The American World That Covid-19 Reveals

Rajan Menon

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) virus, which causes Covid-19, seemed to emerge from deepest history, from the Black Death of the 14th century and the “Spanish Flu” of 1918. In just months, it has infected more than 1.5 million people and claimed more than 88,000 lives. The virus continues to spread almost everywhere. In no time at all, it’s shattered the global economy, sent it tumbling toward a deep recession (possibly even a depression), and left much of a planet locked indoors. Think of it as a gigantic stress test.

Doctors use stress tests to assess the physical fitness of patients. Governments use them to see whether banks have enough cash in reserve to honor their obligations to depositors and creditors in economic crises. The International Monetary Fund conducts stress tests on national financial systems.  Now, like several other countries, notably Italy and Spain, the United States faces a different, far tougher stress test imposed by Covid-19.  The early results are alarming.

Since the first infection in the U.S. came to light in the state of Washington on January 20th, the disease has spread across the country at a furious pace. Hospitals, especially in New York City, have been deluged and are already at the breaking point. And things will get worse — and not just in New York.  Yet the most basic necessities — protective masks, gowns, rubber gloves, and ventilators — are so scarce that they are being reused, further increasing the risk to healthcare workers, some of whom have already contracted Covid-19 from patients.  The experiences of China, Italy, and other countries suggest that the disease will take the lives of many of these brave people; indeed, some here have already paid the ultimate price.

And this pandemic will subject our political system, economy, and society to a set of stress tests into the distant future.

The “Wartime President”

By mid-January, the news from China made it obvious that the virus would spread across borders and soon reach the United States. The sheer volume of travel between the two countries should have made that reality all too obvious.  Nearly three million Chinese visitors came to this country in 2018 and 2.5 million Americans, counting only tourists, traveled to China. In fact, we now know that, in the weeks after Covid-19 was disclosed in Wuhan, China, more than 430,000 people flew here from that country, thousands of them from Wuhan itself — and this continued even after Donald Trump put his much-vaunted travel measures in place. (“I do think we were very early, but I also think that we were very smart, because we stopped China,” he nonetheless claimed.)

In addition, President Trump and his team remained unruffled, never mind that the country wasn’t remotely prepared for what was clearly coming. Despite secret intelligence reports as early as January warning that Chinese leaders were understating the coronavirus threat’s severity, the administration failed to develop any kind of emergency plan to prepare for the pandemic.

That proved to be a monumental blunder. China confirmed its first coronavirus fatality on January 11th.  An infection was first reported in Washington state barely a week later. More than a month after that, at a February 26th press conference, President Trump nonetheless dismissed the seriousness of the disease, noting that seasonal flu kills as many as 69,000 in the U.S. annually. He failed to mention that the virus may have a fatality rate up to 10 times higher than the flu and that a Covid-19 vaccine was nowhere in sight. Only 15 infections had been reported here, he claimed breezily, and “when you have fifteen people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Close to zero? By mid-March, infections had risen to 1,200 (which soon would prove a drop in the pandemic bucket as “America First” acquired a new meaning). Yet the president called that number inconsequential. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh did him one better: “Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.” He accused the media of exaggerating “in an effort to get Trump.”

True to form, the president was quick to personalize the pandemic. He preened about how scientific experts marveled at his grasp of the complex details of virology and the way supposedly awestruck doctors asked, “How do you know so much?” The president’s self-effacing answer: natural ability, possibly even a genetically-derived aptitude, thanks to “a great, super-genius uncle” who’d worked at MIT.

He declared himself a “wartime president,” despite the lack of any evident strategy to vanquish this particular foe. His response when governors of hard-hit states began pleading for urgent help from the federal government: “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves.”  The governors, he groused, were “complainers,” who should have stockpiled what they were now begging for. Thin-skinned as ever, he told Vice President Mike Pence that those like Governor Gretchen Whitmer, “the woman from Michigan,” who weren’t appreciative enough of his help didn’t even deserve to have their phone calls returned, at least by him. Inevitably, he had a Limbaugh-like conspiracy theory ready: fear-mongering Democrats were exploiting the Covid crisis to bash him. The virus, he said during a campaign rally — yes, he was still holding them in late February — was their “new hoax.” Fox News and the president’s base duly ran with this theme.

Despite the warning of epidemiologists that the virus’s transmission rate would skyrocket unless Americans were scrupulous about “social distancing,” Trump tarried (and to this day can’t keep his distance from anyone at his news conferences). He failed to use the presidential bully pulpit to disseminate this advice quickly.

Nor, despite an evident shortage of medical supplies and equipment, did he act decisively. The 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) gives him the authority to order private companies to produce essential medical supplies and equipment, including ventilators, and then distribute them in ways that would prevent hard-hit states from outbidding each other.  He rejected widespread calls to use the Act. “We’re not,” he quipped, “a country based on nationalizing our business. Call a person over in Venezuela. How did the nationalization of their businesses work out? Not too well.” Of course, no one had called for a government takeover of American companies. Trump did eventually invoke the DPA reluctantly in late March but has used it sparingly and ineffectively.

Continuing to downplay the Covid-19 threat, he declared during a March 31st  Fox News “virtual town hall” on the coronavirus that he would love to have the economy up and running two weeks later on Easter Sunday with “packed churches all over the country.”  That was, of course, a pipedream: by March 30th, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had already reported more Covid-19 cases — 140,904 — here than in any other country and 2,405 deaths.  (And yet, in early April, Trump was still talking about the need to fill sports stadiums “sooner rather than later”; the cure, he said, cannot “be worse than the problem itself.”)

As of April 11th, the CDC’s tally had risen to 492,416 infections and 18,559 fatalities, while John Hopkins University’s tracking site reported 526,296 infections and 20,463 deaths (the highest numbers in the world in both categories).  Physicians and public health specialists have, however, warned that the toll could already be much higher given the shortage of test kits. President Trump seemed finally to be grasping the gravity of the pandemic, thanks in part to the patient tutelage of specialists like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the long-time head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  But put this in your no-good-deed-goes-unpunished file: on social media, radio, and television, Fauci has been pilloried by Trump fans for supposedly undercutting the president or, as one acolyte tweeted, for trying to create a “Police State Like China in Order to Stop the coronavirus.” Fauci even started receiving death threats.

Unable to stay out of the limelight, Rudolph Giuliani, evidently seeking to displace Dr. Fauci as Trump’s top coronavirus expert, took to Twitter, practicing medicine without a license and touting the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a sure-fire cure for the disease. This despite doctors’ warnings that the drug’s efficacy was unproven and that it could have fatal results, as well as the American Medical Association’s counsel that a rush to use it could lead to hoarding and reduce its availability for treating people with ailments for which it’s actually been approved. The president has followed Dr. Giuliani’s advice on hydroxychloroquine, repeatedly hailing it“the biggest game-changer in the history of medicine.”

