Nearly 70,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in US prisons

Sam Dalton

According to new research from the UCLA COVID-19 Behind Bars project, the death rate in US prisons is 39 deaths per 100,000, as opposed to 29 per 100,000 in the wider population. When age-adjusted for the disproportionately young US prison population, inmates are three times more likely to die from the virus than the population as a whole.

According to the project, as of July 15, there have been over 68,900 confirmed infections across prisons in the US and at least 675 deaths. Reflecting the trend of a nation-wide resurgence of the virus following the criminal bipartisan reopening campaign, this figure is over double the 29,251 cases reported on May 29.

Testing has also been criminally inadequate. Just 382,749 of the over 2.3 million inmates in the US criminal justice system have been tested since the beginning of the pandemic. In crowded and unsanitary prison and jail conditions, where social distancing is near-impossible, without every single prisoner being tested regularly the true extent of the virus’ spread cannot be known.

The latest tally has been collected from individual reports by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on both jails and prisons at county, state and federal levels. Given the agency’s reputation for opaque statistics, accusations of undercounting, and recorded instances of information suppression at both state and federal levels throughout the pandemic, it is likely the current infection rate and death toll is a significant undercount.

For many states, data for prisons has not been made available by the BOP. This includes Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Mississippi. All of these states have seen record daily new infections in the past two weeks. The BOP has also not released any data on deaths for prisons in New York and Massachusetts, which have suffered 22,808 and 8,340 deaths respectively.

Many of the most intense outbreaks in prisons have been in states experiencing a resurgence of the virus.

In California, where the daily confirmed infections exceeded 10,000 on July 8, Terminal Island prison has had ten deaths. An intense outbreak at the infamous San Quentin prison in Northern California has led to 2,032 confirmed cases and at least eleven deaths. At the California Institution for Men in Chino there have been 949 confirmed cases and seventeen deaths; the largest official death toll of any single incarceration facility in the country.

In Florida, where hospitals are now turning away ambulances due to a flood of COVID-19 patients, there are at least 2,632 prisoners infected. Exposing the influence of the deadly reopening campaign on prisons, the number of prison staff infected has doubled in just the last month to 885. Due to the increasing number of infected prison staff on quarantine, those left are being asked to work twelve-hour shifts, six days a week. While this number includes a large number of prison guards, it also includes social workers who provide vital services for the well-being of the inmates.

In North Carolina, which has had around 2,000 newly confirmed cases every day this week, Butner Low prison has had 677 infections and 16 deaths, while another adjoined facility, Butner Medium, has had 214 infections and at least nine deaths.

Federal prison facilities have also been hit hard. At the Elkton Federal Correctional Institution in Ohio, there have been nine deaths. This is the location where prisoners leaked harrowing footage documenting inmates struggling for breath and the construction of a temporary morgue. Following this leak, in what is still an unexplained episode, the National Guard were sent in to deal with a COVID-19 medical emergency. At another federal facility in Fort Worth, Texas, there have been twelve deaths from the coronavirus.

In Houston, a lawsuit has also been taken out against a for-profit facility run by the Geo Group. The facility’s management has been accused of threatening to discipline prisoners if they call health agencies to seek information on the virus and of covering up at least three COVID-19 deaths. Geo Group runs prisons and mental health institutions in the US, UK, South Africa and Australia and has an annual revenue of $2.4 billion. In the US alone it manages 95,000 beds in prisons or halfway houses.

Since the onset of a federal prison lockdown on March 31, which was later followed by similar regulations in state prisons and jails, inmates have lived in conditions of solitary confinement for 23 hours-a-day. Restrictions on phone access and family visits have also left prisoners unable to communicate with the outside world.

There have been exceptions to this blackout, however. For example, in late June images were posed on Twitter that showed prisoners at Bradley County jail in Tennessee, holding up signs to cell exterior windows. One read, “Nobody is given underwear, socks, or bras! Women bleeding on themselves! Denied medical attention.” While another read, “Fourteen-day quarantine, no tests, no masks, no way to communicate with outside or family. No court dates.” The only response of the Bradley County’s Sheriff’s Office was to board up the windows. According to the BOP, there have been four COVID-19 deaths in Tennessee prisons.

The accelerating outbreak in prisons and jails is a product of two intersecting crimes of the American ruling class. The first is the broader reopening campaign, the deadly toll of which is beginning to be seen most acutely in California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. The second is the failure to enact a mass release of non-violent and elderly prisoners to allow for social distancing to limit the exposure of at-risk prisoners to the virus. Despite well-publicized executive orders from many state governors and US Attorney General William Barr, mass releases never actually happened.

In practice the treatment of the most vulnerable prisoners has been quite the opposite. In New York, last month 96 aging inmates were transferred to the Adirondack Correctional Facility two-hours from the Canadian border. Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the plan was implemented to protect the inmates from the virus. However, on July 8, one prisoner tested positive. Now they are many hours further away from their families and at high risk of infection and death. Given the virus’ decimation of elderly populations in care homes in New York earlier this year, it is probable that large numbers of elderly prisoners will die from COVID-19.

In truth, the vast majority of prisoners who will die as a result of the latest national surge should have been released months ago. Indeed, many of them should not have been incarcerated in the first place.

The consequences of the criminal failure to enact a mass release is not just borne by prisoners themselves, however. Prisons also act as vectors for the spread of the disease in the wider population. An ACLU study published in April estimated that a failure to release inmates and implement effective measures within prisons would lead to a further 99,000 deaths in the US population at large. That figure assumes strict social distancing, tracing and testing to contain the virus. In the absence of such measures the study predicts 188,000 extra deaths.

Despite the advice of scientists and prison advocates, who have published clear step-by-step guidance to politicians since lockdowns began in March, no meaningful action has been taken to protect prisoners, or the wider population from the virus. In line with the wider COVID-19 response, inaction in prisons was a conscious decision taken by Democratic and Republican politicians on behalf of the profit interests of the ruling class. For this they have the blood of hundreds of individuals on their hands.

Canada refuses to repatriate illegally jailed citizens accused of ISIS ties

Laurent Lafrance

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is refusing to abide by its legal obligation to assist and repatriate dozens of Canadians, most of them young children and women, illegally detained in miserable conditions in military prisons in northeast Syria. The prisoners are being held by Kurdish nationalist forces, who allege the Canadians had ties to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS.

The New York-based organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a chilling 92-page report on June 29th on the conditions faced by some 47 Canadian citizens—8 men, 13 women, and 26 children. The child detainees, most of whom are under the age of six, include a five-year-old orphan. The report was based on interviews with detainees, family relatives, and Canadian and foreign officials.

