Sri Lankan government and opposition greet US president-elect Joe Biden

K. Ratnayake

President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his brother Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse this week led the congratulatory messages from Sri Lanka to US president-elect Joe Biden. The parliamentary opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) joined the chorus, issuing their own greetings.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapakse, attends an event to mark the anniversary of country’s independence from British colonial rule [Credit: AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena]

In a Twitter message, President Rajapakse greeted Biden’s “historic victory” and said he hoped to work “closely” in “strengthening the bilateral relations between our two countries.” Rajapakse expected an “even more robust, mutually rewarding partnership” under Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris.

Prime Minister Rajapakse remembered 72 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries and added that he looked forward to working with Biden and Harris “to further enhance Sri Lanka-USA relations.”

Members of the ruling elite are particularly concerned about how the political changes in Washington could affect them, while they are seeking close relations with this major imperialist power. These anxieties have significantly heightened in the past decade as the geopolitical tensions in the Asia-Pacific region have mounted, with the US and India confronting China.

The battle between Washington, New Delhi and Beijing has increased the pressure on governments in Sri Lanka, which is strategically located astride vital sea lanes in the Indian Ocean. Washington wants Sri Lanka to line up with its strategic and military preparations against China.

Just a week before the US presidential election, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Sri Lanka and met with President Rajapakse and Foreign Affairs Minister Dinesh Gunawardena. Pompeo’s visit was part of a tour of the region to strengthen the US position against China.

In Colombo, Pompeo demanded that Sri Lanka directly support the US against China. He said: “[A] strong, sovereign Sri Lanka is a powerful and strategic partner for the United States.” The country could be a “beacon for a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

US governments are hostile to the cash-strapped Colombo regime increasingly leaning on financial assistance from China in the wake of the economic collapse triggered by the global pandemic. Pompeo thuggishly accused China of “bad deals, violations of sovereignty and lawlessness on land and sea.” He denounced the Chinese Communist Party as a “predator,” saying that the US had come to Sri Lanka as a “friend and a partner.”

The previous Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president, pursued a “pivot to Asia” policy designed to diplomatically isolate and militarily encircle China. It opposed the then government of President Mahinda Rajapakse for its relations with Beijing in seeking financial aid. The US supported his regime’s war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which killed tens of thousands Tamil civilians in the final weeks of the conflict that ended in May 2009.

Washington then hypocritically used the human rights violations to pressure Mahinda Rajapakse’s government to distance itself from Beijing. Finally, the Obama White House orchestrated a regime-change operation, with New Delhi’s backing, to oust Rajapakse in the 2015 presidential election and replace him with the Maithripala Sirisena.

President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who came to power last November, has continued the military relations with the US that were built up by Sirisena and Prime Minster Ranil Wickremesinghe after 2015.

The Sunday Times has reported that Rajapakse entered into a deal with Pompeo to bolster these relations with Washington. By sending his greetings to Biden, Rajapakse is demonstrating his loyalty to the US.

In his greetings, opposition leader Premadasa showered praise on Biden for standing “with the American people to uphold the values of democracy and justice,” saying, “your platform provided the world with an example of progressive democracy, pluralist patriotism and social equity.” Premadasa claimed that his party, the Samagi Jana Balavegaya, upheld those ideals.

In reality, Premadasa backed the 2015 US regime-change in Colombo. Until recently he was a leader of the pro-US United National Party (UNP) government, enforcing its repressive rule and the three decades of bloody war against the LTTE.

Notwithstanding all the lavish tributes, Biden is a reactionary representative of US imperialism who will ruthlessly pursue its interests if and when he takes office.

R. Sambandan, leader of the TNA, another servile pro-Washington party, was equally keen to hail Biden and Harris. He told the Veerakesari on November 9 that: “Biden seems to be concerned over several issues, including justice, equality, fundamental rights, human rights and progressive [concerns].” Referring to Harris’s Indian origin, Sambandan said: “She is fighter for justice and voiceless people,” and said he hoped to “meet them in the future.”

The TNA leadership is issuing this sort praise in the hope of advancing its own interests. It supported the bogus US human rights campaign after the civil war and fully aligned with Washington’s 2015 intervention in Sri Lanka. In aligning with US strategic interests, it is seeking support for its request for power-sharing arrangements in Sri Lanka’s north and east.

After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, the TNA leadership kept close contact with the US and its diplomats, and supported the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government’s measures to integrate more closely with the US military.

However, a November 9 editorial in the Colombo-based Daily Mirror indicated some nervousness by factions of the Colombo ruling elite that the political changes in Washington will see the US again using the war crimes in Sri Lanka as a means of intervening in the country.

The editorial stated that during the Sri Lankan war, “the US sanctioned arms sales to the country” but “when the War on Terrorism’ led to the successful defeat of the terrorist organisation, the US pursued a vigorous anti-Sri Lanka policy,” and began raising “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

While the US limited some arms sales, Mahinda and Gotabhaya Rajapakse are on record of repeatedly stating that the war against the LTTE could not be won without the logistic and other support from Washington and New Delhi,.

The bloody conflict was not a “War on Terrorism” but a war to suppress the working class, dividing it on anti-Tamil ethnic lines, escalating the vicious communal policies Colombo has pursued for decades. The US has exploited the internationally documented war crimes to demand that Sri Lankan governments support Washington’s strategic maneouvres against China.

While the Sri Lankan ruling class and the military want immunity for their atrocities the Mirror warning “it is difficult to see any change in the US attitude toward Sri Lanka under a Biden presidency.”

Amid these nervous calculations, the Rajapakse regime, in line with its promises to Pompeo, is pledging to maintain close relations with Washington.

Stalinist Podemos minister pledges to keep US military bases in Spain

Alejandro López

Alberto Garzón, consumer affairs minister for the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government and general coordinator of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE)-led United Left, has welcomed Joe Biden’s election as US president. On this basis, he pledged to keep US military bases in Spain.

Last Sunday, in a television interview in La Sexta’s programme El Objetivo, Garzón hailed Biden’s election as “good news.” Donald Trump’s defeat, he said, was a loss for “the far-right of the whole world,” adding: “People committed to freedom have voted en masse for the Democratic candidate who represents a very diverse space, who raises hopes around the world because he is something different from Trump.”

