As COVID-19 ravages Brazil, governments promote homicidal reopening of schools

Tomas Castanheira

Brazil set new COVID-19 records for a single day on Wednesday, reporting 70,869 new cases and 1,554 deaths. With this, the country simultaneously surpassed the milestones of 2.5 million cases and 90,000 total deaths from the disease.

These figures expose one of the worst scenarios of the global pandemic. Although in absolute numbers Brazil still lags behind the United States, Wednesday’s numbers surpassed those of any other country in the world.

In the midst of these catastrophic conditions, the Brazilian political establishment is promoting a campaign to reopen schools across the country as soon as possible, threatening to escalate the already soaring levels of COVID-19 infections.

Entrance of a public school in São Paulo [Credit: Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo]

The schools represent a key step for a total reactivation of the Brazilian economy, which demands that workers leave their children while they are at their jobs generating profits for the ruling elite.

The brutal irrationality of this proposal was recently expressed in a commercial produced by the Union of Private Educational Establishments of Rio de Janeiro (Sinepe-RJ). Attacking science and normalizing COVID deaths, it stated:

“Months have passed, we’ve learned to live with the virus. COVID will never totally leave, what ends is fear… We understood that science is the vaccine, studies have only caused confusion. Locking everyone up at home is not science. To confine is to ignore, to subtract life, to weaken, to mess with emotions. Children need to get back together, play, rebuild bonds, friendships, see their friends again.”

Although it was quickly taken off the air, after a rain of criticism by health experts, its conceptions are fully aligned with the discussions being held at the top level of the state. It is impossible not to associate them with the sociopathic positions defended by extreme-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

About a month ago, when he announced to millions of Brazilians that he had contracted the new coronavirus, Bolsonaro once again insisted that the entire population should contract the virus and called for the immediate reopening of schools.

At that moment, he was looking for a candidate for the Ministry of Education (MEC). Renato Feder, one of those interviewed, declared later to Estadão that the president’s central concern was to have someone capable of promoting a plan for the resumption of classes throughout the country.

The minister appointed by Bolsonaro, the evangelical preacher Milton Ribeiro, was promptly praised by national private education associations as a figure capable of advancing “the safe resumption of on-site academic activities.”

Schools are already reopening

The reopening of schools in Brazil is progressing in the same way as they were closed, without general planning, with local governments making arbitrary decisions.

However, if in the movement to close schools at the beginning of the pandemic, governors and mayors appeared as opponents of the homicidal policy of Bolsonaro, now in promoting the reopenings, they reveal the total inconsistency of their opposition.

Public school classroom in São Paulo [Credit: Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo]

Following the lead given by the Ministry of Education in early July, when it presented a national protocol for the resumption of classes, the state and municipal governments have approved their own protocols, which despite not setting dates, prepare the ground for reopenings at any time.

Eleven states, plus the Federal District, have already scheduled the reopening of their schools. The dates set are based on completely fabricated arguments of a supposed “stabilization” of the epidemic.

In São Paulo, the state most affected by the pandemic, an average of almost 2,000 deaths per week was commemorated by right-wing governor João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) as a “plateau” in the spread of the disease and the time for “normalization.” Since then, he has manipulated data and the criteria of his reopening plan to allow a return to school in early September.

A number of other governments are already pushing for the resumption of classes in private schools as a spearhead to open the way for public schools, which educate 80 percent of Brazilian students with much more precarious infrastructure.

The first capital to permit the reopening of private schools was Manaus, in Amazonas, on July 6. According to the Union of Private Educational Establishments of the State of Amazonas (Sinepe-AM), 70 percent of the units reopened, bringing about 88,000 students inside classrooms.

This week, the Amazonian governor Wilson Lima of the reactionary Christian Social Party moved up the date for the return of public schools throughout the state to August 10. The government’s irresponsibility with the pandemic was already graphically demonstrated in April, when the scenes of thousands being buried in mass graves in Manaus shocked the whole world.

UK government forced to enact new restrictions after pandemic let loose

Thomas Scripps

The Conservative government’s claims to have brought the pandemic under control—its main justification for ending the national lockdown over the last weeks—are in a state of utter collapse.

Amid a national surge of coronavirus cases and fatalities, Prime Minister Boris Johnson convened a press conference Friday. He announced that the lifting of the last remaining national lockdown restrictions—scheduled to begin today—were now being postponed. Wedding receptions of up to 30 people and indoor live performances; the opening of bowling allies, casinos, and skating rinks; and larger gatherings in sports venues and conference centres will be delayed for at least two weeks.

More measures were required to stop the spread of the disease, Johnson said, announcing that face coverings would be mandatory in cinemas, museum, galleries, and places of worship from August 8.

Speaking alongside Johnson, Chief Medical Officer for England, Sir Chris Whitty, declared that Office for National Statistics (ONS) data suggested, “we have probably reached near the limits or the limits of what we can do in terms of opening up society.” He added that this created “difficult trade-offs” and that “The idea that we can open up everything and keep the virus under control is clearly wrong… what we’re seeing is that we are at the outer edge of what we can do and therefore choices will need to be made.”

ONS figures indicate that the prevalence of the virus in the community is rising throughout the country for the first time since May. The number of infections per day in July shot up compared with June. Around 4,200 people are catching the virus each day in England, up 68 percent on the estimated 2,500 daily infections two weeks ago. This figure does not include care homes and hospitals and rates are thought to be twice as high in London, and still rising.