The Canadians are among some 14,000 non-Iraqi foreigners from more than 60 countries who are still being held in the north of Syria for suspected ISIS links, even though US President Donald Trump declared the Syrian war ended last year, and said ISIS forces were “one hundred percent defeated.” In fact, the US-led onslaught on Syria, which began with the instigation of a bloody civil war in 2011, has devastated the country, with more than half of the pre-war population forced to flee their homes. When the US-led air bombardment and military intervention was launched in 2014, on the pretext of combating ISIS, Canada’s Conservative government deployed fighter jets and troops to the Syria-Iraq conflict. After waging a “progressive” election campaign in 2015, including a demagogic pledge to withdraw the fighter jets, Trudeau’s Liberals promptly extended and expanded Canadian military involvement in the war in early 2016. Four years on, Canada continues to maintain almost a thousand troops in Iraq, Jordan and Kuwait.

In the introduction to its report, HRW provides a scathing critique of Trudeau’s refusal to bring the Canadian prisoners home. The Liberal government has left them languishing “for more than a year in overcrowded, filthy, and life-threatening conditions,” says the report. Canada, it asserts, has breached its obligations, including “taking necessary and reasonable steps to assist nationals abroad facing serious abuses including risks to life, torture, and inhuman and degrading treatment.” The HRW analysis continues, “The indefinite detention without charge of the Canadians amounts to guilt by association and collective punishment, prohibited under international law.”

The report underlines that none of the Canadians have been charged with any crime, or even brought before a judge to review the legality and necessity of their detention. In other words, no evidence has ever been presented to prove their ties to ISIS. Three of the adults interviewed even said that ISIS had imprisoned them before they were captured by the Kurdish nationalist forces, the YPG. Some women, including at least one Canadian, said they are on an ISIS “kill list” for refusing to support the terrorist group.

The Trudeau government’s refusal to honor its obligation to ensure that the basic rights of Canadian citizens, including children, are being respected, leaving them to rot in illegal prisons in Syria, represents a dangerous precedent and an attack on citizenship rights. It is a de facto abrogation of the Liberals’ own Bill C-6, which at its passage in 2017 overturned a law adopted by the previous Stephen Harper-led Conservative government that stripped dual citizens of their Canadian citizenship if convicted of terrorism, treason or espionage.

The 26 children have been imprisoned because their fathers are “suspected” of having ties to ISIS. In many cases, their fathers have disappeared and are likely dead. Some children are imprisoned along with their mothers, but as the HRW report notes, others are orphans. Such is the case of five-year-old Amira, “who was found on the side of a road last year after her parents and siblings were killed in an airstrike.”

These people are arbitrarily detained in prisons and camps run by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the militia force backed by the US-led Global Coalition Against ISIS, of which Canada is a member. It is worth noting in this regard that the SDF was embraced as Washington and Ottawa’s proxy force in the campaign to overthrow the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad only after the Sunni Islamist forces they had previously supported were either vanquished or had defected to ISIS. If anyone is to be held accountable for the crimes of Islamic State—many of whose foreign fighters were funneled into Syria with the support of the Western powers or their Gulf State allies—it should be the imperialist powers who fostered its growth, rather than the women and children caught up in the maelstrom created by US imperialism’s drive to consolidate its hegemony in the Middle East.

The conditions in the prison camps are horrendous. HRW notes, “In makeshift prisons for men and adolescent boys food is scarce and overcrowding is so severe that many of the detainees must sleep shoulder to shoulder. … In locked camps for women, girls, and younger boys, tents collapse in strong winds or flood with rain or sewage.”

The report goes on to point out that no protective equipment is provided to face the coronavirus pandemic. It notes, “Drinking water is often contaminated or in short supply. Latrines are overflowing, wild dogs scavenge mounds of garbage littering the grounds, and illnesses including viral infections are rampant. Medical care is grossly inadequate.”

HRW estimates that more than 100 prisoners and possibly several hundred have died, many from lack of care, since mid-2019. The Kurdish Red Crescent reported that in al-Hol–the larger of two camps for women and children with about 65,000 detainees—at least 517 people, 371 of them children, died in 2019, many from preventable diseases.

Trudeau has resorted to evasions and flat-out lies to justify his government’s decision to leave dozens of Canadian citizens in perilous conditions. “Syria is an area where we do not have any diplomats or any Canadians on the ground and therefore we work through intermediaries to try and provide consular assistance as best we can,” he said when questioned about the HRW report. In fact, Canada has managed to repatriate 40,000 citizens from 100 countries since March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including 29 from Syria.

Even though other imperialist countries such as the US, France, Germany, the UK and Australia have repatriated some of their citizens detained in Kurdish camps so as to prosecute and jail them, the Trudeau government has no intention of doing so. One reason for this is that the government knows that attempts to prosecute the adult detainees, male or female, are likely to fail, for lack of evidence that they were ISIS fighters, let alone broke any Canadian law.

Above all, the Liberals fear that if they repatriate the detainees, the Conservatives and other of their right-wing opponents will lambaste them for imperiling “national security” and an indulgent attitude towards “terrorists” so as to politically destabilize the government. As HRW points out in its report, “Although Canadian authorities do not cite potential political fallout as a reason, in 2017 Trudeau faced a backlash simply for supporting rehabilitation programs for Canadian (ISIL) suspects who return home.”

The abandonment of vulnerable, traumatized and, in many cases, ill children points to the vindictiveness and moral decay of Canada’s ruling establishment. It is also in line with the criminal policy of successive Liberal and Conservative governments of imprisoning innocent refugees and their children in migrant prisons in Canada itself. According to the latest data reviewed by the refugee rights group No One is Illegal, the Canadian government jailed more than 87,000 refugee claimants and other migrants without charge between 2006 and 2014, including up to 807 children per year. These migrants are detained under atrocious conditions in provincial prisons and in various immigration-holding centers run by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

The capturing, jailing and torturing of civilians have also become commonplace in the uninterrupted series of US-led military conflicts involving Canadian imperialism over the past quarter century. From NATO’s bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999 to the neocolonial occupation of Afghanistan, the air war on Libya and the ongoing conflict in Iraq and Syria, US and Canadian forces have devastated entire societies, killed tens of thousands, and forced millions to flee their homes.

Canadian citizens caught in the crosshairs of US and Canadian imperialist aggression have suffered systematic abuse and mistreatment. Omar Khadr, who was detained as a child soldier in Afghanistan in 2002, became the youngest inmate of the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison camp. During 10 years of detention in this hell-hole, he was abused and tortured by US authorities with the complicity of successive Liberal and Conservative governments.

In the early years of the so-called “war on terror,” Ottawa also instituted what the World Socialist Web Site described as a “made in Canada form of rendition,” under which Canada s national-security agencies encouraged authoritarian regimes to detain and torture Canadians suspected of possible terrorist ties when they travelled abroad. Maher Arar and Abousfian Abdelrazikk, both of whom were Canadian citizens, were detained, tortured, and interrogated by the Syrian and Sudanese regimes respectively. In both cases, the torturers used information supplied by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to question them. No evidence of their involvement in terrorist activity was ever uncovered.

