Indonesia records over 1,000 COVID-19 cases every day for three weeks

Owen Howell

Indonesia is becoming the new COVID-19 epicentre in East Asia. Over the past three weeks, more than 1,000 new cases were recorded every day. If the current trend continues, within the next two weeks the country’s official figures will surpass those of China, where the virus first broke out in January.

During the same period, the death toll similarly climbed, with between 30 and 90 fatalities confirmed each day. The numbers currently stand at 75,699 infections and 3,606 deaths.

Last Thursday, a new record was reached with 2,657 cases in one day. The spike was due to the discovery of a large cluster at a military academy in Bandung, West Java. Army Chief of Staff General Andika Perkasa revealed on Saturday there were 1,280 confirmed cases at the school. Of these, 991 were army cadets, while the rest were staff and their families. The vast majority showed no symptoms.

Moreover, the 2,657 cases were discovered from testing only 12,554 people, suggesting an infection rate of over 20 percent.

Indonesia’s testing rate, despite a mild expansion of capacity over the past month, remains among the lowest in the world. Ranked 162nd, according to website Worldometer, it conducts only 3,789 tests per million people. In the fourth-most populous country in the world, with over 273 million people, this is highly dangerous.

The dramatic rise in figures partly corresponds to increased testing, but the government’s aggressive back-to-work policy has accelerated the spread of the virus across the nation’s 6,000 inhabited islands. Overcrowded urban centres have become viral hotbeds, since the large-scale reopening of workplaces, restaurants, and public transport began early last month.

In response to Thursday’s spike, President Joko Widodo labelled the situation a “red signal” but blamed the spread of the virus on the behaviour of the population. He claimed that transmission would rise if the public did not cooperate with prevention measures.

The government is seeking to divert popular attention from its own track record of mixed messages and blatant misinformation about the virus. COVID-19 taskforce spokesman Achmad Yurianto said the term “new normal,” widely used by the government to justify the return to work, had created complacency among people.

Since the start of the pandemic, politicians, religious leaders and other authority figures have either trivialised the virus or touted quack cures, undermining efforts by health professionals to provide clear information to the public. This has resulted in confusion and even indifference among masses of workers and peasants.

Government ministers have variously advocated bean sprouts and broccoli to avoid contracting the virus. Widodo himself promoted drinking jamu, a traditional herbal drink. Others asserted that the coronavirus cannot survive in tropical climates.

Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo was condemned last week by experts for claiming a necklace made from eucalyptus could help prevent transmission. The necklaces have been developed by the government and will be mass-produced in August.

In February, Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto, a military doctor and radiologist, attributed the country’s lack of COVID-19 cases to religious prayer. After the first confirmed cases in March, however, Widodo admitted that the government was aware of coronavirus infections in Indonesia as early as January, but concealed data to “avoid panic.”

National coronavirus watchdog Kawal COVID-19 showed that, as of Thursday, there were at least 7,360 deaths among suspected COVID-19 patients. These deaths were not counted in the official death toll. As many provincial governments do not release such data, the real number is undoubtedly much higher.

The severe shortage of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests has led to the proliferation of rapid antibody tests, which are known to produce false negatives. But even these cheaper testing kits—at a price ceiling of $US10.49, set by the Health Ministry—are unaffordable for large sections of workers. Kompas reported last week that private hospitals in Central Java were ignoring regulations and charging up to $US35 per test kit.

While East Java has replaced Jakarta as the country’s epicentre, the capital is witnessing a resurgence after lockdown measures were abandoned. Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan announced on Sunday that the city had recorded 404 new cases, its highest one-day spike since the outbreak began. He said the city’s positivity rate had doubled overnight to 10.5 percent, while 66 percent of new cases detected since June were asymptomatic. This indicates that the spread has gone far beyond the official statistics.

Jakarta has officially recorded 658 deaths, but the probable number of deaths reached 2,152 last Monday, according to data from corona.jakarta.go.id. Citing an increase in the city’s burials, Governor Anies told the Sydney Morning Herald he believed an extra 3,000 Jakartans died from the virus in March and April alone, when the official toll was 414.

In addition to the military academy in Bandung, clusters are appearing across West Java province. A factory in Cikarang city’s industrial zone, run by consumer goods giant PT Unilever Indonesia, was forced to close its tea-based beverages plant on June 26 after workers confirmed positive. In a workplace of just 265 employees, 21 had contracted the virus.

Throughout the reopening, the government taskforce has downplayed the transmission through factories, offices and other workplaces, relying on the state’s chronic lack of testing.

In his daily briefings, spokesman Yurianto has heralded many of the country’s 34 provinces as “green zones,” with no or minimal infection rates. On June 29, he said 13 provinces had reported zero case in a single day. These provinces, however, have the lowest testing rates, some as low as 94 tests per million people.

Professor Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist at the University of Indonesia, urged the government to double or triple the rate of PCR tests and abandon rapid tests altogether. He said that if the required funding is not quickly invested in testing and healthcare, the pandemic could soon accelerate to 4,000 new cases a day.

From the beginning, the Widodo administration’s priority has been to address the pandemic’s economic impact, at the expense of public health. The pro-business interests driving the country’s early reopening are evident in the government’s plans to restart the tourism industry, a huge source of corporate revenue.

The Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry will soon publish a handbook to guide the sector on how to do business in the “new normal era.” Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan last week promoted the development of “tourism villages” around Lake Toba on Sumatra island, reassuring executives and investors that “the pandemic is not an obstacle for us to go ahead.”

Authorities on the resort island of Bali began lifting limits last Thursday, allowing residents and tourists to resume public activities. The island will open to domestic arrivals on July 31 and foreign arrivals in September.

Dr I Gusti Agung Ngurah Anom, chairman of Indonesia Doctors Association in Bali’s capital Denpasar, expressed concern over the resumption of flights, referring to the island’s rising case numbers and already overwhelmed healthcare facilities. Balinese medical staff continue to work flat out, without removing protective clothing during eight-hour shifts. “We almost don’t have time to drink or to pee, some wear Pampers [nappies],” Dr Ngurah said.

Washington renews covert campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure

Jean Shaoul

There have been a series of mysterious explosions and fires in Iran over the last weeks. The most serious bear the hallmarks of an attempt by US and Israel’s intelligence services to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme.

It is part of Washington’s broader campaign aimed at exerting maximum pressure on the country, to cripple its economy and intimidate and starve its people in the hope of effecting regime change and consolidating US control of the resource-rich Middle East.