The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) admitted yesterday that it “does not have confidence that R [Reproduction rate of the virus] is currently below 1 in England,” which would mean the virus is now spreading significantly.

The surge was clear in Friday’s infection and fatality figures. Along with 880 new infections—the highest spike for a month—120 deaths were reported. In just the five days to Friday, 367 have died of COVID-19, after the death rate declined to single figures as a result of the lockdown.

Johnson declared with unabashed hypocrisy, “we cannot be complacent,” and that it was time to “squeeze the brake pedal” on lifting restrictions “in order to keep that virus under control.”

In response to the resurgence of the virus, late Thursday evening and without any warning, the government was forced to impose new lockdown measures in a huge area of northern England. The areas selected contain some five million people—roughly equivalent to the entire population of Scotland.

The areas now under additional lockdown restrictions are Greater Manchester; Pendle, Hyndburn, Burnley, Rossendale, and Blackburn with Darwen in East Lancashire; Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees in West Yorkshire and the city of Leicester, which saw the UK’s first local lockdown.

Sixteen local authorities in the region have seen dramatic increases in rates of infection in recent weeks.

Greater Manchester alone has a population of over 2.8 million and is spread over an area of nearly 500 square miles. It includes two cities—Manchester and Salford—and eight towns: Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan. Another city included in the lockdown, Bradford, has a population of over 539,000.

In the seven days to July 20 and the seven days to July 27, the rate of coronavirus infections per 100,000 increased from 83 to 89 in Blackburn and Darwen, from 23 to 54 in Oldham, 45 to 48 in Bradford, 27 to 42 in Pendle and 15 to 41 in Trafford. Overall, the 19 local authorities affected by the new restrictions have recorded 1,536 new cases in the last week alone.

The northern England lockdown was rushed through in a way that could only undermine its effectiveness. At 9:16 p.m. on Thursday night, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced in a tweet that people living the north England areas would no longer be allowed to meet other households indoors from midnight—giving millions of people less than three hours’ notice. After 11pm, less than an hour before the measures were due to come into effect, the government issued a statement saying that police forces would be given powers to prevent meetings between households either indoors or in private gardens.

On Friday morning, Hancock contradicted official guidance issued by the Department for Health and Social Care, which had asserted that visits by households in the restricted areas to households outside of the affected areas would be illegal. Hancock said this was against the guidance but not against the law.

The imposition of the lockdown was massively culturally insensitive. The north of England’s many Muslim communities are celebrating the religious festival of Eid, which began exactly as the lockdown was being imposed. Major celebrations were to be held this weekend, normally involving gatherings of friends and family. The restrictions were sprung on them with no consultation, leaving no time to make new arrangements, and with no plans to offer support.

The restrictions still leave open the possibility for significant continued transmission. While meetings in outdoor gardens are banned, pubs and restaurants remain open (people are only allowed to visit in their household groups). In Leicester, pubs and restaurants will reopen on Monday, along with cinemas and museums, as elements of an earlier local lockdown limited to the city are simultaneously lifted! Wales, just 50 miles away from parts of Greater Manchester, is reopening pubs, bars, restaurants, cafes, bowling alleys, auction houses and bingo halls from Monday.

Many other parts of the country are seeing a resurgence of infections. Yesterday, the Daily Mirror reported that at least 51 employees at an Iceland food distribution centre in Swindon, in the south of the England, have been infected. Three local firefighters have also contracted the disease, and cases have been reported at a Honda plant and Royal Mail delivery office in the town with a population of over 192,000. The rate of infection per 100,000 in Swindon has increased from nine, two weeks ago, to 29 more recently.

To seriously confront the pandemic and contain the spread of the virus would require reverting back to a national lockdown. But this would require opposing the profit interests of big business—which are the government’s only priority. Instead, Johnson’s reckless ending of the national lockdown around a month ago—after they had succeeded in slowing the spread of the virus and saving many lives—has resulted in a catastrophic coronavirus resurgence.

Even while forced to bring in new measures, Johnson was at pains to say he had not “cancelled summer” and “would encourage people to still think of staycation-ing in the UK.” Workers would still be pressured to return to the workplace from August 1, with employers having been given “more discretion over how employees can work safely, whether by continuing to work from home, or attending a COVID-secure workplace.” Plans to remove shielding guidance for 2.2 million highly vulnerable people this Saturday will also go ahead.

Asked by a journalist at Friday’s press conference, “Why are you lifting guidance from tomorrow, encouraging people to go back to work tomorrow and planning to reopen schools in September, when the virus is on the rise across the country?” Whitty responded that reopening schools was still an “absolute priority,” cynically invoking the “welfare of children.” Earlier that day, the Independent SAGE committee—a group of eminent scientists and academics critical of the government’s handling of the lockdown—pointed to the growing evidence that children are effective spreaders of coronavirus.

The crisis-ridden Tory government is able to endanger the entire population due to it being unopposed by the Labour Party. Downplaying the grave risks to the health of the population, Labour, who are staunch backers of the Tories back to work and re-opening of the economy agenda, merely complained that the government improve its PR skills. Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer praised the government’s “right decision,” only calling on the Tories to “improve communications” since “we are going to see more of these situations over the coming weeks and months.”

Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham uncritically agreed with the plans for “modest measures to bring down the rate of new infections.” Sky News reported the comments of Lucy Powell, Labour MP for Manchester Central, who claimed she had not seen any “alarming data” beforehand that would suggest new restrictions were imminent. This under conditions in which it was common knowledge for weeks that there was a resurgence of cases in the region.

