Jens Holst

The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has been extremely instructive and provides an excellent basis for analysing other conditions whichare highly relevant for global health, particulrly the dominant global economic system and the resulting power relations. Growing evidence shows that the predominantly biomedical approach has not sufficiently taken into account the actual dimension of COVID-19 as a syndemic. The much longer-term pandemic caused by the neoliberalism virus has not been systematically considered by public and global health scholars in the context of COVID-19, although it exhibits essential characteristics of an infectious pathogen, and the symptoms can be described and detected according to biomedical criteria. Even more, the severity of leading symptoms of neoliberalism such as growing inequities calls for immunization campaigns and ultimately herd immunity from viral neoliberalism. However, achieving worldwide immunity would require an anti-neoliberal vaccine, which is extremely challenging to develop vis-à-vis the power relations in global health.

The paper "Viral Neoliberalism: The Road to Herd Immunity Still A Rocky One" by Jens Holst was published in the International Journal of Social Determinants of Health and Health Services
53: (1): 30 - 38. DOI: 10.1177/0020731422113.