Germany: Racist “family tree research” and police state measures in Stuttgart

Max Linhof & Jan Ritter

The aggressive police state campaign following the so-called night of violence in Stuttgart is taking on increasingly blatant racist features. Over the weekend, it became known that the Stuttgart police are conducting so-called “family tree research.” According to the minutes of last Thursday’s meeting of the city council, Stuttgart’s police chief Franz Lutz stated that “nationwide searches” would be conducted at registry offices “to determine the migration background (of individual suspects).”

The measure is so obviously in the tradition of the Nazis, who persecuted people based on their origin or “race”, that even parts of the police feel compelled to condemn the action. “There is no connection between ethnicity, origin or nationality and crime”, explained criminologist Thomas Müller of the PolizeiGrün professional association. “What the police in Stuttgart wants to investigate is racism in action and is reprehensible given Germany’s past.”

Although the “family tree research” by the Stuttgart police has caused an outcry among the population, it is being aggressively defended by the coalition state government of the Greens and the Christian Democrats (CDU). Baden-Württemberg’s Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) said, “Establishing living and family circumstances is part of police investigations, this is a matter of course in criminal proceedings.” He went on to say that for reasons of crime prevention, “in individual cases, the nationality of the parents of suspects is determined by inquiries at the registry office to clarify whether there is a migration background.”

Representatives of the Greens made similar provocative statements. “I cannot detect any misconduct on the part of the police,” said Winfried Kretschmann, the Green state premier of Baden-Württemberg, on Tuesday. He said that the wrongly conveyed term “family tree research,” which the police allegedly never used, had created a “completely poisoned debate.”

Stuttgart’s Mayor Fritz Kuhn (Greens) also defended the racist approach of the police in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Of course, the desire to know as much as possible: Where do they come from, where do they live, how old are they? We must understand: What drove these young men to do this?” He advises “everyone to keep their heads down.” You cannot “say one day, we’re behind the police and the next day, we’re insulting them again. The police must now investigate, and we must have the right information so that we can do the prevention work that we are focusing on.”

By “prevention work,” Kuhn and the Greens do not mean social programmes, but the stigmatisation and persecution of allegedly “criminal migrants” and young people. For weeks, their leaders have been agitating in the style of the extreme-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and calling for law and order. The events of the night from June 20 to 21 serve as a pretext for them when clashes between youths and the police occurred in downtown Stuttgart after a 17-year-old was checked for drugs.

The clashes clearly have social and political causes. In an interview with SWR radio, Stuttgart social worker Veronika Laengrich described the problems facing many young people. “Our young people probably experience structural discrimination from a very early age. Be it at school, be it in contact with police officers, be it in the job centre,” she said. The reaction of the young people in June were not surprising to her. “Such checks sometimes happen here five times a day,” according to Laengrich. “And at some point, things probably reach their limit, where it explodes.”

Although the vast majority of the youths under investigation are from Stuttgart and have German passports, leading politicians—especially the Greens—are engaged in xenophobic smear campaigns.

On 21 June, the mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer, who is notorious for his racist outbursts, shared a picture from the Stuttgarter Zeitung on his Facebook page showing young people in downtown Stuttgart. He commented, “Almost all of them have an appearance that would be described in the police report as ‘dark-skinned’ or ‘southern.’ I can hardly discover any ‘white men.’ In the videos of the night of the riot, almost all the perpetrators have similar appearances to most of the men in this photo.”

The racist “family tree research” by the Stuttgart police also bears the signature of the Greens. According to media reports, Kretschmann had already called for “a more accurate picture of those involved in the night of chaos” at the end of June. More precise information was needed, he said. “If these are certain milieus that now come from migrant communities or something—these are important things, you can do something with them.”

The racist campaign goes hand in hand with the systematic stepping up of police state powers. “In the short term, we will strengthen police forces at the weekend, in the medium term, the security partnership I have offered the city of Stuttgart will have an effect, and thirdly, we need stricter penalties for this massively violent mob,” threatened Interior Minister Strobl (CDU) as early as 26 June.

Since then, the measures announced have been put into practice. Hundreds of additional police officers are being deployed, especially on weekends. Officers in full protective gear, mounted police and plain-clothed officers characterize the cityscape.

On 2 July, the security partnership between the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and the city of Stuttgart announced by Strobl was adopted. The massive police presence is now the new normal, with the expansion of video surveillance in the city centre as well as increased controls on Stuttgart’s arrival and departure routes.

On the first weekend in July, a police helicopter circled over Stuttgart city centre, which police spokesman Jens Lauer justified saying, “This gave us a better overview of the situation.” In addition, the dark corners of Lake Eckensee and the Upper Schlossgarten were illuminated by the Technical Relief Agency.

Last weekend, the police again brutally attacked groups of youths. In the early hours of 12 July, they cleared the Eckensee at around 12:30 am, leading to further arrests. The police justified their action by saying that “sustained alcohol consumption” in the castle garden and on the castle square had been prohibited since May 2020.

The comprehensive arming and mobilization of the police is not limited to Stuttgart and Baden- Württemberg but is being pushed forward nationwide. Police laws are being tightened up everywhere and the security apparatus is being expanded to control the emerging social struggles, which are being further intensified by the coronavirus crisis and its consequences. In this way, the authorities seek to suppress the growing resistance against the intensified exploitation of workers and the politics of militarism.

Quarter of a million threatened with homelessness by UK government’s lifting of evictions ban

Dennis Moore

Research from homelessness charity Shelter estimates that nearly 230,000 tenants across England have fallen behind with rent payments since the start of the pandemic and are at risk of losing their homes.

The research was based on a poll of 1,058 private tenants carried out by YouGov on behalf of Shelter in England between June 4-11.

Of the 8.7 million tenants who rent their homes from private, council or housing association landlords—including three million households with children—it is estimated there are 442,000 tenants in rent arrears, twice as high as in the same period last year.

174,000 tenants have already been threatened with eviction by their landlords or letting agents.

Houses for rent in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England

As the pandemic took hold in Britain, the Conservative government imposed a ban on evictions for three months, ending August 23. Following public complaints that this was not enough to protect renters, the courts were forced to suspend possession hearings for 90 days, meaning no evictions could legally complete until this is lifted.

However, landlords were not prevented from still being able to serve eviction notices, with many fearing that when the ban on evictions ends, there will be a surge in eviction cases and homelessness.

To prevent the deadline from ending, emergency legislation would have had to be passed by July 16. Responding to a series of parliamentary questions, Lord Greenhalgh, a minister at the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local government said from August 24 “the courts will begin to process possession proceedings cases again.” Greenhalgh ruthlessly declared that this would be “an important step towards ending the lock down and will protect landlords’ important right to regain their property.”

