COVID-19 is Manufactured Chaos

Wim Laven

In late December of last year, the Chinese announced an epidemic in Wuhan. The autocratic Chinese government should have made that outbreak known at least three weeks earlier.

Over here, the increasingly autocratic Trump dithered, misunderstood, failed to act, dismissed the threat as nothing, and let coronavirus win. This poor excuse for an official finally lets us know on March 31 that we can expect more than 100,000 American deaths, yet he fails to model basic preventives such as physical distancing and wearing face masks while in the company of others, endlessly and idiotically stressing that all this is “optional.”

An abbreviated timeline with Trump’s claims:

Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China” Davos, Switzerland

Jan. 30: World Health Organization declares Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

Jan. 31: “Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus”

Feb. 2: On Fox News: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It’s going to be fine.”

Feb. 25: While visiting India: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away. They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”

Feb. 27: During Black History month reception at White House: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

Feb. 28: At a campaign rally: “hoax.”

March 4: Back on Fox again: “If we have thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work – some of them go to work, but they get better.”

March 6: While touring the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”

March 8: Tweet: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on Coronavirus…”

March 10: Press briefing: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

March 13: declared the COVID-19 pandemic a National Emergency

Trump was lying while people were dying. But he created this problem well in advance.

On May 10, 2018,  Stephen Schwartz, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Senior Fellow,  responding to the Trump administration decision to disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic response team, Tweeted, “When the next pandemic occurs (and make no mistake, it will) and the federal government is unable to respond in a coordinated and effective fashion to protect the lives of US citizens and others, this decision by John Bolton and Donald Trump will be why.”

By contrast we can review a different outbreak. Ebola.

December 2013: 18-month-old boy in a small village in Guinea is infected by bats. Nearly 30,000 would die from the subsequent outbreak.

When President Obama responded to the Ebola pandemic he sent experts to West Africa months before a case reached US soil and also before the WHO labelled Ebola an international threat. The response was proactive and robust; it contained the spread enough to basically keep it from the US.

Of course, during the preventive and responsive Obama administration successful defeat of Ebola’s threat to the US, Trump was busy tweeting his usual ignorant and insulting anti-Obama offal. He called Obama “stupid” and with his signature nastiness, tweeted that the American health worker who had become infected while helping with the CDC team should not be brought home for treatment but should “suffer the consequences.”

By stark and tragic contrast, six years later Trump was in power and we see the predictable catastrophic outcomes. He never sent experts to China; he actually removed Dr. Linda Quick, the CDC health advisor who was in China in July 2019, thus eliminating the expert who worked closely with Chinese public health officials, which slowed the US response by weeks. After dismissing the COVID-19 threat and predicting it would magically disappear, he finally instituted a travel ban. The horse was long gone and he claims great credit for finally shutting the barn door.

Criminally malignant intent or incomprehensibly hateful ignorance? You decide. Those are our logical assessment options. We now have 434,791 cases and 14,802 deaths with no end in sight.

Australian hospitals lack ventilators and staff to deal with pandemic

Clare Bruderlin

Last Thursday, the federal and Victorian state governments announced a $31.8 million agreement with a consortium of local companies to produce 2,000 ventilators to enable hospitals to deal with COVID-19. However, the life-saving equipment will not be ready until July.

While the two governments hailed the announcement as a triumph for national-based manufacturing, it underscored the lack of urgently-needed pandemic-fighting equipment, and the staff needed to operate it, in Australia’s hospitals.

Another alarming aspect of the announcement was that the federal government invoked “emergency” powers to allow its health minister to exempt ventilators from the usual safety and performance tests of the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

For weeks, federal and state governments have been promising to triple intensive care unit capacity. But modelling suggests there are not enough invasive ventilators—used to aid breathing in seriously-ill COVID-19 patients—to support such a surge.

Despite premature government and corporate media claims that the end of the pandemic is near, the number of COVID-19 cases in Australia continues to rise, passing 6,200, with 55 deaths. The New South Wales (NSW) Health Department previously predicted that in the coming months some 80,000 people in that state alone were likely to require intensive care beds. In neighbouring Queensland, the health department predicted 64,000 beds would be needed.

The ventilators jointly promised on Thursday by federal Industry Minister Karen Andrews, from the Liberal-National Coalition, and Victorian Jobs Minister Martin Pakula, from the Labor Party, would only represent an almost doubling of Australia’s ventilator stocks.

An article published in the Medical Journal of Australia last week indicated the acute shortage of intensive care unit (ICU) beds. It estimated that there are only 2,378 available intensive care beds in the public and private sectors. This equates to 9.4 ICU beds per 100,000 people. In Italy, where the coronavirus rapidly overwhelmed hospitals, there were 12.5 ICU beds per 100,000 people.

At the reported maximum surge capacity, the existing ICUs could support an additional 4,261 ICU beds and 2,631 invasive ventilators. Yet there was another problem. Even with ICU beds at maximum surge capacity, the journal article estimates that this would require up to 4,125 additional senior doctors and 65,758 registered ICU nurses.

Far from meeting this need, the federal government last week pledged $4.1 million to e-learning provider Medcast to offer free online courses to 20,000 registered nurses, to train them to work in intensive care and high dependency units.

The Australian Nurses and Midwives Federation, the trade union that covers some 280,000 workers, welcomed “the government’s strategy” on its web site. “This will maximise the capacity of experienced, registered nurses and prepare them to boost the intensive care nursing workforce as needed in dealing with the unfolding pandemic,” the union claimed.

In reality, in addition to the inadequate number of free places available, registered nurses must seek approval from their managers in order to undertake the courses. Registered nurses who do not qualify for free training will have to pay for it out of their own pockets. A four-day Critical Care Nursing Course with Medcast costs $945.