Six months since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global public health emergency

Benjamin Mateus

Just six months ago on Thursday, January 30, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus and the disease it caused, COVID-19, a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).

As the Director-General of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted then, “we don’t know what sorts of damage [it] could do if it were to spread in a country with a weaker health system. We must act now to help countries prepare for that possibility. For all these reasons, I am declaring a PHEIC over the global outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China but because of what is happening in other countries. Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems that are ill-prepared to deal with it.”

The WHO declares Public Health emergency of International Concern [Credit: Fabrice Coffrini]

At the time of the PHEIC declaration, there were 7,818 total confirmed cases worldwide, with only 82 cases of COVID-19 without any fatalities outside of mainland China across 18 countries. Dr. Tedros, during the press briefing, also warned, “this is the time for science, not rumors. This is the time for solidarity, not stigma.”

Despite the warning, the wealthy nations of the globe squandered the time that was bought by the lockdowns imposed by China to prepare for the epidemic by imposing flight restrictions and border closures while healthcare and public health infrastructure remained in shambles.

It was only on March 11 that the WHO characterized the COVID-19 epidemic as a pandemic. The number of cases outside of China had risen 13-fold, and the number of cases had reached 118,000 across 114 countries, with 4,291 people who had lost their lives.

At the WHO’s press briefing on Thursday, remarking on the declaration of PHEIC, Dr. Mike Ryan acknowledged that public health systems across the world responded slowly to implementing a comprehensive strategy to bring the pandemic under control. “The capacity to do surveillance, an integrated response is not there,” he said. “We need to look really hard to our assumptions of the existence of systems that did not prove correct.”

Since then, the pandemic has wrought a trail of devastation that continues to rage in defiance of national borders. The daily cases of COVID-19 have reached a seven-day moving average high of 260,028. There are more than 17.7 million cases with close to six million active cases. Total deaths are approaching 700,000 globally, with a seven-day moving average of 5,655 fatalities per day. Three days running, more than 6,000 people have died. Much of the recent fuel to the coronavirus’ acceleration has been the demand by the markets and the financial oligarchs to reopen commerce even while community transmission remained hot, and health experts warned incessantly that such measures would be ruinous.

Initially, Italy bore the brunt of the pandemic followed quickly by New York City. France, the United Kingdom, and Spain followed. The continent accounts for 2.87 million cases and over 203,000 deaths. Despite the massive efforts to bring the pandemic to a grinding halt, reopening efforts have led to resurgences in Spain, Germany, and France again while the Ukraine and Russia are attempting to fend off their initial foray with the virus. Many of the stateless and most impoverished in the country are facing uncertainties, including ethnic minorities, the homeless, and those recently released from prisons. They account for more than 35,000 people.

The United States continues to lead as the global epicenter of the pandemic with 4.7 million cases and nearly 157,000 deaths. Though cases have plateaued at a high of almost 70,000 cases per day, the fatality rate has been climbing, reaching nearly 1,500 three days running. According to covidexitstrategy.org, The pandemic that has seen a record number of deaths in the sunbelt states is pushing north through the Midwest states. Yet, federal and state officials have begun an effort to hide the real statistics, making the tracking of hospitalizations and cases impossible.

In a recent development in Georgia, 260 children, teens, and staffers, out of 344 tested, were found to be positive for COVID-19 while attending an overnight camp. More than half those testing positive were children ages 6 to 10. Masks were not required for the children. The massive cluster highlights the fact that children are very susceptible to the virus and should be considered contagious if infected. This will add to the growing return-to-school catastrophe that has the nation on edge. Yet, Director of the Centers for Disease Control Dr. Robert Redfield continued to endorse the reopening of schools while unable to provide clear guidance as to how to achieve sufficient measures to ensure the safety of teachers, staff and students.

During the US House of Representatives’ special select committee investigation into the Trump Administration’s response to the pandemic, Admiral Brett P. Giroir acknowledged to lawmakers that getting COVID-19 testing back to a turnaround time of 48 to 72 hours “is not a possible benchmark we can achieve today, given the demand and the supply.” Yet his attempt to paint an optimistic scenario only fell on bewildered ears. Testing shortages continue to hamper efforts on the ground.

Dr. Fauci, in his opening statement, assured the hearing that he was “cautiously optimistic” that the Moderna mRNA vaccine would be successful. The vaccine trial was ushered in with pomp and circumstance as this week beginning the phase three trial intending to enroll 30,000 subjects to prove the efficacy of the vaccine.

However, the United States has positioned itself to bring all viable vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 under its control. Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline reported that the US government would provide them up to $2.1 billion to fund their development and manufacturing of their experimental COVID-19 vaccine. As part of this quid pro quo, they will provide the US with 100 million doses with an option to procure up to 500 million doses. They are expected to begin trials in September.

On top of the Moderna vaccine, Operation Warp Speed has also invested $1.2 billion in UK-based AstraZeneca’s vaccine with the assurance of 300 million doses. They have also announced the purchase of 100 million doses of German-based BioNTech’s vaccine, created in collaboration with Pfizer, for $1.95 billion.

Should these regimens require two doses, and if the immunity remains short-lived, the vaccine will become a bonanza for shareholders and critical life-saving treatment against a virus that has barely infected the world’s population despite the arduous six months the world has suffered to this moment.

