In late October, British oil and gas company BP announced that over the next six months it will progressively close its refinery in the city of Kwinana near Perth, Western Australia (WA). The shutdown will cost at least 590 jobs.
The refinery, the largest in Australia and the only one in WA, has been in operation for over 65 years. It currently employs 400 permanent staff and 250 contractors. It is to be converted into an import terminal that will employ only 60 people when it is completed in the middle of next year.
Kwinana Refinery (Credit: bp.com)
The company’s callous decision will see the Kwinana workers dumped into an ever tightening jobs market under conditions where thousands of workers have already been laid-off across the state since the coronavirus crisis began.
Even before the pandemic had fully taken effect, official unemployment in Kwinana had hit 11.8 percent in the March quarter this year. This is far higher than the general rate for WA, which has just fallen to 7 percent, down from 8.7 percent in June as COVID-19 restrictions are eased.
BP Australia head Frédéric Baudry told the media that the company’s decision “was not in any way a result of local policy settings,” but was in “response to the long-term structural changes to the regional fuels market.”
The closure is part of a vicious global restructuring of the sector by the major oil companies, to cut costs and offset the impact of a slump in oil prices. Production is being slashed, jobs destroyed and older plants closed to facilitate the relocation of operations to newer large-scale export refineries in Asia and the Middle East.
A September article by Reuters stated that global oil refiners, “reeling from months of lackluster demand and an abundance of inventories,” are cutting fuel production “because the recovery in demand from the impact of coronavirus has stalled.”
Reuters reported that the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) had reduced its forecast for global oil demand for 2020 for the second time in two months “due to the faltering recovery.” The IEA also forecast that “global consumption of petroleum and liquid fuels will average just 91.7 million barrels per day (bpd) for all of 2020, a reduction in its previous forecast of 200,000 bpd and down 8.4 million bpd from 2019’s 100.1 million bpd level.”
According to natural resources research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, nearly 10 percent of high-cost refineries in Europe, or 1.4 million bpd of capacity, are in serious threat of closure over the next three years. Research and marketing agency Argus reported in August that US and Canadian refiners had already slashed 800,000 bpd of crude capacity this year and “at least 575,000 bpd of that will stay closed.”
In Australia, other closures are likely to follow Kwinana with owners of the country’s three other remaining refineries already placing their operations under critical review. Ampol is considering shutting its Lytton refinery in Queensland, threatening 500 jobs, Viva Energy will possibly close its refinery in Geelong, Victoria, a facility that employs 700 people, while ExxonMobil has put a question mark over its Altona refinery in the same state, which is manned by 350 workers.
Australia’s energy unions have signaled that they have no intention of mobilising workers in an industrial and political campaign to oppose the Kwinana closure or to defend jobs. On the contrary, they are already working to prevent such a development and to divert all opposition into dead-end appeals to the pro-business federal Liberal-National government to intervene.
In a statement reeking of nationalism, Australian Workers Union (AWU) national secretary Daniel Walton declared the Kwinana closure “a matter of national security, and called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison “to get on the phone to BP and tell them to stop dead in their tracks” and “throw this decision into reverse immediately.”
Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) state secretary Steve McCartney has made it clear that as far as the union is concerned, the closure is already a fait accompli. He called on BP to reveal what “their plans are for the surplus staff,” adding, “BP needs to step up and show us what they’re going to do for these workers and for the contractors who provide maintenance and services.”
The Morrison government has no intention of intervening in the interest of workers. All this year, with the full support of Labor and the unions, it has backed the corporate elite’s ruthless utilisation of the pandemic to restructure operations, cutting jobs and implementing further regressive changes to working conditions.
For months, the unions have been involved in tripartite working groups established by Morrison. These bodies, involving corporate, government and union representatives have been tasked with developing proposals for pro-business workplace changes and more “industrial relations reforms.” The depth of the unions’ collaboration was epitomised by the declaration of Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus in April that employers “can get everything you want through co-operation.”
The record shows that to mount a fight to defend jobs and conditions refinery workers have to break with the thoroughly corporatised unions. This must involve a complete break with the economic nationalism promoted by the unions. It serves only to divide the working class along national lines, in an inherently global industry, and line workers up behind their class enemies in the corporations and national governments.
The turn must be to building new organisations of struggle, including rank and file committees, to organise a unified counter-offensive by refinery and energy workers, nationally and internationally, against global oil conglomerates.
This struggle must be based on a socialist perspective and the fight for a workers government that will place energy and other key sectors of the economy under public ownership and democratic workers’ control to meet social need, not private profit.
Hurricane Eta continued to break records in intensity as it caused widespread devastation and incalculable suffering across the entire Central American isthmus and much of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.
As of this writing, 98 people have been found dead and 187 have been reported missing, while many more casualties are feared as rescuers reach communities isolated by the flooding and damage to roads and bridges. Millions have seen their livelihoods uprooted by the destruction of homes, public services, roads, and countless acres of plantations.
The rampant social devastation in the region, which is the product of the historical and intensifying neocolonial exploitation by US imperialism, had already been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the storm, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America had estimated that the Central American economy would contract 6.5 percent this year and sink over 1.5 million more people into official poverty.
Alan Sacún, Chiapas, flooded by Eta (Credit: Proteción Civil Chiapas)
Amid low levels of testing, the region has reported 512,572 coronavirus cases and 12,075 deaths, while the Pan-American Health Organization has warned that the storm has increased the threat of infection. The mass displacements of people, the crowding into shelters and water availability issues are compounded by the near total lack of emergency measures to prevent contagion.
