Calls for early reopening of UK schools met with widespread opposition

Tom Pearce

Government ministers are now considering beginning a phased reopening of schools next month amid the worsening coronavirus pandemic. This follows a study by university researchers released earlier this month calling for schools to reopen “as soon as practical.”

According to the Times, the plan is for primary schools to start reopening along with nurseries in a “regionalised approach,” starting with those in areas outside coronavirus hot spots such as London and Birmingham. Gavin Williamson, the Conservative government’s education secretary, wants schools to reopen “in tandem” with changes to government advice about people going back to work. But there are reports that “some ministers are pushing for pupils to return before half-term next month.”

This week, Denmark became the first European country to start reopening its schools, despite parents refusing to send their children into an unsafe environment.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has weighed into the debate and said that school re-openings should be prioritised in any end to the lockdown. The new leader cites concerns regarding the widening gap between disadvantaged pupils and the more privileged. The real concern, however, is that Labour be seen to be in the forefront of calls to end the lockdown so as to revive the economy and restore Labour’s reputation as the friend of business and finance.

The safety of teachers continues to be ignored by politicians. The National Education Union wrote to Prime Minister Boris Johnson calling for an end to speculation on school reopenings, knowing that no answer will be forthcoming. Dr. Patrick Roach, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said that people would be “horrified” if schools were used as a testing ground for the easing of restrictions.

Teachers need protection more than ever after reports of three teacher deaths from COVID-19. Primary head teacher Wendy Jacobs died at the end of March in Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria. Last week, a 35-year-old secondary teacher, Emma Clarke, contracted the virus and died in Runcorn, Cheshire. Neither had previous complications. Kate Fox, 56, a literacy teacher from Birmingham, died after complications. This is despite government guidance stating, “The scientific advice indicates that educational staff do not require personal protective equipment.”

The current UK guidance states that PPE “is needed by medical and care professionals providing specific close contact care, or procedures that create airborne risk, such as suctioning and physiotherapy, for anyone who has coronavirus (COVID-19) and is displaying symptoms.”

The guidance adds, “If you are not providing this care to someone with the virus and displaying symptoms, PPE is not needed. Asymptomatic people (people with the virus but not displaying symptoms) have a reduced viral load and so risk of transmission is considerably reduced.”

None of these assertions matches the experience of workers in public roles. Even medical and care professionals have not been provided with the correct equipment to combat the disease and are dying by the dozens as a result. Public transport workers and postal workers are also dying, even as the government and the employers insist that PPE is not needed. Royal Mail workers have had to fight for PPE and take independent strike action as the unions look on.

Teachers will have to do the same to protect their health. As a result of the changing evidence and deaths, teachers are demanding PPE and insisting that they should not be guinea pigs for a lockdown exit strategy.

The advocates of a reopening of schools often cite a preliminary study led by University College London (UCL) researchers on the impact of school closures on limiting the spread of COVID-19, which looked at the previous virus spread of SARS and MERS. The report was published in the Lancet Child and Adolescent Health. Following its publication, “Send the pupils back for the good of the economy,” was the message peddled by the media outlets.

One co-author of the study, Russell Viner, who is president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, stated that the benefit gained from closing schools had to be weighed against the costs. “Children’s education is damaged and their mental health may suffer, family finances are affected, key workers may need to stay home to look after children and vulnerable children may suffer most.”

The study found that school closures “markedly increased the economic cost to the nation, in particular through forced absenteeism by working parents, in the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Costs have been estimated to be as high as 0.2–1 percent of UK national gross domestic product (GDP) per annum for school closure for 12–13 weeks, or up to 3 percent of GDP for an eight-week closure in US studies.”

Instead of closing schools, the study suggested that head teachers “suspend affected classes or year groups, or changing the school organisation structure to reduce student mixing (e.g., by closing playgrounds, cancelling non-essential activities and meetings, keeping students in constant class groups or classrooms, increasing spacing between students in classes, shortening the school week, and staggering school start and lunch or break times across year groups or classes).”

Some of these points are included in the advice that the UK government is giving schools that are currently looking after key workers’ children and ministers believe they can now be implemented in the phased return.

Despite the report being largely inconclusive due to a lack of scientific evidence on the spread of Covid-19, it didn’t stop the media latching onto the headline that schools should reopen.

Robert Dingwall, a professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University, told the BBC, “This is an important study that confirms what many of us suspected, namely that the public health benefits of school closures were not proportionate to the social and economic costs imposed on children and their families. It also underlines how the assumptions used in modelling the pandemic may rest on very flimsy foundations in terms of scientific evidence.

“This work suggests that UK schools could, and should, begin to reopen as soon as practicable after the initial wave of cases has passed through.”

This led to uproar and despair from teachers, who have been struggling with the challenge of continuing classes while working from home—with teachers taking to social media and sharing their concerns with the online community. On Twitter @AlwaysComputing wrote, “What have I just seen on the BBC??? Shutting schools isn’t helping apparently. Forget about teachers’ health as well as the children and families. Their suggestion of what we should be doing is just mind blowing.”

@BadleyThomas tweeted, “Why even give this quarter-baked slip of an idea any air time?”

@LanghoLynne10 said: “Not a teacher but a Chair of Govs who cares about the health and well-being of all staff and children this is madness #notonmywatch”

@simonrenshaw wrote, “That report today was crackers. It’s like they didn’t look at the initial report from Imperial. Their modelling was pretty clear what happens when schools reopen. Why anyone would suggest this after such a short period is baffling.”

Teacher and parent Jeremy Taylor wrote to the Guardian asking, “How are pupils meant to travel to school? On crammed buses needed by key workers to get to work, driven by bus drivers, who once again will be put at risk. It’s important that the education community debunks this nonsense.”

Secondary School teacher Caiti Walter wrote, “[A]s long as the advice to the general public remains that we all stay at home, it would be nonsensical to remove social distancing expectations for school staff only.”

Teacher Kate Stockings told ITN news it “wouldn’t be realistic and would be ‘impossible’ in any school to expect students to stay two metres apart. It is dangerous to explore the possibility of opening schools again whilst social distancing measures are firmly in place across society.”

