Confirmed coronavirus cases in Africa exceeds 6,000 with more than 200 deaths

Stephan McCoy

The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 on the African continent as of Wednesday was 6,261 with over 200 fatalities.

The potential for an explosive growth of the pandemic is already clear, due to the prevalence of slums and overcrowded working class areas housing the most vulnerable in every country.

World Health Organisation Secretary General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has pleaded, “Don’t abandon the poorest to coronavirus.” Africa should “wake up,” he declared. As far as the fate of the African working class goes, his appeal will fall on deaf ears of the continent’s ruling elite and the imperialist powers.

Alexandra township in Johannesurg—with some 20,000 “informal dwellings”—and Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township, the second largest township in South Africa, have already confirmed cases.

In Khayelitsha, a 25-year-old woman tested positive and is in isolation with her three-year-old daughter. She was in contact with members of her family and a childminder. According to Times Live, the young woman was left to potentially infect others, while local authorities and the African National Congress government squabbled over who should take responsibility for her.

Following reports in Rwanda that two young men had been murdered by the police for violating the lockdown, the South African media reported that a man in Volsoorus, outside Johannesburg, had been shot and killed by metropolitan police.

According to Times Live, following a confrontation with a group of people, the police “discharged rubber bullets.” It is alleged that the deceased, Sibusiso Amos, 40, “was followed up to his veranda where he was fatally shot.”

After the release of the officer who shot Amos, Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) spokesperson, Sontaga Seisa, tried to placate public anger, telling the press, “He [the officer] is out now but that does not mean he is off the hook. I want to emphasise that being out does not mean he is not involved in this murder and other charges.”

The police have been charged with two further counts of murder in relation to the lockdown and are being investigated by the IPID.

The South African military is also being investigated after videos surfaced showing soldiers’ degrading treatment of people who allegedly violated the lockdown—with some forced to do push ups, sits ups and other exercises. The Financial Times reports more such abuses, “including footage of a balaclava-clad soldier who was seen kicking and beating civilians caught outside in the lockdown.”

Nigeriaʼs lockdown, which began on Monday, is set to put 30 million people under quarantine in Abuja, Lagos and Ogun. The Nigerian military and the police are enforcing the lockdown.

In Kenya, Amnesty International and 19 other human rights groups in a joint statement noted that they “continue to receive testimonies from victims, eyewitnesses and video footage showing police gleefully assaulting members of the public in other parts of the country. Police indiscriminately threw tear gas, frog marched and beat up members of the public trying to get home in time for the curfew.”

The statement continues, “We have testimonies from suppliers and trained medical practitioners who experienced intimidation and threats of arrest as they tried to provide services during the lockdown.”

Riven by social inequality, with ruling elites who will stop at nothing to protect their wealth, African governments are exploiting the lockdown to impose de facto martial law and abrogate democratic rights as they prepare for serious opposition from the working class.

Even as the national bourgeoisie clamour for aid and “bailout packages” and coronabonds from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, they remain subordinate economically and politically to the major powers. Global markets have rendered their policies of import substitution largely ineffective. The ruling elites are bitterly hostile to an independent movement of the working class which would challenge their rule.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought with it a resurgence of neo-colonialism, culminating in a new scramble for Africa—as US imperialism tries to offset the growing economic influence of Chinese capitalism on the continent, while the old colonial European powers try to maintain a foot hold.

The Financial Times reported that Ken Ofori-Atta, chairman of the joint World Bank-IMF Development Committee, had “co-chaired a meeting in which African finance ministers called for a $100bn stimulus package.” It noted that “the IMF said it was making $50bn available for emerging countries, with $10bn for low-income countries.”

However, the struggle for control of vital mineral and oil reserves, spheres of influence and other raw materials and markets means all aid or debt relief is tied to demands for free access to local markets by multinational corporations. The bulk of the debt will then be re-imposed on the backs of the poor, as ever deeper attacks are made on the working population to pay back the corporations, banks and financial institutions, like the IMF and World Bank.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recently warned that half of all jobs could be lost on the African continent because of the pandemic—when 60 percent of the population remains unemployed and job insecurity soars.

Achim Steiner, administrator of the UNDP, said, “Without support from the international community, we risk a massive reversal of gains made over the last two decades, and an entire generation lost, if not in lives then in rights, opportunities, and dignity.”

This comes as the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) warns that Africa is two to three weeks away from being overwhelmed by the coronavirus storm.

“Africa accounts for 1% of global health expenditure” yet “it carries 23% of the disease burden, including hundreds of thousands of deaths each year from malaria, HIV/Aids and tuberculosis,” UNECA Executive Secretary Vera Songwe told Bloomberg. “Our hospital systems are so weak and so stressed already that another stress on them is going to break them.”

She warned, “If there is one African country or one country anywhere in the world that still has the coronavirus, the whole world has it. We’ve seen the speed of contamination and how quickly it can re-spread.”

A study by Imperial College in London showed that if early action had been taken to slow the spread of the virus, 800,000 would die from the coronavirus in Africa. However, if it was delayed, this number would soar to 4 million.

Save the Children UK chief executive, Kevin Watkins, told The Express, “If we act now and act decisively, we can prevent and contain the pandemic threat facing the poorest countries… Delaying prevention and containment in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will not only claim many lives in those regions, it will potentially fuel the pandemic in Europe, North America and other regions. Failure to act now will increase the numbers infected by coronavirus in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa by almost one billion.”