Colorado State University specialist Philip Klotzbach found that, in the satellite era (post-1966), the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season has had the most named storms, the third most named-storm days, the second most hurricanes and fourth most major hurricanes. Eta became the 12th named storm to make landfall in the continental US, compared to the previous record of nine storms in 1916.
As recently as November 1, Typhoon Goni made the strongest cyclonic landfall in recorded history at 195 mph, devastating the Philippines .
Scientific American reported in October that the factors that have contributed to this hurricane season in the Atlantic involved “unusually warm” ocean temperatures as well as low sea level pressure and favorable wind conditions. It indicates that, while research does not indicate that climate change will increase the total number of storms, they will grow in strength.
“Studies suggest that climate change will increase the speed at which hurricanes intensify over the ocean,” the magazine explains. Hurricane Eta intensified at record levels right before making landfall as a strong Category 4 storm in eastern Nicaragua, before becoming a tropical depression as it crossed through eastern Honduras.
The storm wiped out small communities in the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, where 30,000 people were evacuated. The government has acknowledged that two artisanal miners died but no official accounting of the damages has been provided.
Damage in Panama was concentrated in the Chiriquí province bordering Costa Rica. Landslides and flooding killed at least 17 people and left 68 missing, according to the Security Ministry.
In Costa Rica, a couple died after their home was swept away by a landslide. Authorities have reported that 1,872 people were sent to shelters after their homes were destroyed or placed at risk, while the destruction of roads and public infrastructure left 19 towns temporarily isolated and tens of thousands without power or running water.
Honduras saw the most widespread damage, including at least 26 dead and six missing reported so far. Large portions of the city of San Pedro Sula, the industrial center of the country with more than 1 million inhabitants, were submerged under a meter of water. Authorities have given estimates that across Honduras hundreds of thousands of homes and 1.7 million people were affected, with many losing all their belongings.
Thousands in surrounding communities in the Sula Valley were cut off, with residents waiting days to be rescued from rooftops. The news program “Hoy Mismo” received a call from a woman requesting a helicopter or boat. “We haven’t eaten for two days and there are about 60 of us here with children,” she exclaimed.
More than 16,000 people had been rescued by Sunday in the Sula Valley, where operations continued involving 50,000 rescue personnel and helicopters sent from the United States and even Guatemala, which was also severely affected.
Road destroyed in Sabanilla, Chiapas (Credit: Protección Civil Chiapas)
Some of the most affected communities are those surrounding the Chiquita banana plantations in La Lima, with survivors describing a continuing nightmare. Speaking to La Prensa, a man said 300 people crammed into his second floor to escape the flooding, living “moments of desperation.” Another says: “We were trapped, have no food or water for the children. Some desperate mothers are using water from the river itself to prepare baby bottles. We are in a state of calamity, surviving the flood, but now families are hungry and in need of water, clothes and mattresses.”
In Guatemala, the entire indigenous village of Quejá, with approximately 150 households, was buried under a landslide. The state disaster agency Conred announced that five bodies have been recovered from Quejá and 108 are missing, but family members estimate at least 200 missing.
A specialized group of Mexican rescuers known as “The Moles” arrived at Quejá to help find survivors. Meanwhile, hard-hit residents of Cobán protested against Guatemala’s right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei when he visited, indicating the anger the catastrophe has stirred against the corrupt ruling elite.
The authorities report that in other areas of the country, 22 others have been found dead, more than 150,000 people have been directly affected, and 14,000 were evacuated and sheltered.
Widespread flooding in the northeast of Guatemala has destroyed vast swaths of crops, public infrastructure and homes. Over 500 acres of rice plantations in the eastern Polochic Valley of Guatemala were damaged, while residents in Bilwi, where flooding took entire homes, are already re-building in the same places.
In the southern Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas, thousands of homes were destroyed by flooding, forcing at least 80,000 people into shelters and leaving at least 27 dead and four missing. Five people drowned in Tabasco, while 22 others died in Chiapas, including many drowned by flash flooding. Several towns remain isolated.
About 1,700 people were sheltered in El Salvador, where one fisherman was killed. While not reporting any casualties, authorities in Belize, Jamaica and Cuba described major flooding of residential and agricultural areas, the destruction of roads and large evacuations.
While heavy rainfall continued in Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahamas, Eta reached southern Florida on Sunday night leading to some flooding in Miami. The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecasts that the storm will turn to the Florida Gulf Coast as it reaches hurricane conditions on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The NHC has warned that a new tropical system in the Caribbean has a 50 percent chance of becoming tropical cyclone Theta before reaching Nicaragua on Sunday.
With Donald Trump refusing to acknowledge his electoral defeat, which was declared on Saturday by all the major US media outlets, his political ally in Brazil, the fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, is one of the few world leaders who has yet to take a stand on the outcome of the US elections.
On Saturday night, Bolsonaro made an unscheduled broadcast live on social media, appealing to his supporters to cast their votes in Brazil’s local elections, which will begin next Sunday. Without speaking directly about the United States, he warned: “You are seeing the issues in the world, how politics are in the world.” Making a clear reference to the election of Luis Arce of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in Bolivia, he continued: “several countries [in South America] are being painted red again.”
Former PT President Dilma Rousseff toasts Biden in visit to US in 2015. (Credit: Rodrigo Stuckert Filho/PR)
Brazil’s vice president, Army Reserve Gen. Hamilton Mourao, spoke Monday about Bolsonaro’s silence on the US elections. Boosting Trump’s false accusations of electoral fraud, he said: “I think the President [Bolsonaro] is waiting to the end of that imbroglio there, of the discussion, if false voting happened or not, to give his position.” Mourao added: “And I think it’s obvious that the President, at the right time, will convey the greetings to whoever is elected.”