By far the most important was the July 2 fire at Iran’s main nuclear-fuel production site at Natanz, 300 miles south of the capital Tehran, that caused extensive damage to the factory. It took place in workshops and laboratories assembling and testing newly developed centrifuges, known as IR-8, to enrich uranium.

Last November, Iran resumed uranium enrichment at its underground Fordow facility, in the presence of UN inspectors, and confirmed that it was going ahead with a tenfold increase in its enriched uranium production at Natanz. Tehran said it would reverse these steps if Europe offered a way of avoiding US sanctions that, coupled with secondary sanctions on countries trading with Iran, were imposed after US President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018 from the 2015 nuclear deal, and that were preventing its oil exports.

Behrouz Kamalyandi, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation spokesman, said the fire had caused significant damage that could “slow down the development and production of advanced centrifuges in the medium term.”

“Iran will replace the damaged building with a bigger one with more advanced equipment,” he added.

Iran’s National Security Council (NSC) warned that it would retaliate against any country conducting cyberattacks on its nuclear sites, after three Iranian officials said the blast at Natanz was caused by cyber sabotage. The Iranian media pointed the finger of blame at the US and Israel, saying that Israeli social media accounts had claimed that Israel was behind the incident.

According to the New York Times, which cited unnamed senior intelligence sources, the explosion was not the result of a cyber-attack, but a bomb smuggled into the site, implying extensive knowledge, contacts and infrastructure. Israel’s former Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman made it clear that he thought the Times ’s senior Israeli intelligence official meant Yossi Cohen, the Mossad chief.

According to DEBKAfile, which has close links to the Israeli military-intelligence establishment, the targets selected imply “a joint Israel-US-Saudi operation—possibly through local proxies—is likely ongoing against Iran.”

The BBC reported that it had received a message sent to its Persian service before news of the incident became public from an unknown group calling itself the “Cheetahs of the Homeland,” claiming responsibility for the Natanz attack. In a video, the group said that its members included “soldiers from the heart of regime’s security organisations” who wanted to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

WikiLeaks’ release of US State Department cables in 2007 indicated that Mossad had planned to use its established links with disaffected minority groups in Iran—Baluchi, Azeri and Kurdish minorities, including Islamist groups—to delay Iran’s nuclear project.

Israel has a long record of covert operations against Iran that serve to give the US deniability. In 2010, the United States and Israel jointly developed and employed the “Stuxnet” computer worm to destroy about 1,000 of Iran’s 5,000 centrifuges operating at Natanz. In 2011, there were a series of unexplained explosions at Iranian military sites that killed dozens of people, including a senior general in charge of developing long-range missiles and responsible for liaison with Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Mossad organised the assassination of five top scientists working on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to answer a question on the Natanz explosion at Thursday’s press conference, while Defence Minister Benny Gantz said that Israel was not necessarily behind every incident in the region, a formulation widely construed as confirming Israeli involvement.

The blast at Natanz followed a June 26 explosion at a factory producing liquid fuel for ballistic missiles in Khojir, close to Parchin, east of Tehran, and a fire at power plant in Shiraz that caused an outage in the city, as well as an explosion at a medical clinic in Tehran on June 30 that killed 19 people.

Since the explosion in Natanz, there have been a large fire in Shiraz and an explosion and fire at power plant in Ahwaz, in Khuzestan, home to the country’s largest oil fields. This was followed by a chlorine gas leak at the Karoun petrochemical plant in Mahshahr and most recently explosions in the cities of Garmdareh and Qods.

Washington’s sanctions on Iran have shattered the country’s economy and blocked access to critical food, pharmaceutical and industrial supplies, making it more difficult for Iran to respond to the pandemic that has infected more than 250,000 people and caused nearly 13,000 deaths, the highest number in the Middle East.

Oil production fell to 1.9 million barrels per day in June, nearly half that in 2018 and the lowest level since 1981 after the start of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, while its oil storage facilities are reported to be full. Last month, its currency fell by about 13 percent against the dollar, fueling the already high inflation that has decimated living standards. Iran’s attempt to secure a $5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund was vetoed by the Trump administration.

Tehran has sought to evade the sanctions, dispatching several oil tankers to Venezuela, which has also been sanctioned by Washington. Last month, both Iran and Venezuela reported that Iran would send regular fuel deliveries. Tehran is also close to ratifying a 25-year deal with China, the Sino-Iranian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which was approved by President Hassan Rouhani in June in a bid to mitigate the impact of US sanctions.

Under the deal, China will invest $400 billion in Iran’s oil, gas and transport sectors, with Beijing getting a 32 percent discount on crude purchases along with two-year payment breaks. It will also grant China a significant stake in other projects ranging from security and telecom infrastructure to health and tourism. Crucially, it will permit China to dispatch up to 5,000 troops to protect its interests in Iran as well as significant control over Iranian islands in the country’s southern business hubs.

The US has ramped up the pressure on Iran since the start of 2020, beginning with Washington’s drone assassination at Baghdad’s international airport on January 3 of General Qassem Soleimani, one of the most senior officials in the Iranian government, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, leader of Kataib Hezbollah and deputy commander of the Popular Mobilisation Forces, part of Iraq’s armed forces.

Last week, Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial and arbitrary killings, in a special report examining the legality of armed drones and the Soleimani killing, described the US raid that killed Soleimani as “unlawful.”

The Trump administration has also stepped up its military provocations against Iran in the Persian Gulf with the deployment of a carrier strike group led by the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower in the North Arabian Sea, within easy striking distance of Iran. This comes atop Trump’s April tweet that he had told the US Navy to “shoot down and destroy” Iranian gunboats that “harass” US ships.

The US is also exerting “maximum pressure” on Tehran’s political allies in Iraq and Lebanon, while there have been several Israeli strikes on Iranian and allied targets in Syria. Washington’s attempts to redraw the political map of the entire Middle East threaten not only region-wide conflict, but the involvement of the nuclear powers it is trying to exclude from this area of vital geostrategic concern, Russia, and China.

Duda wins Polish presidential election after campaign attacking Jews, LGBTQ rights and Germans

Clara Weiss

The incumbent Polish president Andrzej Duda of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has won the second round of the presidential elections on Sunday. According to unofficial results, Duda received 51.52 percent of the votes. His rival of the liberal Civic Platform (PO), Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, received 48.79 percent.

Duda and his wife with US president Donald Trump and Melania Trump.

With 67.9 percent, it was the second-highest turnout for a presidential election since 1989. In several places, voter turnout was at a record high. Compared to the 2015 election, Duda was able to increase his votes by 1.78 million. Trzaskowski won in most urban areas, but Duda dominated in the eastern part of the country and in the rural areas, where the influence of the Catholic Church is paramount.