Spain's caretaker Prime Minister Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias speaks after signing an agreement with Spain's caretaker prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in the Spanish parliament in Madrid, Spain, Monday, Dec. 30, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul White)

After promoting Biden—who as vice president of the previous Democratic administration bailed out Wall Street at the expense of the working class, waged war in Iraq and Afghanistan, launched new wars in Libya and Syria, and orchestrated coups and drone murders around the world—Garzón then went on to defend the renewal of Spain’s military agreement with the US.

He endorsed the agreement that regulates the presence of the US military bases of Rota (Cadiz) and Moron de la Frontera (Seville) in the southern region of Andalusia. He used the cynical argument that “from the labor point of view, it creates a large number of jobs and this is the first thing that has to be preserved.”

Garzón was referring to the estimated 500 civilian jobs, and a few thousand more indirect ones, involved in the bases. He did not mention that these two bases played a key role in US-led wars in the past three decades in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria that led to the deaths of millions in the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans.

Garzón’s comments were a calculated signal to Washington. Days after the interview, the Spanish government announced it would grant a one-year extension to a bilateral defence agreement with the United States that expires on May 21, 2021. This would give an incoming Biden administration time to organise new geopolitical guidelines and renegotiate the defence agreement with Spain.

The military bases are an important asset for Madrid in trade and military negotiations with Washington. The PSOE-Podemos government hopes to use US military presence in Spain to request lower US tariffs on Spanish products. Last year, the Trump Administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on Spanish agricultural products such as olive oil, wine and cheese, whose exports to the US total around €800 million.

More importantly, it is a bargaining chip for a greater Spanish presence in South America. Diplomatic sources told El País: “there is some leeway [with the renewal of the agreement] on a few issues, like the sanctions imposed on Spanish entrepreneurs in connection with Title IV of the Helms-Burton Act [and] Latin America policy, particularly with regard to Cuba and Venezuela.”

The bases are of key strategic importance to Washington. In 2011, Washington secured with the previous PSOE-led government an eight-year extension to the Agreement on Defence that allowed the deployment of four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, 1,200 soldiers and 100 civilians. In 2017, two US warships steamed from Morón to the eastern the Mediterranean to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria.

At the end of 2019, the PSOE-Podemos government accepted that more modern US warships would replace these US destroyers. They are to arrive next year. They are part of the Missile Defence System, which forms an essential component of the Pentagon’s plans for waging offensive nuclear war against Russia and China: this system would aim to shoot down whatever missiles Russia and China fired back at the United States or Europe after a US nuclear first strike.

The Washington Post has named Rota as a candidate to house the headquarters of USAFRICOM, the United States Africa Command.

While Garzón was defending Spain’s imperialist interests with the US on television from Madrid, his government counterpart, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias was attending the inauguration of Luis Arce of Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in Bolivia at the behest of Spain’s major corporations and banks.

The Spanish ruling class banked on Iglesias’ “left populist” ties in the region. Travelling with Spanish King Philip VI with a large delegation to welcome the MAS government in Bolivia, Iglesias held closed meetings with candidates to the presidency of Peru and Ecuador, Verónika Mendoza and Andrés Arauz, and Argentine president Alberto Fernández.

While most of the pseudo-left groups orbiting the Podemos-United Left alliance remained silent on Garzon’s comments and the imperialist foreign policy trip of Iglesias, the Morenoite Workers’ Revolutionary Current (CRT) expressed concern at how Podemos is rapidly exposing itself.

Its article published in Izquierda Diario stated: “Garzón’s replies show up to what point IU [United Left] and the PCE are subordinated to the PSOE and to positions on ‘order’ and ‘responsibility of state’ in order to get a seat in the government. IU and the PCE have historically made rhetorical points against military bases and NATO. To be consistent in this central anti-imperialist question (against US and Spanish imperialism) would mean going much further than the ‘politics of gestures’ they have had in recent years. But what happened with Garzón is a qualitative leap. The integration is such that the IU and Podemos ministers have become true defenders of the agenda of Spanish imperialist capitalism.”

It concluded with an appeal to members of the Stalinist PCE machine to “ask themselves how is it possible to talk about ‘communism’ while their leaders, such as Alberto Garzón or [Labour Minister] Yolanda Díaz, are ministers of a neoliberal and imperialist government with the PSOE.”

The pro-imperialist role of Podemos and the PCE flows from their history and anti-Trotskyist programme, and the middle-class interests that they defend. These are state parties that attack workers’ living standards, support wars and coups, attack democratic rights and block working class opposition to the bourgeoisie’s fascistic agenda. The CRT’s appeal to the PCE underscores that the CRT is itself a barely disguised wing of the United Left and of Podemos.

In truth, the Stalinist politics of the PCE and Podemos have for decades been inseparable from their support for Spanish imperialism and, in the last four decades, for the PSOE.

Under the 1953 Madrid Pacts, agreed with the fascist dictator General Francisco Franco, four US military bases were built in Spain. In exchange, the Franco dictatorship received economic and military aid, and de-facto international rehabilitation after years of isolation following the Second World War, when Franco tacitly backed Nazi Germany after having received aid from Hitler in the Spanish Civil War. The Franco regime was integrated into the Western defence system aimed at the Soviet Union, though without formally being accepted into the NATO alliance.

Three years later, in 1956, the PCE called for a “National Reconciliation” with Spanish capitalism’s “modern” sector, based on a perspective of establishing a capitalist parliamentary regime. The PCE called for the fictitious “peaceful coexistence” and “neutrality” between Spanish imperialism and the Soviet Union, while not calling for the end of US military bases.

In 1975, according to recently-declassified CIA documents, PCE leader Santiago Carrillo spoke to a Time magazine correspondent, who was apparently functioning as a US intelligence asset. Carrillo, who was infamous for his implication in Soviet intelligence agents’ murder of revolutionaries in Spain during the Civil War, told him that “Americans can stay as long as the Russians keep troops in Czechoslovakia.”

In 1976, as the PCE suppressed the largest strike wave since the 1930s against the Franco regime, Carrillo said he was against “all foreign bases, both American ones in capitalist countries and Russian ones in socialist countries.” For now, he added, the PCE “would accept the American bases in Spain.”

Washington welcomed Carrillo for an 11-day visit the following year. He spoke at Yale, Harvard and John Hopkins and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The New York Times wrote: “Chatting informally at a dinner Saturday with politicians, businessmen and journalists with connections to the United States, Mr. Carrillo said half‐jokingly that he was going to the United States ‘to sell merchandise’—namely, his novel brand of Communism.”

