Hong Kong police carry out largest arrests since imposition of national security law

Ben McGrath

In a dragnet on Wednesday, the Hong Kong police carried out the arrest of 53 politicians and activists associated with the city’s official political opposition, the pan-democrat bloc. The arrests are the largest since Beijing passed a national security law last June, designed to stamp out dissent in the city following the eruption of large-scale, pro-democracy protests during the summer of 2019.

Activists shout slogans in response to the mass arrests during a press conference in Hong Kong Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. . (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

The city’s police mobilized over 1,000 officers to carry out Wednesday’s arrests, raiding 72 locations, including four media outlets. Those arrested are being charged with subversion under the national security law. Penalties for convictions range from a minimum of ten years behind bars to life in prison.

Many of those detained are longstanding figures within Hong Kong political establishment, including Benny Tai, a key figure of the 2014 “Occupy” movement; and James To and Claudia Mo, of the Democratic Party and Hong Kong First respectively. Another of the detained former lawmakers, Lam Cheuk-ting, was previously arrested in August under accusations of rioting in 2019. In reality, Lam had been the victim of an attack by pro-Beijing gangsters. John Clancey, a human rights lawyer and US citizen, was also arrested.

Joshua Wong, one of the most prominent youth activists in Hong Kong, was also charged under the national security law for the first time. Police had already jailed Wong on separate charges prior to this week’s raids. In early December, he was sentenced to more than 13 months in prison for taking part in protests deemed unlawful in 2019.

Among the targeted media was the tabloid Apple Daily, which is published by Next Digital Media and founded by Jimmy Lai. Lai has vocally criticized Beijing while posturing as a pro-democracy advocate. He has also been jailed under the national security law after being arrested in August. Lai has longstanding connections with the US intelligence agencies and state department. He has held meetings with figures like Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Hong Kong’s secretary for security John Lee indicated that more arrests could be coming, saying investigations were ongoing. “The government will not tolerate subversion of state power. This is severe, and we will prosecute accordingly,” He stated.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying stated that the arrests were necessary to prevent “external forces and individuals colluding to undermine China’s stability and security.” Since the beginning of the 2019 protests, Beijing has sought to blame foreign interference for the source of public anger, rather than to acknowledge declining living and working conditions and attacks on basic democratic rights that animate working-class discontent throughout China.

The Beijing bureaucracy’s greatest fear is that workers in Hong Kong will break out of the control of the pan-democrats and move to assert their own independent interests and spark the latent opposition within the huge working class on the Chinese mainland.

The arrested include those who ran in an unofficial primary last year, organized to determine which opposition candidates would stand in the general election originally slated for September. More than 600,000 people participated, exceeding expectations.

The Hong Kong government postponed the election in July citing the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext. Wednesday’s arrests therefore make it clearer that the postponement was motivated by political considerations, with the city government and Beijing fearing a landslide victory for the pan-democrats.

Wednesday’s arrests follow the sentencing of 10 people accused of violating border laws while attempting to flee Hong Kong for Taiwan. They were arrested by the Chinese coast guard on August 23 in a boat outside of Hong Kong waters, according to Chinese authorities. They were given sentences ranging from seven months to three years in jail on the mainland.

Two minors also arrested at the time were returned to Hong Kong in police custody. The government tried the group on December 28 in a closed, one-day trial. One of those arrested in August, Andy Li, is an activist who had also been charged with violating the national security law.

Washington has responded to the latest arrests with its standard hypocritical rhetoric. Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state said on Twitter, “The sweeping arrests of pro-democracy demonstrators are an assault on those bravely advocating for universal rights. The Biden-Harris administration will stand with the people of Hong Kong and against Beijing’s crackdown on democracy.”

This is in contrast to Biden and the Democratic Party’s response to the ongoing threat of a coup in Washington, led by President Trump. Prior to the violent assault by fascist rioters on the Capital on Wednesday, the Democrats did everything possible to downplay the threat to democratic rights and the Constitution. Washington has no genuine concern for democracy, but instead sees Hong Kong as another means to undermine China, in an attempt to force it to accept US hegemony.

Hong Kong’s pan-democrats similarly have no real concern for the democratic rights of the city’s workers and youth. They are a coalition of different parties, trade unions, and organizations, headed by the Democratic Party, that represent sections of the Hong Kong bourgeoisie. These layers desire closer economic ties with the US and other Western powers and resent Beijing’s impact on their business interests. While some groupings within the pan-democrats attempt to appear radical or even socialist, they seek to pressure Beijing into making an accommodation.

The pan-democrats are just as hostile to the working class as Beijing. In fact, their duplicity has helped paved the way for Beijing’s crackdown. In 2019 when workers were beginning to join the protest movement, the pan-democrats responding by indicating that, on one hand, they would be willing to accept an agreement with the government, and on the other, utilizing anti-Chinese and pro-US slogans to obfuscate the real causes of the protests and push the movement to the right.

Hong Kong’s official opposition demonstrated it would not launch any serious fight for democratic rights which would involve mobilizing the working class throughout China to directly challenge the Chinese Communist Party regime. Beijing took this as its cue to crack down on opposition figures. Those genuinely wanting to defend democratic rights can place no faith in the pan-democrats and should instead turn to the working class in Hong Kong and throughout China and internationally.

