Germany: The coronavirus pandemic and the destruction of the public health system

Tino Jacobson & Markus Salzmann

Across Europe, the COVID-19 epidemic is shedding light on the disastrous state of the health system. Everywhere there is a shortage of beds, staff, medical equipment and protective gear. Staying in clinics and nursing homes is now life-threatening for patients, doctors and nurses.

Contrary to the numerous comments by politicians and journalists, who suggest that an otherwise stable and efficient health care system would understandably reach its limits in view of coronavirus infections, the truth looks different. The current crisis in the German health care system was deliberately brought about by all the establishment political parties. Over the last 30 years, the German health care system has been radically damaged as a result of austerity, privatised and its institutions trimmed for profit.

In Germany, more than 58,000 confirmed cases had been reported by Sunday evening; 455 people have already died from the virus. According to the president of the Robert Koch Institute, Lothar Wieler, Germany’s health system could reach its limits due to the crisis. Wieler told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that one must expect that capacity is insufficient. One could not rule out the possibility that there were also more patients than ventilators in this country, he said, referring to the situation in Italy.

It is already clear to everyone that the existing 28,000 intensive care beds in Germany are far from enough, not to mention a lack of personnel. Even before the crisis, there was a shortage of more than 17,000 nursing staff at hospitals in the country. Due to a lack of protective clothing and materials, doctors and nurses are absent every day and even fall ill with the virus. In nursing homes, there is a huge number of deaths. Most recently, 12 people died in a nursing home in Wolfsburg.

Today, the catastrophic consequences of the policy of the last 30 years, which was characterized by cutbacks, privatisation and competition in the health care system, are becoming apparent. Under successive governments, clinics were no longer geared towards the welfare of the population, but the generation of profits.

Currently, in terms of medical facilities, 29 percent are public hospitals, 34 percent non-profit (e.g., run by the church) and 37 percent private institutions. For years, there has been a creeping demise of hospitals. In 1998, there were 2,263 hospitals in Germany, in 2007 there were 2,087 and in 2017 only 1,942 hospitals. Accordingly, the number of hospital beds was reduced by around 10,000 within 10 years, from 506,954 (2007) to 497,200 (2017).

The closure of hospitals has drastically reduced the supply of care close to home. Intensive and emergency medical care, in particular, has suffered from privatisation and closures. More and more emergency cases are being turned away from hospitals close to where people live, or there are no longer any clinics there, and people are being taken to hospitals far away.

According to a survey by the DIVI (German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine), a quarter of the paediatric intensive care units covered by the survey said between 50 and 100 children per year were referred to other hospitals. The reason for this is that many local hospitals have now closed their paediatric and paediatric intensive care units.

A good overview of the development of hospital beds is given by the number per 100,000 inhabitants. In public hospitals, there were 367.7 hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants in 2005 and 10 years later there were only 332. In non-profit hospitals, the number fell from 257.3 to 236.6 in the same period. Only in private hospitals did the number of beds rise, from 221.8 to 244.6.

Diagnosis Related Groups

After German reunification in 1990, the Christian Democratic Kohl government and the then Health Minister, Horst Seehofer, decided to introduce competition into the hospital sector in addition to privatization. To this end, hospital financing was fundamentally changed by the introduction of so-called Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG), a patient classification system that standardizes prospective payment to hospitals. They were intended to force competition between clinics. Hospitals could only survive if they used their beds to full capacity.

Under the Social Democratic-Green Party government of Gerhard Schröder, the DRG system was then made compulsory in 2004. As a result, the average length of hospital stay fell from 10 days (1998) to 7.3 days (2017). The reason for this is that hospitals are no longer paid according to the length of stay of their patients, but according to fixed per-case flat rates. In contrast, the number of hospital stays rose from 18.6 million patients (2012) to 19.4 million (2017).

The per-case flat rates have had a serious impact on patient care and the day-to-day work of doctors. Only if a patient is discharged from hospital as early as possible does the clinic make a profit. However, if the patient has to stay in hospital longer than is covered by the flat rate per case payment, because the treatment is more expensive, this is usually not reimbursed by the health insurance companies and the clinic must pick up the costs.

Because of per-case flat rates, so-called “bloody discharges” occur. In order to meet the specified waiting times, patients who are not actually ready to be discharged are sent home. This leads to a high complication rate with enormous follow-up costs for the health system. Follow-up treatments must then be carried out by general practitioners, who are, however, severely restricted financially by current budgets.

Chronically ill patients and seriously injured patients, in particular, are treated worse in the case-based lump-sum system, as they are generally not profitable for hospitals. Dr. Arne Manzeschke, Professor of Anthropology and Ethics for Health Professions, explains the problem as follows: “Lucrative patients are courted, less lucrative ones—not DRG-relevant—are passed on if possible.” His conclusion on diagnosis-related flat rates: “On the whole, the economically induced stress in the DRG system reduces the quality of medical services.”

It is significant that even in the current crisis, the system of competition and profit is being maintained. While doctors and nurses are working under disastrous conditions to the point of exhaustion and putting themselves at risk, all proposals to suspend the billing system in practice have so far been rejected.

“Largely business as usual,” reports Tagesspiegel. “This means that every single hospital service, whether provided for corona patients or for normal patients, will be billed to the health insurance funds according to the remuneration system of diagnosis-related flat rates per case (DRG).” Only a small number of “special charges” should exist.

Multi-resistant germs

Even under “normal” conditions, i.e., before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, massive hygiene problems in clinics became known, which were due to cutbacks, overworked staff and lack of training. MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) has been a huge problem in German hospitals, nursing and old people’s homes for years.

The MRSA bacteria are dangerous for many patients whose immune defence is weakened, and the bacteria are resistant to almost all broad-spectrum antibiotics. If a MRSA infection develops, the bacteria can multiply and cause serious illness. One of the most important transmission routes is direct hand contact between immunocompromised patients and nursing staff. Otherwise, MRSA can be transmitted through contaminated objects (e.g., medical equipment, catheters or breathing tubes), or liquids.

According to estimates by hospital hygienists, approximately 40,000 patients die in Germany every year from hospital-acquired germs, 25,000 of them from multi-resistant germs. One-third of these deaths could be prevented by better hospital hygiene. Causes for the increasing multi-resistant pathogens are especially the frequent use of antibiotics, also in factory farming. Complications that can result from MRSA bacteria include blood poisoning, pneumonia or meningitis. In some cases, limbs must also be amputated.

A business worth billions

In order to further increase the profits of a narrow stratum at the top of society, this policy is being further pursued. Last summer, the Bertelsmann Foundation called for the closure of one in two hospitals in Germany and suggested that not even 600 of the current 1,400 hospitals should survive.

In the meantime, the health care market has become a billion-euro business, from which not only the pharmaceutical companies, but also private clinics and nursing homes and their shareholders on the stock exchanges benefit. Behind the Bertelsmann Foundation is the Bertelsmann Group, whose central figure, Liz Mohn, is one of the richest women in the world. She is a close friend of Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), and her family is also well connected with the private clinic groups.

