Trump’s Withdrawal From WHO: a Cover-Up for His Abject Failure on COVID-19

Prabir Purkayastha

Microbes do not recognize borders. We are all safe only when everybody is safe. In a pandemic, to attack the only body we have for global cooperation endangers everyone. That is why the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) is dangerous not only for the United States, but for all of the world.

Trump’s decision to withdraw from the WHO is a continuation of his wielding a wrecking ball to the international framework of treaties and organizations. Whether it is arms control, climate change, trade or the WHO, the United States sees these agreements and institutions as fetters on its hegemonic powers to shape the world. Trump may express this pathology in its most ugly form, but the disease runs far deeper.

Trump’s excuse for withdrawing from the WHO is that it did not do its job well on the COVID-19 epidemic and was soft on China. Condemning Trump’s move, Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh and adviser to the Scottish government, tweeted, “Donald Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. from the WHO ignores the key role the agency plays in outbreak prevention and response. Not only for COVID, but also for polio, malaria, TB, plague, yellow fever, cholera, Zika virus, and neglected tropical diseases.” She also pointed out that it is because of such international agreements that the WHO received information from China on the novel pathogen on December 30, 2019, and declared the “highest alarm bell the world has”—a Public Health Emergency of International Concern—on January 30, 2020.

Trump is trying to pass the buck to the WHO for his administration’s abject failure to prepare the United States for the COVID-19 pandemic and its handling of the epidemic. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) could not even prepare a proper test kit for two months for detecting SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease. China, Germany and South Korea, to name a few, all had working test kits well before the CDC. One of these, Berlin’s Charité hospital test kit, has been supplied by the WHO to more than 120 countries. The WHO had delivered this test kit to 57 countries well before the CDC—with an annual budget almost three times WHO’s (the CDC’s annual budget is about $6.8 billion against the WHO’s two-year budget for 2020-2021 of about $4.8 billion)—could get its test kits to work.

The United States has a bipartisan unity on its being the sole global hegemon. Its wars of invasion—from Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan to Iraq—have had bipartisan support. Its right wing, which in any other part of the world would be regarded as the loony right, believes that it can impose its will on the world through unilateral action: using military force and economic sanctions. The other side, the more globalist right—there is no left or centrist forces in the U.S. leadership of either party—believes that this hegemony can be exercised more easily with a combination of using the global institutions from within and unilateral action outside.

What Does the WHO Do, and What Are the Risks to the World of a U.S. Pullout?

Almost all countries have reposed their faith in the WHO as the only international instrument we have in fighting pandemics and infectious diseases. So the U.S. action will inflict some financial damage to the WHO, but it is not a threat to its existence or mandate.

The WHO has an annual budget of about $2.2-2.4 billion (its two-year budget for 2018-19 is $4.4 billion, and its two-year budget for 2020-21 is $4.8 billion). According to the WHO, about 80 percent of its budget is funded by “voluntary contributions” made by member countries as well as organizations including philanthropic foundations and the private sector. The remaining 20 percent is covered by what are called “assessed contributions” of countries. The assessed contribution of the United States is about $120 million for the year 2020. Based on the Congressional Research Service’s figures for U.S. voluntary contributions to the WHO from 2012 to 2018 (data is not available for 2019-2020, it says), it is my estimate that the U.S. voluntary contribution to the WHO for 2020 is about $320 million, and that, along with its assessed contribution of $120 million, is about 20 percent of the WHO’s current $2.2-2.4 billion annual budget.

Because the assessed contributions are too low to fund the WHO on their own, voluntary contributions from countries and private funders have become the major component of its budget. Consequently, the WHO has become progressively more dependent on private interest groups and country interests that then dominate its agenda. After the United States and the UK, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the third biggest contributor to the WHO’s total budget.

Compared to its mandate of health for all, and fighting disease and epidemics across the world, it is a measly budget. Just put the WHO budget numbers in perspective—as I mentioned above, the U.S. CDC’s annual budget is roughly three times bigger than that of the WHO. The WHO also has no powers over sovereign countries, and has to work with governments.

Even with these constraints, the WHO has had remarkable success in eradicating smallpox, bringing down the number of polio infections from the scourge they once were to today’s small numbers, and interventions in other infectious diseases. Controlling the Ebola epidemic required multi-country and multi-agency cooperation that would not have been possible without the WHO’s intervention (albeit its efforts had some critics). It is the only agency with technical competence, drawn from different regions, that can coordinate the efforts of different countries and their agencies.

Sure, we can criticize the WHO for its mistakes, initially on not advising the wearing of masks and not emphasizing the role of airborne fine droplets or aerosols in closed spaces. However, it raised the flag of pandemic early, it came out with clear recommendations on testing and tracking, and its multidisciplinary team worked with China to control the epidemic there, figuring out information essential to combat the virus and sharing it with the world.

A WHO report released on February 24 based on its collaboration with China made other countries aware that controlling the spread of COVID-19 required a more stringent protocol that is more like that of SARS than the flu. As a result, policy changes were made in countries like New Zealand. Countries who had experienced the 2003 SARS outbreak, such as Vietnam and South Korea, were already following SARS protocol of using masks, extensive testing and isolating those infected. Vietnam, in spite of a shared border with China, has controlled the epidemic completely and has not reported a single COVID-19 death.

Why is the WHO’s coordinating role so important? Unlike human populations, microbes have no borders. They travel not only locally through water and air, but also, in an interconnected world like ours, via passengers traveling by air, water or land. They infect animals and birds, both domesticated and in the wild. That is why quarantining the infected and isolating countries from others is only a short-term measure. The only long-term way to fight epidemics is either to eradicate it completely or to confine it to small pockets of outbreaks, through vaccines and other public health measures. This battle cannot be won by one country. That is why gutting the WHO, the only competent public health instrument of global cooperation we have, is a road to disaster.

While there have been many warnings that a new pandemic was inevitable, the flu virus was thought to be the major threat. Its ability to mutate rapidly, using reservoirs of domesticated animals—chickens and pigs—and migratory birds, has been recognized as a long-term pandemic threat. The memory of the 1918 influenza epidemic lent credit to the seriousness of the flu threat.

The WHO has created a global network and infrastructure that can monitor flu outbreaks all over the world. Its Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS), functioning for more than 65 years, identifies “novel influenza viruses and other respiratory pathogens” and provides vital information for the upcoming season’s likely flu strains and vaccine composition recommendations. The GISRS is the only global platform that allows countries to share virus strains so that they can receive vaccines through the WHO’s programs at concessional rates, and not at the prohibitively expensive market rates for the poorer countries.

Which countries benefit from such a virus sharing platform? The bulk of influenza vaccines are used in the United States and western Europe. The United States uses more flu vaccine than any other country. Meanwhile, nearly 50 percent of the global population—Africa, West Asia, South Asia, and southeastern Asia—uses only 5 percent of the world’s flu vaccines, even though the bulk of flu samples come from these countries.

