We Need to Change Our COVID-19 Strategy

Gail E. Tverberg

We would like to think that we can eliminate COVID-19, but doing so is far from certain. The medical system has not been successful in eliminating HIV/AIDS or influenza; the situation with COVID-19 may be similar.

We are discovering that people with COVID-19 are extremely hard to identify because a significant share of infections are very mild or completely without symptoms. Testing everyone to find the huge number of hidden cases cannot possibly work worldwide. As long as there is hidden COVID-19 elsewhere in the world, the benefit of identifying everyone with the illness in a particular area is limited. The disease simply bounces back, as soon as there is a reduction in containment efforts.

Figure 1. One-week average new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Israel, Spain, Belgium and Netherlands. Chart made using data as of August 8, 2020 using an Interactive Visualization available at https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ based on Johns Hopkins University CSSE database.

We are also discovering that efforts to contain what is essentially a hidden illness are very damaging to the world economy. Shutdowns in particular lead to many unemployed people and riots. Social distancing requirements can make investments unprofitable. Cutting off air flights leads to a huge loss of tourism and leaves farmers with the problem of how to get their fruit and vegetable crops picked without migrant workers. If COVID-19 is very widespread, contact tracing simply becomes an exercise in frustration.

Trying to identify the many asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 is surprisingly difficult. The cost is far higher than the cost of the testing devices.

At some point, we need to start lowering expectations regarding what can be done. The economy can protect a few members, but not everyone. Instead, emphasis should be on strengthening people’s immune systems. Surprisingly, there seems to be quite a bit that can be done. Higher vitamin D levels seem to be associated with fewer and less severe cases. Better diet, with more fruits and vegetables, is also likely to be helpful from an immunity point of view. Strangely enough, more close social contacts may also be helpful.

In the remainder of this post, I will explain a few pieces of the COVID-19 problem, together with my ideas for modifications to our current strategy.

Recent News About COVID-19 Has Been Disturbingly Bad

It is becoming increasingly clear that COVID-19 is likely to be here for quite some time. The World Health Organization’s director recently warned, “. . . there’s no silver bullet at the moment and there might never be.” A recent Wall Street Journal article is titled, “Early Coronavirus Vaccine Supplies Likely Won’t Be Enough for Everyone at High Risk.” This article relates only to US citizens at high risk. Needless to say, creating enough vaccine for both high and low risk individuals, around the world, is a long way away.

We are also hearing that vaccines may be far less than 100% effective; 50% effective would be considered sufficient at this time. Two doses are likely to be needed; in fact, elderly patients may need three doses. The vaccine may not work for obese individuals. We don’t yet know how long immunity from the vaccines will last; a new round of injections may be needed each year.

A new report confirms that asymptomatic patients with COVID-19 are indeed able to spread the disease to others.

Furthermore, the financial sector is increasingly struggling with the adverse impact shutdowns are having on the economy. If it becomes necessary to completely “write off” the tourism industry, economies around the world will struggle with permanent job loss and debt defaults.

Shutdowns Don’t Work for Businesses and the Financial System 

There are many issues involved:

(a) Shutdowns tend to lead to huge job loss. Riots follow, as soon as people have a chance to express their unhappiness with the situation.

(b) If countries stop importing migrant workers, there is likely to be a major loss of fruits and vegetables that farmers have planted. No matter how much money is printed, it does not replace these lost fruits and vegetables.

(c) Manufacturing supply lines don’t work if raw materials and parts are not available when needed. Because of this, a shutdown in one part of the world tends to have a ripple effect around the world.

(d) Social distancing requirements for businesses are problematic because they lead to less efficient use of available space. Businesses can serve fewer customers, so total revenue is likely to fall. Employees may need to be laid off. Fixed costs, such as debt, become more difficult to pay, making defaults more likely.

Shutdowns cause a major problem for the economy, because, with many people out of the workforce, the total amount of finished goods and services produced by the economy falls. Broken supply lines and reduced efficiency tend to make the problem worse. World GDP is the total amount of goods and services produced. Thus, by definition, total world GDP is reduced by shutdowns.

Governments can institute benefit programs for citizens to try to redistribute what goods and services are available, but this will not fix the underlying problem of many fewer goods and services actually being produced. Citizens will find that some shelves in stores are empty, and that many airline seats are unavailable. They will find that some goods are still unaffordable, even with government subsidies.

Governments can try to give loans to businesses to help them through the financial problems caused by new rules, such as social distancing, but it is doubtful this approach will lead to new investment. For example, if social distancing requirements mean that new buildings and vehicles can only be used in an inefficient manner, there will be little incentive for businesses to invest in new buildings and vehicles, even if low-interest loans are available.

Furthermore, even if there might be opportunities for new, more efficient, businesses to be added, the subsidization of old inefficient businesses operating at far below capacity will tend to crowd out these new businesses.

People of Many Ages Soon Become Unhappy with Shutdowns

Young people expect hands-on learning experiences at universities. They also expect to be able to meet possible future marriage partners in social settings. They become increasingly unhappy, as shutdowns drag on.

The elderly need to be protected from COVID-19, but they also need to be able to see their families. Without social interaction, their overall health tends to decline.

We Are Kidding Ourselves If We Think a Vaccine Will Make the Worldwide COVID-19 Problem Disappear

Finding a vaccine that works for 100% of the world’s population seems extremely unlikely. Even if we do find a vaccine or drug treatment that works, being able to extend this solution to poor countries around the world is likely to be a slow process.

If we look back historically, pretty much all of the improvement in the U. S. crude death rate (number of deaths divided by total population) has come from conquering infectious diseases.

Figure 2. Crude mortality rates in the United States in chart from Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century, Armstrong et al, JAMA, 1999.

The catch is that since 1960, there hasn’t been an improvement in infectious disease mortality in the United States, according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Society. As progress has been made on some longstanding diseases such as hepatitis, new infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS have arisen. Also, the biggest category of infectious disease remaining is “influenza and pneumonia,” and little progress has been made in reducing its death rate in the United States. Figure 3 shows one chart from the article.

Figure 3. Mortality due to influenza or HIV/AIDS, in chart from Infectious Disease Mortality Trends in the United States, 1980-2014 by Hansen et al., JAMA, 2016.