Moreover, the course comprises just 32.5 hours of education. Medcast notes in its FAQ: “This is not designed to replace practical training delivered in the clinical setting nor is it designed to replace formal postgraduate critical care qualifications. It is an expectation that the nurses who complete this course will go on to be supervised by more experienced HDU [high dependency unit] and Critical Care nurses and work as part of a team providing patient care.”

Reflecting staff shortages across the entire health sector, 40,000 former doctors, nurses, midwives and pharmacists whose registration ended in the past three years are being urged to return to the medical workforce. There is no indication that any training will be provided to these workers. It will be left to their employers to “support them to make a safe return to practice and to ensure patient safety.”

Preparations are being made also to hire students to bolster health staff. Without concern for the psychological or physical wellbeing of students, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government announced that restrictions would be lifted on some 20,000 international nursing students working in the health system, so they could work up to 40 hours per fortnight.

Many international students may have no choice but to take on this work, in order to remain in Australia. The government has refused to provide any financial support for the two million or more international workers and students who have lost their jobs and livelihoods as a result of the pandemic. Morrison last week said they could “return to their home countries.”

Acute staff shortages exist in the ambulance and paramedic services too. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported recently that NSW Ambulance planned to recruit paramedic students. Charles Sturt University students were “to be hired on a short-term casual basis.”

Australian Paramedics Association spokesperson Alan Murphy told the ABC that students would be “put in a position where they’re unable to drive an ambulance under lights and sirens, but they’re also not in a position to be able [to] treat patients unsupervised either. So you’ve got a qualified paramedic in the front trying to drive and direct treatment unsupervised while the student is in the back with the patient.”

NSW Ambulance employs just 3,800 paramedics, who provided care to 1,224,060 patients in 2019, before the outbreak of the coronavirus. The pressure on paramedics to cover under-staffing, can be seen in the 11 percent increase in overtime payments for paramedics between 2017-18 and 2018-19.

Reflecting the extent of under-staffing and equipment shortages, Sydney Health Ethics last week published a framework “to help clinicians, hospital administrators and policy makers decide how to allocate clinical health resources as they become scarce within a pandemic such as COVID-19.”

The framework referred to three groups who were to be excluded from ICU care:

“The first group is those who are likely to recover—they are expected to survive without access to the ICU, even if they would, in normal circumstances, be admitted and could benefit from it. The second group are those who are dying—according to the best available evidence they are terminally ill (e.g. they have advanced, inoperable cancer). They are to be given supportive care, including palliative care, but are not to be considered for ventilation etc. The third group are those who choose not to be admitted to the ICU.”

According to the framework, patients deemed eligible for ICU should be divided into high and low priority, with high priority given to those who “on the basis of their current medical condition, are highly likely to recover and benefit long-term from admission into the ICU,” whereas low priority is given to those who “may recover after admission to the ICU.”

Such guidelines raise the spectre of doctors, nurses and health officials having to decide who will live and who will die, matching the horrific scenes of Italy, Spain, the UK and the US.

The inability of the health care system to cope with the unfolding pandemic is the product of decades-long cuts to funding to public health services carried out under Liberal-National and Labor governments alike, with the trade unions repeatedly suppressing the opposition of health care workers.

Instead of directing funding toward preventing the spread of the virus and treating patients, the government has pledged billions to the banks, big business and private hospital owners. The Morrison government’s biggest corporate bailout—its $130 billion wage subsidy for employers, backed by the Labor Party—equals the amount allocated to public hospitals over four years in the 2019-20 federal budget.

African economies in free fall as coronavirus pandemic worsens

Stephan McCoy

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the African continent has risen above 12,000, with over 500 deaths. Although the number of confirmed cases has not yet surged to levels in the advanced countries, the impact of the global economic turmoil is rapidly being felt across the continent.

Africa, integrated into the global economy both as a supplier of raw materials and as an importer of finished goods, could never escape the economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis.

As the Financial Times pointed out, while in the US and Europe the coronavirus has produced an economic and social disaster, “In much of the developing world, the sequence has happened in reverse, with the economic devastation of coronavirus arriving before the epidemic itself.”

The United Nations has warned that Africa could fall into recession, with growth estimates for 2020 revised down to 1.8 percent from an earlier 3.2 percent. Bartholomew Armah, head of the UN Economic Commission for Africa’s head of macroeconomics and governance division, told Bloomberg that he expects a recession, “Our previous forecast should be seen as conservative because it was done at a time when the actual number of [coronavirus] cases in Africa was low.”

The World Bank reports an equally grim situation, estimating $37 billion to $79 billion in losses due to the pandemic. Trade and value chain disruption and a seven percent fall in food production due to transport blockages could see food imports decline by a massive 25 percent. The World Bank projects that Africa’s economy will shrink 2.1-5.1 percent this year.

An African Union (AU) study predicts that some 20 million jobs are at risk in Africa due to the impact of the pandemic. Sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest oil producers, Nigeria and Angola, stand to lose $65 billion in revenues due to the collapse in oil prices and the fall in demand as a result of the looming slump. Their deficits are likely to double, while their economies will shrink by an average of three percent.

The study estimates that continent’s tourism and travel sector, a major foreign currency earner for many countries, could lose at least $50 billion and two million tourism and related jobs. Thus, countries dependent upon tourism are expected to see their economies shrink by an average of 3.3 percent, with major tourist destinations such as the Seychelles, Cape Verde, Mauritius and Gambia shrinking by at least seven percent.

Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria, with a population of 200 million, is already badly affected by the coronavirus. The country has recorded the highest number of cases in sub-Saharan Africa, 288, with seven deaths.

Nigeria’s Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed has warned the economy could contract by 3.4 percent this year. The Brookings Institute had warned even before the virus outbreak that the economy was struggling, “grappling with weak recovery from the 2014 oil price shock,” and sluggish GDP growth of 2.3 percent. The IMF had revised its estimate for 2020 GDP growth rates down from 2.5 percent to 2 percent because of the falling price of oil, which constitutes the main source of revenues.