Many renters are in a vulnerable position under the present court system because they can be evicted automatically when they accrue eight weeks rent arrears, and also face section 21 “no fault” evictions that give little option in the courts but to evict.

Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 enabled private landlords to give prospective tenants the right only to short-term tenancies of between six and 12 months. Tenants could be asked to vacate tenancies, and the landlord would not have to give a reason why, as long as the correct notice period was served—a no fault eviction.

Prior to the pandemic, the Conservatives pledged to “good landlords” in their election manifesto last December that “we will strengthen your rights of possession.” The Independent noted at the time, “It is unclear exactly what is intended, but a previous consultation proposed allowing new fixed contracts, of unknown length, rather than simply ‘assured tenancies’ with no time limit.”

“They would be introduced by strengthening section 8 of the existing 1988 Housing Act – if section 21 of the same legislation is scrapped, to end ‘no fault’ evictions carried out with no reason given.”

With the ban on evictions being lifted, the 230,000 already in rent arrears could face automatically being evicted from their homes if they are eight weeks behind with their rent. Shelter’s CEO, Polly Neate, said, “We know people have been doing whatever they can to pay their rent and keep their home safe. Despite this, the minute the eviction ban lifts, the 230,000 already behind with their rent could be up for automatic eviction if they’ve built up eight weeks’ worth of arrears.”

The Generation Rent organisation believes that 45,000 people are at serious risk of homelessness this autumn. The winding down of the government’s furlough scheme—ahead of its termination at the end of October—will lead to mass unemployment, pushing millions into financial ruin, unable to pay their rent and losing their homes. Around 11 million workers and the self-employed have had 80 percent of their wages paid by the state under the furlough scheme.

Since the imposition of lockdown in March, Shelter have seen an increase in calls for assistance, with a quarter of all calls from private renters worried about losing their homes.

The possibility that thousands of people, after losing their homes, could present themselves as homeless at local authority homelessness departments is a perfect storm. Many local authorities are already overstretched and have little capacity to meet a sudden surge in homelessness presentations.

The last decade saw a substantial growth in the private rented sector across England. Between 2010-11 and 2017-18, the number of private renting households rose from 3.6 to 4.5 million—accounting for the second largest tenure in England. In 2017-18, of all households in the private rented sector, 35 percent included dependent children.

Recent research from payment technology firm Flatfair and real estate investor Rowan Asset Management points to a significant number of younger people being heavily exposed to falling into financial distress due to this crisis. One in two renters with residential landlords are aged 16-34, and a high proportion of these workers work in retail or the gig economy. Nearly half of all UK retail workers (2.8 million) are aged 16-34, with a quarter aged 25–34. Restaurant workers are more likely to be younger, with six in 10 aged 16-34. The impact of the exposure of these workers to job insecurity and a loss or reduction in income puts them at risk of losing accommodation.

Research from the Resolution Foundation found that many young people are earning less than they were before the COVID-19 crisis, with a third of 18-24-year olds (excluding students) being furloughed or losing their jobs. This compares to one in six of prime-age adults.

Franz Doerr, CEO and founder of Flatfair, said, “As more firms start to furlough staff and others cease due to the economic impact of the virus, swathes of young renters up and down the country will see incomes plummet and may not be able to pay their rent. Rising rent arrears are likely to mount over the year as a consequence.”

Vast numbers of people struggle to pay their rent already. According to an English Housing Survey covering 2018/19, more than one million (28 percent) of private renters find it difficult to pay rent. Nearly two thirds (61 percent) reported having no savings at all. Among social renters, the proportion without savings is even higher at 82 percent. Private renting households, noted Shelter, spent 33 percent of their household income on rent on average and for people aged between 16 and 24, this increased to 47 percent.

The policies of the Johnson Tory government during the pandemic—aimed solely at the bailout of big business—is leading to mass unemployment and enormous financial insecurity for millions. There is no sign that even with workers being told to get back to work this will offset the enormous economic damage that has taken place, with many livelihoods threatened by mass job losses reported on a weekly basis.

While the government attempted to stimulate the housing market, with exemptions on having to pay stamp duty on properties up to the value of £500,000, hundreds of thousands face being made homeless.

The response of the Labour Party to the evictions crisis amounted to nothing more than Shadow Housing Secretary Thangam Debbonaire issuing a five-point plan calling for an “extension to the ban on evictions to allow further protections to be introduced” and for a two-year period for tenants to pay back any arrears accrued during the pandemic.

Transport for London downplayed COVID-19 dangers to bus, rail and tube workers in critical early months

Laura Tiernan

Transport for London (TfL) deliberately minimised the COVID-19 threat to bus and transport workers during January and February this year, even as the World Health Organisation (WHO) instructed countries to take urgent action.

New documents reveal that TfL focused on operational efficiency at the expense of workers’ lives, with TfL bosses, including Chief Safety, Health and Environment Officer Lilli Matson, insisting the COVID-19 risk to bus, rail and tube workers was “low” and that gloves and facemasks should not be worn.

London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan released a 19-page batch of internal TfL memos last week, after a request from Conservative Member of the London Assembly Keith Prince. The documents exclude any communication between TfL, Khan, and government ministers, but they expose criminal neglect of workplace health and safety.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan (AP Photo/Robert Stevens, FILE)

They show how the Johnson government’s homicidal herd immunity strategy resulted in a catastrophic spread of COVID-19 among transport workers in London that would ultimately claim 44 lives, including those of 29 bus drivers.

Between January 23 and February 28, TfL internal directives about managing coronavirus included:

• “Despite some sensational headlines, there is no cause for alarm” (Bulletin to Operational Managers, January 23)
  
• “We are confident that our colleagues are at low risk at work—including those in customer facing roles” (Bulletin to London Underground Area Managers, Train Operations Managers and equivalents in R&E and Assets, and Bulletin to all Operational Line Managers Surface Transport, February 14, 2020) and “We must emphasise that the risk to individuals in the UK remains low” (Letter to all 300 TfL leaders from Lilli Matson Chief Safety, Health and Environment Officer, February 27, 2020)
  
• “We are not providing masks or encouraging colleagues to wear them as they are a poor form of protection against viruses including coronavirus” (Bulletin to all Operational Line Managers, Surface Transport, February 14, 2020)
  
• “[Masks] make our network appear an unnecessarily risky environment which could result in undue fear and panic” and “Avoid local PA announcements on trains or stations in relation to coronavirus at this stage”.

All the documents released by Khan cite the authority of Public Health England, with the desired implication that TfL and the Mayor of London were only following orders. In reality, all of these “stakeholders” shared the same objective: protecting profits not lives. TfL directives included statements that: “Public Health England doesn’t advise the use of masks or gloves as protection from coronavirus.” And: “We have based our plans around advice from the experts: Public Health England and our Occupational Health colleagues. They currently assess the risk to individuals in the UK as low.” Lilli Matson is presumably one of TfL’s “Occupational Health colleagues”, appointed Chief Safety, Health and Environment Officer in September 2019 despite having no health and safety qualifications.