The elections took place under conditions of a recession that is set to lead to contraction of Poland’s GDP by at least 4.2 percent this year. The World Bank estimates that the eurozone, which is Poland’s most important economic market, is expected to contract by over 9.1 percent. Over one million people are now unemployed, with hundreds of thousands having lost their jobs because of the coronavirus crisis.

Despite very limited testing, the country records hundreds of new coronavirus infections every day. The mining region of Silesia has been by far the most affected by the pandemic because the government has left the mines open even amid a national lockdown. PiS has been thrown into a serious crisis and was forced to postpone the election from May to June in order to avoid the fall of the government. In the first round of the election two weeks ago, Duda had failed to win an absolute majority and many polls saw Trzaskowski as the likely winner of the election.

The fact that even under these conditions, and after years of relentless promotion of far-right forces and assaults on democratic rights, PiS was able to carry the day, is above all the result of the policies of the liberal opposition. Avoiding any serious discussion of the far-right policies and war preparations of PiS, the opposition consciously chosen to black out all major social and political questions concerning workers from the campaign.

Throughout the campaign, Duda and Jarosław Kaczyński, the de facto head of PiS, repeatedly alleged that Berlin was interfering in the elections. At one of his last rallies, Duda stated that there had been “a German attack in these elections. The Germans want to choose the president in Poland? I will not allow this!”

Duda’s main rival, Trzaskowski, speaks for sections of the Polish ruling class that seek to maintain close ties with Germany, Poland’s largest trading partner, fearing that an exclusive reliance on US imperialism will be unsustainable and harmful for Poland’s foreign policy interests. Trzaskowski has worked closely with Donald Tusk, one of the main leaders of the liberal opposition, who has been an important ally of German chancellor Angela Merkel in the EU.

There is little question that the campaign by the PiS was conducted with the approval, if not direct involvement, of the White House. Days before the first round of the election, Duda had traveled to Washington as the first guest to be received by the White House since the lockdown in the US. In a move unprecedented for a US president amid an election in the EU, Trump effectively endorsed Duda’s campaign, stating that he was doing a “terrific job.”

Trump also announced that many of the troops that he is now pulling out of Germany will be stationed in Poland. The already significant tensions between German and US imperialism have been further heightened in recent months, with Germany exploiting the crisis in the US amid the pandemic, as a pretext to escalate its own remilitarization. The outcome of the Polish election is set to significantly exacerbate these geopolitical tensions, and further deepen the political crisis of the Polish ruling class.

In addition to promoting anti-German sentiments, the PiS made a conscious decision to place appeals to anti-Semitism and homophobia at the center of Duda’s reelection bid. The state-owned TVP broadcaster, which is effectively controlled by the PiS, has aired reports suggesting that Trzaskowski was working for a “powerful foreign lobby” and “rich groups who want to rule the world,” and linked him to the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, who is one of the main targets of the anti-Semitic right in Eastern Europe. In another broadcast, Trzaskowski was denounced as hostile to Catholics and a believer in the “god of Spinoza” whom TVP described as a “Jewish philosopher.”

Polish state television also ran several features suggesting that Trzaskowski was preparing to sell out the country to “Jewish interests” because he had cautiously suggested that Jewish organizations should be “talked to” in the ongoing dispute over the restitution of Jewish property that had been plundered by the Nazis and Polish collaborators during German occupation of Poland in World War II. TVP stated that satisfying “Jewish claims” would stop “the stream of money that is flowing from the state budget into the pockets of Polish families.”

Before the war, Poland was home to the world’s largest Jewish community of almost 3.5 million; 90 percent of them were murdered during the Holocaust. While the Nazis bear primary responsibility for this genocide, they were aided by local fascist and nationalist forces across Eastern and southeastern Europe. Anti-Jewish pogroms by Polish nationalists occurred both during and after the war.

Just three days before Sunday’s election, Jarosław Kaczyński doubled-down on TVP’s anti-Semitic campaign in an interview with the far-right Catholic Radio Station Radio Maria. In the interview, Kaczyński said that “Only someone without a Polish soul, a Polish heart and a Polish mind could say something like that. Mr. Trzaskowski clearly doesn’t have them, seeing as he says that this [restitution of Jewish property] is open to discussion.”

Duda also denounced rights for LGBT as an “ideology” that was more dangerous than “communism” and proposed a constitutional amendment that would bar same-sex couples from adopting children.

Over the past years, the PiS government has systematically encouraged anti-Semitic sentiments. In 2018, president Duda signed a bill into law that bans discussion of Polish anti-Semitism and collaboration in the Holocaust. Government representatives have demonstratively participated in marches of the far-right. However, such open appeals to anti-Semitism had as yet not been such a central part of election campaigns.

In a staggering expression of political cowardice and spinelessness, Trzaskowski made virtually no effort to denounce the blatant anti-Semitism of the PiS. In response to Kaczyński’s attacks broadcast over Radio Maria, Trzaskowski insisted on Twitter that he had “a Polish soul” and “a Polish heart,” and that the opposition would not let the PiS take away its “right to Polish patriotism.” He did not mention the term anti-Semitism.

While avoiding any serious criticism and even discussion of the ever more open appeals to fascist forces by the PiS, Trzaskowski and the liberal opposition also shunned any mention of the burning social crisis that has significantly deepened in recent months. In the eyes of Polish workers, many of whom have been pushed to the brink of financial ruin in recent months, the PO stands above all for policies of austerity. Trzaskowski himself has in the past advocated for the raising of the retirement age. His campaign was focused almost exclusively on appealing to layers of the upper middle class, emphasizing an orientation to the EU and issues like LGBTQ rights.

Underlying this political strategy is the fact that the opposition’s main fear is not the shift toward authoritarianism and the strengthening of fascist forces in Poland under the PiS, but an intervention of the working class in political life. When a national strike by over 300,000 Polish teachers shook the PiS government in the late spring of 2019, the PO-aligned teachers’ unions made every effort to quickly shut it down, thus helping stabilize the PiS government in one of its most severe crises. Moreover, just like the PiS, the PO stands for an escalation of the war preparations against Russia.

The outcome of the elections is a stark warning to workers internationally. The threat of fascism, dictatorship and war can only be countered through the intervention by the working class on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program.

Seventeen states and tens of universities file lawsuits against ICE attack on international students

Sam Dalton

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic across the US, on March 13, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued an exemption to its requirement that international students studying in the US on F-1 visas must attend classes in person. At that time, the government said the arrangement was “in effect for the duration of the emergency.” However, on July 6, ICE made an abrupt announcement reversing the exemption. The change in policy means that over 900,000 international students attending American colleges this fall will be required to take at least one in-person class to remain in the US.