With respect to HIV/AIDS, it took from the early 1980s until 1997 to start to get the mortality rate down through drugs. A suitable vaccine has not yet been created.

Furthermore, even when the US was able to reduce the mortality from HIV/AIDS, this ability did not immediately spread to poor areas of the world, such as Sub-Saharan Africa. In Figure 4, we can see the bulge in Sub-Saharan Africa’s crude death rates (where HIV/AIDS was prevalent), relative to death rates in India, where HIV/AIDS was less of a problem.

Figure 4. Crude death rates for Sub-Saharan Africa, India, the United States, and the World from 1960 through 2018, based on World Bank data.

While the medical system was able to start reducing the mortality of HIV/AIDS in the United States about 1996-1997 (Figure 3, above), a 2016 article says that it was still very prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2013. Major issues included difficulty patients had in traveling to health care sites and a lack of trained personnel to administer the medication. We can expect these issues to continue if a vaccine is developed for COVID-19, especially if the new vaccine requires more than one injection, every year.

Another example is polio. A vaccine for polio was developed in 1955; the disease was eliminated in the US and other high income countries in about the next 25 years. The disease has still not been eliminated worldwide, however. Poor countries tend to use an oral form of the vaccine that can be easily administered by anyone. The problem with this oral vaccine is that it uses live viruses which themselves can cause outbreaks of polio. Cases not caused by the vaccine are still found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These examples suggest that even if a vaccine or fairly effective treatment for COVID-19 is discovered, we are kidding ourselves if we think the treatment will quickly transfer around the world. To transfer around the world, it will need to be extremely inexpensive and easy to administer. Even with these characteristics, the eradication of COVID-19 is likely to take a decade or more, unless the virus somehow disappears on its own.

The fact that COVID-19 transmits easily by people who show no symptoms means that even if COVID-19 is eradicated from the high-income world, it can return from the developing world, unless a large share of people in these advanced countries are immune to the disease. We seem to be far from that situation now. Perhaps this will change in a few years, but we cannot count on widespread immunity any time soon.

Containment Efforts for a Disease with Many Hidden Carriers Is Likely to Be Vastly More Expensive than One in Which Infected People Are Easily Identifiable 

It is easy to misunderstand how expensive finding the many asymptomatic carriers of a disease is. The cost is far higher than the cost of the tests themselves, because the situation is quite different. If people have serious symptoms, they will want to stay home. They will want to give out the names of others, if they can see that doing so might prevent someone else from catching a serious illness.

We have the opposite situation, if we are trying to find people without symptoms, who might infect others. We need to:

1. Identify all of these people who feel well but might infect others.
2. Persuade these people who feel well to stay away from work or other activities.
3. Somehow compensate these people for lost wages and perhaps extra living expenses, while they are in quarantine.
4. Pay for all of the tests to find these individuals.
5. Convince these well individuals to name those whom they have had contact with (often their friends), so that they can be tested and perhaps quarantined as well.

Perhaps a few draconian governments, such as China, can handle these problems by fiat, and not really compensate workers for being unable to work. In other countries, all of these costs are likely to be a problem. Because of inadequate compensation, exclusion from work is not likely to be well received. Quarantined people will not want to report which friends they have seen recently, if the friends are likely also to lose wages. In poor countries, the loss of income may mean the loss of the ability to feed a person’s family.

Another issue is that “quick tests” are likely to be used for contact tracing, since “PCR tests,” which tend to be more accurate, often require a week or more for laboratory processing. Unfortunately, quick tests for COVID-19 are not very accurate. (Also a CNN report.) If there are a lot of “false positives,” many people may be needlessly taken out of work. If there are a lot of “false negatives,” all of this testing will still miss a lot of carriers of COVID-19.

A Major Benefit of Rising Energy Consumption Seems to Be Better Control Over Infectious Diseases and a Falling Crude Death Rate

I often write about how the world’s self-organizing economy works. The growth in the world’s energy consumption since the advent of fossil fuels has been extremely important.

Figure 5. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects, together with BP Statistical Data on 1965 and subsequent

The growth in world energy consumption coincided with a virtual explosion in human population.

Figure 6. World Population Growth Through History. Chart by SUSPS.

One of the ways that fossil fuel energy is helpful for population growth is through drugs to fight epidemics. Another way is by making modern sanitation easy. A third way is by ramping up food supplies, so that more people can be fed.

Economic shutdowns lead to reduced energy consumption, partly because energy prices tend to fall too low for producers. They cut back on production because of unprofitability.

Figure 7. Weekly average spot oil prices for Brent, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.

Given this connection between energy supply and population, we should not be surprised if shutdowns tend to lead to an overall falling world population, even if COVID-19 by itself is expected to have a small mortality rate (perhaps 1% of those infected). Poor countries, especially, will find that laid off workers cannot afford adequate food supplies. This makes poor members of those economies more susceptible to diseases of many kinds and to starvation.

Epidemiologists Based Their Models on Diseases Which Are Easily Identifiable and Have High Mortality Rates

It is clear that an easily identifiable illness with a high mortality rate can be easily contained. A difficult-to-identify disease, which has a very low mortality rate for many segments of the population, is very different. Members of segments of the population who usually get only a light case of the disease are likely to become more and more unhappy as containment efforts drag on. Models based on very different types of pandemics are likely to be misleading.

We Need to Somehow Change Course

The message that has been disseminated has been, “With containment efforts plus vaccine, we can stop this disease.” In fact, this is unlikely for the foreseeable future. Continuing in the same direction that has not been working is a lot like banging one’s head against a wall. It cannot be expected to work.

Somehow, expectations need to be lowered regarding what containment efforts can do. The economy can perhaps protect a few high-risk people, but it cannot protect everyone. Unless COVID-19 stops by itself, a significant share of the world’s population can be expect to catch COVID-19. In fact, some people may get the disease multiple times over their lifetimes.

If we are forced to live with some level of COVID-19 (just as we are forced to live with some level of forest fires), we need to make this situation as painless as possible. For example,

• We need to find ways to make COVID-19 as asymptomatic as possible by easy changes to diet and lifestyle.
• We also need to find inexpensive treatments, especially ones that can be used outside of a hospital setting.
• We need to keep the world economy operating as best as possible, if we want to stay away from a world population crash for as long as possible.

