Growing protests in Germany against lethal policy of opening schools

Gregor Link

The decision by German politicians to keep schools, day-care centres and businesses open under unsafe conditions is daily costing the lives of hundreds of people, who die a completely avoidable and agonizing death. On Wednesday, the number of deaths in Germany reached a new high of 512 deaths—the day before it was 487. Another 17,000 to 19,000 people are currently infected every day, and many fall seriously ill.

Nevertheless, the federal and state governments are sticking to their homicidal herd immunity policies, and on Wednesday, again spoke out against the closure of schools and nonessential production. In doing so, they are continuing deadly policies and putting tens of thousands of lives at risk. The positive test rate has risen sharply in recent weeks and now stands at 9.3 percent—almost twice as high as the threshold of 5 percent set by the World Health Organisation (WHO), a level above which the pandemic threatens to spiral out of control.

Crowds of pupils in a school in Dortmund-Hacheney, Germany

“We can see that the health authorities are increasingly exhausted,” said Professor Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI—the German government agency responsible for disease control and prevention), at a press conference on Wednesday. “For example, they are no longer able to determine where those affected have contracted the disease. We are seeing more and more outbreaks in old people’s homes and nursing homes.” In some regions, Wieler said, hospitals were once again at the limit of their capacity. The number of serious outbreaks and deaths was increasing “from week to week.” Due to the time lag between infection and death, “many more” were to be expected.

Virologist Christian Drosten, from Berlin’s Charité hospital, also confirmed on Twitter on Wednesday, concerning the figures in the RKI report, that these were “minimum measures” due to “under-testing” and that “late reports could therefore be expected.”

The fact that November was by far the deadliest month of the pandemic to date is a devastating indictment of the criminally inadequate government action aimed solely at protecting the corporate balance sheets of German corporations, stabilizing the financial markets and not endangering Christmas shopping.

A key role in this calculation is played by schools and day-care centres—not as safe places for education and free development, but as “custodians” of children who should not get in the way of their working and profit-producing parents.

With a view to schools, Wieler conceded that “naturally” an “infectious event” was also taking place there and added, “We are seeing more and more outbreaks in school settings. By [Wednesday] we had received news of a total of 636 outbreaks in schools. In the last four weeks, that was 64 outbreaks per week.”

To protect “grandma and grandpa,” the RKI president called for the coronavirus rules (wearing a mask, maintaining a safe social distance, regular ventilation) to be followed and warned the population of the devastating consequences of poor “compliance.” He did not mention a word about the government’s responsibility.

But students, parents and teachers know only too well that individual adherence to the rules is not enough to ensure safety from the contagious virus in crowded schools and day-care centres. While children and young people come to school with sleeping bags, hot-water bottles and umbrellas to avoid freezing or being snowed on due to the open windows and sub-zero temperatures, protests and school strikes for safe education are growing throughout the country.

As reported by broadcaster WDR, students at the Schiller School in Bochum went on strike on Wednesday against forced attendance at classes amid the pandemic, “to protect their own health and that of their families.” According to the school management, half of the students stayed away from lessons, and in the upper school, “a maximum of five percent” of students were present. Student representative Abdelbari Shniba told the broadcaster, “The anger about the current coronavirus schools’ policy is, of course, great. This is mainly because it is the top priority of this state government to enforce in-person lessons by all means.” He emphasized “that we are not per se striking lessons, but in-person lessons.”

According to press reports, the district government of Arnsberg, in its role as school supervisory authority, made it clear in an “objective discussion” with the students “that there is no room for exceptions from the nationwide regulations.” School administrators could only set up distance learning “in consultation with the responsible school supervisory authority” if in-person teaching could no longer be guaranteed “due to a lack of personnel capacities caused by the coronavirus”—in other words, only if masses of teachers had already become victims of the pandemic.

In Frankfurt, hundreds of students went on strike on Monday to demand safe education and a model alternating in-person with at-home lessons. Three hundred students took part in a demonstration at 11 a.m., called by the Frankfurt am Main City School Board (SSR). As the hessenschau television news reported, the students were demanding the provision of additional buses and trains for peak hours and a tightening of hygiene rules in schools. “Regular lessons in full classrooms are a danger to students, teachers and their families,” explained SSR board member Hannes Kaulfersch.

The school strikes in Bochum, Frankfurt and other cities follow the pattern of protests and school occupations that have taken place in France, Poland and Greece in recent weeks and months. They are part of a nascent international mass movement of students and workers against the European governments’ herd immunity and austerity policies.

Resistance is also growing among teachers. In a video statement on Instagram that went viral, teacher and author Bob Blume states, “Actually, you don’t even need to read Kafka anymore—you just have to look into the latest regulations.” This was particularly evident in the refusal of state governments to close schools or equip them safely: “If the incidence value is too high for us, we simply set the limit higher!” He had “to bring forward all class tests,” so that “students now have to write three class tests a week” and were literally “bombarded” with tests.

Meanwhile, he said, there was a lack of “resources for school administrators, who sit in school until the evening.” While he publicly condemned the situation, Blume said, “no one among the politicians was interested.” He summed up their attitude toward the pandemic and schools by saying: “Students simply don’t matter. Teachers don’t matter, school administrators don’t matter—it all simply doesn’t matter at all.”

Andrei Priboschek, editor of the educational magazine News4Teachers, has also sharply criticized the arrogance and inaction of government politicians in an open letter to the prime ministers of the German states.

Given the hypocritical admission by Bavarian State Premier Markus Söder that “practically one plane crashes every day in Germany,” Priboschek said, “the question arises as to why you don’t care about air traffic control (to keep the analogy). On the contrary: you do everything possible to maintain mass air transport without restrictions. Worse still: you even drive people into the aeroplanes.”

Instead of ensuring safety in schools or closing them down, government politicians had agreed “that schools could introduce hybrid in-person and at home teaching, if the local incidence value is over 200—but even then, only occasionally and when it suits the respective state government.” And this despite the “hundreds of outbreaks in educational institutions” noted by the RKI.