The announcement was made last week, just as the pandemic was hitting record numbers of cases in the US, over 375,000 coronavirus cases in a single week, more than the number of cases reported in February, March and the first week of April combined.

The measure is part of a broader attempt to force universities and grade schools to fully reopen for the fall semester. The ICE rule reversion came the same day Trump tweeted, “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” The rule is also seen as an opportunity for Trump to appeal to his fascistic base by whipping up a hostile anti-immigrant environment.

A number of lawsuits have been filed against the ruling. One filed jointly by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has received the support of over 50 amicus briefs from other universities. An initial decision by the judge is expected on Wednesday, July 15. Another suit has been filed by the University of California system, which enrolls over 40,000 international students. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has also filed a lawsuit on behalf of California State University and the California Community Colleges system.

On July 13, seventeen mostly Democratic-controlled states and the District of Columbia joined the universities in suing the Trump administration. In response to this lawsuit, the government defended its action on the basis of national security concerns, stating, “A solely online program of study provides a nonimmigrant student with enormous flexibility to be present anywhere in the United States for up to an entire academic term, whether that location has been reported to the government, which raises significant national security concerns.” The invocation of “national security concerns” is completely baseless. Rather, it is part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to stoke extreme nationalism by targeting immigrants and refugees.

The Harvard and MIT lawsuit provides no safeguard against future attacks on international students. It seeks only a temporary restraining order on ICE’s July 6 rule, an order setting aside the rule and a declaration that the rule is unlawful. Nowhere in the lawsuit are future guarantees for international students’ residency requested by the universities. Even if the judge grants every request, the short- and long-term future of international students in the US remains perilous.

The lawsuits undertaken by the coalition of mostly Democratic-controlled states and the capital territory are perhaps even more blatant in their disregard for the democratic rights of international students. Commenting on his decision to back the lawsuit, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal derided the Trump administration for using “international students and the tuition they pay as leverage [to return to in-person classes].”

The Democratic-led lawsuit’s notion that the rights of international students should be defended on the basis of the tuition they pay is particularly foul. It detracts from the fact that many international students are from working class and lower-middle class backgrounds who attend colleges in the US on scholarships or through years of saving and sacrifice by their parents. Indeed, international students face food insecurity at a higher rate than their American counterparts.

The harsh reality is that if the money can be sourced elsewhere or if state contracts are at risk, then these universities will have no qualms sending international students on their merry way.

The states’ lawsuit also represents the interests of a section of the ruling class who are concerned about the damage the ICE ruling will cause American imperialism’s foreign policy interests. As of last year, 62 of the world’s heads of state had spent a portion of their higher education in the US.

There is also no doubt a deep concern among Democratic Party officials of a massive backlash by students and workers against this measure which threatens to break out of the confines of the state-sanctioned opposition. Already dozens of petitions have been signed by thousands of students, American and international alike, who understand that the move represents an attack on democratic rights more broadly.

Both the anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration and the back-to-work campaign have been facilitated and supported by the Democratic Party.

Just last month, the Supreme Court suspended habeas corpus and due process rights for asylum seekers. The darling of the “progressive” wing of the Democratic party, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, voted in favor of the reactionary ruling. This is the logical conclusion of Obama-era immigration policies, which saw record numbers of migrant deportations.

Other measures taken in the past two months include the realization of long-term policy goals of the right wing of the Trump administration, particularly fascistic ex-adviser Stephen Miller. These include the crackdown on H-1B work visas and the vicious reprisals against Chinese graduate students. Indeed, over 370,000 Chinese students on F-1 visas face deportation following the ICE ruling.

Following Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, the US was rocked by mass protests in a number of major cities against his xenophobic and nationalistic policies. The role of the Democratic Party has been to nullify that anger with token resistance, or, in many cases, to actively participate in the crackdown. Their actions have given the Trump administration carte blanche to carry out widespread attacks against asylum seekers, foreign workers and international students alike.

The lawsuits filed by the mostly Democratic-controlled states and state-aligned university administrations will not buck this trend. International students should not have any illusions in these or any future legal actions. As anti-immigrant measures are enforced at an ever greater pace by all sections of the American ruling class, it will ultimately be in the arena of a political struggle of the working class armed with a socialist perspective that the right to equal and high-quality education regardless of nationality will be secured for all.

Pandemic and Tory government measures having brutal impact on London’s disadvantaged young people

Harvey Thompson & Charlotte Salthill

The Childhood Trust report, “Children in Lockdown—The Consequences of the Coronavirus Crisis for Children Living in Poverty,” exposes the disproportionate impact of the pandemic and government policies on disadvantaged children and youth in London.

The authors engaged directly with children and families living in poverty. They note, “Families who were already enduring hard, challenging lives have had to survive lockdown in the most appalling circumstances. For children in poverty, the crisis has multiplied the impact of the adversities they endure such as hunger, fear, isolation and stigma.”

Children in Lockdown—The Consequences of the Coronavirus Crisis for Children Living in Poverty

Between 2010/2011 and 2017/2018, funding for local authority services for children fell by £3 billion. During this decade of austerity, “a network of charities, community organisations and volunteers are now often the only means of support available for disadvantaged children.” The COVID-19 pandemic has placed these already hopelessly inadequate organisations under existential threat.

The report is divided into six sections, uncovering different aspects of the social crisis for the capital’s youth that have been exacerbated during the pandemic. London, as a highly socially polarised conurbation, shares these features with urban centres around the UK and internationally.

Childhood hunger during the pandemic is addressed in the section Hunger and Food Insecurity, which states: “Research suggests that around 2 million children have now directly experienced hunger since March 23, beyond the 1.3 million children that are entitled to free school meals before the start of the pandemic.”

The lack of adequate governmental provision during the closure of schools has led to an increase of food deprivation. “For many disadvantaged children and young adults, the free meal they could receive at school was their only hot meal of the day. Without access to this, they are facing hunger and malnutrition. Moreover, families dealing with unemployment as a result of the coronavirus recession are struggling to make up for this loss.”

Popular opposition forced the government to extend the free school meals scheme through the summer, lifting the threat of malnutrition hanging over the heads of 1.3 million children. The report, however, criticises the government voucher system, which was supposed to replace school meals following school closures, as being “slow and flawed.” Also cited is a recent Human Rights Watch statement calling the UK government’s approach a violation of children and young adults’ right to food.