We cannot continue to post articles which seem to say that a spike in COVID-19 cases is necessarily “bad.” It is simply the way the situation has to be, if we don’t really have an effective way of containing the coronavirus. The fact that young adults build up immunity, at least for a while, needs to be viewed as a plus.

Some Ideas Regarding Looking at the Situation Differently 

(1) The Vitamin D Issue

There has been little publicity about the fact that people with higher vitamin D levels seem to have lighter cases of COVID-19. In fact, whole nations with higher vitamin D levels seem to have lower levels of deaths. Vitamin D strengthens the immune system. Sunlight raises vitamin D levels; fish liver oils and the flesh of fatty fishes also raise vitamin D levels.

Figure 8 shows cumulative deaths per million in a few low and high vitamin D level areas. The death rates are strikingly lower in the high vitamin D level countries.

Figure 8. COVID-19 deaths per million as of August 8, 2020 for selected countries, based on data from Johns Hopkins CSSE database.

The vitamin D issue may explain why dark skinned people (such as those from Southeast Asia and Africa) tend to get more severe cases of COVID-19 when they move to a low sunlight area such as the UK. Skin color is an adaptation to different levels of the sun’s rays in different parts of the world. People with darker skin color have more melatonin in their skin. This makes the production of vitamin D less efficient, since equatorial regions receive more sunlight. The larger amount of melatonin works well when dark-skinned people live in equatorial regions, but less well away from the equator. Vitamin D supplements might mitigate this difference.

It should be noted that the benefit of sunlight and vitamin D in protecting the immune system has long been known, especially with respect to flu-like diseases. In fact, the use of sunlight seems to have been helpful in mitigating the effects of the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918-1919, over 100 years ago!

One concern might be whether increased sunlight raises the risk of melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. I have not researched this extensively, but a 2016 study indicates that that sensible sun exposure, without getting sunburn, may decrease a person’s risk of melanoma, as well as provide protection against many other types of diseases. Non-melanoma skin cancers may increase, but the mortality risk of these skin cancers is very low. On balance, the study concludes that the public should be advised to work on getting blood levels of at least 30 ng/ml.

(2) Other Issues

Clearly, better health in general is helpful. Eating a diet with lot of fruits and vegetables is helpful, as is getting plenty of exercise and sunshine. Losing weight will be helpful for many.

Having social contact with other people tends to be helpful for longevity in general. In fact, several studies indicate that church-goers tend to have better longevity than others. Churchgoers and those with many social contacts would seem to have more contact with microbes than others.

A recent article says, Common colds train the immune system to recognize COVID-19. Social distancing tends to eliminate common colds as well as COVID-19. Quite possibly social distancing is counterproductive, in terms of disease severity. Epidemiologists have likely never considered this issue, since they tend to consider only very brief social distancing requirements.

A person wonders how well the immune systems of elderly people who have been cut off from sharing microbes with others for months will work. Will these people now die when exposed to even very minor illnesses? Perhaps a slow transition is needed to bring families back into closer contact with their loved ones.

People’s immune systems can protect them from small influxes of viruses causing COVID-19, but not from large influxes of these viruses. Masks tend to protect against large influxes of the virus, and thus protect the wearer to a surprising extent. Models suggest that clear face shields also provide a considerable amount of this benefit. People with a high risk of very severe illness may want to wear both of these devices in settings they consider risky. Such a combination might protect them fairly well, even if others are not wearing masks.

Conclusions – What We Really Should Be Doing

Back at the time we first became aware of COVID-19, following the recommendations of epidemiologists probably made sense. Now that more information is unfolding, our approach to COVID-19 needs to change.

I have already laid out many of the things I think need to be done. One area that has been severely overlooked is raising vitamin D levels. This is being discussed in the medical literature, but it doesn’t seem to get into the popular press. Even though the connection is not 100% proven, and there are many details to be worked out, it would seem like people should start raising their vitamin D levels. There seems to be little problem with overdosing on vitamin D, except that sunburns are not good. Until we know more, a level of 30 ng/ml (equivalent to 75 nmol/L) might be a reasonable level to aim for. This is a little above the mean vitamin D level of Norway, Finland, and Denmark.

Social distancing requirements probably need to be phased out. A concern might be temporarily excessive patient loads for hospitals. Large group meetings may need to be limited for a time, until this problem can be overcome.

Producers push reckless resumption of North American film production in face of pandemic

Lee Parsons

With the daily number of COVID-19 infections and deaths still climbing in some of the leading centres of film production in North America—including California, New York and Georgia—organizations governing workers on both sides of the camera have come out in lock step in their drive to resume film and television production.

Hollywood sign (Photo: Thomas Wolf)

Most of the two million-plus workers who directly or indirectly are employed in the North American film industry have been idled during the pandemic and now face uncertain futures. Producers and distributors seeking to fill a growing shortage of content are presently ushering these employees back to work, with governments of every political stripe giving a green light to the resumption of film and video production.

This drive coincides with the termination of emergency benefits and funding that have temporarily kept millions from hunger and homelessness. Workers are being forced to return virtually unprotected to the workplace—in this case, film studios and sets—or face financial ruin. In Canada, come September, the millions of people on the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) will be transitioned onto the “enhanced” federal EI program, which generally means less money for the few who qualify at all.

Increasingly, jobs in the film industry are short-term engagements without any security and most have schedules, even for series productions, spanning no more than a few months each year. Particularly in regions with harsher climates such as New York and Toronto, the work season can be further limited, with workers obliged to supplement their income with other jobs or by subsisting on unemployment benefits. The pandemic has made matters worse by depriving them of work in the peak summer months, so that the ending of emergency benefits will have a particularly devastating impact on this sector, leaving most without adequate income for the year.

Jurisdictions that instituted social distancing and other protective measures in the early days of the pandemic have recklessly lifted restrictions, despite the cost in lives of workers. Powerful media and film giants are among the most aggressive in the back-to-work drive.

Statements such as those by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio underscore the hypocrisy of corralling workers into production studios without any protection guarantees. “We want to bring people back to work… But safety and health first, always,” de Blasio pledged. The reality is that, with governments standing aside, dozens of films and digital programming projects are plowing headlong into production under a patchwork of unenforceable and confusing guidelines.