The result of this decision was that “aeroplanes ... continue to fall from the sky day after day, while in day-care groups and school classes, around 13 million children, young people and their educators and teachers are brought together every day practically unprotected, in the case of schools this is even obligatory due to compulsory education.”

The News4Teachers editor also contradicts the lie that keeping schools open has something to do with educational fairness: “For decades ... we have known that 20 percent of students—those from poor families—are well and truly disconnected. ... And what have you done for these children in the past 20 years? Nothing.” There were “no cross-cutting school concepts” for distance learning, no adapted curricula and examination schedules, “no digital equipment” and no additional teaching staff to ensure that students could repeat the “messed up school year” voluntarily.

Instead, “millions of children and hundreds of thousands of teachers have to sit in schools every day at single-digit temperatures in conditions that you and your staff in state chancelleries and ministries would never accept. The federal government provides its top officials on business trips with a second ticket for air and rail travel, so they don’t have anyone sitting next to them during the flight or trip. State administrations have equipped state parliaments and ministries with mobile air filters. They conduct their meetings via video conferencing software and sit behind Plexiglas screens in the state parliaments. But day-care centres and schools must continue as if there were no pandemic.”

Their “dishonesty towards families, educators and teachers,” Priboschek concludes, meant the German state premiers were “not one jot better” than the US president and notorious liar, Donald Trump, whose government is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

To stop the murderous “profits before life” policy, students, teachers, educators and parents need a socialist perspective, and must take their safety in their own hands. An important step on this path was marked by a networking meeting last Friday, called by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE). By an overwhelming majority, the meeting adopted a political resolution calling for the formation of rank-and-file committees to prepare strikes for safe education.

The resolution stresses that “resistance in schools must be linked to workers’ struggles for safe workplaces and to defend jobs. It must be part of a broad mobilization for a general strike that places the needs and health of the people against the profit logic of capitalism.” Instead of transferring billions to the corporations, the following demands must be implemented: Close schools and day-care centres and prepare safe education! Invest billions in safe and good education! Full compensation for lost wages for parents who have to care for their children!

Alternative for Germany shifts further to the right

Peter Schwarz

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is positioning itself ever more openly as a fascist party. This was underscored by its party congress held last Saturday in Kalkar, North Rhine-Westphalia.

The congress’ proceedings were dominated by bitter conflicts between party leader Jörg Meuthen and the neo-Nazi “Wing” (Flügel) around Thuringia state AfD leader Björn Höcke. But this is merely the form through which the entire party shifts further to the right, tests out its political options and searches for a social base for a mass fascist movement.

AfD leader Jörg Meuthen (Photo: Robin Krahl / CC BY-SA 4.0)

Many media outlets portrayed the congress as a conflict between the bourgeois and right-wing extremist forces. But they did the same in 2015, when Frauke Petry ousted party founder Bernd Lucke, and in 2017, when Petry suffered the same fate. At the time, Meuthen was pulling the strings to engineer Petry’s ouster in collaboration with Höcke, the party’s honorary chairman Alexander Gauland, and parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel. Meuthen has cooperated closely with the right-wing extremists ever since. No journalist can explain how this promoter of right-wing extremists has suddenly become a standard bourgeois politician.

In his speech, Meuthen warned the 600 delegates to moderate their manners and statements. He called for more distance from militant coronavirus deniers, criticised “the pushing and shoving around” in parliament, where guests invited by AfD deputies threatened deputies from other parties, and attacked the honorary chairman Gauland, who had spoken of a “coronavirus dictatorship.”

“But is it really wise to talk about a coronavirus dictatorship?” asked Meuthen. “We don’t live in a dictatorship, otherwise we would hardly be able to hold this congress as we are doing today.”

Meuthen is above all concerned that a too explicit presentation of the AfD’s right-wing extremist positions could scare off some voters. The party’s poll numbers are currently well under the level of support it received in 2017, when the AfD emerged as the third largest party with 12.6 percent of the vote. “People will stop voting for us due to such incidents,” complained Meuthen. “We won’t be successful by appearing increasingly aggressive, rude and uninhibited.”

At the congress, Meuthen enjoyed support from delegates in western Germany, who are concerned about losing their parliamentary posts and thus their incomes. However, less than a third of the delegates applauded his speech. Around half of the delegates and the remainder of the party leadership opposed him, which culminated in bitter recriminations. Some loudly called for him to resign and held up red voting cards in protest. The party congress organisers turned the microphone off when several angry speakers opposed him. Gauland described Meuthen’s speech as aimed at “splitting” the party and accused him of bowing before the domestic intelligence agency.

Unlike previous congresses, the Kalkar gathering did not result in a split. A motion denouncing Meuthen’s “splitting behaviour” was not put to a vote. Meuthen and his opponents have no differences over content. They all advocate the same right-wing extremist, xenophobic, chauvinist and authoritarian policies. They merely have tactical disagreements.

At the end of the congress, 89 percent of the delegates voted to accept the main motion of the federal commission on social policy. The document is a racist and volkish manifesto. It incites hatred against foreigners and contains no genuine social demands or policies to redistribute wealth.

Social policy is for the AfD above all a means to resolve the “demographic crisis” and increase the birth rate. “An increase in the birth rate to a sustained level of 2.1 children per woman is the only way to stabilise and retain our social systems, and also to maintain our culture and the continued existence of our people,” stated the motion.

Immigrants should be barred from social welfare to the greatest extent possible and repatriated to their countries of origin, it continues. Large sections of the motion amount to a diatribe against foreigners. For example, it blames “the migration of poorly-trained and low-qualified migrants since the 60s” for “the disappearance of German virtues.”

The social policy measures proposed by the AfD cannot even be described as modest. The age of retirement should be freely chosen in line with several options, which would either contribute to an increase in old-age poverty or elderly people in the workforce.

Politicians, the self-employed and newly hired state officials, excluding soldiers, police officers and judicial employees, should be brought into the obligatory pension system and no longer be financially supported by the state—a populist demand aimed at appealing to anger towards those “at the top” while doing nothing to overcome social inequality. The wealthy and those with high incomes would be left unscathed.

