Turkey adopts inadequate restriction policies as COVID-19 surges

Ulaş Ateşçi

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s announcement Tuesday of new coronavirus “restrictions” shows the Turkish government is committed to a “herd immunity” policy, regardless of how many lives are lost. Like governments across Europe faced with growing opposition to official policy, he is announcing token restrictions to try and contain not the pandemic, but anger in the population.

After Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Monday that the coronavirus science board “recommended implementing concrete measures to prevent the spread of the disease”—an implicit admission that no concrete measures had been taken—President Erdoğan announced on Tuesday night a nationwide weekend curfew from 8 p.m. to 10 a.m., “so as not to disrupt supply and production chains in the country.”

That is, the government is prioritizing capitalist profits over human lives. Erdoğan added, “the partial lock-down in effect for people aged over 65 will also be applied for those under 20, with exception of the employed.”

People walk in the main Kizilay Square, in Ankara, Turkey, June 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

Education in schools that entered a week-long fall break will continue online until the end of the year. Erdoğan said, “Working hours of businesses such as shopping centres, markets, barbers and hairdressers will be limited to between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m.” Moreover, restaurants and cafés are to open only for takeaway and deliveries.

Apart from school closures, these are token measures, under conditions where the pandemic is out of control across Turkey. Fourteen education workers have died of COVID-19 in Turkey since September, when face-to-face education restarted, according to the Education and Science Laborers’ Union (Eğitim-Sen), which supported the back-to-school campaign.

Health Minister Koca announced on Tuesday that 103 people have lost their lives in the last 24 hours because of COVID-19 and that they have recorded 3,819 more symptomatic patients.

The Turkish government refuses to announce real data over the pandemic so as to force workers back to work and contain public anger, making an arbitrary, unscientific distinction between “cases” and “patients.” However, available information indicates that the situation in Turkey is among the worst in Europe.

Turkey has the second-highest number of severely ill patients in Europe: 3,657. Moreover, intensive care facilities’ occupancy rate is 70.8 percent, even after many hospitals increased capacity. One intensive care doctor asked on Twitter: “If 36 patients are currently being treated in the intensive care unit, which had a capacity of 12 people before the pandemic, and the capacity is 60 on paper, is the intensive care occupancy rate 300 percent or 60 percent?”

Turkish Medical Association (TTB) official İbrahim Akkurt said that given estimates that “3.8 percent of cases with PCR-positive tests have pneumonia, and radiological and tomographic tests detected 3,316 pneumonia cases” on Monday, the real number of new cases was 87,263.

The government’s “restrictions” come after growing warnings from medical associations and scientists that hospital systems will collapse, and growing anger among health care workers. However, the latest measures aim not to contain the pandemic but to prevent a collapse of hospital systems.

Under these conditions, the TTB announced an “action program” demanding that COVID-19 be regarded as an occupational illness. As of yesterday, at least 161 health care workers have lost their lives to COVID-19, and the virus is ripping through their ranks. The TTB launched a “light on and off action” at 9 p.m. for five days last week, warning that if their demands are not met, they may go on strike.

Last week, the İstanbul Medical Chamber denounced the government’s policy as “bankrupt” and called for an “immediate lock-down” for İstanbul. Moreover, the Turkish Thoracic Society called for a nationwide lock-down, stating: “Social mobility should be restricted. Complete closure is required for at least two weeks, or even one month.”

On Tuesday, just before official coronavirus “restrictions” were announced, TTB chairwoman Şebnem Korur also called for total lock-down, stating: “Workplaces, except for those involved in essential production, must be closed for at least three or four weeks,” adding: “According to scientific studies, a two-week lock-down reduces the infection rate by 22 percent and a four-week lock-down reduces this rate by 38 percent.”

The TTB announced last week that daily cases in İstanbul had reached around 10,000 by the end of October.

The figure for the western city of Izmir was 1,000, but Izmir Medical Chamber stated that daily cases in the city have reached to 3,500 on Tuesday. Yesterday, the chamber also warned that the health care system in the city is on the verge of collapse. “Ambulances are having difficulty in carrying cases. The available services and intensive care units in hospitals fall short; new COVID-19 services and intensive care units are opened,” it said, adding: “We are at a point which overburdens our health care system’s response capacity to a considerable extent.”

The latest information on the death toll from the pandemic underlines that official death figures are also unreliable. In fact, Turkey has seen hundreds of deaths per day for some time.

The İstanbul Medical Chamber said that from March 12 to November 4, 2020, a total of 8,456 excess deaths occurred in İstanbul, compared to the 2015-2019 average, based on İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality data. However, the total official death toll from COVID-19 in İstanbul stood at just 3,253 on October 25.

On Saturday, İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu (Republican People’s Party, CHP) tweeted that 164 people in İstanbul alone had lost their lives to infectious diseases. However, the official daily death toll across Turkey was 92 on the same day. On March 28, total deaths from infectious diseases in İstanbul was only 21. As one-quarter of all new coronavirus patients across Turkey have been diagnosed in İstanbul, one can surmise that Turkey’s real daily death toll is likely near to 400 or 500—close to France, Spain, the UK or Italy.

İmamoğlu’s second tweet on the issue was another example of the reactionary collaboration between the government and bourgeois opposition parties at the cost of workers’ lives. “Our Health Minister of Health just called me. He said that they are working precisely on measures,” he wrote, before adding: “It is our duty to take all steps together on the basis of transparency and science with the understanding of mobilization during the pandemic process.”

