US deaths from COVID-19 lead to a more than one-year decline in life expectancy

Benjamin Mateus

According to an analysis conducted by researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) and Princeton University, deaths caused by COVID-19 have reduced the overall life expectancy in the United States by 1.13 years. In epidemiologic terms, this is an enormous decline. Life expectancy is one of the most accurate barometers of the health of a society.

Adding to the catastrophe of the pandemic, a new variant of the coronavirus has been detected across more than 12 states, threatening to further exacerbate the crisis.

On New Year’s Day, the US had registered 20.7 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 357,000 deaths, making it the third leading cause of death behind cancer and heart disease. However, this conservative figure only represents confirmed cases.

Overall, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found more than 475,000 excess deaths through early December. It has been estimated that almost two-thirds of excess deaths are attributed directly to COVID-19. Compared to 2019, deaths in the US have climbed more than 10 percent.

Figure 1 Excess deaths in the United States [Source CDC]

The term “life expectancy” is frequently used in epidemiology to assess a nation’s health but allows comparison between countries and groups of people. In its simplest expression, it is an estimate of the average age that people in a given population will be when they die.

The more commonly used metric by international organizations such as the United Nations and World Bank, termed “period life expectancy,” is the estimated average length of life for a particular population from birth through death. It does not take into account how mortality rates change over time. Instead, it focuses on mortality patterns at one point in time.

Despite the US spending more on health care per capita than any other nation, these efforts have not translated to people leading longer lives in the US. In 2019, life expectancy stood at 78.9 years compared to 80.7 years for the rest of OECD nations. This is directly attributable to massive social inequality.

Specifically, the US does poorly in areas such as avoidable mortality. It also suffers from a higher chronic disease burden and greater obesity among the population. Additionally, the US does worse with access to health coverage and financial stability. It should come as no surprise that given the massive austerity and cutbacks in the US public health infrastructure that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has thrived so well.

Since 1860, when life expectancy stood at a stark 39.4 years, predominately due to high infant and maternal mortality, medical advancements and improvements in living standards have seen it climb steadily over the intervening decades to 78.9 years by 2020. Only in three historical periods has life expectancy significantly dropped; the Civil War, 1860–1865; the Spanish Flu of 1918; and, since 2015, the opioid epidemic, alcohol abuse and rising suicides that have surged as a byproduct of economic and social distress. Between 2010 and 2017, the mortality rate had increased 6 percent among all working-age adults, but particularly those aged 25 to 34.

Deaths from the COVID pandemic have now further reduced life expectancy to 77.48 years. In historical terms, this is the lowest level since 2003. Compared to the annual declines seen due to drug overdoses, the decrease in life expectancy due to COVID is 10 times larger.

According to the USC and Princeton study, “The US reduction in 2020 life expectancy is projected to exceed that of most other high-income countries, indicating that the United States—which already had a life expectancy below that of all other high-income nations prior to the pandemic—will see its life expectancy fall even farther behind its peers.”

The study goes on to provide estimates by race. While life expectancy declined for whites by only 0.68 years to 77.84 years, the reduction was dramatic for blacks, with a loss of 2.10 years to 72.78 years and for Latinos by 3.05 years to 78.77 years. Blacks and Latinos have real median household incomes of $46,073 and $56,113, respectively, compared to whites with $76,057 and Asians with $98,174.

Throughout the pandemic, race has been used to cover the pandemic’s impact on the working class as a whole. As the economic indices indicate, it is the poorest in society that fare the worst. The WSWS has chronicled on an almost daily basis that workers holding low-paying jobs with little autonomy are most impacted by the ravages of the pandemic. Health care, food, retail and meatpacking are but a short list of the industries where workers face high exposure risks. Dire economic necessity forces many workers to make the difficult choice to continue to work while risking the consequences of the infection.

Additionally, chronic poverty also means a lack of access to adequate health care, nutrition, exercise and healthy living conditions. Many chronic health conditions that put people at risk for severe outcomes with COVID-19, such as high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and heart disease, are overrepresented in the more impoverished sections of the population at an even younger age.

Since the first of the year, 3.578 million new COVID-19 infections have befallen the country, and 48,595 more people have died in the last 16 days. Despite these glaring statistics, President-elect Joe Biden and his incoming administration are pushing to see schools reopen, despite the chaos of the vaccine rollout. Schools must remain open at all costs, they argue, so that children’s parents can be herded back into the workplace.

Adding to the catastrophe of the pandemic, in the face of the B.1.1.7 variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has been detected across more than 12 states, the CDC’s modeling analysis suggests that it will become the dominant strain by March.

They warn, “The increased transmissibility of this variant requires an even more rigorous combined implementation of vaccination and mitigation measures (i.e., distancing, masking and hand hygiene) to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2. These measures will be more effective if they are instituted sooner rather than later to slow the initial spread of B.1.1.7 variant. Efforts to prepare the health care system for further surges are warranted. Increased transmissibility also means that higher than anticipated vaccination coverage must be attained to achieve the same level of disease control to protect the public compared with less transmissible variants.”

With increased transmissibility, the number of new cases will begin to rise dramatically in just a few short weeks without any further interventions. Already beleaguered health care workers will face a new onslaught of sick patients, further exacerbating an untenable situation. The working class must unite based on a common struggle to fight the pandemic by organizing independent workplace and neighborhood committees to demand the closure of all nonessential workplaces and full financial assistance to all those impacted by the pandemic.

Mute on Washington coup, UK ruling elite turns fire against China

Julie Hyland

The British government has been at pains to downplay the January 6 coup attempt by outgoing US President Donald Trump, sections of the military intelligence complex and their fascist supporters.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson had to be repeatedly pressed before criticising Trump for encouraging “people to storm the Capitol” and casting “doubt on the outcome of a free and fair election.” Home Secretary Priti Patel said Trump's failure to “condemn that violence” was “completely wrong”, while Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab referred only to the “shocking events” on Capitol Hill.