Daughter Brigitte Mohn sits on the supervisory board of Rhön-Klinikum AG, a listed operating company that runs 54 hospitals and 35 medical care centres and had already generated sales of €2.32 billion in 2009. Together with Helios, Asklepios and the Sana-Kliniken, Rhön is one of the largest groups in the hospital sector.

The current measures taken by Health Minister Spahn should also be seen against this background. Spahn stands for the further ruthless economization of health care. At the beginning of the year, he presented a draft bill that will further dramatically cut back emergency care in Germany; at its centre is the reduction of emergency facilities by 50 percent.

Clinics that are not among the selected locations are to receive 50 percent less remuneration when they provide outpatient emergency services. In the clinics still selected as emergency facilities, extreme waiting times and increased workloads would occur. Travel distances would be considerably longer.

After Spahn played down the coronavirus crisis for a long time, he is now more or less idly watching as clinics reach their limits. According to Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD), the €55 billion in funds made available by the federal government are not nearly enough to take even the most necessary measures.

Hospitals are to receive financial compensation for postponed scheduled operations and treatments in order to be able to treat more patients with a coronavirus infection. For every hospital bed that is not occupied, there will be a flat rate payment of €560 per day. This means that clinics will continue to weigh up economically whether or not to use a bed for coronavirus patients.

The current crisis in the health care system makes it clear that the ruling class is neither willing nor able to protect the population sufficiently and to provide adequate treatment throughout the country. Not alms, but substantial financial resources must flow immediately into the construction and expansion of clinics and medical facilities. All cuts made in recent decades must be reversed. Privately run hospitals and facilities must be converted to public ownership and no longer serve the greed of shareholders but the welfare of society.

German government preparing major domestic military deployment

Johannes Stern

According to a new report, the German government is preparing a major domestic deployment of the military. The report, based on an internal document from the Interior Ministry, was published Friday by Der Spiegel.

“The Bundeswehr (German Army) will mobilise 15,000 soldiers over the coming days to help manage the Coronavirus crisis,” said the news magazine. It will involve men and women “who are not deployed in foreign interventions or in NATO commitments.” By 3 April at the latest, “full operational capability will be reached.”

The plan is being “kept under wraps militarily” and “secret.” Over the course of three pages, the topics “Area security and force projection,” “command structure” and “force categories and possible tasks” are discussed. It is “an operational plan that is unprecedented in the history of the Republic.”

The number of troops to be mobilised for specific tasks is “listed in detail.” The plan includes 5,500 soldiers for “security and protection,” 6,000 soldiers to “support the population,” 600 military police officers for “security and traffic services,” 250 soldiers from the ABC Division for disinfection, and 2,500 logistics soldiers for “storage, transportation and handling.”

According to the authors, the tasks include “mass accommodation (i.e., containers), quarantine”; regional support; preparing areas for care and military airfields; disinfecting materiel, surfaces and spaces; protection of spaces, objects and critical infrastructure; and supporting security and traffic services.

Four regional command centres under the direction of Gen. Martin Schelleis, lieutenant general of the Air Force and general inspector of the armed forces, will lead the deployment. The Naval command in Rostock is responsible for Mecklenburg-Pomerania, Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg; the Air Force command in Berlin for Berlin and Brandenburg; the 1st Armoured Division in Oldenburg for Bremen, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and North-Rhine Westphalia; and the 10th Armoured Division in Feitshöchheim, Bavaria for the rest of the country.

The extensive deployment of the Army domestically sheds light on the disastrous state of the civilian health care system. After decades of privatisation and austerity, it is not even close to being prepared for a pandemic like COVID-19. Overwhelmed civilian authorities filed 200 requests for assistance from the military by Friday morning, reported Der Spiegel. They included requests for personnel and materiel assistance, such as the provision of protective materials, disinfectant and beds from military stockpiles.

Regardless of how much medical assistance the military ends up providing, its deployment must be taken as a warning. Der Spiegel reported that there have been “controversial follow-up questions” from various German federal states about soldiers “who will ultimately be assisting while armed.”

The Green/Christian Democratic coalition government in Baden-Württemberg, for example, is considering “officially declaring a state of emergency due to the catastrophic state of police personnel and requesting help from the military.” Interior Minister Thomas Strobl has reportedly already contacted federal Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer about this.

With the domestic deployment of the Army, the ruling elite is setting into motion long-developing plans for rearmament and militarisation. The “2016 White Paper on Security Policy and the Future of the Army,” Germany’s official security policy doctrine, stated in the section “Domestic deployment and support from the Army” the following: “To support the police in the effective combating of a disaster situation, the armed forces can under narrow restrictions carry out official responsibilities and assume powers of intervention and compulsion.”

The assumption of “powers of intervention and compulsion” and the carrying out of “official responsibilities” have nothing to do with medical assistance and disaster aid. The Army would, in fact, become a domestic tool of suppression, which has a long and bloody history in Germany. Under the Kaiser, during the Weimar Republic, and under the Nazis, military and paramilitary units were deployed to crush social and political protests and revolutionary struggles by the working class.

This is what the ruling elite is preparing for today. A document from the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies titled “What ambitions for European Defence 2020?” sees one task of future military interventions as “shielding the global rich from the tensions and problems of the poor.”

“As the proportion of the world population living in misery and frustration will remain massive,” the report states, “the tensions and spillover between their world and that of the rich will continue to grow. Technology is shrinking the world into a global village, but it is a village on the verge of revolution. While we have an increasingly integrated elite community, we also face increasingly explosive tensions from the poorer strata below.”

Since this document was first published in English in 2009 (a German translation with a foreword by EU Foreign Policy High Representative Catherine Ashton appeared in 2011), social inequality in Germany and across Europe has exploded. While austerity policies have thrown millions into social misery—some 13 million people in Germany are now considered poor—and gutted the continent’s health care and social services, a tiny layer at the top of society has enriched itself obscenely. In Germany, the richest 1,000 individuals and families control wealth totaling close to €1.2 trillion, more than three times the annual federal budget.

The Coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the political and moral bankruptcy of the entire capitalist system. Like the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the ruling elite views this far greater catastrophe as a chance to transfer billions to the coffers of the large corporations and investors. It is not only willing to sacrifice the health, but also the lives of millions of workers to achieve this. Although the pandemic continues to spread—there were more than 6,933 new cases and 84 deaths in Germany on Friday—the calls to send millions of people back to work are growing ever louder.

In the March 27 World Socialist Web Site Perspective column on the ruling elite’s demand that workers get back to work without any serious protection from the virus, we wrote that for the ruling elite, “’winning the war” against the pandemic means, above all, establishing the best conditions for the intensified exploitation of the working class. But for the working class, the success of the fight to contain the spread of the coronavirus is measured in “lives saved, not profits made.”