The legal restrictions put in place early on in the pandemic have generally given way to voluntary protocols such as those spelled out in “The Safe Way Forward,” a report issued collectively by the Directors Guild of America (DGA), SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), representing actors, IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees), representing film crews, and the Teamsters.

For the film industry, this translates into a multi-tiered system of inadequate protections, including voluntary safeguards for workers and technicians alongside greater protections for performers and producers who can’t be treated as dispensable. The class divide that has always been clearly delineated in the film world is now defined by actual walls separating zones of protection, as the above document seeks to justify, stating, “It’s important to remember that performers are the most vulnerable people on the set.”

An equivalent document in Canada referred to as “Section 21,” from the Ontario Ministry of Labour, explicitly excludes both legal and medical advice, offering benign “guidance” to employers who are intent on resuming production during the pandemic. Face shields, a limit of ten-hour days, isolating “pods” and “depopulating the set” are some of the changes being promoted as protections for film crews.

The studios are claiming the ten-hour day is a health measure, but in fact it is a self-serving strategy to save two hours of overtime pay. With no provisions for oversight let alone enforcement, these measures amount to little more than lip service from production companies and professional organizations seeking to present a responsible public face.

Writers have been instructed to reduce or eliminate sets and locations such as bars and concerts that require crowds of background performers. Actors from out of the country are being required to rehearse their roles in isolation and are kept behind barriers away from camera crews and support staff. Although those involved in digital work, such as set designers, graphic artists and visual effects artists, can work remotely, the vast majority must work on site.

A grim indication of the danger of a return to work, and one of the biggest obstacles production companies are facing, is the fact that currently no insurance company will provide coverage to a film production without a COVID-19 exclusion clause. This has itself halted a number of productions and jeopardized new investment. In Canada, the government of Quebec has recently filled that gap with the announcement of $51 million in financial assistance for film producers to fill in where insurance companies won’t, while the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) has appealed to the federal government to provide a $100 million insurance backstop to the industry.

The second largest centre of film production on the continent, New York City, has just entered “phase four” of the state’s reopening drive, coming just over a month after California allowed production to resume. In British Columbia, the provincial government and film commissions are framing the province as a safe haven for film production due the currently low rates of infection, even though there continue to be reported outbreaks at hospitals and care homes.

Big budget productions such as “Mission Impossible 7,” starring Tom Cruise, have notably been given special exemptions from quarantine restrictions in the UK and elsewhere to limit investor losses. Numerous other reports have emerged of non-union productions and commercials circumventing quarantines or other restrictions, with actors, directors and various others with influence flying under the radar with the tacit approval of officials.

The contraction in revenues for the film industry has been sharp and global, with the Chinese market down by $2 billion by March of this year. North American box office receipts are at their lowest level since 1998, and it is estimated that global box office revenues could drop by over $5 billion due to the pandemic.

In addition to the halt in new production, dozens of films have had their theatrical release cancelled, suspended or postponed, and in many cases are instead getting early home media releases or going directly to video on demand (VOD). Obscene profits are at stake, exemplified by the fact that there were 10 films released last year that each generated $1.6 billion in revenues.

Toronto International Film Festival Bell Lightbox (Photo: Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine)

Various awards ceremonies and film festivals have also been reduced, postponed or cancelled as a result of the pandemic. Among the largest annual events in the industry, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is going ahead as scheduled in September, but with only 50 films—a fraction of the 250-plus screenings of previous years. Each of these will have a physically distanced premiere, with the rest being made available on electronic media, or in some cases at drive-in venues.

In an indication of studios’ disregard for the health and safety of workers, now showing up in film production contracts are waivers such as the following:

“I am aware that participating in production activities involves… risks and dangers related to contracting COVID-19 or related virus… and agree that such risks and danger are unpredictable.”

The irresponsible way film production is being resumed lays bare underlying class antagonisms and the overriding concerns of producers and distributors for profits over human life.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke to two film workers about the impact of the coronavirus on the industry.

Nadine is a graphic artist working in the industry for the last five years. She said: “My work has been quite volatile since I started. Some of it I attribute to just being new in the industry and I was told from the veteran people that once you find new crews, you get more regular work.

“March 15, I think, is when the productions shut down. I had been on an August to March contract, so I was looking forward to taking some time off, but I did have prospects for other work. I’m a transient worker in and out of different areas and I have been doing some part-time work because I think you can make up to $1,000 on the emergency benefit, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last month or so.

“It’s really unclear what’s happening with the film industry now. There’s not a lot of information that’s been given. I accepted a production, but I’ve been given no information on what safety protocols look like. I think IATSE sent something out, but the production itself hasn’t sent out any sort of plan. So, I have no clue, and it’s meant to start in the next month or so.

“I know they’re making special exceptions for American actors to travel, so I am wondering if that’s going to be the same policy adopted by Hollywood. If we’re meant to be going into prep mode and the shooting schedule’s established, where would there be time to go into quarantine unless they’re doing it now without anyone’s knowledge. If there is another outbreak, I don’t know if it’s something where they will declare another Force Majeure or if they would continue production and make adjustments.

“It’s easier for me. I don’t have a lot of living expenses like my colleagues on the coast. I don’t have family, but my colleagues who do have all that are very much stressed out. Some of them are considering a total career change. I can’t blame them there.

“The initial response of the union was very disorganized and secretive. They haven’t really addressed it in a direct way until last week, when they sent out an email containing some workplace protocols. Outside of that, there’s not a lot of communication and they’re not willing to be forthright with the changes in the industry and having any honest approach with what that looks like for workers.

“They just pretend like the industry is going to be back in full speed and it’s going to be a very promising future. They’re not willing to discuss if there are even cases, being accusatory even. I made a call myself and they were highly cynical. They were like, who are you, where do you work? Like I was a reporter looking for dirt, ­and I’m a member. They just suggested that people call the number that was set up, which you could never get a hold of anyone on.”

Maria has worked in the film industry for the past 25 years and has a compromised immune system due to a battle with cancer and subsequent complications. She has recently returned to work as a buyer on a successful television series but expresses great concern and mixed feelings over the prospects.

“The guidelines are pretty general,” she said. “For instance, they say disinfect everything that comes in like props or furniture. But there’s no official word on how to do that without damaging those items. By official, I mean medical or scientific information.