Head teachers have called for an end to the “pretence” that social distancing in schools is possible. Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, a headteacher of a London school said, “Schools will open at some point. But what I don’t want is for people to perpetuate the lie, and it is a lie, that social distancing [in schools] is possible, it just isn’t.”

UK government’s herd immunity policy denounced by leading scientist

Robert Stevens

In the last week, the UK has become the centre of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe. On Friday, a further 847 people were announced to have died in hospital, bringing the official death total to 14,576. The dead included the former England soccer international, Norman Hunter, a member of the 1966 World Cup winning squad.

Boris Johnson’s Conservative government did nothing to prepare for the pandemic and instead pursued a policy of herd immunity—which envisaged the mass infection of tens of millions with COVID-19 and the deaths of possibly hundreds of thousands.

The policy was described in the most brutal terms, behind closed doors, at the end of February by Johnson’s key adviser, Dominic Cummings. According to the Times, some Tories present summarised his position as “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.”

Herd immunity had to be formally abandoned in March due to widespread opposition, including from Imperial College London scientists advising the government. However, it is becoming ever clearer that, aside from imposing a temporary lockdown to prevent the National Health Service (NHS) being overrun, the policy remains in place to this day.

On Friday, the herd immunity policy was denounced by Professor Anthony Costello whose criticisms make clear that nothing substantive, other than the lockdown, has ever been implemented. Costello is professor of international child health and director of the Institute for Global Health at the University College London. From 2015 to 2018, he was director of maternal, child and adolescent health at the World Health Organisation.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph he said of the government’s response to COVID-19, “It is a total mess and we have been wrong every stage of the way. We have to change our policy and at the moment I don’t hear anything to suggest we are. They keep talking about flattening the curve which implies they are seeking herd immunity, but what we should have done is crush the epidemic and then keep it down.”

Costello warned that the UK would be forced—in the absence of any widespread testing regime—to succumb to eight to 10 waves of coronavirus before the population would be able to achieve “herd immunity.” His prognosis was based on statements by the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, that herd immunity required the infection of about 40 million of the UK’s 66 million population.

Costello warned, “The recent estimates, even from the chief scientific officer, is after this wave we could have only maybe 10–15 percent of the population infected. So the idea of herd immunity would mean another five, six waves, maybe, in order to get to 60 percent.”

Costello insisted, “We won’t get herd immunity if what the latest models show are correct.” He cited a study by Dutch scientists which found that just 3 percent of the Netherlands population acquired immunity as the pandemic reached its peak there; and research from UCL neuroscientist Professor Karl Friston who believes that on average just 6.4 percent of people in Europe will have acquired immunity—via their own naturally produced antibodies—by the end of the first lockdown phase.

Each wave would lead to mass deaths. Speaking to the House of Commons Health Select Committee yesterday, Costello said, “This [first] wave could see 40,000 deaths [in the UK] by the time it’s over.”

Given that the UK has already recorded nearly 15,000 deaths in hospital and estimates that there could easily be the same number of deaths outside of hospital, even the grim figures provided by Costello could be an underestimation.

Costello said that lockdown could not be successful if imposed as a stand-alone policy: “It should be combined with testing, tracing and digital apps that have been used so successfully in South Korea.” None of these policies have ever been implemented, even when promised repeatedly.

The government announced, just as the pandemic was taking hold in the UK, that there would be no more systematic testing, as everyone who had symptoms should stay at home and self-isolate. With people continuing to die in their hundreds, the Tories were forced to pledge 100,000 tests a day by the end of this month. They are still nowhere near the target.

Instead of population-wide testing, they claimed weeks ago that antibody tests to see who had contracted COVID-19, and then produced antibodies naturally to withstand it, was the way forward. Two million home test kits were purchased by the government from China for at least £16 million, which proved unreliable. Scientists are now saying that all such tests are inaccurate, and that immunity will not be achieved anyway due to virus mutations.

The transformation of exhibition centres in London, Birmingham and Manchester into Nightingale field hospitals has been a disaster. London’s 4,000 capacity Nightingale hospital received just 19 patients over the Easter weekend and had just 30 patients on Tuesday. They are incapable of treating COVID-19 patients with pre-existing conditions—who are the vast majority—and refuse to take them. Existing hospitals in London have been forced to double their own intensive care units, sacrificing other care facilities and even operating theatres, to deal with the catastrophe.

However, the more fundamental reason why hospitals have been able to cope without resort to the Nightingale facilities is because thousands of COVID-19 patients are dying in residential care homes or in their own homes. Government advice remains to stay home and self-isolate if you believe you have been infected with COVID-19. Many do so and limit themselves at best to contacting their GP or ringing the NHS 111 line. By the time some realise they have become dangerously ill and contact the NHS for help, it is already too late. Others delay contacting the NHS out of concern that they will place an unnecessary strain on the service, or due to fear that a trip to hospital will mean death anyway.

Among its most criminal actions is the government’s failure to keep the necessary stockpiles to provide health workers with the personal protective equipment (PPE) required to safely treat COVID-19 patients. This has led to mass infections and deaths of health workers, patients and other public workers. According to Nursing Notes, 61 medical workers were reported to have died as of Friday morning.

On Thursday, the Royal College of Nursing’s ruling council were warned that the National Health Service only has enough long-armed gowns—essential to treat coronavirus patients—to last for the next 48 hours.

Under conditions of acute crisis, with Johnson recovering from a brush with death after becoming a victim of his own policy, the government is unable to sanction immediately lifting the lockdown and forcing millions back to work—along the lines of a number of European governments and the Trump administration in the US. But such demands are being led by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who is demanding the government publish an “exit strategy” with schools reopening as a central component.

Any such move will be socially explosive. Millions of workers, having seen the mounting death toll and its devastating impact on the NHS, will simply refuse to return to work in unsafe conditions with their lives at stake in the midst of a pandemic.

