Major hospital in Chile goes up in flames amid near collapse of public health system

Mauricio Saavedra

The fire that engulfed San Borja Hospital, one of the major hospitals in Santiago this past Saturday, bears the hallmarks of decades of underfunding and under-resourcing of the public health system by right-wing and “left” governments alike. Amid an alarming escalation of COVID-19 cases that has national intensive care units at 92 percent occupancy, such avoidable catastrophes can only speed up the collapse of an already debilitated health system.

It is due both to good fortune as well as the decisive action and dedication of health professionals and emergency services that no one was injured. Around 300 firefighters, 40 fire engines and emergency vehicles battled the blaze after the alert was raised at around 7 a.m. In less than two hours, health staff evacuated the majority of patients, some 300 in total, to safe areas of the hospital to determine who could be discharged and to transfer others, including ICU patients, to already stretched health facilities across Santiago.

A San Borjan doctor from the pediatric wing movingly described how he and other health personnel, some of whom were on vacation, quickly responded to the news that their hospital had caught on fire: “I received the news, got dressed and went to the hospital ... the pediatric staff behaved impeccably. There were 19 hospitalized children, all of them were brought down in a calm manner, all of them in order, all of the staff knew what to do, everything as we always learned about transfers. It was a marvel, the commitment of everyone.”

San Borja Hospital in flames. (Credit: bomberos de Chile)

It remains unclear the exact trigger for the fire that started in the boiler room; an investigation is ongoing. The initial report indicated an electrical fault. What is certain is that with years of financial neglect, insufficient maintenance and obsolete equipment, such incidents are bound to happen.

This is the conclusion that millions in the country have drawn. A video has gone viral of an angry San Borja worker confronting the Health Minister Enrique Paris while he was giving a press conference in the vicinity. “You have done nothing! You come for the TV and for the photo op, nothing else,” he said as he was moved along.

Film of four hospitals being inundated with rainwater only 24 hours later also went viral. The worst hit was the El Pino Hospital, located in the San Bernardo district. A hospital communiqué stated that the “facility suffered several incidents in its installations. For the most part, these are minor leaks and filtrations. But around 4:00 p.m. there was a major incident in the Maternal Emergency Service (where) the false ceiling broke due to the accumulated water that exceeded the capacity of the rainwater filtration systems.”

Heavy rains in the Metropolitan Region on Sunday also affected the Buin Hospital, the Padre Hurtado Hospital and the San Borja Hospital.

Iván González Tapia is an architect who was involved in an inquiry into the state of the public system under the military dictatorship that was commissioned by the then incoming civilian government in 1989. The center-left “Concertación” Coalition, which included the Socialist Party and was supported from the sidelines by the Stalinist Communist Party, held consecutive power from 1990 until 2010.

Referring to the tragedy at San Borja, Gonzalez raised in an opinion piece that fires in urban buildings are never the result of unforeseeable natural events:

“The causes that produce them are, always, what we have been permanently claiming for these and other catastrophes: the lack of planning, management and maintenance. This, which should seem obvious, is not attended to in Chile with the dedication and provision of minimum indispensable means to avoid the risks and catastrophes that adequate planning will always be able to anticipate.”

The commission Gonzalez had been involved in 1989 verified that in the 17 years of military rule most of the urban buildings had fallen into utter disrepair.

He wrote: “Among them, the health area stood out for its enormous deficiencies, since out of a minimum budget for their replacement and maintenance, not even half of what was required had been invested. We are not surprised, then, by what happened in San Borja … which today does not even have the necessary means to attend to the patients it receives.”

This is a significant admission from someone aligned to the center-left Concertación (today the Nueva Mayoría) and an indictment of the entire parliamentary left political caste that has sought to lay the entire blame for the unpardonable state of social and public infrastructure solely on the military dictatorship and its free market economic policies. In reality they intensified these same policies by providing a miserly 4 percent of GDP to the health budget, creating among the worst staff-to-patient ratios in the OECD and a resource and infrastructure-starved public health system.

This is the background to the San Borja disaster under conditions where COVID-19 cases are rapidly rising in Chile, today reaching the high incidence rates of last winter in the middle of the summer period. The number of daily cases being reported has reached 4,000. As of January 28 the total number of confirmed and suspected cases reached 821,130, along with 24,429 deaths according to the Health Ministry’s latest report.

The disaster is compounded by the fact that regional hospitals are sending their critical patients to Santiago as they have no more bed spaces. This is the case for the region surrounding Valparaíso, Chile’s second largest city. Both the Carlos Van Buren hospital and the Gustavo Fricke hospital reached 100 percent occupancy, while the mining region of Antofagasta was forced to turn to the Military Hospital due to lack of personnel.

Throughout the pandemic the overriding concern of the ultra-right government of President Sebastian Piñera has been to keep profitable sectors of the economy open. His former health minister, Jaime Mañalich, who was forced to resign after caught providing false coronavirus figures to the general public, implemented a “dynamic” quarantining regime that allowed the mining and other export-oriented industries to remain open for business. This led directly to COVID-19 spreading to other regions, especially those with a mining workforce.

Where quarantining was implemented, no meaningful assistance was provided to the millions that, either due to being furloughed without pay or working in the informal sector, were forced to break curfews for food or work. This created the conditions for the virus to rapidly spread in the densely populated working-class suburbs and shanty towns of Santiago, Valparaíso and elsewhere.

The latest health minister, Enrique Paris, has intensified the government’s criminal “herd immunity” policies that directly contributed to the present second wave. Late last year, the government made the extraordinarily reckless decision to open the country to international tourism.

In this whole process, the right-wing government has been aided by the parliamentary left and the Communist Party and Frente Amplio-dominated corporatist unions which agreed to nonessential export industries remaining operational. They accepted a freeze on collective bargaining, wage cuts and the furloughing of workers for the benefit of employers, and they have point blank refused to call any industrial action against poverty, hunger, insecurity and evictions impacting the working class.

