In the spring of this year the worlds political and scientific leaders were scrambling for ways to prevent the spread of Covid 19.

They had little understanding of the virus or how to contain it. The capitalist world quickly came to realise they needed to protect their economies.

The cash register soon replaced public health as the number one priority.

The weak and vulnerable would be abandoned; the elderly discarded into unprepared care homes to make room for those economically productive in the population who might fall ill.

Having failed to stop the virus and with delays in finding a vaccine, the authorities decided to open schools, colleges and universities in a blind experiment hoping to generate herd immunity.

In its scramble to cope with Covid 19 the capitalist world has failed miserably.

Unashamedly, they have turned to socialist economics in the form of financial state aid schemes such as Furlough to save them from collapse.

If we are to learn anything from the pandemic it is that socialism is the only way the world can survive in the face of disease, poverty and climate disaster.

Socialism is the only way to ensure social and economic wellbeing in the world.

We also learned that the nurse, the cleaner and those in essential health and social services are far more important to society than the executives of the large corporations. We have learned that society can and is willing to make sacrifices, and to make the changes necessary to create a better world for everyone.

No one should be left behind in the new world order, not the ill nor the elderly, not the vulnerable, not the refugees or migrants.

These are the lessons we must learn and ensure they become our new normal.

Hugh Scullion