Unemployment, redundancies and poverty soar as UK lockdown is brought to end

Robert Stevens

Ruling elites everywhere are doing the bidding of global corporations that are exploiting the pandemic to implement long-planned measures to slash costs, cut jobs and ramp up exploitation in factories and workplaces.

With all lockdown measures set to end by June and the economy reopened, those who have been shielded to some extent by furlough schemes and other social support will face the class war agenda pursued by the British ruling class as it seeks to complete the post-Brexit “Thatcher Revolution.”

Workers face grinding levels of exploitation, longer hours, increased workloads and wage cuts. UK companies are turning to “fire and rehire” ultimatums to push through attacks during the pandemic. Research conducted by BritainThinks for the Trades Union Congress found that almost a quarter of workers—24 percent—has seen working terms, such as pay or hours, downgraded since the first lockdown last March. More than one in three employees aged 18 to 24 reported their terms at work had deteriorated and nearly a third (30 percent) of workers earning below £15,000 reported the same.

A unemployment office in Britain (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The herd immunity policy of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has cost the lives of over 126,000 people. A year after the pandemic began, millions more are in a perilous situation, without a job, without income, with many facing losing their jobs and livelihoods in the next months.

Unemployment rose to 5.1 percent in the three months to December, the highest level in almost five years. Most job losses (three fifths) are among young people.

Young workers and students are often employed in the retail and hospitality sectors, which have been decimated by the pandemic.

Almost two million people have not worked for at least six months due to the economic impact of the pandemic, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank. Those people affected were either unemployed (700,000) or fully furloughed.

The rise in unemployment is already the largest since the 2008/09 financial crisis, but the situation is set to worsen dramatically as there were still 6.4 million people on the government’s furlough scheme at the beginning of February. The scheme will be scrapped at the end of March. There is speculation that it may be extended by Chancellor Rishi Sunak in his March budget—but only until May.

The Financial Times cited positively an increase in the number of payroll employees in January for a second consecutive month, and an increase in vacancies, but had to note, “Despite tentative signs of improvement, the damage done to the labour market over the past year remains huge, and the headline unemployment rate does not reflect the true extent of slack in the labour market.

“Real-time payroll data collected by HM Revenue & Customs suggest that despite small increases over the past two months, there are 726,000 fewer employee jobs in the UK than there were last February before the pandemic hit, a fall of 2.5 per cent. The majority of these job losses—425,000—have been among 18 to 24-year-olds.”

The official unemployment figures mask the real level of social distress. The furlough scheme pays 80 percent of wages and only up to a maximum of £2,500 a month. Underemployment is on the increase, with Hannah Audino, economist at PwC, stating, "Another measure of stress in the labour market is the underemployment rate—the share of workers who would like to work more hours. This continues to rise, reaching 9 percent in the three months to December, which compares to 7.5 percent pre-pandemic.”

The Resolution Foundation noted that “7 per cent of workers have already stopped working since the start of the pandemic, but unfortunately, this will not be the limit of job losses: both the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England expect unemployment of more than 7 percent when the Job Retention Scheme ends.” It adds, “Workers, as well as forecasters, expect significant job losses. Overall, 7 percent of respondents reported that they expected to lose their job within the next three months, and a further 1 percent had been told that they would be made redundant—a total of 2.6 million workers.”

Workers face this nightmare under conditions in which redundancies have already exceeded the record levels reached in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash. The Office for National Statistics ( ONS ) quarterly survey to December 2020 recorded a consistently rising redundancy rate that stands at a record 14.2 per thousand employees. This compares to the maximum of 12.2 per thousand reached during the financial crisis. The highest rates of redundancy were recorded in the administrative and support services industry, with 35.8 per thousand employees. The sector including arts, entertainment and recreation had redundancy rates of 30.5 per thousand.

The number of firms expecting redundancies of 20 or more employees, rose from 485 in March 2020 to 1,734 in September. From September to November last year, a record 395,000 redundancies were announced. In response to a Freedom of Information request by the BBC, the Insolvency Service revealed that 292 employers made plans to cut 32,000 in January—up 9 percent on the same month last year. As the Insolvency Service figures only cover firms making 20 or more job cuts, the real number of redundancies is larger.

In the retail sector alone, the Centre for Retail Research forecasts 200,000 job losses in 2021, following the closure of 320 stores every week in 2020.

According to research published last month by the Legatum Institute, well over 15 million in the UK are living in poverty—up from 14.5 million pre-pandemic. By then the pandemic has already pushed another 700,000, includes 120,000 children, into hardship.

Almost half a million people (450,000) have fallen behind on rent or mortgage payments due to the pandemic. Three-quarters of a million families in the UK are in arrears, 300,000 of them with dependent children. Nearly a fifth of people (16 percent) expect to take on more debt.

