Anger grows across the US as closed-door talks continue on expired unemployment relief

Jacob Crosse

Frustration, anxiety and anger are rising among the roughly 30 million workers who stopped receiving their weekly $600 federal unemployment supplement last week after Congress failed to reach an agreement on a new coronavirus stimulus bill and adjourned for the weekend.

Closed-door talks Monday between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, on the one side, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, on the other, reportedly left the two sides far apart on a possible extension of the enhanced jobless benefit.

Pedestrians wearing protective masks wait on line for food donations during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Corona neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Both sides are agreed on slashing the already inadequate $600 weekly benefit on the grounds that its recipients, part of the tens of millions laid off due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the incompetent, Wall Street-dictated response of Trump and both big business parties, are being “overpaid.” They are haggling over the details of how much to cut and how fast to cut it.

The social interests behind the cut-off of jobless aid were demonstrated by the response of Wall Street. The Dow shot up 236 points on Monday. The Nasdaq jumped 157 points, prompting Trump to tweet, “RECORD HIGH NASDAQ.”

The refusal of Congress to extend the benefit sets the stage for a social catastrophe. Termination of the federal supplement cuts the weekly income of the unemployed by 60 to 90 percent. Tens of millions of households, already in arrears, face homelessness following the expiration of moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures.

According to a survey by the US Census Bureau, one in seven tenants in California did not pay rent on time last month and nearly 1 in 6 do not expect to pay on time in August. The same survey found that overall in the US, 23,759,822 renters reported “no confidence” or “slight confidence” that they would be able to make rent in August.

The research firm Stout concluded that nearly 1 million renters across the Ohio valley, which includes Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia, are unable to pay rent this month and face eviction. At the end of July, Stout estimated that some 475,000, or 43 percent, of Michigan renters were at risk of losing their home.

Hunger, already on the rise as seen in the proliferation of mile-long lineups of cars at food distribution centers, is poised to explode and threaten starvation.

Official unemployment remains in the double-digits at 11.1 percent. For the week ending July 25, another 1.4 million workers filed initial unemployment claims, meaning that over 52 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March.

An AP/NORC poll published last week revealed that 27 percent of households had someone laid off due to the pandemic, 33 percent had someone with reduced hours of work, 24 percent had someone forced to take unpaid time off, and 29 percent had someone working at reduced wages.

Congress’ failure to extend the federal unemployment benefit and a partial ban on evictions is not the result of partisan “gridlock.” It is deliberate policy. The aim is to blackmail workers back into virus-infected factories and workplaces so they can resume pumping out profits for the banks and corporations.

Hundreds of thousands of workers laid off during the pandemic have never received a cent of unemployment pay due to the failure of state employment agencies to process their claims. In Colorado, the Department of Labor and Employment says of the 664,532 unemployment claims filed since mid-March, 223,298 claims are still pending.

In New Jersey, 50,000 are still waiting to be paid, while the Department of Employment, Education and Training in Nevada reports a “delay” that has caused over 20,000 claims to remain “unpaid.” Meanwhile, the agency has sent “overpayment” letters to thousands of workers who have yet to receive anything!

WSWS reporters spoke with workers in Illinois and Pennsylvania regarding the expiration of their benefits.

“I feel like I’m being deprived of my money that I earned for working,” Dana, an unemployed store manager, said. “I worked for over 20 years straight. When you get put on unemployment you don’t see all your money, like you would if working. The $600 helped me tremendously. It was like getting a paycheck and being able to see all your money without them deducting your pay. I was able to play catch up on my bills and pay for medical expenses.”

Laura, an unemployed worker in Illinois, remarked that “the $600 was a huge blessing and added benefit to my house. It allowed me to save and pay my bills.”

“I was laid off,” she continued. “I did not choose this situation. Being on unemployment is not ideal. I want to work, but no jobs are out there right now. I would like to get medical care and other benefits that are provided when you work.

“So I really don’t like it when the secretary of the Treasury makes it look like unemployed people have no incentive to look for work. Workers are used to hearing the lie that there is no money to support the programs we rely on, so, yes, I agree it is time we do something about it.”

