Deaths in ICE custody rise as pandemic rages across the United States

Meenakshi Jagadeesan

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported last week the deaths of two men in custody in detention centers in Louisiana and Florida. While reports regarding the cause of death are still pending, one of the men who died, 51-year-old Onuval Perez-Montufa, who originally hailed from Mexico, had tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks prior. The second victim, Luis Sanchez-Perez from Guatemala was pronounced dead at Ochsner LSU Monroe Medical Center in northern Louisiana where he had been receiving inpatient care since February 26.

Perez-Montufa, who had been held in ICE custody since mid-June, was taken to a Palm Beach, Florida hospital on July 1 after he had complained about shortness of breath. He remained in the hospital after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

Meanwhile, Sanchez-Perez had been hospitalized since February 26th, and though hospital staff ruled the preliminary cause of death to be “septic shock leading to cardiopulmonary arrest,” there have been no detailed reports of what might have caused the hospitalization or contributed to the septic shock.

The deaths of these two men are only the latest official reports of casualties among ICE detainees, as the pandemic rages across the United States. The last reported case was that of Santiago Baten-Oxlaj, who died of COVID-19-related complications on May 24. Baten-Oxlaj, a 34-year-old worker from Guatemala, had been held in the Stewart Detention Facility in Lumpkin, Georgia since early March, and had been admitted to the hospital in mid-April for treatment of “decreased oxygen saturation levels.”

According to ICE, the agency has been taking all necessary precautions to ensure the safety of those held in its detention centers around the country. The federal agency boasts that high-level experts are monitoring “best practices” and “issuing guidelines” on how to separate vulnerable populations and screen those entering the various facilities. These claims are hard to believe, given the well-publicized and highly unsanitary conditions in the detention centers prior to the pandemic, as well as what has been disclosed by immigrant advocates and former detainees over the past few months.

On May 6, Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, 57, became the first ICE detainee to die of COVID-19-related complications. Escobar Mejia, who had a history of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems and an amputated foot, had been complaining about feeling sick for weeks prior to his death. However, officials at the Otay Mesa detention center outside San Diego, California gave no urgent attention to his situation. Other detainees from Otay Mesa spoke of continued unsanitary conditions, even as the pandemic took root. Neither guards nor detainees were provided masks, and as new inmates kept being processed, keeping a safe distance became an impossibility.

Speaking to the Guardian in the aftermath of Escobar Mejia’s death, former detainees disclosed the callousness of ICE officials and guards in dismissing the health concerns of detainees, including many who showed symptoms of COVID-19. Briana, a 25-year-old migrant from Honduras, released in April, told reporters: “They didn’t care. People were detained in there like animals.”

The Trump administration now claims that there are slightly over 850 cases of COVID-19, among the nearly 23,000 detainees currently held by ICE.

However, the Otay Mesa situation should put these numbers in perspective. At the time of Escobar Mejia’s death in early May, Otay Mesa had 144 confirmed COVID-19 cases among its roughly 630 detainees, by far the most of any ICE facility. What is truly frightening is that only 181 detainees had been tested for the virus.

As of May 16, when ICE reported that 1,201 immigrants in its custody had tested positive for COVID-19, only 2,394 had been tested. Given the paucity of testing among the detainees it is highly likely that the numbers of infected is significantly under-reported.

As early as March, immigrant rights advocates pointed out that the conditions in ICE detention centers made the risk of a deadly outbreak among the inmate population highly likely. Their calls for the release of at least the most vulnerable populations have been supported by federal judges across the country. As US District Judge Judith Levy noted in her order freeing two immigrants from an ICE detention center in May: “COVID-19 does not respect prison walls. The raging global pandemic outside of Calhoun County Correctional Facility and a confirmed case within the facility pose a serious risk to those inside.”

In the past few months, ICE has claimed that it has released over 900 detainees, bringing its detention numbers to the lowest they have been in many years. However, these court ordered moves have not addressed the fact that thousands of men and women—a majority of whom have not committed any serious crimes—are still being held in conditions that heighten their susceptibility to a highly infectious and dangerous disease. At a time when coronavirus cases are increasing at an alarming rate around the country and existing public health services are already being stretched to the breaking point, this situation is nothing short of criminal.

Australian coronavirus surge hits workplaces, factories

Paul Bartizan

The surge in coronavirus infections in the Australian state of Victoria has affected multiple workplaces, including meatworks, warehouses, factories, and retail outlets, in addition to schools, aged care facilities and hospitals.

Yesterday, Victorian state Labor premier Daniel Andrews reported that some 80 percent of all COVID-19 transmissions in the last two months have taken place within workplaces.

Today and yesterday, the state registered four more coronavirus deaths and another 638 new cases, with the vast majority of these classified as “under investigation,” meaning that authorities have no idea how and where people became infected. More than 1,500 coronavirus infections are under investigation in Victoria, indicating community transmission rates that are spiraling out of control.

Coles warehouse workers on strike in July 2012

The workplace transmission figures further expose the federal and state governments’ response to the pandemic. Like their counterparts in the US and internationally, Labor and Liberal political leaders have prioritised the demands of big business and finance capital over public health and safety.

The so-called national cabinet of federal and state ministers rejected in April a strategy aimed at eradicating coronavirus through strict lockdown measures, instead opting to allow a supposedly “safe” level of viral infection in order to open up the economy as quickly as possible.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that everyone with a job was an “essential worker.” Likewise in Victoria, as infections surged this month, the Labor government instituted lockdown measures that limited individuals’ movements and prohibited family and social gatherings, but did nothing to restrict the operations of non-essential business activities.

Schools have been kept open, with thousands of teachers forced to continue working there even when their students are remote learning from their homes.

Throughout the pandemic, millions of workers who are unable to work from home on computer-based tasks have been forced to continue as usual in their workplaces.

In Victoria, schools, nursing homes and hospitals have been hard hit. Most of the clusters have formed in the working-class northern and western suburbs of Melbourne. The biggest school cluster is at Al-Taqwa College in Truganina, with 169 people contracting the virus. Thirty nursing homes for the elderly are now in lockdown, including Menarock Aged Care in Essendon and Estia Aged Care in Ardeer, both with 38 cases.

The dangerous situation in nursing homes has emerged in part because of the highly exploitative working conditions that nurses and care workers are subjected to. The workforce mostly comprises immigrant women who have no job security or sick pay provisions, and often work multiple jobs across numerous nursing homes. As a result, the workers can act as inadvertent super spreaders of COVID-19.