According to the findings of a survey this week by the Office of National Statistics, over four in five adults in the UK (84.2 percent) said they were very worried or somewhat worried about the effect that the coronavirus is having on their life. Another poll by the Institute for Public Policy Research and YouGov found that nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of health workers were dissatisfied with government actions on prevention and testing. A massive 96 percent of the public wanted the government to go further with action to protect health and care workers.

Pentagon activates military units to defend Washington

Bill Van Auken

An elite US military unit that is best known for providing color guards, fife-and-drum corps and 21-gun salutes for presidential inaugurations and funerals has been placed under “operational command” for far more sinister purposes. These include the defense of the US government against “foreign or domestic” enemies and the potential evacuation of top officials in the event that Washington, DC slips out of the government’s control.

A report by journalist William Arkin published in Newsweek magazine Thursday reveals that the Joint Task Force National Capital Region (JFT-NCR) was activated last month amid the intensifying crisis generated by the criminality and neglect of the US government in the face of the most widespread and deadly outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic anywhere on the planet.

The Newsweek article follows Arkin’s reports last month that standby orders had been issued in early March to activate contingency plans “not just to protect Washington but also to prepare for the possibility of some form of martial law.” He cited an internal military contingency plan known as CONPLAN 3502 (Civil Disturbances Operations) providing for domestic military deployments to suppress “riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, group acts of violence, and disorders prejudicial to public law and order.”

Newsweek reported that “now, planners are looking at a military response to urban violence as people see protection and fight over food and, according to one senior officer, in the contingency of the complete evacuation of Washington.”

Noting that the Pentagon dismissed these reports, insisting that National Guard troops were under the command of governors and that federal troops were operating under the direction of FEMA, Arkins writes:

“And yet the activation of Joint Task Force National Capital Region, including almost 10,000 uniformed personnel to carry out its special orders, contradicts those assurances. JTF-NCR is not only real and operating, reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense for some of its missions, but some of its units are already on 24/7 alert, specially sequestered on military bases and kept out of coronavirus support duties to ensure their readiness.”

Arkins reports on the deployment of two Blackhawk helicopter companies of the Illinois National Guard to Fort, a US Army installation in Virginia near Washington. He points out that, unlike other guard units activated during the coronavirus crisis, these companies are not under the control of the state’s governor, but rather under “strict federal duty as if they were to be shipped to Afghanistan or Iraq. Except that in this case, the battlefield is in Washington, DC.”

The helicopter units have been mobilized in conjunction with the Joint Emergency Evacuation Plan (JEEP), which calls for evacuating the Pentagon’s command out of the Washington area, and the Atlas plan, which provides for the evacuation of civilian executive, legislative and judicial leaders to ensure “Enduring Constitutional Government."

Washington, as with other areas of the country, is under a state of emergency imposed by its mayor, Muriel Bowser. As yet, it has not faced the full brunt of the pandemic. According to official figures, the number of coronavirus cases in the city stood Friday at 2,476, and the number of deaths at 86. It could still face a major surge of the disease. But as to an evacuation to maintain continuity of government, where would the president, his cabinet, the Congress and the Supreme Court go that they would not be taking the virus with them?

Among the military forces that are on alert for mobilization to the US capital are, according to Newsweek, “quick reaction infantry units from the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, and the 101st Airborne Division from Ft. Campbell, Kentucky—units that would normally be rushed to the Middle East in some crisis."

In addition, according to the report, special operations troops, “the so-called National Mission Force”, have been sequestered in “operational facilities" in Washington, divided into separate units to avoid one group from infecting the other.

These preparations are not being made to combat the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed, according to official figures, some 37,000 Americans.

Rather, they are part of the preparations of the US ruling establishment and its political representatives to confront rising social anger and resistance as tens of millions have lost their jobs, and the corporations and the government are preparing to force millions to return to work under conditions in which their health and lives, along with those of their families, will not be protected.

As many millions of American workers have been left without jobs and incomes, forced to line up for food donations and deprived of adequate medical care, the financial oligarchy has gorged on itself on the trillions of dollars lavished upon it by the US government. The vast social chasm separating these two poles has become so naked that an explosion of class struggle is inevitable.

This is why the plans for a military defense of the US capital and even an evacuation of the government are being dusted off and put into operation.

Chinese economy contracted by 6.8 percent in first quarter

Nick Beams

In a foretaste of what is to come in the rest of the world when official data are released, China, its second largest economy, has recorded a 6.8 percent year-on-year decline in gross domestic product for the first quarter of the year.

Compared to the last quarter of 2019, output was down 9.8 percent. It was the first year-on-year contraction since Beijing began reporting quarterly data in 1992.

The fall was larger than had been predicted, with the median forecast of economists polled by Bloomberg putting the contraction at 6 percent.

The announcement of the plunge in the Chinese economy comes just days after the International Monetary Fund forecast the world economy would shrink by 3 percent this year and experience a loss of output over 2020 and 2021 of $9 trillion.

It has predicted that China will maintain a positive growth rate of 1.2 percent for the year as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic start to wear off and production resumes.

But the Chinese economy is very much dependent on what happens in the rest of the world. It faces the danger of a second wave of infections if the pandemic is not brought under control elsewhere and its economy will be hit by a global slump.

Reporting on its outlook report earlier this week, IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said: “The rest of the global economy is now in the grips of the pandemic and there are severe containment measures around the world so that would have a big negative impact in terms of external demand on China’s growth.”

Under conditions where the economy was already experiencing a significant slowdown—last year’s growth was just 6.1 percent, its lowest level in almost three decades – the pandemic has delivered a major blow to the Xi Jinping regime’s aim of having the economy double in size in the decade 2010–2020.

That may still be possible if growth surges to 6 percent in the rest of the year but this appears highly unlikely given global conditions and the significant internal contraction.

Other data, released with the GDP result, showed that fixed asset investment fell by 16 percent in the first quarter compared to last year, while infrastructure spending, which forms a key component of the Chinese economy, was down 20 percent.

In the recent period, Chinese government and financial authorities have sought to make the economy more consumer-based. However, retail sales fell by 16 percent in March.

Exports also fell in March by 6.6 percent after plummeting by 17.2 percent in January and February.