“We have a coded rep and medical information officers who come in and talk to everybody, but it’s just general information that you get: hand sanitize, wear masks, two meters distance, clean your surfaces. But when you’re dealing with antiques, for instance, we don’t know what the protocols are.

“They say they’re cleaning them, but then they’re getting handled and there just isn’t enough information out there about this sort of stuff. Right now, all we can do is get things ahead of time so that they sit.

“We are not allowed to go anywhere near where the cast blocks or anything like that. We’re not allowed to go in the studio space when they’re shooting. There’s a lot of physical limitations on where you can go. And you have to sort of jump through hoops or walk in circles to get from A to B because of that.

“It’s all guesswork right now. We are all dealing with these disinfectants and you don’t really know how much of that works against COVID.

“But how does it work in terms of your health being exposed to all these cleaners? That’s something that hasn’t been talked about in the media at all. We may be depleting our immune system just by disinfecting so much. Out of the frying pan into the fire.”

Indonesian economy contracts for first time in over two decades

Owen Howell

As a result of the global coronavirus pandemic, Indonesia’s economy has suffered its first contraction in more than two decades. The steep decline in economic activity this year has had an impact far greater than previously anticipated, with the threat of recession looming.

Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, saw its gross domestic product (GDP) shrink by 5.3 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, according to data from Statistics Indonesia released last Wednesday. The country’s last contraction occurred in the first quarter of 1999, at the tail-end of the Asian financial crisis.

Over the course of the 2000s, economic growth recovered from that economic shock and accelerated to over 4 ̶ 6 percent, becoming the fastest growing economy in the region outside China. Since 2012, however, annual GDP growth has decreased to around 5 percent.

After President Joko Widodo assumed office in 2014, his administration took measures to ease regulations for foreign direct investment, in an effort to stimulate a slowing economy. Even before the pandemic struck, the government was confronting mounting problems, including a weakening currency, decreasing exports, and stagnating consumer spending.

The partial lockdown imposed in April dealt major blows to manufacturing and retail sales. The economy, having grown in the first quarter by almost 3 percent, was expected to shrink 4.6 percent in the April ̶ June quarter, according to a Reuters poll of analysts.

The broad scope of the pandemic impact was also unforeseen, with businesses delaying investments and households curbing spending. Exports were also hit by lower global demand and commodity prices. Indonesian shares responded negatively to Wednesday’s released data, with the benchmark stock index slipping nearly 0.3 percent.

The government has attempted to counteract the pandemic’s impact with a fiscal stimulus in which thus far has amounted to $US48 billion. However, experts are suggesting the GDP will likely contract again in the third quarter, albeit at a slower rate, putting the economy formally in recession. Anwita Basu of Fitch Solutions, in comments to the Australian Financial Review, predicted a 4.5 percent contraction.

Amid warnings that Indonesia’s recovery could be the slowest in Southeast Asia, the finance ministry projected that the economy could shrink by 0.4 percent for the full year. The World Bank has predicted a far worse outcome: output could contract by as much as 3.5 per cent in 2020, a disastrous result for an emerging economy.

The government this month unveiled a $US40 billion debt monetisation scheme. Bank of Indonesia, the nation’s central bank, pledged to buy $US28 billion of government bonds while relinquishing interest payments. The bank has cut its key interest rates four times this year by a total of 100 basis points, in a drastic bid to promote economic growth.

Despite these measures, economists are urging Widodo’s government to further ramp up state spending to prevent a recession. “The economic performance will depend heavily on whether the government can accelerate spending to jack up growth,” Bank Central Asia economist David Sumual told the Jakarta Post last week Wednesday.

At the outset of the global downturn in March, Widodo announced a regulation that would waive a cap on a maximum budget deficit for three years. This allowed Bank Indonesia extraordinary powers to funnel huge sums of money into the financial sector. Following this aggressive intervention came a protracted series of stimulus packages, directed almost exclusively at bailing out the corporations and amounting to 15.7 percent of the total budget.

The government’s relentless drive to resume production, even as the pandemic ravages the population, is an expression of its desperation to prevent a liquidity crisis and economic collapse. In fact, its response to the pandemic, from the beginning, has been motivated solely by a concern over its impact on corporate profits.

The belated implementation of limited lockdown measures in April brought production across a range of industries to a grinding halt. These were largely confined to capital city Jakarta, where the transnational corporations are largely based.

In early June, authorities began to ease restrictions and force workers to return to their jobs, hoping to stir production back to life. The attempted reopening, however, has aggravated the spread of the virus, now present in all 34 provinces. Reluctantly, the government has extended movement restrictions in virus hotspots until August 13.

With thousands of new cases discovered each day, the infection tally has grown to 118,753 nationwide. In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald last week, two of the country’s leading epidemiologists agreed that the actual number of cases could have already topped one million, or nearly 10 times the official figure. This would place Indonesia at fourth position in the world’s coronavirus rankings.

The official death toll of 5,521 deaths also grossly underrepresents the actual devastation of the virus. Last month, national coronavirus watchdog Kawal COVID-19 showed that there were at least another 7,360 deaths among suspected patients, who died before being tested.

Health care in Indonesia faces imminent collapse as hospitals fill up across the archipelago. With scarce resources in protective equipment, testing facilities, and even staff, the medical system has been criminally neglected, even while funds are endlessly rolled out to big business to prop up the failing stock markets.

Meanwhile, the government is pressing ahead with economic reopening. Late last month, the national coronavirus taskforce was replaced by a COVID-19 Mitigation and Economic Recovery Committee, consisting mostly of financial ministers, headed by billionaire media tycoon and State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir. The decision was widely regarded by commentators as a further shift in priorities towards economic recovery despite the ongoing public health catastrophe.

The revival of the tourism industry, a critical source of GDP, is proceeding at a frantic pace. Initiatives include the reopening of Bali to international tourists next month, the redevelopment of villages around Lake Toba, and the building of port infrastructure in Padang, West Sumatra.

This is entirely in keeping with the pro-business character of Widodo’s government. Following last year’s election victory, he embarked upon policies including tax breaks for the wealthy and international investors, privatisation of water supplies, further undermining of environment regulations, and tighter limitations on the state’s anti-corruption body.