PHE is not a neutral health body. An executive agency established by the Tories in 2013 under the Health and Social Care Act (2012), its Chief Executive Duncan Selbie has no public health expertise (in 2013 he joked to the Lancet, “You can fit my public health credentials on a postage stamp”). PHE’s craven defence of the government was underscored in March when it downgraded COVID-19 from a “high consequence infectious disease” so that personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements for health workers could be eviscerated. More than 500 health care workers have since died.

Advice from PHE and TfL that coronavirus posed a “low risk”, contradicted warnings from WHO and from leading epidemiologists. On January 30, WHO declared an international health emergency, calling for immediate action by governments: “it is still possible to interrupt virus spread, provided that countries put in place strong measures to detect disease early, isolate and treat cases, trace contacts, and promote social distancing measures commensurate with the risk.” Six days earlier, scientists warned the UK government’s emergency COBRA committee that COVID-19 might cause “mass casualties”, while epidemiologists told the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) on January 22 that the virus had a potential reproduction rate above 3.0—higher than the Spanish Flu which caused 50 million deaths between 1918 and 1920. Epidemiologists from Imperial College London urged lockdown measures to halt a potentially catastrophic loss of life.

But scientists’ warnings were suppressed or swept aside. In late February, as COVID-19 overwhelmed health systems in Italy and Spain, provoking growing public concern, Prime Minister Boris Johnson cited PHE guidance to justify inaction on social distancing, testing, and contact tracing. For TfL, Khan and the private transport companies too, it was business as usual.

TfL: “super-spreader”

One incident providing an early warning of the role TfL and the bus companies would play in spreading COVID-19 was the UK Bus Summit held on February 6. Despite calls by WHO for social distancing, the conference went ahead at the QEII Centre in London, bringing together 250+ delegates, including TfL and bus company executives and MPs. Baroness Vere, Minister with Responsibility for Buses, delivered the keynote address. David Brown, Chief Executive of Go-Ahead; Mark Threapleton, Chief Operations Officer, Stagecoach; and Gareth Powell, Managing Director of Surface Transport, TfL, also spoke.

Seven days later, conference organiser Transport Times emailed delegates informing them that a fellow-attendee had been diagnosed with COVID-19. According to a BBC report on February 14, “The email included advice from PHE urging delegates that no action was needed if they felt well.”

There is no mention of the London Bus Conference in the internal TfL memos released by Khan. Did PHE officials carry out contact tracing after the bus conference? If not, there is every possibility that attendees, including TfL and bus industry executives and MPs, passed the virus to others. At least one employee from TfL head office was later reported to have died from coronavirus, although no further details have been provided by TfL. At the end of February, a Nike conference held in Edinburgh became a super-spreader event infecting 25 people.

Passengers lining up at a bus stop in Romford in London

Tom Kearney, a prominent bus safety campaigner told WSWS, “The COVID-19 outbreak at the UK Bus Summit was an alarming indicator that TfL’s bus contractor employees were probably already infected. The fact that there is no mention of that outbreak in any TfL internal communication in February suggests to me that an important opportunity to prevent the deaths of 33 London bus workers was lost.”

Even before the pandemic, TfL’s surface transport system was being described by a former board member as “institutionally unsafe.” By February 2019, 1,062 people had been killed or seriously injured in TfL bus collisions over the preceding five years. A study by Loughborough University in 2019 found that 36 percent of London bus drivers had a “close call” due to tiredness in the previous 12 months.

By February this year, bus drivers were at breaking point. Anger over punishing shifts, cuts to break times, and poor pay forced the Unite union to call a London-wide “consultative” strike ballot. More than 97 percent of members voted for strike action, but Unite refused to organise a follow-up ballot, and, as the pandemic took hold, it signed a Tripartite Agreement with TfL pledging to deliver “industrial harmony.”

Workers left defenceless

Workers were left defenceless in the face of the pandemic. The documents released by Khan show that TfL’s Head of Network Delivery Richard Jones advised managers to downplay the threat level to TfL’s workforce. On February 14, he directed them to discourage masks because “they make our network appear an unnecessarily risky environment” and instructed them to “Avoid local PA announcements on trains or stations in relation to coronavirus at this stage.” Instead, “frontline leaders” were told to “reassure colleagues. This will be a big support in making our people feel safe at work and will help us continue to run a good service for Londoners.”

From late February, TfL’s memos focused on curbing absenteeism. On February 27, Matson sent an email to all 300 TfL managers stating, “In essence, there is no change to the way we should be managing absence. Managers should continue to follow the usual absence policy for managing colleagues not at work due to reasons linked to coronavirus.”

Managers were directed to contact ill workers “by phone.” If absenteeism due to COVID-19 was “affecting resourcing levels”, Matson instructed, “Contact your manager in the first instance, who can escalate where required.” Throughout April and May, sick drivers told WSWS they were being harassed to return to work. TfL’s memos prove this was policy.

Khan’s much publicised “bus bonus retention scheme” announced on February 14 must be seen in this context. Drivers would receive a £1,000 bonus after two years on the job, and another £600 if they stayed for three years. Khan hoped the measure would avert a crippling staff shortage during the pandemic. In retrospect, one driver calls it “blood money”.

“Their whole approach was criminal neglect”, the driver told WSWS. “Reading these documents, they are saying ‘no face masks, no gloves, no safety announcements’… It’s complete disregard for life.”

To this day, TfL and Khan have refused requests, including under Freedom of Information, to disclose the date and work location of COVID-19 infections, deaths and hospitalisations. Clusters of infection—including at Cricklewood, Holloway and Westbourne Park garages—were only discovered later, after drivers and bus safety campaigners began piecing together scattered press coverage.

Kearney says he is not surprised by TfL’s ongoing cover-up. “In my opinion, TfL’s obstruction of public scrutiny is a deliberate attempt to hide the poor working conditions and safety practices which underpin these services’ highly-regarded timeliness and availability. I’d have thought intentionally running a public surface transport system that kills and injures (a) for the convenience of its passengers and (b) the profitability of its contractors, would qualify as a textbook case of corporate manslaughter.”

Unite joined with Khan, TfL, and the bus companies to insist that PPE was not required and took no steps to investigate workplace infections and deaths, stating that it was not their responsibility. As the Johnson government reopened the economy, the unions were again on board, pushing a return to normal rosters based on lying claims that drivers’ safety would be protected. The reality is that drivers are back on crowded buses, left to fend for themselves.

Unite and TfL both claimed that safety screens installed in drivers’ cabins had been designed by experts at University College London, but a UCL spokesperson told the WSWS, “The screens were not designed by UCL.” He explained, “The role of UCL researchers was to simulate and quantify airflow and droplet concentrations into and out of the driver’s cabin under various scenarios.” Neither UCL nor TfL have been willing to provide any further information.