According to an economic research firm, Trivium China, cited by the Wall Street Journal, Chinese business activity has returned to about 83 percent capacity, up from the level of roughly 70 percent a month ago but now appears to have flattened to a level of 80 percent.

“That last 20 percent is going to be harder than all the progress made so far,” Trivium said in a note to its clients this week.

The Journal described the economy as still being in a “fragile state.” While many of the restrictions have been lifted new ones have also been enacted, including on international flights, in order to try to prevent a second wave of infections.

Accurate jobs and unemployment data for China are always somewhat difficult to obtain because a considerable part of its labour force comprises migrant workers from the country side.

According to estimates by UBS economists, nonfarm employment fell by 78 million in the first quarter, comprising 50 million to 60 million in the service sector and 20 million in the industrial and construction sectors. This is out of a total working-age labour force of 900 million.

The official urban unemployment rate, widely regarded as an understatement, stood at a record high of 6.2 percent at the end of February, and can be expected to rise still further in the coming months, even if the economy returns to positive growth.

Facing political hostility because of its repressive policies and the growth of social inequality, the Xi Jinping regime rests on its capacity to promote economic expansion and maintain what it calls “social stability.” The government sets a target of providing at least 10 million more urban jobs each year.

But according to UBS economist Wang Tao, even as the labour market recovers, nonfarm employment will fall by 14 million this year, wiping out the job gains of the past two years.

It was significant that as Xi toured areas affected by the county’s lockdown measures in early February he insisted that there should be “no large-scale layoffs.”

The government confronts a major problem in finding employment for the record number of college graduates now coming on to the labour market.

Earlier this week at a State Council meeting, Premier Li Keqiang said the government cared more about job creation than it did about the GDP growth target and noted that “the employment situation is dire for college graduates this year.”

In 2009, the government responded to the global financial crisis and the loss of 23 million jobs with a massive stimulus package, comprising government spending of around half a trillion dollars and an expansion of credit. Overall, the stimulus measures are estimated to have amounted to about 16 percent of GDP at the time.

But that option is not open to it in the present crisis because of the consequences of its previous measures. Growth rebounded after 2009. But the result was housing market bubbles, the construction of ghost towns and massive debt. According to the Institute of International Finance, the ratio of total debt to GDP expanded from 173 percent in 2008 to around 300 percent by 2019.

Accordingly the government and the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) have eschewed the kind of measures seen in other major economies. The government has given some tax breaks for companies and provided additional funds for banks to lend to struggling companies. The PBoC has shifted to a somewhat looser monetary policy by lowering one of its key lending rates.

But given the state of the world economy and the hammer blows China has already suffered, it is doubtful such measures will be able to halt the downward slide and maintain the “social stability” on which the Xi regime, ruling in the interests of an ultra-wealthy oligarchy, depends.

India and the Coronavirus

Conn Hallinan

While the corona virus has focused much of the world on Europe and the United States, India promises to be the greatest victim of the disease. But other than a slick public relations campaign, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done little to confront the crisis. Indeed, a number of policy moves by Delhi have likely fed the spread of the dangerous virus.

When Modi announced a 21-day nationwide shutdown on March 24, he did so without any warning. Almost before the Prime Minister had finished talking, panicked city residents—mostly middle class—poured into the streets to stock up on food and medicines, almost certainly accelerating the spread of COVID-19.

The shutdown instantly made tens of millions of people jobless, setting many of them in motion toward their home villages. Since public transportation has been shut down, that involved journeys of over 300 miles. And because many villages are blocking outsiders, where migrants will get food and water is anyone’s guess.

Except for a few independent news sources, much of the chaos set off by the March 24 orders has gone unreported. Using a combination of financial pressure and outright censorship, Modi and his rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have silenced much of the media. Newspapers and broadcast outlets are finding that criticism of Modi or the BJP results in the loss of government advertising, a major source of revenue. Modi has also filed expensive and difficult to fight tax cases against opposition media outlets.

In the case of the corona virus, the government got the Supreme Court to order all media to “publish the official version” of the health crisis, which, in practice, has meant feel-good stories.

The success that the BJP has had in corralling India’s 17,000 newspapers, 100,000 magazines, and 178 television news channels has been sharply condemned by media organizations. Reporters Without Borders rates India a lowly 140 out of 180 countries on its freedom index.

Modi has led a high-profile campaign to create a regional response to the COVID-19 crisis. On March 15, Modi convened a teleconference of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to create a corona virus emergency fund and exchange medical information. On March 26, Modi expanded the effort to draw in the G-20, an international forum of wealthy governments and banks that includes the European Union.

But there is suspicion that Modi’s regional and international efforts have more to do with repairing his government’s reputation than confronting the health crisis.

Modi’s unilateral seizure of Jammu and Kashmir in violation of the Indian constitution—and subsequent crackdown on any and all opposition to the takeover—was widely condemned internationally. The recent move by the Modi government to redefine “citizenship” in a way that excludes Muslims has also been wide criticized. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Eights, Michelle Bachelet, called the law a violation of several international agreements that India is a party to.

There has been scant follow through with the SAARC or the G-20, and the government has done little at home. India’s public health system is fragile at the best of times, with only 0.5 hospital beds for every 1,000 people. In contrast, Italy has almost seven times that figure.

One important independent outlet reporting on the Covid-19 crisis has been Rural India Online, part of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), a network of reporters and photojournalists who report on India’s rural dwellers who make up 70 percent of the population.

P.Sainath, PARI’s founder and editor—a winner of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award and Amnesty International’s Global Award for Human Rights—is sharply critical of the Modi government’s actions, and PARI’s reporters have covered what the mainstream media has been intimidated from reporting: the massive number of poor who have taken to the roads to return home, cancer patients sleeping outside of hospitals in the hope of getting treatment, and day laborers who cannot afford to miss any work. One told PARI reporter Shraddha Agarwal, “Soap won’t save us if we die of hunger first.”