The commentary continued: “This is an irreconcilable conflict. The determination of the ruling elite to deal with the pandemic without undermining the capitalist profit system leads to authoritarianism and war. The efforts of the working class to combat the pandemic lead to socialism.”

The planned domestic deployment of the military must be viewed in this context.

Millions of Europe’s health care workers endangered by government neglect

Thomas Scripps

The death from COVID-19 of a further 2,335 people in Europe on Monday brought the total on the European continent to 26,548. There were 24,334 new cases yesterday, bringing the total to 409,797.

France saw its worst daily toll with 418 deaths, bringing the total to 3,024. After China, Italy and Spain, France has now crossed the 3,000-death threshold. Health agency Director Jerome Salomon reported that 5,107 people were in serious condition requiring life support.

Italy reported an additional 812 deaths, bringing its total to 11,591. Spain reported 812 new deaths, raising its total to 7,340. Britain recorded 180 additional deaths, bringing its total to 1,408. Germany reported 19 new deaths; it has now suffered 560 COVID-19 fatalities.

These totals include many young people and those with no underlying health conditions. Last week, a 16-year-old girl in Paris with no health complications became the virus’ youngest victim in Europe. Of the 260 people who died in the UK last Saturday, 13 had no underlying health conditions.

The crisis is taking a particularly heavy toll on woefully under-resourced health care workers fighting on the front lines of the pandemic. This intolerable situation threatens the health and lives of medical staff and their families and the collapse of already overwhelmed health care systems.

In Italy, 8,358 health care workers were reported infected as of yesterday. Sixty-one have died. Doctors Without Borders has sent a team to Codogno in the north of the country to care for hospital workers and support staff.

In Spain, Fernando Simon, the head of the country’s emergency coordination centre, said Friday that 9,444 health care workers were infected, up from 3,475 less than a week earlier. This represents 12 percent of current cases. The real numbers are thought to be much higher. At least three medical workers have died.

In the UK, one in four National Health Service (NHS) doctors is ill or self-isolating with sick family members, according to the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). Overall, the RCN found that up to a fifth of all front line health staff has been forced to take time off work to self-isolate. Over the weekend, the first two deaths of medical employees were reported. The GMB trade union believes that 4,100 ambulance workers have also self-isolated, roughly 17 percent of paramedics.

A study published by the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet found that in China’s Hubei province, the first epicentre of the pandemic, 70 percent of front line health workers suffered extreme levels of stress, 50 percent had depressive disorders, 44 percent had anxiety and 34 percent had insomnia. There have been several reports of suicide by nurses in northern Italy.

Responsibility for the tragedy unfolding in hospitals across Europe lies squarely with the ruling elites, which have failed to provide protection for medical staff. Reports of inadequate supplies and quality of personal protective equipment (PPE) are widespread.

In France, doctors have been taking spare masks from construction sites and factories. Biologist Francois Blanchecott told France Inter radio, “We’re asking mayors’ offices, industries, any enterprises that might have a store of masks.”

Alain Colombie, a 61-year-old doctor, posted a photo of himself naked, with the words “cannon fodder” written on an armband, to highlight the lack of protection. Below the photo he wrote, “President Macron, you are asking your little soldiers to go to the front without weapons or defences (masks, gel, overshirts) and, of course, without consideration.”

Colombie explained that he wanted to “come to the defence of the entire family of health care workers.” He added, “I denounce a guilty lack of preparation, even though I’ve been communicating about COVID-19 since the end of January.”

Doctors in smaller hospitals in the German capital Berlin have warned of possibly having to close due to a lack of masks, glasses and suits.

Professor Julio Mayol, medical director at the Clinico San Carlos Hospital in Madrid, Spain, said, “It is a bad situation, it is really bad and it is getting worse day by day, because the number of positive COVID-19 patients is increasing.

“We can provide them with more beds, but we need personal protection equipment, and there is a global shortage, and this makes it very difficult for us to send health care workers to battle on the front line without the adequate equipment. … health care professionals are getting infected. I estimate it could be as many as 25 percent in the near future if we don’t do something.”

Dr. Natalia Silva, from the San Juan de Deu Hospital near Barcelona, told Al Jazeera, “We have to wear masks that we should throw away once they have been used once. Instead, we have to wear them for days. We have also protective glasses that do not fit, and we have to pass them around from one doctor to another.”

The Spanish government has been forced to call up 50,000 additional medical workers, including recent graduates and retired doctors and nurses, to plug the rapidly widening gap.

On Saturday, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, wrote a blistering indictment of the British government’s response to the crisis:

“The NHS (National Health Service) has been wholly unprepared for this pandemic. … February should have been used to expand coronavirus testing capacity, ensure the distribution of [World Health Organisation]-approved PPE, and establish training programmes and guidelines to protect NHS staff. They didn’t take any of those actions. The result has been chaos and panic across the NHS. Patients will die unnecessarily. NHS staff will die unnecessarily. It is, indeed, as one health worker wrote last week, ‘a national scandal.’ The gravity of that scandal has yet to be understood.”

Horton reprinted a selection of harrowing messages he has been sent by health workers in Britain:

“It’s terrifying for staff at the moment. Still no access to personal protective equipment or testing.”

“It feels as if we are actively harming patients.”

“When I was country director in many conflict zones, we had better preparedness.”

“The hospitals in London are overwhelmed.”

“The public and media are not aware that today we no longer live in a city [London] with a properly functioning western health care system.”

“How will we protect our patients and staff? … I am speechless. It is utterly unconscionable. How can we do this? It is criminal … NHS England was not prepared … We feel completely helpless.”

Despite the Johnson Conservative government’s promises to roll out mass testing of health workers, just 900 NHS staff were tested for COVID-19 over the weekend.

The government distributed a survey to textile manufacturers two weeks ago asking what protective equipment they could make but have made no further contact with the factories that responded. The same factories report receiving pleas from local hospitals for “anything you can make.”

A document leaked Monday showed a stock check carried out by Northern Ireland’s regional health service. It found that 32 of 33 COVID-19-related PPE products were listed as “out of stock.” Some suppliers are warning that protective gear will not be ready until the summer.

Many staff have already been forced to buy their own protective gear or use makeshift equipment. The hashtag #GetMePPE has been trending on Twitter, and doctors and nurses have set up a crowdsourcing website, “GetUsPPE.org,” to appeal for donations. Over the weekend, Public Health England released guidance on the use of PPE that sets a significantly lower standard than World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance.

Every few days bring new evidence of warnings ignored and preparations not made. In 2017, the UK government’s Department of Health rejected advice from an independent advisory committee recommending “providing eye protection for all hospital, community, ambulance and social care staff who have close contact with pandemic influenza patients.” The committee were told to reconsider and ultimately drop their advice due to “the very large incremental cost of adding in eye protection,” according to minutes of the meeting.