The AfD also proposed a form of child premium. Families should receive €20,000 of the parents’ pension contributions in the form of rebates through the tax system, and the state should transfer €100 each month into a savings account for every child who is born as a German citizen and leads their life in Germany.

The AfD is despised among wide layers of the population and has fallen well below 10 percent support in many opinion polls. Their influence is secured thanks above all to the established parties, and the official “left” in particular, for two reasons.

Firstly, the “left” parties are responding to the global capitalist crisis and the coronavirus pandemic with renewed attacks on the working class and lower middle class. As the banks and major corporations are flooded with cash from the government and central bank and the share markets reach new record highs, workers are losing their jobs or being forced to work under life-threatening conditions. Small business owners and the self-employed are being forced into bankruptcy.

The government policies implemented by the Left Party, Social Democrats and Greens do not differ on these issues from the Christian Democrats (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU), or Free Democrats (FDP). This provides the AfD with the opportunity to fish for support among desperate layers of the population with National Socialist demagogy.

Secondly, the establishment parties are deliberately paving the way for the AfD. They welcome them into the media and parliaments. The further the AfD shifts to the right, the closer the established parties collaborate with it. The right-wing extremist terrorist networks in the army and police, which have close ties to the AfD, are systematically covered up by the intelligence services and judiciary.

The true relationship between the established parties and the AfD was shown clearly in Thuringia in February, when the CDU, FDP and AfD jointly voted in a new minister president. After he was forced to resign in the face of a wave of protests, Left Party Minister President Bodo Ramelow reached out the hand of cooperation to the AfD and cast the deciding vote to give the party the prestigious post of a parliamentary vice president in Thuringia’s state parliament.

In Saxony Anhalt, the CDU and AfD are currently cooperating closely to block a planned increase in the broadcast licence charge. Their opposition to the unpopular measure is a pretext to pave the way for a government coalition including the AfD.

The promotion of the AfD by the establishment parties has objective roots. The ruling class is relying on the right-wing extremist party to enforce its policies of militarism, the strengthening of the repressive state apparatus, and social spending cuts against mounting opposition among the population. The coronavirus policies pursued by the federal and state governments are virtually identical with those of the far-right “Lateral Thinkers” movement and the AfD. A few activities in the sphere of private life are restricted, but the real super-spreader events—schools, workplaces, and public transport systems—remain open without any safeguards. Profits must flow unhindered, even if this costs large numbers of human lives.

UK healthcare workers: “The ending of lockdown will see a massive increase in infections”

Margot Miller

Healthcare workers have spoken with the World Socialist Web Site about the catastrophic impact of coronavirus on the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). Doctors, nurses and health care assistants say hospitals are at breaking point and warn that the Johnson government’s ending of the national lockdown will fuel a new wave of infections and hospital admissions in the weeks ahead.

When the partial national lockdown was lifted Wednesday, the number of new COVID-19 cases over the previous 24 hours stood at 16,170, with 414 deaths. Hospital admissions stood at 15,236, with 1,313 patients on a ventilator. The official UK death toll stands at 60,113, but if “excess deaths” are included, more than 70,000 lives have been lost to the virus.

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [Credit: Neil Hall Pool via AP]

Across the world, November was the pandemic’s deadliest month. A record 17 million people tested positive for the virus and 212,000 people died. So far, the pandemic has claimed more than 1.5 million lives, with more than 65 million cases. Across Europe, 334,981 people have died.

Though the infection rate in the UK has only just begun to dip, the Johnson government, with Labour’s full backing, has replaced the November lockdown with a regionally based tier system of restrictions under which schools, universities, retail outlets and most businesses will remain open.

A senior healthcare assistant (SHA) on a gerontology ward in Merseyside told the WSWS, “The tier system is a token gesture that addresses nothing concerning public health. The ending of lockdown will see a massive increase in infections. It’s one step forward, two steps back. Our ward has just gone green again, there are no cases, but we will see a steep rise across the city, so I can see us going red again, which will be the third time in less than a year.

“From the perspective of containing a highly contagious virus the tiers make zero sense. This just creates a mood of scepticism and apathy within the public, and especially when government officials don’t adhere to the rules or take them seriously. Science isn’t driving these policies, it’s big business and protecting the economy.

“The fact that Xmas is being used disgusts me. Didn't the Daily Mail use the headline ‘Boris battles to save Christmas’? The cynicism is astounding. It's no good spending a happy Christmas with relatives only to bury them in January or February. There is going to be yet another massive spike of infections.”

During the most recent peak in cases, his ward was turned over completely to the care of Covid patients. “[Non-Covid patients] went home or into nursing homes if they tested negative. At the height of the peak we had 18 patients—five died,” he said. “Morale was rock bottom.”

As in the first wave of the pandemic, the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) was still problematic.

“There is enough PPE now, as in quantity, most of the time, but we wear a white flimsy apron, normal surgical mask, and a visor and gloves. When you raise the effectiveness of this equipment, you are told by infection control that it is adequate.”

Workers in the NHS speak of “burnout” due to long hours of work, staff absences due to quarantining and the stress of constantly dealing with seriously ill Covid patients. “One Higher Care Assistant was in tears; the ward was staffed with agency and bank staff--no permanent staff--and none of the staff knew the patients and their care was shambolic.

“People say [the government] are ‘incompetent’ but it’s not incompetence. It’s a clear strategy of balancing between prioritising the economy while appearing to be tackling a massive public health crisis. And they’ve lined their pockets, and the pockets of their cronies in the process.”

Pointing to the billions in taxpayer money handed over to profiteers for basic medical supplies, he told the WSWS, “Profiting from the deaths of 70,000 people in the UK--they should be arrested and put on trial.

“The NHS is on the brink of collapse and severely lacks resources. There is also a massive crisis in staffing levels. The NHS was struggling before the pandemic, and the virus has only added to these pressures. Consistent cuts by all governments over the years, and the strangling debt owed through PFI [private finance initiative] is being graphically exposed. From articles I’m reading the collapse of the NHS is perilously close.”