Walking out of the WHO leaves at risk not only the global flu program, but also our ability to fight a new influenza pandemic that can rival the one in 1918. At that time it killed an estimated 50-100 million people (15-20 million of those casualties were in British India alone). Since the world’s population was about one-fourth of our current numbers, this would mean a casualty of 200-400 million by today’s count, even without factoring in the effects of modern travel’s ability to speed up the spread of contagions.

No matter where a disease begins, stopping the spread at the source before it becomes a pandemic also protects the populations of other countries. Why then would the United States pull out when it is the net beneficiary of the WHO’s disease monitoring and prevention program?

The right wing opposes public health policies in favor of individual-centric, privatized health care, with Big Pharma mopping up huge profits from life-saving medicines. This remains the case now, even though a pandemic can only be successfully fought at the global level. Public health yields immeasurable profits for society, but not for private hospitals or Big Pharma.

The WHO, with its warts and all, still stands for global cooperation and fostering public health policies, and is the only instrument we have for global cooperation. It is hated by the right wing precisely for these reasons. The right-wing friends of Trump—Jair Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson and Narendra Modi—do not criticize the United States for quitting the WHO, even though their countries need the WHO as much as the rest of the world. The attitude that every person must be for themselves, and every country for itself, is a part of their worldview as well.

Indian Matchmaking: Decoding India’s love affair with arranged marriages

Soma Das

Indian Matchmaking, Netflix’s recent show on arranged marriages in elite families, has spawned countless memes and conspiracy theories. It has also put the spotlight on reality shows and how they spin a particular narrative at the cost of others. The show seems to be tailor-made for a western audience and portrays arranged marriages in a positive way while underplaying issues of casteism, misogyny and heteronormativity.

At the centre of the show is matchmaker Sima Taparia, whose clients include well-off Indians living in the USA or in cosmopolitan cities across India. Her advice to her clients, especially to girls, is to be “flexible”. While she sees the “good heart” of her male clients, she often chides her female clients for being too choosy and demanding.

The precursor to this show is the 2017 documentary, A Suitable Girl, directed by Smriti Mundhra (who also directed Indian Matchmaking) and Sarita Khurana. While the themes are similar, A Suitable Girl offers a nuanced and realistic take on arranged marriages among middle class Indians. Taparia and her daughter Ritu feature in A Suitable Girl as Ritu is one of three women whose journeys are profiled in the award-winning documentary.

Both the show and the documentary highlight the kind of pressure that is brought upon young women (and men) to marry early and as per the wishes/with the consent of their parents.

While Indian Matchmaking can make for uncomfortable viewing, and many Indians may not agree with Taparia’s views on women and marriage, it is undeniable that arranged marriages are popular in India.

A 2018 Lok Foundation-Oxford University survey revealed that 93% of respondents had an arranged marriage, 3% had a “love marriage”, and 2% had a “love-cum-arranged marriage” (the parents set up the meeting, the couple fall in love, and get married).

In their 2016 study, The Decline of Arranged Marriage? Marital Change and Continuity in India, Keera Allendorf and Roshan K. Pandian state that the practice of arranged marriage is shifting, rather than declining: “Young women became increasingly active in choosing their own husbands, spouses meeting before the wedding day became more common, consanguineous marriage declined, and intercaste marriage rose. However, the size of many of these changes is modest and substantial majorities of recent marriages still show the hallmarks of arranged marriage. Arranged marriage is clearly not headed towards obsolescence any time soon.”

The process of matchmaking has evolved over time. While conventional matchmaking involved matchmakers like Taparia who kept a database of prospective grooms and brides, the last few years have seen the rise of online matchmaking services, such as Shaadi.com and Bharatmatrimony.com. There are dating apps like Tinder and OkCupid as well, though singles don’t necessarily meet through these platforms with marriage in mind.

A UN Women’s report, titled Progress of the World’s Women 2019-2020: Families in a Changing World, stated that arranged marriages remain commonplace in India., but the practice has been partially replaced by semi-arranged marriages. The latter are arrangements where families suggest matches but women take the final call on whom/whether to marry.

The study further says that semi and self-arranged matches are more beneficial for women as it gives them greater opportunity to exercise agency in key aspects (such as expenditure and reproduction), and makes them less vulnerable to domestic violence. While arranged marriages may never truly go out of fashion in India, its contours seem to be changing.

Some aspects of arranged marriages are, however, more resistant to change. It is still relatively rare to see caste, religion and region not being used as filters while seeking matrimonial matches. Skin tone also remains a criteria. In June this year, Shaadi.com finally took down their skin tone filter after an online petition drew traction. But many consider it to be a superficial measure as other filters remain intact.

So, why are arranged marriages still popular in this day and age? The arguments in its favour have remained the same over time: parents pre-screen partners making it easier to choose among a select few, you get the benefit of your parents’ opinion and advice, and there may be greater scope for compatibility as the economic/education/cultural background may match. However, there are cons to all these aspects.

As Indian Matchmaking and A Suitable Girl have shown, parents may opt to screen partners based on parameters like income and looks, and may not think of aspects like chemistry or the necessity to even hold a conversation with a partner. And some singles may find greater compatibility with someone who is different from them in social strata, caste, region and religion.

In the coming years, the tradition of arranged marriages is likely to witness further transformation. But, at present, there is a need to have conversations on topics that are left unexplored in the show/documentary: Why is it necessary for people to marry? Why is it so revolutionary for people to remain single and independent? When will we be able to discuss and accept interfaith/intercaste marriages? Will the pressure on LGBT individuals to marry ever abate? When will we stop discriminating against divorced men and women?

At least 20 percent of US meatpackers may have contracted coronavirus

Cordell Gascoigne

Over 50,000 food and agricultural workers have contracted COVID-19 in the United States, according to numbers compiled by the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN).

As of its latest figures, 51,453 workers in the meatpacking, food processing and farming industries have contracted the disease since March. The overwhelming majority of these, 38,641, are meatpacking workers. These figures represent at least 635 plants and 89 farms and production facilities across the country, demonstrating that the virus has spread completely unchecked throughout these industries. At least 221 workers, including 174 meatpackers, have died.

These figures, collated from various news sources and corporate press releases, represent the most comprehensive and up-to-date attempt to track the virus among meatpacking and farm workers. However, they are necessarily incomplete because there is no systematic, regular testing of meatpacking workers in the United States, much less a centralized system of publicly reporting the results. Instead, companies have released figures only in piecemeal fashion and from individual locations, often only after battles with local health authorities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not keep regularly updated statistics for the sector and its latest figures are from a study released on July 7. Even these figures were likely a massive undercount. The CDC total of 16,233 cases at meatpacking plants was roughly half that reported by FERN at the time.

However, this was enough for CDC to declare that 9 percent of the nationwide meatpacking workforce had already been infected. If FERN’s numbers are accurate, this means that more than 20 percent of American meatpackers have been infected.

By far the largest number of cases at a single employer is at poultry giant Tyson Foods, with a total of 10,104.

Brazilian-owned JBS has outbreaks at 12 of its US-based facilities, with at least 2,660 cases and 14 deaths. This includes six deaths at its beef processing plant at Greeley, Colorado, where workers staged a wildcat walkout last month.