In contrast to their muted response to the fascist dangers in the heart of world imperialism, and the command centre of nuclear war, Tory cabinet ministers have focused on denouncing China as the imminent threat to democratic rights.

British aircraft carriers HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Queen Elizabeth moored at Portsmouth harbour, November 2020 (credit: WSWS)

On Monday, Johnson used a world environmental summit to denounce Chinese “demented medicine” for the Covid-19 pandemic. The following day, Raab accused China of human rights abuses on an “industrial scale” against Uighur Muslims. Stating that Britain had a “moral duty” to defend democracy, he announced new export controls on British firms and called on the United Nations to lead an investigation into allegations of forced labour.

There is good reason for the British political establishment to divert attention from events in Washington. Like their Republican and Democrat counterparts, they do not want any examination of the fascist conspiracy because they have had a hand in building it up.

For four decades, the US and UK have been in the forefront of a social counter-revolution against the working class that has spanned Tory and Labour, Republican and Democrat administrations. That is why the UK’s ruling elite have been enthusiastic backers of Trump, with Johnson previously calling for Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Labour Party has been just as muted in its response to the attempted coup, with party leader Sir Keir Starmer also omitting any mention of Trump in his condemnation of the “horrendous scenes” in Washington.

Cross-party support for herd immunity, which has seen Britain record among the highest deaths from COVID-19 per capita, flows from the drive to extract the maximum surplus value from the working class, irrespective of the human cost. Such levels of exploitation and the accompanying social misery are incompatible with democracy. The corollary of this is the ratcheting up of nationalism, militarism, and war in a bid to direct social tensions outwards.

As the WSWS has analysed, the Covid-19 has acted as an accelerant on the accumulated contradictions of global capitalism including exacerbating tensions and conflicts between the imperialist powers and the escalating war threats against Russia and especially China. In its 2020 Fifth Congress resolution, the Socialist Equality Party (UK) explained, “As in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Britain continues to play the role of an agent provocateur for the US, witnessed in its utilising of the still unexplained Skripal poisonings against Russia and leveraging of its former colonial role in Hong Kong as a catspaw against China. Sooner rather than later, British imperialism will have no choice other than to try and resolve its desperate plight in an explosion of military violence.”

The Trump administration had ramped up the Obama’s administrations “pivot to Asia”, aimed at encircling and menacing China, and this was given renewed urgency by the pandemic. In July, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State, raised the stakes in this reckless and dangerous confrontation, demanding the UK and Europe toe the line and support Washington’s aggressive stance.

Although the major corporations have by no means abandoned their plans aims of developing economic relations with China, the British governments public posture is ferociously anti-Chinese and cuts across all such plans. The government had already abandoned its previous talk of establishing a new “golden age” in Beijing-London relations post-Brexit and had banned Huawei from the rollout of the UK’s 5G network in response to US sanctions.

With Pompeo’s remarks it went further, utilising the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong to declare a “clear and serious breach” of the 1985 UK-China agreement over the terms of the return of the former British colony to Beijing in 1997. Subsequently, the same Conservative administration that framed its support for Brexit on the noxious basis of curbing immigration announced it would extend British residency rights to almost three million of Hong Kong’s citizens.

This has been the precursor for measures, including but by no means limited to, financial sanctions, piloted by right-wing lobby groups and think-tanks such as the Henry Jackson Society, which calls for the UK’s “decoupling” from China, and the newly formed China Research group led by Tory MPs Tom Tugendhat and Neil O’Brien.

In November, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee—chaired by Tugendhat—claimed to have found “alarming evidence” of Chinese interference on UK campuses. A stream of black propaganda followed, alleging “mass infiltration of UK firms by the Chinese Communist Party”, and even lurid tales of “honey traps” by “beautiful Chinese women… feared to be bedding UK officials to steal secrets.” The Huawei ban was brought forward by six years, to September 2021.

This campaign has nothing to do with the democratic rights of the Uighurs or Hong Kong residents. British imperialism has a long and bloody history in China, from the 1839 first Opium War, in which it seized Hong Kong and became a byword for colonial domination, oppression and social misery.

Rather, the calculation is that, whether under Trump or Biden, Washington will continue to step up its anti-China policy and the UK must position itself as a major ally. Labour shares this approach, with Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy condemning the government for “going ahead with Chinese investment without regard for [the] consequences for national security for too long.”

The UK is setting itself against not only Beijing but the European Union (EU), especially Germany. In January, the EU struck an investment agreement with China, against Washington’s demands.

Against this, London has become the base of efforts to thwart any bucking of US diktats.

This was underscored by the statement by Nathan Law, one of the leaders of the Hong Kong protests, in the Guardian, December 21, announcing he had filed for political asylum in the UK.

Law is among the many petty-bourgeois opposition figures in Hong Kong whose claim to be concerned with democratic rights is belied by their close relations with Washington. Hostile to the Chinese working class settling accounts with the Stalinist pro-capitalist regime, Law has repeatedly called on the US to intervene against Beijing over its suppression in Hong Kong and met with Pompeo in London in July, directly after the latter’s provocative speech.

In his article, Law warned that Beijing was “building alliances with the EU” so as to position itself as a “an alternative to ‘US unilateralism’…

“In the US, adopting an assertive approach to China and positioning it as one of the country’s greatest enemies is a bipartisan consensus now. This is not the case in the UK and EU; that consensus needs to be built. This is the reason why I boarded a plane destined for London.”

Boris Johnson’s Tory government is reformulating the 1351 Treason Act to criminalise those deemed to have allegiance to a foreign power or organisation, matching similar moves in Australia, and has licensed criminal actions by British forces in its Overseas Operations Bill, on which Labour abstained to allow through.

The dangers are underscored by London’s invite to India, South Korea, and Australia to the G7 summit meeting this year to consolidate the US-led alliance against China. This follows a hiking of UK military spending by an additional £16.5 billion and the deployment of the Royal Navy aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, in the next months to the South China Seas as part of US-Japanese nuclear-armed military exercises.