Australian report documents “Blue Harvest” wage theft of international backpackers

Virginia Browne

A recently released McKell Institute study entitled Blue Harvest exposes widespread wage theft in the Coffs Coast region of northern New South Wales. Located halfway between Sydney and Brisbane, the area grows 65 percent of Australia’s blueberry crop.

The report, which was sponsored by the Australian Workers Union, the Transport Workers Union and the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association, reveals that illegal labour hire practises, severe underpayments and the brutal mistreatment of international backpackers on working holidays are endemic.

Blueberry harvesting (Photo source: McKell Insitute)

While Blue Harvest contains testimony from young backpackers on Australia’s Working Holiday Makers (WHM) scheme, the authors state that their study is not a unique exposure. The report, which only covers the 2019–2020 harvest season, is one of several recent reports highlighting wage theft, underpayment and harsh exploitation. These include not just those on the WHM scheme but workers in a range of industries, including retail, restaurants, banking, manufacturing and even tertiary education.

The government’s WHM scheme is dressed up as a “cultural exchange initiative” with its mission statement declaring that participants “would emerge as lifelong ambassadors of the values Australians hold dear.” In reality, the scheme, from its beginnings in 1975, has served to introduce a low wage cohort of international backpackers into the Australian labour market.

Most of the WHMs picking blueberries in Coffs Coast are young international backpackers on 417 visas. Their 12-month, temporary visas can be extended for an additional year if they complete 88 days of prescribed regional work picking fruit.

This requirement means that employers can exert exceptional pressure on the backpackers who only want to complete the labour “obligation” in order to extend their visas, return to urban centres or continue their travels in Australia.

Labour hire contractors with no apparent Australian Business Number (ABN) are widespread in the Coffs Coast area. The lack of an ABN is not only illegal, but can jeopardise workers who need legitimate documentation of their work records to secure the 417 visa.

Several large companies operate in the Coffs Coast region employing WHMs on low pay. Some companies require application forms that take up to six weeks to process. Many backpackers are forced into the arms of ruthless labour hire contractors who offer immediate employment, allowing them to begin or to continue the required 88 days, while waiting for their applications to be approved.

The report describes some of the methods used to reduce wages. One of these consists of using daily fluctuating piece rates, supposedly attributed to changing “market rates,” but arbitrarily set by the employer to ensure that workers’ pay remains below the minimum wage. Workers allege that when fruit is easier to pick, daily piece rates are low and when the fruit is harder to pick (i.e., on crops with a lower yield) the rate is slightly higher.

Jessica, a 24-year-old from Britain, worked in the Coffs Coast blueberry industry between May and September last year. She told Blue Harvest that she was lured to the area after seeing online advertisements promising $1,000 per week. Instead, she faced illegal pay rates, poor accommodation and verbal abuse. For 18 hours of work between June 20 and 26, Jessica was paid just $143 before tax, equating to an hourly rate of $7.95.

“It was a massive scam to get people to come… [and] in the first couple of weeks I probably made like a hundred dollars,” she said. “As a WHM no matter how much you earn you’re taxed 15 percent of anything you make… you can’t really make any money.”

Makato, a 28-year-old Japanese man, said: “Some pickers… didn’t even get paid at all. The contractors just disappeared.” He also complained of delays in payment, bullying and being forced into unpaid administrative work advertising picking jobs and hiring workers. He alleged that he did this work for one month without receiving any pay although he was offered an attractive hourly remuneration.

Makato (McKell Institute: Photo Edward Cavanough)

A 26-year-old female from Ireland said: “The only thing that makes the farm picking worthwhile is meeting new people and making friends. The bad side is using up your savings that you worked hard for to pick berries.”

With only four hostels operating in the area, the vast majority of WHMs are forced to reside in share houses. Unscrupulous landlords in the Coffs Coast area also profit from the WHMs, cramming between 6 and 12 people into houses and charging from $125 to $150 per person, a net profit around three times the median rent of comparable properties in the region.

One resident told Blue Harvest that the landlord allowed two additional WHMs to sleep in their cars in the driveway. They were charged the same rate as other tenants in the share house on the dubious grounds that they were using amenities.

Blue Harvest also provides a glimpse of the substandard accommodation provided to blueberry pickers employed under Australia’s Seasonal Workers’ Program, which recruits workers from Pacific island nations.

This housing consists of clusters of shipping containers accommodating 90 individuals. Each container holds two bunk beds for four residents and costs $120 a week per tenant. The combined payment of the four workers is the same as renting a three-bedroom house in the area. On top of the high cost of rent, workers are charged $50 per week for transport to and from the worksite.

Shipping container accommodation for Pacific Island workers (McKell Institute: Photo Edward Cavanough)

Following Blue Harvest’s release, Australian Workers Union national secretary Daniel Walton feigned outrage and declared that minimum conditions should be “nailed down in law.” The union, he said, would apply to the Fair Work Commission to amend the current horticulture award so workers receive the poverty-level $24.80 an hour minimum casual wage instead of “piece-work” rates.

All this is hot air. The unions, having collaborated with consecutive Liberal-National Coalition and Labor Party governments, opened the way for the brutal work practises that dominate the industry. They have presided over the destruction of full-time jobs and the rampant casualisation of the workforce, that underlies wage theft and super-exploitation.

In line with its union sponsors, Blue Harvest calls for stronger enforcement of workplace compliance laws, a redesign of the visa system, union worksite inspections, an income safety net for piece-rate workers, national labour-hire licensing, the criminalisation of wage theft and a royal commission into the industry. In other words, industry work practices should be codified and unions given coverage of the workforce.