Oxfam International executive, Jose Maria Vera, said, “Without urgent, ambitious and historic action, we could easily see the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War Two… We can only beat this pandemic if we act in solidarity with every country and for every person. No one is safe until we are all safe.”

An internationally coordinated response to stop the spread of the virus on the African continent is urgent. Without measures to provide the necessary medical equipment and staff to halt the pandemic, the contagion will spread, killing millions and risks blowback on the entire world. Mark Lowcock, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs told Bloomberg. “If we leave coronavirus to spread freely in these places,” the virus “will have the opportunity to circle back around the globe.”

Only by building a socialist leadership in the working class, pulling behind it the impoverished peasantry and in unity with workers in the imperialist centres, can the working class in Africa prepare the uncompromising struggle against the banks, corporations and world imperialism now required.

Hospital closures continue in Germany despite COVID-19 pandemic

Sybille Fuchs

Although every hospital bed in Germany is needed because of the coronavirus epidemic, many hospitals are facing closure.

Especially in rural areas, where health care is threatened due to the closure of medical practices, more hospitals will be shut down. This will put into practice the plan issued last year by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a right-wing think tank, according to which fewer than 600 out of some 1,400 hospitals will be maintained in Germany. The absurd justification for this is the claim that the mass closures would allow for the optimization of care, since small clinics close to patients’ homes lack both trained staff and necessary equipment.

Instead of better equipping smaller hospitals and improving pay for medical staff, especially nurses, hospital boards, including many private, church and municipal ones, prefer to close the facilities down.

As the World Socialist Web Site reported on March 31, the catastrophic consequences of the policy of cutbacks and privatisation of the last 30 years are now becoming apparent everywhere. Especially since the introduction of Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG), a patient classification system that standardizes prospective payment to hospitals, the health care system has ceased to be geared to the needs of the population, and instead to the generation of profit.

Hospitals were given an incentive to reduce capacity. Whole wards or departments were closed, which are urgently needed today. Clinics that sought to take countermeasures went bankrupt in droves, were forced to close, or were sold. The new owners are generally more inclined to close down if the facilities are not generating sufficient profit.

In the name of reducing “overcapacity,” hospitals enter into cooperative ventures and concentrate on service areas that enable them to make enough money to survive.

Numerous clinics have already been forced into insolvency. In the period from 1991 to 2017 alone, the number of hospital beds was reduced by a quarter. The number of clinics across Germany fell from 2,400 in 1991 to 1,400 today.

Because of the coronavirus crisis, the Robert Koch Institute and Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (Christian Democratic Union-CDU) are now calling on hospitals to clear beds for intensive care patients and increase the number of places available. This makes it even more absurd that some hospitals are about to close.

The hospital in Havelberg (Saxony-Anhalt) is to close despite the resistance of the local population. Hospital workers are being given their notices of termination this week.

The hospital in Lehnin is the smallest in the state of Brandenburg, with 55 beds. According to a report in Ärztezeitung, this hospital and its specialist department for internal medicine are to be closed. Only the rehabilitation clinic will remain.

This would also shut the accident and emergency centre operated at the same location. Only palliative care, which is located in the hospital, will continue to operate as a “special facility,” with 10 to 15 beds. There is resistance here too—also with reference to the coronavirus crisis.

The Loreley Clinics in St. Goar and Oberwesel (Rhineland-Palatinate) are also facing closure. The main shareholder, the Christian Marienhaus Hospital and Nursing Home Group, considers the two hospitals to be unprofitable. A takeover by the Red Cross failed for the same reason.

The affected small towns of St. Goar and Oberwesel, as well as the new Hunsrück-Mittelrhein municipality as co-shareholders, wish to keep the hospitals open. A few days ago, local residents hung bed sheets out of windows as a sign of protest.

The clinics’ municipal shareholders had suggested that the hospitals be used for the treatment of coronavirus patients. This was rejected by the Rhineland-Palatinate state Ministry of Health, since emergency and intensive care units at the Loreley Clinics had already been closed at the beginning of 2020.

However, it is not clear why they cannot be reopened. Elsewhere, appropriate emergency facilities will be set up in exhibition halls or similar facilities to ensure the care of COVID-19 patients. According to a Marienhaus spokesman, a final decision is to be made at a shareholders’ meeting on April 9.

The Marienhaus Group is also working on plans to close or merge clinics in the Saarland. The Marienkrankenhaus St. Wendel, the Marienhausklinik Ottweiler and the Marienhausklinik St. Josef Kohlhof in Neunkirchen have already been working closely together for years in the Saar-East alliance. Now the Marienhaus group of companies is working on a concept to close the site in Ottweiler and merge it with the clinic in St. Wendel to form a hospital. The reason cited for this is a considerable building renovation backlog at the clinic location in Ottweiler.

The closure of the hospital in Ottweiler endangers regional care in view of the coronavirus infections of employees at the St. Wendel hospital, which can admit only acute emergency patients.

In the Saarland, a considerable thinning of the overall hospital density is imminent. This summer, the Caritas hospital in Lebach, with 450 employees and 183 planned beds, will close. At a protest rally in front of the building, staff representatives and the Verdi union called for state intervention in order to secure health care and jobs. However, Verdi is not planning a fight to defend jobs, but is demanding a “social contract” and “burden sharing,” making a toothless appeal to the public authorities to assume their responsibility.

Politicians have initiated a discussion about a so-called Nordsaarlandklinik. This threatens both the hospital in Losheim and hospitals in Hermeskeil in Rhineland-Palatinate (institutions of the Marienhaus Group).