State of emergency imposed in Malaysia, granting government sweeping powers

Peter Symonds

A state of emergency was declared last week in Malaysia, reflecting the country’s worsening political and social crisis, which has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the spread of the virus was the stated reason, the anti-democratic powers that the government now has in its hands are above all directed against the working class and the population more generally.

The king, Al-Sultan Abdullah, issued the emergency declaration last Tuesday at the request of Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. A day earlier, Muhyiddin had announced a two-week lockdown of Kuala Lumpur and five states as well as a nationwide travel ban.

Malaysia's King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, right, sits next to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad during his welcome ceremony at Parliament House in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (AP Photo/Yam G-Jun, FIle)

Muhyiddin described the situation as “very alarming” and said the country’s healthcare system was “under tremendous pressure.” He added: “As I have said before, unprecedented situations call for unprecedented measures.”

The number of COVID-19 cases in October, when Muhyiddin first called for a state of emergency, was comparatively low at 13,000. The king refused the request. The number of cases, however, has risen sharply as the government eased restrictions.

By last Tuesday the daily infections had hit a new record of 3,309, bringing the total number of cases to more than 141,000 and over 550 deaths.

Dr. Suan Ee Ong, a Malaysian public health expert at Singapore-based think tank Research for Impact, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): “Most of our ICU beds are very, very full. Even our non-ICU beds are reaching capacity, especially in the major hospitals.”

In early January, a group of nearly 50 former and current senior healthcare workers addressed an open letter to the prime minister warning the government’s measures were not bringing the virus under control. “Our national metrics paint a very bleak picture of COVID-19 pandemic management,” it declared.

The letter called for a ramping up of testing, for more people to isolate at home, and for vaccine approval to be expedited “so that immunisation can begin as soon as the first doses of vaccines arrive at the airport.” Malaysia has ordered 25 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and also has an agreement to buy the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The prime minister, however, offered no explanation as to why the emergency declaration was necessary in order to adopt measures to contain the virus and safeguard public health. No such step was required last year between March and May, when the government imposed a stringent ban on mass gatherings and restrictions on movement. The police and military enforced the lockdown, making thousands of arrests.

The emergency proclamation hands the government sweeping powers. With the parliament suspended, the cabinet can make laws with virtually no restrictions on their scope. The state of emergency will be in force until August 1, so the shaky ruling coalition, which has a slim parliamentary majority, will avoid a no-confidence motion.

Since the end of British colonial rule in 1957, a national state of emergency has been invoked only once before—in 1969 amid race riots instigated by the dominant ethnic Malay establishment following substantial losses to the opposition parties in that year’s general election. The constitution was suspected and parliament dissolved. A National Operations Council took over the government, imposing a curfew, censoring the media and arresting opposition politicians.

The current political crisis is far more severe. The right-wing and repressive United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which had held power since independence, was defeated for the first time in the May 2018 election by an unstable alliance between the party headed by former UMNO Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and an opposition coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim. In 1998, amid the Asian financial crisis, Mahathir expelled Anwar from UMNO, then had him arrested and jailed on trumped-charges.

The shaky ruling alliance fell apart when Mahathir resisted handing over the post of prime minister to Anwar after two years as part of their partnership agreement. Mahathir himself was pushed to one side by Muhyiddin, a minister from his own party, who formed a new ruling coalition with UMNO. Anwar challenged the Muhyiddin government last September, saying he had a majority in parliament and sought to form a fresh government, but the king denied his request.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the political crisis. The government proceeded with a state election in Sabah last September, despite warnings by health experts that it would lead to a spike in cases. Even though his party won the election, Muhyiddin later conceded that the election campaign, during which voters and politicians travelled to Sabah, had contributed to the rise in cases.

The growing discontent and opposition to the government is being fueled by a sharp downturn in the economy and rising unemployment, which has hovered between 4.6 and 4.7 percent in recent months, up from 3.2 percent at the end of last year. The World Bank estimates that the Malaysian economy contracted by 5.8 percent last year. The bank’s projection of a bounce back of 6.7 percent growth for 2021 is now in doubt as a result of the lockdown and travel ban.

Commenting to the ABC on the emergency declaration, Tengku Nur Qistina, a senior researcher at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, said: “The government can be said to [be prioritising] the nation’s health security at the expense of democracy. With the emergency proclaimed, Parliament does not meet and this has been inferred as an obstruction of democracy [by] many.”

Like its counterparts around the world, the Malaysian government’s decision to lift restrictions from May onward was driven by the demands of business for a resumption of work to ensure profits, regardless of the danger to the health and lives of workers. The world’s largest medical glove manufacturer Top Glove was forced to shut down half its factories last November after thousands of its employees tested positive to COVID-19.

With the political establishment deeply divided, the weak coalition government has sought the state of emergency to concentrate police-state powers in its hands to suppress any social unrest. The Malaysian ruling class, which has a long history of autocratic forms of rule, is deeply fearful that the rising tide of working class struggle internationally will find its expression among Malaysian workers, who have been forced to bear the brunt of the pandemic.

Philippines records first case of new COVID-19 strain

Robert Campion

An infection of the more transmissible British strain of the coronavirus was officially confirmed in the Philippines for the first time last Wednesday, threatening a more disastrous stage of the pandemic for the second-worst hit country in South-East Asia. The Philippines joins at least 51 other countries and territories that have recorded a case of the variant, including Singapore, Hong Kong and China.

The infection was detected in a 27-year-old old real estate agent who had recently returned from a business trip to Dubai with his partner. On January 7, the couple returned on an Emirates flight and were placed in quarantine and swab tested. On January 8, the man tested positive for the original strain and contracted a cough. He was transferred to an isolation facility, where it was discovered through an X-Ray that he had developed pneumonia.

It was not until the results were sent to the Philippine Genome Centre (PGC) for full genomic sequencing that the new B.1.1.7 strain was confirmed on January 13.