A consultant haematologist from the North of England explained that government protocols determining Covid hospital admissions were denying treatment, resulting in people dying at home. This is because the NHS was “in danger of being overwhelmed”.

Patients sick at home with COVID-19 are told to call the NHS 111 helpline. Operators ask people routine questions devised by Public Health England and Wales to determine whether to send an ambulance—“is your temperature more than C38 degrees, do you have chest pain, are you breathless on exertion or can you complete a sentence?”

He gave the example of a local Indian restaurant owner whose brother-in-law had Covid for eight days. “He told me they called 111 the previous day and an ambulance came to the house.

“Paramedics examined his blood pressure, pulse and oxygen saturation levels using a hospital machine, which indicated level 94 (normal oxygen levels are 98-100),” he continued. “They didn’t do a blood test or Xray. Following government protocols, which use 90 as a cut off level, staff advised him to rest at home.

“I asked the family to measure the patient’s oxygen levels (they have a low-cost home machine) and it was 91. I said, ‘get him admitted immediately’ as I understood the patient was critical, age 46 with no comorbidities.

“An ambulance came again, measured his oxygen levels which were 91 and asked the patient to stay at home and rest. The patient insisted he should be admitted.

“He was admitted to hospital and taken to ICU [intensive care unit] where he was almost intubated. Luckily, he was given oxygen via a Cpap [Continuous positive airway pressure] machine. He also received intravenous antibiotics, steroids and anti-coagulants—the death rate is lower now because of these new therapies. An X-ray revealed he had full blown Covid pneumonia. In my opinion, without treatment, this man would have died by morning.

“Government protocols can’t manage Covid patients, who ideally should be seen by a team, including a doctor, a nurse and a healthcare worker. In March, April and May, patients over 70 didn’t get admitted to some hospitals, were given a DNAR [do not resuscitate] form and sent home to die.”

The doctor explained that if you have COVID-19 and ring 111, “most of the time [they are] giving wrong advice. Call 999 [emergency services] and ask to be admitted to hospital. They can’t say no—it’s an international rule.”

While medical staff have improved therapies and learned from their experience in the initial wave, the “government haven’t improved anything apart from PPE. They haven’t got more ICU beds or more permanent staff but use retired workers. This is unethical because they will be killed. The shortages in March are still here. Recovery beds have been turned into ICU beds, waiting lists are longer. The NHS will never manage the problems.”

A consultant pathologist working in a Midlands hospital explained how the influx of Covid patients meant working an extra two hours on top of an eight-hour shift, balancing the needs of Covid and non-Covid patients.

The consultant, who also works on Covid wards, specialises in treating leukaemia, lymphoma, bleeding disorders and blood clotting disorders. He explained, “The main focus of the laboratory team now is COVID diagnostics”, adding that there was “less time for training junior doctors in detecting other illnesses.”

The pathologist opposed the lifting of national lockdown measures, “It is wise to take maximum infection control precautions, and it would be better to close schools and universities as well.”

A respiratory nurse at a hospital in Exeter said, “It’s very difficult to say what the rationale for the tier system is. As soon as tier system was back again, hotel owners from places like Cornwall were already selling their accommodations and spa jacuzzis… It’s all about money really. I think all the other health services will completely be neglected to accommodate for COVID cases. Even our respiratory patients will be asked to stay home, so workload in the community will be out of control. It’s about time we reopened the community hospitals they [the government] have closed over the years.”

A former community rehabilitation assistant at an intermediate care team in Bournemouth, who is now employed as a mental health social worker on the south coast, said, “This new tier system only reinforces the fact that the government has never had a consistent strategy to curb COVID-19. It seems to be reactive rather than proactive one. And it is this kind of approach that will cause the R [Reproduction] rate to surge again.”

A consultant in forensic medicine, formerly employed in an NHS hospital in London, said, “There is no scientific basis of this ‘Christmas ‘ move of the government. It will lead to massive increase of the transmission of the virus causing more deaths. In fact, it is a crime towards humanity by the government.”

UK Tory government manipulated statistics to play down COVID-19 danger to educators

Henry Lee

As far back as June, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published data showing that 148 education workers in the UK had died of COVID-19, including 81 teachers, 21 teaching assistants and 18 in nurseries and childminding.

In the face of such shocking evidence, the Conservative government, in enforcing its policy of herd immunity, has rubbished any conclusion that teaching is a high-risk occupation using a combination of manipulated statistics and outright lies.

This was exposed in a recent response from the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) to a complaint about the government's attempt to manufacture a scientific justification for keeping schools open throughout the limited second national lockdown.

On November 3, the Department for Education (DfE) Twitter account posted a comment made by the chief medical officer for England, Professor Chris Whitty, that “[A]ll the data, including ONS [Office for National Statistics] data, do not imply that teachers are a high-risk occupation, unlike, for example, social care workers and medical staff like myself."

This was met with incredulity among experts, with Dr Sarah Rasmussen, a mathematician at the University of Cambridge who has reported extensively on statistics concerning the coronavirus pandemic, tweeting, "What is Whitty talking about? There’s no UK data to answer this." She suggested Whitty was referring to data collected during the first wave of the pandemic, when schools were largely closed.

Since schools fully reopened in September, teachers have reported conditions which guaranteed the rapid spread of the virus, with a lack of masks and social distancing. ONS data for October shows that the rate of infection among secondary school-aged children was far higher than the rates for age groups over 25. It would be perverse to claim that the spread of the pandemic in schools today is the same as it was between March and May, yet the OSR states that this is exactly what Professor Whitty was saying.

ONS data show that conditions in schools have rapidly worsened since they were opened at the start of September, revealing the rapid spread of the coronavirus among school-aged children.

Three days after Whitty’s comment, the ONS Coronavirus Infection Survey’s weekly bulletin included an "ad-hoc analysis" section, not present in any previous weeks. This presented new analysis of the data collected between September 2 and October 16, which it claims showed "there is no evidence of difference in the positivity rate between teachers and other key workers" in the COVID-19 test results gathered by the survey.