To prevent a new wave of infections, bus and transport workers must take the fight against the pandemic out of the hands of the Johnson government, TfL, Mayor Sadiq Khan and the transport unions. Rank-and-file safety committees should be elected at every bus garage and rail depot, led by trusted workers, to introduce necessary safety measures to save lives. The resources to pay for proper safety, decent wages and income protection for sick and shielding workers must be freed through the expropriation of the major transport companies under workers’ control, as part of the fight for socialism.

Charter schools cash in on “small business” Paycheck Protection Program

Mitch Marcus

Like the many politically-connected big businesses and nonprofits which received tens of millions of dollars from the federal “small business” Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), private charter school operators are likewise cashing in to the tune of $1 billion, many while getting their full regular public funding from taxpayers.

Established as part of the $2.3 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the $669 billion PPP was ostensibly intended to help small businesses with payroll expenses. If they could attest to saving jobs, they could have the loans forgiven.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (AP / Evan Vucci)

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s partial public release of recipients and award amounts last week only occurred after he had sustained criticism for having kept it secret for months out of concern for protecting recipients’ “proprietary” and “confidential” data. He revealed that PPP has given 72.8 percent of the larger loans, of between $150,000 to $5 million, to only 13.5 percent of the recipients, most of whom could hardly be considered “small” but rather consist of some of the largest corporations and religious institutions in the country, in addition to Democratic and Republican Party-aligned businesses, think tanks, and advocacy organizations.

In other words, like the CARES Act as a whole, PPP has been a boondoggle of monumental proportions, funneling essentially free cash to the rich and well-connected while almost one-quarter of small businesses, 3.3 million, went permanently out of business between February and April.

The listing of recipients also revealed that, due to PPP being directed to nonprofits as well as private businesses, many charter schools, which can claim to fall into either category, have also sidled up to the trough. This same looting operation is going on within higher education as private colleges and universities took in hundreds of millions of dollars in the forgivable PPP loans while those in the public sphere are ineligible and suffering massive budget shortfalls.

The early July release of the list of PPP recipients only includes a dollar range of each loan amount, yet publicly funded, privately-run charter schools likely received more than $1 billion in funds according to an analysis by Salon.

A search for the term “charter school” in ProPublica’s Coronavirus Bailouts database yields 422 charter school recipients. Many charter schools don’t call themselves “charter” but opt for “academy,” among other euphemisms. As with many multi-million-dollar recipients of PPP funds, no jobs were retained by 15 charter schools that each received over $1 million, according to Salon. Idaho Arts Charter School, Inc. saved one job after receiving between $1 million and $2 million.

In addition to charter schools, elite private preparatory schools, such as those attended by billionaire President Donald Trump’s son and Mnuchin’s children, both of which charge tuition of $44,000 per year for high school, have also received PPP loans. Not satisfied with private schools’ cash grab of “small business” assistance, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has issued additional guidelines that the $13.5 billion CARES Act public school funding be shared with private schools. This has prompted several states to sue DeVos to stop that particular raid.

Included among the private schools receiving millions are religious schools, thereby shredding the Constitutional prohibition on the state establishment of religion. In Illinois alone, Catholic schools received 119 PPP loans totaling between $51.4 million and $123.8 million. Overall, the Catholic Church was allowed to receive $1.4 billion and certified that the “current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the Applicant.”

Secular private schools in Illinois, including those with tuition as high as $61,000 per year, received between $19 million and $48 million, and charter schools in Illinois received between $31.2 million and $74.7 million in PPP funds.

Some of the biggest charter school organizations in the country were receiving PPP funds at the same time that they were receiving additional millions from DeVos’ Expanding Opportunity through Quality Charter Schools Program (CSP) which granted $65.4 million to 12 charter management organizations, which are “high quality public charter schools in underserved communities.” These include:

• The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), with schools throughout the US, received between $28 million and $69 million from PPP.
  
• Achievement First in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island received between $7 million and $17 million from PPP, and $3.5 million from CSP.
  
• Citizens of the World Charter Schools in Los Angeles received between $2 million and $5 million from PPP, and $1.7 million from CSP.
  
• Mater Academy, Inc. in Florida received only $1 million from PPP, but $19.2 million three days prior from CSP.
  
• LEARN in Illinois received from $5 million to $10 million from PPP.
  
• Granada Hills Charter in California received between $5 million and $10 million from PPP.
  
• Bright Star Schools in California received between $5 million and $10 million from PPP.
  
• Birmingham Charter High School in California received from $5 million to $10 million from PPP.

“I hear time and time again that charters are not businesses, and if they’re not, then why are they able to get this money,” Vicky Martinez, a parent of four Los Angeles Unified School District students, told CBS.

In addition to the PPP funding, charter schools also get allotments out of the $13.5 billion in funding allocated to K-12 schools under the CARES Act.

Two charter schools in Pennsylvania received PPP funds of between $2 million and $5 million despite existing exclusively online, i.e., not having to save the jobs of bus drivers or custodians or revamp their normal learning program amid the lockdown.

In response to the Arkansas Times publishing a list of charter school recipients of PPP money, the comments to the article on Facebook were overwhelmingly hostile to such an open cash grab of public funds for charter and private schools. “What about separation of church and state! They haven’t paid taxes! This upsets me to the brim on how unlawful the distribution of our tax payers money!” said one. Another noted, “I guess they do not teach ethics at those schools; because, they seem to lack them by taking public monies for their private endeavor.”

Since federal disbursements of funds to states for charter schools began in 1995, $4 billion has been siphoned off from public schools and roughly $1 billion of that has disappeared due to fraud and waste, according to a report by the Network for Public Education. What money did not get wasted, stolen, or otherwise lost to the “charter school black hole” ended up paying for, at best, no better academic results than public schools.

According to a 2017 study titled “Examining charter student achievement effects across seven states” which corroborated earlier studies, “students perform similarly across the two settings in most locations.” One method used by charter schools to achieve whatever success they can claim is to impose selective admissions processes that would be illegal for public schools. A 2012 federal report found that charter schools enroll significantly fewer special-needs students than district schools. Many other basic standards observed by traditional public schools are violated by charter schools to cut corners and increase profits.

Charter school profiteers and their advocates have always denounced public education as a socialist enterprise, but they seem to have no compunction to receiving millions and billions in government largesse. They clothe their attempt to destroy public education in language about providing a “choice” to parents, particularly of children in low-performing urban schools that have been hard hit as a result of decades of deindustrialization and the collapse of cities’ tax bases. Last month, Trump declared, “Frankly, school choice is the civil rights statement of the year, of the decade and probably beyond. Because all children have to have access to quality education.”