Smithfield Foods has had outbreaks at 13 plants with at least 2,004 cases and 6 deaths. Last month, Smithfield Foods attempted to nullify a subpoena from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to the state of South Dakota that would result in disclosing the number of cases at Smithfield’s plants in the state.

Smithfield Foods defended its request to the courts saying OSHA’s investigation would “damage how it and other companies work with government agencies in their response to the coronavirus pandemic,” that is, in secret and on the companies’ terms. Smithfield representatives said that the company gave the South Dakota Department of Health information only because of an agreement that the information would be “adequately protected.”

In press releases, Tyson Foods issued a statement saying that its “extensive program of prevention and testing” was being implemented in “more than 40 U.S. locations,” a small minority of its total US operations, in partnership with Matrix Medical Network, a private health care provider. According to FERN, Tyson has released testing figures from only 18 plants, with the most recent results announced on June 26. The company has conducted only 40,000 tests out of a total workforce of 122,000.

In their drive to keep workers on the line making profits, the meatpacking companies are following the lead of President Trump, who signed an executive order in April to keep meatpacking plants open.

Even before the pandemic, the meatpacking industry had some of the highest rates of workplace injuries and illnesses in the country, driven by unsanitary conditions and breakneck line speeds. Packed tightly on the line, meatpacking workers perform the same precise cutting motions thousands of times each day, producing astronomical levels of carpal tunnel syndrome and other cumulative trauma injuries. One federal study in 2013 found that 47 percent of workers at a South Carolina poultry plant had carpal tunnel syndrome.

Trump’s Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, son of the late extreme-right Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, is a former corporate lawyer who led a crusade in the 1990s against ergonomics regulations designed to protect workers from repetitive motion injuries as “junk science.”

Last week in the state of Utah, members of the medical community gathered outside the Utah Capitol building to call for the closing of meatpacking plants to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“What we’re asking is that the meat plants are closed,” said Dr. Niki Davis of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a non-profit with over 12,000 members. “We’ve already had 168 deaths of meat packing plant workers in the United States.”

The group explained that meatpacking workers face the problem of “proving” where they had contracted the virus and of subsequently being denied benefits, creating an incentive for them to work through illnesses resulting in the further spread of the disease.

Davis said doctors have received multiple reports of workers claiming they were forced to work in close proximity with others in unsanitary conditions. Among the 239 meat processing facilities in the United States that have reported COVID-19 cases, only 111 of them have documented their rudimentary “intervention and prevention” tactics to the CDC.

Major League Baseball season on brink of collapse as COVID-19 continues to spread

Alan Gilman

Major League Baseball’s (MLB) season began on July 23 and has already been forced to postpone 17 games due to COVID-19 outbreaks. As many as 21 members of the Miami Marlins, including 18 players (or 60 percent of its game day roster), tested positive for the coronavirus last week. Over the weekend, multiple St. Louis Cardinals players and staffers tested positive as well, along with at least two staffers on the Philadelphia Phillies.

These teams cannot play until their remaining players test negative for at least three to four days. Although MLB tests all of its players and staff every two days, because of delays in testing results a positive case can go up to four days before being diagnosed.

The infected teams, their recent opponents and their upcoming opponents all have to postpone their games. Fully 20 percent of MLB’s weekend games, which typically receive the highest viewerships, have had to be postponed.

MLB’s plan has been to play a shortened season, originally consisting of 60 games played over 66 days. To make up for these postponed games MLB intends to schedule multiple double headers with the standard nine inning games being reduced to seven. Playing so many games in such a short period significantly increases the risk of injuries to players, particularly pitchers.

On Friday Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred told MLB Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark that if the sport does not do a better job of managing the coronavirus, it could shut down for the season. According to official guidelines, Manfred has the sole discretion to suspend the season.

The almost immediate collapse of MLB’s return to play exposes the absurdity of attempting to play professional sports in the midst of the most serious public health crisis in modern history.

The multibillions of dollars that are at stake have certainly played an important role in MLB’s reckless decisions. But more is at stake than the revenue streams for team owners.

The reopening of sports leagues is part of the broader return-to-work drive by the entire ruling class and is an attempt to “normalize” the pandemic, even as over 1,000 Americans continue to die each day.

But if MLB, in spite of billions in resources, is unable even to protect the health of a relatively small number of mostly young adults in peak physical condition, this campaign will receive a serious blow. There can be no doubt that MLB is under intense political pressure behind the scenes to not abandon the season.

By Saturday Manfred was shifting the blame to the players. “The players need to be better, but I am not a quitter in general, and there is no reason to quit now. We have had to be fluid, but it is manageable.”

In reality, MLB's “safety protocols” were always grossly inadequate and doomed to failure, and public health experts have stated so. Although these protocols require daily temperature checks, regular testing, and sanitization of club houses, MLB declined to set up a quarantine “bubble” similar to other US sports leagues. Instead, games are being played without audiences in teams’ normal venues, leaving players and staff at high risk of contracting the virus as they travel.

The fact that a central element of the “protocols” is the near-doubling of roster sizes and the establishment of “taxi squads” of replacements for road trips demonstrates that league’s primary concern was not preventing outbreaks, but that suitable replacements could be found to play games in spite of outbreaks.

The fact that the Miami Marlins elected to play their scheduled game against the Philadelphia Phillies last Sunday, in spite of having four confirmed cases already on their roster, testifies to the lack of any independent decision-making process led by medical experts.

Moreover MLB has no qualms about the risk that players are compelled to assume as they travel to and from Miami, Houston, and Los Angeles, three Major League cities that currently have among the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world.

Before the season began, 18 players opted out of playing the season out of concern for their own health and those of their families. This weekend they were joined by three others, Isan Diaz of the Miami Marlins, Lorenzo Cain of the Milwaukee Brewers, and Yoenis Cespedes of the New York Mets. Also on Sunday, Cincinnati Reds All-Star first baseman Joey Votto was placed on the injury list after reporting COVID-19 symptoms.

Eduardo Rodriguez, a 27-year-old pitcher of the Boston Red Sox, has developed lingering complications from the coronavirus and will sit out the season. Even though he had tested positive on July 7 and recovered in time to join the team for spring training, a routine physical revealed he had developed myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart. Recent studies have shown that a large percentage of recovered COVID-19 patients have suffered from heart inflammation, including myocarditis.

Rodriguez told the press last month that he felt about “100 years old” with the virus. “I’ve never been that sick in my life,” he added, “and I don’t want to get that sick again.” The fact that a pro athlete in peak physical condition could develop such severe symptoms exposes claims that only the elderly and infirm are at risk.

The problems plaguing baseball are also appearing in football as the National Football League (NFL) and college football open training camps.

The NFL and the NFL Players Association agreed to a plan that allows players to opt out of the upcoming season if they are uncomfortable with the COVID-19 health protocols put in place. High-risk individuals could opt out and receive a $350,000 stipend, less than the minimum salary for rookies, whereas those less at risk would receive a $150,000 stipend. Players have the ability to opt out later in the season, as well, in the event that a family member becomes sick.

So far 39 players have opted out, including eight from the New England Patriots. Many opted out last week after witnessing the debacle in MLB. Instead of attempting to address the justified fears of its players, the NFL is attempting to stop the flow of players opting out by imposing a Wednesday deadline, by when they can exercise this option.