The board of the Marienhaus Foundation blames “massively tightened federal regulations” for the fact that more and more smaller hospitals are struggling to survive: ever new regulations covering personnel and structural requirements, the outsourcing of the nursing budget and now the new “reform” law covering the Medical Service (MD), which audits hospital accounts.

The reform provides for high penalties of €300 to €30,000 for hospitals, which are imposed even for minor errors in the billing of services, e.g., if a blood pressure measurement is forgotten in the documentation but is still billed. In principle, 10 percent of the total costs must be paid, which can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of euros for operations with complications and long periods of stay.

The complicated billing practices also require valuable time of doctors and nursing staff, who are currently urgently needed for the care and treatment of patients.

Hospitals in the Heinsberg district of North Rhine-Westphalia, which has been hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis, sounded the alarm last week because they see a new wave of costs coming towards them as a result of the MD reform, which could threaten their existence.

The hospital in Riedlingen in Baden-Württemberg will be closed as early as April 1, three months sooner than planned. According to the operator, Sana, only one doctor will be available as of April. All others will have left by that date at the latest.

Numerous specialist clinics, whose facilities and 120,000 employees could also contribute to mitigating the coronavirus crisis, feel their existence threatened because a draft bill by Health Minister Jens Spahn stipulating that hospitals must cancel planned operations and treatments. They will face massive losses, which cannot be offset by the planned reimbursement of €400 to €500 per day of occupancy. Specialist clinics expect costs of up to four times the amount Spahn plans to reimburse per day of occupancy.

Rehabilitation clinics, which are supposed to ensure follow-up treatment and post-op rehabilitation, will also suffer huge losses due to the postponement of planned knee, hip and spinal operations. The number of these facilities has already decreased substantially as a result of cuts made in the health system in recent decades, and would probably be reduced even more by the measures planned.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it abundantly clear that the ruling class and its politicians are not able to guarantee the population a secure provision of health care facilities and the corresponding personnel. The turn to profit maximisation and privatisation, and massive health sector cuts in recent decades, whose deadly consequences are now becoming apparent, must be reversed. Clinics and health facilities must be converted into public utilities and placed under the control of working people in order to serve the sole purpose of the good of society.

Statistical lies used to justify continued inaction, paint the US epidemic as nearly over

Don Barrett

“Lies, damned lies, and statistics”—popularized by Mark Twain

As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States surpasses 200,000 and the number of dead nears 5,000, increasingly sophisticated justifications are being made for the continued inadequacy of the federal government’s response to the pandemic. One of the most recent is a study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which paints the massive outbreak in the country as nearly over, with two weeks to go until the worst is past.

The IHME paper, “Forecasting COVID-19 impact on hospital bed-days, ICU-days, ventilator-days and deaths by US state in the next 4 months,” was led by Chris Murray at the University of Washington in Seattle. Its main claim is that the resources needed to fight the spreading disease will “peak” on April 15. During this time, it estimates that there will only be 64,000 extra hospital beds needed nationally and only 15,000 ventilators. The paper also seeks to prepare its readers to expect some 84,000 deaths.

These figures contrast sharply with earlier estimates done by London’s Imperial College, as well as those by the White House’s own health officials. The former predicts 1.1 million dead in the United States even using its most optimistic scenario, while the latest minimum casualty estimates from Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Task Force Response Coordinator, is 100,000 to 240,000.

The report also conflicts with the requests from cities around the country for 139,000 ventilators and millions of test kits and pieces of personal protective equipment, noted in the recent survey of 213 cities by the US Conference of Mayors. The IHME study tries to bury these and other grimmer predictions of the course of the coronavirus by stating that “these projections [that] imply that there would be millions of deaths in the United States,” and claiming such models “can overestimate health service need by not taking into account behavioral change and government-mandated action.”

This has not stopped the Trump administration, including Birx, from seizing on the new report in an effort to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic. Birx herself yesterday noted that the task force’s estimates had “the same numbers” as the ones in the IHME report. As a result, local and state health officials have also begun using this model to revise downward the number of deaths they will face while the national media has largely accepted this new account uncritically.

It is also being promoted to establish the justification for sending people back to work not when Trump originally proposed, after Easter Sunday, but by the first week of May. The IHME study is in line with the calls from both Trump himself and many from the corporate and financial elite to “get America back to work,” in order to continue generating billions in profits. The catastrophic number of lives that will be lost to the virus will just be the price of doing business.

The IHME is a project constructed at the University of Washington with approximately $400 million in ongoing funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Since its founding in 2007, it has faced criticism from many angles. After it published its first major study in 2010, the leading medical journal the Lancet editorialized that the IHME “struggled to generate support, legitimacy, and acceptance for their findings.”

A 2019 paper in the journal Global Policy examined the political connections of the IHME, and noted the “growing conflict between the expertise and norms of national and intergovernmental statistical production on the one hand, and the distinct epistemologies and logics of new non-state data actors. … In the world of development, as indeed in other realms, measurement is never an innocent matter where as it were, the facts speak for themselves.” With significant foresight, the paper notes that “measures…are contested matters because they are linked with…the outcomes [institutions] aspire to.”

Such statements are further borne out with a closer look at the study itself. While the estimated number of dead, for instance, is given as a 95 percent chance of being between 38,242 and 162,106, the estimations themselves are based on mathematical sophistry.