The state Labor government has sought to blame casual employees for the rise in infections, attributing this in part to people attending work despite having cold or flu symptoms. This is a cynical attempt to scapegoat the most vulnerable layers of the working class, diverting attention from the real cause of the worsening pandemic, the grossly inadequate and incompetent response from every level of government.

Multiple hospitals and health clinics are also affected by new coronavirus infections, with Northern Hospital in Epping the worst hit with a cluster of 21 cases.

Other workplaces now affected include legal firm HWL Ebsworth lawyers with six cases, the Goodman Fielder Pampas pastry factory in West Footscray with 12 cases and the LaManna supermarket in Essendon with a cluster of 16 infections. The Nestlé factory in the northern suburb of Campbellfield was closed for cleaning after one worker tested positive last week.

Major supermarket chain Woolworths has four confirmed cases at their warehouse in Mulgrave. The grocery giant refused to immediately close down the facility for a full clean. Workers were not told of the infections while they were asked to work overtime shifts to cover the places of those affected or forced to self-isolate due to proximity to the infected employees. According to NCA Newswire, several angry full-time workers refused to turn up to their shifts in protest.

The biggest workplace outbreak to date is at the Cedar Meats abattoir, where a cluster of 111 cases in April and May made up of 67 workers and 44 close contacts was mismanaged by the company and state health authorities.

The Cedar Meats facility in Brooklyn, Melbourne [Credit: Google Maps]

Workers were not warned as soon as cases were diagnosed and critical days passed before the facility was shut down on May 1 to bring the outbreak under control. Initially the government refused to publicly name the company as the cluster source, preventing workers and their contacts from taking precautionary measures.

Internationally, meat-processing facilities have been particularly affected by the coronavirus as the work involves hundreds of workers on production lines with circulating cooled air where it is often impossible to socially distance and difficult to wash hands or change face masks regularly.

The World Socialist Web Site reported on the outbreak at the Tönnies abattoir in Rheda-Wiedenbrück in Germany, where of 1,050 initial test results, 730 were positive for COVID-19. On July 7, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 16,233 cases of COVID-19 at 239 meat and poultry facilities in the US, with 86 worker deaths.

Despite these experiences, no precautionary closures of Melbourne meat works were mandated and basic safety measures, such as regular coronavirus testing for workers, not put in place.

There are now major clusters in the western suburbs of Melbourne. The JBS abattoir in Brooklyn is one of ten Australian sites operated by Brazilian-based JBS, the biggest meat producing corporation in the world. There are 35 cases at JBS Brooklyn, and the plant was forced to close last Tuesday. Many of the 1,230 JBS employees are casual workers who will receive no wages while the plant is closed.

In the neighbouring suburb of Tottenham, the Somerville Retail Services (SRS) meat packaging plant has an even bigger cluster, currently at 53 cases. SRS supplies shelf-ready meat to the Coles supermarket chain and employs hundreds of workers. SRS has also been closed. At Colac, in rural western Victoria, six meat workers at the Australian Lamb Company have tested positive.

One meat worker in Melbourne told the World Socialist Web Site: “I’m very worried about the disease as I have two elderly parents at home, and ten children in my extended family. What happened at Cedar Meats was terrible—the company clearly didn’t do the right thing.”

The trade unions have collaborated with business and the federal and state governments, while doing nothing to ensure the safety of workers.

The Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU) boasted on its website: “The AMIEU has been keeping a close watch on the pandemic coronavirus, COVID-19, all around the world. […] There are, however, significant differences between the processes in the USA and many workplaces in Australia. One major difference is that the AMIEU has fought for many years for physical distancing between workers. This [is] not only necessary for infection control, but also reduces the risk of lacerations.”

The latest outbreaks expose this union lie that Australian meat workers’ conditions are significantly different and more safe than those of their fellow workers internationally.

Most meat workers are employed as casuals through labour hire companies. The conditions workers face are the product of decades of enterprise bargaining and productivity agreements that the unions have been party to.

At the JBS plant, for example, in 2010 the National Union of Workers with the assistance of the Australian Council of Trade Unions sold out a six-week struggle against a management lockout of 140 cold storage workers, imposing the elimination of the eight-hour day and reduced weekend penalty rates.

Workers in every affected industry need to organise to defend their safety. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has urged the formation of rank-and-file action committees in every school, factory, office, university and workplace, independent of the unions.

These committees, democratically controlled by workers themselves should formulate, oversee and enforce safety and workplace standards. Where conditions are violated, there must be a stoppage of work. We urge all workers to contact the SEP and develop a discussion on these necessary initiatives.

Dutch unions sell out three-week strike against steel layoffs

Harm Zonderland & Parwini Zora

The giant multinational Tata Steel has dusted out its long-standing “reorganisation plans,” exploiting the COVID-19 crisis to eliminate an estimated 1,250 to 3,000 jobs at Tata Steel Europe’s Dutch and British facilities. This comes down to 1,000 job cuts from the current 9,000 workforce at the former Hoogovens steel plant, affiliated to Tata Steel Europe since 2007.

For the first time in almost three decades, Dutch steelworkers staged a strike at the steel factory in Ijmuiden, just west of Amsterdam, in defence of jobs and to secure future investments in the plant. Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV) official Roel Berghuis told reporters from state funded news outlet NOS: “For the first time in 28 years a strike took place, in a crucial department of the company.”

Despite its bogus claims that it aims to “secure jobs,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government has been deeply exposed by its criminal handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its indifference to the mounting social crisis in the Netherlands and across Europe. Unemployment rates have surged since April and May. However, more mass layoffs are expected to follow; they are being negotiated by and executed with the complicity of the Dutch trade unions.

Since March this year, 201,000 workers lost their jobs, bringing the official unemployment count to 330,000. As not every unemployed worker is counted in the statistics, the real number is kept obscure. In 2019, the Dutch Foodbank served food packages to 151,000 people. Currently, more than half a million Dutch households live in poverty, and half a million are on the brink of falling into poverty. On the other hand, more than 200,000 Dutch are millionaires.

Moreover, according to the Oxfam report, Time to Care, from January 2020, the Netherlands, as a tax haven, helps perpetuate extreme poverty not only at home, but also worldwide.