Under the section “Homelessness and Temporary Housing Risks,” the study states that homelessness among youth is often hidden, “as they are less likely to be ‘rough sleepers’ but still experience shelter insecurity. They are more likely to be staying with friends or family, in shelters, bed and breakfast lodging, or sofa-surfing.” This instability puts them more at risk as it is difficult to socially distance, “making these children and young adults more susceptible to the virus, especially for those who have diabetes, asthma, epilepsy, anxiety and/or depression.”

A recent study that appeared in the Lancet, “Impacts of COVID-19 on vulnerable children in temporary accommodation in the UK,” highlighted problems facing families living in temporary housing as a result of the pandemic and the government response to it. These include:

• Overcrowding due to limited space, shared kitchens, and toilet facilities, making self-isolation impossible.
• Children often have inadequate space to crawl or play and no access to fresh air.
• No face-to-face contact with general practitioners and health services, including health visitors.
• Handwashing and hygiene are problematic due to minimal access to soap, water, disinfectants, and bathrooms.

The section “Emotional and Physical Abuse” details how lockdown conditions of youngsters forced to spend much of their time indoors, often in cramped conditions, has increased “the opportunity for them to witness domestic abuse and/or endure emotional or physical abuse at the hands of their family members.”

Dealing with “Mental Health Concerns,” the report found that the COVID-19 crisis was having “a significant impact on the mental health of children and young people. They are worried about contracting the virus, spreading it to their family members, and losing loved ones.”

The report cites a survey conducted in the first week of the UK lockdown by mental health charity Young Minds regarding the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of children and their ability to access support: “The most pressing areas of concern for children and young adults was relating to worries about their family’s health, the closure of schools, a loss of routine, a loss of social connection and anxieties about their future.” Loneliness and mental health problems can predict “future mental health problems up to 9 years later,” it noted.

Also cited are the “COVID-19 Social Studies” conducted by University College London each week of lockdown to measure young people’s “social and psychological experiences during the pandemic.” Over 60,000 participated in the studies and the findings for 18- to 29-year-olds included:

• 2 out of 3 are worried about a future recession.
• 1 out of 2 are worried about unemployment levels rising.
• Only 7 percent feel fully in control of their future plans.

The section on “Educational Learning Loss” notes that “the educational attainment gap defined by class and economic status was already a significant challenge before coronavirus.” Citing research by the Education Endowment Foundation, the study confirmed that children and young people who are eligible for free school meals are consistently falling behind their counterparts. The attainment level gap often begins—or is accelerated—on entry to school at age 5 years, and this gap “grows wider at every following stage of education.”

These findings underline the significantly lower educational outcomes of young carers, who tend to have higher rates of absenteeism, lower grades and an inability to gain employment.

Speaking directly to the educational experience of most young people during lockdown, the report states that “students from disadvantaged backgrounds have significantly fewer—if any—resources including limited access to technology and internet connection, restricted supervision or guidance over educational activities, and an unstable working environment.”

Referring to a recent report from The Sutton Trust, which examined discrepancies related to the transition to “online learning,” it found that “pupils from middle class homes were much more likely to participate in online lessons (30 percent), compared to working class pupils (16 percent). In private schools, 51 percent of primary and 57 percent of secondary students were able to access online lessons every day, more than twice as likely as their counterparts in state schools.”

While almost half of middle-class parents reported confidence in supporting their children with their schooling during lockdown, only 37 percent of working-class parents did so.

As a result of the policies of the present and previous governments, “between the years of 2010 and 2020, there have been significant cuts to public spending, especially in areas where the need is highest and conditions are generally worse.”

Ultimately, the report is an appeal to the very government and corporations responsible for the increased suffering, before and during the lockdown, of not just the London’s youth but throughout the UK. The Childhood Trust funds a network of more than 200 child poverty charities in London. Its stated intention is to raise money from “London’s corporate sector, trusts, philanthropists and other donors.”

COVID-19 outbreaks escalate across England

Thomas Scripps

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted this weekend, “Each week there are over a hundred local actions taken [in response to coronavirus outbreaks] across the country—some of these will make the news, but many more are swiftly and silently dealt with.”

This statement made to the Telegraph is a marked increase on previously reported figures. The outbreaks are a confirmation that the UK’s epidemic, never fully suppressed, is again spreading out of control.

In Sheffield, an outbreak at a warehouse run by Clipper for fashion retailer Boohoo has infected at least 25 workers. Many more had symptoms but were never tested. Breaking the story at the weekend, the Sunday Times reported the words of a 51-year-old father of two who contracted the virus: “I caught it from the warehouse. There’s no way I should have been working. How is distributing cheap women’s fashion essential?”

He explained how he was forced to work 12-hour shifts throughout April and May, saying, “I needed to put food on the table for my kids.” His wife and son have now both tested positive for COVID-19. Another employee told the Times, “I watched workers from multiple households travelling to the warehouse in packed cars. It saves money.”

As in all such cases, workers have been raising safety concerns for months, but have been smothered by the continued inaction of government agencies and local politicians. On March 26, a video was circulated on social media showing warehouse employees working close to each other, in clear breach of social distancing guidelines. Labour MP for Sheffield South East, Clive Betts, has received complaints from at least 50 different workers at the site. On March 31, eight days into the national lockdown, one wrote to him, “The warehouse is completely full, people are virtually on top of each other with nothing put in place for social distancing, no PPE [personal protective equipment] whatsoever. It’s a breeding ground for the virus and needs closing down ASAP!”

Betts did nothing other than to write to Boohoo. Between April and June, Sheffield’s Labour council and Public Health England (PHE) investigated the warehouse and found it had taken “reasonable steps” to ensure workers’ safety. Following the Times investigation, Clipper and Boohoo were able to respond, “The warehouse has been inspected a number of times by Public Health England and Sheffield City Council and has been approved each time.”

Echoing the excuse of corporations the world over, Sheffield Council’s director of public health, Greg Fell, said virus transmission was more likely to have occurred “within households in the local community.” He did not elaborate on the implications of this statement for the “local community,” nor what geographical location he was referring to.

This follows a spike of coronavirus cases in Leicester two weeks ago, forcing a local lockdown of the city, which has been widely linked to conditions in unsafe garment sweatshops manufacturing primarily for Boohoo.

Another major outbreak was reported over the weekend on Mathon Farm in Herefordshire, run by vegetable producers AS Green and Co—which supplies major supermarket chains like Tesco, Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Asda and M&S. So far, 74 of the farm’s picking and packing workers have tested positive for COVID-19, and 200 are being required to self-isolate.

A screenshot from the A S and Green Co website showing the small bunkhouses on site and the wording "Participants are expected to share accommodation."