Here are the central unsupported assumptions of the IHME forecast:

• That the “curve” of deaths, its early exponential rise, its inflection, and then its leveling out at its end result, is best modeled by the unexamined assumption that the rate at which the death rate first rises is precisely the same as the rate at which it later falls off—and that it will fall off—in each modeled state.
• That the death rate rises, inflects, and falls in the same way that it did in Wuhan, with the same political decisions being made—isolating individuals within their homes, etc.—at the same “thresholds” of deaths. From this they conclude that peak daily deaths will occur 27 days after the implementation of social distancing. There is no analysis of the differences in the Chinese response, which involved a massive effort to test and trace contacts of the infected as well as the harshly enforced quarantine of nearly 60 million people.
• That the profound difference in approach between China and the US (and indeed, the major Western governments) is of little significance, that tracing the contacts of each case, testing and quarantining them either is not a defining epidemiological choice, or will “naturally” happen as thresholds are reached. The word “tracing” never occurs in the report, and testing is only mentioned to justify the use of death rates as the basis of modeling, not to critique the model as a whole.

The authors then conclude that if they are wrong, a major reason will be the “question of adherence to social distancing mandates,” whether “it is fundamentally different in the US compared to Wuhan.” In other words, if they’re wrong, it’s because the working class isn’t obeying here, not because the measures taken are adequate.

None of these assumptions survive a comparison with the reality of the European countries’ experience: Italy and Spain, which belatedly took heroic measures of isolation, have perhaps stabilized daily new cases, which continue at around 5,000 and 7,000 a day, respectively, but without widespread testing and tracing, have not demonstrated that this is adequate to begin a sustained drop in cases. It is too early to tell whether Germany, France and the UK have stabilized a growth in new cases with their measures to date. In any event, none shows the symmetric rapid “Wuhan-like” decline that marked the template to which US states are supposedly being fitted.

Nor, it must be mentioned, does the experience of New York City, Detroit, Seattle or New Orleans match the model. In each of these major metropolitan areas within the US, hospital systems are already disintegrating under the pressure of tens of thousands of cases. Even the IHME’s estimate of 84,000 deaths implies (at a 1 percent fatality rate) about 8.4 million cases nationally, a situation during which medical care in the US would essentially collapse.

The IHME report also does not address the fact that without testing and tracing, taken to the point of containment and then maintained, social isolation and major industrial closures must be maintained essentially indefinitely. Only one of two things would permit these to be relaxed long-term without exponential growth: widespread vaccination or an immunity purchased by near-universal infection—at immense cost in human life.

Workers must be on their guard. As the coronavirus crisis intensifies, more supposedly scientific studies will emerge attempting to justify a back-to-work order, claiming that the danger has passed.

US Conference of Mayors survey shows severe lack of equipment to combat coronavirus pandemic

Bryan Dyne

A survey conducted by the US Conference of Mayors and released on Friday documents the urgent need by cities across the country for medical equipment and supplies to care for those infected by the coronavirus and for testing kits to contain the accelerating pandemic. With coronavirus cases in the United States topping 210,000 and the death toll approaching 5,000, including more than 800 deaths just in the last day, the survey makes clear that there is no region in any state prepared to deal with the crisis.

Martina Papponetti, 25, a nurse at the Humanitas Gavazzeni Hospital in Bergamo, Italy poses for a portrait at the end of her shift, March 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

The exponential spread of the pandemic is underscored by comparing the situation as of Wednesday with the situation just one month ago. At that time, the US had suffered two deaths and the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was 89. Virtually all projections, moreover, say that the country is only on the cusp of an acceleration whose apex is still several weeks away.

New York State continues to be the most hard-hit region, with 83,712 cases (now more than China) and 1,941 deaths. This includes 7,729 new cases and 227 new reported deaths.

The survey covered 213 cities in 42 states and territories, which are home to a total of 42 million people and include areas with populations ranging from 2,000 to 3.8 million people. This includes 45 cities with a population below 50,000 and six with populations greater than one million. Among the cities surveyed are some of the most inundated metropolitan regions, including Detroit, New Orleans, San Francisco and Las Vegas.

In summary, the responses from the cities show that:

• 92.1 percent do not have enough test kits to trace and contain the pandemic in their region
• 91.5 percent of cities do not have enough masks for either first responders or medical personnel
• 88.2 percent do not have enough other personal protective equipment for these workers
• 85 percent do not have enough ventilators to keep severely and critically ill patients alive
• 62.4 percent have received no emergency supplies from their state

This snapshot of the utter failure of the richest country in the world, with by far the greatest collection of billionaires, to mount an effective and coordinated response to the virus is an unanswerable indictment of the entire political and economic system of capitalism. The naked indifference, ignorance and cruelty of the president, Donald Trump, is only the most concentrated and odious expression of the outlook that prevails within the ruling elite and both of its political parties.

Some cities provided estimates of what they need to fight the disease outbreaks in their cities. These include:

• 28.5 million face masks
• 24.4 million other PPE items
• 7.9 million test kits
• 139,000 ventilators

New York City, the current epicenter of the contagion in the US, did not respond to the survey, meaning the actual need across the country could be double or more what is reported.

What cities and states are being promised by the Trump administration is a mere fraction of these needs, and the majority of urgently needed supplies are still weeks if not months away.