There are also over 60 NFL players on what the league describes as Reserve/COVID-19 list. This category includes players who have tested positive or have been in close contact with someone who has. This present list includes two starting quarterbacks, Mathew Strafford of the Detroit Lions and Gardner Minshew of the Jacksonville Jaguars. According to the NFL, these players have to remain apart from the team until they are “healthy.”

Far more dangerous is the situation facing college football players. Most small college programs will not be playing, but the multibillion-dollar business of major college football is scheduled to start later this month.

As college training camps open, many teams have reported significant numbers of players testing positive. Moreover, these amateur “student-athletes” are being brought back to campuses where in most cases the student body will remain at home for some or all of the semester. Many players and their parents have complained about the hypocrisy of having them continue to play and travel while it is deemed too unsafe for other students to be on campus.

Among college players there is growing opposition to these plans. A group of football players from the PAC-12, the West Coast Conference containing major programs such as UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford, and Oregon, wrote a letter to the conference declaring that they would opt out of fall camp and games unless the league meets several demands.

These include allowing players the option to opt out without losing athletics eligibility or a spot on their team’s roster, prohibiting or voiding all agreements that waive liability for the conference and its schools and player-approved health and safety standards enforced by a third parties.

Hong Kong delays legislative elections amid crackdown on democratic rights

Ben McGrath

One month after Beijing passed its new national security law for Hong Kong, authorities have stepped up their attack on democratic rights in the city, including by announcing that they would postpone September’s Legislative Council (LegCo) elections for one year. Opposition activists and politicians have also been barred from running for office and some have faced arrest.

On Friday, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced she would use the 1922 British colonial-era Emergency Regulations Ordinance to delay the upcoming legislative election citing the danger posed by a resurgence in COVID-19 cases. Lam stated it was necessary to “ensure fairness and public safety and health and the need to make sure the election is held in an open, fair, and impartial manner.”

Lam, whose decision was backed by Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, absurdly claimed, “This postponement is entirely made based on public safety reasons, there were no political considerations.”

The number of COVID-19 cases have grown sharply in Hong Kong throughout July, including a record high 149 new patients last Thursday. Lam’s assertions, however, are simply untrue. In local elections last November, the official opposition grouped around the pan-democrat bloc took control of 17 of 18 local councils, winning 390 out of 452 available seats. The opposition again hoped to capitalise on widespread anger towards the government to win a majority in the LegCo.

Prior to its postponement, Hong Kong authorities also banned 12 opposition candidates from running in the election. This included well-known activist Joshua Wong and other younger candidates. Four members of the pan-democrat Civic Party were also banned.

The authorities outlined the sweeping grounds on which candidates would be barred, effectively making any opposition illegitimate. These include: promoting Hong Kong independence, soliciting the intervention of foreign powers, expressing opposition to the new national security law, or being deemed likely to vote against government bills to press for their demands.

On Wednesday, four students were also arrested in the first police operation under the new national security law. “Our sources and investigation show that the group recently announced on social media to set up an organization that advocates Hong Kong independence,” said Li Kwai-wah of the new national security unit inside the Hong Kong police.

The four were connected to a group called Studentlocalism, which advocated Hong Kong independence before being disbanded in June. Tony Chung, a former leader of the group, was accused of “inciting secession” through a Facebook post.

Beijing is not primarily concerned about the establishment pan-democrat opposition grouping in Hong Kong but rather the potential for renewed protests against the attack on democratic rights and the deteriorating social conditions. Last summer’s mass protests by legislation allowing extradition to China drew in millions of people concerned about Beijing’s undermining of democratic rights and deteriorating social conditions. While the movement was hijacked by opposition parties and figures calling for the intervention of US and British imperialism, none of the underlying issues have been resolved.

Hong Kong ranks as the sixth most unequal city in the world. It is home to 64 billionaires while the broad masses struggle to survive with low paid jobs, stagnant and declining wages, widespread poverty, and lack of access to safe, affordable housing.

These conditions are replicated throughout China. In May, an estimated 80 million Chinese workers did not have employment, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and an additional 600 million workers earned just $140 a month. Beijing ultimately fears that renewed protests in Hong Kong will resonate with the rest of the Chinese working class and lead to an explosion of social anger, threatening the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power.

Beijing is also concerned that the United States will foster separatist sentiment in Hong Kong and also exploit the protests to ramp up its aggressive confrontation with China.

Washington’s concern for democratic rights is utterly hypocritical. Even as Trump was suggesting that the US elections could be delayed, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany condemned the decision to postpone the Hong Kong election, declaring that it “undermines the democratic processes and freedoms.”

In a speech on July 23, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a keynote speech that denounced the Chinese Communist Party in Cold War terms as a “tyranny” and a threat to the “free world” that had to be stopped. The condemnation of China and its police state methods comes as the Trump administration is trampling on democratic rights including through the dispatch of federal agents to violently suppress protests in Portland and other cities.

Two days prior to his speech, Pompeo was with Nathan Law, another prominent Hong Kong activist in London at the residence of the US ambassador to the United Kingdom. Pompeo was reportedly “very keen” on meeting with Law, and discussed not only Hong Kong but also Tibet and Xinjiang where the US has also been encouraging separatist groups.

The Trump administration is not concerned about democratic rights in Hong Kong or anywhere else in China. Rather it is mounting another of its phoney “human rights” campaigns as a pretext for its escalating conflict with China.

Any fight to defend democratic and social rights in Hong Kong must involve a turn to the working class throughout China on the basis of a struggle for genuine socialism against the Beijing regime that is responsible for restoring capitalism and represents the interests of the ultra-rich oligarchy.

Vietnam struggles to contain rapid resurgence of COVID-19

Owen Howell

The unexpected emergence of a coronavirus cluster in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang has led to a rapid transmission across the country. Though previously lauded as a “success story” in the international press, having recorded no new local infections for 99 days, Vietnam has now detected cases in the capital, Hanoi, as well as Ho Chi Minh City, and throughout the Central Highlands region.

The first new case appeared in Da Nang Hospital on July 25, before the virus spread through the building, resulting in 15 confirmed cases over the next three days. The source of the cluster apparently remains unknown, though some government officials have claimed it originated outside the country. Vietnam has remained shut to most foreign travellers since late March.

The Health Ministry has registered 173 local cases since the new outbreak began, 120 of which were found in Da Nang. Besides the country’s two major cities, the virus has reached the provinces of Quang Nam, Thai Binh, Quang Ngai, Dak Lak, Dong Nai, and Ha Nam.

With 29 local cases discovered yesterday, the tally has grown to 620 infections, as well as five deaths, all of which were recorded since Friday. The victims were all elderly with pre-existing medical conditions.

Local newspaper Thanh Nien revealed the most recent death was an 86-year-old woman who suffered heart and kidney failure. She was admitted to Da Nang Hospital on July 16 and then transferred to a hospital in Quang Nam two days later. This suggests that she contracted COVID-19 in Da Nang at least one week before the first case was confirmed, and therefore that the virus had been circulating in the hospital undetected for a considerable time.