The seasonal employees, predominantly from Eastern Europe, live in small bunkhouses on site during the harvest season. The World Socialist Web Site warned in May, when Prince Charles was wheeled out to encourage furloughed and unemployed workers to “Pick for Britain” during the summer harvest, “In the middle of a pandemic, these living conditions are clearly dangerous.”

Two workers, Leak Johnson and Brandon Burridge, who joined the farm under the Pick for Britain scheme and left on July 2 told the BBC yesterday that they had been required to share a toilet with 60 other people. Their induction to the site had been carried out with 15 other people all sitting on shared benches. Johnson added, “There was nothing about hand sanitiser, we weren’t given any. We were not allowed to wear gloves.” Neither was contacted about the outbreak at the farm and they were barred from their team’s WhatsApp group for asking questions.

In Wakefield, West Yorkshire, an outbreak at Urban House asylum centre has put over 200 asylum seekers in quarantine for two weeks. In March, the Independent reported that residents at Urban House were being forced to eat in crowded communal spaces. Mears Group, who run the facility, claimed to have addressed the issue, but a photo was released on April 28 showing residents still being required to eat meals less than a metre from each other.

Majid, an Iranian asylum seeker at Urban House, told the Independent, “Everyone is full of fear, stress and anxiety. We’re talking about life or death. In here, there are more than 200 people all living together all day, sharing toilets and eating areas. There is no respect for anyone. There is no respect for life… There is no social distancing in here. Some people are sharing rooms with strangers. To say we are social distancing is just a joke.”

A Mears spokesperson said Wakefield Labour council’s director of public health inspected the site on April 7 and approved its continued operation.

Last Wednesday, a coronavirus outbreak forced Hillingdon Hospital in West London to close its emergency department and tell 70 workers to self-isolate. The UK has an appalling record on health and social care worker safety. A report released by Amnesty International yesterday finds 540 have died with COVID-19. The figure only includes data from England and Wales (not Scotland and Northern Ireland), but still puts the UK second worst of the 79 countries monitored by Amnesty—behind Russia with 545.

Coming on the back of a series of significant outbreaks in food processing factories, these events make clear that the Conservative government has created the conditions for a widespread resurgence of the virus.

While the average number of daily new infections and fatalities has been declining for several weeks, reflecting the impact of the national lockdown, it has now begun to level off and, by some measures, rise again. These trends will make a mark on hospitalisation and death rates in the coming weeks. Even over the last week, the UK still saw 84 COVID-19 deaths a day on average—higher than any other country in Europe besides Russia.

Recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) data “suggest the percentage testing positive has decreased over time since 27 April, and this downward trend appears to have now leveled off.” The ZOE COVID-19 symptom tracker app, with close to 4 million users, estimates the number of people with symptoms has begun to increase since July 6. The UK’s three-day rolling average of new cases shows the same trend, according to figures from the European Centre for Disease Control, reported by Our World in Data. Government statistics show the R value has increased from a range of 0.7-0.9, to 0.8-1 nationally, and up to 0.7-1.1 in the South West.

As it stands, Independent SAGE, a group of eminent scientists critical of the government’s handling of the lockdown, estimate between 20,000 and 25,000 new people are being infected each week in England alone—between 3,000 and 3,500 a day.

A leaked government document ranking the 20 currently worst-affected councils in England shows Bradford, Kirklees and Sheffield are all considered in need of “enhanced government support.” Leicester, currently under local lockdown, has 5.7 percent of tests coming back positive (on a seven-day rolling average); Kirklees has 5 percent and Bradford 4.3 percent—Blackburn with Darwen is also relatively high, at 4.9 percent, and listed as an area of “concern” along with five other localities.

If the catastrophe of a renewed surge of the coronavirus is to be averted, workers must arm themselves with the latest scientific and medical knowledge and with a political programme to fight for safe and secure employment. The Labour Party and the trade unions have shown themselves utterly hostile to any such fight. It must be taken up by rank-and-file workplace and neighbourhood committees as part of an international struggle for socialism.

The politics of the capitalist debt economy

Nick Beams

As workers around the world confront the greatest threat to their jobs and living standards since the Great Depression, amid moves by governments to withdraw the very limited social support they have provided to meet the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial oligarchy has a very clear agenda.

All the economic forces of the state—of both governments and central banks—must be mobilised to ensure its continued accumulation of wealth through the provision of endless supplies of money to boost share prices and other financial assets.

This was set out most clearly in a note issued earlier this month by JPMorgan Chase, reported by Bloomberg. The note said that extremely loose monetary policy—the maintenance of ultra-low interest rates and massive purchases of debt by central banks—would have to be continued for a long time.

“More debt, more liquidity, more asset reflation” was the bank’s conclusion. According to one of its leading strategists, Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, there will be a $16 trillion increase in debt this year, taking the total amount of private and government debt in the global financial system to $200 trillion by the end of the year.

So far this year, top-rated US corporations have issued almost as much debt as they did in the whole of 2019. The total raised by investment grade firms is just $27 billion less than the $1.15 trillion they issued over the course of 2019, putting them on course to exceed the record debt issuance of $1.37 trillion in 2017.

Markets froze at the end of February and in the first weeks of March. But after the intervention by the US Federal Reserve, which stepped in to act as the backstop for the entire financial system by purchasing assets ranging from government bonds to commercial paper, April was the biggest month ever for new corporate bond sales.

In part, this is the result of an effort by major corporations to insulate themselves from the effects of the pandemic. But this is by no means the only motivation. They are also taking advantage of the ultra-cheap money provided by the Fed and its commitment to support the corporate bond market, including the purchase of below investment-grade junk bonds.

The debt binge is not a recent development. In this, as more generally, the pandemic has proved to be an accelerant of trends already underway long before it appeared on the scene.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, would-be reformers of the capitalist economy maintained that because the crisis had been sparked by increasingly risky debt-fueled speculative operations of major banks in the sub-prime mortgage market and elsewhere, there needed to be a deleveraging of the financial system.

The reverse took place. The massive amounts of money provided by the Fed, the European Central Bank and other central banks financed the spread of debt speculation from the banks to the entire financial system, resulting in an historically unprecedented expansion of corporate debt.

This money was not used to finance expansion in productive investment. Rather, it was deployed in various forms of so-called “financial engineering” to boost profits and stock prices. Among the most prominent mechanisms were mergers and acquisitions and stock buybacks.

According to a report in the Financial Times last week, there has been a “relentless build-up in corporate debt in the US, where companies now owe a record $10 trillion—equivalent to 49 percent of economic output.” When other forms of business debt are added in, the newspaper said, “that already extraordinary figure increases to $17 trillion.”