These numbers are an indication of what is to come in cities across the country. The Trump administration is currently projecting a “best-case” scenario of between 100,000 and 240,000 coronavirus deaths in the US—already a human and social catastrophe—and calling this a “good” outcome. But the disastrous lack of medical supplies around the country suggests that many times that figure will die as cities and states are overwhelmed by the disease and are unable to provide even basic medical care to those infected, or protection to doctors, nurses, medical staff and first responders.

The survey also sheds light on the chaotic distribution of goods from the federal to local and state governments. When asked about its materials on hand, Montgomery, Alabama responded that the masks it received had expired despite having been approved by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Of these, 13 percent were dry rotted.

Los Angeles has separately reported that the 170 ventilators it received from the federal government arrived broken and had to be fixed. Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker announced that instead of getting a shipment of 300,000 N95 respiratory masks, his state was instead sent thousands of surgical masks, which are far less effective in preventing infection.

Moreover, mayors and governors are complaining that they are being forced to bid against one another as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to buy equipment on the market, resulting in price gouging that pushes up costs by factors of five-fold, ten-fold or more.

None of this information on the dire situation facing the American people made its way into yesterday’s White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing. The event opened not with the state of the pandemic, but with “Commander in Chief” Donald Trump, flanked by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, other uniformed military brass and Attorney General William Barr, announcing an “enhanced counter-narcotics operation” in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, targeting Venezuela.

During the second part of the press conference, Trump continued to make the false claim that, “Nobody could have known a thing like this could happen,” despite the fact that his administration was well aware of the possibility. It is reported, for example, that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar altered the National Security Council as early as January 3 of the dire implications for the US of the coronavirus outbreak in China.

Vice President Mike Pence in an interview earlier Wednesday on CNN claimed that Trump never underestimated the threat represented by the virus and instead blamed the delay in responding on the CDC and China. He said that “in mid-January the CDC was still assessing that the risk of the coronavirus to the American people was low,” and added, “The reality is that we could’ve been better off if China had been more forthcoming.”

At no point during the press conference did Trump express sympathy for the families of the dead or the hundreds of thousands infected. Instead, he boasted of the “11 companies making ventilators right now,” singling out Ford and GM. No mention was made of the unsafe and virus-infected conditions being imposed on their workers. He went on to tout a new “big order from WalMart” for medical supplies and the purchase of “2.2 million gowns for the national stockpile from [Ohio-based] Cardinal Health.”

As the survey of the country’s mayors shows, 2.2 million gowns are about a tenth of what is actually needed to keep medical workers safe from the virus. But none of the members of the servile press even brought up the damning report by the US Conference of Mayors, or any other the other multitudinous and tragic facts that expose the absurd and lying presentations given out daily by the White House.

Instead, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, the medical figureheads aiding and abetting the criminal indifference of the task force, continued to promote the newly expanded “social distancing” guidelines from the White House. What they did not say is that while such actions can slow the spread of the virus, they do nothing to ultimately stop the pandemic from continuing.

As the World Health Organization has repeatedly stressed, “measures that increase social distancing such as canceling sporting events may help to reduce transmission,” but the only way to properly fight the pandemic and prevent a resurgence of the virus is to “find, isolate, test and treat every case, to break the chains of transmission.”

Fauci said that at some point, “I think it makes sense that you are going to have to relax social distancing. The one thing we hopefully would have in place, and I think we will have in place, is a much more robust system to be able to identify someone who’s infected, isolate them and do contact tracing. Because if you have a really good program of containment, that prevents you from ever having to get into mitigation.”

In other words, there will “hopefully” be in the future the infrastructure needed to know exactly who is infected and isolate and treat those individuals. In the meantime, however, the government has essentially given up on testing and contact tracing. Its guidelines themselves tell people to stay home if they are sick, rather than get tested, and local health officials are testing only those who require hospitalization.

Fauci is arguing, in effect, that instead of training new workers for the public health system and providing them the tools necessary to track the virus, tens or hundreds of millions of people should accept the fact that they will get infected and possibly die.

Nor was any mention made of the colossal sums of money, more than 6 trillion dollars, to be handed over to the corporations and banks under the massive bailout bill passed by Congress last week in a near-unanimous bipartisan vote. In contrast, a mere pittance has been allotted to hospitals under siege from the pandemic and only temporary and completely inadequate aid to workers who face the loss of their jobs and livelihoods.

This must be categorically rejected by the working class. Alongside the urgent need for the medical equipment and personnel to provide the necessary care for those infected, there must be a clear plan that includes a robust, well designed and international strategy to test broadly and identify the silent movement of the infection deep in the community.

The resources exist to combat the pandemic and save untold numbers of lives. But the allocation of those resources requires the independent, mass mobilization of the working class in opposition to the ruling elite that monopolizes the wealth produced by the workers. The struggle against the pandemic is inseparable from a struggle against capitalism.

India: Supply Chains During a Health Crisis

Shoumitro Chatterjee

One silver lining for India during the current pandemic is that there is no aggregate food shortage in the near-term. The stocks of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) are almost three times the buffer stock. Therefore, although India does not face a “supply crisis,” it might face a “supply chain” crisis as it figures out how to move food from one part of the country to another. In the last week, the retail prices of perishables like tomatoes and onions have spiked by about 25-30 per cent. How can India swiftly address these supply-chain bottlenecks in agriculture?

First, administrative barriers to food movements across all political boundaries need to be removed. By-and-large India has not faced local price shocks in recent years. This is due, in large extent, to marked improvements in rural road and highway infrastructure in the last two decades. However, recent episodes of state border closures and excessive policing undermine free movement, making the country more vulnerable to local price shocks. The central government must coordinate with the states to facilitate the movement of all essential goods such as food across the country.