Nearly all of the cases last week were people above the age of 60. However, the 29 cases yesterday included a number of asymptomatic young people, including a 23-year-old health worker and four children below the age of 14. Due to the abrupt and widespread nature of the transmission, medical experts believe the real infection numbers may be far higher than the official figures.

Da Nang, a seaside resort, is a popular holiday destination for Vietnamese tourists on summer vacation. Since early July, over 800,000 people have visited Da Nang. The Vietnamese government fears that tens of thousands of tourists leaving the city after the cluster emerged could cause a disastrous transmission across the country.

On Wednesday, four days after the first case, a lockdown was established and checkpoints set up to prevent people from leaving or entering the city. Thousands of national police and military personnel were deployed in Da Nang, state-run paper Nhan Dan reported. By this time, however, thousands had already left the new pandemic epicentre.

Ho Chi Minh City had recorded 18,000 people returning from Da Nang on Tuesday. Hanoi has received around 54,000 returnees since July 25. Over 21,000 of these are suspected COVID-19 carriers waiting to be tested, as the city’s testing capacity is as yet unable to meet the large requirements.

Vietnam has 118 testing laboratories, of which only 66 are capable of testing samples for coronavirus. The nation’s capacity is 31,000 tests per day—a marginal increase on April’s average of 27,000 a day. But unless it dramatically expands, the testing could soon prove inadequate as the virus surges through a densely populated country of 97.3 million people.

In Da Nang, hospitals and health centres are fast reaching full capacity. Recently, a makeshift coronavirus hospital was installed inside a soccer stadium. The government has sent a contingent of more than 1,000 health workers to Da Nang.

Partial lockdown measures are being implemented in areas where coronavirus cases are appearing. Local authorities in Ho Chi Minh City have placed an apartment building under lockdown since Friday, as two residents had returned from Da Nang and were suspected to have the virus. The building houses 328 residents, but only 26 have been tested.

Tran Van Tan, Vice Chairman of Quang Nam province, imposed blockades on several rural villages and urban neighbourhoods, most of them overcrowded working-class districts. These include the Luu Minh residential area, in Thang Binh district, with 96 households and 384 people. Ostensibly under lockdown because of three confirmed cases there, no testing has yet been organised. With social distancing all but impossible in such locations, they will inevitably become incubators for the virus to grow.

It is now over a week since the Da Nang cluster surfaced, yet the Vietnamese government is reluctant to close businesses and halt production, despite the rapid spread of the virus.

Hanoi has closed its bars and roadside stalls and banned large gatherings. Restaurants and shopping malls, on the other hand, are permitted to remain open. Factories and other large-scale production facilities will continue to operate.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc’s warned on Wednesday that every province and every city was at risk. “We have to act more swiftly and more fiercely in order to control the outbreak,” Phuc told an online conference of government officials.

Ho Chi Minh City Party Secretary Bguyen Thien Nan also expressed concern that the situation is becoming far worse than the country’s first wave of infections, pointing to similar resurgences in Italy, Hong Kong, and Australia.

After suspending international travel on March 22, and introducing restrictions, Vietnam appeared to have contained the coronavirus. Like its counterparts in other countries, the government pushed ahead with a reopening policy to reverse the economic damage, particularly focusing on the revival of domestic tourism.

On June 1, the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism launched a new program aimed at galvanizing domestic tourist demand. The result was that people flocked to Da Nang from June onward, drawn by discounted flights, hotel bookings, and travel deals.

As with other Southeast Asian nations, Vietnam is heavily dependent on its tourist sector. The renewed spread of the virus is being viewed by the government primarily as a setback to their plans to reopen international travel and address the slowing economy.

In a report released on Thursday, the World Bank assessed that Vietnam’s economy would grow at around 2.8 percent in 2020, its slowest rate in 35 years and significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels. This finding, moreover, was based upon the situation before the resurgence in Da Nang.

Desperate to reverse the slowing economy, Prime Minister Phuc on Saturday approved the development of the country’s “night-time economy.” It will allow non-essential activities to occur overnight in major tourism zones and cities, many of which have witnessed new COVID-19 cases. Night markets, discos, karaoke parlours, retail stores, public transport, and other services are expected to generate profits unimpeded, despite the immense risk of accelerating the spread.

US credit outlook rated “negative” as concerns mount over dollar’s global role

Nick Beams

In another sign of concern over the stability of the US dollar, under conditions where the Fed is pumping trillions into the financial system, the Fitch credit rating agency has placed a question mark over the credit worthiness of the United States.

The agency downgraded its outlook for US credit to “negative” from “stable” on Friday, while retaining its AAA rating—the top grade—for the credit of the US. The agency raised issues about whether the US would be able to contain rising deficits as the government continues its corporate bailouts.

In a statement announcing the downgrade, the agency said the US sovereign rating was supported by “structural strengths” and benefited from the role of the dollar as the world’s preeminent currency. However, the outlook had been revised to negative “to reflect the ongoing deterioration in the US public finances and the absence of a credible fiscal consolidation plan.”

Fiscal deficits had already been on a rising path before the economic shock delivered by the COVID-19 pandemic and they had started to “erode the traditional credit strength of the US,” Fitch declared. Now, there was a “growing risk that US policymakers will not consolidate public finances sufficiently to stabilise public debt after the pandemic shock has passed.”

Articulating the class interests of the financial oligarchy in the US and internationally, it made clear where such “consolidation” should take place—not in reductions to the corporate bailouts or a reversal of the massive corporate and personal tax cuts for higher income earners enacted by Trump at the end of 2017.

With one eye clearly fixed on the development of the class struggle, Fitch said: “Having laid bare inequalities in the provision of health care and exacerbated widening wealth inequality… the crisis could also lead to pressure for higher public spending, greater state involvement in the economy, redistribution of incomes and moves to strengthen workers’ bargaining power.”

It left no doubt about how such issues should be dealt with. “The economic crisis has likely brought forward the point at which social security and healthcare trust funds are exhausted, demanding bipartisan legislative action to sustainably fund or reform these programs,” it said. In other words, there should be an assault on spending for basic social services.

Pointing to what it called the “exceptional financing flexibility” of the US—the borrowing by the US government of $3 trillion from February to June and the interventions of the Fed to “backstop financial markets”—Fitch raised the longer-term consequences of these actions.

In what appeared to be a concession to so-called Modern Monetary Theory, which maintains that as the US is the issuer of its own currency it can never run out of funds—a theory widely promoted in pseudo-left circles—it said: “It is a truism that the US government can never run out of money to service its debts. However, there is a potential (albeit remote) risk of fiscal dominance if [debt-to-GDP] spirals, posing risks to US economic dynamism and reserve currency status.”

Concerns about the global role of the dollar as a result of the rise of government debt and the expansion of the Fed’s financial asset holdings, which have increased from under $1 trillion on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis to around $7 trillion today, go well beyond Fitch and other agencies.

