Simon Gros

Through the night I decided to read through this shorter work by Žižek, as it fits the current circumstances I’m in, where I don’t have the energy or focus to deal with more in-depth, longer philosophical works of his.

As the title Pandemic! suggests, the author wrote this book in some sort of a panic about the implications of the pandemic, and a seeming despair marks this particular work which is not seen in his earlier books. I will continue with the sequel later today, but am writing this review from a time where the pandemic has seemingly ended, although there is a possibility of an outbreak of a vaccine-resistant variation just around the corner.

I am writing this review four months into the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing economic problem now is the sudden onset of really high fuel prices on a global scale. Yesterday I went through an in-depth analysis of the fluctuations of gas and oil prices in the last few decades and people would be surprised just to what extent the ongoing rise in fuel costs is the direct outcome of the covid_19 pandemic and not necessarily the following onset of the war itself.

The pandemic upset global fuel economy because apparently during the pandemic there was the biggest drop in oil prices globally ever, and through complex fiscal mechanisms this later lead to the current sudden rise which is crippling domestic and national economies on a global scale. It could be said that the invasion of Ukraine that led to over 6 million refugees is a direct consequence of the politics of trading oil on a global scale, with Russia trying to maintain its economic monopoly through invasion and conquest of areas related to oil trade.