At the beginning of the pandemic, as unemployment soared, the Universal Credit (UC) benefit payment was increased by £20 per week. UC combines six benefits, including unemployment and housing benefits, into one payment. The government plans to cut-off this additional support at the end of March. The number of people relying on UC shot up from 3 million in March 2020 to 6 million last month, with around 446 people making a new UC claim every hour in the first week of 2021.

The Trussell Trust, the largest provider of food parcels through its food bank network, reported that one in five people surveyed receiving UC said they are “very likely” to need to use a food bank if the uplift is cut—the equivalent of 1.2 million people. The Trust handed out more than 1.2 million emergency food parcels between April and September 30 last year, with 2,600 emergency food parcels (and 470,000 overall) provided for children every day.

Perseverance rover returns videos from its descent to the Martian surface

Bryan Dyne

Mere days after the Perseverance rover landed on the surface of Mars, on February 22, NASA scientists presented another first in planetary exploration: multiple videos of a rover’s entry, descent and landing sequence from the perspective of the rover itself.

NASA’s Mars mission captured stunning footage from multiple cameras on the areoshell (the capsule that protected the rover during entry and deployed the parachute to slow its descent), the rocket pack (which guided the rover to its final landing spot), and the Perseverance rover itself. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A total of five cameras were used to film the various stages of Perseverance’s descent. Two were placed on the rover, one pointed up to observe the rocket pack as that part of the landing system lowered the rover to the ground via skycrane, and one pointed down, providing a front-row seat from the perspective of a vehicle landing on Mars as it hurtled toward the Martian surface.

Two others were attached to the outer shell that protected the rover during entry into Mars’ atmosphere and were aimed upwards, watching the parachute deploy from two different perspectives. A final camera was added to the bottom of the rocket pack to record the rover as it was deployed, which provided the stunning image of the rover being gently placed on the red planet.

Six individual images from the Perseverance navigation cameras were stitched together to make this panorama of the Martian surface. Such images are used by algorithms onboard the rover to guide it as it travels from point to point, largely independently of its controllers on Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Every frame of these videos will be carefully studied for years to come. They are the first time that anyone has been able to view a Mars landing as it happened in real time, and every moment provides crucial information about the state of the spacecraft during what is arguably the most difficult part of the mission.

The two videos in which the skycrane was featured are also the first time this system has been seen in operation. While every other aspect of the spacecraft can be tested on Earth (parachute, heat shield, rover), the fact that the skycrane is designed to work specifically in the Martian atmosphere and under Mars’ gravity means that it cannot be tested on Earth. Though the system was first envisioned 15 years ago for the Curiosity mission, this is the first time its designers have seen it in operation. By all accounts, the system performed flawlessly.

These two images were among many taken of the rover’s various instruments and calibration targets. These were all taken to ensure that none of the instruments were physically harmed either during the rover’s cruise from Earth to Mars, or during the tumultuous entry, descent and landing sequence. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

At the same time, NASA also released the first audio recordings from Mars. Perseverance has a microphone attached to its SuperCam instrument, which recorded a soft breeze blowing at the rover’s landing site. The raw and filtered audio are available here. The microphone will continue to record sounds, primarily to listen to the sounds made as Martian rocks are vaporized by the laser mounted on the SuperCam. These data will be used in conjunction with the rover’s cameras and spectrometers to analyze the chemistry and geology of those rocks.

A whole slew of other imagery has been released, including images of the rover’s descent system as it was heading to the final landing point, taken by the orbiting Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and thousands of raw images taken by Perseverance. While all of these images are primarily used as part of the process to ensure the rover is functioning as expected after landing, they have already provided some initial scientific insights into the history of Jezero Crater.

This view of Perseverance’s landing site was taken by the orbiting Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to provide pinpoint data about the final landing position of the rover, and to locate where the parachute, rocket pack and heat shield ultimately crashed. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mission controllers have also received confirmation that the Ingenuity helicopter, currently attached to the underside of the rover, is operating as expected. Over the next several days, the craft’s batteries will be charged in preparation for when it will be deployed and hopefully fly above the Martian surface, currently scheduled for 30 to 60 days from now.

One of the many raw images taken by the rover’s Right Navigation Camera during Perseverance’s second sol (Martian day) on Mars. These are used by both controllers on Earth and the rover’s computers to determine where the rover is and any nearby hazards to be avoided as Perseverance drives across the Martian landscape. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

German federal and state governments’ plans for reopening schools threaten thousands of lives

Gregor Link

As the World Socialist Web Site warned earlier this month, Germany’s federal and state governments have opened the floodgates to another devastating wave of the COVID-19 pandemic by initiating the sweeping reopening of schools and day-care centres. Unless the working class intervenes independently to close factories, offices, schools and day-care centres, hundreds of thousands of deaths loom in Germany alone in an even worse wave of the pandemic. Available data and scientific findings leave no doubt about this.