An indefinite strike called by the health unions late last year was ended as quickly as it began once a sellout deal was stitched up. One of the key demands—the payment of a paltry COVID Bonus of 200,000 pesos (US$275), reduced from the 500,000 pesos (US$650) originally pledged by the Congress earlier in June—has yet to be paid.

A study published last week by the nurses association evaluating variables—such as the number of new cases, mortality rates, the characteristics of the second wave in Europe, the government’s mismanagement and the vaccination processes—concluded that cases could quadruple by the winter period. But even under this impending cataclysmic scenario they refuse to mobilize the working class.

With this track record of criminal negligence and callous indifference on the part of the entire political elite, the working class needs to draw critical lessons and intervene with its own agenda. It must break with bourgeois politics, especially the Stalinist PCCh, the pseudo-left Frente Amplio and the establishment left who are all wedded to parliamentarism and defend capitalist private property. It must reject the domination of the corporatist unions and create new organs of political power that are comprised of and controlled by the rank and file.

Russian court sentences Alexei Navalny to prison

Clara Weiss

A Moscow court has sentenced Russian oppositionist Alexei Navalny to a prison sentence of three-and-a-half years. He was found guilty of violating terms of his probation, which stems from 2014 fraud-related charges. The court counted several months that Navalny has already spent under house arrest towards his latest sentence, so that his imprisonment term was reduced to two years and eight months in a penal colony. His defense team will appeal the sentence.

Navalny returned to Russia in January, after having spent five months in Germany, to which he was flown after falling ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow in August 2020. Navalny, along with the United States and European Union, insists that he was poisoned with Novichok on behalf of the Kremlin. These claims have been riddled with contradictions from the start. Navalny, who was warned by the Kremlin that he would be arrested upon returning to Russia, was detained by the police on January 17 upon his arrival in Moscow.

Alexei Navalny talks to one of his lawyers during a hearing in the Moscow City Court in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. (Moscow City Court via AP)

In the courtroom, Navalny argued that the charges against him were illegitimate. He denounced Putin as “the poisoner of underpants,” referring to one of the latest versions of the story according to which he was nearly killed by the Russian government. Navalny claims an elite FSB unit planted Novichok in his underwear.

The courthouse where the trial was held was surrounded by a massive police cordon, and at least three hundred protesters were arrested. There was also a heavy police presence in other parts of the country, where pro-Navalny demonstrations took place.

The previous two weekends have seen tens of thousands of people in Moscow, Petersburg and dozens of other cities take to the streets in defense of Navalny. The Kremlin has responded with violent crackdowns and thousands of arrests. Several of Navalny’s main allies are now under house arrest.

After the verdict was announced, the National Guard was mobilized in Moscow and the square in front of the Kremlin was shut down for visitors and tourists. The US-backed liberal opposition parties PARNAS and Yabloko announced that they would organize protests in support of Navalny this weekend.

The oppositionist also enjoys the support of broad sections of the pseudo-left in Russia. According to press reports, the Stalinist Communist Party of Russia (KPRF), long a key prop of the Putin government, is on the verge of a split over Navalny, as a substantial wing of the party is now backing him.

The verdict prompted an immediate outcry by the imperialist powers. French President Emmanuel Macron, whose government has brutally suppressed social protests in recent years, declared the verdict “unacceptable” because “political disagreement is never a crime.”

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken both called for the immediate release of Navalny. British foreign minister Dominic Raab denounced his sentencing as “perverse.”

The political tensions erupting domestically and internationally around Navalny are an expression of a broader crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has profoundly destabilized society in Russia and around the world. It has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the country, and thrown over one million people into unemployment and many millions more into destitution. The Russian economy contracted by 3.1 percent last year.

This follows years of economic slump, triggered by the conflict over Ukraine and sanctions imposed by the US and EU. The Russian oligarchy has shifted the full burden of this conflict onto the working class. Real wages had been in steady decline for six years even before the pandemic hit. Incomes fell again by 3.5 percent last year, while inflation stands at 4.9 percent.

Three decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, social inequality in Russia is among the highest of any major economy. In 2017, the top 10 percent owned 89 percent of the country’s wealth. The vast majority of workers have to survive on a few hundred dollars a month, while the ten richest Russian oligarchs own a combined wealth of $151.6 billion.

Navalny has sought to tap into this social discontent with a video exposing what is allegedly a palace built for Putin on the Black Sea. The video has been watched over 100 million times. The Kremlin is now arguing that the palace is owned by a close ally of Putin, the oligarch Arkadi Rotenberg. A 24-year old protester told Al Jazeera on January 23 that she was shocked by the video, given the poverty wages medical workers receive who have been on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, noting sarcastically, “I can imagine what kind of bonus doctors get: about 17,000 roubles ($223).”

The political crisis gripping Russia and manifesting itself in the tensions erupting around Navalny is a symptom of the breakdown of world capitalism more broadly. The bitter internecine conflicts within the Russian oligarchy are fueled, above all, by escalating class tensions.

Terrified of mounting class anger in Russia, Navalny and his backers are seeking to channel such sentiments behind a reactionary agenda. Navalny, who maintains well-documented ties to the far-right, speaks for a layer of the oligarchy that is oriented toward more direct cooperation with the US. Sections of the American ruling class view the fueling of separatist sentiments within Russia as a means to extend US domination over the region.

It is for this reason that the issue of Putin’s wealth has been presented as one of personal corruption, a basis upon which the most reactionary forces, including monarchists and ultra-nationalists, can be mobilized. Meanwhile, any mention of the term “capitalism” has been banned by the political forces dominating the protests, from Navalny himself to his backers in the Pabloite Russian Socialist Movement.

The conflicts within the Russian ruling class are also driven by the geopolitical tensions which it confronts and the failure of its foreign policy. Having emerged out of the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, which was carried out hand-in-glove with US imperialism and the German ruling class, Russia’s oligarchy is highly dependent on world imperialism both politically and economically.