Public education in the US has been under sustained attack and starved of funds for decades. Yet the ruling class is determined not to let the crisis of the still raging coronavirus pandemic go to waste and is pushing public schools across the country off the fiscal cliff while only providing a pittance to cover the astronomical costs of making school buildings “safe” for reopening. Meanwhile, amid the increasingly shrill demand that teachers and students be herded back into the virus deathtraps known as schools in order to get the economy fully running again, the spigots of federal aid are opened wide to charter, private, and religious schools as well as the enterprises of the rich and well-connected.

Public education, a product of historic class struggles in the aftermath of the Civil War and rooted in democratic and egalitarian traditions, can only be defended, along with the very lives of teachers, students, and their families, as part of a revolutionary movement to replace capitalism with socialism.

Real economy plunges but financial profits surge

Nick Beams

Reports issued by four major US banks this week have highlighted the widening dichotomy between the real economy and the financial system.

The US is set to record the worst recession since the Great Depression, threatening elevated levels of unemployment well into the future and a wave of bankruptcies. Yet the banks are raking in billions of dollars through speculative operations financed by the massive intervention of the Fed into all corners of the financial markets.

On Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup set aside a combined total of $28 billion for current and expected losses on their loans. The second quarter provisions bring the total for the three banks for 2020 to $47 billion, more than they set aside in the last three years combined.

At the same time, two of them, JPMorgan and Citigroup, reported major increases in revenues derived from financial market trading.

Yesterday, Goldman Sachs reported a profit of $2.4 billion in the second quarter, unchanged from a year earlier, resulting from what the Financial Times described as a “bonanza in bond trading” that offset provisions for losses on loans.

Citing the elevated provisions for loan losses, bank executives have pointed to the worsening state of the real economy. There is a significant element of truth in their claims, but their remarks are also directed to ensuring that the Fed maintains its unprecedented support for financial markets from which they have so richly benefited.

After JPMorgan reported a record $10.5 billion provision for losses on loans, its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, said the charges could rise if the economy worsened. “We don’t know what the future is going to hold,” he said. “This is not a normal recession. The recessionary part of this you are going to see down the road.” He added that the bank was “preparing for the worst case scenario.”

The outlook of the major banks, all of which downwardly revised their projections for the economy and made higher-than-expected provisions for bad loans, stands in marked contrast to the statements coming from the White House. Speaking to Fox News on Monday, economic adviser Larry Kudlow said, “I don’t see an interruption to the V-shaped recovery.” With “fingers crossed and some prayers” the US was “on track for a very strong second half of the year,” he added.

The picture painted by the banks is very different. JPMorgan’s chief financial officer, Jennifer Piepszak, said additional amounts had been set aside to cover bad loans because of the expectation that unemployment would remain above 10 percent well into next year, representing a downward revision of the bank’s outlook issued in the first quarter.

“May and June will prove to be the easy months in terms of this recovery,” she said. “Now we’re really hitting the moment of truth in the months ahead.”

The bank’s loss provisions went across the board. The largest portion of $5.83 billion came from the consumer bank, while $2 billion came from the corporate and investment bank, with another $2.43 billion from the commercial bank.

Speaking on a conference call with financial analysts, Michael Corbat, the CEO of Citigroup, which set aside $7.9 billion in provisions for bad loans, also poured cold water on the idea that the US economy is going to enjoy some kind of rapid snapback.

“I don’t think anybody should leave any bank earnings call simply feeling like the worst is absolutely behind us and it’s a rosy path ahead,” he said. “We don’t want people leaving this call simply thinking the world is a great place and it’s a V-shaped recovery.”

The situation in the real economy, where workers confront mass unemployment and small and medium-sized business are threatened with a wave of bankruptcies, stands in marked contrast to the financial world.

JP Morgan took in $33.8 billion in revenue in the second quarter, recording a profit of $4.69 billion, largely because of its operations in financial markets boosted by the actions of the Fed.

As the business channel CNBC noted on its website, it was able to “capture opportunities created by the response to the pandemic.” It continued: “Surging volatility and unprecedented steps taken by the Federal Reserve to support credit markets have created the best environment for trading and advising on debt and equity issuance in years.”

JPMorgan’s corporate and investment bank more than doubled its profits, to a record high of $5.5 billion for the second quarter.

Bond traders brought in revenues of $7.3 billion, an increase of 120 percent on the year before, easily exceeding the projection of $5.84 billion. The revenue from equity trades was $2.4 billion, compared to an estimate of $2.07 billion. And investment bank revenue rose by 91 percent to $3.4 billion on the back of advisory fees from corporate clients seeking to stock up on cash to counter the effects of the pandemic.

Goldman reported its best quarter for trading in fixed income assets for nine years, raking in revenues of $4.24 billion compared to $1.7 billion the year before.

Citigroup was also able to counter a 10 percent fall in revenues from its consumer banking division with a 68 percent rise in fixed income trading revenue resulting from operations in bond markets that have been supported by the Fed. This accounted for most of the rise in its market and services revenues, which climbed by 48 percent to $6.9 billion.

CEO Corbat said that while credit costs weighed down net income, overall business performance was “strong,” and the bank was able to “navigate the COVID-19 pandemic reasonably well.”

Skilful navigation had little or nothing to do with it. The main factor has been the intervention of the Fed, which has pumped more than $3 trillion into financial markets since they effectively froze in mid-March, when the entire system was facing a meltdown beyond that of 2008.

Given the worsening situation in the real economy, the banks and Wall Street as a whole will be pressing for still further interventions by the Fed so that the orgy of financial parasitism, so vital for the bottom line, can continue.

And the next move is being prepared. The Fed is now discussing so-called yield curve targeting, in which the central bank intervenes in financial markets to keep the yields on specified government bonds at a fixed rate.

The move is under consideration because the increase in US government debt resulting from the corporate bailouts under the CARES Act will increase the supply of Treasury bonds, tending to lower their price and push yields (interest rates) higher.

Further Fed intervention would raise their price and lower the yield, thereby enhancing the ultra-low interest rate regime that has been central to a recouping of financial profits by the banks and Wall Street traders.

In a speech to a webinar hosted by the National Association for Business Economics, Lal Brainard, a member of the Fed’s governing board, warned of the possibility of a “wave of insolvencies,” and said that looking ahead it would be important for monetary policy to “pivot from stabilization to accommodation”—that is, the provision of still more money.

With downside risks to the outlook, she said, there may come a time when it would be helpful to “reinforce the credibility of forward guidance… with the addition of targets in the short-to-medium end of the yield curve.” She stuck to the official position that it would come into focus only after additional analysis and discussion, but clearly Fed intervention to provide still more assistance to Wall Street is under active consideration.

White House in disarray as coronavirus numbers explode

Patrick Martin

The toll of coronavirus infections and deaths in the United States is moving relentlessly upwards as the Trump administration’s response descends into chaos. Trump and other aides are denouncing the top US infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, while the White House effectively prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from carrying out its assigned task of coordinating the fight against the pandemic.