The Dutch trade unions bargained a “collective” agreement with Tata while promoting a poisonous nationalist line among the workers, alluding to the history of the 100-year-old plant, calling for the defence of their own Dutch turf, and claiming profits from the Netherlands to keep Tata afloat.

The steelworkers’ strikes that were attracting attention across the Netherlands and beyond, were quickly strangled by the FNV union bureaucracy. A deal with Tata Steel was made that postpones forced job cuts until 2025, although temporary contracts will not be renewed, and retiring workers not replaced.

The FNV, the biggest Dutch trade union, has less than a million paying members after a historic dip in its membership in recent years. It currently represents 14 affiliated unions and concludes more than 800 “collective agreements” with the employers and government per year, affecting a total of 5.1 million workers. This is over half of the entire Dutch workforce of nearly 9 million.

Scanty reports in the media claim that Tata had “promised” not to sell divisions of the plant or to outsource work to other plants. A Tata spokesperson told NOS: “It has been a turbulent period. We have always understood the unrest and worries of employees and we are very pleased with this result. We can now look to the future together.”

Despite what emerges as a classic sellout of the strike, the trade unions, media and their affiliates seek to dupe the workers at the plant with a carrot-and-stick approach: the prospect of forced layoffs looming at the horizon. Both Tata Steel management and FNV agree on the necessity of “increasing competitiveness” on international markets in order to secure the plants’ profitability.

This reflects the hackneyed arguments and orientation cemented and implemented by the Dutch trade unions since the infamous “Wassenaar agreement” was signed in 1982 that gave birth to the so-called “Polder Model.” It marked a watershed of redistribution of income and wealth from the bottom to the top of the income ladder.

Thus this agreement constituted a fundamental change in social and wage policies. Henceforth, the improvement of social conditions was no longer the object of “consensus politics,” but rather budget cuts directed against workers, the unemployed, the sick and pensioners. These cuts were meticulously negotiated and worked out in detail by the governing parties and effectively orchestrated by the trade unions, primarily in an effort to contain working class discontent.

This “Dutch Model” has since been praised internationally by governments, bourgeois economists and bankers, and many governments in Europe and across the world have taken it as an example. Trade unions are bound to the interests of the ruling financial oligarchy and impose social cutbacks and agreements to legitimise deteriorating working conditions on the working class.

The prospect of mass layoffs also hangs over the heads of Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) workers. The largest Dutch railway company seeks to cut 2,300 jobs in the coming years, stating the drastic drop in passengers using public transport during the pandemic as its excuse.

Also, massive job cuts and worsening conditions are also planned to be underway in KLM, the Dutch wing of the Dutch-French airline Air France-KLM. KLM received a €1 billion loan from the government, and state guarantees for loans up to €2.4 billion. In return for this bailout, KLM has to “reorganise.” Many KLM employees have already been subjected to pay cuts up to 20 percent, and forced layoffs loom.

Four decades of the bitter Dutch experience with the treacherous Polder Model has provided ample evidence that yet again, trade unions in country after country have systematically abandoned the base they once had in the working class. In the process of the globalisation of production they have transformed into a well-to-do layer of trusted and go-to henchmen working in the interests of the financial oligarchy and ruling elite in the Netherlands.

The fight for decent and secure jobs that are humane, and above all, safe amid a fatal pandemic requires a conscious political break with the trade unions and advanced through building independent rank and file committees at the work place in a struggle for socialism and workers power.

Fire damages historic Nantes cathedral in France

Will Morrow

A fire that broke out on Saturday morning severely damaged the historic Gothic St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral in Nantes, in western France.

Fire authorities arrived at the cathedral just before 8 a.m. after receiving calls from passers-by reporting smoke and flames coming from the building. They discovered a “violent fire at the level of the organ behind the rose window, and their intervention was focused on this area,” according to the fire department chief Laurent Ferlay. More than 100 firefighters intervened and were able to put out the blaze by 10 a.m.

While the overall structure of the building so far appears to have been saved, the greatest losses were to the organ and the stained glass windows behind it, which were completely destroyed. The grand baroque organ had been built in 1620 and restored five times over the last 400 years. Mathieu Lours, an architectural historian specializing in cathedral architecture, told France Info, “It is a great drama because this is one of the most beautiful organs in France that has just gone up in smoke.”

Before and after image of the Nantes cathedral's grand organ and stain glass windows destroyed by the fire on Saturday

Michel Bourcier, one of the titular holders of the organ, told France Info that the organ “had survived the bombings of the Second World War [during an Allied bombardment of Nazi-occupied France], a fire in 1972, and then, within a few hours, went up in flames. … It was the most important organ from the region and so this is a heritage loss,” and a “severe blow to culture.”

The stained glass windows had been installed in the 19th century but also contained remnants of 16th-century glass. Other items lost included a 19th-century painting by Hippolyte Flandrin.

The organ had reportedly been threatened with destruction in the course of the 1789 French Revolution, as were many other Church artifacts. A leading organist of the time, Denis Joubert, had allegedly convinced the revolutionary committee to instead use the organ for the playing of the Marseillaise and other tributes to the revolution.

The cause of the fire remains unclear. The public prosecutor for Nantes, Pierres Sennès, announced on Saturday that an investigation had been opened for “voluntary arson.” He stated that “three distinct starting points of the fire” had been found, “separated from one another by a substantial difference.”

Two were found at the ground floor, on the left and right side of the building, and a third 30 meters above ground level, at the height of the grand organ. He added that investigators “had not found in the external entrances a sign of a break-in.”

On Sunday morning, Sennès announced that a volunteer at the cathedral had been arrested and placed in police custody as part of the investigation. However, on Sunday evening, Sennès confirmed that he had been released “without charge.” The rector of the cathedral, Hubert Champenois, stated that the volunteer was a 39-year-old Rwandan refugee who arrived in France several years ago.

The refugee had been “responsible for closing up the cathedral on Friday evening and investigators wanted to obtain precise information about the timetable of this person.” Diocese administrator François Renaud stated that “several dozen volunteers” work at the cathedral, but that at night, “the inspection is done by an employee of the cathedral.”

The fire in Nantes takes place almost exactly 21 months after the devastating April 15, 2019 fire at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. Most of the priceless monument’s upper walls were severely damaged, its roof was destroyed and its spire collapsed.