For many years, the Putin regime sought to counterbalance Russia’s growing encirclement by US imperialism by deepening its ties with a substantial section of the German ruling class. Economic ties between the two countries, especially in the energy sector, have remained close, despite the fact that Germany backed the 2014 anti-Russia coup in Ukraine, supported anti-Russia sanctions and escalated the military build-up against Russia.

With the Biden administration packed with figures associated with an aggressive policy toward Russia, German-Russian relations have now become a central focal point of the growing tensions between the US and Germany. The starkest expression of this is the conflict over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The pipeline is set to deliver more Russian gas directly to Germany, circumventing Ukraine.

The US, which has historically opposed all German-Russian pipeline initiatives, has sanctioned Nord Stream 2 with bi-partisan support in Congress, effectively blocking its construction for the past year. Several major companies, including the Zurich Insurance Group and the German construction and engineering group Bilfinger SE, have now pulled back from the project.

Clément Beaune, the French minister for European affairs, called on Germany to end the project on Tuesday, the first time that Paris has raised such a demand. However, the German government so far insists on its support for Nord Stream 2. In the German press, there is heated debate about the project in the context of the Navalny case.

Infectious UK coronavirus variant spreads from quarantine hotel in Western Australia

Clare Bruderlin

Events in Western Australia (WA) this week show how quickly the global COVID-19 pandemic can spread because of inadequate government quarantine facilities and other basic safety measures.

On Sunday, the WA Labor Party state government revealed that a young security guard in the capital, Perth, who worked in a quarantine hotel for oversees travelers, had tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first locally acquired case in the state in almost 10 months.

Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan (Credit: ABC News)

The government later confirmed that the guard had contracted the UK variant of the virus, which is up to 70 percent more transmissible. The quarantine hotel where he worked currently has two confirmed cases of the UK variant and one case of the South African strain, which is also considered highly infectious.

It reportedly took officials more than 11 hours to inform the federal and other state authorities, reflecting the unpreparedness of the public health system to manage COVID-19 outbreaks.

Even as he announced a limited five-day lockdown of Perth and surrounding areas, WA Premier Mark McGowen tried to quell public concern by saying that the worker had used his government’s SafeWA app to record his movements.

But Dr Andrew Miller of the Australian Medical Association told the West Australian, “I think the government here has been doing its homework in the car on the way to school. We’re still not getting QR codes mandatory on the Safe WA app for another couple of weeks at many busy places in our community… the quarantine is not a proper quarantine system because you’re still combining it with hotels, you’ve been slow at getting sewerage testing done… and all these other things, and now we’re paying the price for it.”

Although no further cases have been detected so far, testing levels remain low. On Sunday, just 3,171 tests were conducted. Lines of cars stretched for hundreds of metres at testing clinics, with some people waiting three or more hours for a test. Then clinics closed at 10pm. The tests increased to 16,000 on Monday, but similar lengthy wait times were reported.

The state government declared a state of emergency and a five-day lockdown, from Sunday until Friday, in the Perth metropolitan area and the adjacent Peel and South West regions, covering about two million people. Given that the coronavirus incubation period is 14 days, this measure is patently inadequate.

The lockdown involves the closure of schools, which were due to reopen on Monday, as well as universities and technical college facilities, indoor sporting venues, large religious gatherings and beauty therapy services. But workers classified as essential are exempt, including construction workers and those in the lucrative mining industry.

People quarantining at the hotel where the security guard tested positive were told that they would remain there until they had returned an additional negative COVID test, and travelers who left the quarantine hotel after January 25 were ordered into self-quarantine until they received a further negative test.

The crisis is another demonstration of the failure of the hotel quarantine system. The events in Perth bear similarities to viral escapes in other Australian states—Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland—which have seen coronavirus outbreaks stemming from hotel quarantine. Despite this, there are no national standards for hotel quarantine.

The hiring of private security guards who are not trained to manage coronavirus patients has been identified as a factor in each outbreak, along with poor ventilation, improper personal protective equipment (PPE) and a lack of staff testing.

Many hotel quarantine staff are employed on a casual contract basis and therefore have to work multiple jobs, which facilitates the spread of the virus. The Perth security guard, who is in his 20s, had been working a second job as a ride-share driver, although the authorities said he had not worked while infectious.

Although daily testing for all hotel quarantine staff had been agreed to in a “national cabinet” meeting on January 8, it was not until January 29 that daily testing was begun in all WA quarantine hotels.

The young worker tested negative for the virus on January 15, January 17 and January 23. He was not tested again until two days after he developed symptoms, allowing him to be infectious and in the community for around five days. Contact tracers have identified some 151 close contacts he had, plus 68 casual contacts through venue tracing.

Moreover, there are no clear guidelines as to the use of PPE in hotel quarantine. In a press conference, WA Health Minister Roger Cook said security guards working in Perth’s nine quarantine hotels do not have to wear a mask at all times. “There are particular circumstances in which they are required to wear PPE,” he said. “At other times they may not be.”

When Cook was asked if he expected that hotel quarantine staff would be required to wear a mask if they were working on the same floor as a person who had tested positive to the virus, he said: “Not necessarily.”

In a bid to shift the responsibility from itself for the virus escaping from the quarantine hotel, the government has ordered WA police to conduct an investigation into how the security guard contracted the virus.

The Labor government also announced a review of the state’s quarantine arrangements, yet the failures of hotel quarantine have been known for months and were already the subject of an official inquiry in Victoria after a hotel-sourced outbreak killed 768 people last year.

The impact of the COVID emergency is now being compounded by a massive bushfire engulfing areas just to the east of Perth, destroying more than 70 homes and blanketing the city with toxic smoke, reminiscent of last year’s national bushfire disaster.

In response to even the limited lockdown in WA, media outlets representing the interests of big business have denounced the measures and downplayed the threat of the virus.

A comment by Adam Creighton in the Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper called the lockdown “the biggest overreaction in health policy history.” He wrote: “My economic advice is that the health advice is increasingly unsustainable, given doubts about the efficacy of forthcoming vaccines, and even illogical. Last week the International Monetary Fund said the pandemic had cost governments $US14 trillion. Here, combined federal and state government debt is on track to rise from the equivalent of 42 percent of GDP in 2018 to 74 percent by this year—a much bigger increase than any other major country.”