Since then, the PCE and since 2014 Podemos have aligned themselves ever more closely on NATO wars in the Middle East in Afghanistan and Libya, Spanish weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen, and Spain’s membership in NATO. Former chief of the Armed Forces General Staff General Julio Rodríguez, who led Spanish participation in the 2011 NATO war in Libya that left 30,000 dead, is a leading Podemos member.

Neo-Nazis march in Germany on anniversary of anti-Jewish November Pogroms

Peter Schwarz

Commemorations marking the 82nd anniversary of the November Pogroms were cancelled or prohibited across Germany due to the coronavirus pandemic. By contrast, the right-wing extremist Pegida movement was allowed to hold a rally at Dresden’s Altmarkt with the neo-Nazi Andreas Kalbitz as the main speaker.

On the night of November 9–10, 1938, Nazis across Germany torched synagogues, looted Jewish businesses, murdered hundreds of Jews and sent tens of thousands more to concentration camps. The November Pogroms, which were coordinated at the highest levels of the Nazi regime, marked a new phase in the persecution of the Jews, which culminated in the state-organised murder of 6 million people.

Destroyed Jewish shop in Magdeburg (Federal Archives, picture 146-1970-061-65 / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The Jewish community in Dresden responded with “astonishment and extreme anger” to the right-wing extremist march in the centre of the state capital of Saxony. “It is totally tasteless and ignorant of history that on November 9, a Pegida demonstration is allowed to take place,” argued state rabbi Zsolt Balla. The German Orthodox Rabbi Conference criticised the fact that “right-wing extremist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic sentiments are being chanted openly in the streets” while official commemorations were cancelled due to the pandemic.

Dresden Mayor Hilbert (Free Democrats) justified the authorisation of the right-wing extremist march by saying that neither Germany’s Basic Law nor Saxony’s law on gatherings provided a legal basis to restrict freedom of assembly. But this is a brazen lie.

“Heart not Hate,” a broad alliance of churches, political parties and other organisations, which regularly mobilises against the Pegida marches, recalled the fact that the city authorities possess the powers to take such decisions and have repeatedly banned the alliance’s rallies. For example, a demonstration against Pegida in 2015 involving 6,000 people was “discredited and suppressed by regulations.”

“Heart not Hate” contacted the mayor prior to November 9 with the goal of not permitting any racist events in the city centre, reported spokeswoman Rita Kunert. But a planned meeting with the police and the authorities responsible for events was cancelled without any reason being given. With goodwill and a bit of common sense, it would have been possible to prevent Kalbitz’s symbolically significant appearance on that day, she added.

Thomas Feist (Christian Democrats, CDU), the government of Saxony’s commissioner for the Jewish community, also criticised the city authorities for their unwillingness in the lead-up to the march “to speak with members of the Jewish community about options to prevent it.”

The authorities in Salzwedel, Saxony-Anhalt, and Dannenberg, Lower Saxony, proved that a very different approach is possible. They banned events and justified this on the basis of the need to guard against infection. However, these were not marches by right-wing extremists, but commemorations for the victims of the November Pogroms.

In Salzwedel, a tour of the city’s Stolpersteins, which are cobblestone-sized monuments located around German cities to commemorate Jewish victims of the Holocaust, was banned, despite the fact that the organisers, “Solidarity Action Salzwedel Alliance,” presented a stringent plan to the authorities to reduce the risk of infection. This included a reduced number of participants and a requirement for everyone to wear a mask and observe social distancing. Only a decision by the administrative court in Magdeburg overturned the ban ordered by the local authorities. A candlelit procession to sites associated with Jewish life in Dannenberg was banned due to the pandemic.

Pegida’s march in Dresden on November 9 is the latest in a long line of incidents in which the police, judiciary and governments have closely collaborated to promote the far right. The established parties, the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and neo-Nazis work hand-in-glove to this end. Saxony is a stronghold of this right-wing conspiracy.

Just two days earlier, on November 7, 20,000 people protested in Leipzig against the federal government’s coronavirus restrictions, including hundreds of neo-Nazis from across the country. Although they ignored all public health measures, continued the demonstration after it had been officially suspended and launched violent attacks on protesters and journalists, the police allowed them to run riot. A growing number of videos have appeared online showing how police officers indicated their solidarity with the far-right demonstrators.

Saxony Minister President Michael Kretschmer and Interior Minister Roland Wöller (both CDU), and federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (Christian Social Union, CSU) have since given their full backing to the Leipzig police. “We must stop questioning the police’s tactics in retrospect and from afar without any understanding of details and without the full picture,” said Seehofer. “The police have my full backing.”

It is also no mere coincidence that it was the regional high court in Bautzen that gave the go-ahead for the “lateral thinkers” demonstration in the city centre against the wishes of the Leipzig city authorities, providing the right-wing extremists with a big stage.

The president of the court, Erich Künzler, was praised to the skies two years ago by the AfD. This followed his complaint in the Freie Presse newspaper that refugees whose asylum applications had been rejected by the court were not being deported. This damages the rule of law and undermines the judiciary, he claimed. They increasingly feel “like they are working for the dustbin.”

The AfD’s group in Saxony’s state parliament enthused, “Senior asylum judge adopts the AfD’s line: CDU asylum madness is undermining the rule of law.” The party newspaper, AfD Kompakt, wrote, “It is increasingly clear that the CDU wants to flood Germany with illegal immigrants. The criticism by the judge from Saxony is appropriate.”

The Association of Democratic Jurists and the Republican Lawyers Association (RAV) warned Künzler against engaging in “dangerous incitement on the extreme-right” immediately prior to Saxony’s state election. Dresden-based lawyer Kati Lang, who specialises in immigration law and is a member of the RAV executive, said, “The interview plays directly into the hands of the AfD. The statements are one-sided and an affront to people seeking protection, who trust in the legality of the German courts.”

The close ties between the government, state and right-wing extremists already emerged into the open during the summer of 2018, when leading AfD members and neo-Nazis marched side-by-side through Chemnitz and led a xenophobic mob in attacking immigrants, journalists and left-wing people, as well as a Jewish restaurant.

Kretschmer and Seehofer both backed the far-right march at the time. “There was no mob, no witch-hunt, there was no pogrom in Chemnitz,” claimed Kretschmer in a government statement. Seehofer expressed his understanding that “the population is enraged and angry,” and told the Rheinische Post, “If I were not a government minister, I would have taken to the streets as a citizen.”