The rise and rise of corporate debt was already causing concern before the onset of the pandemic. Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen drew attention to the increased use of leveraged loans to companies, which, by previous standards, would have been considered highly risky.

In an interview with the Financial Times in October 2018, she warned there had been a “huge deterioration” in the standards of bank lending to corporations that posed “systemic risks.”

One of the key risks associated with these loans, issued to companies with shaky credit ratings, is that they are repackaged into collateralised loan obligations, which are then bought and sold by investors in a process similar to that which occurred in the sub-prime mortgage market.

Yellen attributed the risk to a relaxation of regulations. But, in fact, it was the outcome of the quantitative easing policies pursued by herself and her predecessor Ben Bernanke, and now taken to new heights under the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell.

In the space of less than four months, Powell has overseen the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet from $4 trillion to $7 trillion, with predictions that it could rise to more than $10 trillion. The intervention brought a more than $7 trillion rise in the market capitalisation of Wall Street in just three months.

Other warnings were also issued. At the end of 2019, the International Monetary Fund said that around $19 trillion of corporate debt in the US and seven other countries—some 40 percent of the total—could be vulnerable if there was a “material slowdown” in the world economy, signs of which were already appearing at that time. Today, the world economy is experiencing the sharpest contraction since the 1930s as a result of the pandemic.

There are now two interconnected processes at work in the global economy—the creation of the conditions for a major financial crash and a restructuring of class relations aimed at imposing impoverishment on the working class on massive scale.

The central bankers are seeking to stave off a financial collapse by the provision of still more money. But while they can expand the money supply at the press of a computer button, these actions do not create additional value, and the whole house of cards can collapse overnight. This was seen in mid-March, when markets froze and even highly-rated debt, such as government bonds, could not be sold, signifying that their value was essentially zero.

While Powell has insisted there are “no limits” to the Fed’s actions, endless money printing begins to call into question the stability of the dollar and other major currencies that form the basis of the global financial system.

Financial assets—the prices of which are inflated by the Fed and other central banks—do not in and of themselves represent value. In the final analysis, they are a claim on the surplus value that is extracted from the exploitation of the living labour of the working class.

And herein is the objective source of the other central feature of the present situation—the homicidal return to work drive being imposed by capitalist governments around the world in the interests of the financial oligarchies they represent, even as the pandemic spreads and intensifies.

Value must be pumped back into the mountain of fictitious capital the ruling classes have created to bail themselves out through a “restructuring” of class relations, no matter what the economic or health costs to the producers of all wealth, the working class.

The history of the past decade and more, since the crash of 2008, has demonstrated there is no possibility of reform of this system. Rather, just as austerity was imposed after that crisis, a new round of “restructuring” is now being organised, as evidenced by the push to withdraw even the limited pandemic-related social welfare measures on the grounds that they must not be allowed to become a “disincentive” to work and that so-called “mutual obligations” have to be enforced.

Against this class war “restructuring” the working class must advance is own independent program based on the fight for political power as the first step in the establishment of a socialist economy based on human need and not the dictates of profit.

Trump wages war against science and Dr. Fauci, not coronavirus

Patrick Martin

President Donald Trump has stepped up his war of words against Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 and the leading government expert on the coronavirus pandemic. Trump criticized Fauci during two television interviews last week and then had his White House staff leak a hostile memorandum to the media listing Fauci’s supposed mistakes during the COVID-19 crisis.

Most of the statements listed in the memorandum concerned Fauci’s recommendations on specific public health measures, which changed from month to month depending of the scope of the danger. For example, in the early stages of the pandemic he urged people not to wear masks because there were shortages and he thought the limited supply should go to health care workers first.

It requires a considerable degree of political hubris to raise the accuracy of Fauci’s statements and predictions to defend the biggest liar in modern American history. It is only a few months since the American public witnessed President Trump suggesting that the injection of bleach might be a useful measure to combat the coronavirus, to say nothing of his shilling for discredited “cures” like hydroxychloroquine and his suggestion that the virus would disappear “like a miracle” once the weather turned warm.

This dirty tricks campaign—and it deserves that label, as the memorandum was characterized by the Washington Post and several television networks as similar to the “opposition research” conducted against a rival candidate during an election—is aimed at undermining Fauci’s increasingly blunt criticism of the colossal failure of the Trump administration and various state governments in stemming the pandemic.

Dan Scavino, deputy White House chief of staff for communications, went so far as to place a cartoon on his Facebook page Sunday night depicting Fauci as “Dr. Faucet,” flushing the US economy down the drain, demanding schools remain closed and even (a real grievance for Trump) suggesting that there would be no professional football season this fall because of the coronavirus.

Trump embraces such childish smear tactics, rather than simply firing Fauci, in part because the doctor has extensive job protection under civil service rules and could be removed only by his direct superiors, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and only for cause.

More importantly, firing Fauci, the administration’s only voice on COVID-19 with any credibility with the public, would undoubtedly generate a political backlash against Trump of major proportions. The 79-year-old Fauci has headed the NIAID under six administrations, Republican and Democratic, and clearly continues to serve in a demanding position, long after he could have retired, because of his devotion to public health.

Tensions between Fauci and the White House have been mounting over the past two weeks as the disease expert let it be known that he did not agree with Trump’s claims that there was no connection between the reckless campaign to reopen the US economy and the subsequent surge in coronavirus infections. In congressional testimony, Fauci warned that the country could soon face 100,000 new infections each day—triple the peak rate of April and May.

Fauci has contradicted some of Trump’s more ignorant public statements, such as his assertion that “99 percent” of coronavirus cases are harmless, and his claim that the number of US coronavirus cases is going up because more people are being tested, not because more people are falling ill. He also disagreed with Trump’s claims that the lower death rate of the past two months meant that the virus was weakening or even “going away.” He told one interviewer, “It’s a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death.”

Two interviews last week seem to have brought Fauci to the brink of a public rupture with the White House. In a podcast with the election website FiveThirtyEight.com, Fauci said that “as a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re just not.”

This directly contradicts the incessant claims by Trump that the US response to the coronavirus is an unparalleled success—claims that are ludicrous given that the US leads the world in both deaths and total cases. Fauci went on to say that he could understand why the European Union would continue to ban US citizens from entering, on public health grounds.

In an interview Friday with the Financial Times, Fauci revealed that he had not briefed Trump on the pandemic for at least two months and had not spoken with the president at all since early June. He explained that the White House had blocked most requests for television interviews with him and that his “honesty” was probably the reason.