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who has rejected calls for lockdowns during recent coronavirus outbreaks, responded to the WA crisis by denouncing any strategy for eliminating COVID-19. She also attempted to blame individual workers for community transmission from hotel quarantine. “You cannot prevent people who work in the quarantine system from going about their daily lives,” she said, “and whilst people do the right thing most of the time a slight lapse for a minute can cause the disease to spread.”

The response of Berejiklian and the corporate press demonstrates the commitment of governments and the financial elite to preventing any measures, however necessary, to stop the spread of the pandemic and save lives, that cut across the generation of profits.

New Zealand government bans foreign cruise ship workers

Tom Peters

On January 29, New Zealand’s immigration minister Kris Faafoi announced that the approaching cruise ship Le Lapérouse had stopped just outside the country’s exclusive economic zone and was being advised to “turn around,” after officials denied work visas to 61 of its 90 crew members.

Faafoi said the ship, which was not carrying passengers, could dock in New Zealand for maintenance, but the 61 workers, including waiters, chefs, bartenders, entertainers and housekeeping staff, would have to leave the country immediately or be “detained until they are able to leave.” The “best course of action,” he said, would be for the ship to “turn around before they get here.”

Le Lapérouse cruise ship (Source: Wikipedia)

Stuff reported that staff from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment had “told the ship’s owners to dump the hospitality crew in New Caledonia, before proceeding onto New Zealand.”

The owners, French firm Ponant, decided to turn Le Lapérouse around and anchor off the coast of Noumea, in the French Pacific island territory of New Caledonia. With a cyclone approaching and the ship running low on fuel, potentially endangering the crew, Noumean authorities allowed the ship to dock last night.

The fate of the crew, who are from several different countries, remains highly uncertain. Given the global collapse of the tourism and cruise ship industries, they will undoubtedly struggle to find other jobs if they cannot work on Le Lapérouse.

The episode underscores the draconian character of the Labour Party-Greens coalition government’s border regime. Under the guise of keeping the country safe during the pandemic, the government is stoking nationalism and xenophobia to divide the working class and prevent any unified struggle against austerity and job cuts.

Thousands of migrant workers and foreign students who have visas entitling them to live in New Zealand, are stranded overseas and have been denied the right to re-enter. Many have been separated from family members. Tens of thousands of migrants living in New Zealand are facing endless delays in the processing of their residency applications.

Faafoi told a press conference: “New Zealand takes its border security extremely seriously, especially given the threat of COVID-19,” implying the cruise ship workers posed a health risk. However, the crew of Le Lapérouse had tested negative for the coronavirus on four occasions and were aboard the ship for 27 days to fulfill isolation criteria.

New Zealand company Wild Earth Travel had chartered the vessel to provide cruises to sub-Antarctic islands. Le Lapérouse had been cleared by NZ’s Ministry of Health to enter New Zealand well before it departed from Indonesia on January 10. Ponant believed that this approval implied its crew would be granted visas.

Cruise ships were banned in March 2020 due to the pandemic, but the government allowed the industry to restart late last year. Numerous media articles published in December and January welcomed the return of Le Lapérouse, which has operated in New Zealand for seven years. The government apparently did not warn the ship’s operators that two thirds of its crew would be barred from entering the country.

Faafoi admitted to Radio NZ that the crew did not pose a health risk, but said New Zealand’s border closure in late March 2020 meant only citizens, residents and workers granted an exemption to fill “critical skills shortages” could enter the country. Immigration NZ informed Le Lapérouse that 61 crew did not meet the criteria only days before it was due to arrive.

Far from defending the crew of Le Lapérouse, who have been prevented from earning a living solely because of their nationality, New Zealand’s trade union bureaucracy applauded the government’s ban.

Maritime Union (MUNZ) assistant secretary Craig Harrison said the cruise ship jobs should have been reserved for “young New Zealanders… struggling to get positions.” He said “workers that have been displaced at Air New Zealand,” the national airline, could have been employed on Le Lapérouse. He urged the ship operator to enlist the union to act essentially as a recruitment agency and find local staff to replace the 61 foreign crew.

The Merchant Service Guild (MSG) suggested that the entire crew of Le Lapérouse, including the 29 technical crew who were granted visas, should be replaced by New Zealanders. MSG vice-president Ian McLeod told Radio NZ the ship’s “non-resident crew can stay onboard for a couple of weeks to train New Zealanders,” and then return home. All ships should be “using New Zealand people with New Zealand crews,” he said.

Migrant workers are not responsible for unemployment, which has soared in New Zealand as in every country, amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Official figures show 4.9 percent of working age people in NZ are unemployed, up from 4 percent a year ago. The “underutilisation rate,” including part-time workers who want more hours and people not actively looking for work, is much higher at 11.9 percent.

The unions are scapegoating foreigners for the lack of decent jobs to divert attention from the fact that they have enforced mass sackings, wage cuts and other attacks on the working class. These organisations do not represent workers. They are a privileged middle class bureaucracy working hand-in-hand with big business and the state to defend the interests of New Zealand capitalism.

The E tū union, for example, refused to organise any resistance in the working class to more than 4,000 job cuts by Air New Zealand, which is majority-owned by the government and received a loan of $900 million from the state to keep it afloat.

While issuing occasional pleas to minimise redundancies, E tū called on the airline to cut its foreign workforce to reduce costs. On September 16, 2020, the union stated that “there is no operational reason for Air New Zealand to retain a crew base in Shanghai” and demanded that the airline end its agreement with a crew hire company in the Chinese city.

E tū and MUNZ are both affiliated to the Labour Party and urged workers to re-elect it in the last year’s election, despite Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government handing out tens of billions of dollars to major corporations, while overseeing soaring social inequality, homelessness and poverty. MUNZ donated more than $40,000 of union members’ money to Labour’s election campaign.