Last year, as the Blue Harvest report was being finalised, the unions seized on the COVID-19 pandemic to deepen their collaboration with the government and big business over wide-ranging changes to industrial relations. In March, the ACTU helped employers cut the pay and conditions of millions of workers in hospitality, retail and clerical work. It also agreed that employers across the board could do likewise under the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme.

In mid-October, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) national secretary Sally McManus revealed that “ broad agreement ” had been reached on several measures, including an offer to end civil or criminal penalties for employers paying under the legal rate of remuneration.

McManus calculated that employer groups and Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government would return the favour by recognising that “union coverage” is the best mechanism for policing the working class. The agreement could mean that any repayments to workers who have been systematically underpaid would be off the negotiating table.

Vaccine distribution mired in delays across Europe

Will Morrow

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread out of control throughout the European continent, the program of vaccination organized by the European Union is already widely recognized to be a debacle. With governments lacking any plan for the international distribution of a vaccine, key infrastructure and services undermined by years of funding cuts to the health care system, and decision-making subordinated to the profit interests of giant pharmaceutical corporations, Europe’s vaccination rollout has been among the slowest in the world.

Staff state health worker prepares a Pfizer coronavirus vaccine to administer for residents and health workers at San Jeronimo nursing home, in Estella, around 38 kms (23 miles) from Pamplona, northern Spain, Thursday, Jan. 7. 2021. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

The situation is particularly stark in France, where the slow pace of the vaccine rollout has created a political scandal for the Macron government. The first vaccination at an aged-care facility took place with great fanfare and media blitz on December 27, the same weekend that the EU approved the use of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Since then, approximately 5,000 people have been vaccinated in France, according to the latest data published January 5 by the health ministry. This amounts to an average of 500 people per day. Continuing at this pace, it would take more than three centuries to vaccinate 90 percent of the French population.

The rollout is not significantly more advanced elsewhere. In Germany, just over 367,000 people had received a vaccination by January 5. It would take until 2027 to vaccinate the German population at this rate. Italy has vaccinated only 260,000; Spain, 139,000; and Denmark, 63,000; all as of January 5. The Netherlands is yet to vaccinate anyone, with the government announcing that it will not commence vaccinations until January 18.

Britain, which approved the use of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at the beginning of December and administered the first vaccine on December 8, only 1.3 million people had received a vaccination by Thursday. At this rate it would take more than four years to vaccinate the population.

As of Monday, Israel, population 8.84 million, had vaccinated more people than the entire EU, population 447 million.

Popular anger has prompted mutual recriminations by governments attempting to shift blame for the incompetent and chaotic rollout. Last weekend, the head of the German Christian Social Union Markus Söder criticized the European Commission for not purchasing enough of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine early enough. This was followed by BioNTech CEO and newly minted billionaire Uğur Şahin stating in an interview with Der Spiegel that he had been surprised by the low number of vaccines purchased by the EU.

Beginning in June, the European Commission purchased more than 2 billion vaccines, enough to vaccinate the entire population more than twice over. However, given the uncertainty over which vaccine would prove to be effective, it spread the purchases across six different vaccines, including Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

Until Wednesday this week, when the EU authorized the use of the Moderna vaccine that has already been approved in the US and UK, the Pfizer/BioNTech remained the sole vaccine authorized for use on the continent.

Pfizer was forced to announce that it would be unable to meet its promised outlay of 12.5 million vaccines by the end of December. It has pledged to increase production in Europe, but announced that it remained in private negotiations with five to six private manufacturers over the terms of a contract for the manufacture of the drug. With billions of people internationally depending upon the rapid distribution of a vaccine and the eradication of the virus, the urgent needs of humanity are subordinate to the profit interests of pharmaceutical giants and a relative handful of their large shareholders that have already reaped billions from the crisis.

Commentators note that a major bottleneck has been in the use of the vaccines that have already been distributed to countries. None of the countries in Europe have distributed a large portion of the doses they have already received. Germany, which has proceeded the furthest, has distributed less than one half the doses that it has available.

In France, the Macron government has faced a scandal over the slow pace of its vaccine delivery. It had initially focused exclusively on vaccinations in aged care facilities. Besides this, no decisions were taken for the creation of vaccination centers across the country. In the face of the escalating political scandal, Macron leaked statements to the press criticizing the slow pace of the rollout from his government. Health minster Olivier Véran tweeted on January 2 pledging that there would be 100 vaccination centers created across the country over the course of the next week.

The Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines all require two doses to be administered separated by several weeks to the same patient to obtain the effectiveness recorded in clinical trials. Governments are increasingly moving toward expanding the time interval between successive doses to simplify the process of the distribution of the vaccine and shortcut their own logistical failures. They are doing so without scientific evidence as to the impact that such a lengthening will have on the efficacity of the vaccine.

The UK has already announced that it will extend to 12 weeks the time interval between the two doses of both the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines—double the time length recommended by the European Medicines Agency. There are also discussions of similar moves in Germany and the Netherlands.

Pfizer released a statement explaining that “there are no data to demonstrate that protection after the first dose is sustained after 21 days.” The World Health Organization’s representative Dr. Joachim Hombach noted that “there is very little empirical data from the trials that underpin this type of recommendation” to extend the separation between doses.

