COVID-19 vs Cancer: An Analysis

Posted On: May 6, 2020

Are you aware that every year 2 million people die of cancer? That translates to 5479 patients dying every day. The total number of cancer patients in this world is over 18 million. The number of people who have already died due to cancer must be well over the figure currently affected by COVID-19. Still, cancer is not seen as an emergency, but the whole world is scared of COVID-19.

To fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is under lockdown, trade is stalled, travel is banned, fiscal and other public policies are introduced. Awareness and prevention campaigns are being run. Corporations, brands, and investors are joining in without any economic motive. On the other hand, no such measures have ever been taken on a large scale to battle cancer. No ban on processed foods, no control on pollution levels, no environmental measures, no public policy for lifestyle improvements, nothing!

The reason the whole world is afraid of COVID-19 is that it spreads from human to human. Cancer, on the other hand, is not contagious. Plus, the cancer industry is lucrative. It contributes $20 Billion to the economy every year. The smart human race perceives one disease as a global threat and other as an economic opportunity… smart, indeed!

What if the next pandemic is airborne and can spread through the air? What kind of lockdown or isolation or prevention will help us?

stay at home earth picture

The source of these diseases is harmful food habits and the reckless lifestyle that we follow…a lifestyle sold by marketers to people.

The food revolution as an organization has been drawing attention to this. Ocean Robbins and his father, the owners of the world-famous ice cream chain Baskin Robbins, are authentically leading the whole movement. It’s time that every country and its government focused on implementing the objectives of this organization as their primary goal. Alas, that is not going to happen because of the vested interests of those who benefit from disease and want it to be there.

Cancer is an $80.2 billion economy. Add to it the cancer testing/screening industry, food industry, spirit, wine & tobacco industry, travel industry, and many others. We can see how the numbers will multiply.

cancer newspaper

The top guns of Health & pharma industry want cancer to remain. Their tax revenues makes cancer a lucrative catchment area for the governments too. Milking the health and pharma industry, they want to go soft on preventing cancer. At the societal level, the progress has been pretty much slow to ensure safe passage from this dangerous disease.

Consequently, the cost of cancer treatment continues to skyrocket. The Internet is flooded with cancer-related fundraisers. There are endless stories of vulnerable people literally pleading for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The problem with healthcare system is that it is not only damaging, ineffective, and synthetic, it is also extremely expensive. Completely inaccessible to those who can’t afford it. Lack of money (something that men invented) is depriving men of a healthy and long life.

The height of all this is that globally there are many routes and trains that are referred to as cancer trains or cancer routes. From pesticides to fertilizers, from packaged foods to aerated drinks, there are many identified carcinogenic elements being consumed. They are all governed by fixing an allowable maximum percentage. Why doesn’t the government ban them for human safety just like traveling is restricted in these times of COVID-19 outbreak? 

Corporations and governments are so ambitious about their economic interests that they have turned a life threatening illness into a full fledged industry. What an irony!

An aware and healthy society is detrimental for the bottom line of these profiteering businesses, thus health and wellness is not marketed as much as an unhealthy lifestyle is. 

Rampant marketing has pushed us into unhealthy consumption patterns so we can get sick and further fuel the healthcare industry — the irony of the so-called developed world!

The earth and its resources are exploited, rampaged, and devalued for material good which becomes useless in times of pandemic. Due to this greed, multinational corporations are protecting cancer. Human beings are not working collectively to get rid of this dangerous disease. Hope COVID-19 not only kills the human beings, but also annihilates the wrong ideas of greed, scarcity, and competition that are turning out to be threatening to the existence of mankind.

Anand Damani Author at Medium

Serial Entrepreneur, Business Advisor, and Philosopher of Humanism

Writes about Human Behaviour, Universal Morality, Philosophy, Psychology, and Societal Issues.

Anand aims to help complete and spread the knowledge about Universal Human Values and facilitate their practice across sex, age, culture, religion, ethnicity, etc.

Stay tuned with me