The Notre-Dame fire highlighted the catastrophic impact of the French ruling class’ austerity policies and the starving of funds for maintenance and protection of the cultural jewels of humanity.

The fire system at the cathedral was highly complex and required considerable training to be able to read its warning signals and determine the location of a fire. When the blaze occurred, the lone employee on site was unable to determine the fire location and incorrectly concluded that it was a false alarm. The employee had been there three consecutive days and was beginning a second straight shift because his replacement did not arrive.

Moreover, according to Le Canard Enchainé, the security system had previously been manned by two people, which would allow one to keep an eye on the detectors while the other made a time-consuming trip to the potential source of the fires. The second security position had been removed due to funding cuts.

Workers disproportionately affected by coronavirus pandemic in Germany

Marianne Arens

The consequences of the coronavirus pandemic clearly display a class character. The disease particularly affects workers who do not have the opportunity to remain at home and maintain social distancing.

This is the conclusion of a study conducted by WIdO, the research institute of AOK, the largest German health insurer. The study documents who bore the heaviest burden of the pandemic during the lockdown: the nurses and caregivers in the clinics and retirement homes, the workers in the meat industry and millions employed in other sectors.

“The particular sections of the work force that continued going to work during the pandemic appear to be more strongly affected by COVID-19,” said Helmut Schröder, deputy director of the institute, at the July 8 presentation of the WIdO study. Particularly hard-hit were “professions requiring contact with other people, as well as professions in meat processing or warehousing.”

The study analyzed medical data from 11.6 million workers covered by AOK during the lockdown, which in Germany lasted from mid-March to mid-May. During this period, caregivers were most strongly affected by the coronavirus. In the elderly care field, 1.28 percent of all employees contracted COVID-19. Among nurses, the figure was 1.24 percent. Almost one in a hundred first responders fell ill with the disease.

By contrast, professions that were completely halted during the lockdown, such as gastronomy or cosmetics, as well as IT or administrative professions that could be carried out from a home office, were five times less strongly affected by the coronavirus. In university teaching and research, the rate was up to ten times lower than for caregivers, namely 0.11 percent or 110 people in 100,000. Because the study period ended in May, a large portion of teachers still belonged to one of the less affected professional groups.

Unfortunately, the figures from the study do not specifically tabulate workers in the metal, steel and electronics sectors, such as the auto and supplier industries. Nor are supermarket cashiers, parcel service providers, airport ground personal, Amazon workers and employees in transportation specifically accounted for. The study likewise gives no indication how many of its subjects lost their lives to COVID-19.

From March to May, around 10,500 AOK-insured workers became so ill from COVID-19 as to require hospitalization—that is almost one in a thousand, or 91 per 100,000. The rate was again high among nurses, with 157 out of 100,000 suffering a severe case.

In all, around 55,000 of the workers insured by AOK had medically certified cases of COVID-19. That is just under one in 200 (474 per 100,000, or nearly 0.5 percent). The rates were strikingly high among young workers: in the age group of those up to 20 years old, 0.7 percent of AOK-insured workers took sick leave with COVID-19.

Older workers, however, suffered more severe cases of the disease. The rate of hospital admission among AOK-insured workers over 60 was almost twice the average (168 per 100,000). Although the study excluded retirees, this demonstrates that the health of senior workers is subject to elevated risks even during their professional lives.

Indirectly, the study shows that those workers earning the least carry the greatest risk from the coronavirus pandemic. Workers in the meat industry were hit the hardest. Among them, 173 per 100,000 were hospitalized for COVID-19. Moreover, these statistics were generated before the massive outbreak at the Tönnies meatpacking plant in Gütersloh in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

“It remains to be seen whether differences in occupational groups becomes more pronounced due to outbreaks at individual companies,” commented WIdO deputy director Schröder. This is without doubt a reference to mass outbreaks like the one at Tönnies, where in June 1,553 employees tested positive for COVID-19, five of whom are still in intensive care and only surviving by means of artificial respiration. It remains unclear how many of these workers will survive and how many other meat industry workers will suffer the medical repercussions of COVID-19 for years to come.

In Rheda-Wiedenbrück, also in North Rhine-Westphalia, business leaders are working with local politicians to restart production as quickly as possible. The Higher Administrative Court in Münster on Thursday decided to lift lockdown restrictions on the two most affected districts.

Since Thursday, technicians at Tönnies are likewise back on the job. Full production is scheduled to restart July 17. By then, new hygienic protocols are to be developed. The responsible district administrator, Sven-Georg Adenauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), grandson of the first postwar Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, assured the public that “constructive talks” were taking place with the company management.

Meanwhile, Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (Social Democratic Party, SPD) claims it his intention to “clarify the contracts and temporary employment practice in the meat industry.” Heil made the assurance on the broadcaster RND that the government was working “at full steam” and would “not be stopped by lobby interests.” With regard to the recently assumed German European Union (EU) Council Presidency, Heil went so far as to promise an “appropriate minimum wage and good basic security” across Europe.

Heil’s SPD colleague Sigmar Gabriel recently made clear what this means. From March to the end of May 2020, Gabriel was hired by Clemens Tönnies as a highly paid consultant at the aforementioned meat processing plant. As recently as his tenure as Federal Minister of Economics and SPD Chairman, Gabriel had harshly criticized the contracts at Tönnies, describing them as a “shame for Germany.”

Inge Bultschnieder, founder of Werkvertrag, is an eyewitness to the unspeakable living and working conditions for Eastern European contract workers at this company. In a short phone call with the World Socialist Web Site, Ms. Bultschnieder described Gabriel as “the disappointment of a lifetime.” Gabriel had personally visited her five years ago when he was still the Federal Minister of Economics. “He was here,” she reported to the research magazine Panorama. “And he was super-interested and asked very specific questions.” She believed that this would be “the breakthrough” for the contract workers.

Instead, Gabriel was reined in by Clemens Tönnies almost immediately. After speaking with the billionaire meat baron, on February 3, 2015, Gabriel posted the following obsequious sentence on Facebook: “It is fascinating to see how quickly this company has grown. And it is good that Tönnies is setting standards in the positive sense in an industry that has always had to deal with black sheep.”

It is no surprise that Tönnies was then personally consulted and involved in the 2015 government decision on a “voluntary commitment” to comply with labor standards in the German meat industry. With this long-standing, trusted collaboration, Gabriel’s latest consultancy contract with Tönnies in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic is just the icing on the cake.