PARI reporters have also done a number of stories on India’s sanitation workers, few of whom have been provided with gloves or masks. “The government is saying clean hands constantly,” Mumbai sanitation worker Archana Chabuskwan told PARI reporter Ivoti Shinoli. “How do we do that?” Hand sanitizers are too expensive—Chabuskwan makes $2.63 cents a day—water supplies are iffy and social distancing is impossible. “We have to share a public toilet with hundreds of people.”

If sanitation workers do get sick—or, for that matter, any of Mumbai’s 20 million residents—they are in trouble. Government hospitals currently have 400 ventilators and 1,000 intensive care beds available for the entire city.

India’s health crisis is longstanding, and while the actions of the Modi government will almost certainly worsen the current crisis, for the past 30 years Indian governments—right and center—have cut back on health care and privatized much of the system. “We have one of the lowest health expenditures—barely 1.2 percent (as a share of the GDP) in the world,” writes Sainath. Almost a quarter of a million Indians die each year of tuberculosis and 100,000 children from diarrhea.

The US spends about 17 percent of its GDP on health.

According to Sainath, “Health expenditures across India today are possibly the fastest growing component of rural family debt.” A study by the Public Health Foundation of India found that in 2011-12 some 55 million people had been impoverished by health costs, 38 million by the cost of medicine alone.

That is what a substantial part of India’s 1.3 billion people face as COVID-19 ramps up, and they are unlikely to get much help from the BJP or Modi. When China finally went public with the dangers posed by the corona virus, India was convulsed with sectarian riots touched off by some of Modi’s cabinet members. Over 50 people were killed in New Delhi and hundreds injured as rightwing mobs organized by the Rashtyria Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) rampaged through the streets.

The RSS—an organization that philosopher and political commentator Aijaz Ahmad describes as the “oldest, largest and most successful far-right group in the world today”—is the real power behind Modi. The BJP is largely a front for the RSS, a Hindu fundamentalist organization that is “profoundly hierarchical and secretive,” according to Ahmed.

The top-down, no warning decree on the corona virus is typical of the way the RSS functions. In 2016—again, with no warning—Modi unilaterally canceled all 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, throwing the country into currency chaos and further impoverishing large numbers of poor Indians.

The RSS’s major goal is the creation of a Hindu-centered state, and it is not shy about using violence to do that, either of the mob variety, or by assassination. Gunmen have killed several prominent opponents of the RSS over the past several years, killings that have never been solved.

The focus on religion has skewed the government’s priorities. The chief minister of India’s most populous state, Utter Pradesh, spent $91 million to build a huge statue of the god Ram, while short changing emergency medical facilities.

With much of India’s mainstream press either co-opted or cowed, it is alternative sources like the People’s Archive of Rural India that has picked up the slack and reported what is happening to the vast majority of Indians that live outside the huge metropolises, as well as what slum dwellers and city sanitation workers are facing.

So far, Modi and the RSS have avoided having to answer for the increase in violence and the social priorities that have widened the gap between rich and poor. But COVID-19 may change that.

The PARI has put forth a series of demands to address the current crisis, including the immediate distribution of surplus grains, a shift from cash crops to food crops, and the nationalization of private medical facilities nationwide.

The COVID-19 crisis is the third disease to go pandemic since the great 1918-20 flu, which may have killed up to 100 million people. But climate change is producing conditions that favor the growth of diseases like the corona virus and vector-driven pathogens like dengue and malaria. The next pandemic is just around the corner, and unless there is a concentrated effort to make health care a human right, it is only a matter to time before the next mega-killer strikes.

Australian governments pushing for premature return to work

Oscar Grenfell

At a meeting of the expanded “national cabinet” yesterday afternoon, the federal Coalition government, along with state Liberal and Labor governments, discussed plans to wind back lockdown measures over the coming months. They made clear that this would be aimed at forcing workers back on the job to resume the flow of corporate profits, despite the risk of a full-blown outbreak of COVID-19.

Speaking to the media after the meeting, Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that the governments were preparing measures for the “road out” of the current crisis. He couched his comments in terms of reversing the dire impact on business activity of lockdowns instituted over the past month.

The announcement was prepared by a joint media-government campaign over the past fortnight, proclaiming that Australia has succeeded in “flattening the curve” of infections and slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

The claims are highly dubious, under conditions where most states still have highly restrictive testing criteria.

In New South Wales, for instance, the most populous state with the highest number of infections, criteria were “expanded” at the beginning of the month, but only to health and aged care workers showing symptoms and those in areas with a high number of confirmed infections. In other words, most people with symptoms are denied testing, while the estimated 35 to 50 percent of infected individuals who are asymptomatic have no prospect of being examined.

The government announcements, moreover, were made amid some of the lowest testing rates since early March. The day before the cabinet meeting, just 4,851 tests were conducted across the country, compared with more than 16,000 on March 29. From Monday to Thursday, only 1,000 tests per day were conducted in Victoria, which has a population of more than 6.3 million.

Clusters continue to emerge, including at two hospitals in Tasmania last week and at a number of medical facilities in Victoria.

Modelling released by the Actuaries Institute yesterday, based on World Health Organisation data, suggested that there may have been 20,000 people infected with the virus on April 9, well above the official figure of several thousand active cases. The report stated that community transmission of the virus is likely far more widespread than is indicated by official data.

Despite this, Morrison declared at the press conference that while existing lockdown measures would remain in place for the next four weeks, they will be reviewed and likely eased late next month.

Morrison outlined three policies that would supposedly manage the virus as lockdown measures are wound back. He claimed that testing would be dramatically increased, which raises the obvious question of why this has not yet been carried out.

The prime minister stated that clusters of confirmed infections could be met with localised lockdowns to be enforced by the Australian Defence Force—another indication of the repressive policies being prepared.

The government is also rolling out a mobile phone app that will track at all times those who sign up. This would supposedly allow the authorities to identify the phone number of anyone that a confirmed case has been in close proximity to for 15 minutes or longer. The measure, based on a model developed by the police-state regime in Singapore, would represent a major escalation of mass surveillance and other ongoing invasions of privacy.

The prime minister and Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy gave their most explicit comments to date on the “strategy” that has underlined the woefully-inadequate government response to the pandemic. They declared that they were not seeking to eradicate the virus, because of the negative business consequences of a sharp lockdown. Instead they were attempting to suppress it.