The chaotic and incompetent rollout of the vaccine is driven by the same interests that have motivated the response to the pandemic by capitalist governments internationally from the outset. They have rejected the closure of schools and nonessential production, with full wages paid to quarantined workers, to prevent the transmission of the virus, because such policies would impact on the profits of major corporations. Their priority is the protection of corporate profits, not lives.

Yet such measures are essential to any serious policy of vaccination. The spread of the virus must be halted to provide time for the vaccine to be distributed throughout the population in a safe manner in line with the most accurate scientific estimates.

Egyptian hospitals run out of oxygen, killing COVID-19 patients in ICU wards

Jean Shaoul

Video clips of the chaotic and tragic scenes in intensive care units (ICU) treating COVID-19 patients that ran out of oxygen supplies have provoked shock and outrage throughout Egypt.

On Saturday, video shot by a distressed visitor at the Zefta general hospital in the Gharbiya governorate, north east of the capital Cairo, captured the terrible scene in a ward where the oxygen had run out. It showed a woman running up and down the aisles shouting, “I will expose you everywhere… You filthy government!”, and filming rooms showing patients struggling on their beds and members of the medical team collapsed on the floor.

Healthcare workers at Egypt’s Al-Husseiniya Central Hospital lay exhausted as oxygen runs out for patients. (Photo Credit: Ehab via Twitter)

Abdel Nasser Hemida, undersecretary in Gharbiya’s health ministry, denied that oxygen supplies had run out.

Just hours later, Ahmed Mamdouh filmed the scene at an ICU in the el-Husseiniya hospital, in al-Sharqia governorate, northeast of Cairo. He was at the hospital visiting his aunt when the patients—including his aunt—died after the oxygen level fell below two percent, leaving neither enough pressure nor sufficient oxygen to save the patients' lives.

The clip shows patients struggling to breathe, people screaming and medical staff desperately trying to save patients. Mamdouh is heard saying, “Everyone in the ICU has died… there’s no oxygen.”

The image of one nurse, collapsed on the floor in a corner with the fear in her eyes visible through a visor and mask is heart breaking. It has become a nationwide scandal. One social media user tweeted, “No one should experience that!” Another tweeted, “The situation in Egypt is getting worse. Help us.” Many offered their support for the nurse, urging her not to give up. Other spoke of fears for their own safety.

According to Egypt Watch, problems with oxygen supplies in public hospitals are a frequent occurrence, exacerbated by the pandemic and the health ministry’s lack of preparations, with doctors crying out for medical supplies, including oxygen. Egyptian footballer Mohamed Salah, who plays for Liverpool FC in the UK, has donated an oxygen tank to the Basyoun Central Hospital “to support coronavirus patients’ treatment” in his hometown of Nagrig, in Gharbiya governorate.

The manager of Hamool Hospital in Kafr Al-Sheikh, in the Nile Delta, made an appeal on Facebook for oxygen cylinders, only to be referred for investigation by the authorities. This is the government’s standard response to medical professionals who dare to speak out against the disastrous state of the country’s healthcare system or criticize the government’s handling of the pandemic.

The government’s immediate response was to deny that the deaths were caused by the failure of the oxygen supply, with Health Minister Hala Zayed declaring that there were “sufficient medical oxygen supplies at all hospitals receiving coronavirus patients” and accusing the banned Muslim Brotherhood of spreading “rumours.”

Mamdouh Ghorab, governor of Sharqia, maintained they had died “naturally” due to chronic illnesses and not as a result of an oxygen shortage. The claim was rebutted by local legislator Sayed Rahmo who said, “The patients died as a result of negligence at the al-Husseiniya hospital and the mismanagement of the oxygen shortage crisis.” He added, “According to my sources, the intensive care doctor informed the hospital director about the shortage of oxygen supply at least an hour [before the catastrophe],” but the warning was not heeded.

Ahmed Mamdouh was reportedly arrested after Dr Mamdouh Gorab, governor of Al-Sharqia, ordered the security forces to arrest those who had filmed the incident. There were reports that the nurse was fined for “not working during hard times.”

The COVID-19 pandemic is again on the rampage after the lifting of the initial lockdown. While Egypt has officially recorded 145,000 cases and nearly 8,000 deaths, these figures are a gross underestimate in this densely populated country of 98 million people. Rick Brennan, director of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme for the Eastern Mediterranean, dismissed these figures as only an estimate since the government’s testing programme focused only on those with severe symptoms.

According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, Egypt’s official statistics organisation, there were 60,000 overall deaths between May and July last year, the peak months of the first wave of COVID-19, far more than the average death rate in the corresponding period in previous years. On December 21, Mohamed al-Nady, a member of the Ministry of Health and Population’s scientific committee, estimated that the real number of infections was 10 times higher than official figures.

The surge in cases has overwhelmed Egypt’s chronically under-resourced public hospitals, which even under normal conditions are unable to cope. The shortage of hospitals has led to many people in need of treatment being turned away and medical supplies running out, with a recent report revealing the healthcare system at the point of collapse. Others are forced to turn to the private sector, if they have the money or connections to secure a bed.

Egypt has some of the highest numbers of COVID-19 deaths among health workers in the world. Although the government does not collect statistics, the Egyptian Medical Syndicate has reported that more than 282 medical professionals have died from the disease, including 18 this year alone. Hundreds more are ill.