In an editorial published at the weekend, the Financial Times warned that the world economy “is in a dangerous place.” Pointing to the resurgence of COVID-19 infections in Europe, Australia and Japan, where the virus had appeared to be contained, it said: “This was the week when hopes for a short lockdown followed by a swift resumption of economic activity were dashed once and for all.”

This meant, the editorial continued, that it was likely governments would have to continue to borrow and spend. The implications were examined in a separate article titled “Dollar blues: why the pandemic is testing confidence in the US currency.”

The article noted that since the initial scramble for dollars in the crisis that hit financial markets in mid-March as the pandemic struck, the dollar has been falling in currency markets, recording its biggest monthly decline for a decade in July.

The Financial Times wrote that the 5 percent fall in the US currency over the month “might sound modest but in the relatively stable foreign exchange market that counts as dramatic.” It added that such a sharp move “inevitably raises questions that go to the heart of the global financial system and the unique role that the US currency plays.”

Those questions are increasingly coming into prominence because of the rise in the price of gold, now trading at a record high of between $1,900 and $2,000 per ounce. Investors, the article noted, are seeking an alternative to the US currency, and as American politics becomes increasingly dysfunctional, “some are openly asking… whether US institutions are now too weak for the world to rely on the dollar.”

Opponents of the view that the dollar could lose its privileged status maintain there is no possibility of it being replaced as the world’s reserve currency, either by the euro or the Chinese yuan. This is because the financial systems of both the euro zone and China are nowhere near large or sophisticated enough for their currencies to play the global role of the dollar.

That analysis is correct as far as it goes. But it does not go far enough. A dollar crisis will not bring about its replacement by the currency of another country or region. Rather, it will set off a crisis of confidence in all fiat currencies and a breakdown of international trading and financial relations.

The FT article cited remarks by David Riley, a chief investment strategist at BlueBay Asset Management in London. He noted that the US government bond market, where yields on 10 year bonds have gone negative when inflation is taken into account, “is reflecting the fact that the US outlook is weakening.”

“There’s going to have to be more stimulus,” he said. “This is where the gold bug view comes in, where sooner or later this is a debasement of the global reserve currency. So you go into gold.”

There are decisive implications flowing from the weakening position of the US. The role of the dollar as the world currency and the decisive importance of US financial markets for every major corporation provide US imperialism with enormous power as it pursues its geostrategic interests.

For example, it is the reason it has been able to impose sanctions against Iran despite opposition from Europe, by threatening to exclude companies that break them from the global flow of finance, or to hit companies backing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project to transport gas from Russia to Germany.

In response to the deepening crisis of its financial system, triggered and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic but not caused by it—the underlying tendencies were already well advanced before the virus struck—US imperialism is going to intensify attacks on the working class at home while pursuing ever more aggressive measures internationally, including war, as it seeks to maintain its global dominance.

White House engineering a takeover of TikTok by Microsoft

Kevin Reed

In a state-sponsored hostile takeover, Microsoft Corporation announced late Sunday that it was moving forward with plans to acquire the mobile app TikTok from the China-based corporation ByteDance following a discussion with President Donald Trump.

In a blog post, Microsoft said its CEO Satya Nadella spoke with the president and “is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury.” The post said the acquisition would be completed “no later than September 15, 2020.”

The takeover would involve the absorption by Microsoft of the operations of the social media video sharing platform in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. According to Microsoft, the TikTok acquisition will be conducted with an unprecedent level of White House involvement. The statement says, “During this process, Microsoft looks forward to continuing dialogue with the United States Government, including with the President.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Fox News "Sunday Morning Futures" discussing White House plan to ban the Chinese video sharing app TikTok

Additionally, Microsoft is indicating that the new owners of the extremely popular app will operate TikTok under the direct supervision of the state security institutions within the countries where it will operate. “The operating model for the service would be built to ensure transparency to users as well as appropriate security oversight by governments in these countries.”

The Microsoft announcement comes as no surprise, following the appearance of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” earlier in the day. Pompeo said that President Donald Trump “will take action in the coming days” on mobile apps, including TikTok, as part of a growing White House offensive against China.

Although he stopped short of saying precisely what the president was going to do, Pompeo claimed without any evidence that “Chinese software companies doing business with the United States, whether it’s TikTok or WeChat” are feeding data directly to the “national security apparatus” in China.

In a statement clearly designed to whip up anti-Chinese sentiments, Pompeo added that Americans using TikTok were having their facial profiles and “information about their residence, their phone numbers, their friends, who they’re connected to” scraped by the Chinese government. He went on to say that these are “true privacy issues for the American people” and that “President Trump has said, ‘Enough,’ and we are going to fix it.”

Pompeo concluded, “I promise you, the President when he makes this decision will make sure that everything we have done drives this as close to zero risk for the American people.”

The short-form video sharing platform has approximately 80 million users in the US, 800 million worldwide and has been downloaded 2.2 billion times. ByteDance has said that its servers are located in the US and Singapore, and tech experts have pointed out that TikTok gathers user data in a manner similar to other popular social media apps.

That Pompeo is making hysterical and unsubstantiated statements is a demonstration of the desperate nature of the aggressive moves by the Trump White House against China. The administration is attempting to deflect the mass opposition to Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and the authoritarian police measures against protesters across the country in the intensifying anti-China campaign in order to prop up his collapsing reelection prospects.

Meanwhile, it is well-known internationally—primarily due to the exposures by the former national security contractor Edward Snowden in 2013—that the US National Security Agency (NSA) is the number one electronic surveillance operation in the world, gathering data on every single person on earth and storing it in massive server farms such as the Utah Data Center.

On Friday, Trump told reporters that he was going to act soon to ban TikTok. Speaking with reporters on board Air Force One on a flight back to Washington from Florida, he said, “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States.” He then called the ban a “severance” and said he had the authority to make the decision. “I can do it with an executive order.”

However, news of Microsoft’s involvement in a forced divestiture of TikTok by ByteDance emerged before the weekend as it was revealed that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) was involved. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal , CFIUS began its investigation into TikTok last year following concerns raised in Congress. “The Treasury-led foreign-investment committee is made up of federal agencies and reviews deals involving foreign money to ensure they don’t put the country’s national security at risk.”

No doubt a major consideration in the negotiations over TikTok is the fact that the company has recently valued at $150 billion with major investments from US equity firms Coatue Management and Sequoia Capital. Along with the huge US user base, the entanglement of the American financial elite with TikTok make an outright ban a double-edged sword for President Trump and, in the end, it appears that it will be much better to just steal the company from ByteDance under the auspices of national security concerns.

An article in Forbes by Peter Cohen indicates the thinking among American business pirates. “If that deal goes through for the roughly $5 billion, I estimate TikTok’s US operations are worth, you should buy Microsoft shares. ... the triple digit acceleration of TikTok’s user base could add oomph to Microsoft’s top line,” Cohen wrote on Saturday.

The role of the Democrats in the US seizure of Tic Tok exposes the fact that they have no fundamental differences with the Trump White House. Stephen Mnuchin, who heads CFIUS and has been leading the negotiations with Microsoft and the TikTok investors over the takeover, said on “ABC News” on Sunday that the view that “there has to be a change” is shared by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat of California) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat of New York).

