It couldn’t happen here.” Pandemics and other threats to health security were supposed to be problems in and from the Global South. But the deficiencies Western states have faced in developing and executing coherent plans, coordinating state agencies, communicating with the public, or even just producing and storing sufficient medical and pharmaceutical equipment (to say nothing of the EU’s scandalous vaccine rollout), have highlighted state failure in the very heartlands of global capitalism. Hollowed-out state capacities, political confusion, cronyism, conspiratorial thinking, and trust deficits have exposed the crumbling legitimacy that now makes rich and powerful states look like banana republics.
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