Unlike Bolsonaro, other national leaders, such as the president of the House of Representatives, Rodrigo Maia, a member of the right-wing Democrats, promptly welcomed Biden’s victory. On behalf of the House of Representatives, Maia declared: “Joe Biden’s victory restores the values of truly liberal democracy.”
Biden’s victory was also celebrated by the country’s main bourgeois newspapers. The conservative O Estado de S. Paulo published an editorial with the headline “Relief,” stating that it doesn’t matter if Biden will fulfill his promises. What matters, for Estadão, is that most Americans have decided “to hand over to a traditional and experienced politician the task of leading the country in this hour of deep crisis” and that “this powerful message will be heard all over the world, but especially in countries ravaged by the savage populism inspired by Donald Trump, like Brazil.”
A similar position was taken by former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), a reliable spokesman for the interests of the Brazilian ruling class. FHC declared: “In two and a half centuries, no American president had sought to delegitimize the electoral process, one of the fundamental foundations of democracy. The present one did it systematically and deliberately. His reelection would therefore represent a grave risk to democracy, and not only in the United States.”
The newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, the most widely read in Brazil, echoed the reactionary racialist politics of the Democratic Party in the United States, declaring the election of Kamala Harris as vice president “historic, in many aspects.” She is the first “black, Indian-American and Asian-American woman...graduated from an elite African-American university...to reach the White House,” it stated in an article entitled “Kamala as vice president proves that 2020 is the year of black American women.”
However, Folha made it clear what is really at stake by stating in an editorial that the choice of Biden and Harris, representatives of “moderation, dialogue and the diligent exercise of politics,” signaled a refusal by the Democratic Party “to fight the ruffian on the right with radicalization on the left” (making a reference to Bernie Sanders).
The Brazilian ruling class is clearly expressing its nervousness about the destabilization of the political system in the United States, the bastion of world imperialism, and its inevitable consequences for the political crisis in Brazil. There is a growing fear of a “radicalization on the left”—i.e., in the working class—in response to the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the deepening of already intolerable levels of social inequality, state repression and attacks on democratic rights.
Absolutely aligned with such positions is the supposed “left” opposition to the Bolsonaro government—the Workers Party (PT) and its pseudo-left petty bourgeois supporters of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL)—which also enthusiastically celebrated Biden’s election.
Former PT president Luís Inácio “Lula” da Silva declared on Twitter: “The world sighs with relief at Biden’s victory. ... I express the hope that he will not only be guided internally, but also in his relations with the world and with Latin America, by the humanist values that characterized his campaign.”
His successor, Dilma Rousseff, also tweeted: “Biden’s victory...represents a breath of fresh air for those in the world who fight against the extreme right, intolerance and hatred. The election of the first black woman, Kamala Harris, for the vice-presidency of the United States is a relevant fact.”
Biden’s campaign never defended “humanist values”; on the contrary, it supported, domestically, the repression against the growing protests and, internationally, an aggressive imperialist policy. Lula seeks to cover up Biden’s political career marked by the prosecution of the reactionary interests of American imperialism in the world, including in Latin America. As vice president under Barack Obama, Biden participated in the orchestration of the coup in Honduras that overthrew elected President Manuel Zelaya and oversaw the introduction of draconian sanctions against Venezuela.
In light of the US election, the pseudo-left PSOL launched a campaign with the motto “Hope will overcome authoritarianism.” It states that Biden’s victory heralds the defeat of Bolsonaro in Brazil through...the election of the party’s city councilors and mayors! This opportunistic position assumes an even more reactionary character taking into account that the PSOL, following the lead of the PT, is seeking to “oppose” Bolsonaro in the local elections by running dozens of candidates drawn from the ranks of the Military Police and the armed forces.
In an article entitled “The King is dead. Death to the king!,” the “Resistance” tendency within the PSOL, which recently broke with the Morenoite Unified Socialist Workers Party (PSTU), has openly defended an alliance with a section of the US imperialist bourgeoisie: “With the electoral dispute over, fortunately with the defeat of imperialism sans phrase, the new stage of the struggle begins.”
It continues, with unadulterated petty-bourgeois cretinism: “If until today the enemies have been by our side (!)—and their seductive perfume (!!!) and discreet charm could be perceived without much difficulty—from tomorrow a very clear line—or rather, black, feminine and, above all, classist line—must be drawn between us.”
That both the PT and the PSOL are celebrating the advent of a right-wing US administration led by Joe Biden, which will implement a policy of savage attacks on workers in the US and throughout the world, unmasks the true class interests of these parties that seek to present themselves as “left-wing” and even “socialist” alternatives.
As significant layers of the Brazilian ruling class are increasingly dissatisfied with the Bolsonaro administration—not because of his brutal policies against the working class, which they find absolutely necessary, but because they fear that his provocations will unleash uncontrollable mass opposition—the PT and the PSOL seek to present themselves as a viable political alternative to defend capitalist rule in Brazil.
"While the so-called Spanish influenza of 1918–19 is frequently invoked as an analogue for COVID-19, the Russian influenza might be a better cultural parallel." Mark Honigsbaum
The English medical historian and journalist Mark Honigsbaum offers an interesting anecdote on the impact of the 1889–90 Russian flu in a recent article on the COVID-19 pandemic published in the Lancet. The Russian flu pandemic of 1889–1890 had killed around one million worldwide. Several waves of the epidemic recurred over the intervening years from 1891 to 1895.