In fact, Imamoğlu and other CHP officials have done their best to contain growing popular opposition to the “herd immunity” policy, while implementing the very same policies in the cities they control, such as İstanbul. İstanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya thanked Imamoğlu just a few weeks ago, underlining their collaboration on the pandemic. It was no coincidence that the CHP-led municipalities of İstanbul and Izmir announced some pandemic restrictions just on Tuesday.

These mayors’ failure to disclose their own data and their collaboration with the government since the pandemic began constitutes an indictment of the pseudo-left that supported them in local elections last year as an “alternative” to the Erdoğan government’s candidates.

Tens of thousands pay homage to youth slain by police as Peru swears in third president in a week

Cesar Uco

Thousands of youth held vigils on Monday evening in Peru’s major cities in memory of two young students killed by the Peruvian National Police (PNP) in a national march last Saturday.

It was the second such march last week, made up overwhelmingly of Peruvian youth, to protest the parliamentary coup that illegally installed the president of the Congress, Manuel Merino, as interim president. The Congress overthrew President Martin Vizcarra, who was impeached on the charge of “permanent moral incapacity” based on unproven allegations of having taken bribes while governor of the mining region of Moquegua between 2011 and 2014.

Merino was forced to resign Sunday afternoon in the face of the continuing mass protests and popular outrage over the killing of the two demonstrators. Late Monday, the Peruvian parliament elected the country’s third president in just one week, Congressman Francisco Sagasti, 76.

Demonstrators carrying photos of murdered youth Inti Sotelo and Bryan Pintado. (Twitter)

The two slain students were Inti Sotelo Camargo, 24, who died from a bullet wound in his chest, and Jack Bryan Pintado Sanchez, 22, who suffered wounds from 10 projectiles fired into his face and neck.

At least 107 other people were injured by projectiles—both rubber bullets and live ammunition were used—toxic gases and beatings. One is known to be paralyzed from the waist down and another to have lost an eye, while others may be permanently disabled.

While “interim president” Merino approved of the use of excessive and brutal repression, the PNP had long been preparing such tactics for use against a mass uprising.

Peru’s repressive security forces have played an increasingly dominant role as the country has confronted the highest per capita mortality rate in the world from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the worst economic crisis, with the country’s economy shrinking by 30 percent.

The coronavirus pandemic led the Vizcarra government to give the green light to strengthening and deploying the PNP’s riot control forces against the population. When a curfew was declared in mid-March, Vizcarra, with the support of the Armed Forces, deployed hundreds of police armed with high-powered rifles in all the districts of the city. Hundreds of people were arrested between March and November for violating the curfew, especially in the working-class neighborhoods. A late-night curfew remains in effect.

Vigil for slain students. (Twitter)

Reporting on Saturday’s police repression, the Peruvian daily El Comercio stated, “Despite national and international calls to avoid such reprisals, riot police fired a hail of tear gas bombs and used shotguns with pellets against citizens who confronted them as they tried to advance down Abancay Avenue toward the Congress building.”

Spain’s El País in an article titled “In memoriam of the heroes of the Bicentennial generation in Peru,” reported: “From health personnel who watched the marches to the Ombudsman’s Office, they were attacked by police officers who did not hesitate to obey the orders of repression. Not only did they use rubber bullets to shoot at the bodies of the protesters, but they also used metal projectiles, marbles, tear gas bombs, and concussion bombs. Some young people reported wounded could lose their sight, others might not walk again, many were left with projectile wounds.”

The marches represent the eruption of years of accumulated anger against the politicians of all the bourgeois parties, which, mired in corruption and presiding over unprecedented social inequality, have led the country into the greatest economic and health crisis in modern history.

When Merino resigned from the presidency, it was initially announced that Rocio Silva Santisteban of the pseudo-left Frente Amplio would be selected by the Congress as its leader, and as a result the next president. There is little doubt that this maneuver to install a representative of the pseudo-left at the head of a right-wing, military-dominated government was seen as means of pacifying the mass outrage. In the end, however, predominant sections of the bourgeoisie demanded a more reliable representative of their interests and those of foreign capital, upon which they depend.

On November 17, a new president was sworn in, Francisco Sagasti of the center-right Partido Morado (Purple Party, so-named to designate unity of red and blue, the left and right). A former World Bank executive, he was chosen by the bourgeoisie because of his close contacts with the US and finance capital. He worked for the World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was imposing draconian privatization and austerity programs in Latin America, and has a doctorate from Wharton, the prestigious business school of the University of Pennsylvania, the cradle of many of the financial thieves who direct Wall Street’s main banks and finance firms.

Memorial in Lima's Miraflores

While Sagasti was being sworn in as president on Tuesday, businessmen, noting that he was one of their own, said that first the economy had to be reactivated and the spread of COVID-19 allowed to continue its course until a vaccine was found, either abroad or produced by the Peruvian medical university Cayetano Heredia.

Throughout his professional life, Sagasti, a well-known technocrat, has moved between business circles, nationally and internationally, and academia. He is a professor at the Universidad Católica del Perú and previously taught at the Universidad del Pacífico business school.

In an attempt to assuage the mass anger in the streets, Sagasti invited the relatives of the two youth murdered by the police to attend the swearing-in ceremony and repeatedly saluted the young protesters. This purely opportunistic maneuver will soon be forgotten as Sagasti moves forward to fulfill the demands of Peruvian and international capital. Meanwhile, the youth have declared that they will continue to protest and confront the police, if necessary, until the murderers of Inti and Bryan are brought to justice.