Classroom in Dortmund, Germany, August 13, 2020 (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)

The incidence of the B.1.1.7 strain of the coronavirus has doubled within two weeks and increased more than tenfold in five weeks. According to estimates by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), it now represents 25 percent of all infections in Germany. A similar development can also be seen with the B.1.3.5.1 strain, also known as the South Africa variant, whose infection share has risen from 0.3 to 1.3 percent within three weeks. In Bavaria, one of the three “variants of concern” (B.1.1.7, B.1.3.5.1 or P.1 from Brazil) was detected in 41.4 percent of those who tested positive in the last calendar week, according to the responsible testing laboratory.

Leading virologists and epidemiologists warn of the development of a “new epidemic,” which will amplify the current death toll of more than 2,000 daily deaths in Europe and 400 deaths in Germany. Virologists Melanie Brinkmann and Christian Drosten have recently warned that far-reaching “relaxations” of protective measures this summer could lead to 100,000 new infections daily and 180,000 more deaths by the end of the year. According to calculation models, a complete lifting of restrictions would cost the lives of more than 1 million people in Germany alone.

Professor Michael Meyer-Hermann of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig told Tagesspiegel last week that the world population was currently facing “at least two pandemics.” Under conditions of insufficient containment measures, the more contagious variants were about to prevail over the original strain, he said. The slowdown in infections, Meyer-Hermann said, “indicates that the new variant is just taking over and initiating the third wave.” It was “already in a phase of exponential growth again in Germany and the current measures are not enough to slow down this development.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel was forced to acknowledge the impending mass deaths that the policies for which she is jointly responsible threaten. “We are now in the third wave,” she told members of her party’s parliamentary group in the Bundestag yesterday.

Yet, at the beginning of this new wave, the chancellor wants to widely open up society, allowing the virus to run free. Only a day earlier, during consultations with her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) colleagues, she had given the go-ahead for lifting the shutdown measures and called for a “strategy for opening up private contacts, schools, universities, vocational schools, restaurants, sports clubs, etc.” According to Merkel, the “three reopening clusters” should be systematically implemented in “four stages.” To this end, the federal chancellery was to form a “working group” with the state chancelleries of the Länder (federal states) and “work out the details.”

The reopening policy is supported by all the establishment parties. The mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller (Social Democratic Party, SPD), who is also chairman of the Conference of State Premiers, told the Stuttgarter Zeitung that a “step-by-step plan” was in the offing, which would “do without the values 25 or 10” and would “not only be oriented towards new infections.”

Instead, “important criteria for the next steps in easing” the situation, Müller said, were also a linear course of infections (i.e. non-exponential) and “a decreasing utilisation of intensive care.” Such a “pandemic plan,” which means the systematic infection of the population, had previously been publicly demanded by a right-wing group of professors around the Bonn virologist Hendrik Streeck. Now it is being implemented by the SPD-Left Party-Green state executive in Berlin.

Saxony’s state Premier Michael Kretschmer, who had welcomed an angry mob from the far-right Reichsbürger and other right-wing extremists to his private property in January for a discussion on “ending the lockdown,” reopened primary schools in his state earlier this month.

Since Monday, in Baden-Württemberg, primary schools have been open for alternating in-person classes and day-care centres in “regular operation.”

“The overwhelming part of the economy,” Minister-President Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) commented during a virtual meeting of the state branch of the CDU Economic Council, was “not affected by the measures at all at the moment.” If the incidence rate was below 35, retail trade would also be reopened, he assured the group’s representatives.

In Thuringia, the criminal profit-before-life policy of Minister-President Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) has led to the state being far ahead of all other federal states, with 120 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants, and having a seven-day incidence twice as high as the Germany-wide average.

In the past, Ramelow had publicly embraced the Swedish government’s herd immunity policy and on Monday, sent some 70,000 primary school children back to in-person learning with full class sizes and no requirement to wear face masks. Personal attendance is possible in Thuringia up to an incidence rate of 200—a level four times higher than what was considered a Europe-wide hotspot at the beginning of the pandemic.

Representing the federal government, Family Affairs Minister Franziska Giffey described the reopening of primary schools in ten federal states, which is associated with mass contagion, as “the right thing to do, also in the interests of children and the best interests of children.” Federal Education Minister Anja Karliczek (CDU) added that there was “no substitute” for a return to face-to-face teaching.