The economic crisis triggered by the pandemic will have an immense social impact, creating the conditions for social upheavals. Around 3.7 million workers have lost their jobs so far this year, according to the National Development Planning Agency, with the number expected to hit 10 million by the end of the year. Although millions of workers now face the prospect of poverty and hunger, social welfare packages have been slow and totally inadequate.

The Indonesian ruling class is keenly aware of the pandemic’s social consequences. Confronted with mass student protests and mounting unrest last October, Widodo selected a number of military figures and Suharto-era generals for his incoming national cabinet. In March, when widespread opposition to his pandemic response first emerged, Widodo said the government was prepared to impose martial law.

As US cruise industry delays operations until November, thousands of seafarers remain stranded

Tom Casey

On August 5, the Cruise Line Industry Association (CLIA) announced that it would continue its voluntary suspension of operations in US waters until October 31. This decision marks the third instance of an effective extension of the cruise industry’s US hiatus since CLIA initially announced the suspension in conjunction with the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) no-sail order on March 14.

Celebrity Solstice and Azamara Journey turned away from the Port Chalmers, NZ. (Credit: Alistair Paterson, Wikimedia Commons)

In mid-March, countries around the world began to restrict their borders to international maritime passenger travel. What was initially only a US shutdown quickly became a worldwide pause in the entire industry.

A Friday article in USAToday chronicling the most recent CLIA extension estimated that approximately 12,000 cruise workers remain marooned in US waters — a number down from the 70,000 reported in early May, which is a further reduction from the 93,000 reported by the US Coast Guard (USCG) in mid-April. Internationally, there were approximately 100,000 more crewmembers left stranded at the onset of the pandemic and there likely remain thousands worldwide.

The World Socialist Web Site has widely reported on the desperate conditions facing cruise workers from dozens of countries who remain stuck on vessels. In what the International Maritime Organization deemed to be a “humanitarian and safety crisis” for seafarers, there have been nearly a hundred onboard COVID-19 outbreaks, well over a dozen disease-related crewmember deaths, and several other employee deaths suspected to have been suicides.

A cruise worker stranded on a ship near the coast of Brazil spoke to the WSWS about the conditions that crew on her ship were facing. The employee, who wished to remain anonymous, has been at sea for five months with no clear plan for repatriation. “It’s absolutely absurd — nobody responsible is willing to put themselves in our shoes. We are tired, and our depression is going to kill us. We have lost our appetites, and we can’t sleep. Believe me when I say that it’s a really hard time for us.”

Friday’s USAToday report repeats the narrative common in tourism and business publications that governmental port and health agencies — not the cruise lines themselves — have been largely to blame for the failure to repatriate tens of thousands of crewmembers. The article quotes CLIA’s Executive Committee Global Chair Adam M Goldstein who states “there are a lot of countries [to which] you would normally take air transportation or [to which] you might find yourself going from home port to home country on ground transportation … Borders started to be closed, and (crew members) couldn’t access normal routes.”

While the article cites the government of Mauritius and the Philippines as examples of countries whose policies have restricted the repatriation of seafarers, it also cites Goldstein bemoaning the CDC’s restrictive guidelines for travel from within the US. “The industry had faced challenges early on trying to repatriate crew members in the U.S., too… Particularly due to the CDC's stiff requirements for crew's use of commercial air travel,” the report states.

As the WSWS has documented, the government of Mauritius, a small island country in the western Indian Ocean with a population of under 1.3 million, has used the crisis facing seafarers to leverage a boom for its travel economy. In June, Mauritian Foreign Minister Nando Bodha announced a plan by the government, in a voluntary partnership with Air Mauritius Holdings Ltd., its biggest, privately held tourism conglomerate, to repatriate its citizens abroad with an inflated price tag of $1,300 (US) per individual returned.

Even if it were true that the border policies of governments of small countries like Mauritius and the Philippines have been the main obstacle for multibillion dollar cruise corporations’ safe repatriation of their employees — which is itself a highly questionable assertion — the notion that these companies are hapless middlemen, caught between seafarers desperate to return home and restrictive governmental agencies, is belied by the fact that the CDC has acted completely at the beck and call of the cruise industry.

The CDC’s initial no-sail order was put into effect in the closest collaboration with CLIA, spelling out the agency’s complete subservience to the industry. The CDC’s initial March 14 order reads, “[o]n March 13… CLIA and their associated members announced that all member cruise lines would voluntarily suspend cruise ship operations from U.S. … for 30 days.” It continues, “[f]ollowing the example set by CLIA members, additional cruise lines have also voluntarily suspended operations from U.S. ports of call. Although CLIA members and the additional cruise lines implementing a voluntary suspension of operations represent a large majority of the cruise industry, not all cruise lines or ships have announced a voluntary suspension of operations or that they will follow the important example set by CLIA members. This Order is intended to cover and specifically apply to those cruise lines or ships that do not undertake a voluntary suspension of operations.”

In other words, the CDC’s orders only apply to the small minority of cruise vessels whose operators choose not to comply with the CLIA’s voluntary industry suspension.

A separate USAToday report states that cruise lines, which are members of CLIA, comprise 95 percent of the world’s cruise vessels. The association names 28 companies on the list of its global cruise lines. Of these member brands, 20 fall under the ownership of three cruising mega-corporations — Carnival Corp. & plc (CCL), Royal Caribbean Group (RCCL), and Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL).

According to data provided by CruiseMarketWatch.com, brands under the CCL umbrella claimed a total of approximately 40 percent of the $45.6 billion total 2018 annual revenue of the industry. RCCL and NCL-owned companies claimed approximately 20 percent and 13 percent of this revenue respectively.

CLIA’s Global Executive Committee is composed of top former and current cruise line CEOs as well as other high-ranking officers in companies in the hospitality, tourism and entertainment industry. The collective personal net worth of CLIA’s Global Executive Committee is well over $5.5 billion dollars.

On April 9, the CDC issued a notice extending its no-sail order for an additional 100 days, expanding the domain of its directives to “any cruise ship that was previously excluded from the March 14, 2020 Order by virtue of having voluntarily suspended operations.” It also specified that all passenger ships in US waters would be required to implement safety procedures to “prevent, mitigate, and respond to the spread of COVID-19 on board cruise ships.”