Ever since, the intimate ties between the judiciary, police, intelligence agencies, the government, the AfD and neo-Nazis have become ever more obvious. Within the AfD leadership there are several representatives of the security agencies, which are also overrun by right-wing extremist networks. For example, Jens Maier, a judge at the Dresden district court, has been a parliamentary deputy for the AfD since 2017.

Steffen Janich, a police officer in Saxony, is local leader of the AfD in Pirna, and was one of the first to organise a very aggressive demonstration against public health restrictions in April. He was subsequently suspended from duty. He has been nominated for the AfD as a candidate for the federal parliamentary elections in the electoral district of former AfD leader Frauke Petry. The AfD deputy from Bautzen, Karsten Hilse, is also a police officer. When he spoke last week in parliament, he was wearing a “Lateral Thinker” T-shirt.

Prison official Daniel Zabel, who passed an arrest warrant for an asylum seeker suspected of a crime to members of the right-wing extremist milieu and thus triggered the rampage in Chemnitz, is now a parliamentary deputy for the AfD in Saxony’s state parliament. Prior to that, he was handed a suspended sentence.

Andreas Kalbitz (Source: Wikimedia / Professusductus)

Maier, Janich and Zabel are believed to be members of the far-right “Wing” of the AfD, which continues to dominate the party even though it has been officially dissolved. The AfD leader in Brandenburg, Andreas Kalbitz, was one of the “Wing’s” leading spokesmen, together with the leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke. However, Kalbitz was expelled from the AfD after it emerged that he had concealed his membership in a neo-Nazi organisation that was subsequently banned.

This expulsion, however, is purely cosmetic. Last week, Kalbitz pointedly stood directly in front of the stage as his political mentor, Alexander Gaulland, the leader of the AfD’s group in the federal parliament, spoke at an event in Cottbus organised by the right-wing extremist Future Homeland organisation. The rally in Dresden marked Kalbitz’s first public speech since his expulsion.

Gordian Meyer-Plath, who headed the state intelligence agency in Saxony between 2013 and 2020, is active on the far right. He is a member of the thuggish student group Marchia Bonn and was heavily involved as an informant in the building up of the right-wing extremist milieu in Brandenburg, which had close ties to the National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist cell. At the beginning of the year, he was fired by Saxony Interior Minister Roland Wöller, not because he is such a right-winger, but because he refused to delete data gathered on the AfD.

The right-wing extremist rally in Dresden on the anniversary of the November Pogroms underscores just how far advanced is the rightward lurch of the state and political establishment. All of the major parties are responsible for this. The Social Democrats joined Saxony’s state government in 2014, and the Greens followed in 2019. They provide backing to Minister President Kretschmer and political cover for the right-wing conspiracy within the state apparatus. The Left Party also firmly supports the judiciary and police.

By contrast, the right-wing extremists have hardly any support among the population. Only a few hundred participants joined the Pegida rally in Dresden. The right-wing extremists are being deliberately built up from above in order to intimidate and suppress mounting opposition to social inequality, militarism and the deadly reopening of the economy under conditions of the pandemic.

Record breaking surge of the pandemic pushing US health care workers to the edge

Benjamin Mateus

The surge of COVID-19 infections in the United States is mounting as state after state reports new record highs pushing the national health system closer to collapse.

On Friday, the COVID Tracking Project reported more than 69,000 patients in hospitals throughout the nation, a one-week increase of more than 14,000 admissions. This comes as a record high of more than 183,000 new cases of COVID-19 infections were diagnosed throughout the nation. The growth of infections is showing no signs of slowing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has forecasted daily new hospitalizations could reach from 2,000 to 13,000 by the end of November.

As in the deadly wave of infections in the Spring, hospitals and health systems are turning to traveling nurses to supplement the staff that is otherwise infected, in quarantine from exposure, or exhausted from multiple shifts caring for patients with a complex array of health maladies that have been ascribed to severe COVID-19 infections.

Nurses and physicians on a COVID-19 unit in Texas [Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr.]

CEO of Henry Ford Health System, Wright Lassiter, told Crain’s Detroit Business, “The difference between November and April is we have COVID cases all over the country now. When we had the need for field hospitals, there were only a dozen states that were overwhelmed. We could draw from other states for personnel. Now with so many cases, there are not excess critical care nurses or additional personnel to pull from.”

When hospitals become inundated with patients, the strain placed on the entire workforce leads to a growing number of medical errors and a declining standard of care, which have fatal consequences.

Lawanna Rivers, a traveling nurse who was temporarily assigned to work at University Medical Center in El Paso, Texas recounted in a video posted this week on Facebook, “Out of all the COVID assignments I’ve been on, this is the one that’s really left me emotionally scarred. The facility I’m at has surpassed the one I was at in New York. I saw a lot of people die who I felt shouldn’t have died.”

El Paso County presently has more than 31,000 active cases, which means that almost 1 in 30 residents have recently been tested positive. Twenty-seven new deaths yesterday have pushed the cumulative death toll to 778. There are 1,132 hospitalized patients with 317 in the ICU. The county has deployed six mobile morgues that can hold 176 bodies. Additional units will be arriving.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has reinforced the county with an additional 1,400 medical personnel, while the US Department of Defense has offered its medical staff to stem the burgeoning disaster. Dozens of non-COVID patients have been airlifted to other hospitals in Texas and New Mexico to provide much-needed bed space. However, as the COVID-19 surge is beginning to fill these regional hospital systems as well, El Paso may find itself in the difficult position of rationing care.

Utah’s governor has declared a state of emergency as hospitals there are well into their contingency plans. Greg Bell, president of the Utah Hospital Association, reported that its ICU capacity had reached 83 percent state-wide. However, some hospitals are effectively at or above 100 percent as they are attempting to expand capacity.

According to the Associated Press (AP), almost 200 traveling nurses have recently joined Utah nurses in keeping staffing levels up. A nurse from New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Wen-Hui Xiao, told the AP, “I decided to come to Utah because I wanted to pay it forward to the front line workers who left their homes to aid us at our time of need. It was really vital and essential to us, and we are so thankful.”

As hospital systems compete for staffing by paying double or quadruple for a skilled ICU nurse willing to travel, health systems in states like Colorado, which had furloughed nurses in the spring because of cut-back in elective surgeries, are suddenly facing a severe drought in nurses in the face of a dramatic swell in new cases.