Yet the increased speed at which COVID-19 variants are spreading is already having a devastating effect in several cities and districts. For example, the seven-day incidence rate in Fürth skyrocketed from less than 35 to almost 74 within eleven days, while the proportion of the new variants rose to between 20 and 33 percent. Faced with an incidence rate of over 101, the administration of the neighbouring city of Nuremberg was forced to switch back to “emergency childcare” after one day of face-to-face teaching at half-size classes. In the small town of Bad Ems, 26 coronavirus infections were linked with a single day-care centre, where the variant had spread, and in another institution.

In Flensburg, the headmaster of the Fridtjof Nansen School published an open letter to all parents on its website, stating: “We consider the Ministry’s decision to maintain classroom teaching regardless of the infection situation in Flensburg to be wrong.” The Schleswig-Holstein Education Ministry reacted angrily and demanded school management “clarify” the “abbreviated or incorrect statements” which—correctly—blamed the ministry for the school reopenings.

Despite this attempted intimidation, and “after consultation with the school supervisory board,” school management announced its decision to “reduce the attendance offer for those pupils who are taking part in a final examination this school year.” The number of attendance hours will be halved in years 9 and 10, so that “pupils will only come to school once a week for their three examination subjects.”

The Flensburg school board’s courageous stance is part of the growing opposition developing among students, teachers and other workers to life-threatening in-person classes and the government’s entire murderous pandemic policy. The explosion of infections with the new viral strains “shows that schools and day-care centres don’t even have to start regular classes for the stuff to spread,” Quintus S. writes in a popular post on Facebook. “After all, people who are positive today already got infected last week. I think without stopping work we will not get a grip on the occurrence of infections.”

Brazil reaches a quarter of a million COVID-19 deaths

Tomas Castanheira

With 1,390 new deaths recorded on Wednesday, Brazil surpassed the milestone of 250,000 deaths from COVID-19, one day after reaching 10 million infections. This abominable number represents 10 percent of all coronavirus deaths on the planet, in a country that does not even constitute 3 percent of the world’s population.

Demonstrators shout slogans during a protest against the government's response in combating COVID-19 and also asking for the extension of emergency aid by the federal government amid the pandemic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

This week also marks one year since the confirmation of the first COVID-19 case in Brazil, on February 26, 2020. After this long period of suffering and hardship imposed upon the Brazilian working masses, the pandemic remains totally out of control, with thousands of lives being lost every day and various parts of the country being pushed to the limit.

The northern region of Brazil as a whole has suffered a severe impact in recent months. Amazonas, whose capital Manaus had a health care collapse in January, has already recorded more COVID-19 deaths in the first 54 days of this year than during all of 2020. The number of hospital admissions in the state remains high, and hundreds of patients in serious condition await an ICU bed. This week, shocking images were released of a hospital in the city of Parintins where intubated patients are being strapped to their stretchers for lack of sufficient sedatives.

The neighboring state of Acre declared a state of public calamity on Monday. The state is facing the catastrophic combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, an outbreak of dengue fever, and floods that have already affected 130,000 people in 10 of the state’s municipalities, including the capital. Hospitals are on the verge of collapse, and a record 621 new cases were recorded on Tuesday. The right-wing governor Gladson Cameli, of the Progressive Party (PP), said he only has resources for the next three months and compared the situation to a “third world war.”

It is highly likely that the more contagious P.1 variant of COVID-19, originally discovered in Manaus, is circulating in Acre, which received patients after the hospitals collapsed in the neighboring state. The Brazilian Ministry of Health said on Tuesday that cases of this new variant have already been reported in 17 states in all five regions of the country.

In the southeast region, the São Paulo government of Governor João Doria, of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), has decreed a so-called “restrictive curfew” to allegedly limit the circulation of people between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., which will go into effect next Friday. The state, which has seen more than 58,000 deaths and nearly 2 million confirmed cases, registered its highest number of ICU patients this week.

The situation is especially devastating in municipalities in the countryside of São Paulo. Last Sunday, Araraquara declared a lockdown, which was followed by smaller municipalities in the region. With cases of community transmission of the P.1 variant of COVID-19, the city reached maximum capacity in its hospitals last Tuesday. Other cities like Campinas, with more than a million inhabitants, have also reached maximum capacity of its ICU beds, and the cities of the industrial ABC region are approaching the same level.

The brutal conditions faced in the Amazonian hospitals are being reenacted in São Paulo. This was underscored this week by the resignation of 15 of the 24 resident doctors at the Pimentas Bonsucesso Municipal Hospital, in Guarulhos, in the Greater São Paulo region, in protest over the lack of medications and the precarious conditions of the medical unit. According to one of the residents, interviewed by the newspaper Agora, “The situation really got worse at the end of last year and the beginning of this one, because there was no way to replace the medications, which were in short supply.”