Despite the CDC’s seemingly imperative language, however, the April memo explains in no uncertain terms that its “order” did not fall under the category of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the legal framework that has historically provided government oversight to private enterprises in the US. The document listed a series of intended onboard preventative health procedures, which had previously been agreed upon between the CDC and CLIA as early as April 3.

By June 19, CLIA announced that it would extend its voluntary suspension of sailings until September 15. This was followed by the CDC’s July 16 extension of its no-sail order to September 30.

Stranded cruise ship workers should be under no illusion that in the life-and-death crisis they and their families face, their employers have been merely helpless victims of the policies of worldwide governments. From the billions in profits generated by the global cruising industry, as well as the access to ready cash that has been guaranteed them by all of the major banks and the US financial system, the resources exist to ensure the safe repatriation for all seafarers around the world. It is the national profit interests and property rights of the global capitalist class that stand as the major obstacles to the fundamental right of seafarers to be returned home safely.

US nurses’ poll shows appalling working conditions in the pandemic

Julian James

Results from a survey on workplace safety recently conducted by the National Nurses United (NNU) have shed light on the myriad dangers US nurses face on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. These appalling conditions are a result of chronic unpreparedness and the reckless actions of hospital administrators. The results were posted on the NNU website and include the following:

• Only 24 percent of nurses think their employer is providing a safe workplace.
• 87 percent of nurses who work at hospitals reported reusing at least one piece of single-use PPE. Reusing single-use PPE is a dangerous practice that can increase exposures to nurses, other staff and to patients.
• 4 percent of nurses who work at hospitals say their employer has implemented a decontamination program to “clean” single-use PPE, such as N95 respirators, between uses. Decontamination of single-use PPE has not been proven to be safe nor effective.
• Just 23 percent of nurses reported they have been tested for COVID-19. A lack of testing jeopardizes nurses’ health and safety and their ability to protect their patients and families.
• 36 percent of nurses who work at hospitals are afraid of catching COVID-19 and 43 percent are afraid of infecting a family member.
• 27 percent of nurses who work at hospitals reported that staffing has gotten much worse recently. Short staffing is unsafe for patients and nurses. The likelihood of patient death increases by 7 percent for every additional patient in the average nurse’s workload in the hospital.

These results, together with the testimony of thousands of workers, paint a picture of a health care system that is incapable of taking basic measures to protect its workers. In private Facebook groups, interviews and through polling, nurses across the country are testifying to the dire workplace conditions and scarcity of essential tools needed for fighting the pandemic, especially virus tests and personal protective equipment (PPE).

This shocking level of unpreparedness was evident in the early stages of the pandemic—when trucks full of bodies idled on the streets of New York and protesting nurses were forced to wear garbage bags instead of medical gowns—has continued into mid-August, five months after the Trump administration declared a national emergency.

Asked to comment on the recent poll results, two nurses who both work at small hospitals in Western Massachusetts related their own experiences, on the condition their names be changed to protect their identity. Their statements overwhelmingly confirm the NNU findings.

Speaking on PPE and testing, Maya, a nurse in her 30s with 15 years of experience, said:

“At the beginning of the pandemic, some staff had to wear trash bags as gowns and staple used masks together because they were falling apart. Now the hospital is “re-sterilizing” masks, not an approved thing at all.

“Before, you took off your mask as soon as you left the patient’s bedside, and if you needed to go back in you would put on another mask. Now suddenly it’s fine to reuse the same one for a whole week. People got sick from the ‘re-sterilized’ masks, didn’t feel well, had syncopal [fainting] episodes and were passing out. Massachusetts Nursing Association (MNA), our s*** union who claims to be all powerful, fought it so now it’s not ‘forced,’ but we’re still bullied into using them by management.

“As for testing, we attest to no symptoms every day, but there is no actual testing being done. And if we travel outside Massachusetts, we don’t fall under the same quarantine rules as others. They just want a hot body. They say as long as we’re symptom-free we are fine to work.”

Asked to expand on her opinion of the MNA, Maya said,

“They’ve been ineffective since I got there. The local people try but don’t get the backing of higher-ups in the union. So yeah, they’ve been horrible, and we pay over a grand a year in dues.

David, another nurse in his 30s working at a semi-rural hospital in Western Massachusetts, spoke about how conditions deteriorated at outset of the pandemic:

“We didn’t have access to rapid testing because it initially wasn’t available anywhere. The hospital wouldn’t transfer patients from the Emergency Department (ED) to other units until results came back, except for ICU cases and those needing to be moved to another facility. So, patients were backing up in the ED, which used to back up sometimes before the pandemic if there were no beds available, but this was happening on a totally new scale.

“We still don’t have rapid testing, although the turnaround time has recently improved a lot (6-8 hours now). So there has been an uptick in falls and other predictable bad outcomes because of the buildup of patients. And the hospital’s answer is always more paperwork, which we don’t have time to fill out because we are already scrambling to care for patients. This proliferation of paperwork was already endemic but continues to increase.”

David went on to speculate that requirements for ever greater documentation are likely an attempt by the hospital to reduce its liabilities for the increased dangers patients face in a short-staffed ED. In this case, workers who were unable to document their every step could be more easily scapegoated when something goes wrong, even if the failure were due to critical short-staffing.

The dangers of low nurse-to-patient ratios are well documented as mentioned on the survey results sheet released by the NNU, which stated: “The likelihood of patient death increases by 7 percent for every additional patient in the average nurse’s workload in the hospital.” Along with layoffs and wage freezes, maintaining woefully inadequate nurse-to-patient ratios is one of the main ways that hospitals, for-profit and “non-profit” alike, seek to boost their bottom line.

Perhaps most essential to hospital balance sheets are the so-called “elective procedures,” a category defined as any procedure that can be scheduled beforehand. In reality, these procedures are often critical, and cover a broad range of treatments, from hip-replacements to surgical removal of cancer cells. In normal times, these operations account for a huge share of the tens-of-billions of dollars in combined profits of hospitals in the US.

Revenues resulting from the treatment of COVID-19 patients pale in comparison. As a Reuters article from March pointed out, “Hospitals administrators say high-margin services, such as orthopedic and heart procedures, can account for up to 80 percent of revenue, while infectious disease and intensive respiratory treatments are less profitable.”