The English feminist and campaigner for women's suffrage, Josephine Butler, wrote in January of 1892 to her son, "I don't think I ever remember being so weak, not even after the malaria fever at Genoa. I am so weak that if I read or write for half an hour, I become so tired and faint that I have to lie down.” (Honigsbaum & Krishnan, 2020)
During the Christmas season of 1891, she was stricken with the Russian influenza and left weak with conjunctivitis and pneumonia for several days. Though her fevers had subsided, she recounted that there had been little improvement in her overall condition three months later.
Hospitals in the early 1890s caring for patients stricken with the Russian Flu
A post-epidemic analysis conducted in 1957 using blood obtained from people still alive from the period noted that they had antibodies to H2N2, which may have originated from the Russian flu. Four decades later, a seroarcheological study then asserted the strain was most likely an H3N8 subtype instead. However, more recent studies led by Belgian biologist Leen Vijgen indicated that the contagion could have been a coronavirus, specifically the HCoV-OC43.
The “Asiatic” or “Russian” flu originated in central Asia, where it smoldered regionally throughout Siberia and northern India for a period of six months from May to October of 1889. Once it landed in St. Petersburg in November 1889, the pandemic accelerated westward, spreading, in a matter of weeks, into Europe, followed by the United States, and, then, the rest of the Americas, Australia, and coastal Africa, completing its circumnavigation of the globe by the fall of 1890.
The Russian Influenza has been characterized as the prototype of the modern era of a pandemic for the rapidity of its spread within an increasingly interconnected world.
In a scientific report published in PNAS in 2010 on the 1889 influenza pandemic, the authors wrote, “At that time, the 19 largest European countries, including Russia, had 202,887 kilometers of railroads, which is more than now. Transatlantic travel by boat took less than six days at that time, instead of less than one day now (which is not a substantial difference, given the time scale of the global spread of the pandemic.)”
Railroad and train in Lviv region (1880s)
In their support of the Russian flu pandemic's coronavirus theory, Vijgen and his team explained that in the second half of the 19th century, cattle herds were being affected by a deadly contagious respiratory disease. They hypothesized that the bovine coronavirus might have been the inciting agent in the sickened animals that underwent a zoonotic transfer into humans from 1870 to 1890 when industrialized nations were engaged in massive culling operations to stem the infections in the livestock industry when handlers could have quickly become infected.
The authors determined through a molecular clock technique, which uses the mutation rate of biomolecules to deduce the time in prehistory when two or more life forms diverged, that a common ancestor of the current Bovine coronavirus and HCoV-OC43 dated back to 1890, circa the Russian flu pandemic.
Additionally, they noted that the pronounced neurological symptoms that distinguished the Russian influenza from other influenza outbreaks speaks to coronavirus as a likely candidate.
Other findings indicated that men and the elderly appeared to be more susceptible to the virus. The reproduction number (R0) was 2.1, with a case fatality rate between 0.1 to 0.28 percent.
Infection symptoms included high fevers, crippling fatigue, and central nervous system disorders.
A Dublin physician named John Moore provided an account from a patient who fell ill on December 20, 1889. The female patient wrote, “Then my face and head got very hot and uncomfortable, and pains began in my arms, shoulders, and legs. All night the pains were very bad, sometimes so sharp across the back of my chest that I could have cried out.”
A report authored by Mark Honigsbaum, titled “The ‘Russian’ influenza in the UK: lessons learned, opportunities missed,” explains that after the first case was identified in December 1889, the virus began to kill thousands of people over several weeks. “The disease had already sickened the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and sparked mass absenteeism in the General Post Office’s Telegraphic Department, the center of communications of the British Empire.”
Perhaps the most famous case was the death of Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor, which changed the line of succession. Russia’s czar, the king of Belgium, and Germany’s emperor had taken ill but survived their infection.
Honigsbaum notes that the excess deaths from respiratory failure and the pattern of deaths impacting the middle age ranges “should have aided the public health response, but British health authorities preferred to advocate cautious preventive measures that did little to alleviate the pandemic’s impact.” The medical community was consumed by a now obsolete miasmatic theory that held the disease was caused by a noxious form of bad air.
The pandemic returned a year later, killing twice as many people. From 1890 until 1892, it has been estimated that 110,000 died from the infection in England.
In a study mapping the deaths from influenza in Paris in 1889 and 1890, the authors highlighted excerpts from a French newspaper La Lanterne that reported a single-day high of 450 burials on December 31, 1890 as comparable to the present situation in France in its second COVID-19 surge. The high daily deaths in Paris persisted throughout January 1891. (Kimmerly, Mehfoud, & Marin, 2014)
Russian Flu in Paris
In the context of the present pandemic, specifically considering thepost-COVID-19 viral syndrome known better as Long-COVID, Ms. Butler’s words quoted at the beginning strike a dreadful chord.
An untold number of people who have recovered from their infection continue their struggles facing chronic ailments with no end in sight and no help from an incredulous health community that has often attributed their complaints to “being in their heads.” (yerramilli, 2020) The post-viral syndrome associated with COVID-19 has only recently been gaining coverage in the media.
In a study that is still to be peer-reviewed, out of 4,182 cases of COVID, 558 (13.3 percent) patients noted symptoms beyond four weeks, 189 (4.5 percent) beyond eight weeks, and 95 (2.3 percent) beyond 12 weeks. These symptoms include extreme fatigue, persistent headaches, shortness of breath, and the loss of smell, affecting disproportionately females, older people, and those of higher weight.