Thousands of Catholic devotees line up as they celebrate the feast day of the Black Nazarene at the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene in downtown Manila, Philippines, Saturday Jan. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Gerard Carreon)

Both residents of Quezon City had tested negative prior to leaving the Philippines and upon arrival in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is still unclear when and where the infection took place, given that the UAE is yet to detect its first case of the new strain.

The Philippine Department of Health acquired the flight manifesto pertaining to the patient and is now scrambling to contact those who were on board. Currently there is one flight passenger missing, a resident of Quezon City, who left incorrect contact details.

The UAE and Hungary have now been included on a travel ban of 33 countries, which was extended on Friday from the 15th to the 31st. Only Filipinos are able to arrive from the list of countries, but they must be placed in 14-day quarantine and tested. In addition, the government announced it is now compulsory for travelers from all countries to be tested and to undergo genome sequencing to identify the new strains.

The emergence of new COVID-19 variants is the product of the profit-driven approach by capitalist governments worldwide. Under the banner of the “herd immunity” policy, they have allowed the virus to circulate, rejecting lockdown measures that would have an impact on corporate profit-making activities. This has created the conditions for variations and mutations to occur.

The fact that the variant arrived on a flight from a country that was omitted from the travel ban indicates its far-advanced spread and the inadequate character of attempts by governments in the Philippines and elsewhere to prevent its spread.

Studies have indicated that the UK variant has an increased infection rate of up to 70 percent. Whilst not more virulent, its increased transmissibility gives the virus the opportunity to spread at an exponential rate and overwhelm the capacity of hospitals and intensive care units.

Dr. John Wong, part of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), warned earlier this month that the new strain could increase cases in the Philippines by fifteen-fold.

“With our current R [reproduction rate] of 1.1, 20,000 cases at the beginning of the month will be about 32,000 at the end of the month. But if the variant takes over, the 20,000 cases can become almost 300,000 cases by the end of the month,” Wong said.

Despite these warnings, the government has resisted calls for more stringent lockdown measures.

Health undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire reported on Friday that the government would not impose a “complete travel ban for everybody.” “We want to balance health with the economy. It is not feasible for us to do that,” she said.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III also ruled out any immediate escalation of the current general community quarantine (GCQ). He said any change to the policy would be dependent upon an increase in the weekly transmission rate and the capacity of the hospital system.

“As of now, we don’t have that kind of signal yet to elevate the current community quarantine [status],” Duque said at a news briefing last week.

“There is a possibility that more people would get sick because the new variant is more contagious. But if they would not be hospitalised because their cases are mild, it is possible that the quarantine restrictions won’t change,” Roque said.

In other words, the government is allowing the virus to circulate, to prevent any disruption to big business, and is openly acknowledging that this will result in ordinary people contracting COVID-19 and becoming ill.

Under the GCQ, businesses can operate at between 50 and 100 percent capacity, depending on their industry classification. Public transport is continuing to operate, at reduced rates, and potential centres of mass infection, such as shopping malls, remain open. Outside Metro Manilla and four other hard-hit provinces, a “modified” GCQ is in place that involves even fewer restrictions.

This week, the Department of Labor and Employment acknowledged that some 20 percent of businesses it inspected, equating to almost 14,500, had been in breach of health and safety requirements, such as ensuring that workers could socially-distance. Officials ruled out any penalties for the transgressions, instead declaring that they would provide those businesses with greater “assistance.”

A post-holiday surge is also driving an increase in cases. The Octa Research Group recently noted that the reproduction number in Metro Manila had increased from 1.02 to 1.17. Health experts have previously cautioned against letting the virus rise above 1 until a vaccine becomes available.

“There is a clear upward trend now... and if this upward trend continues, the local governments will need to implement measures to reverse this direction before the pandemic gets out of hand," the Octa team stated.

They also noted that the percentage of tests returning positive has risen above 11 percent in Metro Manila, indicating broader transmission that is not being tracked. The World Health Organisation warned early last year that a positivity rate above 5 percent indicates insufficient lockdown measures and contact tracing.

The rise in cases is particularly sharp in Davao City, on the island of Mindanao, where daily infections are greater than 100. In the Davao region more broadly, there is a continuing spread amongst health care workers. A total of 107 cases were recorded last week, mostly among nurses.

Government officials have stated that there is sufficient hospital capacity in most areas. The infections among medical staff, and the prospect of the spread of the new strain, pose the risk that the health system could be overwhelmed if there is a major surge.

The Philippines has been the second-worst hit country in South-East Asia. It passed half a million cumulative cases on Sunday, while the official death toll is approaching 10,000. When the pandemic struck, the right-wing administration of President Rodrigo Duterte dismissed the threat posed by the virus and rejected calls for elementary safety measures. Only amid mass infections and a crisis of the health system were lockdown measures introduced.

At the same time, Duterte has used the pandemic to boost the role of the military in public life, in line with a broader authoritarian agenda. This has gone hand in hand with an offensive against the social position of the working class and the poor. Hunger and malnutrition are at record highs and millions have been thrown out of work or pushed into poverty, with only a pittance of government assistance.

Silent on coup attempt, Mexico’s AMLO defends Trump against “censorship”

Andrea Lobo

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) has refused to condemn the January 6 coup attempt instigated by Donald Trump. Instead, he has focused his response to the tumultuous events in the US on defending the access of Trump—the main conspirator behind efforts to establish a fascistic dictatorship—to his social media accounts.

The breakdown of American democracy has explosive implications for the political crisis engulfing the AMLO administration, as his subservience to Wall Street and US imperialism becomes increasingly evident in the context of the uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus pandemic. In defending Trump after the coup, AMLO is signaling that he will enforce the untrammeled exploitation of cheap labor and austerity diktats in Mexico with his own shift toward dictatorship.