The blood-soaked regime of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has imprisoned more than 60,000 political activists and critics, including secular and Muslim Brotherhood politicians, journalists and human rights defenders, and more than 1,000 doctors and health-care professionals are in Egypt’s notoriously overcrowded and squalid prisons, where they are often detained for years without trial.

Human Rights Watch says at least six doctors and pharmacists are still in jail for raising concerns over the lack of proper testing and personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. They are accused of “spreading false news”, “misusing social media” and “joining an unlawful organization.”

The government has imprisoned or expelled journalists who criticize it, forcing Reuters correspondent and Guardian journalist Ruth Michaelson to leave the country for citing a scientific study stating Egypt had more coronavirus cases than officially confirmed.

There is mounting anger over the delay in the government’s immunisation programme that was set to start last month. It is trying to secure 20 million doses of the vaccine through COVAX, the international initiative, as well as millions of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, while Russia has agreed to supply Egypt with 25 million doses of its Sputnik-V vaccine. At best, this is only enough to cover just under a quarter of the population.

El-Sisi, like his counterparts across the globe, has refused to do anything that would impact on the major corporations’ ability to make profits, instead announcing a series of measures aimed at curtailing freedom of movement and social behaviour.

The collapse of Egypt’s hospital system takes place amid an acute economic and social crisis gripping the country. The economic crisis has been exacerbated by the limited lockdown instituted by the regime to control the pandemic, which has been accompanied by little governmental financial support for the masses who lost their means to make a living, plunging millions into destitution.

The explosive social tensions and the economic crisis wracking Egypt is part of the broader breakdown of bourgeois capitalist rule across the Middle East and Africa. The historic crisis of the capitalist system and its complete failure to address the social catastrophe afflicting the masses makes it clear that only the working class, based on a socialist and internationalist perspective, can lead the fight for social equality and democratic rights.

Modi boasts about “Indian” vaccines as COVID-19 virus rages through the country

Saman Gunadasa

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken to social media to boast that “every Indian is proud that two (COVID-19) vaccines” have been made in the country, even as the virus continues to rage, endangering the lives of millions of workers and poor people.

On January 3, the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) authorised two vaccines—one developed by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, with Oxford University (Covishield), and another by a local pharmaceutical company, Bharat Biotech (Covaxin)—for emergency use.

Health workers screen residents for COVID-19 symptoms at Deonar slum in Mumbai, India. (Image Credit: AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

Having indulged in a mud-slinging campaign against each other, just a few days earlier, the two companies issued a joint statement, following the DCGI’s approval, declaring that their current concern was “to ensure a smooth rollout of vaccines.”

Health experts have reportedly questioned the transparency of the authorisation process. Earlier, Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer of the Serum Institute of India, declared in a TV interview that the rest of the vaccines, other than Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca-Oxford, were as “safe as water.”

The vaccination drive is supposed to begin on January 13 and reach 300 million people—around 20 percent of the population—by August. This timeline indicates that a vast section of the Indian population will continue to be vulnerable to the virus for the rest of this year, and beyond, even if the largest ever Indian vaccination effort is successful.

By January 5, according to government data, India’s coronavirus death toll had exceeded 150,000, while the total number of cases is over ten million. These, however, are grossly understated figures, due to a lack of proper data on deaths and the inadequacy of PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) tests. The number of global coronavirus cases has reached 88 million, with close to 1.9 million deaths.

The health minister of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led federal government, Harsh Vardhan, tried to downplay the danger facing India’s working people due to the pandemic, declaring that “India has one of the highest recovery rates in the world, at 95.46 percent.”

Contrary to Vardhan’s statement, the real death toll from COVID-19 must be well above the official figures, given the under-registration of deaths in India. According to the media, even before the pandemic, only 70 percent of India’s deaths were registered and only one fifth of these were medically certified.

By the end of November and early December, PCR testing in the country was reportedly reduced to less than 60 percent of the total, with the rest consisting of rapid antigen tests. These tests, however, are known to fail to detect coronavirus infections in 50 percent of positive cases.

Moreover, India’s total number of tests is around 128,000 per million people, the lowest among the ten countries that currently have the most cases in the world.

According to the second national sero-survey, conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research, the likely real number of infections is 16 times the official figure, with current cases as high as 160 million. Former professor of clinical virology, CMC Vellore T. John, told the press that “India does not have reliable data on any communicable disease, be it rabies, cholera, tuberculosis or Covid… The Covid statistics derived through the healthcare system, cannot be complete.”

Moreover, by January 6, the Indian government reported 73 cases of the new COVID-19 strain that originated in the UK. This indicates that the pandemic is further intensifying throughout the country, as the new strain is believed to be 70 percent more contagious.

India’s scientists have already expressed fear over the spread of the new variant of the coronavirus. Cardiologist, K. K. Agarwal previously warned that if new variants of the coronavirus, which have been discovered in the south of England and South Africa arrived in the country, a second peak of infections was possible.

Modi’s crisis-ridden government, which faces mounting resistance from workers and farmers, is belittling the suffering being borne by the masses. At the same time, it is campaigning, along with the corporate media, to insist that a second wave would be much lower in number than the first. The government claims that reported daily cases have reduced to around 25,000, from almost 100,000 in September.