Schumer began ringing alarm bells about TikTok last November in a letter to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy over the US military’s use of TikTok to recruit young people. Schumer wrote, “I urge you to assess the potential national security risks posed by China-owned technology companies before choosing to utilize certain platforms.”

Schumer’s campaign was echoed by Senator Marco Rubio (Republican of Florida), who took the issue to CFIUS, and Senator Josh Hawley (Republican of Missouri), who held a hearing on TikTok’s relationship with the Chinese government.

In this particular instance, it is apparent that Pompeo and Trump have now borrowed a few lines from Schumer, who wrote another letter to Transportation Safety Administration Director David Pekoske in February that said, “National security experts have raised concerns about TikTok’s collection and handling of user data, including user content and communications, IP addresses, location-related data, metadata, and other sensitive personal information.” Schumer added, “particularly when viewed in light of laws that compel Chinese companies to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”

European economy collapses as EU bails out the super-rich

Anthony Torres & Alex Lantier

Eurostat economic figures for the second quarter of 2020 show that Europe saw its deepest and most sudden economic collapse in history.

Already before the COVID-19 pandemic, Europe was sinking into recession. In the fourth quarter of 2019, Germany was stagnant, while France (-0.1 percent) and Italy (-0.4 percent) were falling. The collapse in business confidence due to the pandemic and the effects of lock-down measures have now triggered an unprecedented economic disintegration.

Workers, the self-employed and small businesses are seeing a historic collapse in living standards. Eurostat indicated on July 31 that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell by 12.1 percent in the euro zone and 11.9 percent in the European Union (EU). In the first quarter, the contraction was 3.6 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively. In Germany, Europe’s leading economic power, GDP fell by 10.1 percent; the contraction from April to July was 10.7 percent in Austria and 12.2 percent in Belgium.

Italy, which was severely hit by the pandemic, saw its economy fall 12.4 percent. Jack Allen-Reynolds of Capital Economics said: “Italian GDP has in fact fallen to its level from the beginning of the 1990s.” Elsewhere, the collapse was even steeper. France, Portugal and Spain saw falls of 13.8, 14.1 and 18.5 percent, respectively. According to currently available projections, the British economy likely contracted approximately 15 percent in the second quarter.

If European economic activity remains at similar levels for the rest of 2020, Europe will see an economic crash more severe than any year in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Leading European corporations have suffered record losses in virtually every branch of industry and are now dependent on multi-billion-euro, state-funded bailouts. Among Europe’s major automakers, Volkswagen reported having lost €1.4 billion as its revenues collapsed by 23 percent, while the Renault-Nissan alliance suffered a devastating €7.3 billion loss. European aerospace firm Airbus saw a net loss of €1.9 billion.

Major European oil firms were devastated by the collapse of oil prices driven by the halt in travel and industrial activity during the lock-downs. Total and Royal Dutch Shell reported net losses of €7 billion and $18.1 billion, respectively. The net profits of French luxury conglomerate Hermès collapsed by 55 percent in the first half of the year.

Major airlines also face disaster. Air France-KLM published its profit report on Thursday, reporting an 83 percent collapse in its overall revenues. Lufthansa, for its part, had already reported a €2.1 billion loss in the first trimester. IAG Group, which owns British Airways, as well as Aer Lingus and Iberia, reported a net loss of €4.2 billion in the first half of the year.

Millions of workers have no longer been employed during the pandemic, and companies relied massively on state funding to pay their part-time wages. As of last month, 9.3 million workers depended on such programs in Britain, 4.5 million in France (down from 8.8 million in April), 6.9 million in Germany, and 3.7 million in Spain. Italy, for its part, spent approximately €5 billion monthly on such part-time work arrangements.

An explosive class confrontation is brewing between the working class and the financial aristocracy in Europe and internationally. Having advocated a politically criminal policy of “herd immunity” on COVID-19, calling to end lock-downs and let workers catch the deadly virus to try to acquire immunity, the ruling elite is now proceeding with as much contempt for workers’ jobs as for their health and lives. While grabbing trillions of euros in public funds for the banks and corporations, they are moving to slash wages and jobs.

While the European Central Bank (ECB) has agreed to a €1.25 trillion bailout of European banks, the EU has agreed to a €750 billion bailout package for European states and corporations. These vast sums of public money are being plunged into stocks and the financial markets to bail out the super-rich. However, state authorities and the trade union bureaucracies are not demanding that billionaire investors and major corporations that receive these massive sums in state aid give any guarantees that they will not sack workers or cut their pay.

Instead, dozens of bailed-out corporations are announcing mass layoffs, while governments across Europe and worldwide move to slash social spending and living standards. Already in Britain, plans have gone into effect to cut furlough programs by October, and payments in Spain are to be cut from 70 to 35 percent of workers’ wages by the fall. Yesterday, the IG Metall union announced that it expected 300,000 jobs to be destroyed in Germany.

This social onslaught is proceeding with the complicity of the European trade unions, which are actively helping to design these policies with state officials and corporate management. The German and French unions, in fact, signed a joint statement hailing the EU bailout designed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.

The ruling elite is pursuing the most parasitic, selfish and reckless policy since the French feudal aristocracy refused to pay any taxes to resolve the fiscal crisis before the 1789 revolution.

What is being prepared is a new, international eruption of the class struggle outside the corrupt framework of the unions. The most explosive situation is emerging in America, where support payments for workers are being suspended this month, threatening tens of millions with hunger and eviction. In Europe, the EU Commission has estimated that unemployment will reach 9.5 percent in the euro zone, with southern European countries the hardest hit. They foresee unemployment rising to over 20 percent in Greece and Spain, 11.8 percent in Italy, and 10.1 percent in France.

These horrific figures mean the loss of millions of jobs and the bankruptcy of thousands of small businesses, in order to bail out a corrupt financial elite that is plundering massive amounts of public money. It must be added, however, that these estimates are likely over-optimistic. They depend on employers agreeing to rehire tens of millions of workers currently paid by the state, due to a quick recovery in economic output.

Thus, ING economist Bert Colijn told Le Monde: “This recession is like no other. We have never seen such figures, such a dizzying collapse linked to the pandemic and the lock-down, which will be followed inevitably by a rapid upswing which we will see in the statistics for the third quarter.”

Such a scenario seems increasingly unlikely in the longer term, however. The ending of lock-downs has led to a collapse of social distancing measures and now a rapid resurgence of the virus across Europe. The number of daily new cases has risen to 1,000 in France and soon in Germany, over 600 in Belgium, and 3,000 in Spain. Thus, since late June, when the daily number of new cases was at its lowest, just after the lock-down, this number has gone up by a factor of two in France and Germany, seven in Belgium, and 10 in Spain.

While EU states insist they will not impose further lock-downs or only impose regional lock-downs, a policy that in fact accelerates the spread of the disease, their dithering may ultimately leave them no choice but to take drastic measures if the virus explodes out of control. Given the failure of EU governments to implement proper testing and tracing facilities and boost health care spending, such a scenario—entailing a new, drastic contraction in economic activity—is a growing possibility.