On her Twitter account, the candidate for the 2016 presidency of the bourgeois left, Veronika Mendoza, wrote that the protests had brought to power “a transitional government and a parliamentary leadership without coup-makers or corrupt people,” thus defending the new president who represents the interests of foreign capital, especially that of the United States. Like her counterparts in Chile, she has advanced the proposal for a “constituent assembly” to rewrite Peru’s 1993 constitution as a means of diverting the mass youth uprising back under the domination of the bourgeois state.

Contrary to Mendoza’s attempt to build up illusions in the regime, many youth have no confidence in any member of the political class, including Sagasti. They have seen four presidents in the past two years—only one of them popularly elected—and every living president, along with the majority of Congress, implicated in bribery and kickback scandals.

Yesterday, vigils were held in all the main cities of Peru. The main one took place in Lima’s San Martin Square, the meeting place of the marches, which was once again filled with people honoring the memory of the two murdered youth. There were also vigils at Plaza Bolivar in front of the Congress of the Republic, Kennedy Park in Miraflores and several districts of the capital.

In the second city of the country, Arequipa, a crowd gathered in front of the city’s cathedral. As in Lima, participants dressed in black and came with white candles. A minute’s silence was observed for the life of Inti and Bryan. A contingent from the National University of San Agustin (UNSA) joined the vigil.

Similar demonstrations were held in Trujillo, in Cusco’s Plaza de Armas and in the northern cities of Tumbes and Piura, as well as in the Amazonian cities of Tarapoto and Iquitos.

In the highland city on the shores of Lake Titicaca, Puno, the young people said, “We don’t know them, but their deaths hurt us.”

The popular explosion that is now entering its ninth day is the response of the Peruvian masses, and in particular the youth, to the intolerable conditions of life created by the disastrous response of the capitalist government to the COVID-19 pandemic and the deep economic recession that is driving millions of families back into extreme poverty.

A solution to these immense problems will not be forthcoming from the newly installed administration headed by the “technocrat” Sagasiti or any other capitalist government. Only the working class, based on an internationalist and socialist perspective, can take forward the fight for democracy and equality in Peru and throughout the Americas.

Number of children diagnosed with COVID-19 in the US surpasses one million

Alex Findijs

A new report by the American Academy of Pediatrics found 1.04 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 among children as of November 12, accounting for 11.5 percent of all infections in the United States. Of these cases, 112,000 infections came in the week before the report was published, the highest amount in a week for the entire pandemic.

The rapid rise in the number of cases among children is directly related to the campaign to keep schools open and tethered to in-person learning.

On August 20, around the time that many K-12 schools were returning for classes, child cases totaled 442,785—9.3 percent of the 4.76 million total cases for all ages. By November 12, the number of total cases had risen by 87.5 percent to over 9 million. Child cases, in turn, had risen by 135 percent to 1.04 million.

A woman clutches a child while waiting with hundreds of people line up for food donations, given to those impacted by the COVID-19 virus outbreak, in Chelsea, Mass., Tuesday, April 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

This explosive growth in confirmed cases among children can chiefly be explained by the reopening of schools at time in which the virus was still spreading widely throughout the country and the refusal of school administrations and governments to switch to remote learning once cases in schools and their surrounding communities began to rise.

While the Democratic and Republican parties have used the low death rate among young people as a justification for exposing them to the virus, the disastrous effects of the push to resume in-person learning are becoming clear.

An increasing number of children who have been infected with COVID-19 are being diagnosed with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a condition that causes severe inflammation in human organs like the kidney, lungs, brains, skin and, most commonly, the heart.

So far, nearly 1,200 children have been diagnosed with MIS-C and 20 have died.

Of these cases around 50 percent experienced shock or very low blood pressure, and 40-50 percent experienced decreased heart function, also called “squeeze of the heart.” This severe loss in heart function has occurred in roughly half of all MIS-C cases related to COVID-19 hospitalizations, where the average length of stay is five days.

With infections continuing to rise among children, the number of children affected and hospitalized due to MIS-C is expected to double in the coming weeks, according to Dr. Jason Lake, a pediatric infectious disease specialist.

While there are effective treatments for MIS-C, the state of the medical system in the United States poses a dire threat to the lives of these children. MIS-C is a serious disease that requires medical treatment in a hospital, but this cannot be done if hospital beds are overrun with coronavirus patients. Just as the overwhelming of hospitals will lead to more COVID-19 deaths, it will also result in more deaths among children from MIS-C.

Additionally, MIS-C takes about four weeks after the infection of COVID-19 to develop, meaning that the effects of recent mass infections are still to be seen. Given the current rate of children who are becoming infected, it is possible that thousands of children with MIS-C will require treatment throughout the winter if nothing is done to stop the spread of the virus.

This is a serious health risk to millions of children who could suffer lon- term health damage. Children who suffer from MIS-C can face permanent scarring of the heart, which can lead to serious health complications like arrhythmic heartbeat.

Potential long-term health effects of COVID-19 in children are still unknown. Several diseases, such as West Nile poliomyelitis and Shingles, are the result of a viral infection that produces an illness years into the future. By keeping schools open at the demand of Wall Street, the Republican and Democratic politicians are gambling with the future health of millions of people.

What is required to fight the pandemic is a scientific approach to public health that takes the health and lives of workers and youth seriously. Neither corporate party can do this because they serve the financial interests that are demanding workers remain on the job creating profits for the banks and major corporations, which can only be done if schools are in session.