At a March 29th press conference, Trump finally ditched his goal of restarting the economy by Easter and asked non-essential workers to stay home until the end of April, venturing outdoors only when essential. The Covid-19 death toll could, he now conceded, end up ranging between 100,000 and 240,000, a number, he asserted, that would only prove “we all, together, have done a very good job” given that he’d heard estimates of “up to 2.2 million deaths and maybe even beyond that” if the pandemic were not dealt with effectively here. Later, he allowed that even 240,000 deaths in the U.S. could be a low end figure. Then he again praised himself for taking decisive steps — assumedly by denying for weeks that the virus was a massive problem, predicting that it would perish in the summer heat, and assuring Americans that you could, in any case, cure it with anti-malarial drugs, which he “may take” himself. Compared to two million possible deaths, 240,000 was, he boasted, “a very low number.” Give him credit for the math, at least: 240,000 is indeed a far lower figure than two million.

Economic Pain — Acute, with More to Come

As the stock market plunged — it had lost more than a third of its value by the end of March — and it became undeniable that the fallout from the virus would cause the economy to crater, Congress passed a $2 trillion-plus Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) bill on March 27th, which the president signed within hours. The main provisions of that mammoth, nearly 900-page piece of legislation included:

* $1,200 to people with annual incomes below $75,000;

* $2,400 to those who file taxes jointly and earn less than $150,000;

* $500 per child for households with dependent children;

* 13 weeks of unemployment compensation beyond individual state government limits plus a weekly supplement of $600;

* a 50% payroll tax credit up to $10,000 for businesses that continued to pay non-working employees and whose revenues have shrunk by at least 50% compared to a year ago;

* loans to small businesses to help them cover the costs of employees’ salaries and health insurance;

* a $30.75 billion “Education Stabilization Fund,” providing various forms of economic assistance to hard-pressed students;

* six-month deferments on federal student loans and the suspension of penalties for overdue payments;

* $500 billion in loans and guarantees for corporations.

These were certainly much-needed moves and $2.2 trillion was hardly chump change. Still, the number of the unemployed may far exceed current expectations as the economy more or less shuts down. Some economists estimate that the gross domestic product could eventually shrink by a staggering 30%, with unemployment reaching at least 32%, or 47 million people, a figure that would surpass the 24.9% peak during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The CARES stimulus package, geared significantly to big banks and big corporations, may not suffice to meet the needs of an increasing number of jobless people. At least 6.6 million had filled unemployment claims by end of March alone. By early April, the number edged close to 17 million, and millions more will follow. And who knows how much of the $500 billion allotted to corporations will be devoted to protecting workers’ jobs and benefits when less than 10% percent of it has strings attached?

Furthermore, some of the measures in the CARES Act to help the jobless expire on July 30th and others at the end of the year, although it could take far longer to truly contain the virus.  The government could pony up more money, but the bill itself has no renewal clause, which means that we could be in for another grim legislative battle. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already stated that he’ll oppose rapid follow-on legislation until the effects of the current bill are known, lest Democrats “try to achieve unrelated policy items they would not be able to pass.”

The intricately linked global economic system has broken down in just a couple of months, so time isn’t on the side of the unemployed. In addition, the maximum duration of unemployment benefits varies strikingly by state. In North Carolina, it’s only 12 weeks; in Massachusetts, 30. Likewise, the maximum weekly amount paid ranges from $823 in Massachusetts to $235 in Mississippi. Unemployment insurance certainly helps, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that it averages just over $300 a week nationally, covering only 46.6% percent of a worker’s former earnings. Yet if Covid-19 leaves many millions without jobs well beyond July 30th, or perhaps even the end of the year, they will have to pay for food, rents or mortgages, and utility bills, to mention just a few of the basics.

Households with incomes in the bottom 20% will face a particularly hard struggle, to say nothing of the 38 million people already living in poverty.  Monthly rent in 2018 averaged $1,450 and monthly food costs (not counting spending in restaurants) $363. The average savings of Americans — excluding investments, retirement accounts, and homes — totaled only $4,830 that year. Unsurprisingly, approximately 27% percent of them report that may not be able to cover even a month’s worth of basic expenses; another 25% say that they could hang on for three months. Then what? Already, laid-off low-wage workers, who could barely meet their basic expenses when they had jobs, have become desperate, while those still employed who work in restaurants and hotels hit hard by social distancing have seen their hours cut back and their tips diminished.

No one knows just how bad things could get, how many people will succumb to Covid-19, or what heights the jobless rate will reach, but of this much we can be certain: the virus’s wave hasn’t crested yet and may not for weeks, or even months. And because the United States lacks the strong social safety nets of European countries, people with meager savings will be especially vulnerable. Apart from the trauma of suddenly losing jobs, people filing unemployment claims have already been wearied by chronically busy phones and crashing websites as unemployment offices face a tsunami of a sort never previously imagined.

The Social Fabric Under Stress

The loss of a job doesn’t just create economic insecurity, it can also produce psychological stress and a diminished sense of self-worth. Covid-19 is likely to leave startling numbers of Americans feeling bereft.  Social isolation may provide welcome solitude for a while (at least for those who can half-afford it). Before long, though, it will likely disorient people, particularly the elderly and those who are alone and cut off from friends and family, not to speak of exercise, eating out, or even trips to the local library. Zoom and Skype won’t, in the long run, qualify as the real deal. Well before Covid-19 made its appearance, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) reported that a fifth of Americans already felt isolated and two out of five claimed to lack “meaningful” social networks.” Loneliness, the HRSA concluded, had become an “epidemic” — and that was before an actual epidemic hit. Medical professionals concurred at the time. Imagine what they’d say now.

Among other things, the coronavirus experience will undoubtedly increase the risk of suicide (especially given the rush to purchase weaponry), already at epidemic levels.  In 2017 alone, 47,000 Americans killed themselves. By then, suicide had already become the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more lives than homicides or motor vehicle accidents. The suicide rate has increased for the last 13 years straight.  Among youth, it has jumped 56% in the past decade alone, among blue-collar workers by 40% in less than two decades. Sixty thousand veterans have died by their own hand since 2008, a suicide rate 1.5 times higher than for other adults.