The admission underscores why it took so long for the state and federal governments to introduce lockdown measures last month. It indicates that the governments are preparing to force workers back onto the job while the virus circulates for the foreseeable future and periodic outbreaks become a “new normal.”

It is clear that teachers have been selected as the “guinea pigs” of the back to work campaign, which threatens to cause thousands of unnecessary deaths. On Wednesday evening, Morrison delivered a video message to teachers, hectoring them to ensure that schools remain open.

Morrison made clear that this was aimed at resuming business activity, cynically declaring that teachers could not force parents to decide whether to “put food on the table” by going out to work or staying at home to look after their children.

In reality, it is the federal and state governments, which have focused their response to the economic breakdown on providing billions to the corporations as they lay off workers, that are responsible for the deepening social hardship, not teachers.

Comments in the Australian and other media outlets of the financial elite were blunter, noting that reopening the schools was crucial to “kickstarting the economy,” and creating the conditions for employees to be pushed back into their workplaces.

Victoria is viewed as a test case, with the state Labor government of Premier Daniel Andrews forcing teachers back to the schools this week, despite widespread anger over a lack of safety precautions. Teachers are being compelled to go to schools, where they risk infection, while developing online curricula for the majority of students who are still learning remotely, greatly increasing their workload.

In New South Wales, the state Liberal government has signaled that it will begin a staged reintroduction of face-to-face classes starting on May 12. This is in line with calls from the state’s Teachers Federation for Year 12 and kindergarten students to begin attending schools again. As in every state, the unions have collaborated closely with the government, brushing aside the concerns of the teachers they falsely claim to represent.

In the Northern Territory, teachers are being forced to take classroom lessons and to prepare online classes. Measures for a full reopening of the schools are doubtless being discussed in other states and territories.

The stated rationale for resuming face-to-face teaching, that schools are unlikely centres of infection, is highly dubious. Earlier this month, a cluster of over 70 infections emerged at Marist College in the New Zealand city of Auckland. A number of schools in New South Wales and South Australia were forced to close prior to the end of Term One after cases were detected.

In reality, teachers are being subjected to dangerous conditions as the first step in imposing similar conditions on broader sections of the workforce. At the same time, tens of thousands of construction workers remain on the job at the behest of governments and the unions, despite the impossibility of practicing social distancing.

Behind the scenes, the ruling elite and its representatives are discussing how many people will be allowed to die to minimise any impact on corporate profits.

In an interview with Morrison last night, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Leigh Sales noted that there have been no deaths under the 50- to 59-year-old cohort, and asked: “Is it fair to say that the people who are bearing the hardest burden of the economic shutdown are not the people who are at the most serious health risk?”

Sales asked whether it might be possible, as some business leaders have suggested, to “return to a sort of normal existence for everyone under 60 and lockdown measures restricted to older Australians and younger people with serious health issues.”

An article in the Australian Financial Review by Sam Lovick, headlined, “The next stage must be to let the virus spread,” was even more explicit. Hailing government moves to end the lockdowns, he wrote: “In the absence of a vaccine or a cure, the best policy involves a managed increase in spread so that some degree of herd immunity develops, seeking to protect those most at risk while it does.”

“How might we achieve this? One policy that is unlikely to work is to try to prevent every death. Why not? Because to do so we would need to eliminate infections entirely. That can only be done with severe and prolonged social distancing at prodigious economic cost (2 percent of GDP per month for at least 10 months, at least $400 billion).”

Lovick detailed two scenarios, allowing a “managed spread” of the pandemic. He claimed that under the first model, of a gradual easing of lockdown measures, “64,000 lives would be saved” because intensive care units would not be overwhelmed despite a rise in infections.

Under his second scenario, “Some 3,000 fewer lives are saved, largely because we are short around 500 ICU beds for one month. But the impact on GDP is much smaller at 4.1 per cent ($85 billion). The cost per life saved falls to $1.4 million. The cost of saving those additional 3,000 lives is $9 million each, more than society is normally willing to pay.”

In other words, the corporate and financial elite, and the governments that represent them are preparing to inflict thousands of deaths to shore up their bottom lines. This underscores the necessity for workers to immediately develop their own response to the crisis. As a first step, new organisations of struggle, independent of the corporatised trade unions, must be developed everywhere, to lead a fight against any premature return to work.

South Korea’s Democratic Party wins general election in landslide

Ben McGrath

On Wednesday, the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DP) won a landslide victory in the South Korean general election, defeating the main opposition United Future Party (UFP) and retaining control of the National Assembly. Legislators serve four-year terms in the 300-seat unicameral body.

The DP won 163 seats outright while the UFP took only 84 with those totals rising to 180 and 103 when proportionally-allocated seats were added. To procure the additional seats, both parties took advantage of a new electoral law passed in December by setting up satellite parties known as the Together Citizens’ Party and the Future Korea Party respectively, with the explicit intention of merging these into the main parties.

The election is the first in 16 years that the ruling party has won a majority in the National Assembly and ensures that the Democrats and President Moon Jae-in will have full control of the government. A voting bloc controlling 180 seats or three-fifths of the total can pass almost any legislation except for changes to the constitution, which requires an additional 20 votes.

DP Chairman Lee Hae-chan stated after the election, “We will do our best to overcome the war against the coronavirus and the economic crisis so as to reward people’s support for us.” The DP was the beneficiary of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the explosion of infections in February, public support for Moon had fallen to 41 percent while the Democrats approval rating stood at just 34 percent.

Hwang Gyo-an, who served as UFP chairman, stepped down from his position Wednesday night as his party’s defeat became clear. He remarked, “I will take all responsibility. As I promised earlier, I will give up my party post to hold myself accountable for the election outcome.” Resignations are a common practice in South Korean politics after an election loss and are largely ceremonial shows of contrition.

Hwang also lost his race against Lee Nak-yeon in Seoul’s Jongno district, where numerous government offices are located. Both men are former prime ministers, with Lee and Hwang serving under Presidents Moon and Park Geun-hye respectively. The race was seen as a potential presidential match-up in 2022 when Moon’s single term ends.