Heil’s promise will hardly end the exploitation of these workers. There are still 12-plus-hour shifts, the butchers and meat packers still do hard work in frigid temperatures. Their low-wage contracts are further diminished by excessive deductions for accommodation and transportation, while their housing is entirely substandard, and any reasonable health care is lacking. The pandemic has not created these abuses, which have been rampant in the meat industry for decades, but only disclosed them.

New coronavirus outbreaks have barely been reported by the media. A developing hotspot is feared in the district neighboring the Tönnies plant: the Westphal meat company had to shut down its cutting and slaughterhouse in Herzebrock-Clarholz last week because a worker had contracted COVID-19. So far, he and two roommates, who also work at Westphal, have tested positive.

Not far away is Göttingen, where there have already been mass eruptions of COVID-19 in the Iduna apartment complex and in another high-rise. The nearby Friedland refugee transit camp has also been affected for over a week. At the end of June, 62 people were tested positive in the camp, 52 so-called “late repatriates” who came to Germany from Kazakhstan, seven employees of the facility and three asylum seekers. The camp, which traditionally accommodates immigrants from Russia and Kazakhstan, houses 123 asylum seekers, in addition to 191 late repatriates.

The daily figures from RKI, the German government agency and research institute responsible for disease control and prevention, do not come close to expressing the social dimension of the pandemic. Not only do they avoid giving a breakdown of the professional groups and social classes concerned. They are also undoubtedly underestimates, as there is still no systematic testing.

This was most recently demonstrated by the situation at a Catholic kindergarten in Friedrichshafen, in southern Germany. There, the director closed the facility on July 6, because so many children were sick. More than 40 children showed coronavirus symptoms. However, the authorities saw no need to have all 67 children and their educators tested for COVID-19, giving as a reason that especially in children, “various factors” could lead to a “generally perceived accumulation of respiratory symptoms.”

Barcelona residents told to stay at home as COVID-19 resurges across Europe

Alejandro López

European Union (EU) states are facing a resurgence of COVID-19 outbreaks provoked by the criminal and negligent policies of the ruling class. Back-to-work policies, the lifting of confinement measures, continued lack of protection for the most vulnerable sections of the working class and the drive to reopen countries to tourism are leading to a collapse of social distancing. A new contagion threatens to swamp health systems yet again.

Fresh Covid-19 outbreaks have been detected throughout Europe. Sweden, Portugal and Bulgaria have some of the highest rates of new infections in the European Union, with an incidence rate of over 40 cases per 100,000 population according to data released on Saturday by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

In the past two weeks, Sweden reported 6,642 new infections and 208 deaths. Since the beginning of the outbreak in March the country has recorded more than 77,280 cases and 5,619 fatalities. Sweden is infamous for openly embracing the “herd immunity” policy—the same policy pursued by all governments—which means the abandonment of all efforts to stop the spread of the virus by allowing it to spread without constraint.

In Portugal, the 14-day infection rate is now at 47.9 with nearly 5,300 new cases reported in that period. An additional 95 people have also lost their lives to the virus. Lisbon’s 700,000 residents have been in lockdown since July 1—expected to last until late July.

In France, the latest weekly bulletin from Santé Publique France has designated three départements—the north-western département of Mayenne and the overseas French territories of French Guinea and Mayotte—at an “elevated” level of concern. In several other areas including the Paris region and Nouvelle-Aquitaine, local authorities say they are monitoring cases. The average daily death rate has gone up to 22.4, a significant rise from the previous two weeks which saw a 14.8 and 15.5 daily death rate respectively. The total number of deaths during the outbreak now stands at 30,138.

In Belgium, the number of new infections per day continues to increase, with the daily average new cases reported for the week from 9 to 15 July rising above 200, to 207 from 124.7 new in the first seven days of July, an increase of 61 percent.

Spain currently seems to be the epicentre of the resurgence of the virus in Europe, a month after the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government ended the state of alarm, eased lockdown restrictions to struggle against the Covid-19 virus and forced millions of non-essential workers back to work. France is now discussing closing its borders once again to the Iberian Peninsula.

Spain was one of the hardest hit since the beginning of the year, with over 28,000 deaths recorded from COVID-19, although the National Institute of Statistics has stated that deaths overall in the country increased by 48,000 between March 2 and May 24, the weeks when the health crisis hit Spain the hardest.

Spain has at least 158 active coronavirus outbreaks, involving 1,993 people. The north-eastern Catalonia region has again recorded a daily COVID-19 infection figure of around 1,000, the worst of the outbreaks. The region’s department of health announced yesterday night that the latest 24-hour figures record another 944 cases, nearly 700 of them in the Barcelona metropolitan area.

On Friday, the Catalan regional government announced last-minute new lock-down measures. Four million residents of the province of Barcelona have been urged to stay at home unless absolutely necessary. The Catalan government is banning gatherings of over 10 people and shutting cinemas, theatres and nightclubs, after the number of new cases tripled in a week.

The rapid rise in cases throughout Europe is the result of criminal policies which lifted confinement measures early for the sake of profit. In China, the central government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province, the epicentre of the initial detected outbreak, in an effort to quarantine the virus from January 23 January to April 8. That is, the lockdown in China lasted two months, two weeks and two days. In many European states full lockdowns lasted only a few weeks, if they were ever implemented.

The concentration of EU governments was not protecting lives but protecting profits. To varying degrees, their initial response was to downplay the danger and keep businesses operating as usual. Once they were forced to due to mass anger and workers’ strikes, some governments implemented lockdowns, only to ease them as soon as the number of cases went down.

Now, as European Union leaders discuss a €750 billion bailout plan as corporations shamelessly approve mass sackings, it is emerging that EU governments have not used this breathing spell to prepare for new outbreaks, even though they all predicted it would come. On Sunday, a study by El País said that Spain needs at least 12,000 contact-tracing officers, but instead only had 3,500. Helena Legido-Quigley, a health expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the daily “we have been insisting for months that we need to contract more tracers.”

As anger mounts at the scale of the resurgence of the virus, the EU is working to limit the extent of localised lockdowns in order to continue extracting profits.

Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, UK Prime Minister Boris Jonson compared a nationwide shutdown to a “nuclear deterrent,” stating, “I can’t abandon that tool any more than I would abandon a nuclear deterrent. But it is like a nuclear deterrent, I certainly don’t want to use it. And nor do I think we will be in that position again.” He was contradicting the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, who warned that with winter coming, “The challenges will be very much greater and of course there is a risk that this could also need national measures as well.”