By ratcheting up stress, dejection, and isolation, Covid-19 could also increase domestic violence, the neglect and mistreatment of children, and drug and alcohol abuse, especially among recovering addicts.  Globally, the virus has also turbocharged demagogues, for whom the pandemic provides an opportunity to commit hate crimes and engage in scapegoating, racial tropes, and weird conspiracy theories, while using social media to whip up fear, suspicion, and animosity, and deepen social divisions. Admittedly, such problems can’t all be chalked up to the pandemic. Still, they could all get worse as this insidious virus continues to wreak havoc.

Now for the Good Part

Crises highlight and exacerbate a society’s problems, but they also put some of its best attributes on display. Covid-19 hasn’t been an exception. Doctors, nurses, hospital staff, and first responders knowingly endanger their lives daily to care for those sickened by the virus. By April, 25,000 healthcare workers from other parts of the country had converged on New York State, the pandemic’s epicenter, to help. Volunteers have mobilized nationwide to sew masks for hospital workers, stepping in where the government has failed. People have found ways to help elderly neighbors. Strangers have been engaging in acts of kindness and generosity toward one another — an acknowledgement that we confront a shared problem that will consume much more than our livelihoods if we don’t stand together (social distancing aside). Civic groups, non-profit organizations, and companies are pitching in to help in a variety of ways. Governors — Andrew Cuomo of New York, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Larry Hogan of Maryland, Gavin Newsom of California –have been working tirelessly to protect their states, showing that not all parts of the political system are as dysfunctional as Washington, D.C., today.

At some point, we’ll emerge into a different world. What it will be like no one can yet know. Covid-19 has certainly created much despair but reasons for gratitude and admiration as well — something to keep in mind as this terrible stress test continues without letup.

How China Broke the Chain of Infection

Vijay Prashad, Du Xiaojun & Weiyan Zhu

On March 31, 2020, a group of scientists from around the world—from Oxford University to Beijing Normal University—published an important paper in Science. This paper—“An Investigation of Transmission Control Measures During the First 50 Days of the COVID-19 Epidemic in China”—proposes that if the Chinese government had not initiated the lockdown of Wuhan and the national emergency response, then there would have been 744,000 additional confirmed COVID-19 cases outside Wuhan. “Control measures taken in China,” the authors argue, “potentially hold lesso[n]s for other countries around the world.”

In the World Health Organization’s February report after a visit to China, the team members wrote, “In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history.”

In this report, we detail the measures taken by the different levels of the Chinese government and by social organizations to stem the spread of the virus and the disease at a time when scientists had just begun to accumulate knowledge about them and when they worked in the absence of a vaccine and a specific drug treatment for COVID-19.

The Emergence of a Plan

In the early days of January 2020, the National Health Commission (NHC) and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began to establish protocols to deal with the diagnosis, treatment, and laboratory testing of what was then considered a “viral pneumonia of unknown cause.” A treatment manual was produced by the NHC and health departments in Hubei Province and sent to all medical institutions in Wuhan City on January 4; city-wide training was conducted that same day. By January 7, China CDC isolated the first novel coronavirus strain, and three days later, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and others developed testing kits.

By the second week of January, more was known about the nature of the virus, and so a plan began to take shape to contain it. On January 13, the NHC instructed Wuhan City authorities to begin temperature checks at ports and stations and to reduce public gathering. The next day, the NHC held a national teleconference that alerted all of China to the virulent novel coronavirus strain and to prepare for a public health emergency. On January 17, the NHC sent seven inspection teams to China’s provinces to train public health officials about the virus, and on January 19 the NHC distributed nucleic acid reagents for test kits to China’s many health departments. Zhong Nanshan—former president of the Chinese Medical Association—led a high-level team to Wuhan City to carry out inspections on January 18 and 19.

Over the next few days, the NHC began to understand how the virus was transmitted and how this transmission could be halted. Between January 15 and March 3, the NHC published seven editions of its guidelines. A look at them shows a precise development of its knowledge about the virus and its plans for mitigation; these included new methods for treatment, including the use of ribavirin and a combination of Chinese and allopathic medicine. The National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine would eventually report that 90 percent of patients received a traditional medicine, which was found to be effective in 90 percent of them.

By January 22, it had become clear that transport in and out of Wuhan had to be restricted. That day, the State Council Information Office urged people not to go to Wuhan, and the next day the city was essentially shut down. The grim reality of the virus had by now become clear to everyone.

The Government Acts

On January 25, the Communist Party of China (CPC) formed a Central Committee Leading Group for COVID-19 Prevention and Control with two leaders—Li Keqiang and Wang Huning—in charge. China’s President Xi Jinping tasked the group to use the best scientific thinking as they formulated their policies to contain the virus, and to use every resource to put people’s health before economic considerations. By January 27, Vice Premier of the State Council Sun Chunlan led a Central Guiding Team to Wuhan City to shape the new aggressive response to virus control. Over time, the government and the Communist Party developed an agenda to tackle the virus, which can be summarized in four points:

1. To prevent the diffusion of the virus by maintaining not only a lockdown on the province, but by minimizing traffic within the province. This was complicated by the Chinese New Year break, which had already begun; families would visit one another and visit markets (this is the largest short-term human migration, when almost all of China’s 1.4 billion people gather in each other’s homes). All this had to be prevented. Local authorities had already begun to use the most advanced epidemiological thinking to track and study the source of the infections and trace the route of transmission. This was essential to shut down the spread of the virus.

2. To deploy resources for medical workers, including protective equipment for the workers, hospital beds for patients, and equipment as well as medicines to treat the patients. This included the building of temporary treatment centers—including later two full hospitals(Huoshenshan Hospital and Leishenshan Hospital). Increased screening required more test kits, which had to be developed and manufactured.

3. To ensure that during the lockdown of the province, food and fuel were made available to the residents.

4. To ensure the release of information to the public that is based on scientific fact and not rumor. To this end, the team investigated any and all irresponsible actions taken by the local authorities from the reports of the first cases to the end of January.

These four points defined the approach taken by the Chinese government and the local authorities through February and March. A joint prevention and control mechanism was established under the leadership of the NHC, with wide-ranging authority to coordinate the fight to break the chain of infection. Wuhan City and Hubei Province remained under virtual lockdown for 76 days until early April.

On February 23, President Xi Jinping spoke to 170,000 county and Communist Party cadres and military officials from every part of China; “this is a crisis and also a major test,” said Xi. All of China’s emphasis would be on fighting the epidemic and putting people first, and at the same time China would ensure that its long-term economic agenda would not be damaged.

