The Capitalist Elite of Denmark Behind Massive Public Coronavirus Experiment

News:

Denmark has been under a major lockdown since mid-March with the purpose of limiting the rapid transmission of COVID-19. The Danish Prime minister, however, announced during a press conference on the 6^th of April that the whole country must gradually reopen after the Eastern Holidays. Among the government’s shocking decisions was the decision to reopen daycare and kindergartens as well as schooling for children up to the fifth grade. This decision was made even though Danish health officials have predicted that the Corona-contagion will reach its peak in Denmark in April.

Comment:

During health crises and pandemics, people expect their leaders to make decisions based on medical assessments and calculations made by experts in the various health fields, such as virologists and epidemiologists, in the best interest of the people. The Danish State Department, however, has not expressed any medical reasons behind the decision to reopen the country.

Some believe that the Danish government has turned to the strategy of intentionally spreading the virus with a faster pace in order to achieve “herd immunity” in the population. This, however, was denied explicitly by the Danish Prime Minister and top officials of the Ministry of Health. So if the reason behind reopening the country is not based on a change of epidemiological strategy, what is the reason then?

The Danish television station, TV2, reported on March 29 that the Danish Prime Minister met with the country’s major corporations and chambers of commerce. During this meeting, a “gradual reopening of the society” was discussed and agreed upon. In the days prior to this meeting, top directors of the major companies had already publicly expressed throughout various media channels that the country “must reopen” soon. The Prime Minister obviously had no other choice than obeying the commands of the Danish industry as the major corporations are the one who are in power and thus they are the real decision makers in Capitalist states.

The Danish broadsheet newspaper, Politiken, also reported on April 2^nd that the elite of the major Danish corporations secretly have been represented in The National Operative Staff (NOST), which is the state’s highest coordination center in dealing with the Coronavirus crisis. Even the country’s parliament was not informed of this. Among the companies present in this staff were Carlsberg and Maersk.

Denmark’s decision of gradually reopening the country in April is clearly influenced by the Capitalist elite in the society and not by the leading virologists, epidemiologists and other health experts. It is a testimony of the horrendous consequences of basing a society on Capitalism as this will result in leaving the country’s future in the hands of corporations, which only care about their own short-term interests. Thousands of people dying do not matter if this is the price of helping the industry in achieving short-term profit.

The consequences of this corporate decision to prematurely reopen the country are yet to be seen. But it can potentially lead to a major rise of Corona-contagion, which will lead to hundreds or thousands of deaths. Through the lenses of the cynical capitalist companies, this is an experiment. If it works, they will profit. If it doesn’t, the people who will die will be elderly and sick people who constitute an economic burden on society. Capitalism does not give value to human life. In Islam, human life does not have a price tag. It is priceless and saving one person is the equivalent of saving the whole of humanity.

[وَمَنْ أَحْيَاهَا فَكَأَنَّمَا أَحْيَا النَّاسَ جَمِيعًا]

“and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind.” [Al-Maida: 32]

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Taimullah Abu Laban

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