Mexico is reporting record daily COVID-19 cases and deaths, while corporations, trade unions, and the authorities cover up deadly outbreaks in factories and workplaces. In this context, the AMLO government plans to double down on its policy of maximizing production and depriving those workers and small businesses falling into economic destitution from the necessary economic aid.

US President Donald Trump meets with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Wednesday, July 8, 2020. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Currently, news coverage in Mexico is dominated by AMLO’s most naked appeal yet to the Mexican military, upon which he has increasingly relied to repress strikes and protests. On Friday, he endorsed the exoneration by Mexican prosecutors of Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, a former Mexican Defense Secretary who had been indicted by US courts on drug trafficking charges. The refusal of the Mexican government to level any charges against Cienfuegos is an effective guarantee of impunity to the military brass.

AMLO made his first mention of the US Capitol insurrection during a January 7 press conference. He began: “We have always acted with respect to the domestic policy of other countries, like our Constitution says… We will not intervene in matters that correspond [to] resolving, serving Americans. That is our policy; that is why I can comment.”

He then lamented the deaths of the four insurrectionists at the Capitol and appealed for the “conflict” to be resolved through “dialogue.” He concluded fleetingly: “Regarding the rest, we don’t take a position, we wish for peace, that democracy prevails, being the power of the people, and that there are freedoms. That is all.”

The Mexican president had used the same excuse of “respect” and non-intervention in foreign affairs to justify his refusal to recognize the overwhelming electoral victory of US President-elect Joe Biden until after the Electoral College ratified it on December 15. Every Latin American president, except for López Obrador and Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, congratulated Biden on November 7, after the major news networks “called” the result.

As the World Socialist Web Site warned at the time, “AMLO is contributing to the installation of an American presidential dictatorship.” Having been portrayed by the American media and the pseudo-left in Latin America, Europe and North America as a “left” and “progressive” president, AMLO’s stance helped provide a cover of legitimacy for Trump’s claims of voter fraud as he prompted his fascist supporters to mobilize to overturn the elections.

As early as November 9, backing Trump’s conspiracies, AMLO was already suggesting that the greatest threat to democracy in the United States was the decision by social media companies to label as “unverified” Trump’s claims of voter fraud.

Then, on January 8, after refusing to condemn Trump’s instigation of the Capitol coup, AMLO again denounced Twitter and Facebook after Trump’s personal accounts were closed. “I don’t accept that,” he said. “There is something I said yesterday and some days earlier and I always say what I think, something I did not like about the Capitol business—it’s only that I’m respectful—but I don’t like censorship.”

He then compared the closing of Trump’s accounts to the “Holy Inquisition” and called it “extremely serious” only to add: “Where is that regulated? This is a matter of the state, not of the companies. It’s an important issue because they have tried to censor us here.”

Trump’s neofascist conspiracies constitute a threat of historic proportions for Mexican workers domestically and in the United States. Fascist groups violently hostile to migrants, incited by a president who has threatened to deploy US troops into Mexico against migrants and criminal organizations, attempted to overturn an election and establish a dictatorship.

In response, AMLO has extended his hand in collaboration. Not since Porfirio Díaz, the dictatorial ruler overthrown by the Mexican Revolution in 1911, has a Mexican head of state adopted such a submissive stance toward the imperialist power to the north.

In doing so, AMLO is merely expressing the interests of the Mexican national bourgeoisie, which has become completely subordinated economically to US imperialism in the form of a North American geopolitical platform to compete against Washington’s Asian and European economic and military rivals.

At the same time, the fate of workers internationally has been fused in the most unbreakable sense. This is especially true in Mexico and the United States. Nearly half of all Mexican imports come from the United States and 80 percent of exports go to the United States; the two countries share a 2,000-mile border, and about 40 million people of Mexican origin live in the U.S.

Numerous details have continued to surface of the high-level support in the Republican Party, the police and military for the January 6 insurrection, as well as reports by the FBI of more planned attacks by fascist militias against Washington D.C. and all US state capitals ahead of the January 20 inauguration of Joe Biden.

However, as late as Wednesday, AMLO continued his silence on the fascist plots and again aimed his attacks against the closing of Trump’s media accounts. He declared: “Since those decisions were made, the New York Statute of Liberty has been turning green from anger because it doesn’t want to become an empty symbol.”

Trump himself duly recognized AMLO’s backing in what is thus far his only public appearance since the coup attempt, a pilgrimage to his hated border wall in Texas. After applauding the “groundbreaking agreement with Mexico” to force asylum seekers to the United States to wait in Mexico, Trump gushed:

“I want to thank the great President of Mexico. He is a great gentleman, a friend of mine, President Obrador. He is a man who really knows what is happening and he loves his country and he also loves the United States… We actually had 27,000 Mexican soldiers guarding our borders over the last two years. Nobody thought that was possible.”

Trump was praising the same man promoted by pseudo-left outlets like Jacobin Magazine, which speaks for the faction of the Democratic Party in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), as a “firebrand champion of the working class” with “pro-poor politics.”

AMLO’s subservience to Trump is a confirmation of the theory of permanent revolution developed by Leon Trotsky, who wrote on Mexico in 1938, at the time of the nationalizations of oil and railways under Lázaro Cárdenas, that the bourgeoisie was still “absolutely incapable of developing democratic rule.” He added: “If the national bourgeoisie is compelled to abandon the struggle against foreign capitalists and work under its direct tutelage, we’ll have a fascist regime.”

To oppose the threat of fascism, the Mexican working class must build a revolutionary political movement to unite with their class brothers and sisters in the United States, Latin America and internationally in a fight for socialism. This must be done in unbending opposition to all pro-capitalist and nationalist parties and the trade unions.

Podemos obeys Spanish fascist Vox party’s demand for no shelter-at-home

Alejandro López

After the January 6 fascist coup attempted by Donald Trump in Washington and amid growing, public threats of a Francoite coup in Spain, the fascist Vox party is increasingly dictating terms to Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government.