According to the Guardian, a July 2019 review of the UK’s biological security strategy focusing on preparations for emerging infectious diseases was postponed and then cancelled. Professor Sir Ian Boyd, a former government adviser involved in writing the strategy, explained, “Getting sufficient resource just to write a decent bio-security strategy was tough. Getting resource to properly underpin implementation of what it said was impossible.”

The working class is moving to take a stand against this criminal neglect. Following strikes and protests by workers in the United States and in Europe to demand safe working conditions, 500 warehouse workers for British fashion retailer ASOS walked out of a warehouse on Saturday in Barnsley, South Yorkshire to protest against unsafe conditions.

A mass, international campaign must be developed for the closure of all non-essential plants and warehouses and to demand that workers involved in essential production, health and care services above all, be provided with full protective gear by the government and employers. Such measures must be paid for out of the hoarded wealth of the super-rich.

Growing protests in US immigrant detention centers over coronavirus pandemic

Meenakshi Jagadeesan

More than 150 immigrants held at the York County Prison detention center in Pennsylvania have started a hunger strike demanding immediate release amidst the coronavirus pandemic. The strike, first reported by the Movement of Immigration Leaders in Pennsylvania, is part of a growing movement across detention centers around the country. As reported last week, 350 immigrants held in the Stewart Detention Center in southwest Georgia have been on a hunger strike since last Thursday demanding better protection against the pandemic.

The situation prevailing in these centers has long been breeding grounds for public health disasters. Last year, a mumps outbreak that started at a Texas immigration detention center quickly surged through the system, sickening nearly 1,000 migrants in 57 facilities across the country. During that outbreak, an entire wing at the York County Prison had to be quarantined for two months.

At this point, the Trump administration has only acknowledged two cases of adults held in a New Jersey detention center, five Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) employees in three different states, and three children under the protection of the Office of Refugee Resettlement as testing positive for COVID-19. However, given the nature of the pandemic as well as the highly unsanitary conditions prevailing in the world’s largest network of immigration detention centers, these numbers do not fool anyone, least of all the detainees themselves.

Phoebe Lytle, a law student volunteer who has spoken with detainees at ICE facilities in Louisiana, told the Guardian, “People are terrified for their lives and think that they’re going to die there. ... I don’t think anyone is saying it in a light or flippant way.” Jaclyn Cole, a volunteer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, was quoted in the same report as hearing 10 to 15 shots during a 10-minute phone call with a Cuban detainee being held at the Pine Prairie Processing Center. Cole was informed that guards had been shooting rubber bullets and using chemical agents against protesting detainees.

In the past week alone, according to government documents obtained by Buzzfeed, guards have used force to quell detainee protests over COVID-19 fears at least four times. The incidents mentioned in the documents took place in three ICE detention facilities in Louisiana and Texas—LaSalle ICE Processing Center, Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center, and South Texas ICE Processing Center.

Last Wednesday, ICE medical officials, along with representatives of the Geo Group, the private contractor which runs the center, held a meeting about COVID-19 at the LaSalle Processing Center. The meeting soon descended into chaos with about 75 protesting detainees being pepper-sprayed by the guards. ICE spokesperson Brian Cox confirmed the incident, claiming that the use of force was necessitated by protesting detainees who “refused to comply with directives from facility staff,” and four of whom “attempted to force their way out of the housing area.”

Similar statements have been made about other incidents as well—the use of “pepper balls” against 23 detainees in LaSalle, the use of pepper spray against “physically combative” detainees in Pine Prairie, and the use of force against the 60 detainees in South Texas who told guards they would “continue their protest until they were released from custody.”

Each of these actions has been justified by ICE and its private contractors as necessary measures against “actions that compromised the security protocols of the facility.” However, the point being made by the detainees is precisely that none of the protocols actually in place will secure them against the spread of the coronavirus. As Alexandra Seo, whose mother is being held at LaSalle, told Buzzfeed, “They are freaking out about it. ... She is saying ‘help her,’ she is begging for help.”

Dr. Sirous Asgari, an Iranian scientist, who is being held in the ICE holding facility in Alexandria, Louisiana, spoke at length to the Guardian about the “inhumane conditions” prevailing in filthy and overcrowded centers. His case is a perfect illustration of the sheer disregard for any legal norms that governs this administration’s treatment of immigrants.

In 2017, Dr. Asgari, who has a Ph.D. in materials engineering from Drexel University, and his wife arrived in the US with valid visas. Their two children live in America. Shortly after arriving, he discovered that he was being prosecuted by the US government for alleged violations of sanctions law. Charged with stealing trade secrets related to his academic work with a university in Ohio, Dr. Asgari was fully exonerated in a trial that concluded five months ago.

However, the Trump administration revoked his original visa when he was initially charged, and then, in a Kafkaesque scenario, this was given by US immigration officials an an excuse to detain him even after his acquittal. After arriving at the Alexandria Staging Facility (ASF) on March 10, Dr. Asgari has been seeking to “self-deport” to Iran, but ICE has refused to let him leave the country or be reunited with his family in the US.

ASF is meant to be a final transit stop where detainees are to be held no longer than 72 hours before being deported. However, because of the general travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 400-bed facility is holding people for days on end and bringing in more people who might have been exposed to the virus. The overcrowded facility, Dr. Asgari said, provides no hand sanitizer or face masks. Despite having brought his own face mask, since he has a history of serious respiratory illness, he was prevented from using it.

Detainees have been forced to clean their own living spaces and toilets with the limited cleaning supplies they are given and often must wear the same clothes they have traveled in since there are no laundry facilities. Of course, social distancing is impossible to practice in a space where 100 people are often crammed into bunk beds placed in a single pod.

Dr. Asgari reported that his pod had only six showers for all the inmates, which made it impossible for people to maintain basic hygiene. In addition, ASF also kept the detainees on a very limited diet, providing only one hot meal a day at 5 p.m., and two small meals at breakfast and lunch. There was no option for people to buy more food, even if they could afford it.

As Dr. Asgari put it, “The way ICE looks at these people is not like they are human beings, but are objects to get rid of. ... The way that they have been treating us is absolutely terrifying. I don’t think many people in the US know what is happening inside this black box.”

The protests by detainees in recent days is a desperate attempt to open up the black box. To continue running these detention centers at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is escalating at a dangerous pace is criminal.

US prisons begin release of inmates after COVID-19 pandemic engulfs system

Sam Dalton

On Monday the official total of positive COVID-19 cases in New York City prisons rose to 167 prisoners, 114 staff and 23 prison healthcare workers. The infamous Rikers Island, with a population of 4,740, now has the highest infection rate of any defined population globally, at almost 3 percent. Rikers’ infection rate is almost 10 times more than New York City as a whole, which has an infection rate of 0.357 percent, according to the Legal Aid Society.

Given the scarcity of testing, the true case numbers are undoubtedly much higher. At least two prison workers have died in New York.