Brazil India, Chile, South Africa, Columbia, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina are only a shortlist of countries hard-hit by the pandemic whose economies remain in disarray and are unable to provide adequate care to the poorest in their countries. Countries and areas like Japan, Israel, Lebanon, and Hong Kong are facing a record number of new cases after they had suppressed infections to single digits. In Australia, the rising tide of cases forced officials to impose restrictions on Melbourne, a city of more than 5 million.

Experience with the 2009 Swine flu demonstrated that vaccine distribution would not be based on the allocation of resources to the most in need or essential, but to those that can pay. The majority of nations will be forced to negotiate for vaccines for millions of inhabitants who will face the most likely winter surge. The six months of the public health emergency of international concern has demonstrated capitalism’s total inability to deal with the threat of infectious disease and other critical threats to mankind.

US unemployment supplement expires, setting the stage for mass hunger and homelessness

Barry Grey

The $600 weekly unemployment insurance supplement enacted in March as part of the bipartisan multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street expired Friday, leaving some 25 million US workers laid off due to the coronavirus pandemic facing destitution.

The loss of the federal supplement to state jobless insurance will cut benefits by up to 80 percent in some states, dropping the average national payment from $920 a week to $520, according to some estimates.

People line up at a food distribution site in Chelsea, Massachusetts [Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman]

In addition, a moratorium on evictions of tenants in buildings with mortgages backed by the federal government, affecting 18 million of the 44 million renter households in the US, expired last week. This means that 11 million households could be served with eviction papers over the next four months, according to the global advisory firm Stout Risius Ross LLC.

With home mortgage payment moratoriums also expiring, a vast growth of homelessness is looming.

Mile-long lineups of cars at food distribution centers have already become commonplace. A cutoff or reduction in the unemployment pay supplement will greatly increase the spread of hunger and even starvation in the US. Already, almost 40 million people do not expect to be able to make their next rent or mortgage payment, and nearly 30 million say they did not have enough to eat during the week ending July 21.

The official unemployment rate, at 11.1 percent, remains the highest since World War II, and the government reported Thursday that new jobless claims for the week ending July 18 rose for the second week in a row, climbing to 1.43 million.

The Labor Department reports that 33.8 million workers are either receiving jobless benefits or have applied and are waiting to see if they will receive them. These workers account for fully 20 percent of the US labor force.

Moreover, the expiration of the unemployment supplement follows Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department that the nation’s gross domestic product fell at a record annualized rate of 32.9 percent in the second quarter, a decline of 9.5 percent from the first quarter of 2020. And this past week, Levi’s, United Air Lines, American Air Lines and Wells Fargo added to the wave of layoff announcements with the warning that tens of thousands of their employees face being furloughed or terminated in the near future.

Under these conditions, the stalemate in Congress over an extension of the unemployment pay supplement, which is certain to result in either the total elimination or a major cut in the benefit, amounts to a declaration of war by the capitalist ruling elite against the entire working population.

This was underscored by the response on Wall Street, where the financial oligarchy reacted to the expiration of benefits on Friday by driving up stock prices on all of the major indices. The Dow climbed by 114 points and Nasdaq shot up by 157 points.

The ruling class is demanding the elimination of the $600 benefit or its reduction in order to carry through its drive to force workers back to work under conditions where its incompetence, indifference and sheer greed have led to the uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus pandemic and the deepest social crisis since the 1930s Depression. Workers are being given the “choice” of going back to factories and workplaces that are breeding grounds for the virus, without any serious protection for themselves or their families, or seeing their families go homeless or hungry.

The Republicans openly denounce the $600 benefit as a “disincentive to work,” because a majority of workers laid off due to the pandemic are receiving more income in jobless pay than they did when they were working. This fact is a stark commentary on the near-poverty wages of most American workers.

But the Democrats echo the Republican line, agreeing, as in the New York Times editorial of July 30, that replacing only “a portion of the income of the average unemployed worker” is “reasonable in normal times,” because it “encourages people to find jobs,” but not in the midst of a pandemic.

In any event, there are no jobs for millions of laid-off workers to return to. As the Economic Policy Institute noted: “There are 14 million more unemployed workers than job openings, meaning millions will remain jobless no matter what they do. Slashing the $600 cannot incentivize people to get jobs that are not there.”

The Republican leadership of the Senate on Monday put forward a series of bills that would immediately slash the federal jobless benefit from $600 to $200 a week through September, and thereafter calibrate the federal addition to state benefits to provide 70 percent of the worker’s previous pay, with a combined maximum of $500.

The Democrats, who passed their so-called HEROES Act in the Democratic-controlled House in May, which would extend the $600 benefit until January, rejected the Republican proposal, setting off negotiations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer on one side and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on the other.

President Trump weighed in this week, calling for a stopgap measure that would temporarily extend the federal jobless benefit, at an unspecified amount, as well as the federal moratorium on evictions. In talks on Thursday and Friday, the Democratic leadership rejected a piecemeal deal, nominally insisting on other components of their HEROES Act, including federal aid to state and local governments and additional funding for coronavirus testing.

With no settlement in sight, Senate Republicans adjourned for the weekend, while it was reported that talks would continue between the representatives of the White House and the Democratic leadership.

CBS News reported Friday, citing an unnamed source “with knowledge of the negotiations,” that Meadows first proposed a simple one-week extension of the $600 supplement and then put forward a scaled back bill that would include four months of benefits at $400, along with funding for the reopening of schools and additional funding for the corporate slush fund known as the “small business” Paycheck Protection Program. He agreed, as part of the latter proposal, to strip out the Republican demand for a five-year legal immunity for businesses from lawsuits related to the pandemic.