This prompted a complaint by Rasmussen to the OSR, about what seemed to be the leak of this analysis by Whitty, and also about the analysis itself. The use of unpublished ONS statistics was, according to Dr Rasmussen, a breach of the "trustworthiness principle" of orderly release contained in the OSR's Code of Practice for Statistics. The code, which applies to all government bodies, states that the trustworthiness principles are based on the notion that "no-one can just expect to be trusted. An organisation must provide testable evidence to demonstrate that they have the interests of the public at heart" —a key democratic principle on which all ethical use of public statistics is based.

Dr Rasmussen quoted two sections of the code Professor Whitty would have breached by referring to the November 6 report in his comments, which assert, "Policy, press or ministerial statements referring to regular or ad hoc official statistics should [...] contain a prominent link to the source statistics" and "ahead of their publication [...] no indication of the statistics should be made public".

The breaches outlined can only leave the public without the ability to independently scrutinise claims from highly political figures such as the chief medical officer, and vulnerable to dishonest and misleading statistical manipulations.

The means by which subtle statistical manipulations are used to conceal the truth from the working class are revealed by the other part of Dr Rasmussen's complaint about the ONS report itself. The analysis used two main methods to manipulate its results to justify Professor Whitty's conclusion that the data "do not imply that teachers are a high-risk occupation": the separation of teachers into four categories, and the presentation of an average figure for the whole period September 2nd to October 16th.

From the November 6th ONS report. The category of teachers ("unknown type") with the highest infection rate and the largest sample size (i.e. the most reliable data) is separated from the first three categories of teachers by the inclusion of university lecturers. The large error bars indicate the unreliability of the data for the categories with smaller sample sizes.

The sample of 12,201 teachers was separated into four different categories: three based on the age of the children, and one extra "teacher of unknown type" category. The name of this final category, separated from the other three categories by the entry for university lecturers, is intended to suggest that it is a small, insignificant sample, and that teachers reading the survey ought to look at the positivity rate for the type of school in which they work, which for primary and secondary teachers is lower than the figure for other key workers. This is extremely misleading. The "unknown type" category contains every respondent to the survey who wrote "teacher" as their profession. More teachers are contained in this category than in any of the other three, as can be seen by the small "error bars" which describe the size of the fluctuation caused by a small sample size: small error bars indicate a large, reliable sample.

In the most reliable "teacher of unknown type" category, 0.51 percent of respondents tested positive for COVID-19, compared with 0.40 percent of those categorised as "other key workers", a category including care home and healthcare workers. As the value of 0.40 percent still lies within the error bars for teachers of "unknown type"—and it is impossible to rule out the possibility that the difference is due to the small sample size—the ONS concludes pedantically that "there is no evidence of difference". However, Dr Rasmussen notes that as dividing the data into four categories reduced the sample sizes (and so increased the size of the error bars), this really means "we disaggregated and restricted the data in such a way as to make the analysis too underpowered to generate significant evidence."

In response to this complaint the ONS published a new analysis combining all teachers into one category, of which 0.43 percent tested positive for COVID-19 in the survey. Considering the small sample size, Dr Rasmussen's criticism of the analysis as "underpowered" still holds for the updated version. It is disingenuous to draw any conclusion about the risk to teachers from the results presented.

The other issue is that the figure presented in the ONS analysis is based on data collected over the entire period between the start of the school year on September 2 until October 16, three weeks before the analysis was published. While collecting data over a long period can increase the sample size of a study and may be appropriate when studying something which changes quite slowly, such as the average height of the population, it is misleading when presenting analysis of a rapidly developing coronavirus pandemic.

As Dr Rasmussen points out, the data collection started on September 2, but many schools were closed to pupils for teacher training until September 7 and so infections would have been low during this period, making the average figure over the whole period far lower than the true value on November 6 when the results were published.

The exclusion of data collected in the three weeks before the analysis, during which time the ONS data shows a sharp increase in positivity rates nationally, and an even faster increase among school-age children, was justified by the ONS as the additional time required to sort the data into categories based on profession, but had the same distorting effect on the average figure.

The presentation of data on infection rates in the general population in the November 6th report follows the ONS's own procedure for presenting data about the pandemic which evolve over time, a procedure which was not followed in presenting the infection rates for teachers. It is clear from this chart that the behaviour of the pandemic at the start of the term in early September was very different from a few weeks later, suggesting that the actual infection rate among teachers was far higher in mid-October than the average figure presented by the ONS for the period 2nd September to 16th October suggested.

The ONS is aware of the problems with presenting a single average figure calculated from rapidly evolving data. In fact, the ONS deals with these issues competently in most of the bulletin: in every other section which analyses data collected over a period of more than two weeks, the result for each fortnight is presented separately.

This has been the standard procedure the survey has followed since June, so even if the additional time needed to process profession data were a valid reason to exclude three weeks of data (which Dr Rasmussen disputes), the only reason to avoid showing the change in infection rates among teachers over the period covered is to conceal data revealing that the risk to teachers has increased over time, and for the most recent period is higher than other professions.

These issues alone are enough to render the ONS analysis untrustworthy, with Dr Rasmussen comparing the report to the lies about "weapons of mass destruction" used to justify the Iraq War. She wrote, "If you push hard enough for the manufacture of evidence, evidence will be produced, whether it’s valid or not."

The National Education Union’s joint general secretary, Kevin Courtney, feigned outrage at the ONS report, posting on Twitter the day the complaint was reported, "The outcome of this complaint to the UK statistics authority is very important to teachers and support staff... @NEUnion will write to UK Stats asking for urgent decision on this complaint."

Also very important to teachers and support staff is last month’s vote of the NEU National Executive against a national ballot for strike action in opposition to the dangerous conditions in schools.

Waiting for the outcome of the complaint is another in a long list of manoeuvres intended to provide excuses for the NEU's lack of action to defend its members.