There is no greater admission of this than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly removing from its website the guidelines that the agency had pushed to justify the reopening of schools over the summer. The documents, which had been created with the influence and pressure of the Trump administration, claimed that children were not likely to transmit or contract the disease.

Now the CDC guidelines state that “the body of evidence is growing that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and contrary to early reports might play a role in transmission.” The official reason for this change in policy is that evidence has changed, but there was never any evidence to support the initial claim to begin with.

The CDC has effectively admitted that government officials lied about the danger to schoolchildren in order to support its drive to reopen schools and the economy.

While some Democratic Party-run cities have closed their schools, including New York City yesterday, this is the result of the demands of teachers and the undeniable surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Democratic- and Republican-run states alike are seeing explosions of COVID-19, yet they refuse to move to remote learning and support teachers and workers. Pennsylvania and Illinois are two states with especially concerning COVID-19 outbreaks where their Democratic-led governments have so far refused to take any significant steps. In Michigan, where Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer has implemented new restrictions in the face of a record surge of infections, elementary and grade schools remain open despite the closure of high schools and colleges of in-person learning.

Educators, students, staff and community members who want to protect health and lives must break from the Democrats and Republicans and form independent rank-and-file committees that will organize educators and workers around the country to oppose their deadly policies and take measures to suppress the pandemic.

Record daily coronavirus death tolls in Italy and Spain since September

Will Morrow

The coronavirus is continuing to spiral out of control in Italy, which is now experiencing the largest number of deaths of any country in Europe. On Tuesday, another 731 people died, and on Wednesday, 753 people, the highest tolls since the peak of the first wave from March 21–31.

The total number of COVID-19 deaths in the country, according to the official underestimated figures, is now 47,217, second only to the UK in Europe. More than 1.2 million cases have been detected. The number of daily new cases hit a record of 40,896 last Friday and has continued to average more than 30,000 in the days since.

On Tuesday, Spain also recorded its largest daily death toll since September, with 435 people killed. Spain surpassed one million cases on October 21, and in the space of just 20 days, the case total increased by 50 percent, to more than 1.5 million.

Coffins with the bodies of victims of coronavirus are stored waiting for burial or cremation at the Collserola morgue in Barcelona. (Image Credit: AP/Emilio Morenatti)

According to the official death count, there have now been 41,668 deaths in Spain. But this is a significant underestimate of the real toll. A report published Tuesday by El Diario detailed the increase in the national mortality rate associated with the two waves of the pandemic. Since 1975, there had never been more than 12,000 deaths in the country recorded in a single week. For three consecutive weeks from March 23 to April 12, the weekly death rate exceeded 18,000.

From March to April alone, there were 43,000 more deaths than the historical average. Since September, the total number of excess deaths has exceeded 15,000, giving a total estimated COVID-19 death toll of more than 58,000.

In Italy, the healthcare system is already on the verge of collapse. Across the country, 42 percent of ICU patients are being treated for coronavirus, significantly above the emergency threshold of 30 percent indicated by the government as the point at which hospitals would be overwhelmed.

Ambulances are queueing up due to a lack of available beds. A video widely shared on social media posted by a health worker at the San Giovanni Rotondo hospital in the province of Foggia, in southern Italy, shows more than six ambulances queued waiting to be able to deliver their patients. “This is total chaos,” the health worker says into the video.

While in March and April the pandemic had been largely confined to the northern regions around Lombardy, the virus is now overwhelming hospitals in the poorer south.

On November 11, a video taken inside the bathroom at Cardarelli Hospital in Naples went viral. A man is seen lying under the bathroom sink of the hospital ward, as the phone operator states, “This man is dead.” Pointing at another motionless patient lying on a bed, they add, “This one we don’t know whether he is alive or dead.”

Last Friday, Rodolgo Punzi, the head of the infectious disease department at Cotugno hospital in Naples, told AP, “The current situation at the Cotugno hospital is that we have no more beds available.” Nurses were seen providing oxygen treatment to patients in their cars outside the hospital a week ago. The army has converted the Formula One racetrack in Monzo into a temporary hospital.

On Monday, the Italian government announced that it had requested Gino Strada, who founded Emergency NGO, which works with civilian victims of war, to manage the response to the pandemic in Calabria. Strada, who is also a surgeon, has previously worked setting up hospitals in Sudan and Afghanistan.

The health commissioner in Calabria, Saverio Cotticelli, resigned from the position on November 7, after admitting that it had no emergency coronavirus response plan.

Calabria is the poorest region in Italy, and has the highest rate of unemployment at 21 percent, and more than 30 percent among youth—double the national average.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has rejected repeated appeals by medical associations for a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus.

On Monday, Massimo Galli, the head of the infectious disease department at Milan’s Sacco Hospital, told RAI television, “I am afraid there is no doubt that the situation is largely out of control. Other illnesses don’t go on strike because Covid exists and we have to get organized… otherwise the pandemic will end up doing damage that goes beyond the already very sad number of deaths.” He said a total lockdown throughout the country was required.

The same day, Filippo Anelli, the president of the Italian Federation of Medical Guilds, had called for Italy to be put in a “complete lockdown.”

The situation is “dramatic and therefore we must resort immediately to a total closure,” he wrote. “We have reached fairly critical levels, lines of ambulances at emergency rooms are seen everywhere, intensive care is starting to have significant numbers.”