Second, the government will need to waive the multiple embedded statutes that force agriculture trade and procurement through official agricultural markets or Agricultural Produce Market Committee (AMPC) mandis. State governments should waive any state or mandi taxes until this crisis is over. This will remove bureaucratic hurdles, especially at state borders, and ensure that physical congestion, the antithesis of social distancing, does not occur.

The congregation of people, especially during peak marketing season, can risk mandis becoming a hotspot of virus transmission. Ensuring social distancing protocols within mandis will be a severe challenge. Since agriculture marketing practices vary significantly across states, even for commodities that are procured by public authorities, governments should encourage all decentralised approaches that encourage sales at the farmgate as much as possible, with the help of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), Self-Help Groups (SHGs), co-operatives, arthiyas, etc.

As India moves to off-mandi sales, it is important to remember that the mandi performs two essential functions. One, it serves as a node for information exchange. This is where farmers meet, learn about prices, and aggregate market conditions. Information about market prices is the basis of the bargaining power of farmers. If farmers do not know the market value of their produce, they do not have an anchor to bargain on. The state agricultural departments should, therefore, push daily information on local market prices of commodities to all cellphones via SMS or WhatsApp.

Mandis also serve as a site for benchmarking product quality. Market intermediaries often underpay farmers (below market prices) by making deductions based on the quality of their produce—shape, size, dust content, and extent of damage. In the absence of any benchmark, farmers have to accept what intermediaries offer. Thus, there is a need to quickly innovate on transparent sampling at the village level in a way that ensures sanitisation, safe handling, and reduced contact. For this, moisture meters could be provided to villages for collective use. Visual sampling can be done using images taken on smartphones. In the medium-term, the government can also explore artificial intelligence (AI)-based detection. Such software, for example, by IntelloLabs of Gurgaon, is being used in India, albeit on a small-scale.

Third, changes in procurement must be accompanied by changes in payment systems. State governments need to ensure that payments are made on time. This writer’s research shows that a delay of six months in payment, even in Punjab, is commonplace. Timely payment will ensure the flow of credit in the supply chain and assure rural consumption. Some states require documentation to prove that the farmer is a resident of their state before they can sell and impose limits on how much they can sell. All such procedures need to be waived, with an emphasis on facilitating quicker transactions with minimal contact. It is possible that the country could end up with excessive procurement, but that can be off-loaded in the global market, which is likely to see a shortage amidst this crisis, later.

Fourth, the government must ensure adequate supply of credit for the farming sector. The agricultural supply chain functions on credit rotation. Moreover, this will leave farmers exposed to local money lenders who are likely to charge exorbitant rates. Anantha Nageswaran and Gulzar Natarajan, among others, have argued that there needs to be debt forbearance, interest-free loans for a year to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and advance market commitments (AMCs). Similar policies are required in the agricultural sector. A more extended moratorium on payment of agricultural loans, extending the credit on Kisan Credit Cards to those farmers who haven’t excessively defaulted in the past, and ensuring a credit line to co-operatives who finance the input costs of many farmers, is worth considering. Based on past data, advance Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) payments can be made for input purchase; and if needed later in the year, advance payments can be made for Kharif procurements.

Fifth, as a result of the mass exodus of migrant labour following the 21-day national lockdown, rural labor wage rates will increase. This will be especially true in the key agricultural states of Punjab and Haryana. A major impact will be seen on the cost of procurement, as labour that performed the key tasks not only of harvesting but also of loading, unloading, cleaning, grading, and sorting of crops is now scarce. The government will have to bear this cost—otherwise farmers could just dump their produce.

Admittedly, these measures will not benefit each and every farmer. Unlike Jandhan Aadhar and Mobile Money, which have a much wider coverage, digital infrastructure in the agriculture sector lags behind. Not everyone has a Kisan Credit Card, and the landless are not covered under PM-Kisan. But, given the scale and intensity of the crisis, and the need to act rapidly, the best should not become the enemy of the good. And if this works, it will provide a guide path for the next generation of reforms in agriculture markets.

WISE Accelerator for Education Technology Projects 2020

Application Deadline: 20th April 2020 at 16:00 GMT.

Eligible Countries: All

About the Award: The WISE Accelerator is a program designed to support the development of innovative projects in the field of education. Selected projects receive the guidance and expertise of qualified mentors and partners who provide effective strategies and practical support for their further development. Each year, five projects are selected to join the one-year program, during which time they benefit from tailor-made mentorships to address their specific needs. In addition, the WISE Accelerator assists the selected projects to connect with an international network and create opportunities to share knowledge and find support among donors and investors.
The WISE Accelerator supports innovative projects that have a high potential for:

• scalability
• a positive impact in education Projects addressing education challenges through the use and/or design of technology in all sectors and regions are welcome to apply.

Projects in this particular field may cover a wide range of activities. From the conception of apps and digital games to the creation of online platforms or the design of new curricula and pedagogies integrating technology, all education projects that are using or linking technology to their DNA are invited to apply.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: Ideal candidates for the WISE Accelerator will be existing projects at an early stage of development, with the following attributes:

• Established for at least two years;
• A significant and growing number of beneficiaries or customers;
• A record of activities with a product or service that has been successfully implemented and beyond proof of concept;
• Existing, stable revenues, and new opportunities for growth;
• A dedicated team, with an established physical space or office;
• Deep knowledge of the market/education context and of their beneficiaries’ or customers’ needs;
• Clear future objectives and motivation to develop further;
• Good understanding of the project’s current challenges in scaling.