The same doctor reports that, as in the hospital at Parintins, there is a lack of sedatives for intubated patients: “This doesn’t allow them to relax, preventing the equipment [ventilators] from working effectively. I witnessed a [COVID-19] patient die by biting the hose [that takes oxygen to the lung], because the intubation was not working, due to the fact that he was conscious.”

The northeast region of Brazil has had the largest increase in infections in the last week, up by 26 percent. The state of Ceará, governed by Camilo Santana of the Workers Party (PT), has practically filled up its ICU beds, and the number of cases and deaths is increasing, especially in countryside municipalities. Bahia, the largest state in the region, governed by Rui Costa also of the PT, recorded on Tuesday the highest number of ICU admissions for the fifth consecutive day.

The situation is equally critical in the southern region of Brazil, with its three states recording a hospital occupancy rate close to or above 90 percent. Last Friday, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite of the PSDB, declared the suspension of activities in public places from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., just like his party colleague in São Paulo. The state also has a record rate of occupancy of ICU beds.

In the face of this catastrophe, Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro maintains his policy of “war on lockdowns,” declared in just these terms in May of last year. At an official event on January 28, Bolsonaro gave a frantic speech: “The policy of closing everything did not work. The Brazilian people are strong, the Brazilian people are not afraid of danger. We know who are the vulnerable, the elderly and those with comorbidities. The rest have to work!” On this Tuesday he made this same point once again: “Lockdowns didn’t solve anything last year, will they solve it this year? Now, how will the economy look?”

Speaking on behalf of the Brazilian ruling class, this would-be Mussolini seeks to push the working class to its death in infected workplaces in order to maximize capitalist profits. All parties in the Brazilian political system have aligned themselves with this criminal policy.

Seeking to free itself and its allies from responsibility for the pandemic catastrophe, the traditional newspaper of the bourgeoisie, O Estado de São Paulo, declared in its Wednesday editorial: “One doesn’t arrive at a state of calamity like this without an unbelievable succession of errors. Brazil’s situation is the worst possible. Contributing to this result were the neglect and incompetence of President Jair Bolsonaro and his Health Minister, Eduardo Pazuello, the uncontrolled spread of a new strain of coronavirus identified in Manaus, the P.1 variant, potentially more contagious, and the careless behavior of many citizens who, following the bad example of President Bolsonaro, insist on disregarding the protective measures recommended by health authorities.”

The response of Bolsonaro and the Brazilian establishment to the pandemic was not a “succession of errors,” but a conscious policy of social murder. The development of the coronavirus variant identified in Manaus, treated by Estadão as a misfortune, is the most conclusive proof of the devastating consequences of the nefarious “herd immunity” policy adopted by the ruling class.

In the same anti-scientific spirit, this newspaper maintains that the resumption of face-to-face classes is absolutely safe, and has viciously attacked the teachers in São Paulo who are militantly opposing the reopening of classrooms in the midst of such a “state of calamity.”

O Estado de São Paulo accused the educators of “denying the new generations the basic training they need to emancipate themselves socially, culturally and professionally. And morally.” It continued: “[I]n a period of enormous difficulties like the present, by refusing to accept their share of sacrifices and resorting to strike action to make it impossible for the school year to begin, the teachers miss the opportunity to give a lesson of civility to their students and to society itself.”

There is no essential difference between this grotesque demand that teachers “accept their share of sacrifices” and Bolsonaro’s fascistic back-to-work speech. Estadão is acting as no more than a mouthpiece for the PSDB government in São Paulo, which has now enacted a farcical lockdown, fighting the supposed “careless behavior of many citizens,” without backing down a single inch in its criminal reopening of schools, which will put more than 30 percent of the state’s population, between educators and students, in the streets and into enclosed classrooms.

A notable event this week was the departure of renowned Brazilian scientist Miguel Nicolelis from the scientific committee of the Northeast Consortium. Nicolelis had assumed the direction of this committee in early 2020 with the perspective of contributing to a science-based policy to combat the pandemic. The researcher has been warning of the need for a real policy of social distancing. “Either the country goes into a national lockdown immediately, or we won’t be able to handle burying our dead in 2021,” he tweeted in January.

As Folha de São Paulo reported, “[p]eople close to him say that the decision is due to Nicolelis’ dissatisfaction with the failure of governments to adopt the guidelines indicated by the committee’s scientists.” The newspaper also reported that one of the committee’s participants stated that their feeling “is that the governors are not acting so differently from the federal government.”

The same political forces behind the Northeast Consortium, the PT and its allies in the so-called opposition to Bolsonaro, such as the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), are also behind the reactionary Brazilian unions that are fighting to break the teachers strikes in São Paulo and throughout Brazil, and to prevent their unification with different sections of the working class to promote a general strike that stops all non-essential production and puts the pandemic under control.