Neighborhood Committees

A key—and underreported—part of the response to the virus was in the public action that defines Chinese society. In the 1950s, urban civil organizations—or juweihui—developed as way for residents in neighborhoods to organize their mutual safety and mutual aid. In Wuhan, as the lockdown developed, it was members of the neighborhood committees who went door-to-door to check temperatures, to deliver food (particularly to the elderly) and to deliver medical supplies. In other parts of China, the neighborhood committees set up temperature checkpoints at the entrance of the neighborhoods to monitor people who went in and out; this was basic public health in a decentralized fashion. As of March 9, 53 people working in these committees lost their lives, 49 of them were members of the Communist Party.

The Communist Party’s 90 million members and the 4.6 million grass-roots party organizations helped shape the public action across the country at the frontlines of China’s 650,000 urban and rural communities. Medical workers who were party members traveled to Wuhan to be part of the frontline medical response. Other party members worked in their neighborhood committees or developed new platforms to respond to the virus.

Decentralization defined the creative responses. In Tianxinqiao Village, Tiaoma Town, Yuhua District, Changsha, Hunan Province, Yang Zhiqiang—a village announcer—used the “loud voice” of 26 loudspeakers to urge villagers not to pay New Year visits to each other and not to eat dinner together. In Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the police used drones to play the sound of trumpets as a reminder not to violate the lockdown order.

In Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 440,000 citizens formed teams to do a range of public actions to stem the transmission of the virus: they publicized the health regulations, they checked temperatures, they delivered food and medicines, and they found ways to entertain the otherwise traumatized public. The Communist Party cadre led the way here, drawing together businesses, social groups, and volunteers into a local self-management structure. In Beijing, residents developed an app that sends registered users warnings about the virus and creates a database that can be used to help track the movement of the virus in the city.

Medical Intervention

Li Lanjuan was one of the early medical doctors to enter Wuhan; she recalled that when she got there, medical tests “were difficult to get” and the situation with supplies was “pretty bad.” Within a few days, she said, more than 40,000 medical workers arrived in the city, and patients with mild symptoms were treated in temporary treatment centers, while those who had been seriously impacted were taken to the hospitals. Protective equipment, tests, ventilators, and other supplies rushed in. “The mortality rate was greatly reduced,” said Dr. Li Lanjuan. “In just two months, the epidemic situation in Wuhan was basically under control.”

From across China came 1,800 epidemiological teams—with five people in each team—to do surveys of the population. Wang Bo, a leader of one of the teams from Jilin Province, said that his team conducted “demanding and dangerous” door-to-door epidemiological surveys. Yao Laishun, a member of one of the Jilin teams, said that within weeks their team had carried out epidemiological surveys of 374 people and traced and monitored 1,383 close contacts; this was essential work in locating who was infected and treated as well as who needed to be isolated if they had not yet presented symptoms or if they tested negative. Up to February 9, the health authorities inspected 4.2 million households (10.59 million people) in Wuhan; that means that they inspected 99 percent of the population, a gargantuan exercise.

The speed of the production of medical equipment, particularly protective equipment for the medical workers, was breathtaking. On January 28, China made fewer than 10,000 sets of personal protective equipment (PPE) a day, and by February 24, its production capacity exceeded 200,000 per day. On February 1, the government produced 773,000 test kits a day; by February 25, it was producing 1.7 million kits per day; by March 31, 4.26 million test kits were produced per day. Direction from the authorities moved industrial plants to churn out protective gear, ambulances, ventilators, electrocardiograph monitors, respiratory humidification therapy machines, blood gas analyzers, air disinfectant machines, and hemodialysis machines. The government focused attention on making sure that there was no shortage of any medical equipment.

Chen Wei, one of China’s leading virologists who had worked on the 2003 SARS epidemic and had gone to Sierra Leone in 2015 to develop the world’s first Ebola vaccine, rushed to Wuhan with her team. They set up a portable testing laboratory by January 30; by March 16, her team produced the first novel coronavirus vaccine that went into clinical trials, with Chen being one of the first to be vaccinated as part of the trial.

Relief

To shut down a province with 60 million inhabitants for more than two months and to substantially shut down a country of 1.4 billion inhabitants is not easy. The social and economic impact was always going to be very great. But, the Chinese government—in its early directives—said that the economic hit to the country was not going to define the response; the well-being of the people had to be dominant in the formulation of any policy.

On January 22, before the Leading Group was formed, the government issued a circular that said medical treatment for COVID-19 patients was guaranteed and it would be free of cost. A medical insurance reimbursement policy was then formulated, which said that expenses from medicines and medical services needed for treating the COVID-19 would be completely covered by the insurance fund; no patient would have to pay any money.

During the lockdown, the government created a mechanism to ensure the steady supply of food and fuel at normal prices. State-owned enterprises such as China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation, China Grain Reserves Group, and China National Salt Industry Group increased their supply of rice, flour, oil, meat and salt. All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives helped enterprises to get direct connection with farmers’ cooperatives; other organizations like China Agriculture Industry Chamber of Commerce pledged to maintain supply and price stability. The Ministry of Public Security met on February 3 to crack down on price gouging and hoarding; up to April 8, the prosecutorial organizations in China investigated 3,158 cases of epidemic-related criminal offenses. The state offered financial support for small and medium-sized enterprises; in return, businesses revamped their practices to ensure a safe working environment (Guangzhou Lingnan Cable Company, for instance, staggered lunch breaks, tested the temperature of workers, disinfected the working area periodically, ensured that ventilators worked, and provided staff with protective equipment such as masks, goggles, hand lotion, and alcohol-based sanitizers).

Lockdown

A study in The Lancet by four epidemiologists from Hong Kong show that the lockdown of Wuhan in late January prevented the spread of infection outside Hubei Province; the major cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Wenzhou, they write, saw a collapse in numbers of infections within two weeks of the partial lockdown. However, the scholars write, as a consequence of the virulence of COVID-19 and the absence of herd immunity, the virus might have a second wave. This is something that worries the Chinese government, which continues to be vigilant about this novel coronavirus.

Nonetheless, the lights of celebration flashed across Wuhan as the lockdown was lifted. Medical personnel and volunteers breathed a sigh of relief. China had been able to use its considerable resources—its socialist culture and institutions—to swiftly break the chain.

Garment workers protest in Bangladesh as COVID-19 spreads

Wimal Perera

Thousands of clothing workers demonstrated on Monday in Dhaka, the national capital, and in industrial zones across Bangladesh to demand outstanding wages and protest against terminations and layoffs. An estimated 20,000 garment workers also demonstrated the day before, following protests the previous week.

The Awami League-led government of Prime Minister Sheik Hasina had previously imposed a national lockdown—from March 26 to April 4. Confronted by widespread action by workers demanding hand sanitisers, face masks, gloves and proper social-distancing practices, it then extended the lockdown until April 25.