Anelli told Ansa, “Either we stop the virus, or it will stop us, because the signs show that the system is not holding up. Even the current yellow regions will soon find themselves in the same conditions as the worst-hit areas.”

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte rejected these appeals on Wednesday, November 11, telling La Stampa that “a generalised lockdown shouldn’t be the first choice—the costs would be too high.”

For the Italian and European ruling class, the “costs” of a lockdown—i.e., the potential impact on the profits of businesses—take absolute and unconditional priority over the tens of thousands of lives that could be saved by a lockdown to prevent the further spread of the virus. The current resurgence taking place across the continent was not inevitable. It is the outcome of the policies pursued by governments in Italy and across Europe.

They have rejected new lockdowns and deliberately reopened economies, pushing millions of workers back to work, ensuring that the virus could spread.

In Italy, as across Europe and the US, the Conte government has kept all primary school students in classes, to ensure that their parents can continue to go to work, while non-essential industries remain open, except for restaurants, bars and some smaller stores in certain regions.

In addition to the massive loss of life, the pandemic has wrought enormous social devastation, exacerbating the existing social crisis. While hundreds of billions have been pledged to prop up Italian corporations, the Conte government has refused to provide basic assistance for workers affected by the impact of the lockdown.

Valeria Leonardi, from SOS Ballarò, a neighborhood committee in Palermo, told the Financial Times on Tuesday that the lockdown from March to April “was a catastrophe for many people, who were already in a precarious situation, often forced to work without a regular contract and out of the institutional safety net, who found themselves without income overnight.”

Municipal elections expose rightward turn of Brazilian ruling class

Tomas Castanheira

Brazil held the first round of its municipal elections on Sunday. The electoral process was marked by the highest abstention rate in the last 20 years, surpassing 23 percent. It also saw an accelerated shift by the Brazilian bourgeoisie to the right, with fascistic attacks against the democratic system and an escalation of state surveillance over social media.

One of the factors contributing to the low voter turnout, in a country where voting is mandatory, was the uncontrolled COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. After a decrease in contamination rates in September and October, Brazil is registering a rapid rise in coronavirus cases, with averages of new cases and deaths nearly doubling in the last 10 days, according to Worldometerdata. Brazil already has a total of more than 5.9 million cases and 166,000 deaths.

Voters on Line in Rocinha, Brazil’s largest favela, in Rio de Janeiro’s southern zone.

But the abstentions also expressed the discrediting of the entire Brazilian political system in the eyes of broad sections of the working class, which is increasingly dissatisfied with the conditions of mass poverty and social inequality.

There were a significant number of protest votes, which added to the abstentions, surpassing the votes for the first-place mayoral candidates in 483 Brazilian cities, including 18 capitals. In the country’s largest city, São Paulo, protest votes and abstentions reached 3.6 million, while the votes for the top two candidates added up to just 2.8 million.

The election was a fiasco for the Workers Party (PT), which governed the country for 14 years, as well as for the candidates supported by Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. The PT, which in 2012 was elected in the first round in 630 cities, won only 179 municipal elections this year. Bolsonaro, whose fascist party Alliance for Brazil, which he founded in 2019, has not yet been officially recognized, supported 59 candidates, with only 10 them elected.

There was also a significant drop in the number of candidates elected by the traditional bourgeois parties, the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) and Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). The parties that registered the largest gains were the Progressive Party (PP) and the Democrats (DEM), the latter having won six capital cities in the first round.

These results were enthusiastically celebrated by the Brazilian media, which characterized them as a victory for “traditional” politics and for “democracy.” In an editorial, Folha de S. Paulo celebrated the “choice of moderate conservatives” and stated: “Two years ago, the national and state elections were characterized by a right-wing wave, often with populist and authoritarian tones, and a rejection of traditional politicians and parties. This scenario has changed.”

The conservative O Estado de S. Paulo, following the same line, declared: “The debacle of Bolsonaroism and Lula-PTism at the polls, two years after they starred in the polarization that plunged the country into an unprecedented moral crisis, is great news for Brazilian democracy. ... Traditional politics is being valued again.”

The political perspective highlighted in this farcical celebration of the Brazilian municipal elections closely resembled the hailing by these same media outlets of Joe Biden’s victory in the US elections. Folha and Estadao praised Biden as a “traditional” and “moderate” politician and considered his election a milestone in the collapse of a “right-wing populist” wave around the world.

But, while a section of the Brazilian bourgeoisie seeks to mirror itself in the reactionary model of the US Democratic Party, the political allies of Bolsonaro have literally mimicked Donald Trump’s false accusations of electoral fraud.

A delay in the release of poll results, which in Brazil are held in electronic ballot boxes (not connected to the Internet), and vague reports of hacker attacks on the Supreme Electoral Court (STE) were used by fascistic figures connected to the President to declare the entire process illegitimate, setting a dangerous precedent for future elections.

Federal Congresswoman Carla Zambelli, co-founder of Bolsonaro’s Alliance for Brazil, declared on Twitter: “Now more than ever we have to talk about #PrintedVote again as a way to check the electronic voting. Nobody will convince me that the system crashes that way without fraud involved.” The son of the President, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, tweeted: “This brings a climate of insecurity, which makes people suspicious that the delay in the disclosure could be a new hacker attack or manipulation, since there is no transparency [in the process].”

As in the United States, the claims that the election of “traditional” right-wing politicians is an effective way to contain the fascistic forces in Brazilian society are absolutely false. The dictatorial threats emerge not from the sick mind of a Trump or a Bolsonaro, but from the response of the ruling elites to the deep crisis of capitalism and the resulting eruption of class struggle.