These interests were clearly expressed by the ABC Metalworkers Union (SMABC), the political cradle of the PT and one of the main Brazilian trade unions, which responded to the farcical “restrictive curfew” of the PSDB government in São Bernardo do Campo, not by demanding a real policy of social distancing that shuts down factories and other workplaces, but by suggesting that the government makes the measures more flexible to allow workers to get to their jobs!

The president of the union, Wagner Santana, declared: “São Bernardo is not isolated from the other cities. We have to think about the worker who will leave the company at night and won’t have transportation. We will not accept that, after a workday, the worker has no way to return home and is exposed on the street to the dangers of the early morning.”

These are compelling proofs that no political force connected to the capitalist state, no matter in which shade of red it tries to disguise itself, offers a genuine basis to effectively stop the spread of the virus. Only the independent political mobilization of the working class guided by a socialist and internationalist program will put an end to the continuing nightmare of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The dominant variant of the coronavirus in California has acquired dangerous mutations

Benjamin Mateus

Scientists have recently reported that a new variant from California has become the dominant lineage in that state. In a review of their database, they had first identified it in the early part of last summer, laying dormant until the winter surge propelled it rapidly throughout the state. According to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), this particular variant grew from 0 percent in September to 50 percent in late January.

In this Jan. 12, 2021 file photo, provided by the LA County Dept. of Medical Examiner-Coroner Elizabeth "Liz" Napoles, right, works alongside with National Guardsmen who are helping to process the COVID-19 deaths to be placed into temporary storage at LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner Office in Los Angeles. California reported 669 COVID-19 deaths, the second-highest daily death count, on Saturday, Jan. 16, and the nation's most populous county announced it had detected its first case of a more transmissible strain of the coronavirus. Public health authorities in Los Angeles County confirmed its first case of the variant of COVID-19 first detected in the United Kingdom. It was identified in a man who recently spent time in the county. The man has traveled to Oregon, where he is isolating. (LA County Dept. of Medical Examiner-Coroner via AP, File)

This new variant has also been detected in many other US states and has reached places as far as the UK, Singapore, and Australia. It possesses mutations in its spike protein that appear to make it not only more transmissible but also helps it to evade antibodies generated by the COVID-19 vaccines.

Scientists have designated the new mutation as the CAL.20C variant spanning the B.1.427 and B.1.429 lineages. It is associated with a mutation in its receptor-binding domain called L452R.

Dr. Charles Chiu is the senior author of a study documenting the rise of the CAL.20C variant among 8,000 residents of the Mission District in San Francisco, and first detected the variant on December 31. He told the press, “This variant is concerning because our data shows that it is more contagious, more likely to be associated with severe illness, and at least partially resistant to neutralizing antibodies. … The devil is already here. I wish it were different. But the science is the science.”

Speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Chiu indicated that it would be imperative to drive down infections as much as possible while rapidly moving to vaccinate the population. This assessment was echoed by Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a Georgetown University virologist, who stated, “The [UCSF] findings warrant taking a much closer look at this variant. … They underscore the importance of pulling out all the stops in terms of both exposure reduction and increased vaccine distribution and access.”

In a review of 324 people with COVID-19 treated at UCSF clinics or its medical centers, after adjusting for various confounding variables, such as age, gender, and race, those infected with the CAL.20C variant were almost five times more likely to need ICU admission and 11 times more likely to die. Analysis from nasal swabs also demonstrated that patients with CAL.20C carry twice the viral load. Additionally, during in vivo studies, the variant was four times less susceptible to antibodies from previously infected individuals and two times less susceptible to antibodies obtained from people vaccinated with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Infectious disease physician Dr. Robert “Chip” T. Schooley, who has been advocating for the Biden Administration to acknowledge the significant role that aerosol transmission plays in spreading SARS-CoV-2, affirmed these findings, stating, “The biology of having a higher level of virus … would certainly fit the thesis that people would not do well. We are seeing here in Southern California more people … for a longer period of time in our ICUs.”

The study results will undoubtedly need to be confirmed in more extensive epidemiological surveillance but they highlight the dangers these infections pose to communities. Critics had noted that the number of cases requiring admission to the ICU or leading to death, though statistically significant compared to the previous COVID infections, was small and occurred at the peak of the surge when health systems were inundated, which may have contributed to these findings.

The B.1.427 and B.1.429 variants share three identical mutations at their spike protein which appear to stabilize the interaction between the virus and the receptor on the human cell it binds to before gaining entry. Specifically, the L452R mutation, primarily circulating in California, has not been found in the other commonly discussed variants. But analysis from GISAID-deposited genomes of the virus has found several recent “independent L452R-carrying lineages that have emerged across the globe,” suggesting the mutation confers an adaptive advantage for the virus.

UCSF scientists conducting benchwork studies on this variant engineered a coronavirus with the L452R mutation. They found the mutated virus they created infected lung tissue 40 percent more readily than the common variants that had been circulating.