In apparent cost-cutting move, Stellantis introduces lower-quality face masks at Sterling Stamping Plant

James Brewer & Tom Hall

Stellantis’ (formerly Fiat Chrysler) Sterling Stamping Plant (SSP) has been a center of COVID-19 infections in recent weeks. The plant, located in the northern suburbs of Detroit, is the largest stamping plant in the world, with some 2,100 employees. The Sterling Heights Assembly Plant Rank-and-File Safety Committee reported last November that infections were spreading out of control at the plant. Since then, dozens of new infections have been reported to workers.

While Stellantis and the other automakers claim that they are taking precautions to prevent outbreaks in their plants, autoworkers have reported for months that even the token measures implemented after the restart of production last May have been progressively abandoned.

Inside the massive Sterling Stamping Plant (SOURCE: YouTube. The Wheel Network)

However, the personal protective equipment (PPE) which the automakers provided workers was inadequate from the very beginning. In spite of repeated advice by public health experts that workers at risk of infection should wear N95 masks, which provide a higher level of air filtration, workers have only been provided with generic surgical masks at the start of their shifts.

However, even as the virus continues to kill 3,000 people per day in the United States, and Dr. Anthony Fauci has called on people to wear two masks when out of their homes, Stellantis management at Sterling Stamping has stopped giving out even the surgical masks it had been previously providing. Instead, the company is providing workers with new masks that appear to offer much lower levels of protection.

The new masks lack the water-resistant blue out layers which are normally used with surgical masks, and have a texture that is highly absorbent and transparent and that workers have compared to tissue paper. They carry no safety rating whatsoever, either from the government of China, where the masks were produced, or by the American ASTM (formerly known as American Society for Testing and Materials).

A worker shows the WSWS the increased liquid permeability of the new masks.

The masks are “Much thinner ... three ply, yet the outer two layer are transparent,” a Sterling Stamping worker told the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter. “This appears to be the result of cost cutting. Less cost, Less filtration, and an increase in new variant infections. This is what it looks like to me.”

The new masks appear to be only “applicable to daily life to filter pollen, willow wool, bacterial particles and block nasal or oral exhalation or ejection of pollutants to wear protective masks,” the worker continued. “I believe we have a problem. This Identification is ONLY on the outside of the shipping box!”

The masks are produced by a Stellantis subsidary, Comau LLC, based in Southfield, Michigan. The company, which operates dozens of facilities throughout the world, including North America, Europe and China, specializes in robotics and automation. It has no background at all in producing medical supplies or PPE. The masks themselves come in boxes branded with the FCA company logo.

Disclaimer on the packaging for the new masks.

The new masks have not been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. Instead, they have been authorized by the government for use on an emergency basis under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which provides for temporary authorizations in cases of public health emergencies. This is indicated by a disclaimer on the packages that the masks are shipped in, which are not provided to employees themselves.

The packages also include the following disclaimer: "Not recommended for: 1. Use in any surgical setting or where significant exposure to liquid, bodily or other hazardous fluids, may be expected; 2. Use in a clinical setting where the infection risk level through inhalation exposure is high; 3. Use in the presence of high intensity heat source or flammable gas.

Last Tuesday, Harvard public health professor Joseph G. Allen penned an editorial for the Washington Post calling for ASTM rated N95 masks to be used by the general public: “A typical cloth mask might capture half of all respiratory aerosols that come out of our mouth when we talk, sing or just breathe. A tightly woven cloth mask might get you to 60 or 70 percent, and a blue surgical mask can get you to 70 or 80 percent.

More disclaimers on the shipping box.

“But there’s no reason any essential worker—and, really, everyone in the country—should go without masks that filter 95 percent.

“The masks I’m referring to, of course, are N95s. These are cheap—pre-pandemic they cost about 50 cents—and easy to manufacture. Yet our country has failed to invoke the Defense Production Act to produce enough masks for health-care workers and other essential workers. That needs to change, as my colleagues at Harvard Medical School have written.”

Stellantis’ apparent cost-cutting measures on such a basic necessity as facemasks give the lie to their perfunctory statements of concern “to protect employees, their families and the surrounding communities.” In reality, management at Stellantis as well as the other automakers have been colluding with the United Auto Workers union for months to cover up the spread of the infections and to force workers to endure record levels of overtime to make up for absences and lost production earlier last year.

For much of the past year, the auto industry has boasted, to considerable acclaim from the corporate press, about its decision to divert a small portion of its industrial capacity towards the creation of ventilators, face shields and other safety equipment. The most bombastic promotion has come from the Detroit Free Press, which compared it to the measures during World War II to mobilize the entire economy of the country to produce bombers, tanks and other weapons of war. In reality, this was always first and foremost a public relations ploy by the auto companies, meant above all to facilitate the reopening of auto plants after a wildcat strike forced the industry in North America to close last March.

Fiat Chrysler/Stellantis announced last March that it would begin producing face masks for US healthcare workers out of one of its plants in China. It is unclear at this point whether the masks at Sterling Stamping are of the same design which the company is producing for healthcare workers.

Regardless, autoworkers must be provided with N95 masks or better. However, even if higher quality masks are distributed, there are no conditions under which the auto industry and other nonessential industries can be operated safely. Workers must demand the closure of nonessential production as well as schools, with full compensation for laid-off workers, to prevent further infections and death. This requires as well full support by autoworkers for the struggle of Chicago teachers, who are resisting demands by the administration of Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot for a return to in-person instruction.

UK: Working-class people in dangerous occupations most likely to die from COVID-19

Robert Stevens

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has confirmed that working-class people are most likely to die from COVID-19 in England and Wales.

Its report, “Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by occupation, England and Wales,” covers deaths registered between March 9 and December 28, 2020.

The survey covers deaths “involving the coronavirus (COVID-19), by different occupational groups, among men and women aged 20 to 64 years in England and Wales.” It found that “7,961 deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the working age population” were registered during the period surveyed. The almost 8,000 deaths recorded represented a twelfth of all coronavirus deaths at the time of publication.

The ONS notes, “When looking at broad groups of occupations, men who worked in elementary occupations (699 deaths) or caring, leisure and other service occupations (258 deaths) had the highest rates of death involving COVID-19, with 66.3 and 64.1 deaths per 100,000 males, respectively.”