In Germany, the states and the federal government reached an agreement on “more targeted measures.” This means public authorities will only implement limited lockdowns in targeted hotspots and localised travels bans, to limit the impact on profits. The meeting came after recent lockdowns imposed following an outbreak at a slaughterhouse in the Gütersloh district. The restrictions have since been lifted.

On Thursday, Spain’s King Felipe VI presided over an empty official tribute to essential workers and to the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic. The event was promoted for weeks by the ruling class in an attempt to prop up the popularity of the Monarchy, embroiled in multiple corruption scandals, and to present the pandemic as over and Spain as open to “business as usual,” especially tourism.

More than 400 people—all the members of the government, each of Spain’s 17 regional premiers, and even NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adanom Ghebreyesus and the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen—attended the ceremony.

The grotesque nature of the event has not only been exposed by the rise in cases in the past week, but also by protests and strikes of doctors, medical residents and other health care workers over low salaries and non-renewal of contracts in past weeks. Depressed and traumatised by their experience in the past months, they are now fearful of an insecure future: 36.3 percent of public health care workers not having a permanent contract. Regional governments have already started slashing health staff.

Last week, over 4,600 doctors, nurses, and pharmacy personnel began an indefinite strike to protest against low salaries. Marching through the streets, they received the support of the population, who applauded them from the balconies.

In the same week, the misnamed “progressive” Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government traveled to the EU summit to discuss corporate bailouts and billions of euros in EU austerity measures.

Israeli police deploy tear gas and water cannon against anti-Netanyahu demonstrators

Jean Shaoul

Thousands of people demonstrating against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the pandemic’s economic fallout and calling for his resignation were brutally assaulted by Israeli police.

Around two thousand people protested outside Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem, Saturday, one of a series of increasingly angry demonstrations in the city over the past week demanding his resignation. They marched into the city, blocking nearby streets. The police blasted demonstrators with water cannon to disperse the crowds and arrested 15 people.

In Tel Aviv, the country’s commercial centre and most populous city, several thousand self-employed workers rallied in Charles Clore Park before marching through the city to Habima Square. This demonstration was one of a series that have been held on Saturday evenings.

Protesters carried posters reading “Out of touch, you don’t care,” and chanted “Shame!” The rally was addressed by social activists and self-employed people, who described their plight.

Angry clashes broke out as police used mounted units and water cannon to disperse the protesters and arrested 13 people, detaining six.

The protests, held under the slogan, “Fighting for bread,” were organized by several groups representing self-employed Israelis and members of the Black Flag movement, which has been demanding Netanyahu’s resignation since his indictment on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases. It has also opposed Netanyahu’s attacks on the attorney general, the media, law enforcement, and the judiciary amid claims that the charges against him are part of a left-wing plot.

Earlier in the week, the police had refused to allow the rally to take place in Rabin Square, claiming that the square and the surrounding area could hold no more than 1,800 people practicing social distancing.

Around 100 people demonstrated in Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev, while thousands came out to protest at nearly 200 bridges and junctions throughout the country for the fourth week in succession.

The number of COVID-19 infections has skyrocketed, with Israel reporting almost 50,000 cases and over 400 deaths. The overwhelming majority of these have occurred since Netanyahu’s criminal plans, announced on April 19, for a return to work and the reopening of schools to ensure the flow of profits to Israel’s financial and corporate elite, without any measures to guard against or deal with a second wave. He ignored recommendations from a team of experts, headed by Professor Eli Waxman from the Weizman Institute of Science in Rehovot, calling for a contact-tracing body, a national information centre on the COVID-19 crisis, and a unit within the Ministry of Health to tackle emergency situations. Waxman blamed the increase in cases on the speedy and uncontrolled reopening of schools and the economy, and the government’s failure to implement his team’s recommendations, including reconsidering the decision to restart the economy if the daily number of infections rose above 200, just 10 percent of the current rate.

Healthcare experts have warned that the government has “lost control” of the virus, while public health director Professor Siegal Sadetzki has resigned over the reopening of the economy without adequate safeguards.

According to a review by the Ministry of Defence, the government’s procurement and supply of personal protective equipment for medical teams was just a fraction of the amount determined as necessary by health officials at the start of the pandemic. Dr. Daniel Trotsky, head of the emergency department at the Yitzhak Shamir Medical Center, said, “We use this equipment before any contact with a verified patient or with suspected patients. A shortage of protective equipment will result in multiple exposures of medical staff to the virus.”

The review said that Israel’s contact tracing system, with just a few hundred contact investigators, was “very limited—at least 10 times smaller, and sometimes more than that, compared to Western countries.”

The lockdown and international flight bans have had a catastrophic impact on Israel’s tourism, hospitality and service sectors. Some 21 percent of the population are now unemployed, up from 3.5 percent in February, with many more layoffs expected in the light the Bank of Israel’s forecast of a six percent contraction in the economy.

With unemployment benefits only payable for a three-month period, opposition to Netanyahu’s indifference to the plight of so many families, even as he obtained Knesset approval for years of backdated tax relief for himself, has risen. His public approval ratings have fallen to 30 percent in the opinion polls.

Netanyahu and his coronavirus emergency coalition government face a tidal wave of anger and criticism over its failure to make available a promised $580 million aid package for small and medium-sized businesses, which his critics say has come too little and too late if it ever arrives.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu announced a $1.74 billion package, including payments of up to $217 for every citizen over the age of 18, rising to nearly $870 for those with three or more children, to boost spending and “get the economy moving faster.” More than 120,000 people with assets over $1 million would also receive the handouts. Senior officials, including Netanyahu’s cabinet colleagues, spoke out vehemently against the proposals, saying the money should be targeted at the poorest citizens, while commentators attacked it as a bribe for the masses.

Such is the hardship that Channel 13’s crowdfunding campaign for people to donate their grants “to those who really are in need” raised nearly a million dollars overnight. Its staff wrote on the official Facebook page that it was for “People who do not receive assistance from the state at all. Children who are disgracefully hungry. Families whose electricity has been cut off. Let’s now pass on to them the grants we have received from the government.”