Despite the government cutting its budget, crowding out vital health care and social assistance spending, its borrowings are set to increase as foreign currency earnings and reserves fall. Yet Nigeria’s five richest men, with a combined wealth of US$29.9 billion, own as much as the country’s entire national budget.

South Africa, the second largest economy, saw prices for its metal exports fall by eight percent between December and March, prompting a downgrade to junk rating by Moodyʼs, 25 years after being awarded investment grade rating. This follows a negative rating last November and subinvestment status by the other two major ratings companies. Moodyʼs cited “unreliable electricity supply” and “longstanding structural labor market rigidities”—despite the African National Congress government and the trade unions having enforced ever deeper attacks on wages and working conditions.

Tshepiso Moahloli, acting head of asset and liability management at South Africa’s National Treasury, seized on the downgrade as the pretext for further measures that would increase the country’s social and economic polarisation, saying, “We take this downgrade as an opportunity do the right thing … an opportunity to do the things we are supposed to do.”

However, the National Treasury was not so optimistic, saying, “The decision by Moody’s could not have come at a worse time.” Its concern lay not with the impact on South African workers and their families but on “South African financial markets.”

Yet the money and resources are there. According to the most recent statistics from the World Inequality Database, South Africa’s top one percent take home almost 20 percent of all income in the country, while the top 10 percent take home 65 percent, with the remaining 90 percent getting just 35 percent of total income. Similar inequality dominates every country on the resource-rich continent.

Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s third most populous state, has been hugely impacted by the crisis. Ethiopian Airlines, the country’s flagship carrier, which uses its capital Addis Ababa as a hub connecting Europe and Asia with Africa, has reported operating at only 10 percent capacity with a loss of $550 million in the months of January to April 2020. Its flower export industry, like that of neighbouring Kenya, has been hit by plummeting European demand, with flower prices falling by more than 80 percent, putting some 150,000 jobs at risk.

All of Kenya’s main foreign currency earners, including tourism, flower and horticultural exports, have been affected, under conditions where informal labourers account for 83.6 percent of the total workforce.

Many African countries, in the wake of the US Federal Reserve’s decision to cut its main interest rates to near zero, have sought to stem economic decline, brought on by lockdowns and reduced trade, by taking similar measures in a bid to woo business and investors.

Egypt’s central bank slashed rates by 300 basis points at an emergency meeting in March. Ghana and Kenya both cut their key interest rates to an eight-year low, and Mauritius, Uganda and Namibia reduced their benchmark rates to record lows—2.85 percent, 8 percent and 5.25 percent, respectively—with Namibia cutting its rate by 100 basis points.

At least 10 central banks, including in Botswana, South Africa, Kenya and Malawi, have announced lower reserve or liquidity requirements for commercial lenders to encourage more lending.

The African Development Bank issued the world’s biggest dollar social bond by selling $3 billion notes. The bank has since received $4.6 billion in bids for its “Fight COVID-19 social bond,” thanks to its low interest rate of 0.75 percent. At least 37 percent of the bonds were allocated to European institutions, 36 percent to US and 17 percent to Asian investors.

Goldman Sachs recently noted that $75 billion in funding was required to save the continent’s ailing economies, most of which would go to the local oligarchs, aiding the corporations and the wealthy and into the pockets of CEOs and top executives. In reality, African governments are asking for very much more.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has asked G-20 leaders to assist Africa with $150 billion, much of it directed to the corporations and the wealthy, and to write off or convert debts of low-income countries, in effect waiving the debts of African corporations. This is because Moodyʼs estimates that $115 billion of foreign currency debt are held by corporations, accounting for a significant share of 21 of Africa’s 54 countries’ foreign debt.

But with government deficits rising all over the continent, even middle-income countries are spending 20 percent or more of their revenues on debt service, making it impossible to provide much-needed health, education, and infrastructure.

According to the Financial Times, “Tidjane Thiam, former chief executive of Credit Suisse, is among several prominent Africans pressing for a two-year moratorium on $115bn of sovereign African debt owned by the private sector in what, under normal circumstances, would be considered a default.”

Such desperate economic conditions, even before the pandemic hits Africa with full force, make clear the need for an international socialist strategy for the working class. The wealth of the ruling elite must be expropriated and used to meet the urgent economic, social and health care needs of workers and poor farmers. This requires the building of a revolutionary leadership in the working class to wage an intransigent struggle against the diktats of the banks, corporations and world imperialism and their local agents on the continent.

Testimony from US and Canadian inmates exposes deadly conditions inside prisons

Sam Dalton

Prisons and detention facilities throughout the US and Canada are developing into COVID-19 hot spots across the continent. The foul conditions which already existed in these facilities have left inmates and prison workers at extremely high-risk of infection and death. The close quarters and overcrowding means that once the virus enters a prison or detention facility, it can rapidly spread to a large population.

The Bureau of Prisons has officially reported that only eight federal prisoners have died from the virus; five of those deaths were of people incarcerated at one federal prison facility in Oakdale, Louisiana. State prisons in Illinois, Georgia, Michigan, Massachusetts and New York have also seen at least one death.

The true number of deaths and infections amongst incarcerated individuals is undoubtedly much higher. Many harrowing accounts have emerged in the form of videos and written testimony from prisoners outlining the conditions they face in the last two weeks.

One young prisoner at Elkton Federal Prison recorded a video on a smuggled phone which was posted on YouTube on April 5th. The prisoner, whose identity is unknown, begins:

“Sh*t was all good a couple of days ago, then all of a sudden everyone started getting sick and dying. Three guys I know have already been taken out of here dead. The rest of us are sick as hell. They are literally leaving us to die. They keep talking about social distancing, but we... can’t even social distance, look at this.”

The speaker then turns the camera to his room. He is on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed, the end of which is pushed up against another bed. The man lying in the other bed is wrapped up in a blanket, wearing a surgical mask and is unresponsive to the speaker’s questions.