In an online survey of self-reported symptoms from patients from Renown Health System in Reno, Nevada, out of 233 COVID-19 positive cases, 43.4 percent had symptoms lasting more than 30 days, and 24.1 percent had at least one symptom 90 days out from their positive results. These symptoms include chest pain, heart palpitations and tachycardia, poor concentration, shortness of breath, memory loss, confusion, headaches, and dizziness. Those with shortness of breath are at higher risk of developing chronic symptoms.
A European study from the Netherlands found that one-third of 1,837 non-hospitalized patients were dependent on caregivers.
Though these patients do not require intensive medical care, those who have joined social media support groups recount how debilitated their condition has made them, complaining of “rolling waves of symptoms” and “brain fog.” As one New Jersey-based administrator for the COVID-19 Slack group poignantly stated, “We’re not dead, but we’re not living.”
One of the most insidious aspects of the chronic effect of COVID-19 infection is the incapacitating exhaustion and ill-feeling. Thousands of those affected report struggling with just getting out of bed, let alone working for more than a few minutes at one time. A small study from Italy of 143 people discharged from a Rome hospital indicated that 53 percent had fatigue, and 43 percent had shortness of breath two months later. (Carfi, Bernabei, & Landi, 2020)
As with the Russian influenza, post-viral syndromes have been frequently reported with viral illnesses. Even with the Spanish flu of 1918, which was caused by the H1N1 influenza virus and killed an estimated 24.7 million to 50 million people, journals kept by treating physicians noted that many of those who survived never fully recovered.
After the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) pandemic of 2003 that infected over 8,000 individuals and killed close to 800, many of those who survived were followed to assess their health outcomes. In a study of survivors one year out from their infection, 18 percent continued to have decreased walking tolerance while 17 percent had still not returned to work. More than 60 percent had persistent fatigue. Forty-three percent were being evaluated for mental health disorders. Sleep disturbances were common. Caregivers of many of those severely impacted noted a considerable decline in their patients' cognitive capacities. (Tansey & Herridge, 2007)
In a pooled analysis of 28 studies in patients with documented SARS and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) infections, six months after discharge, 27 percent had impaired lung functions and reduced exercise tolerance. More than one-third of these patients suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression compounded by anxiety.
During the early phase of the pandemic, in a letter penned in June to the editors of the journal Medical Hypotheses, the lead author Dr. Raymond Perrin, a neuroscientist and specialist in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome from the School of Medicine and Manchester Academic Health Sciences, warned about the potential for a post-viral syndrome that could manifest in patients recovering from a COVID-19 infection, similar to that in SARS patients.
“After the acute SARS episode some patients, many of whom were healthcare workers, went on to develop a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME)-like illness which nearly 20 months on prevented them returning to work. We propose that once an acute COVID-19 infection has been overcome, a subgroup of remitted patients are likely to experience a long-term adverse effect resembling CFS/ME symptomology such as persistent fatigue, diffuse myalgia, depressive symptoms, and non-restorative sleep.”
CFS/ME is a complex, fatiguing, long-term medical condition distinguished by lengthy exacerbations after mental or physical activity, significantly diminished capacity to accomplish tasks that had been routine previous to their illness, and unrefreshing sleep or insomnia. The proposed mechanism is a byproduct of the immune response to the infection that traverses the blood-brain barrier via the olfactory pathway into the hypothalamus.
The “pro-inflammatory cytokines” that pass through the blood-brain barriers cause inflammation in the central nervous system leading to “autonomic dysfunction,” which manifest “acutely in high fevers and in the long term to dysregulation of the sleep/wake cycle, cognitive dysfunction and profound unremitting anergia (lack of energy).”
There have been over 50 million cases of COVID-19, and by all accounts, the present surge is a massive tsunami of cases that have placed every health system in the Northern Hemisphere on notice. Millions are expected to die. However, millions more, especially within the working class who have lost their jobs, will face an uncertain future of disabling conditions and chronic unemployment unless immediate efforts are made to bring the pandemic under control. Early intervention and supportive care will be necessary to mitigate the long-term consequences for millions. Medical bills and the cost of treatments must be waived.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Tricia Sales, a 41-year-old who fell ill with COVID-19 in March and is experiencing unremitting symptoms of nausea, dizziness, and numbness in her hands and feet, owes more than $100,000 in medical expenses. Many people are forgoing treatment due to concerns over high deductibles, attempting to live on their savings as they are still too ill to return to work.
The City University of New York Public School of Health estimated that if 20 percent of the US population contracts COVID-19, one-year post-hospitalization costs would be more than $50 billion, without considering the long-term care post-acute recovery. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, many insurance companies are raising 2021 premiums to account for expected COVID-19 costs.
Though a paramount concern, death is not the only indicator of importance concerning the health crisis caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Experience with post-viral syndromes has a long history in medical journals. The literature on SARS and MERS should have informed public health policies and provided guidance early during the pandemic in the post-treatment management and care of these patients.
It will be critical to developing rehabilitation programs in this context to address the multidimensional aspect of this disease. It has been predicted that 45 percent of discharged patients will require health and social care, while another 4 percent may need continued inpatient treatment. The health impact on all national health systems will be considerable.
States across the US are facing massive budget shortfalls as a result of the pandemic-induced collapse in tax revenue. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), K-12 districts in the US face a combined $1 trillion shortfall by the end of 2021. There have already been huge budget cuts in nearly every state, resulting in the elimination of at least 354,000 K-12 and 337,000 higher education jobs since last spring. The Wall Street Journal, noting that overall state budget shortfalls have already hit $434 billion, predicted that the shredding of education and social programs will “fuel social unrest.”