States such as North Dakota have turned to implement rules allowed by the CDC for crisis response that helps designated “essential” health care providers continue working despite being infected with coronavirus. Nurses on social media have indicated states like Georgia, Indiana, and Florida have also forced nurses to stay on the job despite testing positive or having symptoms of COVID-19.

Many medical facilities are once again curbing elective surgeries to prepare for the rising tide of COVID-19 patients. Idaho, one of 17 states with a record-high number of hospitalized patients, has halted major surgeries requiring overnight stays and has begun to transfer cases regionally. Dr. Joshua Kern, vice president of medical affairs for St. Luke’s Magic Valley, Jerome and Wood River medical centers, told CNN, “Basically when we get to the point where the hospital is full—based on the staffing capacity that we have available—then we’ll say no to any additional patients. So, that’ll be patients in our own ER that we’ll then have to transfer to Boise via ambulance or helicopter or fixed-wing plane.”

Unlike in the springtime, when only a few hospitals were slammed with a massive influx of patients, the situation has become ubiquitous. Throughout less affected regions, many nurses and physicians feel their turn to face an onslaught is nigh and feel compelled to remain put for their community.

Surges in rural regions are most concerning as limited resources and capacity to treat patients places significant hardship on the staff who frequently are friends and family members. Many of those infected also suffer from an excess of chronic ailments, leading to severe consequences with COVID-19 making care in a limited treatment facility dangerous. However, transfer to regional centers with the closest ICU could be six hours by car complicates transportation.

There has also been a call to bring retired health care workers back to work in situation where possible infection with COVID puts them at significant risk. According to CNN, in Wisconsin, Bellin Health Systems in Green Bay has redeployed and rehired more than 200 people. Assurances are being given that they will not be working in frontline settings, but as infection rates continue to climb, such promises will fall by the wayside.

The health crisis and the ruling class’s complete disregard for health care workers’ safety and well-being are once again fueling a growing tide of outrage and opposition. Over 1500 nurses at Einstein Medical Center and St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia are preparing to strike over being “pushed to the brink by unsafe staffing that seriously undermines patient safety,” according to a release put out by their association.

Nurse practitioners, physicians, and physicians’ assistants at 20 Indigo Urgent Care facilities based out of Takoma, Washington who belong to the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD) are preparing to strike next week, seeking better work and safety conditions.

Dr. Stuart Bussey, president of UAPD, said, “For too long these providers have been subjected to irresponsible and unsafe policies including working 12+ hour shifts, sometimes seeing over 70 patients in one day without breaks. Not only has MultiCare put patients at risk through these assembly-line conditions, but since the COVID-19 outbreak, MultiCare refuses to allow providers to wear N95 masks, even if they purchase their own.”

The esteemed epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm, appointed last week to the Biden coronavirus taskforce, was forced to walk back his advocacy of a paid national lockdown of six weeks duration to get the pandemic under control.

Asked Friday about the possibility of a national lockdown by ABC News, Osterholm deferred, saying he had not discussed his opinions with the incoming administration. In a candid assessment, he put it bluntly, “Nobody’s going to support it [lockdown]. It’s not going to be supported out of the administration. It’s not going to be supported in Congress.”

These simple words contain the entire policy of the Democratic party and their response to the pandemic—nothing will be done that in any way hinders profit making, no matter the cost in lives. However, the shutdown of non-essential business to get the pandemic under control and save lives would receive broad support from the rank-and-file health care workers and the working class.

Tropical Storm Eta causes widespread flooding in southeastern US as record-setting hurricane season continues

J. L’Heureau

After devastating large swathes of Central America and southern Mexico last week, the storm system named Eta, the 28th of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, made two separate landfalls in Florida as a Tropical Storm on Sunday and Thursday. But even as Eta shot through Florida and began to dissipate in the Atlantic on Thursday, another storm system has already formed in roughly the same location as Eta, placing Central America and the Yucatan back in harm’s way.

After making landfall in Nicaragua on November 3 as a Category Four hurricane and causing widespread death and destruction from Panama to Chiapas, Mexico, Eta downgraded into a tropical storm, making its second landfall in Cuba on November 8. Later that night, it made its third landfall in the Florida Keys, marking the first landfall of a named storm in Florida this hurricane season (which officially ends on November 30), and the 12th to make landfall in the continental US so far, a new record.

Map plotting the track and the intensity of the storm, according to the Saffir–Simpson scale [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

A storm advisory affected over 20 million people in south Florida. Heavy rains produced widespread flooding in the area, especially in Miami-Dade and south Broward county. Tens of thousands lost power early Monday morning as the storm moved north. Though only at tropical storm strength, Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said “This is a very big, very serious rainfall event.”

Commenting on how saturated the ground already was due to heavy rain in October, Feltgen added that “We’re looking at the potential for a lot of urban flooding around here.” Robert Molleda, a National Weather Service Meteorologist, said that “Any kind of additional rainfall, even if it looks like a half-inch or an inch, it could make things worse.”

Four days after its third landfall, Eta made its fourth north of Tampa after dwelling in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico in the interim. Though it had already moved into the Atlantic by Thursday afternoon, it produced heavy flooding in the Tampa Bay area. The storm surge alone, almost four feet, was the highest recorded in the area in 29 years.

Dozens had to be rescued from high water in Pinellas County, which has a population of over 950,000. Low grade hurricanes and even tropical storms leave almost 10 percent of Florida’s properties at risk of flooding, according to the Tampa Bay Times. In Pinellas County, this risk is near 30 percent. Diane Kacmarik, a meteorologist at Spectrum Bay News 9, said “Tampa Bay just by geography and population is super vulnerable.”

Over 40,000 customers lost power in Pinellas, the St. Petersburg area, Pasco County, and Tampa, mainly due to high winds. Over 20,000 households and businesses were still in the dark Thursday afternoon.

As of this writing, only one storm-related causality has been documented in Florida, a 65-year-old resident of Manatee County who was electrocuted in his home on Wednesday after stepping in water that had inundated his powered clothes dryer.

As it made its way to the Atlantic, moisture from Eta combined with a cold front passing through the eastern US. This mixture has resulted in widespread heavy rainfall and power outages in Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas. North Carolina in particular has witnessed deadly flash flooding, with many roads and bridges crumbling and being washed away, and over 100 water rescues being conducted, including one at a charter school in Charlotte where 143 people had to be evacuated from flood waters.