The Democrats reportedly rejected these offers. However, they made clear they were prepared to accept a substantial reduction in the federal jobless pay supplement.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Tuesday on CNN, “Look, it’s not $600 or bust.” He went on to signal his agreement with the Republicans that the current benefit was a “disincentive to work,” saying, “I think that’s an argument that… has some validity to it, and we ought to deal with that.”

Schumer is jointly sponsoring a bill along with Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat of Oregon) that would progressively cut the federal unemployment supplement by $100 for every drop of 1 percentage point in a state’s unemployment level.

And on Friday, Pelosi reiterated on CNN her position that, prior to the August 7 adjournment of Congress for the party conventions, “We’ll find our common ground” on a relief bill.

Any cut in the benefit, already inadequate given the added costs of dealing with the pandemic and rising staple goods prices, will have devastating consequences for workers already struggling to pay rent and put food on the table.

Bonnie Armstrong, a laid-off server from Naples, Florida, told the local CBS television affiliate WINK, “I won’t be able to pay my rent. The fact is, if you’re offered your position back and you say no, you don’t get any more unemployment.”

Saying she would be glad to return to work, she added, “For every job, there are hundreds of people applying. It’s going to be difficult.”

There are tens of thousands of laid-off workers who have not received any unemployment benefits because their state unemployment offices failed to process their claims. In Wisconsin, where 13 percent of claims were still not processed as of July 7, workers have set up a Twitter group called “Empower Wisconsin.”

One member recently posted: “I haven’t received any money either and I filed on March 24th. Friday I called the phone line and actually got through. I was very nice and respectful and I asked, ‘This Sunday will be week #13, when will I receive benefits?’ Guess what!? She hung up on me… no lie.”

Could the Duterte Regime be COVID-19’s Next Victim?

Walden Bello

In his fifth State of the Nation (SONA) address on July 27, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte tried to live up to his old form: by turns menacing, double-talking, cursing, dripping with cynical humor, digressing, and irreverent.

Instead he came across as uninspiring, unimaginative, and perhaps overwhelmed by the realization that a formula which might have worked in the pre-COVID-19 period — where his unorthodox gangster charm worked with millions frustrated by a malfunctioning democracy — no longer connected in these times of the coronavirus.

Instead of coming across as invincible, as in previous SONAs, Duterte offered the country the rare sight of a national leader self-destructing in full public view.

Shifting Winds

The wind had shifted, and it had blown Duterte’s cover, exposing the empty core underneath that previously charming (to some) tough-guy exterior.

He faced a different audience from those in previous years, with a very large number of them possessed of eyes from which the scales had fallen. The one thing on their minds while Duterte went through his theatrics was: “Cut the BS, man. Just tell us what you’re going to do to get us out of this mess.”

The background to the SONA was an infection rate that had risen by 137 percent from mid-June to mid-July, from 33,069 to 78,412, and a death rate that had increased by 64 percent. Amazingly, Duterte had absolutely nothing to offer except praise to the military that is carrying out his failed militarized response to the pandemic. Even his handpicked audience of allies failed to clap on cue, and when they did, it was faint.

The SONA exposed this administration for what it is: an incompetent, blundering regime that relies on the deployment of coercion for everything.

Like many leaders, Duterte was blindsided by COVID-19. The difference is that many others were able to adjust and steer their countries to relative safety. Duterte, in contrast, turned to the only thing he really knows how to do, and that was to bluster and threaten and impose draconian controls.

Other countries did adopt lockdowns, but in the most successful cases, as in Thailand, lockdowns were part of a broader strategy that rested fundamentally on appealing to people to unite and work together to stop the spread of the virus. In contrast, from the very beginning, when Duterte ordered the police to shoot lockdown violators, till his most recent move, which is to employ the cops to do house-to-house searches for “non-self-isolating” COVID-19-positive people, it has been all threat, threat, threat.

Not surprisingly, he has drawn international attention as one of the two global leaders with a principally coercive approach, the other being his close friend President Xi Jinping of China. Not surprisingly, too, the Filipino people are not buying it, as testified to by the thousands who have been defying his decrees from above, many risking arrest in individual acts of protest.

Failure on Two Fronts

The Duterte approach has failed dramatically as infections continue their exponential spread and deaths keep rising.

The Philippines now has the second highest rate of infections in Southeast Asia after Indonesia, and many public health professionals actually think the actual numbers are far higher. The 1,181 recorded deaths are in contrast to 123 in Malaysia, 58 in Thailand, 6 in Myanmar, and zero in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The reality on the ground is that hospitals in Metro Manila have long run out of space for COVID-19 victims.

Even as failure has dogged the public health front, incompetence has marked the administration’s response to the economic crisis triggered by the lockdown.

Transportation, bad in the best of times, is worse in the “new normal” as factories and businesses struggle to reopen and people labor and sweat to get to work. Funds appropriated to alleviate hunger and suffering have been far from adequate. Distribution of relief goods has been chaotic, and when people have protested over their inability to access goods, the command from Malacanang, the presidential palace, has been, “Shoot those sons-of-bitches.”

In the last month, the policy drift can no longer be hidden from ordinary citizens. “The government isn’t helping at all. We have to fend for ourselves,” as one friend put it, a complaint now voiced by usually non-political housewives.