COVID-19 is running rampant across Europe, with record number of infections and daily deaths mounting to several thousand per day. Yet when Vox denounced a shelter-at-home policy needed to halt the pandemic, the PSOE-Podemos government immediately accepted.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (PSOE), second left, walks next to Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, second right, and First Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, left, at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Jan. 14 2020. (Image Credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

On Friday, Vox leader Santiago Abascal intervened in a party-sponsored event titled “The Future of Patriotism in the US and Spain” in Barcelona. Other far-right attendees included Georgia Meloni, of Fratelli d’Italia; far-right Chilean politician José Antonio Kas; and US Republican operatives Ted Bromund of the Heritage Foundation think tank and Grover Norquist. The latter is the brother of David Norquist, appointed acting secretary of defense by the incoming Biden administration as a sign of “unity” between the Democratic Party and its “Republican colleagues” after Trump’s coup.

Abascal denounced Twitter for closing Trump’s account during his coup attempt. The Vox leader said it was the result of “hatred,” which “shows the fear of the globalists, of the left, who have perceived that the future does not belong to them, it belongs to the patriots.” He concluded with a call for the fascists and far-right extremists to work together, “coordinated and united” against the “left,” that is to say, against the working class.

Shortly before the meeting, Abascal reacted publicly to news that Spain’s conservative Popular Party (PP) may change its opposition to a state of alarm to implement a shelter-at-home policy. He made clear there could be no attempt to change health policy: “Spain must protect itself, but Spain cannot stop. They have no right to arrest Spaniards in their homes condemning them to their ruin. For many months they have not been allowed to work, or their rights are being restricted.”

Hours after Abascal’s intervention, Fernando Simón, director of the Centre for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies, made clear, as he has done for a number of weeks now, that the PSOE-Podemos government will not reverse to shelter-at-home. Simón said: “The option of home confinement, as always, is there. But it does not seem, right now, necessary. We will see in the future. The control measures implemented are very similar to that of France or Germany.”

He falsely claimed that the limited measures adopted by regional governments across Spain, like shutting down bars and restaurants while allowing non-essential work and children back to school, “will not have the name of confinement, but the set of measures has a very similar effect.”

The following morning, as if to further reassure the fascists, Health Minister Salvador Illa said in a press conference: “At the moment, we do not contemplate any home confinement. We dominated the second wave without home confinement. We will defeat this third wave through co-governance and the current state of alarm, which works.” He added, “We are in the third wave, we are reporting very worrying figures, but we want to remind everyone that we have the knowledge, the experience and we know how to bend this curve.”

Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government is lying. One cannot define the current state of the pandemic as a third wave when the second one—which itself was only the resurgence of the virus after the premature ending of lockdown measures in the spring—was never brought under control. The virus is running rampant throughout Spain, and ICUs throughout the country face collapse.

Last Monday, Spain reported 61,422 new coronavirus cases, the highest weekend figure so far. By the middle of the week, on Wednesday, the number of new coronavirus infections reported was 38,869 in 24 hours. This was the worst seen so far in the pandemic until Friday, when Spain reported 40,197 new infections. The number of “excess deaths” above the historical norm—a better indication of deaths caused by the pandemic—now stand over 84,000.

The reaction of the government confirms the warning that it does not represent a “progressive” faction of the capitalist establishment. The working class cannot “pressure” the “left populists” in Podemos and trade unions to obtain a less callous and repressive policy, or a scientifically-based approach to combat the virus. These forces are becoming the main instrument through which the increasingly fascistic ruling establishment implements its policy.

It confirms the warnings of the International Committee of the Fourth International: If the control of the virus is left in the hands of the capitalist governments in Europe, the result will be hundreds of thousands of further unnecessary deaths. Capitalist elites in country after country have rejected any response to the pandemic that conflicts with corporate profit interests and the drive for the accumulation of private wealth.

The EU bailout, co-managed with Podemos and union representatives, transferring €140 billion to corporations and banks is being paid with the thousands of infections and deaths in herd immunity policy, pension and labour reforms, and brutal police-state repression to suppress social opposition.

Meanwhile, Podemos is intervening to cover up advanced coup plans of Vox and sections of the army. For over a year, these forces plotted to impose a dictatorship under the guise of a national PSOE-PP-Vox unity government.

Vox’s attacks on the PP for considering shelter-at-home policy, reveals the class interests underlying this policy. Just days after retired Lieutenant General Emilio Pérez Alamán wrote to the Minister of Defence on the same day Trump launched his coup, demanding it “change the course” of the government, a PP internal debate emerged whether to align themselves with the fascist campaign.

It is also an exposure of both the social-democratic PSOE and the “left populist” Podemos, and its allies across Europe, that Vox is intervening not to shift the policy of the PSOE and Podemos, but to ensure that there be no change to the murderous policies that they are already implementing.

The debate takes place amid rising working class opposition to the PSOE-Podemos government’s “herd immunity” policy and a growing class gulf separating the workers from the capitalist class. Nearly 60 percent of Spaniards believe the government should have taken stricter measures to control the virus, according to a survey conducted in early December by the state-funded Centre for Sociological Research (CIS).

It reflects a gulf between the policy of death and profits and the police of saving lives and socialism. The capitalist policy must be countered by the unified struggle of the working class across Europe. Schools and non-essential workplaces must be closed, with living wages provided to everyone, and full compensation provided to small businesses.

United Kingdom COVID-19 variant reaches New Zealand

John Braddock

Despite New Zealand’s fabricated reputation as a haven from the global coronavirus pandemic, its isolation facilities are now housing the highly-transmissible UK variant of COVID-19 and another strain associated with South Africa.

Twenty-eight new COVID-19 cases arrived in four days last week. An earlier spike of 35 cases up to January 11 included people who had arrived from India, the UK, Zimbabwe, Austria, Russia, Poland, Ukraine and the US. Nineteen cases are from a group of 190 international mariners who arrived from Singapore and the UAE early this month.