The connection between the COVID-19 pandemic, falling profits and deteriorating working conditions/job losses is something that health care workers on the front lines are acutely aware of. As Maya stated:

“Hospitals across the country are drowning in debt right now. They only make money from certain departments, and those were all shut down at the beginning of the pandemic. So now we get the cuts and the layoffs. My wages and retirement benefits are frozen for the foreseeable future, and despite all the wage and benefit freezing they did a $6 million rebranding. So, all they care about now is elective procedures and I guarantee there will be forced overtime once they get the okay to continue.”

Maya also provided a damning account of the reckless decision-making of hospital administrators, their hostility toward workers and how these factors are helping fuel the skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety and nervous breakdowns being experienced by hospital staff throughout the US.

“When changes are made,” she said, “admin doesn’t tell staff and then acts confused as to why none of us are following the rules. At one point, we were pulled from our jobs and redeployed to critical care units after just one four-hour class and one day to shadow. No warning. Never asked if we were okay with it. It was just, ‘If you want your job, you’ll do what we say when we say it.’

“And they laughed in our faces when we asked about hazard pay. We are being treated like pawns and our lives very clearly matter to no one. They spout in the news ‘thank you to health care heroes’ but what thanks do we get? We are all at the max of our emotional and psychological wellbeing and most of us are also on psych meds and/or on leave because of this.”

This is the state of affairs under capitalism, a system in which the lives of health care workers, like other members of the working class, are only valued to the degree they can be made to produce profits for stockholders and executives.

Louisiana Supreme Court denies review of Fair Wayne Bryant’s life sentence for allegedly stealing a pair of hedge clippers

Helen Halyard

Fair Wayne Bryant, now 60 years old, has spent the last 23 years at Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana on one count of attempted simple burglary. This penitentiary is one of the largest, and most notoriously brutal, state institutions in the US.

The Louisiana Supreme Court building in New Orleans (Nolanwebb/Wikipedia)

In 2018, Bryant’s attorney Peggy Sullivan appealed his sentence before the Second Circuit Court of Louisiana, stating that her client “contends that his life sentence is unconstitutionally harsh and excessive.”

The state appellate court, after a hearing held in November 2019, maintained that the sentence was in accordance with the habitual offender law and no longer subject to review. That decision was then appealed to the seven-member Louisiana Supreme Court.

On August 5, with one dissenting vote, the other 6 Supreme Court justices declined to review the appeal upholding the decision of the State Appellate court that Bryant remain in jail for the rest of his life.

Bryant’s crime was attempting to steal a pair of hedge clippers.

Although Louisiana’s State Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Bryant will have one more chance at possible parole. An earlier ruling by the lower appeals court in 2018 stated that Bryant had been illegally denied parole eligibility. Bryant filed an appeal on July 21 and the Louisiana Committee on Parole will decide whether or not to hold a hearing. Even then, the final decision would be made by the board.

Upon reading about this case, one is reminded of Victor Hugo’s classic novel Les Misérables, which tells the story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant sentenced to 19 years in jail for having stolen a loaf of bread. But as Bryant was sentenced not to 19 years but to life in prison, here America compares unfavorably even to Hugo’s depiction of France under the Bourbon Restoration, when the French monarchy was re-established after the defeat of Napoleon.

This grueling and horrific experience for one count of alleged petty theft demonstrates the true face of justice in capitalist America. One finds one set of rules for the poor and oppressed and another set of rules for those who control the wealth and run the political and state institutions, including the police and courts and their representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties.

Less than two weeks before Bryant lost his appeal, the grotesquely misnamed “SAFE TO WORK” Act was introduced into Congress, which provide companies with legal immunity if their workers become seriously ill or die from the coronavirus after becoming infected at work.

Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the United States. According to a recent report from the ACLU, 1 out of every 86 residents in the state is in prison. A disproportionate number of inmates are black or another minority. The state’s prisoners suffer brutal treatment. The Angola Three, Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert Hillary King, each spent 40 years in solitary confinement at Angola, the longest ever such period in prison history.

In her dissenting statement, Chief Justice Bernette Johnson wrote: “The sentence imposed is excessive and disproportionate to the offense the defendant committed. Mr. Bryant was sentenced, as a habitual offender, to life in prison for unsuccessfully attempting to make off with somebody else’s hedge clippers.” Johnson noted. In her dissent, she went on to review the conditions that this prisoner and thousands of others face in a state suffering from one of the highest poverty rates in the country.

“Mr. Bryant’s sentence is sanctioned under the habitual offender law because of his four prior convictions. His first conviction was attempted armed robbery in 1979, for which he was sentenced to 10 years at hard labor. He has had no more violent convictions. He was subsequently convicted of possession of stolen things in 1987; attempted forgery of a check worth $150 in 1989; and simple burglary of an inhabited dwelling on 19 March 1992. Each of these crimes was an effort to steal something. Such petty theft is frequently driven by the ravages of poverty or addiction, and often both.”

The Bryant case is the product of decades of bipartisan “law-and-order” campaigns. It was Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden who authored and promoted the “tough on crime” legislation passed 25 years ago, which was signed into law by then President Bill Clinton. This law was the one of the key factors in the explosion of mass incarceration beginning in the period of the 1990s. The bill led to longer prison sentences, a growth of the number of prison cells and a more aggressive policy of policing. Approximately 1,000 people are killed each year by US police.

Laws enacted in the state of Louisiana followed those of the federal government, including the habitual offender statute, which condemned thousands of young people to life imprisonment for minor offenses at one of the harshest prison facilities in the US.

In addition, large numbers of the country’s prison population are innocent. To date over 375 people have been exonerated through the Innocence Project based on DNA evidence and legal appeals.

On April 29, 2016, political prisoner Gary Tyler was freed at the age of 57 years old after spending his entire adult life at Angola for a crime he never committed. He was framed up at the age of 16 for the shooting death of Timothy Weber, a 13-year-old white student. The killing occurred in a racially charged atmosphere whipped up by elements such as David Duke, then emerging as a leading figure in the Louisiana and national Ku Klux Klan.

The Workers League (forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party) played a major role in campaigning for Gary Tyler’s freedom and carried out a determined national and international struggle to mobilize the working class in his defense.