Already, the Spanish government re-imposed a “voluntary” lock-down in Barcelona, affecting over 4 million people in an economically vital region of Spain.

Workers cannot stop the plundering of society by the financial aristocracy through nationally-oriented protests organized by the trade unions, which are at the same time negotiating austerity with EU banks and governments. As the pandemic exposes the bankruptcy of the capitalist system, it is essential for workers across Europe to take up a political struggle for state power against the EU. Their best allies are workers around the world fighting against austerity and reactionary back-to-work orders.

The trillions of euros spent to bail out the wealthy must go to fighting COVID-19, safeguarding the salaries of workers and the self-employed, while major corporations relying on public bailout funds are nationalized across Europe and beyond, to be run under workers control as public utilities. This is essential to ensure the health and safety of workers despite the horrific impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting blow to the economy.

Scottish government prepares to reopen schools as new COVID-19 spikes emerge

Steve James

The Scottish government led by Scottish National Party (SNP) leader and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced its intention to reopen all schools in Scotland on August 11.

The decision, announced by Sturgeon July 30, once again underscores the point that, presentational differences notwithstanding, SNP policy on the coronavirus pandemic is indistinguishable from that of Boris Johnson’s hated Conservative government in Westminster.

From August 11, primary and secondary schools will begin to reopen. All schools are expected to be fully operational by August 18. Only the most minimal measures will be taken to prevent coronavirus infection rapidly taking hold in schools, endangering the health and lives of large numbers of children, and placing their families, particularly elderly and vulnerable relatives, in danger.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, Pool)

Government advice does not require physical distancing between children and young people of any age, although adults are expected to maintain two-metre distancing. Personal protective equipment (PPE) will not be required unless specified by a risk assessment. Pupils will not be required to wear face masks, nor will they be required to physically distance on school buses. “Enhanced hygiene” measures are required, meaning only more time for hand washing and sanitiser use. Windows and doors are to be left open.

Sturgeon sanctimoniously claimed she was acting on the “moral and educational imperative that we get children back to school as soon as is safely possible.” Her deputy, Education Secretary John Swinney, claimed he was responding to concerns from teachers.

“That’s why we’ve taken such care to gather the evidence, we established a specific expert group to look at all of these questions and to provide us with clinical advice” said Swinney.

A measure of the Scottish government’s “care to gather evidence” was the rebuke issued to Sturgeon by director of the UK’s Office for Statistical Regulation, Ed Humpherson. Writing to the Scottish government’s chief statistician, Roger Halliday, Humpherson noted Sturgeon’s July 3 claim repeated on several occasions that the “the prevalence of the virus in Scotland, right now, is five times lower than it is in England.”

Humpherson complained that “sources used to underpin this claim have been difficult to identify… it is important to recognise that a comparison of COVID-19 prevalence rates is not straightforward. If it is to be undertaken, the results and the uncertainties should be communicated transparently.”

Humpherson noted the comparison was based on groups of statistics that were not directly comparable and with unclear timeframes. He concluded, “We do not think that the sources above allow for a quantified and uncaveated comparison of the kind that was made.”

In other words, the Scottish government chose its statistics to justify the impression that its response to the pandemic was qualitatively better than in England.

Comparing similar statistics, however, the UK’s Office for National Statistics reported that Scotland suffered the third worse rate of excess deaths in Europe over the first half of 2020. Only Spain and England fared worse. Of the 25 major European cities with the highest rates of excess deaths, Edinburgh and Glasgow were both in the top 10, along with London, Birmingham, Amsterdam, and Madrid.

The ONS conceded that the fact that Scotland retained its lockdown a few weeks beyond May 10 meant that death rates continued to fall in Scotland. On the week beginning May 23, for example, Scotland had an age-standardised mortality rate 5.11 percent above average for the last 5 years. England’s rate was 7.55 percent, against Spain’s 6.65 percent. The downward trend has continued. In the week to July 26, COVID-19 accounted for less than 1 percent of all deaths in Scotland, compared with 36 percent at the pandemic peak.

But whatever gains may have been made by extending the lockdown in Scotland, they are rapidly being squandered in the rush to make up lost time. Many workplaces are already working normally, but fully returning the schools August 11 is the key to restoring the generation of profit. This will inevitably be accompanied by tragedies reminiscent of the pandemic’s early days.

New infection spikes have already emerged in advance of schools re-opening. Among the most concerning was that reported in Inverclyde, which includes the former industrial towns of Greenock and Port Glasgow. Inverclyde, which has some of the poorest areas in Scotland, has consistently recorded by far the highest infection and death rates.

In May, the region reported a COVID-19 death rate of 12.7 deaths per 10,000 people, more than double Scotland’s rate at the time of 5.1 deaths.

A June report from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde suggested that the coronavirus was circulating extensively in the area long before the lockdown. Talking to Scottish Television of her experiences early during the pandemic, Dr Abby Gunn, a consultant to the Inverclyde Royal Hospital in Greenock, made the same point. She explained, “Every ward and every room that you went to had Covid-19 in the hospital. We saw this coming months in advance, yet we were still doing some of the real-time planning after we had the first positive case.”

Last week, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde confirmed a cluster of cases had again emerged in Inverclyde. Eleven new cases have been reported including a worker at Amazon’s 300,000-square-foot Faulds Park distribution centre outside Gourock, which employs 400. Although some workers were sent home, the entire facility remains operational.

An Amazon worker told the Greenock Telegraph, “The problem is that the person who tested roamed about putting items onto steel shelving, so workers feel the whole plant should have been closed down for a deep clean. Who knows where this person or others who are now isolating touched? People are concerned that management haven’t gone far enough to make sure the whole site is safe.”

Distribution played a role in other cases associated with the Inverclyde cluster. Deliveries by an infected driver to a Port Glasgow pharmacy appear to have resulted in several cases linked to the pharmacy.

Another spike associated with an outbreak at a privately contracted NHS contact tracing centre, run by Sitel near Motherwell, has now been linked to 27 COVID-19 cases. These include workers at the site and cases associated with reopened pubs and cafes across central Scotland.

Five people tested positive last week at the Fullarton Care Home in Irvine, where 22 elderly people died during the peak of the infection crisis. Run by HC-One, which operates 300 care home across the UK, the Irvine care home was criticised by the Care Inspectorate for poor hygiene and infection control, with staff untrained in the safe use of PPE.

Of a total of 4,201 COVID-19 deaths in Scotland, 46 percent, 1,932, have been in care homes. Many were caused by hasty releases of 1,300 untested elderly hospital patients, some of whom later showed COVID-19 symptoms. Most died in extremely difficult circumstances—isolated, frightened, written off by an over stressed hospital system, and left in care homes suffering extreme staff shortages because of the pandemic.

No confidence should be placed in the Scottish government, or its allies and apologists in the trade union bureaucracy and the pseudo-left groups, to do anything but defend the interests of capitalism. To combat the pandemic, and the attacks on living standards being pushed through, workers in Scotland, as in England and internationally, must mobilise independently through the formation of rank and file organisations in every workplace, school, and neighbourhood. They must take up the struggle for the socialist reorganisation of society.