Employers have responded to the lockdown, and a drastic fall in international orders, by shuttering the plants, sacking thousands of temporary workers and refusing to pay outstanding wages.

When the lockdown began, thousands of mainly female garment workers, whose monthly wage is only about 8,000 takas ($US95), were forced to return to their remote villages without any pay. According to media reports, less than 300 garment factories have paid salaries, with an estimated 200 factories still operating.

Facing destitution and expecting the plants to be reopened on April 4, workers returned to the industrial zones, where they were confronted by an unprecedented situation. Scores of factories had closure notices on their gates. Thousands of workers had been laid off. Factory managers in some plants attempted to make workers sign resignation letters.

Public transport services were not operating, so workers’ journeys were perilous. They travelled by ferries, vans, auto-rickshaws, trucks and motorcycles. Others walked long distances—some for up to 30 hours—to reach Dhaka and other industrial zones.

Bangladesh is the world’s second-biggest garment maker after China. Its more than 4,500 officially registered plants account for some 84 percent of the country’s $40 billion annual export earnings. Hasina’s government and the garment industry bosses, like their counterparts in Europe and the US, are urging a reopening of the plants.

Mehedi Hassan, a garment worker who had returned from Netrokona village, 150 km from Dhaka, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We are just pawns in this risky game [of the factory owners].” It had cost him over 1,000 takas, a large amount for a low-paid worker, to return to his plant.

Another worker, from TSS-Fashion at Mowchak in Gazipur, told the New Age: “I risked my life on my way to Gazipur to join my factory tomorrow. It is my livelihood. I don’t understand the policy of the government since they’ve kept everything else closed, except garment factories.”

Garment worker Sajedul Islam, 21, told the AFP: “We are afraid of the coronavirus. We heard a lot of people are dying of this disease but we don’t have any choice. We’re starving. If we stay at home, we may save ourselves from the virus but who will save us from starvation?”

Speaking with New Age, Iqbal Arsalan, a Bangabadu Medical University professor, warned: “We are increasing the risk factors by allowing them to come to Dhaka and begin work in factories where physical distancing cannot be maintained.”

Last week, hundreds of garment workers protested in Mymensingh district over the closure of the Crown Wears plant and non-payment of wages. They were violently attacked by police and more than 20 were injured. Two protesting workers were killed when a truck ran over them.

APS Holdings workers in Gazipur also protested against the management seizure of their identity cards and attempts to force them to sign blank sheets of paper that could be later used to terminate them.

About 150 Risingtex Fashion workers in Savar were confronted with the same demands. According to media reports, over 3,000 workers were laid off from 20 factories in the Gazipur, Ashulia, Savar and Chattogram areas.

Confronted with this rising working-class anger, the government ordered the closure of all garment factories, apart from those producing personal protective equipment. Following discussion with garment industry owners, it announced that shut downs would be extended until April 25.

This meant those workers who had travelled from their villages confronted an impossible situation, unable to return home, while facing police restrictions to prevent them from entering or leaving Dhaka.

Hundreds of thousands of poor people across the country have lost their earnings and are starving because no government food aid is reaching them. This has led to suicides and protests. Among the suicides was Wahidul Islam, 30, a van-puller and father of four children from Dalbhanga village in Maheshpur sub-district.

Last week Narayanganj residents marched toward a district administrative office on Wednesday, demanding aid and defying bans on public gatherings and official social-distancing measures.

The government’s claims of providing generous aid were exposed by a survey conducted by BRAC, an NGO. It found that only 4 percent of the population had received any emergency relief support as of April 5 and that at least 14 percent of low-income people had no food at home. It also revealed that the average household income of 14,599 taka before the lockdown had fallen drastically by 75 percent to 3,742 taka this month.

Currently about 30 districts out of 64 in Bangladesh, including areas of Dhaka, are in lockdown. For the majority of people “social distancing” is virtually impossible, particularly in Dhaka’s slums, where 4.8 million people—nearly one-third of the city’s population—live.

On April 13, Health Minister Zahid Maleque for the first time admitted community transmission is taking place widely. About 1,012 persons had tested positive for COVID-19 with 46 deaths by April 14. On April 14, 209 people tested positive, the highest single-day count so far.

These low figures are mainly due to the lack of mass testing, as recommended by the World Health Organisation. As of April 10, only 7,359 people—in a population of 160 million—had been tested. Jahidur Rahman, a virologist and assistant professor at Shahid Suhrawardy Medical College, has called for at least 10,000 tests daily.

An April 12 comment in the Daily Star said the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak “had been plagued by inappropriate decisions, delayed actions and muddled thinking—right from the beginning.”

Even as health authorities warned that COVID-19 could become practically uncontrollable if it spread, Prime Minister Hasina initially downplayed the pandemic, saying it was “not that deadly.”

Her government announced a massive bailout package of $US8.56 billion for the garment industry, almost three times the $3.02 billion losses from cancelled export orders. The amount that the government recommended for workers’ wages is about 7 percent of that handed over to the employers.

Bolivia’s coup regime extends COVID-19 quarantine amid repression

Cesar Uco & Don Knowland

Bolivia’s self-proclaimed “interim president,” Jeanine Añez, announced Tuesday that the quarantine imposed in response to the coronavirus will be extended until April 30.

As of April 14, the number of people reported to have been infected with COVID-19 in Bolivia was 354, with 28 deaths. These low official numbers for infected and deceased coronavirus victims obscure the alarming threat to South America’s poorest country. An indication of the potential rapid spread of the disease came on Tuesday with a report from Oruro, the traditional mining center of Bolivia, that the number of cases had doubled in 24 hours from 14 to 27, while another 111 suspicious cases were reported and 37 more were still waiting for test results.

Añez, who was installed by a US-backed military coup and fascist violence that overthrew the government of President Evo Morales and his Movement toward Socialism (MAS) government last November, has exploited the pandemic to militarize the country and postpone elections that had been set for May.

In her televised address Tuesday, Añez offered another pittance to Peru’s impoverished workers and peasants, a “universal bonus” of 500 bolivianos (less than $73). This meager benefit will be offered only to those who did not receive similar paltry handouts offered earlier, including a “family bonus,” also worth 500 bolivianos for families with young children, and a “family basket” of just 400 bolivianos for older adults surviving on state pensions, low income mothers and people with disabilities.

How much of this thoroughly inadequate aid will actually get into the hands of Bolivians is in serious question.

Añez also said that within one week she would announce a decision on whether to ease the quarantine in different regions of the country. She is responding to the demands and profit interests of Bolivian and international capital, which supported the coup that brought her to power.