He continues, “This motherf**ker over here is dying from coronavirus, they got him in my room. How the f**k am I supposed to live?” The prisoner then reveals that his cellmate on the bunk above him is also infected.

“They told us to stay 6 feet, gave us these masks [surgical masks] and said, ‘good luck.’ I’ve got a light drug sentence and now they are trying to kill me. I was trying to keep the phone situation low-key, but this is too serious. Everyone is dying.”

He then leaves his cell and goes into a communal area and turns the camera to show an inmate who is unresponsive and audibly having extreme difficulty breathing. “He can’t breathe, this motherf**ker is literally dying. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to die in here, I’ve got under a year left.”

Later in the video the speaker says that, “The nurse came today, he told me to be prepared, ‘half of the unit is going to die’ he said. They are already stacking up bodies in the tent.” At another point in the video the inmate goes to a window to show a large tent that has been constructed in the prison’s basketball court.

Towards the end of the video the speaker begins to list names of his friends and family, saying goodbye as he fears he will never see them again. He adds, “F**k all of this advice, we need to get out of here! Andrew Cuomo we can’t social distance! If I don’t make it, this is all for prison reform, don’t let anyone else die for this. If I die, share this to everyone. Share this!”

He finishes the recording by stating, “There is no protection for inmates, they are going to throw you into that tent, and they are going to phone your parents and tell them there isn’t anything they could have done about this. But there is something they can do! I’m here on a light drug charge, I meet all the criteria for the CARES Act and compassionate release, why can’t I get out? Someone has got to answer that! But they want the money.

“They might send me to the hold for this [the recording of the video] but what else can I do? Spread awareness of people in prison, we [referring to his cellmate] only got drug charges and this is what they are doing to us. He is on his deathbed.”

The fate of this inmate and those shown in the video are currently unknown. On April 6, a day after the video was leaked, Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine called the national guard to Elkton Federal Prison, just east of Canton, Ohio.

On April 4, a letter was published on twitter, by an attorney on behalf of their anonymous client, an inmate at Rikers Island Jail Complex in New York.

The letter, which is dated March 21, begins: “I will not be stating my name for fear of retaliation and repercussion. I’m currently being held on Rikers Island as a detainee until my case is resolved [the author is therefore awaiting trial and yet to be convicted of a crime].

“In the past few months, I’ve been watching the news every day on the COVID-19 pandemic. And I’m also watching how our governor [Andrew Cuomo] continues to lie on saying there were no cases of COVID-19 on Rikers Island. That is a complete lie. There were 28 that I know of so far.”

On the same day as this letter was written, Mayor deBlasio announced that 21 inmates had tested positive. Until then only one case confirmed on March 18 amongst Rikers inmates had been reported by city authorities.

The day after the letter was published it was confirmed that Michael Tyson, aged 53, was the first Rikers inmate to die from COVID-19. Tyson had been incarcerated on February 28. He was awaiting a hearing on a parole violation. The most recent numbers at Rikers include at least 273 inmates infected with the virus—a rate of infection seven times higher than New York City, now the world epicenter of the pandemic.

The letter from the inmate continues: “Every day there’s more and more people coughing and sneezing having flu-like symptoms and no one is being tested. We sleep in horrible conditions only two feet apart. We’re receiving no masks, gloves or even enough soap. We are not getting the extra phone time the mayor promised us when visits were shut down.

“Everyday we live in fear of this virus and the staff are also very afraid. No one here deserved a death sentenced for the crime they’re accused [emphasis in original] of. We should be released with ankle monitors to give us a fighting chance. At least let us spend what can be our last days with our loved ones who are worried to death about us. Every day we sit and watch as ‘our’ mayor and governor lie.”

At the Laval correctional facility in Montreal, Canada, a number of prisoners are currently on hunger strike protesting the conditions of their incarceration. News of the strike spread to Burnside Prison in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Prisoners from the institution penned an open letter in solidarity with the hunger strikers which states: “Leaving marginalized people in prison during a pandemic is a violation of human rights that is targeted to the least powerful in society. The people who argue for us to be held in these facilities can sit safe at home while they condemn us to be left to sicken or die if infection breaks out.”

Pointing to the gross injustice of thousands of migrants who have been imprisoned and facing deadly conditions the letter continues, “Prison is never safe or healthy. We particularly condemn incarceration of people who have committed no crime: people who have simply come from one place to another.

It concludes, “Free the Laval Strikers! Solidarity with all prisoners across the world!”

One migrant who is locked up at the South Texas Immigrant and Customs Enforcement Center, which is run by the private for-profit GEO group, gave the following plea to an attorney, “Help us, we fear for our lives. GEO doesn’t want us to know anything here.”

The increased risk to older prisoners and those with pre-existing conditions has also been highlighted by desperate inmates. In a letter to Governor DeWine, one Ohio inmate wrote, “I have four months left and I have asthma. This virus that is going around can kill people like me. I have two kids and a wife. I know there are others in here that have not done things that bad that we could all be put on house arrest or probation for the rest of this time.”

The inmate continues, “We are in groups of 210, could be more, and we sleep next to each other and we eat off the same plates. All it will take is one of us to get this and the whole prison will have it.”

Mass incarceration has been one of the major weapons utilized by the capitalist class, both Democrat and Republican, for the last forty years of social counter-revolution.

No society in human history has incarcerated as many of its own citizens as has the United States. The COVID-19 crisis has only sharpened the deadly consequences of this practice.

Japanese PM imposes coronavirus state of emergency

Peter Symonds

After resisting such moves for weeks, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced on Tuesday that his government would impose a state of emergency in selected areas of the country, including the capital Tokyo, to try to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abe emphasised that the state of emergency was not a lockdown, that public transport would continue and that prefectural governors could only request, not order, businesses to close and people work from home and avoid going out.