“I don’t know what I am going to do,” Helen, an unemployed Pittsburgh worker, told the WSWS. “I worked as a health aide. My daughter is 9. I’ve been out of work since March when the schools closed.

“I couldn’t go to work because I don’t have anyone to take care of her. They are starting school, but I’m really scared what will happen to her. Things are getting worse in Pittsburgh. They ended the social distancing too soon and opened up the bars and restaurants. Now everyone is getting sick again. Even if the schools stay open, they are not having the after-school programs and I don’t have anyone to watch my daughter.

“The $600 allows me to pay my bills and buy food and things. I don’t know how we will get by. I have to pay for electric, gas and rent. I have car insurance, cable, phone and internet.

“They knew the unemployment was coming to an end. These politicians can meet and vote to give the rich all kinds of money, but when it comes to the poor they can’t find the time. All they care about is the rich. They don’t care about the working people.”

One month of the coronavirus pandemic: 7.2 million infected, 165,000 dead

Bryan Dyne

The month of July was the deadliest yet in the COVID-19 pandemic, as the disease continued to tear through the global population.

More than seven million people were infected with the disease last month, compared with 4.4 million the month before. And 165,000 people died, compared with 139,000 the previous month. In total, 18.4 million people worldwide have been infected, and the death toll will have hit, by the end of today, over 700,000.

Indian health volunteers take swab samples as part of the India-Israel Non-Invasive Raid COVID-19 test study camp, at a government hospital in New Delhi, India, Friday, July 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

The center of the global disaster is the United States, the wealthiest capitalist country with the most extreme social inequality and where human life is cheapest.

In the United States, there were two million new cases in July, up from 800,000 in June, and 27,500 people lost their lives, another monthly record. If the disease continues at this pace, 330,000 people will die in the US in the course of a year.

White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx warned Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread.” She then added that the pandemic is entrenched in both “rural and urban” areas.

This disaster is the predictable consequence of the White House’s abandonment of all efforts to contain the pandemic as part of its drive to prematurely force workers back into workplaces where the disease is raging. In April, when states throughout the country reopened factories, the country had just passed one million confirmed coronavirus cases and was nearing 58,000 known deaths in this country alone.

Seven weeks ago, Vice President Mike Pence declared that “the alarm bells over a second wave of coronavirus infections” were “overblown.” He claimed that “great progress” was being made, which was “a cause for celebration.” The administration’s “success” had at that point resulted in 2.2 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 121,000 dead.

Today, the real testament to the administration’s response is the ongoing mass suffering and death across the country. There are more than 4.8 million cases in the United States, more than double what they were in mid-June. An additional 38,000 men, women and children are dead, bringing the national tally to just under 159,000.

The situation is similarly dire in Latin America, which has recorded five million cases and well over 203,000 deaths. The situation is most dangerous in Brazil, led by the fascistic Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly dismissed the pandemic as a “little flu” and has actively ignored warnings from his top public health officials, firing two during the course of Brazil’s outbreak. The country has so far suffered more than 2.7 million COVID-19 cases and is expected to cross the threshold of 100,000 deaths sometime this week.

In Mexico, led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, there have been 439,000 cases and 47,000 deaths, both of which are considered to be vast underestimations of the spread and death toll of the pandemic in the country.

The pandemic has similarly spiraled out of control in India. There are 1.8 million known cases, with more than 50,000 new cases each day. Nearly 39,000 people have died. It took only 25 days to add one million more cases to the current caseload from July 10, when the total COVID-19 cases in India stood at 794,000. This means that more than half of the country’s total cases occurred in the past four weeks.

The disease is also spiking again in European countries, such as Spain, France and, to a lesser extent, Germany. All three of these countries were hit hard when the coronavirus first emerged in Europe in March and April and had done a better job than the US in suppressing their outbreaks. But as a consequence of their governments’ efforts to get workers back on the job, the number of cases is growing. Germany now averages more than 600 new cases a day, France more than 1,000 and Spain more than 2,000.

Throughout the world, the disease is fueling unemployment, poverty, homelessness and hunger. According to the United Nations, hunger tied to the pandemic is leading to the deaths of 10,000 children every single month.