On Wednesday, the US death toll passed 140,000, according to the count maintained by the Worldometer website, and the total number of cases reported reached 3.6 million, meaning that more than one out of every hundred Americans has been infected by the potentially deadly virus.

The one-day total of infections set a new record at 71,670. Over the past seven days, the average one-day total has been more than 62,000, triple the level of one month ago.

President Donald Trump, and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony S. Fauci at a coronavirus update briefing in April. (Image Credit: Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)

It will not be long before the United States experiences more new infections in a single day than China suffered throughout the entire months-long crisis that ravaged the city of Wuhan, where the global pandemic began. Soon after that, the US may hit the 100,000 daily infection rate about which Dr. Fauci warned in his Senate testimony last month.

In cities across the southern and southwestern states, scenes that recall the horrors of April in New York City are now taking place, with hospitals in Miami, Orlando, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix running out of PPE, ICU beds and space to house the dead.

On Tuesday, when there were more than 65,000 new cases across the country, Florida, Texas and California accounted for nearly half. Florida alone had more than 78,000 new cases over the past week, more than most countries have had in the entire course of the pandemic. China, it should be noted, has suffered 83,612 cases of COVID-19 in the eight months since the disease was first discovered in Wuhan.

A front-page analysis in the Washington Post gloomily noted that the soaring global coronavirus toll was being powered by a group of poor countries, and by the United States, more or less suggesting that America resembles a third world country in its efforts to fight the pandemic. The newspaper cited one key fact: “Nearly all the countries struggling with a surge share something in common: After weeks or months of trying to suppress the virus, they reopened their economies, only to find that the virus came roaring back.”

The newspaper failed to point out, however, that the reopening in the US was not in response to popular demand. It was rather carried out, in the face of deep-seated opposition from workers, at the orders of the financial aristocracy and its political servants in both parties, Democratic as well as Republican.

Some of the most strident advocates of the reopening have themselves contracted coronavirus. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, who hailed the Trump campaign rally held in his state last month at a Tulsa arena, revealed Wednesday that he had tested positive. So did Representative Morgan Griffith of the 9th Congressional District of Virginia, in the Appalachian region, a leader of the ultra-right House Freedom Caucus, who attended a public event in Washington where the participants were generally maskless.

There is a chaotic patchwork, in some cases state by state, in others city by city, of emergency orders, mask mandates and decisions to reopen public schools and other potential flashpoints of a new surge in COVID-19. The Houston Independent School District said it would begin its school year with at least six weeks of online-only instruction, with a plan to review the decision in mid-October. San Francisco announced a similar schedule, while Prince George’s County, Maryland, in the Washington D.C. suburbs, said online-only instruction would continue at least until February 2021.

Two more state governors, Republican Kay Ivey of Alabama and Democrat Steve Bullock of Montana, announced they were dropping their previous opposition and issuing statewide orders requiring anyone out in public to wear a mask. The Republican governors of Georgia and Florida, two of the hardest-hit states, are still refusing to issue orders to wear masks.

Many states are being forced to return to some form of partial lockdown, at least banning indoor service at bars and restaurants, in some cases threatening a fuller closing down of the economy.

At her press briefing on Wednesday afternoon, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer revealed that the state’s COVID-19 curve had begun to rise again, hitting 891 new cases, the biggest single-day total in two months. Blaming the population for failing to wear masks, Whitmer warned, “If Michiganders don’t mask up when we’re going out in public, cases could rise and we could be forced to close down more of our businesses, including auto manufacturing plants that employ thousands of Michigan workers, jobs that our whole economy depends on.”

Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, the state’s top health official, said that the resurgence in the coronavirus was driven by younger people, with the highest rate among those aged 20–29, followed by those aged 30–39. She also noted the spread to new areas of the state not previously significantly affected, including the rural Upper Peninsula and the Grand Rapids area, both of which had their highest infection rates since the pandemic began. Michigan schools are still set to reopen on September 8.

Republican Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio gave a statewide address Tuesday night in which he warned that if no action was taken, “Florida and Arizona will be our future.” He warned against any relaxation of social distancing and wearing masks, saying in that case, “we’re literally playing a Russian roulette game with our own lives, and our families’ and our neighbors’.”

In the Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. area, the seven-day moving average of new infections has returned to the level that prevailed before the lockdown of nonessential businesses was loosened at the end of May, passing 1,400 per day, with the biggest increase in the Hampton Roads area, which includes the largest US naval base, as well as the tourist center of Virginia Beach.

Against this backdrop of mounting sickness and death, the White House has been thrown into turmoil by attacks on Dr. Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, by Trump and several aides.

Trump referred disparagingly to Fauci’s “many mistakes” in two media interviews last week, and the attack escalated with White House officials releasing a memorandum detailing supposed errors by Fauci and other materials aiming to discredit him. This culminated in a column published Tuesday in USA Today by Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, under the headline, “Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.”

The op-ed was an ignorant rant by an official with no public health expertise but plenty of nationalistic spleen directed at China, the country Navarro accuses of deliberately unleashing the virus on the world. Navarro evidently regards Fauci’s scientific advice as an obstacle to the anti-China campaign.

After a media and political backlash, White House aide Alyssa Farah claimed that the Navarro column had not gone through “normal White House clearance processes and is the opinion of Peter alone.” Later in the day, Trump disavowed the Navarro column entirely, saying it was a “rogue” effort and that he did not share Navarro’s view of Fauci. But Navarro was only repeating, in more compressed and pointed form, exactly what Trump and other White House officials had been saying against Fauci for a week.

Fauci himself, in a media interview Wednesday, stated the obvious about the White House attack on him: “It distracts from what I hope would be the common effort of getting this thing under control, rather than this back-and-forth distraction, which just doesn’t make any sense.”

He continued, “Let’s stop this nonsense and figure out how can we get our control over this now, and looking forward, how can we make sure that next month we don’t have another example of California, Texas, Florida and Arizona, because those are the hot zones now, and I’m looking at the map, saying we got to make sure it doesn’t happen in other states… Let’s focus on that.”

The White House also reaffirmed the directive issued July 10 for hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send information on COVID-19 patients and resources to the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington. The order—a transparent effort to suppress information about the pandemic by centralizing it under the control of the White House—was roundly criticized by professionals in the public health field.

In a press statement, Dr. Thomas File, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, called data collection a “core function of the CDC,” which was being undermined by the Trump administration. “Placing medical data collection outside of the leadership of public health experts could severely weaken the quality and availability of data, add an additional burden to already overwhelmed hospitals and add a new challenge to the US pandemic response,” he said.

According to press reports, hospitals will not actually contact the federal government at all to report COVID-19 information. They will report their data to TeleTracking, a private company in the Pittsburgh area, which was awarded a $10 million no-bid contract to provide HHS with reporting capability.