These gargantuan sums are a fraction of the $6 trillion handed over to Wall Street through the CARES Act, which was passed at the end of March in a near-unanimous vote by Republicans and Democrats in Congress, including Bernie Sanders. The CARES Act allocated merely $13.5 billion for schools, and both big business parties have made it clear that no federal rescue for education is being planned.
A student e-learning, wearing a mask. (Stock Image licensed via Envato)
While Joe Biden has falsely claimed that his administration will serve the interests of educators, one need only look to the massive austerity implemented while he was vice president under Obama to see what is in store in the coming period. Following the 2008-2009 financial collapse, the Obama administration bailed out the banks and escalated the attack on public education as part of an overall assault on the working class. By 2012, at least 350,000 teachers had lost their jobs and countless schools throughout the country were closed.
During the pandemic, districts have been forced to use rainy day funds to get by, scrambling to provide students with Chromebooks to accommodate distance learning. Education Dive reports that many districts have purchased low quality technology, writing, “where they’re able to cut corners, they cut corners. Some are opting for free online tools without the best track records or purchasing refurbished devices with substandard specs. … Those are more likely to break down, they’re more likely to experience trouble in an online learning environment so they might, for instance, have not enough memory.”
Other districts are finding it difficult to even get devices at all, including Denver Public Schools, which has 94,000 students. Trade war measures imposed by the Trump administration meant that 12,500 Lenovo devices manufactured by China and destined for Denver schools were seized at the border.
A Denver schools spokesperson noted in late summer, “We anticipate thousands of DPS students, including a large portion of our youngest students, will be forced to start the school year remotely, without access to technology, if we are unable to secure devices. This will put our most vulnerable further behind.” The district has been reduced to scouring warehouses and offices for computers and imploring alumni to mail in extra devices.
Moreover, significant declines in attendance will exacerbate the fiscal crisis in at least 20 states, as school funding in the US is largely predicated on enrollment. For example, Wisconsin has reported that student counts have fallen by 3 percent, the largest drop in decades, resulting in a funding loss of more than $23 million. These cuts also disproportionately affect poorer districts, which receive less revenue from local property taxes.
Inequality in online learning
Special education students, who under federal mandates are legally entitled to receive “free and appropriate education,” have faced particular difficulty with online learning. Approximately 7 million special needs students qualify for an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that is tailored towards their learning needs. The pandemic has disrupted access to IEPs and there has been no significant effort on the part of the federal or state governments to aid in the transition to online learning or to provide the necessary safety equipment and medical personnel to ensure a safe learning environment for students who are incapable of learning online due to a disability.
Parents of special needs children, many of whom live in poverty, have had to set aside everything in order to assist their children in learning, since education specialists are unable to provide adequate services remotely. The dire conditions facing special needs students and their families has cynically been used as a pretext for sending some of the most medically vulnerable of society back to school in the middle of a pandemic.
The widespread switch to online learning has also exposed the huge disparity in internet access in the US and internationally. In 2019, only 56 percent of adults making less than $30,000 and 72 percent of those making between $30,000 and $50,000 had broadband internet at home. This impacts many students’ ability to access online learning, forcing large numbers to rely on smartphones alone. Seventeen percent of the US population is dependent on their phone for internet service and smartphones can have limited or even no access to districts’ online schooling applications.
Even when students have internet, oftentimes the service is inadequate for schoolwork. A 2020 FCC report noted the wide disparities between urban and rural access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps broadband, which is considered adequate for electronic learning.
These disparities are far worse on a global level, with UNICEF reporting that 463 million children have been unable to access remote learning during the pandemic. “The sheer number of children whose education was completely disrupted for months on end is a global education emergency,” said UNICEF director Henrietta Fore, adding, “The repercussions could be felt in economies and societies for decades to come.”
In East, West, Central, and South Africa, almost half of all children are unable to access remote learning. In North Africa and the Middle East, 40 percent of students are unable to access remote learning, in South Asia 38 percent of students, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia 34 percent of students.
Speculators exploit the crisis
The financial oligarchy has massively increased their investment in the technology sector during the pandemic, while reaping the unprecedented growth in stock valuation. The wealth of America’s billionaires rose to $3.88 trillion as of October 13, a jump of $931 billion from March, with tech billionaires Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison amassing unfathomable wealth.
The sales of education technology has been a key component of the stock market climb. “There are tremendous opportunities to invest into EdTech, with strong growth in both venture capital and listed equity,” a senior fund manager at Credit Suisse Asset Management recently stated. He added, “The Coronavirus pandemic will accelerate investment, with many EdTech companies bringing forward investments into new functionalities.”
Like vultures picking apart a dying animal, the financial oligarchs are enriching themselves off of the crisis of education they created through years of bipartisan defunding. Both political parties are responsible for the assault on the fundamental right to high-quality education for all. For their part, the teachers unions have provided support to the politicians wielding the axe, while suppressing numerous strikes and protests of educators.
The class divide in education has widened to an abyss during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the fight for the universal right to free, high quality education, the first step forward for educators, parents and students is the formation of independent, rank-and-file committees. These committees must be completely independent of the Democrats, Republicans and unions, and fight to establish the political independence of the working class.