Newspaper coverage indicates that Bolivia is presently at risk of widespread hunger, due to failing food supply chains, especially in working class cities such as El Alto.

According to the newspaper El Alteño, “Two weeks after the [March 22] quarantine was put into place, neighbors from different areas and El Alto began to worry about the lack of resources from the lockdown imposed upon them and the lack of food ... neighbors are aware that they cannot take to the streets to carry out their activities normally, they claim that ‘money is already finished.’”

One woman interviewed by El Alteño said: “Since the quarantine has been issued, we no longer go out to sell with my husband, everything we have earned before quarantine is gone; on the street there’s everything, gas, vegetables, fruit, but there’s no money.”

For its part, the main union confederation, the Bolivian Workers’ Central (COB), which has collaborated with the coup regime, has proposed that it distribute half of the minimum wage of 2,122 Bolivianos ($320 per month) to the population, a half-hearted measure which has also been rejected.

As for the country’s health infrastructure, it is woefully inadequate to address the onslaught of the pandemic.

Doctors at the largest public hospital in La Paz issued a statement Monday warning that they lack even the basic supplies needed to deal with COVID-19 patients. “We do not have the minimum supplies such as caps, chinstraps, boots, glasses, gowns, and even less high-end supplies such as intensive care medicines. They send us to war without weapons, condemning us to fight under unfavorable conditions,” they said.

Bolivia is sorely lacking in such critical equipment as ventilators, and cannot compete with wealthier nations on the world market to purchase them.

The coronavirus threat is particularly worrisome in the country’s overcrowded jails. Inmates at the San Pedro prison in Oruro rioted last Saturday. “We have come to serve a sentence, not to lose our lives,” said one of the inmates interviewed by La Patria newspaper.

Under the national quarantine first imposed on March 22, many public and private activities have been suspended or severely curtailed, and only one person per family is allowed to make minimum and indispensable trips in the vicinity of the family residence during the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 12:00 for the purpose of acquiring food and other necessary supplies.

As of March17, all borders were ordered closed and international flights were suspended. Interdepartmental and interprovincial land transport was also suspended, allowing only for the transport of merchandise.

More than 480 Bolivians who managed to reenter Bolivian territory, mostly workers returning from Chile where they had lost their jobs as a result of the COVID-19 shutdown there, originally were concentrated in camp “Tata Santiago,” in the town of Pisiga, and subjected to various health protocols. Lack of food and overcrowding was reported, including insufficient bathrooms.

Tents of 3 x 3 meters were used to house 15 people per unit, each granted a single blanket in the midst of bitter cold. Without electricity, they were effectively held incommunicado since they could not charge their cell phones.

Those who complained of mistreatment by the Bolivian military were reportedly threatened with being thrown back across the border into Chile and having their national identity cards taken.

At least another 800 Bolivians remained trapped on Chile’s northern border with Bolivia, blocked by Bolivian troops from returning to their country.

Desperate after being left there for two weeks, several hundred of them attempted to force their way back into Bolivia last week, only to be repulsed with beatings and tear gas.

The Bolivian coup regime has attempted to blame the incident on the former chief minister in the Morales government, Juan Ramón Quintana, who is trapped in the Mexican Embassy in La Paz, denied safe passage out of the country. The government held a press conference Monday claiming—without presenting a shred of evidence—that Quintana had orchestrated the rebellion of the desperate migrant workers on the Chilean border from behind the embassy’s walls.

Within Bolivia, the regime has enforced the quarantine with brutal police-military repression. On March 25, the Ministry of Justice and Institutional Transparency issued a statement warning that people who failed to comply fully with the quarantine would be punished with “one to 10 years in prison for committing crimes against public health.”

La Razon quoted the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Gen. Carlos Orellana, as reporting that, as of April 11, “Military troops arrested 9,917 people who violated the restrictions of the total quarantine in the country.”

Añez concluded a recent speech by threatening brutal repression against anyone who violates the quarantine, which would bring down the “active participation of the Armed Forces and the National Police.”

Añez’s March 25 decree that extended the nationwide lockdown until April 15 included the threat that “individuals who incite non-compliance with this decree or misinform or cause uncertainty to the population will be subject to criminal charges for crimes against public health,” punishable by between one and 10 years imprisonment.

The language allows for the intensification of the crackdown waged by the regime since it seized power last November, launching a “pacification program” that bloodily suppressed workers’ protests and arresting journalists on charges of “sedition” for reports criticizing the government, calling them “communication terrorists.”

Añez, who initially claimed that she would serve only as a transitional head of state until elections were held, has since announced that she will run for the presidency. She has urged voters not to allow “the savages” to return to power, a transparent reference to the indigenous heritage of Morales and many of his supporters. Polls, however, have shown the MAS presidential candidate, Luis Arce, as the favorite in the now-postponed elections.

While the MAS, a bourgeois nationalist party, has sought to accommodate itself to the coup regime, recognizing its legitimacy and agreeing to bar Morales from running for re-election, the military-backed government, backed by Washington, has responded only with increased repression.

Coronavirus exposes Chilean two-tiered health system as deathtrap

Mauricio Saavedra

The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing how successive governments have ravaged Chile’s national health care systems. Chile began spreading the gospel of the free-market in health care under the fascist-military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, as early as the 1970s. It is this policy of sustained socio-economic shock therapy that lay the groundwork for incalculable loss of life today.

As of this writing more than 125,000 have died of coronavirus, predominantly in the imperialist centres, while the death toll is quickly ascending internationally, including in Latin America.

Chile’s Health Ministry’s most recent figures—7,917 infected and 92 deaths since March 21— are, as elsewhere, a severe underestimation of the pandemic’s real toll. While cases of bodies in the streets—as in Ecuador—have yet to be reported, given the criminal response of the Chilean state to this epidemic, this may prove the next stage. There are many factors keeping the tally of infections artificially low.

Last year's police crackdown in Chile amid mass protests against the Piñera government. (AP Photo/Luis Hidalgo)

The health ministry updates give a percentage and not numbers for communes with infections of less than four. This may appear negligible, but an epidemiological study on the Valaparaiso region, reported by Interferencia on April 3, revealed that the ministry provided imprecise information on 12 communes which account for over 499,605 people, or 25.5 percent of the region’s population.

The same epidemiological study pointed to an anomaly in the progression updates beginning March 26, with the daily tally remaining constant for almost two weeks. “First we noticed it as an anomaly in the trend of curves, something that could give us hope,” University of Valparaiso academics Aníbal Vivaceta, Sebastián Espinoza and Nicolás Schiappacasse wrote.