So far there are at least seven deaths accounted for in the state. Four have been recorded in Alexander County, two in Iredell County, and one, an 11-year-old found drowned in the small town of Rolesville. Many others are still unaccounted for.

A study published in the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature entitled, “Slower decay of landfalling hurricanes in a warming world,” found that the rate at which hurricanes making landfall in the North Atlantic have decayed over the past 50 years “has slowed, and that the slowdown in the decay over time is in direct proportion to a contemporaneous rise in the sea surface temperature.”

Professor Pinaki Chakraborty, co-author of the study and a professor at the Okinawa Institute for Science and Technology in Japan, told the BBC, “As to the underlying reason, our analysis suggests that the culprit is climate change.”

The study notes that “warmer sea surface temperatures induce a slower decay by increasing the stock of moisture that a hurricane carries as it hits land.” Professor Chakraborty stated that “Unfortunately, our research also suggests that as the climate keeps warming, the decay of hurricanes will keep getting slower, and consequently, regions farther inland will face the wrath of ever stronger storms.”

This finding is important in light of the simultaneous increase in rapid intensification—which is when a storm’s maximum wind speeds increase at a minimum of 35 miles-per-hour in 24 hours—that recent storm systems have been undergoing. Nine storm systems have undergone this process during this season alone, and Eta intensified at twice the defined rate during its early lifespan, “a move never observed so late in the season and only a handful of times at any point in the Atlantic,” according to the Washington Post.

The frequency with which named storms are making landfall is also increasing. As Eta was making its third landfall earlier this week, Tropical Storm Theta, the 29th named storm this season, formed in the Atlantic Ocean, officially making 2020 Atlantic hurricane season the most active on record. And as Eta made its way through Florida, the 30th named storm, Iota, formed in roughly the same location Eta started out in the central Caribbean.

The National Hurricane Center’s afternoon advisory stated that Iota “is expected to strengthen and be a major hurricane when it approaches the coast of Central America,” and that “Flooding and landslides from heavy rainfall could be significant across Central America given recovery efforts underway after Hurricane Eta.”

Dan Kottlowski, hurricane expert at AccuWeather, warned that “I am greatly concerned we may soon have another major disaster on our hands in Central America if this Caribbean tropical system pans out like we suspect.”

Iota would be the 13th hurricane of this season, rivaling only one other year that produced as many Atlantic hurricanes—2005, the year of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Jake Carstens, meteorology graduate research assistant at Florida State University, told CNN that this hurricane season, “Every mile of the US Gulf and Atlantic coast has been under a Tropical Storm or Hurricane Watch or Warning, except for one single county with coastline: Wakulla County, Florida.” That means 99.6 percent of the US coastline from Texas to Maine that has been under a tropical storm and hurricane warning so far this year, according to James Franklin, the former chief of the Hurricane Specialist Unit at the National Hurricane Center.

Since May, which is one month before the hurricane season begins, every month has seen a storm system make landfall in the US. The states that saw landfall include Texas (Hanna in July and Beta in September), Louisiana (Cristobal in June, Laura and Marco in August, and Delta and Zeta in October), Alabama (Sally in September), Florida (Eta in November), North Carolina (Isaias in August), South Carolina (Bertha in May), and New Jersey (Fay in July).

However, as Carstens said, “It’s worth noting that despite Florida seeing a bit less of the action compared to other states like Louisiana, landfall locations don’t fully describe the range and extent of impacts,” citing Isaias, Sally, and Marco as examples. The usage of the Saffir–Simpson scale, which categorizes hurricanes based solely on their wind speed, is increasingly being called into question for this reason.

The United Nations recently released its State of Climate Services 2020, which states that human-induced climate change has increased the number of recorded weather, climate, and water-related disasters throughout the world over the past 50 years. Over 10,000 of these disasters have occurred over this time span, claiming millions of lives and causing trillions of dollars in economic losses. The poorest and least developed nations, such as the small island states, have borne the brunt of the deaths. The study calls for the creation and consistent financial investment in effective early warning systems, stating that the shift in emphasis from forecasting to predicting weather systems’ impact must take place.

Mami Mizutori, special representative of the UN secretary-general for disaster risk reduction, told the BBC that “COVID-19 has made risk everybody’s business,” and that “We need to carry this understanding and momentum into the much bigger fight for our planet against the larger, stronger, more devastating climate emergency.”

Another sobering study published in the Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention further examining the human toll of natural disasters underscores this point. Detailing the correlation between natural disasters and suicide rates in US counties where one major disaster declaration was made between 2003 and 2015, that suicide rates increased by as much as 23 percent following a natural disaster.

“That finding is important, I think, because those could be preventable deaths with better disaster preparedness and response,” Jennifer Horney, founding director of the epidemiology program in the College of Health Sciences at the University of Delaware, told Medicalxpress.com. She continued: “Counties impacted by hurricanes saw the biggest increase in the rate of suicide in the first year, which makes sense because it’s the most widespread type of disaster among those we examined,” however, “these data are probably underestimate the association between disaster exposure and suicide because we know that there are a lot of additional mental health impacts from repetitive loss.”

The impacts natural disasters have on the environment, infrastructure, economic and social life are becoming more uniform the world over. The ruling capitalist class’s criminally indifferent response to all crises perpetuated by the private profit motive, from the COVID-19 pandemic to natural disasters, is increasing the social and psychological misery that’s been leveled on the working class, peasants, and youth for decades. The World Socialist Web Site stated its perspective and the tasks necessary to overcome this situation in its earlier coverage of Hurricane Eta:

These urgent issues can only be solved by the international political mobilization of the working class to expropriate the fortunes of the financial elites and major banks and corporations globally. Trillions of dollars from this social wealth must be used in programs to rebuild Central America, develop clean, safe and efficient energy and transportation systems and abolish all forms of social inequality.

Tropical storms continue to pound the Philippines

Robert Campion

Still reeling from Typhoon Goni, the central Philippines was struck by Typhoon Vamco (known locally as Ulysses) this week. As of Saturday morning, local police count the death toll at 42 with at least 20 missing.

Typhoon Vamco followed a path roughly 100km north of Super Typhoon Goni, passing directly over the most populous regions including the capital, Manila, and producing the worst flooding in years. It made landfall in Patnanungan, Quezon, around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, with sustained maximum winds of 150kph (90mph) and gusts of up to 205kph (127mph), equivalent to a category-2 hurricane.