Elementary occupations include postal workers, builders, cleaners, security staff and professions generally not requiring a qualification. The second highest death rate revealed by the statistics was among workers employed in caring, leisure and other service occupations.

The top 10 occupations of men who died from COVID-19 were taxi and cab drivers (209 deaths), security guards (140), large goods vehicle drivers (118), storage workers (111), care workers/home carers (107) processing plant workers (100), van drivers (97), builders (85), bus and coach drivers (83), chefs (82).

Among women, “process, plant and machine operatives (57 deaths) and caring, leisure and other service occupations (460 deaths) had the highest rates of death involving COVID-19 when looking at broad occupational groups, with 33.7 and 27.3 deaths per 100,000 females, respectively.”

The top 10 occupations in which women have died from COVID-19 are: care workers/home carers (240 deaths), sales assistants (111), nurses (110), cleaners (95), other administrative jobs (58), nursing assistants (54), teaching assistants (37), kitchen/catering assistants (36), personal assistants (30), payroll managers/clerks (26), government administrators (26).

In total there were 594 deaths in the care sector. One in seven of all working-age women who died from the disease last year were care workers. Of 2,833 women aged between 20 and 64 who died after catching COVID-19, 400 worked in care services. This is the highest number of women to have died in any single profession category.

Social care occupations had a “statistically significantly higher rates of death involving COVID-19 when compared with rates of death involving COVID-19 in the population among those of the same age and sex.” In these occupations there were 79.0 deaths per 100,000 among males and a total of 150 deaths, and 35.9 deaths per 100,000 among females, with 319 total deaths.

The lives of hundreds of social care workers employed in the care sector were sacrificed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, which ruthless implemented a herd immunity policy. In the first weeks of the pandemic, the government flooded care homes with elderly and vulnerable people who had been in hospital. Many were not tested for COVID-19.

As a result, over 18,000 residents and staff members died. The ONS report notes, “Almost three in four of the deaths involving COVID-19 in social care occupations (347 out of 469 deaths; 74.0%) were in care workers and home carers, with 109.9 deaths per 100,000 males (107 deaths) and 47.1 deaths per 100,000 females (240 deaths).”

The ONS reports that for the period surveyed there were “139 deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) in teaching and educational professionals aged 20 to 64 years”. It acknowledges, “Of the specific teaching and education professions, the rate of death involving COVID-19 in male secondary education teaching professionals was statistically significantly higher than the rate of death involving COVID-19 in professional occupations in men of the same age.”

Despite government lockdown guidance that workers should work at home in those occupations that allow it, companies are routinely herding staff into offices that are previously unacknowledged transmission vectors for COVID-19.

The ONS reports 364 deaths in administrative occupations. The dangers facing office workers has been massive downplayed throughout the pandemic, despite outbreaks at headquarter buildings of corporations and at call centres, including one that has ripped through the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) HQ in Wales in recent months. At least 530 workers at the site have tested positive. Last week, it was reported that a worker employed there had died.

The DVLA headquarters in Swansea (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

This is just one of many outbreaks in office settings. Figures obtained this week from Public Health England via a Freedom of Information request from BBC 5 Live, revealed that there were than 60 suspected Covid outbreaks in offices in just the first two weeks of the current lockdown in England, beginning January 6.

The BBC reported, “The data from Public Health England, obtained by the 5 Live Investigations team, lists the different types of workplaces where there have been clusters of cases. The figures reveal for the first time which are the most susceptible to Covid outbreaks, with offices coming top.

“The data showed there were more than 500 outbreaks, or suspected outbreaks, in offices in the second half of 2020— more than in supermarkets, construction sites, warehouses, restaurants and cafes combined.”

Both reports underscore the criminality of the government’s herd immunity policy, which has led to the UK recording over 106,000 deaths, the fifth highest death toll in the world. Other countries with a death toll higher than 100,000— India, Mexico, Brazil and the United States—all have far larger populations than Britain.

The real number of deaths in the UK is, moreover, substantially higher than the government measure. According to a Financial Times model there had been an estimated 120,200 excess deaths by last week.

The figures made available from the Office of National Statistics and Public Health England add to a growing body of evidence confirming that the disease impacts most severely on the working class.

An ONS report released in May, “Deaths involving COVID-19 by local area and socioeconomic deprivation,” established that those residing in the most deprived communities are more than twice as likely to die from the coronavirus than those in the wealthiest districts.

The government and employers could never have imposed such mass losses of lives in workplaces without the assistance of the Labour Party and the trade unions, who have worked in a de facto coalition government with the Tories. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has continued the stance of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn and offered to back Prime Minister Boris Johnson with “constructive criticism” in the “national interest”.

The trade unions never lifted a finger to ensure a full lockdown and the safety and necessary financial support for millions of workers. They have overseen the deaths of thousands of their members and worked with the government to ensure a “ mass return to work ” by prematurely ending the limited national spring lockdown.

Responding to the ONS deaths by occupation report, Trades Union Congress (TUC) General Secretary Frances O'Grady had the gall to state that workplace Covid-19 deaths have been “vastly under-reported”. She added, "Everyone should be safe at work. But this pandemic has exposed huge inequalities in our labour market. People working in low-paid and insecure jobs have been forced to shoulder much higher risk, with too many losing their lives.”

The TUC will do nothing to oppose any of this, with O’Grady stating only that “The Government urgently needs to beef up its workplace safety guidance and get tough on employers who put their workers in harm's way."

Britain’s flood defences continue to deteriorate

Barry Mason

Last year, over 3,400 crucial flood defence structures across England were deemed to be in poor condition.

The research arm of the environmental charity Greenpeace, Unearthed, published a report on January 24 noting, “New data, obtained from the Environment Agency (EA) using Freedom of Information rules, shows that 3,460 ‘high consequence’ flood defence assets were rated as being in poor or very poor condition in 2019/20. That’s 6 percent of all such assets in England, an increase on the previous year after many defences were damaged in last winter’s flooding.”