“Normally in an epidemic we have an exponential progression … Nothing in the measures [the government adopted] would allow us to predict such a favorable situation, in which we would only receive an equal number of new cases every day.”

The reason is not a mystery. Nurses reported from almost the beginning of the outbreak that they were directed to exclusively test those requiring hospitalisation and ventilation. A reason for this directive was that public hospital staff across the country did not have sufficient COVID-19 tests. But that is not the end of it. The Chilean public health system is short of every form of personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, ICU beds and most importantly, staff. The system is chronically underfunded, with a deficit of $1.15 billion in 2018. Spending on public health as a share of GDP has not surpassed four percent in decades.

With only 2.5 doctors, 2.7 nurses and 2.0 beds per 1,000 inhabitant, thousands of people on waiting lists of the National Health Fund (FONASA) were dying long before COVID-19 came around. A 2018 report by the health ministry found that “15,600 patients on the waiting list died,” in 2016, while at least 6,700 other cases could be linked to “death and pending care.”

The public health system has only 1,058 ICU beds and just 640 with ventilators, but this includes machines that are already in use. The “concierge” private health system, however, whose facilities look more like hotels than hospitals and attend to a mere 17 percent of the population under normal circumstances, has 1,597 ICU beds. Another 1,577 ventilators have been ordered but are expected to arrive only by the end of May.

Meanwhile, nurses are sewing masks, making makeshift eye shields and donning plastic bags for PPE. As a result, by April 5, 140 primary care workers had tested positive for COVID-19, another 176 are waiting for the results of their respective tests, and more than 1,400 are in quarantine.

Staff and equipment shortages result not from a lack of foresight, but are rather the product of conscious state policy. In a circular from the Ministry of Finance to public offices, Minister Ignacio Briones Rojas outlined austerity measures “for the duration of the health emergency caused by the COVID-19 virus,” in which the hiring of new staff, the filling of vacancies and wage increases are suspended or curtailed.

In late March, the presidents of 15 Chilean scientific societies and the Academy of Sciences addressed an open letter to the president signed by more than 1,500 researchers including internationally renowned astronomer José Maza and biochemist Ramón Latorre, among others. Their main demands were 1) that a preventive national quarantine and social isolation measures in the urban centres be implemented immediately, and 2) for the transparency of data. The proposed measures they explained “seek to anticipate an eventual collapse of the health system in Chile … We cannot put at risk the system, nor health professionals, nor other patients suffering from other pathologies that also require hospitalization, critical beds and mechanical ventilators.”

“Likewise, as soon as possible, 100% transparency is needed … We, the signatories, are committed to Chile and request that the best decisions to protect the health of the population be evaluated, substantiated and made, understanding that these decisions are dynamic based on the best available information, scientific evidence and in a transparent manner for the citizens. Life comes first!” they concluded.

To this day, quarantining measures have been selectively implemented in certain municipalities of only the most severely hit regions, which are then routinely flouted by the upper end of society. Videos have surfaced on social media showing the rich on helicopters heading off to their summer retreats. Meanwhile, in the overcrowded poblaciones and shantytowns, which in some instances lack running water and sewerage, the virus is spreading quickly. No quarantine measures have been called for Puente Alto, a working class suburb in the Metropolitan Region, even though it has recently reported an alarming growth in cases.

In fact, everything that the Chilean state has done related to this health emergency has magnified the crisis to such a point that many unnecessary and avoidable deaths have become foreseeable.

For example, COVID-19-positive Katia Guzmán, the regional health secretary of La Araucanía region, knowingly, if not maliciously, incapacitated not only the regional authorities, including the mayor, the head of the National Defense in the area, the police chief and the regional education, justice, transport and sports authorities, but almost the entire local media. An infected official who arrived from Brazil earlier in March did not go into preventive quarantine as per protocol, but rather, with the regional health authority’s blessing, continued to work in public activities and meetings including a press gathering in which Guzman herself greeted everyone with a kiss. She is now under investigation.

It would be wrong to see this extraordinarily egregious act of negligence as the conduct of one individual. Also in late March, more than 700 doctors from public and private health institutions in La Araucanía attached their names to a letter asking for the immediate closure of the region and a period of strict quarantine.

“We feel that there is an under-diagnosis with respect to citizens who have coronavirus,” Dr. Javiera Brierly said in introducing the letter’s demands. By that point, the entire region had received only 100 diagnostic kits. “Our letter is also a call to have sufficient supplies, confirmatory tests, protective equipment for the population and for health professionals. We believe that there is a lack of resources and clear guidelines from the institutions.”

But the Health Ministry implements quarantining measures only after an outbreak occurs and then uses the Carabinero police and the military as a blunt instrument when people are forced by circumstance to go to work or find food or to fetch water. Of the 347 municipalities in Chile, 238 suffer shortages of water, and of these 194 have a “multidimensional poverty index”, that is, they are poor and lack water. 383,204 homes in Chile do not have drinking water. Such is the contempt for the people by the Chilean state, which is a government of, for and by the rich, and the rest of the population be damned.

“There is a lot of informal and precarious employment; people subsist on a daily basis so it has become impossible to maintain the total quarantine, since they must earn their daily sustenance,” explained a local official from La Araucanía region. “The state gives recommendations on how to protect themselves from infection, but does not support the social problems.”

La Araucanía, 680 kms south of Santiago, while the site of some multi-million-dollar estates, is also home to the impoverished indigenous Mapuche communities. The region has the most people infected with COVID-19 after Santiago, but its population of some 950,000 is one sixth that of the country’s capital. Of the ten poorest communes in the country, La Araucanía has seven, and Temuco, the regional capital, is also the poorest city in the country.

Temuco, with Chile’s highest coronavirus death rate, “is plagued by high pollution levels, contributing to respiratory sickness in locals,” reported the Guardian on April 10.

Dr. Carolina Chahin, an infectious disease specialist at Hospital Hernan Henriquez Aravena, “predicted the upcoming winter months would hit Chile’s colder, southern regions hard,” the report continued. The hospital, “the only one in the region with equipment to care for critical COVID-19 cases (had) last week, all of its ventilators (at) capacity. The health ministry immediately shipped six new machines to the hospital but Chahin said they did not have the staff to operate them.”

Mapuche families of victims have recounted how they saw the sick being turned away from emergency rooms because staff could not cope with the inundation of patients. Pablo Huaquilao, whose parents both contracted COVID-19, told local media “They started to prioritize who they were treating, many old people went back to their homes and that wouldn’t be accounted for in the official figures.”