Teachers, education workers and students must advance a genuine socialist program in defense of public education. This entails seizing the massive bailout given to the financial oligarchy, nationalizing the multi-trillion-dollar tech corporations and converting them into public utilities, providing high-quality computer equipment and free broadband to all students, securing full funding for all levels of education, abolishing student debt, assuring mental health supports for students, and providing full financial support to parents and caregivers who must stay at home while schools are closed.
The number of reported new coronavirus infections in Germany reached a record level on Saturday with 23,399 cases, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). The previous record of the day before was exceeded again by about 2,000 cases. The number of fatalities rose by 130 and now stands at 11,226.
The situation in hospitals, and especially in intensive care units, is becoming more dramatic day by day. As of Saturday, 2,839 patients were receiving intensive medical care. Exactly one month earlier, the figure had been 470. According to the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care (DIVI) register, the number of patients requiring ventilation rose from 233 to 1,534 during the same period.
People are ordered to wear mandatory face masks due to the coronavirus pandemic at a shopping street in Cologne, Germany, October 22, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Martin Meissner]
Doctors assume that intensive care bed capacity will be exhausted by the beginning of next month, at the latest. A concrete forecast is difficult to make, as many beds are reported as available, but there are no staff available to manage them. On average, five nurses are needed per intensive care bed.
The German Foundation for Patient Protection has expressed doubts that the correct number of available beds is being reported by hospitals. It is feared that hospitals report an appreciable number of beds as available, for which no nursing staff are available, reported Tagesschau.
A total of 642,488 infections have now been registered in Germany. At the end of September, Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) had warned that there could be 19,200 new infections per day by Christmas. This figure was already exceeded in October. Most recently, Merkel had to warn of a collapse of intensive care bed provision in Germany given the latest infection figures.
Laboratories are now increasingly overloaded with test evaluations. The RKI had reported a backlog of around 99,000 samples in 69 laboratories by November 1; two weeks earlier, it was around 21,000 in 52 laboratories. According to the RKI, an increasing number of laboratories reported they had reached the limits of their capacity in recent weeks.
This development was predictable and avoidable. All scientific forecasts and the experiences in other countries pointed to it. However, the federal and state governments made a conscious decision not to take effective measures. They did not impose a necessary lockdown, but only highly inconsistent and insufficient contact restrictions. Schools and daycare centres remain open so that production can continue in the factories.
In practice, this equates to the inhuman policy of “herd immunity,” which gives free rein to the virus in the hope that the population will eventually become immune. In Sweden, where herd immunity was official government policy, it led to a mortality rate nine times higher than in neighbouring Finland. Nevertheless, this policy has been adopted by Germany’s grand coalition of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats (SPD) and all European governments.
The infection figures show how ineffective the current mild restrictions are. Despite the lockdown in Germany, a clear reversal of the trend is not yet in sight, as the RKI also noted in its report on Thursday. A further increase in community transmissions has been observed; the spread of the disease is diffuse, and the infection chains cannot be traced.
The situation is particularly tense in the capital. For the first time, Berlin is registering more than 15,000 active coronavirus cases. There were 697 new infections on Saturday alone, with two more deaths being added. Health Senator (State Minister) Dilek Kalayci (SPD), who is responsible for the disastrous pandemic policy of the Berlin Senate (State Legislature), is currently in quarantine.
To distract from his policies, Berlin’s governing mayor Michael Müller (SPD) called for a “month of personal responsibility.” He aims to blame the population for the rising number of infections, an effort which received the support of the Greens.
The Left Party even attacks the inadequate measures implemented by the Senate and speaks out against any restrictions being placed on the ability of big business to ensure the flow of profits. Last month, Left Party chairwoman in Berlin Katina Schubert openly opposed placing further restrictions on contacts. “Berlin must look at what is important for Berlin, just as Thuringia, for example, takes it upon itself to do. We don’t have to go along with everything,” Schubert told the media.
Schubert thus made clear that the positions of Thuringia’s State Premier Bodo Ramelow are widespread in the Left Party. Ramelow publicly praised the “Swedish model” and advocates herd immunity, i.e., the murderous infection of the population with the coronavirus.
In practice, Berlin’s SPD-Left Party-Green Senate advocates this policy of contagion as well as the grand coalition at federal level. The Senate Administration for Education published new figures on Friday on the number of infections in Berlin schools. Since last week, the number of cases has almost doubled, as the Berliner Zeitung reported. The number rose from 408 to 744 students and from 157 to 221 school staff members. Above all, the number of closed learning groups has reached an absolute peak of 326, the paper reports. At the end of October, it was 22 groups. In vocational schools, 207 students and 15 teachers tested positive.
The districts of Neukölln and Tempelhof-Schöneberg have each recorded 105 pupils proven to be infected. The COVID-19 infections are similarly high in Mitte, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Reinickendorf. More and more students, parents and teachers are calling for regular operations in schools and learning establishments to be stopped, as there is no longer any protection against infection.
In doing so, they face all the parties in the Senate and the trade unions, which, with their usual ignorance and unscrupulousness, want to enforce regular classes. Only now, after the infection figures have exploded, is the GEW education union quietly demanding that some lessons be held online.
Even this proposal goes too far for the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party. A spokesperson for the education administration declared that the current situation in schools was by no means such that personal attendance at classes should be suspended. Schools were not hotspots, he said.
It is not only the obvious statistics from Berlin that prove this statement wrong, studies clearly show that children and adolescents are “key players” in spreading the virus and are “very efficient transmitters.” Stopping regular lessons at schools and closing daycare centres would be an effective way to stem the spread of the virus.