The administration’s briefings have become an exercise in trying to put the best face on a deteriorating situation, as when Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque declared victory — not over COVID-19, but over a University of the Philippines forecast that the rate of infections would be higher than it was by the end of June. Then, when questioned about police being ordered to go on a house-to-house search to apprehend “non-self-isolating” patients, Roque’s glib reply was that they intended to bring them for “a paid-for vacation in an air-conditioned facility.”

A former human rights activist who, in breathtaking Anakin Skywalker fashion, leaped over to the dark side, Roque is said to be one of the reasons the government’s credibility is sinking day by day. Roque’s serving as the chief spokesman on COVID-19 represents the “triumph of public relations over public health,” according to one of his less enamored colleagues in the administration. Another, a university professor who knows him, said, “Harry somehow manages to spontaneously evoke animosity.”

The problem is the administration is scraping bottom. There’s hardly any credible administration-associated public personality available to speak on COVID-19, since the only other official out there with some stature, Health Secretary Francisco Duque, became damaged goods when he admitted in late January that Chinese tourists could not be banned from entering the country, even after COVID-19 became a public health threat, so as not to ruin diplomatic relations with China.

Perhaps the least pessimistic assessment is provided in a bleak, comprehensive report for Kyoto University’s prestigious Center for Southeast Asian Studies by Dr Ayame Suzuki, a visiting Japanese academic who has no ax to grind against the government:

“The path the Philippine Government chose in the health crisis — hard lockdown primarily backed by coercive power — has so far has been able to prevent a devastating outbreak. However, the path seems far from sustainable: it has severely damaged the economy and increased unemployment and poverty. An exit strategy seems to be absent, and school closures continue. Worse still, the space for voice has become narrower and narrower, which hinders government from getting valuable inputs on the reconstruction effort.”

A Generational Rebellion

Not only have people realized that they’re on their own when it comes to COVID-19, but it’s finally hit them that the administration’s priorities aren’t containing the pandemic.

What people could not understand was why, even as the anti-COVID-19 campaign was floundering, Duterte was focused on passing an Anti-Terrorism Act that was clearly aimed at throttling the freedom to protest peacefully, securing the conviction of two journalists for allegedly violating the cyberspace libel law, and shuttering the ABS/CBN network, the country’s main source of television entertainment, at a time when people desperately need diversion (and when the economy could ill afford another 11,000 unemployed workers at a time of record unemployment.)

For most people, common sense dictates that national unity in the face of the pandemic is paramount, and these moves only serve to divide the country. For some, they come across as diversionary tactics, to draw people’s attention away from the failure on the COVID-19 front by painting Duterte’s critics as being more dangerous than the pandemic.

But if the wind has shifted, this is due to more than the government’s incompetence on COVID. There is a demographic shift.

Since his election in 2016, several million more youths have graduated to political maturity, and, since questioning is second nature to youth, they have begun to ask why their elders have allowed themselves to be hypnotized into erotic submission by a man that Senator Leila de Lima has characterized as a “homicidal sociopath.”

When the daughter of a legislator who is a Duterte ally tweets her support for ABS/CBN workers, contradicting her father’s shameful vote to deny the network a franchise, and the son of another member of Congress calls her a “fascist” in public for voting the same way and asks voters not to vote for her, these are not isolated, quaint incidents. They’re representative acts of a generation that has realized with horror that so many of their elders have abandoned the values on which they raised their children by backing a man who has boasted that his main qualification for office is that he has spilled a lot of blood.

A generational revolt is brewing and the president is the flashpoint.

A New Opposition?

One must, nonetheless, issue a caveat.

While COVID-19 has shattered Duterte’s invincibility, there is still some way to go before opposition to him translates into a critical mass on the ground. How fast that comes about depends greatly on the perceived character of the leadership of the growing resistance.

Will the resistance now spreading throughout the country see the emergence of young, fresh faces with new, refreshing visions for the future of the country? Or will it see the same recycled representatives of discredited elite politics that drove many to the false solution offered by Duterte in the first place?

COVID-19 is a terrible plague, one that has taken the lives of many Filipinos. But the main victim of the virus might turn out to be a regime that was well on its way to becoming a dictatorship before it came along.

Every Step the EU Takes Toward Financial Unity Sows New Seeds of Its Potential Collapse

Marshall Auerback

Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” is a play featuring two characters waiting for a character, Godot, who never arrives. As such, it is a useful metaphor for the goings-on of the European Union (EU). Observers of the EU’s evolution in the capital of Brussels have witnessed a Godot-like experience of the promised arrival of the long-awaited resolution of the group’s dysfunction and economic malaise that never happens. The pattern is virtually always the same: the countries meet, they squabble, and then they emerge with a “landmark” or “historic” compromise that deals the lowest common denominator in terms of economic impact.

True to form, the EU Joint Declaration characterized the newly created €750 billion recovery fund as an “ambitious and comprehensive package combining the classical [budget] with an extraordinary recovery effort destined to tackle the effects of an unprecedented crisis in the best interest of the EU.”

That is typical Brussels-driven hyperbole. There are some important new policy developments that give a small glimmer of hope to those hoping to nudge the EU toward full-on debt mutualization: that is to say, to jointly issue a common debt instrument of a pan-European institution (as opposed to national sovereign bonds) to fight the outbreak and its effects. The pooling of liabilities of the European Union nations and linking them to the EU’s currency issuer, the European Central Bank, are an important series of precedents, and there’s also the positive benefit of providing more fiscal support to the severely indebted countries of southern Europe (although, as usual, not enough).