As of January 17, the total number of active cases is 82, from a total of 1,900. Almost a quarter of live cases are the UK variant, with that number expected to sharply increase. At least 19 cases in official isolation are linked to this variant, which is believed to be up to 70 percent more infectious than the previous strain.

A nurse holds a phone while a COVID-19 patient speaks with his family from an intensive care unit. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

The Ministry of Health reported the first case of the South African variant on January 10, although it had arrived at the border on December 26. While less is known about this strain, it is considered more transmissible than the original but less so than the UK variant.

The surge in more infectious strains echoes the situation in Australia where Brisbane, the third largest city, recently enforced a three-day emergency lockdown after a cleaner contracted the UK COVID-19 variant from inside the hotel quarantine system. Repeated failures to implement basic preventive measures have seen multiple clusters erupting from quarantine hotels into the general population.

While no community cases have been reported in New Zealand since November, health experts have expressed alarm about the arrival of the new variants. Auckland University microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles warned that the new strains “would spread like wildfire.” Wiles told the New Zealand Herald the UK variant has a “founder effect.” That is, a mutant takes off not because it is more infectious, but because it is the one that people who are infectious have. According to reports from Britain, much younger patients are becoming very ill very fast.

Epidemiologist Michael Baker also warned of an increased risk of community transmission. “As soon as you have a variant that’s more infectious it means those with it are more likely to infect people on the flight to New Zealand, more likely to infect other people in managed isolation and the staff that work there,” he said.

This underscores the global nature of the virus, which cannot be contained within national borders. According to Baker the strain, which has now been reported in over 50 countries, was always going to make it to New Zealand. “This new variant will become dominant all over the world over the next couple of weeks and months because it’s more infectious,” Baker said.

Modelling expert Shaun Hendy declared that a new community outbreak would need a level 4 lockdown to bring it under control. “Level 3 was effective back in August ... but I think if you take into account the extra infectiousness of these new variants, level 3 is probably not strong enough,” Hendy said. Epidemiologist Nick Wilson told Radio NZ the government should consider banning flights from certain countries and look at fast-tracking vaccinations for border control workers.

From this week, people arriving from America and the UK have to show they have tested negative less than 72 hours before departing. While the Labour-Greens government has tightened international travel restrictions, it insists the protocols governing managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities do not need to be upgraded.

However, a crisis already exists over the inadequate supply of facilities for new arrivals. Existing MIQ hotels have a combined operational capacity of 4,500 rooms. In the next 14 days, 4,299 of these rooms will be full with 5,627 people, but the government has no plans to establish new facilities.

A Christchurch-based MIQ worker told Stuff on Saturday that an outbreak could happen at any time, due to inadequate measures to prevent the more contagious strains getting into the community. Workers at the facility highlighted control “gaps” such as a lack of social distancing, the possible spread of the virus through a hotel’s ventilation system and inadequate contact tracing and testing for staff.

Nurses have previously raised concerns about staff shortages. A Ministry of Health audit in October admitted shortages and roster problems in MIQ facilities. The ministry said the matters have since been addressed, but health care professionals working at border facilities have publicly disagreed.

Nursing trade unions have sat on the growing crisis. Nurses Society director David Wills said the union surveyed members working in MIQ facilities last month, and 44 percent had experienced inadequate staffing. A NZ Nurses Organisation spokesperson said members raised concerns before Christmas, which the union had dealt with “on an individual basis.”

The Unite union, which covers hotel workers, has lauded union-controlled health and safety committees for “working closely” with government departments at some MIQ sites. Unite spokesman Gerard Hehir said any COVID outbreaks to date were the “result of procedures not being followed”—in other words, the fault of workers.

The unions have played the key role in buttressing the Labour-led government and enforcing the continuation of work under increasingly dire conditions. As with previous complaints about lack of supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE), the unions have organised no industrial campaign or strike action to fight the staff shortages and overwork.

There is growing anger among workers. Last year primary health care nurses began taking strike action for pay parity with their District Health Board (DHB) counterparts, following widespread strikes over pay and conditions in 2018-19, which the unions sold out.

As elsewhere globally, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government has responded to the health emergency by prioritising financial considerations. Returning citizens are now charged a $3,000 upfront fee to secure a place in an MIQ facility. Thousands of citizens, along with displaced migrant workers and foreign students with residency visas, have been tossed into limbo.

The wider public health system remains ill-equipped to deal with a new COVID-19 surge. A $4 billion cash injection following the COVID-19 lockdown last March failed to address the crisis in the system, which is falling apart. Underfunded and resourced for decades, the country’s 20 DHBs are millions of dollars in the red. Health Minister Andrew Little has promised to “reform” the health bureaucracy, but has not promised any more money.

Free COVID-19 whistleblower Rebekah Jones!

Bryan Dyne

On Sunday, scientist and COVID-19 whistleblower Rebekah Jones tweeted that the state of Florida had issued a warrant for her arrest in a flagrant effort to intimidate the outspoken and courageous scientist.

Jones is one of the most outspoken public opponents of the “herd immunity” policy being carried out by both the Trump White House and the Democratic governors. It has resulted in the premature reopening of schools and businesses even as the pandemic surges throughout the country.

Jones has repeatedly warned of the dangers of reopening schools, countering the false narrative peddled in much of the establishment media that schools are not major sources of transmission for COVID-19.

“To protect my family from continued police violence, and to show that I’m ready to fight whatever they throw at me, I’m turning myself in to police in Florida Sunday night,” Jones said. “The Governor will not win his war on science and free speech. He will not silence those who speak out.”

At the time of this writing, Jones’ current location is unknown, and the Florida government has not even enumerated the charges against her. Jones made clear that the state of Florida was using the threat of legal prosecution to muzzle her. “The agent told my lawyer there would be only one charge, but emphasized that speaking out or going to the media may result in police ‘stacking’ additional charges. All of this just to silence a critic of a governor who failed to do his job and got thousands killed as a result,” she wrote.