Out of the 3,460, 791 of the assets were classed as very poor, having severe defects which could lead them to fail completely. The EA defines high consequence assets as “flood defence assets that contribute to managing flood risk in a location where the consequence on people and property of an asset failing is high”.

Large parts of the UK have just suffered flooding from Storm Christoph. The Environment Agency issued 130 flood warnings across England, with 225 less severe flood alerts. Residents were forced to leave their homes in parts of Ruthin, North Wales, and Maghull in Merseyside due to rising floodwaters.

In the Didsbury district of south Manchester, the River Mersey came very close to bursting its banks as it reached the highest water levels it had ever recorded. Around 2,000 homes and businesses were told to evacuate the area. This part of Manchester had not faced the danger of flooding for 60 years.

In areas that had suffered or were under threat from January’s Storm Christoph, such as Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Shropshire, South Yorkshire, the West Midlands, and Worcestershire, 831 crucial flood defences were classed as in poor or very poor condition when inspected last year. This represents nine percent of all the assets in those areas.

Warrington, which was flooded in Storm Christoph, had the second highest figure of over 25 percent of its flood defences classed as in poor condition last year.

Unearthed’s research showed flood defence assets maintained by third parties were even more likely to be in a poor state. It noted, “Across England, third party-managed flood defences were twice as likely to be in a poor condition last year as those managed by the EA —eight percent compared to four percent.”

It was difficult to compel such third parties, which include local authorities, private landowners and transport companies, to improve the flood defences for which they are responsible. “Last year, the National Audit Office (NAO) suggested that the EA’s strategy to strengthen England’s flood defences is being undermined by the array of different actors tasked with maintaining them. The NAO recommended the EA step up communications with third party owners in a bid to get them to take better care of their flood defences.”

A January 26 article on the New Civil Engineer (NCE) website quoted a flood specialist stating, “Failure of a third-party asset could have serious consequences for other flood defences in a local area, which are in good conditions, but are not designed to cope with additional flows that could result from a catastrophic failure.”

Doug Parr, chief scientist and policy director at Greenpeace UK, told the Guardian, “The poor state of so many critical flood defences in England is putting thousands of people and homes at risk. This is unacceptable.”

In August 2019, following torrential rain during which half a month’s rainfall fell in one day, the town of Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire, a dam holding water in Todbrook reservoir was near collapse. The reservoir is owned by the Canal & River Trust, a charitable body, came into existence in July 2012 as it took over responsibility from the state-owned British Waterways.

The emergency operation underway at the Toddbrook Dam (WSWS media)

The heavy rain meant water was overflowing down the concrete spillway, which suffered damage and was in danger of collapsing. Built in 1830, it was an earthfill or embankment dam built using a mixture of soil and gravel.

The spill way was a concrete topping over the earthfilled embankment designed to safely carry away any water overtopping the dam. In 2019, the overflow damaged about a fifth of the area of the spillway and was in danger of carrying away the earth embankment. Residents had to be evacuated from houses below the dam and emergency measures taken to try and lower the volume of water held by the dam.

The concrete covering had last been replaced in 1969 following damage a few years earlier and had been allowed to deteriorate. The Conversation news website in August 2019 noted, “Drone footage shot by Miles Haslam in 2016 shows plants and grass growing on the surface of the spillway. This could mean the concrete surface may have already been cracked, or even that the foundation of the concrete spillway had been undermined, allowing plant life to grow.”

It continued, “Concrete surfaces must be maintained and kept smooth and clean, without any cracks or holes. With water pouring across the spillway at very high speeds of up to 60-70mph, any small crack or hole will be subject to tremendous forces that will accelerate erosion damage.”

Following the near disaster, the Canal and River Trust issued reports on the state of the dam after Freedom of Information requests from the BBC. The dam had been inspected by the trust in November 2018. An independent engineer also inspected it. The two reports passed to the BBC were heavily redacted, citing security concerns.

A BBC news website report of October 2019 quoted Whaley Bridge resident Matthew Forrest’s response. “The population of Whaley Bridge had very little confidence in the Canal and River Trust as things stood after the near disaster in August that could have potentially killed thousands of people. This nonsensical black hole of a document does little to build upon any remaining confidence and faith in the Canal and River Trust to internally investigate the causes, let alone replace the neglected Todbrook Dam."

Climate change is making heavier rainfall and flooding in the UK more likely. A study of flooding across Europe in the prestigious science journal, Nature, involving 24 research institutes and based on reports from nearly 4,000 river flood measurements over five years, found an 11 percent increase in flooding in northern England and southern Scotland.

The recent UK floods have disproportionately hit those sections of society already suffering. A report issued in November last year by the Environment Agency concluded, “There is an inequality in terms of social deprivation and flood risk exposure from all sources of flooding. In other words, people from areas that are classed as more deprived disproportionately face more flood risk than those in less deprived areas. This is the case when taking into account nearby flood defences.”

Commenting on the findings in a November 30, 2019 Independent newspaper article, Professor Hannah Cloke, a hydrologist at Reading University, described the findings as “very worrying... A flood event will affect affluent areas and poorer areas in very, very different ways. This shows we’re not doing a good enough job of making sure those people who can’t bounce back after a flood event are taken care of.”

Disadvantaged people are more likely to live on flood plains in rural areas, or in densely crowded urban areas with poor water drainage and are more likely to live in temporary accommodation on flood plains or close to the coast, Cloke explained.

The weather outlook for the UK over the next few weeks is heavy rain and the threat of floods.

Vaccination debacle in Germany exacerbates spread of new variants

Marianne Arens

Well over 100 million people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 worldwide, and more than 2.2 million have died from it. In Germany, nearly 57,000 have fallen victim to the virus so far. One year after the outbreak of the pandemic, the situation continues to deteriorate.