On the other hand, that is precisely why the wealthier northern countries resist it: they fear that such mutualization would derogate from their own pristine credit ratings, while simultaneously allowing the so-called profligate “Club Med” countries to free-ride and avoid making reforms to their own systems.

Caught in the middle of this conflict is France, a nation that, along with Germany, is the fulcrum on which the entire European project turns. It is a country with a history of global aspiration, but its economy contains many of the weaknesses of the southern periphery countries. The government of Emmanuel Macron was one of the leading actors behind the latest initiative. But at the end of a marathon negotiating session, there was virtually nothing on the table for France itself in terms of direct aid or broad concessions toward enhanced debt mutualization. This is highly problematic, as France too has extremely high debt levels and is one of the biggest economic casualties of COVID-19.

France’s current political strategy is reminiscent of its thinking during the negotiations that led to the common currency. At that time, French President François Mitterrand calculated that the creation of the euro would provide the means whereby France could mitigate the economic power of Germany. That proved to be a fatal miscalculation.

Similarly, President Macron is seeking to use today’s recovery fund as a means of nudging the EU closer to the goal of debt mutualization. The history of the European Union suggests that such Gallic aspirations are likely to be frustrated again. France may indeed be one of Europe’s “founding fathers,” but it is a hungry parent that has fallen on hard times. National pride (and perhaps fears that the markets will eventually cotton on to its vulnerabilities if the government draws too much attention to them) has precluded it from acknowledging its needs, but if those weaknesses remain unaddressed, anti-euro populism could well surge in France (as it has in Italy). At that point, the European Union will truly have an existential crisis on its hands.

In theory, debt mutualization is the glue that could bind together a bunch of federated states, as Alexander Hamilton did for the United States. But in practice, such proposals in the past have been the source of ongoing tension and dysfunction, especially within the eurozone. The attempts to bridge the gap have provoked yet more division and possible future splits among the various EU member states, exacerbated by the backdrop of a catastrophic pandemic, which means that incrementalism won’t deliver the goods.

On to the details: the fund will disperse €390 billion in grants (with the remainder in the form of loans), spread among the member countries, with a net fiscal impact of roughly 0.6 percent of GNI. This is paltry in the context of a continent in which double-digit contractions of GDP are forecast by the IMF in some of Europe’s largest economies (e.g., in Italy, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom). Even countries thought to have handled the coronavirus well, such as Germany, are forecast to contract by almost 8 percent this year.

The funds will be borrowed directly by the European Commission (EC), who (per the Financial Times) will “establish a yield curve of debt issuance, with all liabilities to be repaid by the end of 2058.” As the bonds remain a liability of the EC, they consequently won’t be added to the national balance sheets of the distressed countries that will be the main recipients. These borrowings from the capital markets will be supplemented by existing national contributions to the overall EU budget. The latter provision created another stress point that was relieved by the usual expedient of providing additional budget rebates—basically cash back on their annual EU contributions—to the so-called “frugal five” (Finland, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden) in order to enable those countries’ leaders to sell the package to the respective national parliaments (where it still must be ratified). Effectively, the wealthiest countries are being bribed with offsets to secure agreement.

In terms of the mechanics of how the money from the recovery fund is spent, the proposed usage is subject to objection by any national state for three months. This is more akin to a time-limited pause, as opposed to an outright veto. The objections can ultimately be overridden by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm that is responsible for drawing up proposals for new European legislation and implementing the decisions of the European Parliament.

That override feature has led to some of the rhetorical excesses used to characterize the agreement. In reality, however, the power to override opens the door to debt mutualization by a sliver, if at all. Furthermore, the history of the EU shows that objections can turn into larger gridlock and opposition, especially as the EC largely shares the austerian and neoliberal biases of the northern European bloc. Hence, the “reforms” that the EC will likely demand as a quid pro quo for receiving the emergency funding likely means more cutbacks in government social spending that will be highly deflationary (the EC has already demanded such changes from Italy in the past). Hence, the program is not a bellwether for the end of austerity economics, as some have suggested. In addition to these usual north versus south splits, another level of conflict between western and eastern Europe could be added to this volatile mix, if the Dutch or the Nordic countries make aid to Hungary and Poland conditional on ongoing respect to the rule of law (as has been reported here).

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the Daily Telegraph’s international business editor, describes the recovery fund “as a one-off episode that does not lead to fiscal union or change the EU’s constitutional structure. Everything reverts to the status quo ante, which is why it is tolerated by hardliners in the German Council of Economic Experts.” Despite more emollient noises by Chancellor Angela Merkel (who will be leaving office next year), the German government on the whole remains implacably opposed to EU debt mutualization. Other countries that share Berlin’s opposition also include the Netherlands, Finland, Austria, Denmark and Sweden.

Evans-Pritchard’s characterization of the agreement may be a bit extreme: The French in particular hope that the EC’s ability to override national vetoes will ultimately provide a pathway to full debt mutualization. After all, it was the Macron government that originally pushed the idea of a common European fund, even though Paris accepted time limitations on the proposed instruments, in order to head off anticipated German and Dutch opposition to the overall concept. But in a subsequent analysis of the agreement, Evans-Pritchard also highlighted the summit communique’s characterization of the recovery fund as “a temporary facility to cope with a one-off event and should not be taken as a precedent.”