Given that the B.1.1.7 variant that first emerged in the UK along with the various homegrown variants have been quickly spreading throughout the United States, concerns are growing among scientists that if these variants manage to infect an individual simultaneously, the viruses could swap their mutations and produce a strain even more dangerous than the present versions of the SARS-CoV-2, a situation they describe as a “nightmare scenario.”

The multiplication of more infectious variants of the coronavirus is a direct result of the complete indifference that the ruling elite has shown to the dangers of herd immunity, which means establishing the contagion as endemic, so that everyone is exposed to it and those who survive return to work and producing profits.

Notwithstanding the unprecedented scale of death that the pandemic has caused in the United States since March 2020, the emergence of these new lineages that are more transmissible, lethal, and immune-evading, poses a calamitous dilemma for the working class, when coupled with the drive to open schools and resume in-class instruction at “warp speed.”

Just yesterday, Michigan reported that 81 students and staff at 18 school districts, including two colleges, were infected with COVID-19 in school-related outbreaks. Data from Quebec indicated that after January 18, children age nine or younger had the highest rate of relative increase in COVID-19 infections. Data is emerging that the attack rate of the B.1.1.7 variant has its highest propensity for younger people. Though these infections don’t appear to cause more severe illness in children, the data implies that not only are children critical in community transmission, but they may also be a necessary component in the selective advantages these variants enjoy.

With almost 30 million reported COVID-19 infections, the US has the largest outbreak of cases in any one nation globally. However, without a robust national genomic sequencing program to keep track of these evolving mutations, these variants will continue to spread largely undetected. Countries must develop the ability to systematically follow these developments in real time in order to make rational public-health decisions.

The genomic coverage in the US, however, is abysmal. According to Nature, the number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes that the United States has shared on GISAID is less than 0.3 percent of its total number of COVID-19 infections, or approximately 90,000. In comparison, the UK and Denmark have contributed 45 percent and 7 percent, respectively, of the 360,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomes sequenced and stored on GISAID.

The World Health Organization’s technical lead, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, warned, “We really need to expand this [genomic sequencing], so we have better eyes on the changes in this virus that are happening, especially in areas where transmission is most intense.”

Dr. Oliver Pybus, an infectious disease expert at the University of Oxford, told Nature, “Genomic epidemiology has come of age during this pandemic.” However, it isn’t the science that humanity has failed to master, but the understanding that the fruits of science belong to the entire human race to make this fragile world a more hospitable home for everyone. Without implementing an international global pandemic-prevention surveillance program, the potential for future outbreaks will haunt the world.

"Now Scotland": Pseudo-left groups form new alliance with nationalist hardliners

Steve James

Hardline Scottish nationalists and sections of the Scottish pseudo-left have formed "Now Scotland", described as a "grassroots, non-party campaign".

The new formation emerged from the All Under One Banner (AUOB) collection of Saltire-waving demonstrators who, pre-lockdown, held monthly marches in favour of an immediate second referendum on Scottish independence. A series of online meetings last year resulted in the group forming "Yes Alba", before ditching the name in favour of "Now Scotland" so as not to offend Gaelic language activists.

The new organisation is an adjunct of the most pro-independence faction of the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP). Its purpose is to emulate the Yes Scotland alliance of the SNP, Scottish Greens and the pseudo-left Scottish Socialist Party, which mobilised nationalist campaigners prior to the 2014 Scottish referendum. Scottish elections are due this year. The SNP is committed to tabling legislation for a new referendum should it win a majority.

George Kerevan, the newly elected member of Parliament for East Lothian, accepts his office at the Haddington Corn Exchange in May 2015 (credit: Angela Wrapson-Wikimedia Commons)

Now Scotland’s leading lights include George Kerevan, former member of the Pabloite International Marxist Group and the Labour Party, who joined the SNP in 1996. Kerevan, a former associate editor of the Scotsman newspaper, was a Westminster MP for the SNP between 2015 and 2017. His model for Now Scotland is the Catalan nationalist ANC (Catalan National Assembly) which organised a series of demonstrations prior to the 2017 Catalan referendum that were brutally suppressed by the Spanish government.

Angus Brendan Macneil, SNP MP for the Na h-Eileanan an Iar constituency, is a supporter of former party leader and former First Minister, Alex Salmond. Others involved include Julian Assange campaigner and Salmond ally, Craig Murray, and a number of AUOB organisers and supporters of the Wings over Scotland nationalist blog. Salmond is publicly keeping his distance, thus far.