COVID-19 has spread throughout the prisons nationally. Cook County Jail in Illinois, as of March 29, had 101 cases among inmates and 12 among staff. March 29 also saw the first confirmed death of a federal prisoner from the disease, a 49-year-old inmate in Louisiana.

The spread of the virus and the first deaths within the prison system have prompted the release of prisoners across the United States. According to Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York City has released over 1,000 prisoners, lowering the number of incarcerated people in the city to fewer than 5,000 for the first time since 1949. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, whose state has 78 COVID-19 positive inmates at the time of this writing, signed an executive order calling for the immediate release of nonviolent prisoners.

The Los Angeles County sheriff’s office has ordered similar measures and California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered a stop to new prison admissions. New Jersey has also released over 1,000 inmates. Prisoners who are being released are not being tested for the virus.

These measures are haphazard and, in most cases, too little, too late. An acute outbreak of COVID-19 across US prisons is already taking place. Hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners and prison staff will die as the result of the incompetence and negligence of the ruling class. Kelsey Kauffman, the director of education at Indiana Women’s Prison, stated that the failure to release inmates earlier “may be considered one of the great public health tragedies of our time.”

Although the New York City prison system is the epicenter of the crisis, the highly infectious nature of the disease and its uncontrolled spread through the national prison system, with its population of over 2 million people, mean this will become a national catastrophe.

Since the beginning of the outbreak in the US in January, countless warnings from prison and medical professionals about the dangers of inaction have been ignored. On March 6, the Prison Policy Initiative called for wide-ranging releases throughout the US. On March 15, the World Health Organization wrote, “Efforts to control COVID-19 in the community are likely to fail if strong infection prevention and control measures, adequate testing, treatment and care are not carried out.” New York only began releasing prisoners in very small numbers on March 20, and most remain behind bars. The continuing failure to expand these measures will result in many more deaths.

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, the vulnerability of the prison population to infectious diseases had shown that a catastrophe was possible without strong corrective measures. Numerous outbreaks of meningitis, syphilis and tuberculosis have occurred in many US prisons since 2000. A 2011 paper, “The Rise of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) in U.S. Correctional Populations,” stated, “Strategies that focused on increased awareness, early detection and appropriate management, enhanced hygiene, and maintenance of a clean environment have proven successful in containing clusters and outbreaks.”

The crowded and unsanitary conditions of prisons allow infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, to spread rapidly. Jimmy, a recently released inmate from Rikers Prison, told the New York Times: “You’re on top of one another no matter what you do. There’s no ventilation. If anything is floating, everybody gets it.” He went on to say he had seen dormitories and holding pens with feces smeared across the walls. Official guidance instructing prisoners to keep at least 3 feet apart is impossible to follow. Fifty inmates typically share the same toilet, only three telephones and continue to eat together on cramped tables. In most US jailhouses, beds are typically less than 24 inches apart.

Prisoners have more underlying health conditions than the overall population, meaning that infection is more likely to be deadly. State and federal prisoners are 12 times more likely to have suffered from tuberculosis than the general population and three times more like to suffer from HIV/AIDS. Prison populations also suffer from increased rates of diabetes, hypertension and asthma.

The rapid spread of infection among a less healthy population means that the majority of cases requiring hospitalization and ventilators will come in a short period, putting additional strain on already under-resourced hospitals and healthcare workers. Again, this will increase the number of deaths.

Prison staff are also at increased risk of infection. Contrary to reports from New York City authorities, prison workers have not received promised personal protective equipment. A public health practitioner who works at Rikers Island told the World Socialist Web Site: “When I came to administer tests there were no masks and no gloves although I was told they would be provided. All the correctional officers that come in are in one line and not socially distanced. People are desperate to work as they need the money, so they do not want to admit if they do have symptoms nor take sick time. We are just having these tests to say they are testing; they aren’t doing anything to stop the spread.” These unprotected workers are at heightened risk of not only infecting themselves, but also their families when they return home.

Amy, a nurse whose son is currently in a New York state prison for a parole violation, told the WSWS: “My son has asthma and is a smoker. He got 18 months for missing curfew. In the prison he is regularly in a crowded cafeteria and has no access to hand sanitizer. He told me it is spreading like wildfire in there. We are waiting to see if he gets released, but there are so many vulnerable and sick people with him. I am really concerned about them; their lives could end in five minutes.”

Compounding the health crisis in the prisons, all New York City facilities will have various services curtailed due to the pandemic, including creative art therapy, access to caseworkers, age-based screenings for sexually transmitted infections, a program to combat intimate partner violence and new methadone treatments.

The rapid influx and outflow of prisoners through the national system mean prisons act as launching points for the disease’s spread through the wider population. Last year an estimated 10.6 million people cycled through American prisons.

The release of prisoners has incited a barrage of “law-and-order” demagogy from sections of the political establishment. In response to releases, US Attorney General William Barr stated, “Many inmates will be safer in Bureau of Prisons facilities where population is controlled and there is ready access to doctors and medical care.” These words, which ignore the mass privatization of prison healthcare in the past two decades and chronic shortages this has entailed, are facilitating potentially thousands of preventable deaths.

The entire political establishment, Republican and Democrat alike, is culpable in this disaster. Their shocking incompetence and callousness are not accidental or the product of ignorance. The delay in the release of prisoners, despite calls from the medical and prison community weeks ago, is an expression of their subservience to Wall Street, and particularly the corporations who benefit from the plentiful supply of hyper-exploited prison labor across the US. Indeed, it is the case that hundreds of thousands of innocent and nonviolent inmates are still behind bars under conditions where prisons are deadly breeding grounds for the pandemic.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, played a leading role in enacting multiple “crime bills” that have dramatically expanded the number of people imprisoned in the US.

The American prison system was in a deep crisis before the rapid spread of COVID-19. No society in human history has incarcerated as many of its own citizens as the United States. The COVID-19 outbreak—and the threat it poses to millions of lives in the prison system—is not just an act of nature, but the product of decades of the conscious subordination of correctional facilities to the profits of major corporations, leading to mass incarceration under atrocious prison conditions.

The profit system is sabotaging the struggle against the coronavirus

Patrick Martin

The profit drive of big American corporations is a major factor in impeding the efforts of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in the struggle against the coronavirus. This is the reality of American capitalism, as opposed to Trump’s hosannas about how “great companies” are playing an “incredible” role in this crisis.

The New York Times detailed Sunday how financial operations in the medical equipment market blocked an initiative by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to build a stockpile of ventilators, which are now in short supply throughout the United States.

The CDC initiative, which began in 2007 in response to the SARS epidemic and continued for seven years, was aimed at addressing a shortage of the ventilators that would be needed in the event of a runaway influenza-type virus, similar to this year’s coronavirus. “The plan was to build a large fleet of inexpensive portable devices to deploy in a flu pandemic or another crisis,” the Times reported.