In the early hours of Friday morning, following a bitterly divided cabinet meeting, the government re-imposed the closures of restaurants, bars and leisure and entertainment facilities, limiting the size of gatherings to 10 people. It refused to order another full lockdown and said that children’s nurseries would remain open to facilitate the return to work. According to Treasury officials, every day of classes for kindergarten and primary school children is worth about $73 million to the economy. The government was forced to delay the closure of restaurants, introduced without warning, until Tuesday, following angry protests from business.

Education Minister Yoav Galant has announced plans, based on different levels of economic lockdown, for the reopening of schools on September 1. In the worst-case scenario, students from fifth grade and up would study only through distance learning, and lower grades and preschools would be divided into small groups.

His plans fly in the face of a recent Knesset report that the major sources of new infections were home and school transmissions. More than 100 schools were forced to close again after their reopening as hundreds of students became sick with the virus and dozens of staff tested positive. The government refused to order the closure of all schools. In Jerusalem, where many schools were affected, parents refused to send their children to school. It is unknown how many teachers have been infected, but on Friday, the funeral was held of a teacher, 64-year-old Shelve Zalfreind, who died from COVID-19.

Haim Bibas, who chairs the Federation of Local Authorities, pointed out that the implementation of Galant’s plans needed an extra $1 billion. He said, “Without preparation and full and immediate funding, opening the school year is still uncertain.”

While the government had planned to extend the school year—without any extra payments to the teachers—by nearly two weeks over the summer to facilitate the return to work, a court case, brought by the teachers’ union, prevented it from doing so.

Thousands of social workers have been on strike for the last two weeks demanding higher wages and a reduction in their burgeoning case load. With more than 1,000 vacancies remaining unfilled, the government has authorized work visas for teachers from the Philippines and South Asia. Community nurses have also gone on strike, refusing to carry out all but emergency work. At the same time, nurses have started a nationwide strike over staff shortages, refusing to carry out all but emergency work, with 817 nurses in quarantine.

Eighty-five infants infected with COVID-19 in Corpus Christi, Texas

Chase Lawrence

Eight-five infants under the age of one have tested positive for the coronavirus in Nueces County, Texas. The county, which includes Corpus Christi, has seen the number of new cases skyrocket in July after seeing a slight flattening trend. The virus has infected dozens of babies, including the death on July 6 of a baby of less than six months old.

The director of public health for Nueces County, Annette Rodriguez, told CNN on Saturday, “We currently have 85 babies under the age of one year in Nueces County that all have tested positive for COVID-19” and “these babies have not even had their first birthday yet.” She urged, “Please help us stop the spread of this disease.”

Nueces County, on the Gulf of Mexico, has seen a rise in cases and deaths in July in the wake of the reopening, with 2,416 cases and 9 deaths at the beginning of the month, compared to 8,407 cases and 90 deaths as of Saturday, an increase in cases of over 300 percent and deaths by 1,000 percent. This is in a county with a total population of approximately 326,000, meaning that about 2.6 percent of the total population has been infected, twice the infection rate of the United States, which stands at 1.2 percent.

In Corpus Christi, as of Saturday a total of 90 people had died from COVID-19, although this is most likely an undercount due to shortages in testing. According to city numbers, the 7-day averaged daily case was 26 a month ago. As of Saturday, it stood at 236, for a 14-fold increase in daily cases.

The total number of people who have died in Texas stood at 3,865 as of Saturday, far surpassing the 2,977 deaths from 9/11 terrorist attacks, with a new grim record of 174 deaths on Friday alone. Out of the 254 counties in the state, only 5 have reported no COVID-19 cases.

Stretches of South Texas have seen coronavirus infections spread so quickly in recent weeks that local hospitals are being pushed to their limit. The four-county region in the Rio Grande Valley and the Coastal Bend has just 21 ICU beds still available for a population of about 1.4 million people, according to the latest state data. Ambulance operators describe wait times of up to 10 hours to deliver patients to overflowing emergency rooms.

In the Coastal Bend region, which includes Corpus Christi, a trauma service division managed by the Regional Advisory Council reports hospital bed usage is upwards of 80 percent and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds are completely full. Health professionals and scientists have warned that this causes an increase in deaths from other ailments and diseases that otherwise would be treated, as patients are turned away as ICU and ER beds are overwhelmed.

Nueces County Medical Examiner Adel Shaker has requested an additional refrigerated truck to store bodies, as the county’s existing morgue is full. The mobile morgue was scheduled to arrive on Saturday. The county has also written to the Texas Division of Emergency Management asking for additional staffing, personal protective equipment and the construction of field hospitals.

The governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, as recently as July 16 signaled his commitment not to impose a new lockdown. Abbott told KPRC-TV in Houston on Wednesday that it seems like people ask him about a shutdown “like a thousand times a day.”

“People are panicking, thinking I’m about to shut down Texas again,” he said. “The answer is no. That is not the goal. I’ve been abundantly clear.” Abbott is touting measures he’s taken in recent weeks, including a statewide mask mandate and an order shutting down bars. He said it will take a few weeks to see a reversal to the surge in coronavirus cases.

On Thursday, Abbott defended his response to the coronavirus at a virtual Texas Republican convention after acknowledging widespread discontent among party members who have criticized even the governor’s mask mandate. “The last thing that any of us want is to lock Texas back down again,” he said during the convention.

Abbott is trying to shift the blame for the rise in cases on young people, whom he blames for not wearing masks. This claim is obviously false given the fact that people have been infected at places, such as bars and restaurants, that should have been closed under a lockdown.

The news of the infections of infants in Corpus Christi is particularly concerning. The specific literature from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on COVID-19 in infants states that transmission is thought to “occur primarily through respiratory droplets during the postnatal period,” though there are concerns that it may spread during birth or late pregnancy. It also states that “data suggest that infants (<12 months of age) may be at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19 compared with older children,” though the information is not conclusive.

The CDC states that there are complications reported with COVID-19 in infants, and that in a minority of infants “severe disease requiring mechanical ventilation has been reported in COVID-19 positive neonates [infants who were just born].”

The infection of infants exposes the criminality of the Texas government’s efforts to reopen, and the reopening efforts throughout the US and globally, where workers are told that their children will be safe being sent back to school and daycare. This is combined with the failure to heed the warnings of scientists and health professionals, who have warned against premature re-openings, and emphasized the need for massive testing, treatment and the closing of all nonessential businesses.