The response from the OSR to Dr Rasmussen's complaint concedes some of the criticisms of the analysis, but makes mealy-mouthed excuses for each, stating, "We do not think that ONS intentionally presented the analysis in a misleading way".

When responding to the allegation that the chief medical officer was referring to the unpublished report in the comments tweeted by the DfE, the OSR reports a damning admission. It said, "We have been told that the evidence which informed the CMO’s [chief medical officer’s] response on 3 November included other published ONS data." The OSR including a link to the report on deaths analysed by occupation over the period March 9 to May 25.

Either this is true and Professor Whitty used data collected when schools were closed to claim that teachers are not currently at high risk, or it was a lie and he was merely making use of more recent heavily manipulated statistics. Either scenario reveals the dishonesty and abuse of science rife in ruling circles to justify their campaign to keep schools open—a key objective in their push to get parents back to work producing profits.

That the supposedly independent ONS is used as a weapon against the working class in this campaign demonstrates, as the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International have insisted, that the fight against COVID-19 is not a medical issue, but a political struggle.

French government announces mass closure of mosques in continuing anti-Muslim crackdown

Samuel Tissot

In the latest step of the extreme-right anti-Muslim campaign by the Macron government in France, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced on Wednesday that dozens of mosques are to be forcibly closed or investigated.

Darmanin tweeted that “as per my instructions, the state services will be launching a massive and unprecedented action against separatism.” He added that “76 mosques suspected of separatism will be investigated in the coming days and those which must be closed, will be.”

The Grande Mosquée de Paris (Wikimedia Commons)

The action had already been outlined in an interior ministry document dated November 27, which was leaked to the right-wing daily Le Figaro. The newspaper reported that of the 76 mosques, 18 will face “immediate action,” i.e., closure, and that another 58 would be investigated by the end of the year. It noted that the national intelligence services had conducted a review of 2,623 mosques across the country.

Speaking to Le Figaro, Darmanin stated that “ever since taking on my post at [the interior ministry], I have asked that we change classifications to be able to identify the separatist centers that have declared war on the Republic.” He added that “up until now, the government has been interested in radicalization and terrorism. Now, we will also attack the terrain of terrorism, where can be found those people who create the intellectual and cultural space to secede and impose their values.”

Darmanin’s statement amounts to a blunt declaration that the government’s target is not terrorism but is directed against the Muslim population. His reference to “people who create the intellectual and cultural space to secede” is defined so vaguely and sweepingly as to encompass every Muslim church and cultural association in the country.

The Macron government is using the attack on Muslims to build up a fascistic police state. Its policy is aimed at whipping up a pogromist atmosphere to strengthen the far-right and justify far-reaching attacks on the democratic rights of the entire population. This is under conditions of mass left-wing demonstrations of hundreds of thousands last Saturday in opposition to police violence and the government’s attempt to criminalize the filming of police violence.

More than 70 mosques have been closed since the beginning of the year. The campaign has been intensified in the wake of the terrorist killing of Samuel Paty on October 15.

Following the attack, Darmanin conducted a tour of television and radio shows, declaring that he was personally “shocked” when he saw supermarket aisles with international—i.e., kosher and halal—foods, and stating that the mere presence of such food aisles led inexorably toward “separatism” and terrorism.

At the same time, Darmanin had announced the closure of the Pantin mosque in Northern Paris, which regularly served around 2,000 Muslims, on the sole grounds that its Facebook page had shared a video prior to the attack criticizing Paty for having shown students in his class an anti-Muslim caricature by Charlie Hebdo. Following the attack, the mosque had immediately pulled down the video and denounced Paty’s murder.

The government has also ordered the dissolution of 52 Muslim associations, including legal rights advocacy groups, charities and other cultural organizations. This includes the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), one of the largest Muslim charities in the country, which primarily offers legal aid to Muslims in discrimination cases. On November 27, it published its “final statement” pronouncing its self-dissolution according to government orders, and shortly thereafter removed its website and social media accounts.

Barakacity, another charity, was also dissolved, and police conducted a violent night-time raid against its president, Idriss Sihamedi.

In the latest announcement, the 76 mosques targeted will supposedly be closed if they have hosted an imam suspected of promoting Islamic terrorism, have violated rules for receiving public funds, have spaces or rooms inside the facility that are not registered with the state, or if they are already subject to a request for the dissolution of an association. The wide scope provides a multitude of possible charges to justify mass closures.

This has been timed to coincide with the government’s efforts to pass its “anti-separatism law,” which will be introduced into the National Assembly on December 9. Cynically renamed the law “confirming republican principles,” it is to be introduced as a bill on the 115th anniversary of the 1905 secularism law. In fact, Macron’s law is a repudiation of the 1905 law and the most basic democratic rights defended and advanced in the French Revolution, including freedom of expression and association, as well as the separation of church and state.

It will force Muslim institutions and imams to sign a humiliating “secular charter,” agreeing that all future imams will be trained with the oversight of the French state; patients who refuse to be examined by a doctor of the opposite sex will be fined up to 75,000 euros; and French school-aged children will be required to register with an identification number to ensure their attendance at school. The last measure, to illegalize home-schooling, was deemed unconstitutional by the Council of State on December 3.

The response of the majority of French and international media to the latest anti-Muslim measures has been either silence or support. One can only imagine the response of Le Monde and other publications had mass closures of mosques and anti-Muslim measures been imposed against the Muslim minority of Russia or China.

Macron and Darmanin have repeatedly declared that that a “war” is being waged against the Republic. Macron stated that “Islam is a religion that is in a crisis all over the world today,” “we must save our children from the clutches of the Islamists.” The government’s declarations, implying the existence of a country-wide Islamic conspiracy to form a break away Muslim theocracy in France, were once restricted to the ramblings of the extreme right. They have been adopted wholesale by the French state.

The government’s actions are aimed at promoting the far-right and anti-Muslim hysteria. In a report published earlier this year, the CCIF found that 789 Islamophobic incidences took place in 2019, up from 446 in 2017.