The devices would not only be cheaper, but simpler to operate, thus requiring less training for the workers, usually respiratory therapists, responsible for their use. In the current COVID-19 crisis, the lack of staff is at least as important as the scarcity of ventilators.

The CDC selected a small California company to design the new machines, which would cost only $3,000 apiece, much below the price of $10,000 for the bulky machines then in use in hospitals throughout the country. Newport Medical Instruments, a subsidiary of a Japanese firm, won the bid for the federal contract and delivered three prototypes of the new device in 2011. CDC officials were enthusiastic, and told Congress that the device would be on the market by September 2013.

But then a much larger US medical device manufacturer, Covidien, acquired Newport Medical Instruments, as part of an effort to buy up smaller competitors and prevent them from cutting into Covidien’s profits. In particular, Covidien already manufactured and marketed a much more expensive ventilator that would be undercut by the Newport effort. According to the Times, “Government officials and executives at rival ventilator companies said they suspected that Covidien had acquired Newport to prevent it from building a cheaper product that would undermine Covidien’s profits from its existing ventilator business.”

After Covidien, valued at $12 billion, swallowed up Newport Medical for $100 million, its executives asked the CDC in 2014 to allow it to withdraw from the contract for the proposed low-cost ventilator on the grounds that it was not sufficiently profitable. The Obama administration agreed to the request. CDC started over, with a new contract to a new company, the giant Dutch multinational Philips. Covidien was itself acquired a year later by Medtronic for $50 billion. Executives of the giant merged firm told the Times they knew nothing about the low-cost ventilator project.

Medtronic Operational Headquarters in Fridley, Minnesota, USA. (Photo: Wikipedia)

The Times report concluded: “That failure delayed the development of an affordable ventilator by at least half a decade, depriving hospitals, states and the federal government of the ability to stock up. The federal government started over with another company in 2014, whose ventilator was approved only last year and whose products have not yet been delivered.”

There are similar factors behind the shortage of N95 masks, now felt by medical workers at hospitals throughout the country. One of the largest US manufacturers of N95 masks is 3M Corporation, the giant Minneapolis-based conglomerate perhaps best known as the maker of Post-Its and Scotch tape. There has been mounting criticism of 3M and other providers of N95 masks for withholding supplies of materials and finished masks from the market, and for permitting price-gouging by their distributors.

3M in particular has been attacked for its policy of delivering all its supplies through commercial distributors, rather than sending them directly to health care facilities or state agencies seeking to purchase large quantities of the masks, which are used by the millions each day of the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week the company announced stepped-up production of N95 masks, and it was featured in a flattering cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek, headlined, “How 3M Plans to Make More Than a Billion Masks By End of Year,” which hailed the company for “a remarkably large contribution” to the fight against coronavirus.

Sports and media billionaire Mark Cuban, an occasional critic of the Trump administration, denounced 3M by name. “I’m excited that 3M has increased capacity. But supply hasn’t been matched with demand,” he told Bloomberg News. “Why is 3M not telling distributors, pick up the phone, sell your inventory to the hospitals, or we’ll never let you buy more product?”

Citing reports of price-gouging, Cuban continued, “these distributors are making as much money as they possibly can … It’s wrong, it’s criminal.”

President Trump was asked Saturday about Cuban’s remarks, and he defended 3M, claiming one of his own billionaire cronies, Ken Langone, CEO of Home Depot, had vouched for the company.

“I think 3M has done an incredible job,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a photo op in Norfolk, Virginia, as a US Navy hospital ship set sail for New York City. “I just spoke to Ken Langone. I think he’s on the board of 3M. He called up and he said what a great job they’ve done. I think 3M, from what everybody said, they’ve done an incredible job.”

Another attack on profiteering at the expense of N95 production came from an unlikely source, a fervent right-winger, former Army Special Forces helicopter pilot Tyler Merritt, whose apparel company based in Savannah, Georgia, specializes in marketing t-shirts to Trump supporters with provocative slogans—attacking NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, upholding gun rights and other flagwaving motifs.

Merritt has taken to the airwaves, first on Fox News and then Sunday on MSNBC, declaring that several major corporations are blocking efforts to convert factories like his to producing surgical masks, N95 masks and other needed supplies. Holding up a piece of the fabric that is cut and molded to make N95 respirators, Merritt told MSNBC the fabric “is being hoarded by certain companies. This material is being traded as a commodity. This used to cost $6,000 a ton, now it’s costing upwards of $600,000 a ton… It’s despicable what some companies are doing.”

Merritt did not name any names, and his MSNBC interviewer—working for a network owned by Comcast Corporation—did not seek to identify exactly which corporate criminals he was referring to. But there is no doubt of the truth of what Merritt was charging: giant corporations and various middlemen are raking in profits while endangering the lives of millions in the face of the coronavirus threat.

Two other critical components needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic—mass testing and the development of a vaccine—have also been constrained by the profit motive and the division of the world into competing nation-states. As the WSWS has previously reported, plans to develop a coronavirus vaccine following the 2002 SARS epidemic floundered when no companies invested in the research. Had such a vaccine been developed, it could have been tested during the initial outbreak in Wuhan to see whether it could prevent COVID-19. The incredibly long delays in mass testing in the US and many countries has been a combined product of governmental mismanagement and the subordination of this vital social need to the profit interests of the pharmaceutical giants.

COVID-19 and Left Wing Extremism in India: Emerging Concerns

Rajat Kumar Kujur


Left wing extremism (LWE) is known to be India’s biggest internal security threat. LWE conflict zones are home to a variety of actors such as the local civilian population, security and administrative personnel, the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres etc. At present, with the Government of India’s country-wide efforts to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative that innovative security relevant impetus be added to handle this issue in the LWE affected regions.

The recent CPI-Maoist attack on security forces in Chhattisgarh highlights the urgency of doing so. The attack came at a time when people in India, irrespective of political, social, and religious differences, have come together to deal with COVID-19 risks. Although specific information indicating active plotting is not yet available, it is plausible that the CPI-Maoist would be seeking to exploit public fears associated with the spread of COVID-19 to incite violence, eliminate targets and promote their ideology. Additionally, at present, due to the countrywide lockdown, the Maoist rank and file in the dense forests are facing acute shortage of food and other daily use goods. There are reports that in desperation, they are now pressurising innocent villagers and village chiefs to provide them with food and other materials. This is a serious situation as it has the potential to introduce new dynamics to the ongoing Maoist insurgency.

According to official data, 60 districts across eight states are affected by the CPI-Maoist led LWE. Locals living in those areas have almost no proper access to hospitals or healthcare facilities and are often treated like third-class citizens. Consequently, they have turned to dubious ‘faith healers’, which stands to complicate an already difficult public health situation. Given the adverse conditions, it is a major challenge for the government to provide necessary healthcare facilities to some of its most neglected populations at a time when they need it most. The task entails both ensuring availability of the facilities to those populations as well as creating an atmosphere of safety in the Maoist affected areas so that people can avail of those facilities.