That the DEM and PP—both heirs of ARENA, the party of the bloody Brazilian military dictatorship of 1964–1985—have consolidated themselves as the major “center” parties of bourgeois politics in Brazil is a clear sign that the capitalist political system as a whole has moved sharply to the right.

This right-wing shift of the Brazilian ruling class was manifested in the unprecedented number of military candidates running in this year’s elections. It was not only the traditional right wing. The PT and its pseudo-left satellite, the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), ran no fewer than 152 candidates coming from the Military Police or the armed forces. Of the 8,422 military candidates running in Brazil, about 10 percent were elected: 50 mayors and 809 council members.

The 2020 elections also witnessed an ominous escalation in the policing of social media in the name of fighting “fake news.” Hundreds of police intelligence officers were deployed in each state to carry out this task. Supreme Electoral Court Minister Luis Roberto Barroso declared: “We are preparing for a war against fake news,” hailing an unprecedented level of collaboration between the Brazilian state and “all technology companies.”

The demand that the Brazilian state censor “fake news” has been championed by the pseudo-left PSOL, which went so far as to demand during the 2018 elections that the Supreme Court block WhatsApp nationwide for this purpose.

The more prominent role played by the PSOL in these elections, going into the second round in two state capitals, is being welcomed by the Brazilian bourgeoisie. Estadao, in an article titled “DEM and PSOL cease to be supporting parties,” stated that the latter represents “the new left—more identitarian and cultural, in the young outskirts of Brazil; people who see the PT as ‘old’.” That is, it clearly recognizes PSOL as a party of the petty bourgeoisie, completely hostile to the working class movement.

The main race being run by the PSOL is for the city of São Paulo, where its candidate for mayor, the anti-Marxist professor and leader of the Movement of Homeless Workers (MTST) Guilherme Boulos, is competing with current Mayor Bruno Covas of the PSDB.

Covas is attacking Boulos in the same spirit as the editorials in Folha and Estadao, and has declared that “experience beat radicalism in the first round and experience will beat radicalism in the second round.” But the pseudo-left candidate is doing everything to prove that this is not the case.

In the first debate of the second round of the elections in São Paulo, broadcast on Monday by CNN, Boulos exposed his thoroughly bourgeois program. In addition to minimizing the possibilities of a second wave of COVID-19 in São Paulo, ignoring the already accelerating growth in the number of cases and hospital admissions in the city, he reaffirmed his party’s reactionary approach to the military.

Boulos stated in the debate that the “problem of public security” in São Paulo cannot be solved with “street lighting,” as Covas has tried to do, but requires the hiring of more police! Boulos complained that the city’s local police, the Metropolitan Civil Guard (GCM), has far fewer officers than Rio de Janeiro, and declared: “The role of the GCM is to be in the neighborhoods and to identify, through community policing, where are the focal points of crime, conflicts...following the examples of the security models that best work around the world.”

As protests against police brutality are exploding all over the world, one wonders what model for state violence against the working class and youth is most appealing to this pseudo-leftist charlatan.

The Morenoites of the MRT, who in a slander against the World Socialist Web Site claimed to be “the only leftist organization on Brazilian soil that is fighting a principled struggle against the police and the militarization of politics,” are criminally covering up the reactionary outlook of the PSOL and promoting its election in São Paulo. With their characteristic opportunist politics, they support Boulos through a series of articles that call for a “struggle to confront, reject, and defeat Covas.”

In order to fight the turn by the ruling class towards dictatorship in Brazil and internationally, the working class needs to establish an independent political movement against capitalism, decisively rejecting the political influence of every bourgeois and petty-bourgeois tendency.

Twelve million to lose unemployment benefits in December

Jacob Crosse

Without congressional action in the next month, over 12 million people will lose federal unemployment benefits provided in the CARES Act at the end of the year according to a new report. The sudden elimination of much-needed funds for millions of jobless workers portends a further collapse in the health, safety and well-being of millions of people and their families.

On Dec. 26, the day after Christmas, unemployment researchers Andrew Stettner and Elizabeth Pancotti with the Century Foundation estimate that 7.3 million workers will lose their benefits through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, while 4.6 million workers will lose access to monies through the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program.

People wait in line to receive food assistance at the Doles Center in Mt. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

This is over half of the estimated 21.1 million people in the US currently on some form of unemployment, according to the researchers, who also found that another 4.4 million people, roughly every person in the state of Kentucky, have already used up all of their benefits.

For the millions who already have used up their yearly benefits, and the thousands more that will join them in the coming weeks, having to wait until next year is no guarantee they will begin receiving payments again. Byzantine state unemployment systems across the country continue to confound and frustrate hundreds of thousands of workers who have yet to receive their due payments.

Both the PEUC and the PUA program were created with firm deadlines and restrictions in mind. The PEUC program was designed to provide up to an additional 13 weeks of payments to people who had already exhausted their state unemployment benefits, which in some states provide 26 weeks worth of payments, although several are less, with Georgia and Nevada providing only 12 weeks.

The PUA program was designed for so-called “gig” or “contract” workers, such as Uber and Lyft drivers, or the self-employed, such as artists, musicians or other independent contract workers who are normally not eligible for unemployment benefits. This program is supposed to provide up to 39 weeks of payments, however for thousands of applicants, like Howard Booker in Las Vegas, months of trying to get what’s rightfully theirs has been frustrating and futile.