So tension remains, even as debt mutualization looks marginally more possible today than it was before the agreement was secured. So while Evans-Pritchard may be right to call the package “political nitroglycerine on a long fuse,” the fact is that this program establishes a new set of behaviors and precedents for EU allocation of funds. It’s messy and potentially explosive, as all such European compromises tend to be, but such messy ambiguity almost certainly means we will witness similar conflicts in the future.

The problem is that time is running out as the continent faces economic problems of a magnitude not experienced since the end of World War II. While the exigency of the pandemic is slowly pushing the EU member states toward going further than they have gone before, the very unpredictability created by the coronavirus makes it difficult to determine what kinds of spending will provide optimal outcomes. There will likely be a good amount of failure that will provide a bounty of evidence for the frugal five austerians, who remain profoundly suspicious of anything that remotely approximates activist fiscal policy. Likewise for the euro-skeptics if the marginal amounts allocated under this program fail to alleviate economic stress.

Extraordinary circumstances demand extraordinary measures and, short of war, it is hard to envisage a more damaging backdrop than a pandemic, which has single-handedly forced the shutdown of the global economy and continues to act as a brake on recovery, as each new outbreak creates the possibility of renewed shutdowns. That kind of an environment not only makes consumers more hesitant to spend money (given renewed uncertainty about collective employment, to say nothing of the risk of jobs being lost forever—and perhaps with good reason, considering the likely fall-off in air travel, restaurants, and other forms of leisure activities). Likewise, businesses are increasingly reluctant to invest in that kind of an environment.

All of which also complicates the task of government fiscal policy. The latter is supposed to fill in the spending gaps left open by the withdrawal of the private sector. But how can this be achieved effectively if the promotion of economic demand conflicts with the resolution of a public health emergency (that entails scaled-down activity to eradicate the presence of the coronavirus)? The task of focusing on reconstruction also becomes more problematic, as nobody can adduce fully the shape of the future post-pandemic economy, thereby complicating the task of determining how to allocate structural funding to assist in the economic transition.

Most commentary pertaining to the damage inflicted by the coronavirus has focused on Italy and Spain. And, indeed, both countries now feature governing coalitions whose attachment to the euro is lukewarm at best. Italy, in particular, has always been viewed as the greatest existential threat to the single currency union.

But while Italy’s government managed to secure a reasonable chunk of the recovery fund’s grant money (around 23 percent of the total), there is not a lot left over for France. It is, however, worth noting that France’s debt to GDP is rapidly approaching Italianate levels, and the French economy is forecast by the IMF to shrink by 12.5 percent this year.

Despite these ominous developments, the Macron administration’s longer-term goals still point to an embrace of neoliberal orthodoxy in a manner that could further contract demand and therefore elevate the country’s public debt to GDP ratio. Although the French government has deferred its planned “flagship pension reforms” for a year in order to deal with the pandemic, it insists that it still plans to follow through with them (pushing back the retirement age for many workers, as well as “reduc[ing] insurance payouts for high earners and requir[ing] people to work for longer before claiming benefits,” according to the Financial Times). The last time the government attempted changes like these, the “yellow vests” protests brought the country to a standstill.

I have long felt that France, as much as Italy, could ultimately prove the weak link that would potentially blow up the European Monetary Union, given the structural divergences in their respective economies vis-à-vis Germany. Had economics alone determined the creation of a new supranational currency, a more viable currency zone would likely have been restricted to a quasi-Deutsche Mark bloc comprising Germany, the Benelux countries, and a few of the Nordic nations. These countries shared a high degree of pre-existing economic/social/cultural convergence even before the creation of the euro.

But the creation of the euro was clearly not done on economic considerations alone. Years ago, I posited the idea that German industrialists backed the idea of a “big and broad” euro in the early 1990s so as to lock in Germany’s ongoing industrial dominance, despite the objections of the Bundesbank. They were supported by then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who was a Europeanist to the core. France wanted to join because it (naively) assumed that it could control Germany politically by taking a key role in the common currency, a miscalculation as grave as relying on the Maginot Line for national defense. Italy wanted to join because it was a founding member, and the neoliberals who dominated economic policy-making in Rome calculated that this would represent a good way to re-circuit the fundamentals of its economic behaviors and thereby override its long-standing political dysfunction.

These problematic calculations on all sides contributed to what remains a largely dysfunctional monetary union. For a time, it provided the illusion of prosperity and “ever closer” political union. COVID-19 has blown apart that illusion as easily as the wind knocking over a house of cards. The French have been pushing hard for debt mutualization precisely because the country now faces risks comparable to those of Italy, even though the markets have until now given Paris the benefit of the doubt (which is why French bond yield spreads relative to German bonds remain comparatively low). In the context of the pandemic, incrementalism might work for Germany and its northern European counterparts, but it is unlikely to work for France. The violent protests in 2018 of the “yellow vests” (which mirror decades of earlier incidents of civil unrest) and the corresponding rise of populist parties in France point to the unlikelihood that the French government could sustain the kind of economic punishment that has been inflicted on countries like Italy, Greece and Spain, even though many of France’s problems mirror those of the other “Club Med” nations.

The Paris-Berlin axis has long been the motor behind the entire European project. Much as France’s Henry IV once (apocryphally) declared that “Paris is worth a mass,” when the Huguenot king converted to Catholicism in order to ensure maximum political legitimacy for his rule, Germany and the frugal five therefore have to determine whether or not debt mutualization (or some other form of European integration) is a price worth paying in order to prevent total fragmentation.

Simply waiting for a mythical Godot, as Beckett highlighted, will get us nowhere.