The declaration came only after warnings from health officials that the number of confirmed cases in Japan threatened to spiral out of control and overwhelm the country’s hospitals. In the past fortnight the number of confirmed cases has more than trebled from 1,693 to 5,530 yesterday, and the number of deaths has nearly doubled from 52 to 99.

Abe was also under pressure to act from the Tokyo governor and political rival Yuriko Koike whose administration was facing a growing number of cases. Confirmed cases in the capital trebled in 10 days to top 1,500. The city reported a record 181 new infections on Thursday.

Since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in mid-January, the Abe government’s response has been minimal. The relatively low number of confirmed cases led to various theories that because of cultural factors—such as bowing rather than shaking hands and the widespread, every-day use of face masks—Japan had avoided the worst of the pandemic.

In reality, one of the chief reasons for the low numbers was the lack of testing. A day earlier, Abe announced that the testing capacity would be increased to 20,000 a day. However, the number of tests has rarely reached half the existing testing capacity of 7,500 tests a day.

Overall, as of April 6, Japan had conducted only about 45,000 tests, far less than many other countries, including South Korea, which has carried out around half a million tests. Much of the testing has been based on the theory that the pandemic only occurred in specific clusters, so little or no broad testing has been done to identify the wider rates of infection.

Masahiro Kami, head of the Medical Governance Research Institute, told the Financial Times: “It’s very hard to know if the state of emergency is justified or whether it will be effective because Japan hasn’t done the testing.”

The state of emergency, which came into force on Wednesday, covers seven prefectures that include the major cities of Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka and Yokohama. The range of businesses that are likely to be exempt from requests to close is broader than in many countries and covers factories, hotels and restaurants as well as supermarkets, pharmacies, convenience stores, railways and bus services.

With considerable confusion surrounding the measures, the media is already reporting that Tokyo’s crowded commuter trains continue to run on some busy lines and as many people went to work as usual. “It’s unavoidable that people have to come out for work,” Risa Tanaka, a mask-wearing office worker near Tokyo’s Shinjuku station, told Reuters.

The state of emergency will last for a month unless renewed. In announcing it, Abe claimed that the measures would reduce social interactions by 70 to 80 percent. He also suggested that “the expansion of infections can be turned to a decline in two weeks.”

Medical experts, however, rejected these claims.

Kenji Shibuya, director of the Institute for Population Health at King’s College London, told the New York Times: “Japan has been screwing up.” He warned that the number of confirmed cases was “just the tip of the iceberg,” and a surge of cases could cause Tokyo’s health care system to collapse.

According to the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine, Japan has just five intensive care beds per 100,000 people, compared with close to 30 in Germany and 12 in Italy.

Dr. Keiji Fukuda, director of the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, told the New York Times: “For most countries, it’s not ‘are they going to dodge the bullet? ... It’s just ‘when is it going to come?’ This is true for Japan, too.”

Like its counterparts internationally, the Japanese government has been preoccupied with saving the capitalist economy rather than the lives and well-being of its citizens. As he made the emergency declaration on Tuesday, Abe declared: “The Japanese economy is facing its largest postwar crisis.”

In the name of combatting the coronavirus, the Japanese cabinet this week passed the country’s largest-ever stimulus package, worth 108 trillion yen or about $US1 trillion—a massive 20 percent of GDP. This includes previously approved stimulus measures in December when the economy was being hit by the US-China trade conflict and a major typhoon in October.

To boost consumer spending and help prop up businesses, the package includes a 300,000-yen ($2,750) handout to households that have lost income due to the virus, and 2 million yen, along with delayed tax payments, for businesses impacted by the virus. A second phase will include funds to boost spending and travel as the pandemic eases.

Abe also downplayed COVID-19 as his government and the Tokyo prefecture desperately sought to ensure that this year’s Tokyo Olympics went ahead.

Tim Hornyak, a commentator in the Canadian-based National Post, noted this week: “As daily new infections wavered around 30, Japan’s Olympics minister said cancelling the event was ‘inconceivable’—until March 24, when Abe and the International Olympic Committee agreed to postpone the Games until 2021. Almost on cue, new daily coronavirus diagnoses nearly doubled. They’re now over 300.”

Even as he imposed the state of emergency, Abe insisted that he did not have the legal and constitutional powers to compulsorily shut down businesses, or to insist that people work from home or restrict their movements.

Around the world, the ruling classes are exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need to impose shutdowns, quarantining and social distancing, to justify far-reaching expansion of police-state measures that will in the future be used against the working class.

Abe and his right-wing Liberal Democratic Party have long called for the revision of Japan’s postwar constitution to remove any impediments to Japanese imperialism to wage war and make deep inroads into basic democratic rights. By claiming he does not have enough powers to counter COVID-19, Abe is adding to his push for major constitutional change, which has eluded him to date.

Amid COVID-19 pandemic, Turkish government steps up attacks on workers

Ulas Atesci

Turkey has one of the world’s fastest-spreading coronavirus epidemics, with over 45,000 new cases per month, but President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government is using this pandemic as an opportunity to intensify social attacks on the working class. It has made clear that its priority is keeping workers at work to maintain production, exports and profits high, despite a surge of COVID-19 cases in the factories.

It suspended operations only of small businesses (cafés, restaurants, restaurants, gyms, hairdressers), but industrial production continues despite rising disease and death among the workers. Only automakers—Ford, Renault, Tofaş-Fiat, Mercedes Benz, Toyota, Hyundai and Honda—shut down their factories in March. This was largely because of problems in the supply chain and the collapse in the demand. Wildcat strikes by autoworkers in America and Europe also forced several to stop production.

Against the government’s deadly policy, workers in noncritical industries like metal, construction and textiles went on wildcat strikes in recent weeks. After wildcat strikes by Istanbul construction workers, a work stoppage in a filter factory in the southern border city of Hatay and a walkout by metal workers in Gebze, an industrial city near Istanbul, textile workers in Izmir and Gaziantep went on wildcat strikes last week. In Izmir, company thugs physically attacked workers during the walkout.