Likely as a result of the frequency of storms over the past two months—Vamco is the 8th storm to hit since the start of October—flood waters rose quickly, catching many by surprise. A river in Marikina City, one of the most urbanised areas of the Philippines, rose one metre (three feet) in less than three hours. Residents scrambled to their roofs to avoid the rapidly rising floodwaters, which inundated around 40,000 homes in the area.

Flooding caused by Typhoon Goni in Masantol, Pampanga [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

“If the flood continues to rise, then we have nowhere else to go,” one resident George Bolima said in a text exchange with the Filipino Inquirer. Bolima had been forced to move to the second floor of his house with his family after the first had been swallowed up in under an hour.

“We are afraid, the children are afraid. If the flood reaches us, we will have nothing left.”

Marikina City Mayor Marcelino Teodoro announced a state of calamity for the metropolis on Friday, which could only be accessed by water-craft. As well as indicating the urgency for relief efforts, the announcement allows authorities to control prices of basic goods and gives residents the ability to access emergency loans and basic financial services.

Six rubber boats have been deployed by the government for rescue tasks and 250 Coast Guard personnel. All flights were suspended from Ninoy Aquino International Airport Thursday morning.

“It all happened so fast,” Mayor Teodoro said on Friday. “Right now, the rain is getting weaker, but water levels continue to increase in some areas.”

Strong storm surges slammed the 3,194-ton shipping container Peter Ronna against the sea wall at SM Mall of Asia in Bay City, Pasay. Another large vessel, motor tanker M/TRK Bulusan, lost control and drifted to the seaside of Ignacio Street, Navotas City.

The La Mesa dam in Quezon City was breached as of Thursday morning, increasing the danger of flooding along low-lying areas near the Tullahan River.

The water level at Marikina River reached 22 metres at 11 a.m. Thursday, a metre below the height reached under Typhoon Ondoy eleven years ago. Ulysses dumped 153mm in 24 hours, whilst Ondoy unleashed 455mm.

All 47 evacuation centres in the area were filled to capacity with 9,800 people, raising serious concerns over the spread of the coronavirus, with the Philippines the epicentre of the pandemic in South-East Asia.

“People in evacuation centers, of course, cannot follow social distancing measures,” said United Nations humanitarian coordinator Gustavo Gonzalez. “The lack of appropriate water access and sanitation represent also a health risk for an area that is also well known by previous cholera outbreaks.”

The only COVID-19 testing laboratory in the Bicol region, home to over 5.9 million people, was destroyed in the previous storm.

There was a social media backlash to President Rodrigo Duterte’s statement Thursday afternoon, when he said that he wished to “swim” with the victims of the typhoon but that his security aides and doctors prevented him from doing so. Duterte made the remarks after the hashtag #NasaanAngPangulo (Where is the President?) trended on social media.

Over 3.8 million residents were left without power as the storm continued westwards and over 100,000 were evacuated. The storm left the Philippines with winds of 130kph (81mph) and gusts of up to 160kph (99mph).

Typhoon Vamco is the 21st tropical cyclone (TC) to hit the Philippines this year, which usually experiences an average of 20 TCs and is the most cyclone prone country in the world. An estimated 845,000 people were still in need of humanitarian assistance prior to the storm hitting Wednesday according to the United Nations.

PAGASA, the national meteorological agency, announced on Thursday that it is expecting one or two storms to hit in November, and possibly three in December. This year is particularly violent owing to the La Niña weather system, which sends accumulated warmer water into the northwest Pacific Ocean basin.

Numbers of studies have demonstrated the increasing intensity and longevity of tropical cyclones over the decades, owing to rising sea-water temperatures. This has severe implications for the highly-populated, coastal regions of east Asia, as damage caused by its high winds, floods and storm surges increases disproportionately, meaning a 15 percent rise in intensity leads to a 50 percent rise in destructive power.

Typhoon Goni earlier this month was by some metrics the most powerful recorded storm in history. Such indices and more point to the urgent need for international planning and resources devoted to dealing with the needs of the population, which is impossible under the capitalist profit system.

Ulysses is now tracking over the Philippine Sea towards Vietnam as a rapidly intensifying category-4 equivalent typhoon. It is expected to make landfall Sunday in Quang Binh province, a region which has been battered by floods and mudslides in recent months.

US health care workers demand strike action to address understaffing, low pay as pandemic crisis deepens

Alex Johnson

Mass resistance among nurses and health care workers against the criminal policies of hospital conglomerates and governments is erupting across the United States under conditions in which the coronavirus pandemic is spreading uncontrolled in virtually every part of the country.

COVID-19 infections are growing in almost every state, which is leading to a staggering growth in hospitalizations that are threatening to push the nation’s health care infrastructure to a breaking point. The pandemic is now entering into a third major surge, with hospitals in most states reporting more incoming patients with COVID-19 than at any point during the year.

A hospital room [Credit: Pixabay.com]

In Indiana, state officials have reported that health care workers are feeling “exhausted” due to the sheer magnitude of coronavirus patients and are highly at risk of burnout. The state is experiencing an explosive surge in the pandemic’s spread, with the total number of cases increasing by more than 200 percent between September 15 and October 25.

On Monday, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett implemented new coronavirus restrictions in the state, consisting primarily of caps on the number of patrons for restaurants, bars, night clubs and gyms. Health officials on Thursday have ordered schools in Marion County to move to virtual learning by November 30 and through January 18. These limitations will not be sufficient to slow down the spread of the virus and are proven to be ineffective compared to full lockdowns. Public health experts are warning that the flood of new cases could eclipse Indiana’s “first wave” of the coronavirus and push overwhelmed and fatigued frontline hospital workers over the edge.

Indiana is facing its greatest patient load to date, which is being exacerbated by chronic understaffing. According to the state’s health commissioner, the influx of patients has forced hospitals to delay elective surgeries. The Indiana Healthcare Workforce Reserve reported that it is receiving approximately five requests daily from hospitals in desperate need of staffing assistance.

In Flint, Michigan, over 1,000 nurses at the non-profit McLaren Flint Hospital were preparing to go on strike earlier this month after the nurses union and hospital management failed to reach a settlement for their labor contracts for a month. The conditions at the hospital are grim, with nurses demanding that the hospital address the severe shortage of nursing and ancillary staff. A strike was averted after the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union rescinded its strike notice following a tentative agreement reached with the hospital.