In April, the World Health Organization warned strongly against premature economic reopenings by any country if it could not reliably “find, isolate, test and treat all cases, and trace every contact.” During that same period, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, warned that abandoning restrictions on business operations would cause “needless suffering and death.”

Instead, the US political establishment, from the White House on down to state governors in both parties, abandoned efforts to contain the pandemic, allowing businesses to reopen and fuel the spread of the disease. The American financial oligarchy is totally indifferent to the death and suffering of millions.

The United States has adopted a de facto policy of “herd immunity,” forcing workers back into factories, plants and offices so corporations can continue to extract surplus value to pay for the billions or trillions of dollars handed out to the rich.

While this policy is particularly egregious in the United States, it is mirrored in every country, where the primary concern of governments has been to preserve not the health and well-being of the population but the wealth of the financial oligarchy.

The COVID-19 disaster is the product of the anarchy and irrationality of capitalism, most nakedly expressed in the industrialized world in the United States. The destruction of the health care infrastructure over decades is of a piece with the financialization and deindustrialization of the economy and the destruction of jobs, wages and social services.

Instead of global cooperation, the US is using the prospect of a potential vaccine to its own advantage, engaged in what the Wall Street Journal called a “high-stakes geopolitical scramble to secure supplies for a scientific breakthrough that could confer enormous economic and political power.”

On February 28, now more than five months ago, the International Committee of the Fourth International issued a call for a globally coordinated emergency response to the coronavirus pandemic. At a time when the total number of cases stood at 100,000 and the number of deaths stood at 3,000, the ICFI warned that “the danger cannot be overstated.” Rather than taking measures to stop the pandemic, the ruling class utilized the health care disaster to gorge itself, profiting off of death and social devastation.

Now, more than 18 million have been infected, and more than 700,000 people have died. Seven hundred thousand people! All with families, friends and coworkers devastated by the loss. And there is no end in sight.

There could hardly be a more damning exposure of the social, political and moral bankruptcy of capitalism. The working class will not forget what has happened. The pandemic, acting upon the preexisting crisis of the capitalist system, has created the conditions for enormous revolutionary convulsions, in the United States and throughout the world.

A Wrong Message for the Pandemic

Cesar Chelala

Public health messages addressed to the general population should be clear and unambiguous. This is particularly important in times of a pandemic like that caused by the coronavirus. Millions of lives are at stake. One of the messages, “social distancing,” widely used by public health authorities during the present pandemic, exemplifies this shortcoming. It should be replaced by “physical distancing.”

“Language that is unclear –or worse, that conveys inadvertent and counterproductive meanings—undermines public health discourse. This is as true in public health as anywhere; successful behavior-change efforts, like those crucial to defeating covid-19, depend in part on accurate, compelling language,” wrote Joanne Silberner and Howard Frumkin in The British Medical Journal.

The imposed isolation has affected people of all ages. One of the most serious effects of the coronavirus pandemic has been on people’s mental health. Children have increased sadness and depression. They also have difficulties with concentration and attention and avoid activities and games that they enjoyed in the past, particularly when they are unable to join their friends.

Many people have experienced symptoms of anxiety, fear, and depression that have even led some to hurt themselves and others. In many countries, there has been an increase in incidents of domestic violence. The seriousness of the situation is aggravated when people are unable to work or to find paying jobs of any kind. For many low-income adults, the threat of eviction and homelessness is a heavy burden.

Elderly people are more prone to get sick with the coronavirus both as a result of having a weaker immune system and underlying health conditions. Because elderly people often depend on younger family members for their daily needs, isolation measures can critically damage a family support system. Those elderly with physical or mental disabilities need increased attention and care.

In these situations, asking people to do “social distancing” is an ambiguous message that can be misinterpreted. What is needed is more intense social connection, albeit done by telephone or through social media. In this regard, the government through its public health authorities should provide specific recommendations for more effective social connectivity. Increasingly, public health experts are calling for people to do “interpersonal physical distancing” or, in brief, “physical distancing” to avoid becoming infected by the virus.

Public health experts are alerting that measures such as testing and contact tracing are losing effectiveness given the speed of transmission of the pandemic. It is now particularly necessary to change the words “social distancing” for “physical distancing” and insist on the importance of increasing social connection among people to alleviate the mental health effects of the pandemic, and prevent the transmission of the infection.