Despite the COVID-19 outbreak, voter turnout was an estimated 66.2 percent, the highest rate since 1992 and an 8.2 percent increase over 2016. While the establishment media celebrated this outcome, a third of the eligible voting population, or 14.9 million people, still did not vote, an indication of widespread discontent with the candidates and parties. The election was also the first in which 18-year-olds could vote, with the eligible age lowered last December from 19, adding 540,000 new voters.

The same law changed the basis for seats elected on a proportional basis and allowed the two biggest parties set up their satellites. Supposedly meant to help smaller parties win more proportional seats by changing how they are distributed, the legislation had the opposite effect as most of the minor parties have been swept from the National Assembly.

The third largest party in the legislature is now the pseudo-left Justice Party, which won one directly elected seat and five proportional seats, maintaining its total in the legislature. The Party for People’s Livelihoods (PPL), which held 20 seats before the election, was swept out of the legislature all together. The PPL consists of anti-Park Geun-hye conservatives as well as right-wing Democrats who were followers of former President Kim Dae-jung.

Other parties winning a handful of seats include the People’s Party (three proportional seats), which is a former ally of the PPL and led by Ahn Cheol-soo, and the Open Democratic Party (three proportional seats), another DP offshoot. Five so-called independents also won seats.

In its campaign, the DP capitalized on the COVID-19 pandemic to claim that it had successfully contained the outbreak. The government was well aware that another bungled response to a disease outbreak similar to that during the 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak could generate widespread discontent, particularly as support for the government fell.

In the aftermath of the election, however, the Moon administration will accelerate its efforts to prop up big business and foist the burden of the pandemic onto the backs of workers. The International Monetary Fund predicts that South Korean economy will contract by 1.2 percent in 2020—the first period of negative growth since 1997–1998 Asian Financial Crisis.

In response to that crisis, the DP imposed the IMF’s demands for the pro-market restructuring of the economy. While in power under Kim Dae-jung and Noh Moo-hyun, the Democrats oversaw massive job cuts and the casualization of the workforce, the effects of which led to a real youth unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent, as well as stagnant wages, and other attacks on working conditions.

President Moon warned on Monday that “this may be (just) the beginning of pain” while claiming his administration would prioritize protecting jobs. What this means is more government handouts for big business, on top of the trillions of won already spent, supposedly to prevent further layoffs. The Bank of Korea has also already promised an unlimited amount of funds to financial firms.

In fact, major job cuts are being planned with tens of thousands of jobs on the chopping block. Workers have already faced firings, unpaid furloughs, and large wage cuts. In March alone, there were approximately 156,000 applications for unemployment benefits, a 24.8 percent increase over the same month in 2019 and the biggest since the 2008–09 global financial crisis.

The new legislature and the Moon administration will only accelerate these attacks which will provoke resistance from the working class. The government will not hesitate to use the police-state measures rolled out to combat COVID-19—such as the tracking of hundreds of thousands of people—against workers fighting to defend their jobs and health.

Workers, farmers, and youth must turn to their counterparts around the world who are also being driven into conflict with their ruling classes who are determined to enhance their profits and wealth whatever the costs to working people. What is needed is a unified struggle to reconstruct society on a socialist basis to protect the lives and meet the pressing social needs of the entire population.

More than thirty dead as tornadoes rip across southeastern US

Aaron Murch

Severe storms and tornadoes devastated several states in the Southeast over the weekend. Over 30 people have died across the region from the dozens of tornadoes which ravaged through Mississippi, South Carolina, and Georgia. The natural disaster comes as nationwide stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19 have left millions out of work and in precarious situations.

Over the course of about two days, 71 tornadoes were reported in nine different states across the South. Over a million homes lost power during the series of storms. Two days later, half a million people remain without power.

Hundreds of homes were destroyed as the tornadoes ripped through neighborhoods. Emergency crews were reportedly unable to reach many of the more devastated areas due to debris and damage to roads and bridges. Hundreds, if not thousands of people are now homeless, looking for refuge and therefore at greater risk of catching and spreading the virus.

According to reports, the tornadoes that hit Mississippi were particularly destructive, with the most powerful tornado being classified with the rare EF-4 rating with winds up to 170mph.

Strong gusts of wind, up to 80 mph in Georgia and Florida, along with deadly tornadoes, were also reported in those states. By Monday afternoon, tornado watches stretched as far north as Virginia and Washington DC, as well as parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Southern Mississippi remains the hardest hit in the region with 11 reported deaths. Supercell thunderstorms arrived one after another on Sunday carving a path of destruction across several miles.

On Monday, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves posted a series of tweets about the storms, the worst the state has seen in over a decade. Underscoring the severity of the storms, he wrote: “We are used to tornadoes in Mississippi. No one is used to this, ” the governor tweeted, “Winds topped 200 mph. The trail was long and devastating.”

Mississippi residents responded on Twitter by taking the governor to task for his failure to prepare properly for the COVID-19 pandemic, which some say exacerbated the impact of these already devastating storms.

“Tornado Emergencies,” a rare and more extreme weather warning issued when weather events merit a stronger response than the usual “Tornado Warning” designation, were also issued in Monroe, Louisiana; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Walterboro, South Carolina.

Dozens have been injured across these impacted states whose hospitals are already flooded by COVID-19 patients.

In Georgia, at least eight people died as tornadoes tore through mobile home parks in Murray County and Bartow County.

Alexandra Vargas, a resident of Chatsworth, Georgia, described the scene as she got a tornado warning alert on her phone soon before the tornado coursed through her neighborhood. “It was like a train derailing,” Vargas said, describing the roar of the tornado, “Shook the entire house. And you could hear trees snapping and debris hitting the roof.”

In South Carolina, at least nine people were killed, including Jack Harvill, a 77-year-old security guard working at a BorgWarner auto parts production plant. Harvill, who was working security for the plant under the employment of American Security contractors, died from blunt force traumatic injuries when the building he was working in collapsed at around 3:30 a.m.