“Technically, Chile has universal health care, with everyone covered under the public National Health Fund,” the British medical journal the Lancet reported in November of last year in a piece titled “Violent protests in Chile linked to health-care inequities”. “However,” it continued, “the country has a two-tier system, in which the public system covers about 78% of the population and private insurers cover about 17%.”

Modi extends India’s coronavirus lockdown till May 3

Wasantha Rupasinghe & Keith Jones

In an “address to the nation” yesterday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that his government’s hasty, ill-conceived 21-day countrywide anti-coronavirus lockdown will be extended till May 3.

Speaking on the day the lockdown was originally supposed to end, Modi offered only demagogy, in remarks that were laced with right-wing nationalist and Hindu communalist appeals.

He offered no serious plan to deal either with the health emergency—which given India’s mass poverty and ramshackle public health system threatens to result in a catastrophic loss of life—or the socio-economic calamity triggered by the sudden, unplanned lockdown.

As the result of the lockdown, hundreds of millions of workers and toilers, who had little to no savings, have been left jobless and without any income. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), in the first week of April, just three in every 10 Indians of working age were employed.

Yet, even as India’s prime minister extended the lockdown for a further 19 days, he provided not a single rupee in additional aid for working people!

The 1.7 lakh crore rupee (US $22.5 billion) relief package that the far-right, Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government announced on the lockdown’s second day, March 26, amounts in per capita terms to less than 1,250 rupees (US$ 16.45). In other words, India’s already impoverished masses have been placed on famine rations.

Moreover, much of this “aid” will only be available weeks and even months hence, and many of the most vulnerable, including most migrant workers, will not be able to access it. This is because they are not enrolled in the existing poverty alleviation programs through which the state relief is being distributed.

While Modi, with consummate cynicism, claimed in yesterday’s speech to be concerned and moved by the plight of India’s workers and toilers, all he would do for them was make a hollow appeal for others to provide them with charity. Adopting the tones of a Hindu priest, this servant of India’s rapacious capitalist elite beseeched, “Take as much care of poor families as you can. Especially try to fulfill their food requirements.”

What Modi had to say about addressing the health emergency was equally hollow.

He one again lectured the populace on the need to practice social distancing, but failed to say how this could be done in the teeming slums of India’s major cities, where people often live five and more to a room. Nor did he explain how the urban and rural poor can regularly wash their hands, when hundreds of millions don’t have running water in their homes, and more than one in 10 Indians, according to a 2018 Water Aid India study, “lack access to clean water near their home” (emphasis added).

Modi began his address by baldly asserting India’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is “moving ahead with great strength and steadfastness.”

He went on to boast that due to his government’s “holistic approach and quick decisions” India “is in a well-managed position” in combating the pandemic, “better” than “many developed nations.”

This is all lies. Apart from imposing travel restrictions, the Modi government did essentially nothing to halt the spread of COVID-19 for the first two months after the outbreak in China had been identified as a potential major threat. Yet Indian and international epidemiologists and other scientists have long recognised that India would be especially at risk in any global pandemic.

In its 2020-2021 budget, presented at the beginning of February, the Modi government allotted a derisory 69 crore rupees (US $9) billion to providing health care for India’s 1.37 billion people, or less than $7 per person.

Not until March 24—that is the very day Modi was compelled to abruptly shift from claiming India was a model to the region, even the world, in containing the coronavirus to imposing an unprecedented India-wide lockdown—did the government announce emergency funding to fight the pandemic.

Even then, the promised amounts are a pittance given the shortages of trained medical personnel, personal protective equipment (PPE), and ventilators, and the ruinous state of India’s public health infrastructure, which runs the gamut from dilapidated (in the major urban centers) to non-existent (across rural India.) The promised 15 thousand crore rupees ($1.97 billion) is on a per capita basis less than 110 rupees ($1.45)—this when a single COVID-19 test reportedly costs more than 5,000 rupees (about $67).

As for Modi’s claims about India being in a “well-managed” position, these are belied by:

• the hunger, distress and suffering inflicted on working people across India by the lockdown;
  
• the makeshift internal refugee camps to which millions of migrant workers who sought to return to their villagers because the government’s ill-prepared shutdown left them jobless, and in many case homeless, have been confined;
  
• the many medical facilities that have had to be temporarily shut because so many staff became infected with the virus because they lacked proper PPE, including even face masks;
  
• and, last but not least, by the surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

On the day the lockdown was announced, India had 564 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 10 deaths attributable to the virus. By yesterday, the number of confirmed cases had increased more than 20-fold to 11,393, and the death toll had reached 393.

Prioritising money over human life, Indian authorities have administered less than 250,000 COVID-19 tests, one of the lowest per capita test rates in the world. Even now, people who present with COVID-19-type symptoms are only being tested if they can be directly tied to a cluster of previous confirmed cases or, since revised testing criteria were announced late last week, live in a small number of previously identified “hotspots.”

Based on the skewed results produced by its test-rationing, New Delhi, despite worried warnings from health experts that the true number of infections is likely many times higher, continues to insist that there is no “community transmission” in India.

In reality, everything indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to explode across the world’s second most populous country in the coming weeks.

Nevertheless, even as it extends the lockdown, the BJP government is conspiring with big business to reopen at least 15 economic sectors, including the auto, steel, rubber, telecom equipment, agro-chemical, and construction industries.

Modi announced yesterday that the lockdown would be intensified for the better part of the next week, especially in “hotspots,” but that after April 20 there will be “graded relaxations.”

Modi invoked the desperate plight of India’s workers and toilers in trying to justify what—under conditions of the absence of systematic mass testing, contact-tracking, and an entirely revamped health care system—can only be a premature and precipitous return to work that will amplify the pandemic and the consequent loss of life many times over.

“Provision of this limited exemption” in the areas that are to be identified by the 20th will be done, asserted Modi, “keeping in mind the livelihood of our poor brothers and sisters. Those who earn daily, make ends meet with daily income, they are my family. One of my top-most priorities is to reduce the difficulties in their lives.”

Migrant workers lost little time in giving their answer to the claim of Modi, who was propelled to power by big business to dramatically intensify the exploitation of the working class, to be their “brother.”

In Mumbai more than a thousand jobless migrant workers were attacked yesterday afternoon by lathi-wielding police after they had congregated at the Bandra Railway Station to demand that they be transported home. Later in the day, textile workers in Surat, Gujarat, staged their third protest in recent days to likewise demand that they be allowed to return to their villages, rather than being forced to survive on thin gruel rations.

Surat Muncipal Commisioner Banchhanidhi Pani told the Economic Times that NGOs and the municipality are currently “feeding around six lakh three thousand (603,000) people per day,” in Gujarat’s second largest city.