Projects from all sectors and regions of the world are invited to apply for the WISE Accelerator.

Selection Criteria: The WISE Accelerator Committee, composed of leading experts in education and social entrepreneurship, will conduct a rigorous selection process.

Applications will be assessed according to the following criteria:

• • Solution and innovation;

• • Strategy and management;

• • Development beyond proof of concept, and potential for growth

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Program: The year-long program is designed to assess and meet project needs as fully and precisely as possible in order to bring them to the next stage of successful development.

Duration of Program: 1 year

How to Apply: APPLY NOW

Visit Program Webpage for details

AIMS/Mastercard Foundation Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fund ($10,000 Seed Grant) 2020

Application Deadline: 10th December 2020

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: The MCF – SIEF aims to better prepare AIMS Mastercard Foundation scholars and alumni with knowledge and skills to innovate and generate creative solutions to social challenges. Participants will collaborate and create inspirational entrepreneurial projects that contribute to improving their lives and that of others.
The program brings together Mastercard Foundation Scholars, alumni and other AIMS Scholars and alumni to learn how Design Thinking works and how to apply it to real-world challenges. Participants will work on a specific design challenge in one of the following broad areas:

Improving existing livelihoods;
Enabling diversification of income; or
Creating dignified and fulfilling work (jobs).

By the end of the program, participants will have developed innovative entrepreneurial solutions ready to be pitched to others.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: The applications are open to AIMS Mastercard Foundation Scholars, Alumni and other AIMS students based in Rwanda who are interested in being catalysers of socio-economic transformation. Applicants should be interested in learning how to become creative problem solvers and be committed to generating innovative entrepreneurial solutions to help improve their lives and those of others.
Applicants can apply as individuals or in teams of 2-3 people. At least one individual (preferably the one assuming the position of team leader) per application should be a Mastercard Foundation Scholar or Alumni.
Applicants can apply to the program with OR without an existing solution idea.

• Applicants who do not have an existing idea but are passionate and committed to solving a social challenge can generate a new idea as they go through the program.
• Applicants that already have an existing solution idea in mind should be flexible to adapt it as they go through the program’s facilitated process of innovation.

All applicants must be able to attend all training sessions and dedicate time additionally to continue developing their solution ideas

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Skills and knowledge in Design Thinking and social innovation
• Certificate of completion for participants attending all training sessions
• Seed funding grants of up to $10,000 for winning solutions
• Mentorship support for winning solutions
• Opportunity to collaborate with other Mastercard Foundation Scholars and Alumni

How to Apply: 
If you are applying as an individual, click here
If you are applying as a team, click here

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage (see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF) 2020 for Early Career Researchers and Innovators

Application Deadline: 30th April 2020 by 16:00.

Eligible Countries: UK & International

To be taken at (country): UK

About the Award: The objectives of the scheme are:

• to develop, retain, attract and sustain research and innovation talent in the UK
• to foster new research and innovation career paths including those at the academic/business and interdisciplinary boundaries, and facilitate movement of people between sectors
• to provide sustained funding and resources for the best early career researchers and innovators
• to provide long-term, flexible funding to tackle difficult and novel challenges, and support adventurous, ambitious programmes.

Type: Fellowship, Research, Entrepreneurship

Eligibility:

• This cross-UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) scheme will support early career researchers and innovators with outstanding potential in universities, UK registered businesses, and other research and user environments including research councils’ institutes and laboratories.
• The FLF scheme welcomes applications from both UK and international applicants and individuals should use the person specification to assess and justify their suitability for the scheme. The support of the institution will be a critical component of all fellowships which will enable the fellow to transition to or establish their research/innovation independence in any area supported by UKRI.
• These Fellowships support applicants from diverse career paths, including those returning from a career break or following time in other roles. We also encourage applications from those wishing to work part-time in order to combine the fellowship with personal responsibilities. Review panels will take into account time spent outside an active research or innovation environment, whether through career breaks, flexible working or as a consequence of working in other roles.

Number of Awards: There will be six calls for these fellowships between 2018 and 2021, awarding around 100 fellowships per call.

Value and Duration of Award: 

• The support offered will be long-term and flexible and will provide comprehensive package of support, including the fellow’s salary and justified research, staff and training costs, with seven years of support available on a 4+3 model, with a review in year four. The case for support should make clear the long-term aims of the programme, and why they matter – while providing more specific plans and costings for the first four years.
• For business applicants, those in the user community or other applicants, four years’ support may be sufficient and there is no need to apply for a further three years of funding if this is not required. Successful applicants will have the intellectual and financial freedom to develop and change direction over this period.

How to Apply: Before applying,

• Businesses should read the Introduction for businesses (PDF, 223KB)
• Read the overview of the scheme
• Check whether the applicant meets the person specification
• See also guidance on career breaks and flexible working and job share FAQs
• Ensure that the host organisation agrees to support the fellowship.
  The host organiastion is where the fellow will primarily be based. It must be in the UK and be eligible to receive funding from UKRI. Applicants must seek and agree support from the proposed host organisation before the outline proposal is submitted. The full application will need to include letters of support from the host organisation

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Lessons From Africa: Military Intervention Fails to Counter Terrorism

Elizabeth Schmidt

Late last year, President Trump provoked a furor when he declared his intent to withdraw some 1,400 US troops from West Africa, where he claimed they had quelled the terrorist threat. He sparked a similar firestorm when he announced that the U.S. would (eventually) pull 14,000 troops from Afghanistan, where they were engaged in an 18-year conflict against other violent extremists.