As throughout Germany, Berlin’s health authorities are completely overwhelmed by the situation. According to Public Health Officer Patrick Larscheid from the Berlin-Reinickendorf health department, many coronavirus infections ultimately remain undetected. “We are already seeing quite a lot of the iceberg: But I estimate that about four-fifths will remain under the water. That means: For every case we see, we don’t see about four cases.”
Due to the situation, the health authorities were no longer able to rapidly devote a lot of effort to every single case, Health Senator Kalayci said on Friday. After the establishment parties in Berlin, above all the SPD and Left Party, have enforced stringent cutbacks over the last decades, the public health bodies have broken down and are now unable to deal with the situation.
This is why, following an online conference with district health officials, Kalayci is now insisting those infected and their contacts take more “personal responsibility.” At the same time, she said possible infected contacts that did not belong to a risk group were not promptly being followed up. There, it will “take some time,” she said, knowing full well that this, in turn, can lead to numerous more infections and deaths.
Although residents of Puerto Rico are denied the right to vote for the US president and have no voting representatives in the US Congress, elections took place in the US territory last Tuesday for governor as well as legislative and and mayoral posts, along with ballot initiatives. The results, which reveal a sharp decline in votes for the two main parties and an increase in third-party votes, reflect the growing distrust and contempt Puerto Ricans rightly have toward the entire political establishment.
Officials count early votes at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum where social distancing is possible amid the COVID-19 pandemic, during general elections in San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 3, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Carlos Giusti]
Pedro Pierluisi of the New Progressive Party (PNP) won the election with less than 33 percent of the vote, beating Carlos Delgado of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), who received nearly 32 percent, by barely 17,000 votes.
Voter turnout was very low for the island, with only 51 percent of the population participating. Significantly, for the first time since the establishment of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in 1949, neither of the two main bourgeois parties, the PNP and the PPD, received over 40 percent of the vote, and neither will have a majority in the legislature. Third party candidates received, as a whole, over a third of the vote for governor, almost doubling their share from the 2016 election.
Puerto Rico also voted on the issue of statehood, with 52 percent voting in favor, and nearly 48 percent voting against. The vote has been cast multiple times in the past and is binding neither on the island’s nor the US government. However Puerto Ricans vote, the decision as to whether Puerto Rico is admitted as a state rests with the US Congress, which has shown no inclination to pursue the matter. The vote therefore is essentially meaningless. The issue of whether Puerto Rico should remain a Commonwealth (PDD) or become the 51st state (PNP)—and in previous referendums whether it should seek national independence—has long served as a means of diverting intense class and social conflicts into safe political channels.
The new governor, Pedro Pierluisi, was involved in the corruption scandal that ignited mass protests in 2019, in which one-third of the island’s population took to the streets and overthrew Governor Ricardo Rosselló, also a member of the PNP.
Pierluisi was Puerto Rico’s non-voting member of the US Congress between 2009 and 2017. His brother-in-law was the chairman of the Financial Oversight Management Board (FOMB), popularly known as the junta, which oversees the island’s economy in the interests of Wall Street creditors. During his eight years in Washington, his wife ran a firm providing advice to vulture funds on how best to loot the island’s economy, and the couple increased their personal wealth 27-fold.
Before 2009, Pierluisi had worked 11 years for the law firm O’Neill & Borges LLC, whose top client became the FOMB. Pierluisi then returned to the firm to work as the junta’s top legal advisor.
In July 2019, private messages exchanged between Rossello, Pierluisi, and other officials were made public, exposing discussions of hiding emergency supplies, attempting to cover up the negligence of local politicians, and jokes about shutting down public utilities, dead Hurricane Maria victims and even killing political opponents. Pierluisi, who was briefly installed as governor after Rosselló stepped down, was himself ousted only five days later in the face of continuing mass protests, after which current Governor Wanda Vázquez came to power.
Pierluisi is widely despised by Puerto Rican workers and youth, and the election results do not reflect popular support. Rather, the vast majority of people either did not vote at all or voted against him, including for third-party candidates, who themselves benefited from the radicalization of workers and youth and aimed to keep the population tied to the ruling establishment.
Puerto Rico has been engulfed in a series of political, economic and social crises which have left the island in shambles, most recently intensified by the coronavirus pandemic and natural disasters.
Earlier this year, the island faced a string of earthquakes which damaged an already crumbling infrastructure, including schools and homes. In the face of the negligence and indifference of the Puerto Rican government, hundreds of workers from the northern region of the island, which was less impacted by the earthquakes, took it upon themselves to go to the south of the island with emergency aid for residents, bringing water, food and hygienic supplies. There has been no assistance for workers who have lost their homes, and many schools throughout the island are still closed.
Puerto Rico’s elections took place amid record-breaking daily reported cases of COVID-19. The pandemic has been allowed to spread by the malign neglect of the Puerto Rican government. Wanda Vázquez Garced, the outgoing governor of Puerto Rico, began reopening the economy in September.
Puerto Rico hit an all time high for daily recorded cases in the last two months, reporting over 1,000 new cases several days a week, with a current average of 772 cases a day. There are over 72,000 cases and nearly 900 deaths on the island as of this writing.
Even before the pandemic, the health care system in Puerto Rico had been decimated by underfunding, which has led doctors, nurses and other health care workers to leave the island over the years, creating the conditions for mass deaths due to COVID-19.
The real issues confronting the working class on the island, such as decaying infrastructure, the health care crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and immense poverty, will not be addressed within the confines of the existing political establishment. The only way out of the crisis is through the independent mobilization of the Puerto Rican working class against the capitalist system, uniting with workers on the mainland and internationally in the struggle for socialism.