Focusing the interests of financial elite, the government announced last month a package for business totaling 100 billion Turkish liras while launching a “National Solidarity Campaign” calling on big businesses to donate to “provide additional support to low-income people.” The main purpose of the campaign was to promote nationalism amid growing anger among workers at its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many big companies and banks boasted of their donations, while forcing workers sick with COVID-19 to stay at work.

The government has collected only about 1.5 billion Turkish liras ($US225 million), though Turkey had 27 billionaires in 2019. They collectively owned more than $US50 billion, enough to provide full income to all workers idled in uncritical sectors during the pandemic and massively develop Turkey’s health care system.

In addition, the government has prepared a proposed law supposedly to ban layoffs for three to six months. The progovernment Anews cited one official, “The proposed law would guarantee employment and try to protect employees ineligible for parttime work who are put on unpaid leave.”

But this is a blatant lie. In fact, this would let employers put workers on unpaid leave for up to six months on just 39 lira ($6) daily. The minimum wage in Turkey is about 2,300 liras a month, which is only half of it, meaning a starvation wage. Moreover, this amount would not come from the employers but from Turkey’s official unemployment insurance fund. Today, according to the law, employers must receive approval from workers for unpaid leave, but this bill would make unpaid leave permanent.

Opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu called this payment “important” while adding hypocritical criticisms. The pseudoleft groups that support the CHP and the trade unions play a reactionary role. Ozan Gündoğdu, a columnist for the Left Party’s (formerly Freedom and Solidarity Party, ÖDP) daily BirGün, hailed the bill as “positive,” only complaining that “these should be made a month later.” The ÖDP ran its leader as a CHP candidate in last year’s local elections.

In a sign of its class hostility to workers, the pro-CHP Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (DİSK) leader Arzu Çerkezoğlu initially hailed this bill, calling it a “confirmation of our proposals.” Özkan Atar, another DİSK official from the Birleşik Metal-İş metalworkers union, called the bill a “consequence of our struggle.” The DİSK declared on March 30 that in 48 hours it might invoke the constitutional right to not work in unsafe conditions, if the government acts to ensure safe conditions. Ultimately, however, it did not call strikes.

The coronavirus crisis further exposes the collaboration between the government, big business and trade unions at the workers’ expense. This did not, however, start with the pandemic.

Last October, Çerkezoğlu participated in a joint forum with progovernment union federations and the Confederation of Employers’ Unions of Turkey (TİSK), one of the main progovernment business groups. At that time, the WSWS warned: “Gathering together bitter enemies of the working class, this forum was organized to discuss how to suppress growing opposition within the working class.” On Thursday, the TİSK held a video conference involving the vice chairwoman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

While the unions covered up for the AKP’s policy of malign neglect of the pandemic’s toll, COVID-19 is rapidly spreading across Turkey, especially in working class cities like Istanbul and Kocaeli. While the Turkish Health Ministry reported a first case on March 11, the total number of cases had surpassed 45,000 by April 10. This has led to widespread suspicion among workers that the official death toll of 1,000 is an underestimation.

On Wednesday, the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) accused the Health Ministry of not using COVID-19 codes proposed by the World Health Organization to calculate the death toll. “Not using these codes as recommended by international organizations like the WHO leads to undercounting of deaths in the COVID-19 pandemic,” the TTB said.

Research by Avrasya Kamuoyu Araştırmaları Merkezi confirms this. Comparing official death tolls for İstanbul between March 11 and April 7, with the same period in previous years, the research firm found the death toll was 7,417 this year compared to 5,886 in 2019 and 5,814 in 2018. This is 1,500 excess deaths for Istanbul alone.

Moreover, the Istanbul Medical Chamber (ITO) said on Wednesday “the number of doctors and health care workers infected with COVID-19 has already exceeded 1,000 in Istanbul, alone,” blaming the government for the lack of protective equipment. Though the TTB is Turkey’s main physicians organization, its representatives do not sit in the AKP’s Science Council for Coronavirus. In 2018, 11 top TTB members were detained because they issued a statement, entitled “War is a Matter of Public Health,” opposing Turkey’s war policies in Syria.

Moreover, while President Erdoğan and Health Minister Fahrettin Koca repeatedly claim that there is no problem with hospitals and health care infrastructure, Prof. Dr. İsmail Cinel, president of the Intensive Care Association, told daily Cumhuriyet, “Gradually, hospitals and therefore intensive care are filling.” Facing an urgent need for new hospitals, the government said last week it would build two hospitals in Istanbul within 45 days. However, doctors say it would be too late and the government must reopen hospitals closed in the recent period.

The government’s main concern is not to contain the COVID-19 outbreak as soon as possible but to suppress any opposition to its malign neglect policy. Erdoğan has repeatedly accused the US and European governments of failing to take necessary measures in time.

In fact, the Erdoğan government itself did not take critical measures, like testing and quarantining hundreds of thousands of people arriving from abroad, until mid-March. Today, it still endangers countless thousands of lives by forcing millions of workers to stay at work to produce profits for big business.

As a clear sign of the class character of the official “stay at home” campaign, Nail Noğay, an official from Istanbul Provincial Directorate of Family and Social Policies, wrote “Die!” on his Twitter account on Wednesday against a working class woman from Roma community who told Euronews, “We have children, and we are hungry. … I have to go out. What happens when there is no income? Right now I was just begging. Who knows that?”

Health Minister Koca claimed, “There are two sides in the struggle: One is the virus and the other is us.” In fact, the two opposing sides are the ruling class and the working class. The main obstacle to fight the disease is the privileges of the corporate and financial elite. To protect millions of lives and provide health care and other needs for all, political power must be taken by the working class and the wealth of the capitalists expropriated.