These developments confirm the warnings of the Socialist Equality Party (France) prior to the 2017 election, that Macron offered no alternative to oppose the neo-fascist policies of Marine Le Pen.

With thousands dying every week as a result of the government’s de facto herd immunity policy and unprecedent levels of social inequality, the French ruling class is preparing for an explosion of social opposition. Its promotion of fascist forces and its building up of police powers will be directed against the entire working class.

1.5 million dead from the coronavirus pandemic worldwide

Bryan Dyne

The world passed a grim milestone Thursday morning: 1.5 million lives lost worldwide from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. More than 10,000 people are killed by this deadly disease every day, 50 percent more than the height of the first wave of the pandemic in April and more than double the daily death rate at the start of October.

Another measure of the spread of the pandemic is the number of confirmed cases of the infection, which has just passed 66 million. Nearly 600,000 people contract the virus each day, up from less than 300,000 new daily cases two months ago. The doubling of both the daily case and daily death rates are stark indicators that the virus has been allowed to rage totally unchecked through the world’s population by governments in every country.

Medical personnel transfer a COVID-19 patient from a state to a private clinic which has been appropriated, in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece, Sunday, Nov. 29, 2020. Greece's Health ministry has forcibly appropriated two clinics and their staff in the country's second populated city, where the outbreak is the most severe. (AP Photo/Achilleas Chiras)

In response to the surging cases worldwide, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned in a recent press briefing, “This is no time for complacency, especially with the holiday season approaching in many countries and cultures.” He noted that while some areas of the world had seen a reduction in new cases in recent days, “Gains can easily be lost and there was still an increase in cases in most other regions of the world and an increase in deaths.”

This is truest in the United States, where the situation remains most dire. There are now more than 14.7 million cases and 285,000 dead across every state and territory, more than any other country in the world. More than 100,000 people in the country are hospitalized from the disease. An average of more than 175,000 people are newly infected each day and nearly 2,000 die. It is projected that the daily death rate will exceed 3,000 this month.

As President-elect Joe Biden said Wednesday, “I don’t want to scare anybody here, but understand the facts—we’re likely to lose another 250,000 people dead between now and January.” Yet, instead of calling for a national lockdown and an emergency halt to all nonessential production to save lives as one of the necessary measures to end the pandemic, Biden declared, “We no longer have to shut down.”

Such statements fly in the face of reality. Forty-seven out of the country’s 50 states have “uncontrolled spread” of the coronavirus, according to the website CovidExitStrategy. On a national scale, the number of those now testing positive for the coronavirus exceeds 1 in 10. Contact tracing is essentially impossible, meaning that those exposed to one who is infected are not alerted and the myriad chains of COVID-19 transmission remain unbroken.

The death toll for Europe as a whole is even higher than that of the United States, currently at more than 416,000. There are more than 5,000 deaths on the continent, meaning that at the current rate, the number of coronavirus deaths in Europe will reach 500,000 before Christmas day. The number of new cases now exceeds 200,000 each day, and total infections broke 18 million on Friday.

Italy now has an average of more than 700 deaths each day, only slightly lower than its peak in March and April. Its number of new infections, while trending downward because of recent lockdown measures, currently still stands at more than 20,000 each day, about four times the known daily cases during the peak of the country’s first wave.

Similarly in the UK, there are still more than 400 deaths in the country each day. The Johnson government’s de facto policy of “herd immunity,” now adopted by governments in all the major capitalist countries, has brought the total number of dead above 60,000. Moreover, the number of “excess deaths” in the country, which research shows is a better measure of the true scale of the pandemic, is well over 70,000.

Belgium now has the highest per capita death toll of any country in the world, currently 1,467 deaths per million people. This has been in large part driven by the government’s abandonment of medical care for residents in retirement homes in Belgium throughout the coronavirus epidemic. At the same time, the new prime minister, Alexander De Croo, declared when he took office in October that he will not consider a lockdown in the country no matter how many lives are lost. “Let me be very clear,” De Croo asserted, “Our country, our economy and our businesses can’t handle a new general lockdown.”

Countries in South America are also experiencing a second wave of coronavirus cases and deaths. There are more than 11.3 million cases on the continent as a whole, and more than 330,000 deaths. More than 74,000 new cases were recorded Thursday and nearly 1,300 deaths.

The most hard-hit country in the Southern Hemisphere remains Brazil, which is facing a spike in cases similar to what it faced over the summer, when there were more than 40,000 new cases a day. The country’s daily death rate is currently more than 500 and rising. Its official case count and death toll, figures that fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro has tried to censor, stand at 6.5 million and 176,000, respectively.

A comparable disaster is continuing to unfold in India, which has more than 9.6 million cases and has suffered nearly 140,000 dead. A recent government-appointed committee has estimated, however, that these numbers are far lower than reality, and that it is likely that fully half of India’s population of 1.3 billion people will have been infected by the contagion by February.

That the pandemic has become so entrenched in every city, state and country in the world is a testament to the real priorities of every government. The necessary public health measures needed to end the coronavirus are known and have been shown to work in the limited number of cases where they have been applied. However, instead—from the United States, to Europe, to South America, to South Asia and beyond—corporate profits and stock market dividends are being placed above human lives.

Dr. Tedros said, “The pandemic has brought us to a fork in the road,” and “we cannot—we must not—go back to the same exploitative patterns of production and consumption, the same disregard for the planet that sustains all life, the same cycle of panic and neglect, and the same divisive politics that fueled this pandemic.”

While true, this cannot be done through an appeal to the world leaders and social system that allowed the coronavirus to become so deadly in the first place. Capitalism itself has been revealed as utterly incapable of meeting the most basic and urgent social needs of the day. The solution to the pandemic is thus not renewed bourgeois nationalism, but the fight for international socialism led by the only revolutionary force in society, the working class.

Podemos denies mounting danger of fascist military coup in Spain

Alejandro López & Alex Lantier

Amid the explosive political crisis in Spain caused by revelations of widespread calls for a fascist coup in the Spanish officer corps, Podemos leader and Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias finally broke his silence Thursday on the matter—but only to insist that the fascist coup plots do not pose any threat.

