There's an Outbreak of MERS at the World Cup, and Everyone's in Denial

It's happening next to a camel pageant.

Photo by Arkin Si on Unsplash

MERS is spreading through soccer players and fans at the World Cup. It’s been reported in the Egypt Independent, as well as The Latin Times.

Everyone’s trying to downplay it.

Let’s talk about why.

The French national team’s coach refers to “flu-like symptoms” in players, and some of them are blaming everything from physical exertion to bad air conditioning for their illness. Western media seems happy to report on a “virus” that’s benching players and disrupting games, even when a sports reporter drops dead right in the middle of a match under mysterious circumstances, after complaining of a flu-like illness and describing other journalists like this: "So many journalists have got a crazy cough. It sounds like a death rattle sometimes.”

Sorry, it sounds very strange…

The Egypt Independent says that “infection with the [MERS] virus was observed among a number of fans of the teams at the current World Cup in Qatar.” That means the virus is spreading through big crowds.

These aren’t misprints.

Everything points to MERS.

The common name for MERS is “camel flu,” because that’s where humans contract the disease. It just so happens that there’s a huge camel pageant happening at the same time as the soccer games. One news source describes it this way: “Think Westminster Dog Show crossed with the Miss America Pageant, except for, well, camels.” More than 30,000 camels, to be exact.

Yes, it’s a bad idea.

In fact, putting 2.4 million people from all over the world next to 30,000 camels that can carry a deadly zoonotic virus without showing any symptoms sounds like such a bad idea, even a B-grade script writer would reject it as implausible.

Nobody’s that dumb, right?

It’s such a bad idea that a group of scientists published an opinion piece this week in The Lancet warning everyone to be extremely careful. As they write, “Many are attending both events, interacting closely with each other and with camels, creating ideal conditions for the transmission of camel-associated zoonotic pathogens with epidemic potential.”

As scientists know, MERS carries a case fatality rate of 35 percent. It’s incredibly dangerous on its own. It’s even more dangerous when you consider the high probability of it recombining with Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) to produce a new highly contagious novel virus. They’re both coronaviruses. They’re primed to swap genetic material. Scientists warned us.

We need to put this situation in blunt terms:

There’s a dangerous virus spreading at a huge international event, happening next to a camel show. If there were ever a red flag for a pandemic trigger event, this is it. And yet, nobody seems concerned.

The western media hasn’t sounded any alarms at all. They’re actually telling everyone that fears of an outbreak are overblown. You might wonder why on earth they’re not covering a major story like this, which has enormous implications for public health. It’s puzzling at first, but it makes sense when you think about it in terms of normalcy bias and, well, plain greed.

First off, nobody wants to be the reporter that ruined the World Cup for everyone. If they’re wrong, then it would destroy their career. In a place like Qatar, it could also get you cut up into little pieces. (We’ll talk about that in a minute.) I don’t think any news agency would live it down. That’s a strange way to think about public health, but the soccer games are taking priority here.

Why?

There’s a ton of money riding on a successful World Cup. Qatar claims to have invested $220 billion in the games. According to a piece in Forbes, the country has been “spending $500 million per week on infrastructure projects including roads, hotels, stadiums and airport upgrades to prepare the small Middle Eastern nation to host the world’s largest sporting event.”

It’s also the first World Cup ever held in the Middle East, and the most expensive one in the history of the games.

There’s a lot of financial pressure.

The petro-kings of Qatar have no intention of giving up billions in profits after investing that much money. They also have no intention of having to take care of thousands of sick people, nor feeding and sheltering them as they quarantine. That would be incredibly expensive.

It’s easier and cheaper to ignore it.

The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) was reluctant to let Qatar host the games. They didn’t think the country could pull it off. They did, but only through massive financing and human rights abuses. Qatar recruited migrants from India, Pakistan, and Nepal to build the infrastructure they needed to host the games. Amnesty International documents everything in detail, showing how the Qatari government subjected them to forced labor:

They include:

1. Appalling living conditions.

2. Passports taken.

3. Not allowed to leave stadiums or camps.

4. Not allowed to quit.

5. Not paid on time.

6. Not paid at all.

7. Threatened with permanent detention.

Some reports reveal guards supervising workers, and continually threatening to turn them over to deportation services without pay if they complained too much or refused to work under increasingly brutal conditions.

A bombshell report in The Guardian revealed that 6,500 migrant workers from these countries died during the construction of the stadiums. They estimate the number runs far higher when you include unofficial reports from countries like Kenya and the Philippines. I know it sounds dramatic, but we’re talking about the kind of slavery that empires used to construct temples.

It feels equivalent.

The Qatari government disputes all of this.

Of course, they would. If they admitted to these crimes, western countries would have no choice but to cancel the games. That would mean $220 billion down the drain and some very unhappy investors. Qatar is an absolute monarchy, a petrostate peninsula jutting off from Saudi Arabia.

They’re not nice.

Follow the money behind the World Cup, and I imagine you’ll find layers of corruption going even deeper than thousands of dead migrant workers. The FIFA Secretary General, Jerome Valcke, is on record saying: “Less democracy is sometimes better for organizing a World Cup.”

I bet so.

Now, I’m going to ask a question: Would a corrupt oil state and their billionaire investors suppress reporting on a dangerous disease until after the games, when everyone was well on their way home?

Would a country that essentially murdered thousands of migrant workers for the sake of soccer stadiums and hotels put profits ahead of the world’s health, and would FIFA look the other way while they did it?

My answer is yes. Even if nothing comes from this (fingers crossed), it’s a jaw-dropping amount of recklessness. Sadly, this is what we’ve come to expect from the rulers of the world.

We’re really holding a massive soccer tournament next to a gigantic camel show in a place where we know a deadly “camel flu” circulates with a mortality rate of 35 percent. We’re doing it when there’s a high chance it could recombine with another virus we’ve let run amok and become even more deadly. We’re doing it because a bunch of oil kings don’t want to lose their fortunes.

It’s always about money.

Isn’t it?