“I have a reputation, as you probably have figured out, of speaking the truth at all times and not sugar-coating things,” he told the British newspaper. “And that may be one of the reasons why I haven’t been on television very much lately.”

On Monday, after the White House effort to trash his professional reputation over the weekend, Fauci warned that the US hasn’t “even begun to see the end” of the pandemic, although he expressed some optimism about progress in the development of vaccines and potentially therapeutic drug treatments.

Trump responded later Monday, during a brief question-and-answer session with reporters at the White House, by deflecting any discussion of Fauci in particular but reiterating his most absurd and discredited statements about the “great progress” the United States is making against the COVID-19 pandemic.

In response to a reporter who pressed him on his repeated claims that the coronavirus is not actually increasing in the United States, and that the rising number of positive cases is the product of greater testing, Trump replied, “We’re doing great with testing… We’ve done 45 million tests. If we did half that number, we’d have half the cases.”

Even this piece of stupidity was not the crudest statement coming from the Trump administration. That prize goes to Admiral Brett P. Giroir, assistant secretary of health and human services, who was the White House-approved spokesman making the rounds of the Sunday television talk shows. Asked on “Meet the Press” about the White House attack on Fauci, Giroir said, “Dr. Fauci is not 100 percent right, and he also doesn’t necessarily—and he admits that—have the whole national interest in mind… He looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view.”

These are words that should be branded on his backside. Trump, of course, according to the sycophantic admiral, has “the whole national interest in mind.” In other words, he upholds the global position of American imperialism and the profits of the giant corporations, which are being undermined as long as workers cannot be herded back into the factories and other workplaces because of the threat of COVID-19.

As for Dr. Fauci, his “very narrow public health point of view” consists of the sincere desire to save millions of people from a serious illness that means death for hundreds of thousands, if not many more, and significant health consequences even for many of those who are fortunate enough to survive. In a contest between those two outlooks, there is little doubt which would be preferred by the working people who make up the vast majority of the country.

Coronavirus cases, deaths soar in Mexico and across Latin America

Bryan Dyne

Mexico has now surpassed Italy in its number of known COVID-19 deaths, which currently stand at just over 35,000, making the country’s pandemic outbreak the fourth deadliest in the world after the United States, Brazil and the United Kingdom. Mexico now also reports just under 300,000 total coronavirus cases, and its pandemic curve mirrors those across Central and South America, a region which accounts for about a quarter of all cases and deaths internationally.

To cope with its surging case rate and death toll, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has announced that any household with one confirmed case of the virus will be required to stay home for at least 15 days, with the government providing food and supplies. The city has also been forced to enforce laws limiting the length of time a body can be buried to allow the dead in public cemeteries to be exhumed, making space for those who died from the pandemic. Older bodies are being cremated and replaced with a new one.

In contrast to the dire situation across the country, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) claimed Sunday, “The bottom line is that the pandemic is on the downside, that it is losing intensity.” His remarks, which echo the numerous falsehoods uttered by US President Donald Trump about the pandemic, are an attempt to justify the economic reopening his administration has spearheaded even as the actual case and death numbers have continued to increase.

AMLO’s pandemic policies have been criticized by former health officials. Salomón Chertorivski, who served as health minister from 2011–2012, argued against reopening the economy before cases and deaths were steadily decreasing. “There are three fundamental variables: a reduction in the last 14 days in the numbers of contagions, reduction in recent days in the number of deaths, and reduction in the number of hospitalized people,” Chertorivski told the Mexican newspaper Reforma. “None of those three parameters were achieved.”

Worldwide, the number of coronavirus cases reported to public health authorities has doubled in the past six weeks, bringing the total number to 13.2 million. One million of these were reported in the past five days alone. During those same five days, another 23,000 people died from COVID-19, bringing the confirmed death toll above 574,000.

As has been noted by the World Health Organization, mortality from the infection is relatively stable but threatening to rise. The 7-day moving average of daily world deaths is now just below 5,000, higher than records since May 13. At yesterday’s press briefing WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that “there is a lot to be concerned about.”

Dr. Tedros was also more blunt than usual in his contrast of the countries which were “alert and aware” of the dangers of the pandemic, those which “are opening up their societies on a data-driven, step-by-step basis, with a comprehensive public health approach” and countries which are “seeing dangerous increases in cases, and hospital wards filling up again” because “proven measures to reduce risk” were “not implemented or followed.”

While WHO officials rarely name names, these last comments are clearly aimed at countries including Mexico, Brazil and the United States. Dr. Tedros noted, “The epicenter of the virus remains in the Americas, where more than 50% of the world’s cases have been recorded.” This could not have been said even two months ago, when Mexico reported only 40,000 cases, about thirteen percent of its current case count. They are among the “many countries … headed in the wrong direction.”

Mexico, along with Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Bolivia, are in what Dr. Tedros called the “intense transmission phase of their outbreak.” Brazil has just under 1.9 million cases and nearly 73,000 deaths, values which have doubled over the past month. Colombia is worse off, having doubled its cases and deaths to 318,000 and 5,400, respectively, in the past two and a half weeks. Bolivia and Argentina have had similarly sharp increases in their outbreaks.

These countries also provide insight into the seeming contradiction that, globally, cases are increasing while deaths have remained relatively constant.

The pandemic is also spreading rapidly in many Central American and Caribbean countries. Panama, for example, has more cases per capita than the United States, at 45,633, along with 909 deaths. The Dominican Republic has recorded more than 45,000 cases and 903 deaths, doubled from a month ago. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, targets of US imperialism for decades, have collectively suffered more than 67,000 cases and 2,200 deaths.

Moreover, these are countries with very little testing, meaning that the true extent and toll of the pandemic is likely vastly undercounted. In Guatemala, 46 percent of tests have come back positive, indicating that the country’s outbreak is spiraling out of control and that spread of the disease is not really known. In Mexico, there are reports of families not getting sick loved ones tested because the procedure has been generally to cremate those who have died from the pandemic, rather than bury them.

At yesterday’s WHO press briefing, Dr. Michael Ryan gave a sobering assessment of the state of the pandemic. “I’ve said here before, we need to learn to live with the virus. Expecting we will eradicate this virus in the coming months is unrealistic.”

He also warned about being optimistic about developing a vaccine in lieu of basic public health measures. “Believing that magically we will get a perfect vaccine that everyone will have access to is also not realistic. The history of vaccines are that we can and will develop a vaccine. The question is how effective will that vaccine be, and more important and more worryingly: who will get that vaccine and will that distribution be fair and equitable.”