German hospitals become COVID-19 hotspots for health care workers

Markus Salzmann

With nearly 120,000 people in Germany infected with the COVID-19 pathogen, hospitals are increasingly becoming centres of the coronavirus pandemic. According to the public health body the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), more than 2,300 doctors and nurses have become infected in hospitals alone. This is aggravating the dramatic shortage of health care personnel.

The situation is becoming increasingly serious in multiple hospitals. Following an increase in cases of coronavirus infections at the Helios Clinic in Munich-Pasing, operations have now resumed. In addition to patients, many staff were also affected. According to city authorities, around 250 patients and around 1,000 employees have been tested since March 31, 97 of them being positive.

Parts of the hospital in Ansbach, Bavaria have been closed. At the end of last week, a spokesman said that 21 employees from the medical and nursing sector were infected. This number has now more than doubled, the hospital told the Abendzeitung on Friday.

At the Ernst-von-Bergmann-Klinikum in Potsdam, five people died within 24 hours as a result of the coronavirus infection, the city of Potsdam announced on Tuesday. Last week, an accumulation of COVID-19 infections was detected in the clinic and admissions were halted. Currently, only acute emergencies may be admitted.

The hospital currently has 88 patients infected with the coronavirus under in-patient treatment, 14 of whom are in intensive care, with 11 being ventilated. By Tuesday, 21 COVID-19 patients had died there.

At least 80 employees have become infected with the virus in the hospital. Experts from the RKI then inspected the clinic and wrote a report to the responsible health authority. Officially, nothing was supposedly known about this, but several proceedings were initiated immediately afterwards.

According to the Berliner Zeitung, the first is directed against three senior staff. “On Tuesday evening, administrative offence proceedings were also initiated against two directors of the clinic. Here, too, the accusation is that corona cases may have been reported too late or not at all to the Potsdam health department,” the newspaper writes.

Irrespective of whether individual workers have always observed correct protective measures under these conditions, the root cause of widespread infections lies in the catastrophic conditions in hospitals. Doctors and nursing staff are completely overworked and there is still a lack of protective materials such as face masks, protective gowns and disinfectants.

An open letter from doctors and nursing staff from more than 20 hospitals in Brandenburg makes clear how dramatic the situation is in Germany. They demand action from the Social Democratic Party-led state government to ensure that care can be maintained. “The state of Brandenburg must find a way to produce masks, protective gowns, goggles, gloves and disinfectants—immediately!” says the letter, which is addressed to Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) and Health Minister Ursula Nonnenmacher (Greens).

As broadcaster rbb24 reports, employees are demanding more staff for all areas involved in health care “through quick and unbureaucratic recruitment.” Even before the crisis, the situation in hospitals had been precarious; now the health system is facing a crucial test, the letter says.

“The developments of the next days, weeks and months may reveal an unexpected dynamic. If we look at China, Iran, Italy and Spain, we can only guess at what is about to happen in the health care system,” the authors warn.

Moreover, working conditions must be significantly improved, they demand. In addition to the supply of nutritious food, there should also be opportunities for free rehabilitation and physiotherapy in order for staff to be able to continue the mentally and physically stressful work. Employees who themselves belong to risk groups must be given special protection.

The decisions of the past 20 years had been made at the expense of employees and patients, they say, thus clearly criticizing the cuts and privatizations in the hospital sector as well as throughout the entire health care system. The authors call for a rethinking of the financing of the health system. The logic of the market has no place there, they contend.

The state government in Potsdam reacted to the criticism with the usual indifference and arrogance. Thus, despite the call for help, Nonnenmacher declared on Wednesday in the state parliament’s health committee that the hospitals were well prepared for rising case numbers. “All in all, we are well prepared and have a lot of capacity,” they said.

By mid-March it had already become clear where the priorities of the Brandenburg state executive lay. While a rescue package for companies amounting to €500 million was announced practically overnight, the government did not take any measures to improve conditions in hospitals.

The contempt that the federal and state governments are showing towards nursing staff in particular is evident in the discussion about premiums for deployment during the crisis. There are still no uniform premiums for employees in hospitals, nursing or handicapped facilities, who are poorly paid anyway. While hypocritical campaigns are waged for the “everyday heroes,” the federal and state governments undercut each other with their proposals that amount to mere alms.

Doctors and nurses at the state-owned Charité and Vivantes hospitals in Berlin, for example, are to receive €150 more for three months. Bavaria wants to pay a one-time payment of €500 to nurses. The trade union Verdi has agreed with the Federal Association of Employers in the Nursing Industry (BVAP) on a one-time payment of €1,500 for full-time employees. However, large employers, such as church-run health institutions and private providers, are not represented here.

Although RKI boss Lothar Wieler repeatedly declared “that capacities will not be sufficient,” hospitals have already been closed in the midst of the crisis, further reducing capacity. They may not be the last. As weekly Die Zeit reported, six out of 10 hospitals in Southern Germany alone are chronically underfinanced; 78 percent of public hospitals are in debt.

Last year, the Bertelsmann Foundation published a study, according to which the number of hospitals in Germany should be reduced by half to only 600. At the end of February, health minister Jens Spahn (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) had called for “more courage” in closing hospitals, according to the medical journal Ärzteblatt.

Infections are also increasing in nursing homes. Across Germany, the coronavirus has now appeared in more than 300 residences. At least 226 residents have died of COVID-19 so far, 118 in North Rhine-Westphalia. This was shown by a survey by FAKT magazine among the responsible ministries of all German federal states, whereby Saarland and Saxony-Anhalt did not provide any information. Due to insufficient testing, however, the real numbers are likely to be much higher.

Spanish government to force workers in non-essential industries back to work

Alejandro López

Disregarding scientists and the World Health Organisation (WHO), the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and pseudo-left Podemos coalition government will force workers in non-essential industries back to work on Monday, April 13. With trade union support, the PSOE and Podemos are effectively spreading the deadly COVID-19 disease. As most workplaces still lack basic security measures, they are needlessly sacrificing countless thousands of lives simply to boost corporate profits.