The causes of death for many in Mississippi and South Carolina were the result of trees crashing into mobile homes. One woman in Alabama took to social media to describe the destruction in their neighborhood and the impact on her family: “The power was out for three days. We’ve probably lost several hundred dollars worth of food.” Countless others have also posted on Twitter about the setbacks experienced because of these storms. One person wrote: “Power loss = loss of everything in the freezer. People will be forced to start from scratch as grocery stores are already running out of food because of the pandemic.”

The chief of forecast operations at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center, Bill Bunting, told New York Times reporters, “Unfortunately, it has played out like we feared. All of the ingredients, all the conditions we look for when we’re forecasting tornadoes and strong tornadoes were in place.”

In Monroe, Louisiana, a large tornado ripped through several neighborhoods and a nearby airport, with wind gusts up to 65 mph. In a statement, the Monroe city mayor said that some 200-300 homes were destroyed.

In a video that went viral on Twitter, a resident describes the aftermath: “It just wiped out everything around me.” Natural disasters such as these are made incalculably worse because of the immense social crisis gripping the region. Decades of neglect and defunding have led to crumbling infrastructure and job losses, all exacerbated by the rampant lack of health services and a gutted health care system. Such events on top of a deadly pandemic ravaging the nation could prove catastrophic to the poor and working-class populations that get hit the hardest.

US rural hospitals close amid COVID-19 pandemic

Gary Joad

Already reeling from decades of cutbacks and austerity, rural community hospitals in the US are teetering on the brink of collapse in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many facing the possibility of closure, despite the increased need for their services.

According to the “fast facts” provided by the American Hospital Association (AHA), there are 6,146 hospitals in the United States. Of these, 5,198 are community hospitals, nonfederal medical facilities that are open to the public, providing short-term care or specialty services.

There are 1,821 rural community hospitals in the country, providing health care to 15 percent of the population, or 46 million people. However, the population within these regions has become older, poorer and sicker, with a significantly higher prevalence of chronic disease and numbers of uninsured than in urban areas.

Miller County Hospital in Georgia (Wikipedia Commons)

According to the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program, a part of the Sheps Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 170 rural hospitals have closed since 2005, with 128 closing since 2010. The number of rural hospital closures consistently reached double digits starting in 2013, with a high of 19 closures in 2019. There have already been eight closures so far this year, despite the global pandemic.

For example, earlier this month the Decatur County Hospital in Tennessee announced that it would close down on April 15. Established in 1963, the hospital had employed 100 and served a community of 12,000. It is the 14th rural hospital to close its doors in that state in the last 10 years. With this hospital closure, the state, which has only one hospital bed per 73,000 state residents, now has 21 counties with no hospital.

In West Virginia, which does not have a city over 50,000 and where 20 percent of the residents are senior citizens, two hospitals have recently closed.

According to a study released earlier this year by the Chartis Center for Rural Health, 453 rural hospitals are “vulnerable” to closure.

“None of the metrics we track to measure the stability of the rural health safety net are improving,” Michael Topchik, national leader of the organization, said in a statement, “and this research allows us to quantify just how severe the implications could be if the current situation worsens.”

Rural hospitals across the country have been overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients. In Blaine County, Idaho, a popular ski tourist destination, there were 351 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with many patients seeking care at the local 25-bed hospital. A hospital in Eagle County, Colorado, with a 56-bed capacity faced 314 confirmed COVID-19 cases virtually overnight.

Most hospitals, including rural facilities, maintain their solvency by selling access to imaging, emergency care, lab tests, physical therapy and outpatient procedures such as colonoscopy and upper gastrointestinal exams. However, these traditional sources of income have dried up as a result of the pandemic.

“If we’re not able to address the short-term cash needs in rural hospitals, we’re going to see hundreds of them close before this crisis ends,” Alan Morgan, chief of the National Rural Health Association (NRHA), told WGBH News in Boston on March 21. “This is not hyperbole.”

In an April 6 letter to the US Congress, the NRHA warned:

“The loss of revenue of the last few weeks due to the inability to provide non-emergency care is destabilizing core health services in rural America. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, nearly half of all rural hospitals were operating at a financial loss, and now these hospitals are facing catastrophic cash shortages. The rate of rural hospital closures was at crisis levels prior to the pandemic; it will soon become cataclysmic.”

Included in the recently passed CARES act is $100 billion in funds vaguely committed to reimbursing hospitals and providers for care of COVID-19 patients, to be reimbursed at Medicare rates, but few details have been provided as to how these funds will be dispersed.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that between 2 and 7 percent of the uninsured will require hospitalization due to COVID-19, which translates to 670,000 to 2 million admissions. The average cost for non-ICU admission is $13,297, not including an additional 10 percent or more in physician fees, while an ICU bed and ventilator support for 96 hours could run as high as $40,218.

“This virus, and what it is causing for these hospitals, is the perfect storm that will close these hospitals at a time when this country really needs them,” Robin Rau, CEO of Miller County Hospital in southwestern Georgia, told WGBH.

“This is going to be the death blow to them,” she said. “We can talk all we want about the cost of health care in this country with this ridiculous health care system we have. But at a time like this, who for a minute would think about getting rid of rural hospitals.

Randy Tobler, chief administrator at Scotland County Hospital in northeastern Missouri, said that his facility will not make payroll to the end of May without immediate cash assistance. Another hospital administrator in northwest Missouri noted that its facility is being price-gouged, with critical items like N95 respirators costing $5 a piece, 16 times the usual price of 30 cents.

Michael Purvis, CEO of Candler County Hospital in Metter, Georgia, about 65 miles outside Savannah, reported a negative cash flow, with the loss of at least half of its customary care revenue. “If my billers and coders stay healthy, I can make it through April, maybe end of June,” Purvis told Kaiser Health News.

About 60 percent of the rural hospitals lost so far in the United States are in the South.

Governors Tate Reeves (Mississippi), Mike Parson (Missouri) and Kay Ivey (Alabama), however, have rejected self-quarantine recommendations for their states. Reeves issued an order to keep most businesses open, a marked hazard for Mississippi residents and neighboring Louisiana where COVID-19 infectivity is soaring.