Last spring, Modi’s BJP government prematurely imposed a “back to work” policy, thereby infecting workers and the broad masses, after an ill-prepared ten-week lockdown. The brief shutdown was organised without any social support being allocated to the tens of millions of internal migrant workers who lost their income overnight.

Around 30,000 Indian Railway workers have contracted the virus over the past several months, and 700 of them died before the end of last year. This was a considerable increase from September, when close to 15,000 railway workers were infected, with 336 deaths.

The government-owned Indian Railways (IR) manages the fourth-largest network in the world with a route length of some 68,155 kilometres. It currently operates more than 1,000 special trains, while major population centres Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai are running their suburban services at 88, 60 and 50 percent capacity respectively, according to Railway Board chairman V. K. Yadav. These high volumes and the absence of adequate health safety measures have exposed workers to the dangers of infection and death.

The Railway Board chairman insisted in a press briefing: “They [railway workers] are frontline workers who have helped the Railways facilitate the movement of migrants by running special trains. They have been on platforms and in areas where contracting the infection was highly probable.” He hypocritically added: “They are like the railways’ unsung heroes.”

Answering a question in the national parliament, representatives of the railway ministry made clear that no compensation would be granted to the families of employees in the sector who died on the job. They stated that there was no provision for ex gratia payments as “death on account of any disease is not included in these guidelines.” Nothing could more clearly expose the contemptuous attitude of the Indian ruling class to the workers who have become victims of their pro-business “reopening” of the economy.

The devastation confronting ordinary people stands in stark contrast to the fortunes of the Indian and global corporate elite, which have grown substantially during the pandemic. The Economist recently reported that “Gautam Adani, whose conglomerate sprawls from ports to coal mines to food, has seen his personal wealth more than double, to some $32bn. Mukesh Ambani’s riches, which derive from oil refining, telecoms and retail, among other things, have grown by just 25 percent, albeit to an intimidating $75bn or so.” Ambani has been a beneficiary of the mobile phone market and Adani’s wealth has been boosted by government logistics contracts.

The bank balances of the ultra-rich are soaring amid the contraction of the country’s economy by ten percent, which has pushed tens of millions of workers into unemployment and poverty.

The pandemic has also adversely affected millions of Indian patients suffering from terminal illnesses such as cancer, leukemia, chronic diabetes, tuberculosis, as well as a variety of mental illnesses, due to the lack of secure health care facilities. According to one paper, published by the Asia Pacific Journal of Oncology Nursing:

“Amid the coronavirus pandemic, there are chances of approximately 100,000 cancer cases going undiagnosed per month in India, and the numbers might change depending on travel restrictions and lack of easy availability of transport.”

The total unpreparedness of India’s public health system has been caused primarily by the miserly budget allocations for the sector by successive governments—led, not only by the current ruling BJP, but also by the main opposition party Congress. Between 2009 and 2019, India’s health budget was just two percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The Indian government contributes only 16.7 percent of current health expenditure, while Indian patients have to pay the highest portion, i.e., more than 62 percent of their out-of-pocket expenses.

Arts, humanities are first on the chopping block as US state governments face deficits

Andrew Timon

As state governments in the US face deficits estimated to be over $400 billion, school districts and colleges are implementing severe budget cuts, beginning with arts and humanities programs. These measures are just the initial expression of what is to come if there is no organized opposition in defense of education, and particularly the arts and humanities.

University of Vermont (Photo credit–Jared C. Benedict)

Several states have already announced large education cuts.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has announced plans to cut $300 million in K-12 funding and $100 million in college and university funding for the current year. Meanwhile, Georgia’s top budget officials told the state’s schools to plan for large cuts for the fiscal year starting July 1, where lawmakers have signed off on a spending plan of about $2.2 billion in budget cuts—including nearly $1 billion less for public schools.

Randolph Public School District, located in the Greater Boston, Massachusetts region, has cut its entire K-12 arts, music, and physical education (PE) programs and staff from its 2020-21 budget. In Brockton, Massachusetts, 24 teachers received pink slips and the district intends to leave 40 teaching vacancies unfilled, mostly positions in the arts, PE and music departments. The state as a whole has laid off over 2,000 teachers.

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District, which serves nearly 38,000 children, over 42 percent of whom live below the poverty line, faces a potential loss of up to $127 million in state and local revenue in the upcoming year, including $23 million in K-12, and the elimination of $12 million in state-provided student wellness funds.

Eric Gordon, Chief Executive Officer of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD), told a Congressional committee hearing last summer that the district faced losing nearly 25 percent of its net operating budget. This was on top of $23 million in cuts his district made prior to the pandemic!

Gordon told the House Education and Labor Committee: “If this worst case scenario were to occur, I will have no choice but to make deep, devastating cuts to my district this coming winter,” cuts that would include “school building closures, reductions of force at all levels of the organization, elimination of student transportation, and all extra-curricular activities, elimination of art, music, physical education and other classes from K-8 schools and of electives from high schools.”

In late September, the Joint Appropriations Committee of Wyoming asked Wyoming’s school districts to envision what operations would look like with 16 percent less from the Wyoming School Foundation. The Natrona County School District (NCSD), of 12,000 students, would lose nearly $32 million, or approximately 11 percent of the district’s annual budget, from the Wyoming School Foundation.