Furthermore, since 2005, approximately 30,000 people (mostly from the tribal populace) have reportedly fled Chhattisgarh due to LWE violence, and are living in 248 settlements in the forests of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Maharashtra. They currently live in deplorable conditions without proper access to clean drinking water and electricity. They receive lower wages, and most do not possess ration cards or voter IDs and cannot prove their citizenship. This poses a impediments to respective state governments vis-à-vis ensuring their well-being. Those among them without proper identification are vulnerable to being deprived of special provisions instituted by the government to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, thousands of people belonging to the Maoist infested regions of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Maharashtra work as daily wage labourers in Delhi, Mumbai, Goa etc, many of whom are now returning to their villages in large groups. In the Maoist infested areas, checking by police personnel is limited to roads only. Given how those returning are doing so through forest areas, the risk of transmission of the virus from carriers is extremely high.

The LWE affected areas also house large numbers of security personnel who are deployed there. For example, at present, in Chhattisgarh alone, approximately 70,000 security personnel comprising state forces and paramilitary forces like the Central Reserve Police Force, the Border Security Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Sashastra Seema Bal etc are deployed in seven of its worst Maoist hit districts. These personnel are more vulnerable to being affected by COVID-19 in comparison to their counterparts deployed in other places. Findings of various studies suggest that forces deployed away from home for extended periods of time do tend to have higher rates of infection than those able to live with, or near, their families. Additionally, the fact that most of these forces travel from place to place as per the need of the hour makes them more exposed to the risk of contracting the virus.

New Delhi (as well as state governments) must keep their strategy simple without allowing the situation to become advantageous for the CPI-Maoist. Security forces operating in the area must be made aware of their new role in this war against COVID-19. Combing operations might have to continue, but health camps, mobile hospitals etc must be urgently incorporated into the counter-Maoist strategy. Free medicines, soaps, masks and sanitary napkins must be distributed along with government sponsored rations. Local police personnel familiar with local languages as well as surrendered Maoists could be enlisted to aid in spreading public service information to the innocent tribal populations pertaining to safety, sanitation and self-isolation. Overcoming the COVID-19 threat in regions affected by India’s biggest internal security threat would require strict vigilance against Maoist activities as well as comprehensive protection of the local populations.

The New World of Coronavirus

Cesar Chelala

The tragedy of September 11, 2001, and the coronavirus pandemic have one thing in common: both caused a seismic change in the world. And that change, in general, is for the worse. The present pandemic has, and will have, negative effects on how people work, live, and use their free time. This huge public health crisis will affect each and every one of the 7.8 billion inhabitants of the planet.

As a consequence of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, the world became a gigantic apparatus of security and control that severely curtailed individual liberties. Although that has been necessary to guarantee the lives of citizens, at the same time it allowed an intrusion of government controls on people, particularly in the United States.

However, even though the attack on the towers had great effects on citizens’ rights, they pale in the face of the consequences of the present pandemic, which not only affects the survival of millions of people but also has great economic and social effects. And although some analysts think that these effects may be short-lived, they will most likely affect the world’s population for a long time.

Economic effects

As usually happens in times of crisis, those most affected are generally those with the least economic resources. Millions of employees worldwide have been left without work given the widespread cessation of all kinds of activities, except the essential ones. As a result, those workers who depend exclusively on their wages and savings are unable to meet their needs and those of their families.

Although some governments have promised financial aid to those most in need – as is the case in the United States – that aid is insufficient or takes time to arrive, making it less effective. In the United States, an estimated 40 percent of workers depend entirely on their bi-weekly or monthly wages. And if that happens in the most powerful country in the world, it is easy to imagine what happens in developing countries.

Interestingly, although thousands of businesses have had to suspend their activities, large companies that sell their products through the Internet have considerably increased their workforce. Such is the case of Amazon, which added 100,000 new jobs to existing ones. However, it is estimated that the pandemic will significantly reduce the productive capacity of the economy globally, and its effects will be greater than those of the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

Social effects of the pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic led to major changes in people’s behavior. Although the majority act with a great sense of responsibility, limiting the occasions for personal contact as much as possible, irresponsible groups put at risk those most susceptible to contracting the infection, such as people over 60 years of age or those with serious pre-existing diseases.

This also highlights the enormous generosity of health personnel, from the humblest to the most capable, to offer their services at the risk of their lives. Government leaders may take responsibility for setting an example with their behavior, and imposing draconian measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic. The behavior of a few who do not comply with the isolation directives must be prevented from risking the lives of others.

Effect on the global balance of power

Public opinion is that neither President Donald Trump nor the leaders of some European countries such as Italy and Spain responded adequately to the challenge of this world crisis. If the European Union cannot adequately protect its 500 million people, it should come as no surprise if some countries decide to leave Brussels and regain control of their affairs at the national level.

Instead, the early and accurate attitude of the leaders of various Asian countries such as China, South Korea and Singapore is widely praised at the moment. It is important to emphasize this, particularly when a second wave of infections is feared in some Southeast Asian countries. In 2009, Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization had stated in this regard, “All countries should immediately activate their pandemic preparedness plans and must remain on high alert for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia.”

Meanwhile, the dissatisfaction of the American public with the delay of President Donald Trump’s administration to take the necessary measures to combat the pandemic continues to grow. Tom Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College recently wrote for Politico, “The colossal failure of the Trump administration both to keep Americans healthy and to slow the pandemic-driven implosion of the economy might shock the public enough back to insisting on something from government other than emotional satisfaction.”

Outlook

Bill Gates had already warned in 2015 of the possibility of a pandemic like the one the world is currently experiencing. And his tips to avoid it were the following, which are still valid: Develop an excellent health system; create a medical emergency corps; join forces between medical and military resources; do simulation exercises with germs and, finally, increase funds for research and development, particularly for vaccines and diagnostic tests. Gates already warned that if the adoption of these measures did not start immediately, it would be impossible to stop the next pandemic. His words were prophetic.

Confronting the crisis of internally displaced Indians

Swapna Gopinath

India is currently facing a crisis which can escalate into a bigger catastrophe than COVID-19 and the consequences can be heart wrenching as we are already witnessing across the country. The exodus of the migrant population is of an unprecedented kind, triggered by the reckless and callous decisions taken by a senseless government at the Centre. Prime Minister Modi’s 8 p.m. address to the nation has emerged to be one of the dreaded moments in the history of the nation. Every time he begins his speech, Indians sit holding their breath, expecting the worst to befall on them. The memory of the demonetization is, no doubt, fresh in the minds of the people. COVID-19 resulted in a similar situation, and the lockdown for 21 days has opened up  pandora’s box for this nation.