“I just want what’s mine, and I want them to give me my money,” Booker told a local reporter. After months of calling and reaching out to Nevada’s Department of Employee Training and Retention (DETR), Booker said he received a notice this month stating he was “disqualified from PUA” and that he actually owed money due to “overpayments.” Booker says he has yet to receive a “dime” from DETR.

Finally, there is the Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) program, which was created through an executive order by President Donald Trump that authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to spend up to $44 billion from the Disaster Relief Fund in the form of $300 payments. Every US state, except for South Dakota, applied for the program with nearly every state having already dispersed the available funds. As with the PEUC and PUA, the LWA program is slated to expire the final week of the year on Dec. 27.

These programs, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention federal eviction moratorium, are all that is standing against homelessness and destitution for millions of workers. Despite the grave situation, which has led to miles-long food lines in cities across the country, Congress has yet to come to terms on a new relief package that would extend unemployment benefits and eviction moratoriums indefinitely.

After a letter issued by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday predictably did nothing to further negotiations on another bill, Pelosi, who was re-elected by her peers on Wednesday to lead the Democratic caucus in Congress again, gave no indication on Wednesday that she and McConnell were any closer to finalizing a bill to stave off disaster.

In fact the opposite was confirmed: congressional aides with Pelosi and McConnell stated to the Washington Post that “no discussions” were taking place on another relief bill. Instead the two politicians were working separately on another “omnibus” bill to approve spending legislation which would avoid a potential government shutdown before the Dec. 11 deadline.

“We will pass an omnibus… We are on a good path to do that,” Pelosi said to reporters.

Why is it that after months of so-called “negotiations” the Democrats and Republicans are no closer to providing relief, something both Pelosi and McConnell have stated they agree on, but can pass funding for the US Postal Service or fast-track Trump’s judicial nominations?

It is not because, as Democratic Party politicians claim, they and their Republican colleagues are so far apart on principles and figures that no deal can be had. Both parties came together with unprecedented speed and unanimity in March of this year, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average was tanking 10,000 points following the first wave of the virus’ spread in the US, to pass the $2.2 trillion CARES Act. With a 96–0 vote in the Senate and a near-unanimous voice vote in the House, the two parties of capital provided billions to giant corporations, the Catholic Church and Wall Street, while rescuing the stock market and the wealth portfolios of the ruling class.

No, the unwillingness on the part of the two parties to reach a deal is not a mistake, it is a definite class policy that is being implemented. It is part of the on-going effort of the ruling class to offload the cost of the pandemic onto the back of the working class by blackmailing teachers and students into dangerous schools, so parents can go back to work and generate profits for the financial oligarchy. All the while the Democrats and Republicans continue to feign disagreement and separation on a relief package, while exchanging fist-bumps and pleasantries as over 255,000 people in the US succumb to COVID-19.

Germany’s schools remain open despite a massive second wave of COVID-19

Marianne Arens

According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), 267 more COVID-19 patients died in Germany on Monday, in the space of just 24 hours. By Tuesday morning, 14,419 new infections were registered.

Over the past seven days, there have been 145 cases per 100,000 inhabitants nationwide, with numerous hot spots reporting much higher rates. In Berlin alone, there are currently over 1,000 COVID-19 patients in hospital, 274 of whom are being treated or ventilated in intensive care units. The seven-day incidence rate in central Berlin is 360.

The virus has spread rapidly throughout Europe and has claimed 330,000 lives so far. In neighbouring Austria, high case numbers forced the government to tighten its lockdown and close schools on Saturday. Intensive care units in Italy, France, Spain, and Switzerland are on the verge of collapse.

In this situation, the federal and state governments are insisting that schools, day care centres and businesses continue to operate. On Monday evening, the chancellor’s pandemic talks with the state premiers ended without any result.

Angela Merkel and the heads of the state governments agreed on nonbinding “appeals” and refused even to impose a simple binding obligation to wear masks in schools. With schools and day care centres remaining open, all further decisions have been postponed until November 25.

Meanwhile, the pandemic is continuing to spread throughout such facilities. According to a report in this week’s Der Spiegel magazine, coronavirus infections in children have increased tenfold in the last few weeks. According to the RKI, more than 10,400 coronavirus infections in children under 14 years of age were registered in the first week of November. (At the beginning of September, there were less than 1,000 per week.)

A further study from Bavaria last week showed that six times more minors than previously known have been infected with the virus. The number of children who suffer from severe symptoms and must go to hospital has also risen.

The situation in the care sector is also critical. Intensive care units are reaching their limits, with almost 3,500 intensive care patients nationwide. In hospitals, medical practices and other health care facilities, 1,700 doctors and nurses are currently suffering from COVID-19. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been at least 24,500 cases among medics, although the number of unreported cases is high. According to the RKI, 25 medics have died.

Mosaic by an Italian artist from portraits of nurses who have died of coronavirus

While the German government is doing nothing to stem the spread of the pandemic and protect the lives of workers, politicians and the business media are increasing the pressure. Under the headline, “Teachers must realize that an extra contribution is necessary in the crisis,” Barbara Gillmann in the financial daily Handelsblatt strings together a series of accusations and lies.

Echoing the notorious “lazy jerks” insult directed at teachers by former Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Gillmann writes, “So far, schools are still not considered by virologists to be drivers of the pandemic.” She adds that for some teachers, “all the effort with masks and ventilation in the classrooms is simply too much.”