The much invoked “light at the end of the tunnel,” the vaccination of the population, is proving to be a real debacle. The EU and the German government have not bothered to provide the vaccine in sufficient quantities for all of Europe. Instead, they have entrusted this to private pharmaceutical companies worth billions. The vaccine manufacturers—BionTech-Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca—promised huge supplies to win the lucrative EU contracts; now they cannot fulfil them at all.

Patient in an intensive care unit (ICU) [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

The result is an increasingly open, vicious trade war at the European level. At the same time, hundreds of vaccination centres have stood empty for almost two months, while new, even more dangerous variants of the virus are spreading rapidly.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP), its youth organisation the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and the World Socialist Web Site call on workers, teachers, educators, students and pupils to take matters into their own hands. A European-wide general strike must enforce a coordinated lockdown in Europe that also shuts non-essential manufacturing and service industries and closes schools and day-care centres until the pandemic is under control. The IYSSE in Germany has organised an online meeting on the issue February 1.

In doing so, the SGP, IYSSE and WSWS explicitly oppose right-wing politicians, journalists and celebrities who are now using the chaotic vaccination debacle to spread nationalism and demand the opening up of businesses and schools. In Germany, one example is the Christian Democratic district administrator Stephan Pusch from North Rhine-Westphalia, who demanded on Facebook on Friday, “In two weeks, and this is an urgent appeal, schools must reopen.”

Pusch is crisis manager in Heinsberg, the first district to be severely affected by coronavirus, for which he received the Federal Cross of Merit from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Later, in an interview with several media outlets, he repeated that schools and shops must finally be reopened. “Little by little, the economy must also be loosened again … There’s a time bomb ticking.”

Regarding the vaccination chaos, Pusch criticised the German government for wanting to order the vaccine through the European Union. “When the pandemic broke out, we saw how nations around the world fought veritable battles over the supply of protective masks. Against this backdrop, it was naïve to believe that the community of nations would share the vaccine peacefully,” said Pusch, who was clearly in favour of an even stronger national solo effort.

The spread of the new virus variants from Britain, South Africa and Brazil shows the complete ineffectiveness and bankruptcy of such solo national efforts.

More and more outbreaks with the new mutation discovered in Britain are becoming known. In the meantime, there are already hundreds of cases of such mutations, and the number of unreported cases is very high, as even the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) admits. Sixty-four cases of infections with such variants have been discovered in Cologne alone, as Johannes Niessen, head of the Cologne Health Department, reported on broadcaster WDR. They were detected in four day-care centres, one refugee shelter and two hospitals.

Recently, Charité virologist Dr. Christian Drosten issued an unequivocal warning: “We’re in a risky situation, you have to realise that.” Speaking on broadcaster NDR’s “Coronavirus Update,” he explained what the consequence of a premature relaxation could be under conditions of a further spread of such mutations: Even if it were possible that the elderly were all vaccinated and protected (which he does not think is possible), then “we could have an extreme number of infections in a short time. In England, there were around 60,000 new infections every day.”

But it could be much worse, according to Drosten. “Then we would have a situation with 100,000 to 120,000 infections a day ... These would be much younger people who would then also become seriously ill. Because we know that people without risk factors also become seriously ill and end up in intensive care.”

This phenomenon can already be observed in several hospitals and day-care centres. Since the new variants spread more easily overall, more children and young people inevitably become infected with them. As a result, even children have become so seriously ill in recent days that they had to be ventilated.

“What is developing unpleasantly—it has to be said—is the situation among children,” the head of Lower Saxony’s crisis unit, Heiger Scholz, said a few days ago. He reported that the COVID-19 patients who had to be ventilated in his state included two children. A total of eight children with COVID-19 are in hospital in Lower Saxony.

In Hamburg-Altona, no fewer than 13 of a total of 14 educators at the Elbpiraten day-care centre have been infected with coronavirus, although it is not known with which variant. Among the children, 18 out of a total of 35 children are infected, and numerous family members are also said to have already been affected.

In Freiburg, too, a variant of the coronavirus was detected in 18 children and educators in a day-care centre. This prompted the state government under Winfried Kretschmann (Green Party) to change its plans, according to which it wanted to reopen schools as early as February 1—contrary to nationwide rules. Only a few days earlier, Kretschmann had vehemently pleaded for this opening of schools. One should not “forever pretend that primary schools and kindergartens are the problems of this pandemic. That is simply not the case.”

Meanwhile, on the TV programme “Anne Will,” intensive care physician Uwe Janssens warned of a “terrible third wave” if the Brazilian virus spreads. In recent days, there have already been several horrific outbreaks at hospitals in various German states.

On January 26, the Bayreuth hospital in Bavaria had to impose an admission ban and a quarantine of 3,000 staff after a new outbreak of the virus mutant B.1.1.7 was detected in a total of 99 cases. Now the hospital only admits patients who present in an absolute emergency.

Previously, the Humboldt-Klinikum in Berlin-Reinickendorf and the Medius-Klinik Nürtingen had been completely quarantined because of similar outbreaks. While the B.1.1.7 variant was also detected in Berlin, two other new mutations were discovered in Nürtingen. New outbreaks also occurred at hospitals in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.

In these completely sealed-off hospitals, the staff are subject to a so-called “shuttle quarantine,” which places enormous additional burdens on them. They are only allowed to “shuttle” between work and home, but not to walk the streets, use public transport, or even go shopping, take the rubbish out or empty the mailbox.

“Where’s the shuttle service, where’s the shopping service, where’s the childcare?” caregivers ask desperately under the Twitter hashtag #shuttlequarantine. One writes, “The word ‘shuttle quarantine’ is a savage euphemism. It should rather be ‘isolation with work obligation,’ and that’s still the least drastic thing I can think of.”

The risk of contagion is also growing in the factories. At Airbus, the British variant has been detected in a further five employees at the Hamburg plant. This means that seven of the 21 Airbus employees who have tested positive so far have been infected with this variant. The WSWS wrote about this: “The outbreak at Airbus shows once again that workers are completely on their own when it comes to the high health risks to which they are exposed. The company, the authorities and the trade unions and their works council representatives owe their allegiance to the bank accounts of the shareholders rather than the lives and health of the workforce.”