By March 21, most countries had introduced some form of enforced lockdown and self-isolation. The Gambler has just played his last hand. Of Kenny Rogers’ music, it is not Islands in the Stream that resonates with me, but The Gambler, You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, Know when to fold ‘em, Know when to walk away, and Know when to run.

For as long as I can remember, the big C word has been cancer; now it is the coronavirus disease, or Covid-19, which sounds like the name of a pop-boy band. When all the fuss around the coronavirus dies down, the real interrogation will begin. It won’t be an investigation of the virus, its origins and how it was able to bring the world into lockdown, but of the system called capitalism.

Obviously, capitalism has failed us. As I wrote this piece, reports of profiteering had become rife. Profiteering is a pejorative term for making a profit through unethical means. I find it difficult to understand that, in a time of international distress, there are people whose sole focus is on making money. The words of the Bible seem be lost on such people: “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Timothy 6:10). This definition also applies to political corruption, and its prime enabler, namely government contracts.

Much has been written about greed, which is inextricably linked to capitalism, a system that tends to justify the accumulation of wealth on the assumption that “wealth will trickle down”.

You would be quite young or recently arrived from a galaxy far, far away, if you were not familiar with the infamous quote from the imaginary, or not so imaginary, Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 movie, Wall Street: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good . . . It captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

Meanwhile, trickle-down economics, also known as the trickle-down theory, refers to the economic proposition that taxes on businesses and the wealthy should be reduced to stimulate business investment in the short term and benefit society at large in the long term. You might be more familiar with it as “Reaganomics”, which was first applied in the US following the coming into effect of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981.

While trickle-down economics has trickled into obscurity, it is greed perpetuated by capitalism that has not only remained but also become a seemingly unmanageable menace. It has become the cancer of capitalism.

What Covid-19 has exposed, and will continue to expose, is how unequal and unjust society has become. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s words – “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” – ring true. This is reminiscent of what the Bible says: “For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.” (Mark 4:25).

Indeed, it is not the rich who will pay for Covid-19, but the poor, in terms of both their lives and their meagre financial resources, which will be used to compensate the rich for their loss. This is so because, internationally, governments are being called upon to bail businesses out, in the same manner that banks were bailed out during the financial crisis. The bail-outs will be provided using taxpayers’ money. And who pays more than their fair share in taxes? Hint: Neither big business nor the wealthy.

Capitalism cannot continue unchecked; it has faltered far too often of late, while visiting misery on only one section of the population and compensating a select few.