The agreement reached between the AFSCME and McLaren bears all the markers of a sell-out contract that will not resolve the critical need for adequate staffing and much-needed equipment. A joint statement from the union and McLaren Flint says negotiators agreed on “better nurse-to-patient ratios, commitments to provide PPE [personal protective equipment], a better compensation package and a seat on hospital committees.” The specific details of the contract have not been released, including how nurse staffing would accommodate rising patient levels, the quality of the PPE that will be doled out or the type of “compensation package” that health care workers will receive.

Michigan is lurching toward a catastrophic health crisis consuming the entire state’s hospital system. Health executives from Beaumont, Henry Ford, Spectrum and health systems in the Upper Peninsula identified multiple hospitals where the positivity rate tripled. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said at a press conference that the state was in “the worst part of this pandemic to date.” She told reporters that the situation facing the state is what medical experts have been “warning about and dreading since the beginning of the pandemic.”

Nurses at St. Mary Medical Center in the Langhorne Borough of Buck County, Pennsylvania, voted overwhelmingly for strike action after a year of negotiating for their first union contract. The union, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP), represents 775 St. Mary nurses, with 85 percent of them voting for strike authorization in late October. The strike is set to occur on November 17.

According to PASNAP, the nurses at St. Mary have been bargaining with hospital management for their first union contract since last October. Nurses and St. Mary have not able to reach an agreement on minimum staffing levels. Nurses at the hospital have been forced to work shifts where only a handful of nurses are tasked with treating upward of 25 patients. The hospital has remained intransigent in its refusal to concede to the demands of nurses. During the last negotiation session with nurses in October, the hospital’s bargaining team reportedly left “abruptly” an hour and 25 minutes early without coming any closer to an agreement.

St. Mary is a part of the Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic hospital system and is one of Trinity’s most profitable hospitals, with total patient revenue reaching more than $1.6 billion in 2014.

Despite the authorization for a strike, nurses should harbor no illusions in PASNAP, which has made concerted efforts to suppress the emergence of a strike while having nurses work without a full contract for over a year. The union was forced to issue a vote for a strike in response to the rank-and-file opposition of nurses.

Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, the PASNAP at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Delaware County reached a deal with Trinity Health System, averting a planned walkout by 260 nurses to protest unsafe staffing and improved wages. The new contract does little to nothing to ensure safer working conditions or guarantee a long-term pay increase. The union said Thursday that the new contract was designed to increase the number of nurses, but the precise number of additional staff still remains unclear. Moreover, the union agreed to a meager 3 percent annual wage increase for the first three years of the contract, which will barely keep pace with inflation levels.

The state is fast turning into a major hot spot for the spread of the COVID-19 virus. On Thursday, the state recorded 5,488 new confirmed cases within 24 hours, a new daily record. In opposition to warnings from infectious disease experts, Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said in a virtual call with the media Thursday that there are no current plans for a statewide shutdown despite the staggering rise in infections.

Pennsylvania is emerging as a major epicenter for health care worker opposition. In addition to St. Mary, more than 1,500 nurses represented by PASNAP at Einstein Medical Center and St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia are expected to strike in the coming weeks due to the insufferable staffing levels at both hospitals. In the union’s latest press release on November 5, nurses are seeking strike action because they feel “pushed to the brink by unsafe staffing that seriously undermines patient safety.”

An additional 1,000 nurses could potentially go on strike if the two hospitals fail to reach an agreement. Frontline nurses at four Philadelphia-area hospitals have taken steps toward a strike to protect their patients and themselves from the surge of COVID-19 infections.

One registered nurse at St. Christopher’s told CNN that staffing was the “number one issue.” In a scathing denunciation of the for-profit health care system, the nurse said: “We’re in an era of health care being run by hedge fund groups. They do not care about where or how long they run as long as they make them profitable. They’re not invested in these hospitals."

Although most nurses at St. Christopher’s have voted to strike, the union has not provided the requisite 10-day strike notice. Maintaining the pro-corporate position of “labor-management collaboration,” the union is still seeking to negotiate with Tower Health, the owner of St. Christopher’s. Since buying the hospital in December of last year, Tower Health has already closed down one of the two floors at St. Christopher’s allotted for less sick patients. The company has also bled staffing dry, which has led to a shortage of staff available for pediatric care.

In Ohio, approximately 125 nurses represented by the Ohio Nurses Association (ONA) at East Liverpool City Hospital are set to begin a three-day strike November 21 over staffing and retention issues. The contract extension that nurses are operating under is set to expire at midnight November 20. The hospital has refused to address poor nurse retention and consequent staffing shortages, which have resulted in many nurses being forced to work overtime. Nurses are also demanding a revision to their wage scale to incentivize staff to work overtime. One unit in the hospital has over 14 position vacancies, which has led to poor working conditions and has worsened treatment quality for patients.

The hospital has attempted to guilt-trip nurses for deciding to strike, blaming them for launching such an action during the health care crisis caused by the pandemic. The strike itself bears the marker of a “Hollywood strike,” which is purposed as a temporary procedure to let nurses blow off steam for a few days and then allow the union to continue negotiating a sellout deal with hospital management. ONA has refused to call attention to the hospital’s acknowledgment that it intends to use strikebreakers to undermine the strike.

Hospital laundry workers staged a rally in lower Manhattan this week demanding their employer, Unitex, provide them with two masks a day and change working conditions to allow at least 6 feet apart between workers. Laundry workers tend to work under conditions that give ample opportunities for viral infections to spread, including cleaning soiled bed linens and gowns.

The Laundry Distribution and Food Services Workers Union has been in contract negotiations with Unitex for months, with the company repeatedly insisting that any future contract would mean a cut to workers’ pensions. Union representatives, however, have made attempts to derail the strike movement growing among workers. Union representative Albert Arroyo told a local news station, “The last thing they want to do is to go on strike, that’s not what they want to do, but the employer is pushing them into a strike.”

In order for health care workers to advance their interests and protect their lives during this pandemic, they must break from the straitjacket imposed on them by the pro-corporate trade unions and establish their own independent organizations, rank-and-file safety committees, in hospitals and medical centers nationwide to coordinate a decisive struggle against the profit-driven capitalist system. Workers must demand that the necessary financial and industrial resources be diverted away from Wall Street and the upper echelons of the corporate oligarchy to instead be used to eradicate the pandemic by fortifying health care infrastructure and closing nonessential production while providing full income to all those unable to work.