In a response to the proposed measure, Chair of the Natrona County School Board Rita Walsh wrote, “A reduction of this magnitude would necessitate NCSD to reduce educational programs, increase class sizes, lay off personnel, extend the purchasing cycle of curriculum materials, eliminate course offerings, and much more.” Class sizes could be increased to up to 40 students with such drastic cuts.

The University of Vermont has recently announced plans to terminate majors including Geology, Religion, Asian Studies and several language programs, including Greek, Latin and German. The plan would eliminate entirely the college’s Classics, Geology and Religion departments. Other departments would be consolidated.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania, in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, will close five fine arts programs as part of plans to merge its fine arts and humanities schools and slash arts programs. The cuts could result in the elimination of nearly 130 jobs.

Rice University (Photo credit–Daderot)

More than 50 university doctoral programs in the US in the humanities and social sciences won’t be admitting new students for the fall of 2021. The School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania will also pause admissions for school-funded Ph. D. programs for the 2021-2022 academic year. All five of Rice University’s humanities doctoral programs will suspend admissions for a year.

Public education is under attack

Public education in the US, after decades of austerity measures, was already in a severely damaged, precarious condition even before the pandemic struck. Systematic defunding has produced horror stories across the country: water leaking from the ceilings of schools caught in buckets in Florida; drinking water contaminated with lead in Detroit schools; dilapidated or non-working heating, cooling and HVAC systems and bloated classroom sizes in too many school districts to name—just to mention a few of the problems.

A June 2020 study released by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a national survey that “about half (an estimated 54 percent) of public school districts need to update or replace multiple building systems or features in their schools,” including an estimated 36,000 schools that need to update or replace heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.

Attacks on arts and humanities courses and the deteriorating conditions of schools over the past decades go hand in hand. As schools and districts balance their books, money for repairs, system upgrades, teachers and courses are the first things to go. Economic stimulus plans such as the CARES Act, as well as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, have been boondoggles for Wall Street and the corporate elite, while leaving next to nothing for state funding and education.

The last time states faced such a massive budget crisis, in the wake of the 2008 recession, emergency federal aid closed only about one-quarter of state budget shortfalls. States then were forced to cut funding to K-12 schools to help meet their balanced budget requirements. By 2011, 17 states had cut per-student funding by more than 10 percent.

Local school districts responded to the loss of state aid by cutting teachers, librarians and other staff; scaling back counseling and other services; and even shortening the school year. By 2014, state support for K-12 schools in most states remained below pre-recession levels.

School districts have never recovered from the layoffs that were imposed. At the time that COVID-19 hit in 2020, K-12 schools employed 77,000 fewer teachers and other workers than they did when the 2008 recession began forcing layoffs, while the number of students had increased by some 1.5 million. Overall funding in many states is still below pre-recession levels.

For the defense of public education and the political independence of the working class!

Students and workers are being starved, in all senses of the word, of the right to a quality education, to art, to culture and to leisure.

Even more historic cuts and continued deterioration to education and other social services are on the horizon. The current plans to cut arts and humanities programs to balance current state and local deficits are part of an ongoing process, in which private wealth is protected and continuously accumulated at the expense of the working class and young people.

While school districts and states face large deficits and devastating cuts, the reported wealth of 643 of America’s richest billionaires, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, rose from $2.95 trillion to $3.8 trillion between March 18 and September 15, or almost $1 trillion. This figure is more than twice the entire budget deficit facing all 50 states. In combination with the near $1 trillion yearly military budget, there is sufficient wealth to fund the public education system four or five times over from these sources alone.

Clearly, there is more than enough money to rebuild decaying schools, with small class sizes, offering arts and cultural education. But it is not a question of convincing “progressive” sections of the ruling class, their political agents and school district leaders of the importance of art and culture.

Mobilizing these resources to meet human need and not private profit requires the political organization of the working class in a fight for socialism. The ruling elite will not willingly give up a penny of their ill-gotten gains.

This fight requires a complete break from the duopoly of the two capitalist parties who work hand in hand to implement the policies that have left social infrastructure gutted and a socialist political program based on the expropriation of the vast sums of private wealth that these two big business parties represent.

Record numbers of COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations across the US as pandemic surge continues

Kevin Martinez

A record number of Americans died from COVID-19 on Wednesday and Thursday, according to data compiled by Worldometer. At least 4,100 people were confirmed to have succumbed to the virus on Wednesday, while the next day 4,134 were added to the death toll.

Registered nurse Kyanna Barboza tends to her COVID-19 patient at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, Calif. Thursday, Jan. 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Over the last week, the US reported an average of 2,742 deaths every day, a record that is only surpassed by the record set just over two weeks ago just before the Christmas and New Year’s holiday’s disrupted reporting. The total number of American dead since the pandemic started in March now exceeds 374,000 people. According to an analysis from Reuters, almost 1 in every 914 US residents has died from COVID-19 in less than a year.

The number of new daily cases continues to increase with no end in sight. On Wednesday, the US reported 261,212 new cases, well above the weekly average of 228,925, already a record high number. Experts fear that these figures will translate into further hospitalizations and deaths, making January the worst month of the pandemic so far.

The worst outbreaks are in Arizona, California and West Virginia, which all reported record daily deaths, based on weekly averages, according to Johns Hopkins data. The weekly average continues to increase by at least 5 percent in 47 states and the District of Columbia, suggesting an expanding outbreak.

According to the COVID Tracking Project, founded by journalists at The Atlantic, there were more than 132,400 Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 on Wednesday, the highest number yet.