This is a politically criminal attempt by Podemos to lull workers and youth to sleep in the face of the rising danger of fascism. The day before, Infolibre had leaked WhatsApp chats of a group of dozens of retired top air force officers who proclaimed their loyalty to Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco, denounced the left, boasted of close links to the general staff, and called to massacre the Spanish people. Retired Major General Francisco Beca repeatedly called for mass murder to “extirpate the cancer,” writing: “I think what I’m missing is to shoot 26 million people!!!!!!!!”

The night before Iglesias intervened, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel José Ignacio Domínguez, a former participant in the chat group, went on the radio programme Hora 25. He warned, “there has been and there exists a movement for a pronunciamiento ”, that is, an attempt to shift politics to the right by threatening a coup. Speaking of the participants in the chat, Domínguez added: “They are not monarchists or constitutionalists, they are Francoists and they defend dictatorship. I’m not only talking about the past ones, but the future ones. They aspire to a dictatorship.”

On Thursday morning, however, Iglesias gave a prime-time interview on TVE1 state television to brazenly insist that nothing of any importance had been revealed. He said, “What these gentlemen say, at their age and already retired, in a chat with a few too many drinks, does not pose any threat.”

Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias (Wikimedia Commons)

Iglesias tried to reassure the public that WhatsApp messages are “not representative of our armed forces.” This had been contradicted the night before by Lieutenant Colonel Domínguez, who reported that fascism is alive and well in the Spanish army: “The Franco regime continues to have a large presence in the army, and Franco continues to be a respected figure.”

Nonetheless, Iglesias insisted that the threats from the officers in the WhatsApp group have no practical significance: “If they had done this while they were in active duty, obviously, it would have had disciplinary consequences, but there they would not have done it.”

Iglesias claimed that this was because they lacked “the guts” to agitate for a coup when on active duty. To support this grotesque argument, Iglesias cited the authority of another leading Podemos member, retired Air Force General and Chief of the Defence Staff Julio Rodríguez. Rodríguez, Iglesias claimed, had told him that “some of those who now say atrocities while they were in the army were sucking up to anyone in order to continue rising [in the ranks].”

Iglesias’ argument trivializing fascist support in the army is shot through with contradictions. If these officers long supported a fascist coup but did not have the “guts” for it, and instead spend their time “sucking up” to the general staff, this only raises the question: Why do these officers now believe that calling for a fascist coup is a good way of “sucking up” to the general staff and the ruling class?

In fact, powerful forces in Spanish bourgeois politics are spreading and legitimizing appeals to the king to support a coup. Indeed, while Iglesias and Podemos were maintaining a confused silence after Infolibre ’s revelations, the fascist Vox party was openly defending the officers’ obscene and fascistic WhatsApp chats in the Congress. Hailing the officers calling for the mass murder of 26 million Spaniards as fighting for “the unity of Spain,” Vox lawmaker Macarena Olona declared: “Of course they are our people.”

Beca was the lead signatory of a group of 39 retired air force officers who wrote to Spanish King Felipe VI to denounce the elected Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government. This came after another similar letter from 73 top retired army officers, parts of which were published in El País. These officers have now circulated a new letter, again denouncing a government of “communists” and stressing their “oath to defend the integrity of Spain and the constitutional order, giving our lives if necessary.”

Iglesias is covering up for fascist coup plotting because the PSOE-Podemos government itself has effectively been exposed as criminal. It implemented a “herd immunity” policy on Covid-19, imposing a return to work and school that left over 65,000 dead and 1.5 million infected in Spain. At the same time, as joblessness and hunger mount, Iglesias is joining a commission handing out billions of euros in EU bailout funds to the banks and corporations.

Iglesias knows a movement in the working class against the threat of a fascist coup would also enter into struggle against his own government. He is therefore making himself complicit in the fascist coup threat, desperately trying to hide it from the public.

Millions of Twitter users made the retired generals’ fascist messages one of Twitter’s main trending topics on Tuesday. On Wednesday, this was followed by the trending hashtag #YoSoyDeLos26Millones (I am one of the 26 million), in which tens of thousands commented. Thousands more denounced the king for remaining silent. There were many references to Franco’s fascist coup in 1936, the three-year Spanish Civil War that ensued, and the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of left-wing workers by the fascist Francoite regime at the war’s end.

One Twitter user said: “I would also be one of the first. Like my grandfather. He was shot just because he liked to speak and participate in politics. Just like I do. He continues to chew dirt in his mass grave.”

Another said: “I am one of the 26 million people that are not going to allow this happen again. They will have us in front.”

Iglesias waited in silence for four days after the first publication of one of the fascist officers’ letters in El Pais, when anger was boiling over on social media, before taking a public position on the issue. It is self- evident that his mission was to dampen mounting outrage among workers and youth.

Iglesias in his interview promoted the regime and especially the king, who has yet to disavow the letters, disclose the signatories or reveal other coup appeals he has received. Iglesias said: “I don’t have the slightest doubt that he won’t even read the letter.” He blamed the WhatsApp group for putting the king “in an absurdly uncomfortable situation … If some Francoite gentlemen think that by associating the head of state with Francoism they are doing him a favor, I think they do not understand that this contributes to more and more Spaniards feeling republican.”

These are more lies. Firstly, King Felipe and Iglesias himself are no doubt intensively reading the letters fascist officers are sending. Iglesias sits on the board running Spain’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI), one of whose main purposes is to monitor the army’s coup plots. It is known that the CNI identified and stopped coup plots by the Spanish army in 1982, 1985, and 2006. There can be little doubt that the CNI is now reporting on the fascist officers to Iglesias and other government officials.

Moreover, if Iglesias is unhappy that the Francoite officers are putting the king in an “uncomfortable” position, it is not that he fears a movement to make Spain into a Republic. His fear is that the threat of military-fascist dictatorship will provoke an eruption in the working class of strikes and protests and the development of a political movement against fascism. This would inevitably threaten the interests of the financial oligarchy he defends.