Being human means staying connected. I am reminded of the words of John Berryman in his poem Homage to Mistress Bradstreet,

“We are on each other’s hands who care”

The Plunge in Consumption of Services Leads to a Record 32.9 Percent Drop in GDP

Dean Baker

The saving rate hit a record 25.7 percent level in the first quarter, indicating that few of the pandemic checks were spent.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shrank at a record 32.9 percent annual rate in the second quarter. While almost all the major categories of GDP fell sharply, a 43.5 percent drop in consumption of services was the largest factor, accounting for 22.9 percentage points of the drop in the quarter. Nonresidential fixed investment also fell sharply, dropping at a 27.0 percent annual rate. Residential investment fell at a 38.7 percent annual rate.

The plunge in service consumption was expected since this was the segment of the economy hardest hit by the shutdowns. Within services, health care, food services and hotels, and recreation were the biggest factors reducing growth by 9.5 percentage points, 5.6 percentage points, and 4.7 percentage points, respectively.

Spending on health care services fell at a 62.7 percent annual rate in the quarter. This was due to people putting off a wide range of medical and dental checkups and procedures, which far more than offset the care needed by coronavirus patients. The annual rate of decline for food and hotel services was 81.2 percent and for recreation services 93.5 percent.

Consumption of nondurable goods fell at a 15.9 percent annual rate. Declines in clothing and gasoline purchases were the biggest factors, taking 1.0 percentage point and 0.9 percentage points off the quarter’s growth, respectively. Demand for durable goods fell at just a 1.4 percent rate, but this followed a decline of 12.5 percent in the first quarter. Interestingly, spending on cars actually rose slightly in the quarter, adding 0.15 percentage points to growth.

Consumption expenditures by nonprofits serving households rose at 182.5 percent annual rate, adding 3.0 percentage points to the quarter’s growth. This reflects the effort by private foundations and charities to ameliorate the hardships being experienced by many households.

Both structure and equipment investment fell sharply in the quarter, declining at 34.9 percent and 37.7 percent annual rates, respectively. The drop in equipment investment is especially striking since it fell at a 15.2 percent rate in the first quarter. Investment in intellectual products fell at a more modest 7.2 percent annual rate. Residential investment fell at a 38.7 percent annual rate, although this followed a jump of 19.0 percent in the first quarter.

Exports and imports both fell sharply, with exports dropping at a 64.1 percent rate and imports falling at a 53.4 percent rate. Because US imports are so much larger than exports, trade actually added 0.7 percentage points to growth in the quarter.

Federal government spending rose at a 17.4 percent annual rate, driven by a 39.7 percent increase in non-defense spending, presumably most of which is pandemic related. State and local spending fell at a 5.6 percent rate, likely reflecting school closings in the quarter.

Prices fell sharply in the quarter, with the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) deflator falling at a 1.9 percent annual rate and the core PCE falling at a 1.1 percent annual rate. These declines reflected sharp drops in the price of items such as gasoline, hotels, and clothes. Many of these declines were already being reversed by the end of the quarter. They will almost certainly not continue into the third quarter.

The savings rate soared to a record 25.7 percent. This reflects the jump in disposable income attributable to the pandemic checks, coupled with the sharp drop in spending. Nominal disposable income rose at a 42.1 percent annual rate. This rise was, of course, uneven, with people who were still getting their regular paychecks or retirees seeing large jumps in income from the pandemic checks, but with many of the unemployed seeing sharp drops.

With the economy mostly reopened, despite serious outbreaks of the pandemic in large parts of the country, we are virtually certain to see strong growth in the third quarter. But even if the economy grows at a 15 or 20 percent annual rate, it would be nowhere close to recovering the losses from the last two quarters.

The shape of the rescue package currently being debated will also be hugely important. In addition to the unemployment insurance supplements that will be necessary for laid-off workers to sustain their consumption, state and local governments will need large amounts of money both to avoid layoffs and to implement programs for the safe reopening of schools, workplaces and businesses. In this context, it is very difficult to see any economic rationale for the $1,200 pandemic checks.

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.