Health Minister Jens Spahn declared on November 13 at the German Care Congress that, if necessary, employees at hospitals and nursing homes testing positive had to continue to work. His latest proposal goes even further. He declared that if as a result of isolation and quarantine measures there is a lack of nursing staff, the question must be asked, “What is the second-best solution after the best possible one?” His “fallback position” consisted of “letting those who have tested positive work with very special protective measures.”

This led to social media boiling over with angry comments. “SisterUncomfortable,” who works in an intensive care unit, tweeted that Spahn’s demand was “a state’s declaration of bankruptcy in 5 words!” She continued: “We are worth nothing! Not even the dirt under the fingernails of the nation! WE. ARE. NOT. YOUR. COMMON PROPERTY!”

She added: “We deserve to be protected. And all I can do is sit back and watch helplessly as they burn us out.”

Duncan Blues wrote, “Nursing staff have been consistently burned [out] for years, and now with coronavirus they are dumping kerosene on the smouldering funeral pyre of the nursing emergency.”

Others confirmed that this has indeed been “like this for quite some time.” One wrote, “As long as there are no symptoms, work must continue.” Another said nurses are “used to being exploited and put under pressure (stepping in, even if you have time off or vacation).”

Ms. Flausch wrote, “This is bad. Have already been told by a friend who is a doctor. He should continue to work with an infection as an ENT at a large university hospital.”

Neinhorn wrote: “It disgusts me deeply how nursing staff are used as service-providing sacks of meat and are treated like service robots with helper syndrome. It made me sick even before COVID and it’s becoming more and more perverted.”

L+ wrote of a “total failure in personnel recruitment in care and education,” and explained that it was “the fault of politics.”

Enije wrote, “Just because a minister says so, we don’t have to take the bullshit. I can’t remember having sworn an oath of service for better or worse.”

For a few days now, the question of how those affected can defend themselves has been repeatedly appearing on the internet. For example, Ingmar V. wrote: “It is absolutely necessary to think about solutions, how nursing staff can conduct a kind of strike without endangering the people they look after. … Proposals?”

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) and its sister organizations in Europe and worldwide have formulated such proposals. We advocate establishing independent rank-and-file committees in schools and factories so that workers can network and take protection against the coronavirus into their own hands, independently of the trade unions. This should be directed toward the preparation of a European-wide general strike.

On March 7, the World Socialist Web Site wrote: “The indifference of the Trump administration to the health of the population is no better, and perhaps worse, than the attitude of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the slaves.”

The article went on to say that in responding to the disease, “one principle must guide us: that human need is primary.” It continued: “Combating an epidemic that threatens millions of lives cannot be subordinated to considerations of private profit. … It is necessary to build a mass movement of the working class to demand an immediate emergency response to the crisis, to be paid for by the corporations, the government and the financial oligarchy.”

This past summer, when the government imposed a full reopening of the schools, the WSWS warned that it was only a matter of time before rising infection rates would spread to the elderly and result in thousands of deaths.

This is exactly what has happened. Currently, the number of people infected in nursing homes is rising at an alarming rate.

Over the weekend, a home for the elderly and a nursing home in the Berlin district of Lichtenberg had to be partially evacuated because 30 residents and 17 employees had contracted the virus. Within a short period, 14 of the sick residents had died.

Private elderly care operator Kursana, which belongs to the Dussmann Group and has the closest relations with the Social Democratic Party-Left Party-Green Party Berlin Senate, employs almost 7,000 staff at its 116 facilities, including numerous caregivers on temporary contracts. Comments on the internet speak of “too few and overworked staff who exceed their limits daily.” They note that at Kursana, one nurse has to care for nine residents.

In Mannheim there were outbreaks at two facilities. More than 120 people (93 residents and 28 nursing staff) were infected, and eight residents died within a short time. There were further outbreaks in old people’s and nursing homes in Bad Soden-Salmünster in Hesse, Fürth in Bavaria (with 63 people infected), and Karlsfeld near Munich, with 48 people infected and 13 dead in a single old people’s home.

“The heads of government have blanked out the distress in old people’s homes,” Eugen Brysch, head of the Patient Protection Foundation, commented in response to the chancellor’s meeting on Monday. Brysch pointed out that so far half of the deceased COVID-19 patients have been residents of old people’s and nursing homes.

Teachers, school principals, parents and students are increasingly aware of this, and more and more of them are calling for action to stop the pandemic from spreading throughout the schools—but meeting with resistance from politicians.

In early November, the city of Solingen decided to divide up classes and hold weekly alternating face-to-face and distance-learning classes. But the North Rhine-Westphalia state executive, a coalition of the Christian Democrats and Free Democrats, banned this. Education Minister Yvonne Gebauer cited “educational equity” as the reason.

When a comprehensive school in Lollar, near Giessen, decided to take part in a voluntary testing series, almost 90 percent of the students took part. Last week, the test results at the Clemens Brentano European School in Lollar became known, and of some 750 pupils in grades five to 10 who took the test, 60 were COVID-19 positive. As a result, the entire school was closed.

However, it will have to reopen next Monday, after just under two weeks, and resume normal operations.

A video of Markus Söder is currently circulating, in which the Bavarian state premier openly expresses the deeper political motives for the opening of schools and day care centres. On September 22, Söder explained that the real purpose was to keep the economy running.

He said: “Our children need to be cared for if we want to prevent an economic lockdown. That is the context: schools and day care centres also have the purpose of keeping the economy running.”

There is no significant difference here from what Donald Trump promised Wall Street earlier this month: “This administration will not be going to a lockdown.”