Critics included congressional Democrats, Republican stalwarts, and members of the U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic establishments, as well mainstream media pundits, international allies, and even some political progressives.

Establishment figures claimed that the battle against violent extremism was far from over and that U.S. military leadership was critical to victory. They pointed to ongoing insurgencies in the African countries of Mali and Nigeria in the Western Sahel and Somalia and Sudan in the Horn. Other progressives countered that U.S. policies have been ill-conceived and counterproductive — and that foreign military intervention has exacerbated the crises.

The establishment debate misses the point. Mainstream critics haggle over how many troops are needed, which nations should supply them, and where they should be deployed. The real question is whether present counterterrorism strategies are effective — and if not, what policies should be implemented instead.

Evidence from Africa makes it clear that military solutions do not work, and prescriptions imposed from above and outside often fail. Local initiatives that address underlying grievances have been more effective. But their impact will be limited without fundamental social, economic, and political change. To effectively counter violent extremism, the U.S. must withdraw support for the corrupt and repressive governments that foster discontent and assist local endeavors that address the people’s needs.

The disagreement between mainstream and progressive critics in the U.S. is rooted in fundamentally different visions of the role of the United States in the world community. Most establishment intellectuals embrace the notion of American exceptionalism, arguing that the United States is a unique force for good in the world, and to fulfill its mission, it must maintain its position at the helm of the global order.

Proponents of this view ordinarily promote military solutions, as well as economic development and (sometimes) democracy. Progressives, in contrast, reject this sanguine characterization of U.S. actions and denounce the policies that have led to endless war. To resolve the current crisis, the United States and its partners must fundamentally shift their perspective and alter their approach. Continuing on the present path will only result in greater mayhem.

Current U.S. Africa policy, developed during the Cold War, was conceived by leaders and proponents of the U.S. military-industrial complex. Marked by militarism and misunderstanding, it has failed to identify the factors that undermine human security and offered wrong-headed solutions that often exacerbate the problem. The post-9/11 war on terror has led to particularly grievous results.

Military Solutions Don’t Work

Contrary to common misconceptions, religion and ethnicity are not the root causes of African conflicts.

Rather, the sources are deep structural inequalities — poverty, underdevelopment, and political repression — and the devastating impact of climate change. Governmental neglect and the drying up of Lake Chad ignited the Boko Haram insurgency in northeastern Nigeria; the expanding desert in western Sudan has pitted herders against farmers in the struggle for water and usable land; and the destruction of the fishing industry by foreign trawlers led to piracy off the coast of Somalia.

Where do we start? First, we need to determine what does not work.

Counterterrorism operations, whether conducted by the U.S. or its allies, have been catastrophic. Intervention in the Sahel exemplifies the problem. In Mali and Nigeria, government actions in insurgent areas, and externally directed drone and missile strikes, have killed countless unarmed civilians. Such actions have increased local support for insurgent forces. Military successes have generally been short-lived, as violent extremists have regrouped and shifted their focus to unprotected civilians.

Local governments backed by the United States and its allies rarely address the structural problems that triggered the conflicts. As a result, local populations, neglected by their governments, have turned to extremist groups for income, basic services, and protection. Peace agreements, imposed from above and outside, fail to give voice to affected populations and jihadi organizations have been denied a seat at the table, even though they are critical parties to the conflicts. Not surprisingly, most of the accords have collapsed.

Foreign intervention in the Horn of Africa has had similar results. In Somalia, the intensification of US airstrikes has stimulated increased extremist activity and a corresponding refocus on civilian targets. Abuses by unaccountable regimes and foreign troops have generated a popular backlash, and externally brokered peace accords that excluded local voices have resulted in a succession of failed governments.

What have we learned? There will be no peace if underlying grievances are not addressed, domestic and foreign militaries continue to victimize local populations, and dysfunctional states fail to provide basic services.

Shifting the Focus

If the question is not how many troops and where should they be, what should we ask?

First, we must question our current framing of U.S. national security interests. Like Trump’s America firsters, establishment liberals tend to view U.S. national security primarily in military terms that focuses on the defense of national borders against external military threats.

Instead, we need to embrace a more expansive concept of “human security” that focuses on people rather than territory and includes health, education, employment, environment, and respect for human rights and civil liberties as factors critical to human well-being. The safeguarding of both U.S. and global security requires a multidimensional approach that addresses the root causes of problems that threaten the world today.

Second, we need to acknowledge that we do not have the answers and seek out those who do. We will learn that grassroots endeavors — organized by African-led agricultural cooperatives, trade unions, and women’s and youth groups — are already addressing the grievances that spring from poverty and inequality and the conflicts that result. They have lived the experience and have developed the best solutions. They must guide our policy choices.

Third, the U.S. and its allies should support local peace initiatives that include all affected parties. Key actors should not be sidelined at their discretion.

Finally, we should withdraw our support for corrupt, repressive regimes and instead advance US and multilateral initiatives that promote democracy, human rights, and economic, environmental, and climate justice. The only path to greater U.S. security is greater human security worldwide. Although fundamental political, economic, and social transformations will take decades, they are the only solution to crises in Africa and the global south.