A refrigerated semi-trailer sits outside a hospital in Southern California as it waits to be loaded with bodies (Credit: WSWS)

On the same day that Trump supporters tried to storm the US Capitol, the D.C. health department announced it would halt administering vaccinations early. The day’s violence prompted the city’s mayor to declare a 6 p.m. curfew and delayed the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

The government’s disastrous rollout of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines has exacerbated the already tense situation. Officials such as Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Trump vaccine czar Moncef Slaoui have publicly expressed their disappointment with the speed of inoculations that should have happened by now.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 5.3 million doses have been given of the total 17.2 million doses currently available. Officials have expressed their desire for a faster rollout this month.

According to official guidelines vaccines will be administered to all people 75 or older next month, in addition to educators, childcare workers, emergency technicians, as well as food and agricultural workers. From there, residents 65 years or older will be next in line, followed by transport and logistics workers, and those working in essential manufacturing and crowded settings, such as homeless shelters and jails.

Meanwhile, conditions on the ground in Los Angeles County—currently a global epicenter for the virus—are worsening every day, as officials have been forced to ration care and prevent EMTs from responding to all emergency calls in a desperate effort to prevent hospitals from being further overwhelmed.

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Methodist Hospital in Southern California reported that a triage team will “make the difficult, but necessary decisions about allocating limited resources” to the sickest patients “based on the best medical information available.”

So far the team “has yet to find the need to ration any care,” according to the hospital’s senior vice president and chief strategy officer, Cliff Daniels. He added, however, “We are very fearful of what the next month is going to bring.”

Many hospitals are already past the breaking point, as evidenced by the announcement on Wednesday by Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s Health and Human Services secretary, who said that he could not say how many facilities are at the crisis care level outlined by the state’s Department of Health.

In a statement he said, “I do not want to ignore the criticality of the situation—the fact that we have hospitals who really are dealing with crisis situation(s),” adding “They’re making difficult decisions. They are exhausted. They are working hard to meet the needs of Californians, in particular many older Californians, who need that level of care.”

The situation in California is especially acute. According to data compiled by the Times, almost 1 in every 16 Californians have tested positive at some point for the coronavirus, which is more than 2.5 million confirmed cases. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the Times, “There really is no path forward to helping our hospitals unless we get the case numbers down. There just isn’t.”

Supplies of critical equipment, such as ventilators, are becoming extremely limited, with some hospitals reportedly rationing their use for patients who are deemed more likely to survive over patients who are unlikely to recover.

The Methodist Hospital released a grim statement this week saying, “If a ventilator or ICU is not offered or is stopped, the patient has the right to ask their doctor for further detail regarding this decision, and will receive everything needed to ensure that they are free of pain or discomfort.”

The newly appointed state public health officer and director of the California Department of Public Health, Dr. Tómas Aragón, issued an order postponing all but the most essential lifesaving surgeries in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.

Paramedics have even been sent from Northern California to the southern half of the state through a mutual aid system. The majority of nonessential surgeries at Los Angeles County’s four publicly operated hospitals have been postponed, as well as non-urgent and elective surgeries in Kaiser Permanente hospitals throughout the state.

The explosion of cases throughout the US after the holiday season was entirely predictable and preventable, but due to the bipartisan ruling class homicidal policy of “herd immunity” the population has been left to mainly fend for itself in the face of the pandemic.

The WSWS spoke to a health care worker on the front lines of the pandemic in California who spoke about the latest guidance on rationing medical care for new patients: “Usually when there is a cardiac arrest in the field, paramedics work to keep them stable and bring them to hospital where they enter into the care of an Emergency Medicine doctor. An entire team of specialists tend to them, nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists. I’ve seen them work for 45 minutes to try to revive a patient.

“What this order is saying is that if the field paramedics—and not a team of specialists—cannot get a pulse after 20 minutes or ‘until futility is reached’ then they can declare the patient deceased, but 911 paramedics are not equipped to make these decisions.”

The worker described the gulf between the training of an emergency medical technician (EMT) and that of a doctor who should be making these calls, saying, “EMTs only go through nearly as much training as nurses and physicians. They are not trained to see underlying causes of cardiac arrest, sometimes you can correct that and bring the patient back. We go through years of training to pick up on what may be underlying issues. It may be a blood clot, an imbalance in potassium level, or they could be diabetic and their blood sugar is too low and they go into cardiac arrest. EMTs may not realize they are diabetic. We can imagine a situation in which they declare someone dead who just needed a glucose shot.

“What everyone needs to understand is that this could be anyone, COVID or not. Stroke, heart attack, trauma. Anyone who is in cardiac arrest, unable to get a pulse within 20 minutes or ‘until futility’ paramedics pronounce them dead on scene. But this is a slippery slope, what is futility?”

The health care worker said they were deeply concerned for the paramedics who do not want this responsibility and must face families in despair.

“I am sure that the EMTs don’t want this, I can’t imagine what they are going through. This is a lot of moral injury happening to them. Moral injury is sometimes called burnout, but that does not explain it as well. Moral injury is where you feel like you can’t do your job because you do not have tools to do it, because the corporations want to maximize the profits. It causes severe depression, anger, you cannot sleep before your shift. You dread it the entire day and night before. I have experienced this and sensed it among many coworkers. I have seen nurses commit suicide over it. It is especially prominent in female nurses.”