While our prime minister shares animated videos on his exercise schedule titled ‘yoga with Modi’ for his middle-class and upper-class admirers, the rest of India, the poor, the migrant laborers from urban India die on the roads. They are compelled to walk hundreds of miles, with no food or job in the cities, post the lockdown for 21 days. With a population of more than a billion and millions of them being migrant laborers, the decision to lockdown the country is turning to be a brutal and inhuman act on the part of the government. The lockdown was, no doubt a hastily implemented decision, without proper planning or even a passing thought about the far-reaching consequences or the possibility of an immediate disaster as we are witnessing right now.

The extreme callousness with which these laborers and their families are treated is being reported from several parts of the country. The Central government has instructed the state governments to close their borders or to prevent them from leaving their homes. The instruction will further worsen the case of the migrants already on the road. We hear leaders suggesting closing up the borders of the states, we read about these people being subjected to sanitization processes where they are publicly bathed in sanitizers, we read about chief ministers who plan to isolate them in stadiums once they reach their states after an arduous journey by foot.  In this state of exception, they are treated as mere biological beings, their bodies totally under the control of the government machinery.

The pandemic has exposed the worst that governments are capable of and India leads by example in subjecting its own citizens to cruelty of an unprecedented kind. It is the poorest of the poor who are being subjected to this brutality and 22 of them have been reported killed, on their way home. Even as the central government remains responsible for this unplanned lockdown, without coordinating with the states or envisioning the problems it could trigger off in a vast and diverse country like India, Modi has refused to take responsibility and preferred to apologize for the difficulties caused to a large section of the population. For the prime minister, it is affective politics all the way!

Dehumanising the multitudes who are on a desperate journey to their native villages is what we witness in India now. The millions who have been subjected to this traumatic journey, which includes children as young as one year old, may survive it and live on with their lives of deprivation. Several of them might not have the strength and will to endure this long and excruciating travel by foot. Many of them might already have contracted the highly contagious virus and the close interactions with fellow travelers will result in a leap in the number of infected people in India. Above all, India will have displayed to the world, that our people, especially the poor, don’t matter to us and that a brutally insensitive and impulsive leadership can wreak havoc on any nation.

Hungary’s Orbán government seizes on coronavirus pandemic to establish dictatorship

Markus Salzmann

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is using the COVID-19 epidemic to establish dictatorial rule. Following the declaration of a state of emergency on March 11, the country’s parliament is to be effectively abolished with the introduction of an “Emergency Ordinance Act.” The act will allow Orbán to take sole control of all spheres of power.

The act allows the government to suspend parliament indefinitely. Decrees from the prime minister must then merely be communicated to the president of parliament. The government can “suspend the application of individual laws, deviate from legal provisions and take other extraordinary measures.” It is given the right to “suspend the application of certain laws by decree” and “introduce other exceptional measures to guarantee the stability of life, health, the personal and material security of citizens and the economy,” the act reads.

On March 23 parliament refused to discuss the draft law when it was first introduced as an urgent motion. The rejection was possible because passing the act required a four-fifths majority. The government, however, will submit the bill a second time on March 31. This time the act requires a two-thirds majority of deputies, i.e., the majority which Orbán’s party, Fidesz, already possesses in parliament.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (Photo Credit: Annika Haas (EU2017EE))

The government plans to introduce criminal offences which would directly eliminate democratic rights. Anyone who publishes reports or messages that could hinder the “successful protection” of the public against the coronavirus can be punished with up to five years in prison. This means in plain language: Any criticism of official government propaganda is a punishable offense. Persons who violate quarantine regulations can also be imprisoned for between five and eight years.

Orbán is using the coronavirus epidemic as a pretext. From the start his government has ignored and downplayed the crisis. Despite the onset of the virus only around 6,000 people have been tested and the Hungarian health care system has already been stretched to its limits by a still relatively small number of cases.

In addition, Orbán’s Fidesz party is using the coronavirus pandemic to conduct a vile racist and anti-Semitic campaign. The government has already expelled 13 Iranian students from the country for allegedly violating quarantine rules. The Iranians later said that the hygienic conditions they were subjected to were catastrophic and they had received no information with whom they had to share rooms.

Orbán has publicly stated that immigration is to blame for the spread of the infectious disease. At the same time, numerous journalists and scientists complain that the government has failed to release and/or falsified key data.

The government has said it will only deploy the new emergency laws until the end of the year, but its announcement should be given no credibility.

Since taking power in 2010, Orbán has persistently built up authoritarian structures. He has effectively abolished freedom of the press, filled important offices in the judiciary and administration with party loyalists, and waged a brutal campaign against refugees and those supporting them. Fidesz maintains close ties to far-right circles and glorifies leading figures in the fascist dictatorship which ruled Hungary in the 1930s and 1940s.

Orbán regards the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to establish a dictatorial regime that will abolish any parliamentary limits and maximize his personal power. The government has already placed 140 key companies under military supervision. In addition, the army is being extensively deployed for domestic control purposes. with military units patrolling the streets of the capital. At an event organized by the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MKIK), Orbán said that preparations had to be made for “brutal changes.”

According to defence minister Tibor Benkö, the aim of the military operation is to monitor and secure operations during the coronavirus epidemic. The sequestered companies include both state and private companies, including the Paks nuclear power plant, the MOL oil and gas group, electricity, water and gas suppliers, the stock exchange, several banks, transport companies, the post office, the MTVA media company and pharmaceutical companies. Defence ministry control teams consist of representatives of both the military and police.

The new measures are aimed directly at workers who refuse to work in dangerous conditions during the pandemic. In mid-March Orbán declared he saw no reason to close schools, and if he did, teachers would not be paid. He only changed his stance following a massive public outcry.

Audi, Opel, Mercedes and Suzuki have all stopped auto production in Hungary. Finance minister Mihály Varga has already spoken of a massive slump in economic performance due to the ongoing restrictions linked to the COVID-19 virus. For this eventuality the government has announced extensive corporate tax breaks.

At the same time opposition to the government dictatorship is growing across the country. Hungarian-born journalist Paul Lendvai has warned of a “transition to dictatorship” and a group of lawyers, including former constitutional judges, have launched an online petition against the new act. It received over 40,000 signatures within a few hours.

For its part there has been hardly any criticism of the new measures from the leadership of the European Union or individual European countries. Orbán is the European leader who is most advanced with his policy of using the current crisis to brutally attack the working class, but ruling elites across Europe are moving in the same direction.

In Poland, the right-wing governing party PiS has refused to postpone the presidential election in view of the dramatic development because it expects benefits for incumbent Andrezj Duda. In Germany, Handelsblatt published an interview with the financial investor Alexander Dibelius, who bluntly said that the deaths of millions of people should be preferred to an economic crash that endangers his assets and the wealth of his customers. For this reason, no further measures should be taken to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

In the United States, Donald Trump said at a press conference that he wanted American operations to reopen in a few “weeks, not months.” The ruling class is well aware that forcing workers back to their jobs under conditions of a deadly pandemic requires the use of dictatorial means and is incompatible with democracy.