Given recent revelations on the many complications and additional symptoms from the virus, such as widespread blood clotting, liver failure and, in children, Kawasaki-like disease, it is a fair to conclude that sending children back to schools and daycare, where the virus would spread like wildfire, will not be safe for children or infants. The longevity of the effects of the disease are unknown, and may prove to be long term or permanent, much in the same way as polio left people crippled long after being treated.

On July 14, the White House Coronavirus Task Force designated almost half of the counties in Texas as “red zones,” or counties that have at least 10 percent of tests coming back positive. Roughly 4 in 5 people in Texas live in these zones. The task force document suggests “red zones” should close nonessential businesses and limit gatherings to less than 10. These modest demands will most certainly fall on deaf ears as the state government, following the Trump administration’s lead, has repeatedly asserted that it will take no serious measures to fight the virus.

Trump administration expands assault on coronavirus testing

Bryan Dyne

In an interview with Chris Wallace that aired Sunday on “Fox News Sunday,” US President Donald Trump continued his attacks on mass coronavirus testing in the United States. While claiming that countries in Europe “don’t test,” supposedly explaining the continent’s lower case count, Trump decried testing in the US for “really skew[ing] the numbers.” He asserted, “In a way we’re creating trouble.”

The president also said that “many of those cases shouldn’t even be cases,” because “many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day.” Trump then added, “They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test.” Wallace was forced to correct Trump, stating that “Testing is up 37 percent. Cases are up 194 percent. It isn’t just that the testing has gone, the virus has spread. The positivity rate has increased.”

Trump’s interview was broadcast as the number of cases in the US has already exceeded 3.8 million, more than any other country in the world, and as the number of deaths has soared to 143,000. Worldwide, there are now 14.6 million cases and 608,000 deaths. The majority of reported daily new cases and deaths are from the United States, Brazil, India, South Africa and Mexico.

President Donald Trump Interviews with Chris Wallace on Fox News (Screen Capture from Fox News)

Florida continues to be the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, having recorded more than 12,000 new cases yesterday and at least 87 deaths. California had the second highest number of new cases, 8,115, and 11 deaths. Ohio, which Governor Mike DeWine has touted as doing “very well,” had the second highest death toll yesterday, 40 people, along with more than 1,000 new cases. Texas ranked third in both metrics, with 7,389 new cases and 39 reported deaths.

Even New York, which has been hailed as a success story in controlling the coronavirus after being the world epicenter in April, recorded 850 cases and 18 deaths. The state of Montana, which had two multi-day stretches of no new cases in May, now has one of the fastest-growing outbreaks in the country.

Other states with large case counts or deaths rates—or both—include Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina. According to the coronavirus tracking website covidexitstrategy.org, 17 states in the American South and West have “uncontrolled spread” of the disease while only four across the country are “trending better” in regard to their outbreak.

In the interview with Fox News, Trump also reiterated his demand that children attend school in the fall, regardless of their safety. “Young people have to go to school. There are problems when you don’t go to school, too.” He then again threatened to withhold federal money from states and school districts that don’t reopen. “There is going to be a funding problem. When they don’t open their schools, we’re not going to fund them.”

There is a connection between Trump’s two main talking points. He and his administration are aware of the enormous risks involved in sending the nation’s children back to school amid a contagious and deadly pandemic. It is not out of the realm of possibility that most of the 50-60 million school-age children in this country, packed into increasingly crowded classrooms, contract the disease, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and perhaps hundreds of thousands of debilitating lifelong conditions.

The danger of a quick and massive spread among children was made clear in data from Florida’s Department of Health, which currently shows that 31 percent of all children that have been tested for COVID-19 have tested positive, compared to an 11 percent positivity rate for the state as a whole. While questions have been raised as to whether the children tested were at a higher risk of infection, the fact that such a high proportion of those tested have been infected has raised concerns among local health officials even as Governor Ron DeSantis moves ahead with reopening all Florida schools in August and September.

But, at least according to Trump’s logic, it will be much harder to conclusively prove that the virus caused such a catastrophe if the students, teachers and parents no longer have access to testing. The same can be said for workplaces across the US: the virus will in fact “disappear,” as the president has continued to claim, fabricating an excuse to force even more people back to work. The ongoing deaths in factories, plants and workplaces will become a nonissue for Trump and the financial and political interests for which he speaks.

Further details about the state of testing in the US came out during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” between host Chuck Todd and the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins. Todd noted that, “There’s a report this morning that the White House is actually pushing back on a congressional proposal that would add more money to your budget, by the way, more money to states for testing and contact tracing.”

Todd then asked specifically about how tests are conducted. “What can the federal government do right now to improve the testing lag issue, okay? … I've had my own family members have to wait five to seven days to get, to get a, to get the result. That becomes useless at some point if you’re asymptomatic. What do we do to fix that?”

Dr. Collins responded that it can take “as long as a week” to get testing results back, which “really undercuts the value of the testing.” Collins then explained that since “you do the testing to find out who’s carrying the virus and then quickly get them isolated so they don't spread it around.”

Moreover, both Collins and Todd are assuming that one can even get tested. While testing has been ramped up across the country, there are an increasing number of reports that have emerged of miles-long lines of cars at testing centers in Arizona and Florida, as well as testing centers closing down completely in Houston, Texas.

The risk of unknowingly spreading the disease was highlighted in a weekend Washington Post article on “Coronavirus superspreaders,” where one or two cases can cause a cluster of dozens or even thousands of new cases. There are at least a thousand suspected cases worldwide, dozens in the United States alone. One instance reported by the Post occurred in Ingham County, Michigan, where two infections at a college bar on June 18 led to 187 cases by July 17. Health officials have also linked Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma last month to a surge of cases in that state.

Todd also took the opportunity to ask Dr. Collins about the supposed “hacking issue that apparently the Russians were behind.” He then provocatively asked, “Did you guys lose any key information?”

Collins responded somewhat indifferently. “It’s not entirely clear to me what this was all about. Now, we certainly are deeply engaged in this vaccine effort. The vaccine that’s about to have its phase three trials started in just the next ten days or so was initially designed a few hundred yards from where I’m sitting right now at NIH. And certainly, we are always under cyberattacks of various sorts. But I would say most of what we do in science, we publish it. We put it out there. People don’t have to go hacking to find it. We're all about transparency. So, I’m not exactly sure what serious risk is involved here.”