She later defiantly posted, “Censored by the state of Florida until further notice. #LetHerSpeak”

Jones’ incarceration comes one month after Republican Governor Ron DeSantis ordered a police-state-style raid on her house, during which state police aiming guns at Jones and her family. The immediate target of the police were flash drives that, according to an interview given to CNN by Jones, contain proof that Florida officials “were lying [last] January about things like internal reports and notices from the CDC,” as well as “evidence of illegal activities by the state.”

More broadly, last month’s police invasion of her home and the current arrest warrant are an attempt to silence a well-known and outspoken opponent of the back-to-work campaign.

Jones became famous last May for refusing to doctor Florida’s coronavirus case numbers to support the state government’s escalating back-to-work and back-to-school campaigns.

Now, as then, the coronavirus case numbers and death toll make a clear argument for closing down schools and non-essential workplaces to halt the pandemic. There were nearly 24,000 reported deaths in the US during the past week, averaging more than 3,400 dead each day. More than 1,200 of those deaths were in Florida alone.

After being fired from her position, Jones went on to help create and oversee Florida COVID Action and The COVID Monitor—the most comprehensive databases for tracking COVID-19 infections and deaths in Florida and in K-12 schools across the US, respectively.

To date, there have been no major statements from the Democratic Party or pseudo-left organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America opposing the censorship of Jones.

The pretext for the December raid against Jones is a felony charge based on claims by Florida authorities that she had circulated an email among state employees on November 10 that urged them to “speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late.”

Even before Jones turned herself in, the charges were shown to be false. She explained that, “FDLE found no evidence of a message sent last Nov. to DOH staff telling them to ‘speak out’ on any of the devices they took—the entire basis for the raid on my home in Dec.” She also made clear that “an agent confirmed” that whatever police found on her hard drives “has nothing to do with the subject of the warrant.”

Moreover, since the state’s first attempt to silence Jones by claiming she broke the law is falling apart, Florida government authorities have moved on to a new allegation. As Jones tweeted, the new warrant “was issued the day after a Tallahassee judge told police that if they’re not investigating a crime, they had to return my equipment. They didn’t find proof of anything related to the warrant, so they invented something new to come after me for in retaliation.”

The timing of the arrest warrant is also significant. It was issued in the wake of the January 6 attempted coup d’état by President Donald Trump and during the same week that the US death toll of the pandemic topped 400,000. DeSantis is making clear that the central preoccupation of the American state is not seriously probing the immense dangers posed by Trump’s attempts to overthrow the Constitution or the mass death caused by the pandemic, but ensuring that schools and businesses remain open at all costs.

In that light, Jones is an obstacle to be removed before she can reveal any more truths about the government’s handling of the pandemic. The ruling class is very aware of the mass hostility to its homicidal herd immunity policies, anger which will only grow as the number of deaths spiral to ever greater heights. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now predict that 92,000 more deaths will occur during the next three weeks.

Such projections agree with those from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which predicts that more than 500,000 people will have died from COVID-19 in the US by mid-February.

Five hundred thousand dead! And the IHME model admits that even with a “rapid vaccine rollout” the number of dead will be essentially the same. At the same time, the authors of the model, including Chris Murray at the University of Washington in Seattle, predict that the daily death rate will level off in April, presumably a result of the policies of the incoming Biden administration.

In reality, the pandemic will continue to rage out of control as long as the necessary measures to contain the pandemic are not taken, including a lockdown of all but essential production and full compensation for those who aren’t working. The science is clear.

This is ultimately why Rebekah Jones is being silenced. Just as with other persecuted whistleblowers such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, she took it upon herself to commit the crime of telling the working class the truth, both about the pandemic and the criminal response of the government to the public health crisis. It is now up to workers themselves to fight against censorship and defend all democratic rights as part of a broader revolutionary struggle for socialism.

Ashden International Awards in Sustainable Energy 2021

Application Deadline: 3rd March 2021 at 11.59pm GMT.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

To be taken at (country): London, UK

About the Award: World’s leading green energy awards, seeks to reward innovative enterprises and programmes that deliver, or play a key part in enabling the delivery of sustainable energy systems and through this bring social, economic and environmental benefits.

In 2021, we’re uncovering and supporting the world’s next climate champions to help them grow faster and spread further. Are you one of them?

This year’s award categories include greener communities, energy access, green skills, natural climate solutions, sustainable cooling and more. Some categories focus on the UK, and others cover work in low- and middle-income countries. Businesses, public bodies and charities can all apply.

Type: Entrepreneurship, Contest

Who can apply for an Ashden International Award?

• Businesses, NGOs, social enterprises and government organisations are all eligible.
• The work must be delivered in at least one of the UN’s developing regions of Africa, Caribbean, Central America, South America, Asia (excluding Japan) and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand) and can be in rural or urban areas. High-income countries in these regions, as defined by the World Bank, are not eligible to apply

What happens if you win an Award As an Ashden Award winner? You will:

• Be invited to London at Ashden’s expense to take part in the Awards Ceremony as well as other events during that week. Winning an Ashden Award is contingent on taking part in Awards Week activities.
• Participate in media interviews that we may be able to arrange.
• Agree with Ashden what you will spend the prize fund on and any business support you may receive.
• Provide and update monitoring data about the progress of your work after one year, two years and three years

Number of Awardees: 10

Value of Contest: 

• The winners will receive prize funds of £20,000 each
• As well as this cash fund, winning an Ashden Award brings many other benefits, such as:
• Local, national and international publicity, through the work of our specialist media team.
• Support to grow or replicate your work: this can include professional mentoring, training and introductions to investment and other finance providers.
• Opportunities to present your work to large and influential audiences at the Ashden Awards Ceremony, International Conference and other Ashden events.
• Membership of the Ashden Alumni network of Ashden Award-winners, which facilitates opportunities to create productive partnerships and learning.
• The acclaim of winning a prestigious Ashden Award. Our application and assessment process is known for being rigorous.

How to Apply: Apply here

Visit Contest Webpage for details