For 10 days starting March 30, Madrid banned non-essential work and, exceptionally, forced employers to keep paying workers in non-essential sectors while they stayed confined at home. Under the terms of this reactionary deal, the unions pledged to business that they would force workers to work unpaid overtime and forgo vacation days to pay back these wages. This is now being phased out, however.

Workers in manufacturing and construction, primarily, are to be forced back to work. Shops, restaurants (except for home delivery) and leisure establishments are to remain closed.

In parliament on Thursday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez lied, claiming this decision had been taken “based on science.” He added, “What is better, staying home until May or June? There are discrepancies when you speak with epidemiologists and scientists.” He also claimed, “economic hibernation” is “very harsh for our industrial and economic fabric.”

In fact, PSOE and Podemos had not even bothered to check with their government’s own scientific committee, which opposes this reckless policy. Antoni Trilla, an epidemiologist and scientific committee member, told El País that they were not consulted and that, in his opinion, “it would be sensible” to maintain total confinement.

Similarly, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said on Wednesday: “Now is not the time to relax measures.”

The government’s argument for ending confinement is based on lies and scientifically unfounded assertions. The first lie is that the pandemic is now under control in Spain. In fact, thousands continue to contract the disease each day. With more than 15,800 fatalities, Spain has the third highest COVID-19 death toll worldwide, after the US and Italy. With 157,053 confirmed infected, 605 patients died on Friday and 3,831 new cases were detected.

Even pro-government sources admit, however, that the official figures hugely underestimate the pandemic, as many die at home or in rest homes. The pro-PSOE daily El País confessed, “The number of cases does not reflect the true number of infections in the country, which is unknown, nor all the fatalities caused by the coronavirus. It is not even clear what is meant by the figure of intensive care admissions.”

El País also reported that the PSOE-Podemos government is discussing relying on the development of “herd immunity” to the virus within Spain’s population. According to the Spanish Society of Public Health and Health Administration, this would require at least 60 percent of the Spanish population (28 million people) to catch COVID-19 and become immune, preventing them from spreading it further. This would overwhelm Spanish hospitals, which are already swamped when there are 157,000 cases. Moreover, there is not yet any clear evidence that those infected with COVID-19 cannot get it again.

The trade unions are fully complicit in the formulation of this policy with Podemos and the PSOE. On Friday, the Podemos Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, met with the leaders of Spain’s two largest unions, Unai Sordo of the Stalinist Workers Commissions (CCOO) and Pepe Álvarez from the social-democratic General Union of Labor (UGT).

Díaz called this summit “a very productive meeting…it is essential that workers and companies have all the support of the government for the following phases.” The union tops cynically claimed their priority is preserving health—while working to send millions of workers to work without any health and safety assurances! Sordo claimed the return to work “should be subordinated to health and safety of workers.”

These are more lies, and the PSOE-Podemos government has no health or safety protocols in place. Health Minister Salvador Illa said Friday that workers should practice social distancing at work, use masks and avoid public transport—if possible. However, it is not possible, as there are still disastrous shortages of basic protective equipment (masks, gloves, hand gels, testing kits), and no agreed plan to ensure workers can maintain social distancing at industrial workplaces.

The Spanish government’s politically-criminal actions are part of the “back-to-work” call from the financial markets and the ruling establishments, ordering tens of millions of workers to risk contracting a deadly disease in order to continue supplying profits to the financial aristocracy.

In Italy, the country with the highest COVID-19 death toll, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced yesterday, after talks with Italy’s unions, that businesses would start reopening on April 14. Hundreds of academics signed a letter in the Italian financial daily, Il Sole-24 Ore, denouncing shelter-at-home orders: “The social and economic consequences risk producing irreversible damage, probably more serious than those caused by the virus itself.” In Austria, the government will allow small shops to resume business after Easter, while the Czech Republic plans to lift a travel ban.

In the US, President Donald Trump is the loudest advocate of prematurely re-opening businesses, stating this week that it would be “nice to be able to open with a big bang, and I think we will do that soon. I would say we are ahead of schedule.”

Such a criminal policy creates the conditions for a clash between the working class and the thoroughly corrupt financial aristocracy that is international in scope. It was a wave of wildcat strikes and walkouts by workers that forced the shutdown of factories and offices and the adoption of limited shelter-at-home orders in Spain, Italy and the US. According to an online survey in the Barcelona-based daily La Vanguardia, 80 percent in Spain support continuing confinement.

An initial foretaste of what the financial aristocracy is preparing came two weeks ago, when the Podemos-PSOE government oversaw the dispatching of police to assault striking steelworkers who were protesting against being forced back to unsafe, non-essential jobs in Spain’s Basque country.

Yesterday, a Renault autoworker in Spain, Miryam Largo, told Europa Press that the PSOE-Podemos government and the unions were sending them to the “slaughterhouse.” She added, “We will totally oppose the measures as confinement measures continue and there is no clear indication about pandemic control from the WHO.”

To oppose the ruling elite’s campaign to railroad them back to work, workers need new organs of struggles, action committees independent of the trade unions, and a new political perspective.

The record of Podemos has vindicated the International Committee of the Fourth International’s (ICFI) principled opposition to pseudo-left populist parties like Podemos. Such forces are not “left,” but represent deeply corrupt layers of the affluent middle class, who seek to defend their position by defending the wealth of the financial aristocracy. The unions meanwhile act as the capitalists’ main agents to send workers back to work despite the pandemic.

The pandemic poses urgent tasks to the working class. All non-essential work must be shut down, with workers and the self-employed granted full pay. In essential sectors like health care, food and transport, emergency measures must be implemented to ensure workers’ safety, including mass production of the necessary safety equipment. And an internationally coordinated campaign must be coordinated and organized to fight COVID-19’s spread around the world.