Former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond in 2007 (credit: Scottish Government-Wikimedia Commons)

Two leading members of the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party in Scotland, Keir McKechnie and Charlotte Ahmed, are also on the new organisation's inaugural committee. An SWP statement in Socialist Worker outlined:

"The creation of Now Scotland opens up the possibility of a new membership organisation, not controlled by the SNP hierarchy. Those who want to campaign for a radical alternative to the British state and to the limited vision of independence presented by the SNP leadership must seize the moment."

The "radical" alternative to the British state the hardliners want to see is a Scottish capitalist state, formed in the midst of a protracted and potentially violent carve up of the resources of the British state, and a politically catastrophic division of the working class. Their primary differences with the current SNP leadership are over the speed and legality of the process by which this division of assets is initiated.

The SNP is riven with the most bitter disputes on this question between Sturgeon and her former mentor, Salmond, who stepped down from SNP leadership and resigned as First Minister following the 2014 referendum defeat.

Following the 2016 UK-yes vote in the Brexit referendum, Salmond let it be known that he felt Sturgeon was too slow in taking advantage of the vote—with Scotland voting 62 to 38 percent to remain in the European Union (EU)—to press for another independence poll. Sturgeon and her allies have stressed that they intend to proceed in consultation with the British government and state, NATO, and the EU, to ensure the most stable basis to attract investment.

Salmond is viewed as a prospective leader of a "Plan B" movement, which would hold, if necessary, an illegal referendum, along the lines of the Catalan poll in 2017.

When it became known that Salmond was seeking a return to active politics, he was targeted by a Scottish government investigation into alleged sexual misdemeanours. He fought back, and in 2019 a judicial review ruled strongly that the Scottish government's investigation was "tainted by apparent bias". In 2020, he was found innocent of all charges in a subsequent trial, despite a major police operation trawling for evidence against him.

Sturgeon is now in deep trouble and may be forced to resign if found to have breached the Scottish government's ministerial code over the extent of her prior knowledge of the moves against Salmond. At the SNP’s last conference, supporters of the pseudo-left and Stalinist-influenced Common Weal Group won between 44 and 50 percent of seats on key committees. Salmond supporter Joanna Cherry MP was recently sacked from a front bench position in the party's parliamentary party at Westminster.

The SNP's problems are rooted in the bankrupt and right-wing character of its raison d'être, Scottish independence. In power for 14 years, the SNP has supervised a relentless assault on social spending, in line with targets set in Westminster but serving the interests of the Scottish bourgeoisie just as surely as their English counterparts.

Local authority services to the most vulnerable have been shredded, while living standards for the poorest are abysmal. Scotland recently recorded the worst annual drug death figures, by a huge margin, in the whole of Europe—1,264 drug related deaths in 2019, more than double the figure in 2014. In 2018, Scotland registered to 295 drug deaths per million, compared with 81 in Sweden, the next highest, and 76 across the UK. The year to April 2020 saw demand for food banks increase by 47 percent, including a 62 percent increase in the number of children supported.

The pandemic has intensified the exposure of the SNP’s anti-working class agenda. Its response in Holyrood has been every bit as catastrophic as that of the UK government led by Boris Johnson at Westminster. Scotland reported the highest rate of COVID-19 related care home deaths of any part of the UK. Between March and May, 338 COVID-19 positive patients were released from hospitals into care homes. By August, 47 percent of all COVID-19 deaths were in care homes. A Crown Office investigation has been set up to consider prosecutions over 474 care home deaths. By January, the unit had received 2,242 death reports.

The Scottish government has also led the charge to re-open schools with the pandemic still unsuppressed—some primary years are returning this week, in advance of similar moves in England.

To maintain a popular base, the SNP relies massively on the wretched, right-wing character of the Labour Party and the refusal of the trade unions to lead any struggle to unite workers against the assault on living standards. It is reported to be heading for a landslide victory in the May elections and a number of opinion polls have recorded narrow majorities for independence.

But no faction of the nationalists can offer workers even a minimal alleviation of the relentless destruction of jobs and social services. They champion rival strategies for the further drastic division and impoverishment of the working class.

A recent article in the Scotsman from Sturgeon supporters Alyn Smith and Stewart McDonald delivered an anti-Russia rant and hailed the pro-EU "Maidan" uprising in Ukraine of 2014. According to the pair, this fascist backed coup, which saw street fighting between the neo-fascist Right Sector and government forces and brought the world to the brink of war, was "the Revolution of Dignity" which took place because the Ukrainian people wanted "prosperity and integration with their European neighbours."

The SNP's defence and foreign affairs spokesmen hailed the British government's commitment to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum upholding the inviolability of Ukrainian borders, which has repeatedly served as the pretext for military manouevres against Russia. Ukraine’s social policy of mass immiseration, under conditions of the pandemic, threatens 9 million of the country's 42 million population with "extreme poverty", according to the UN.

Salmond supporter and blogger, Craig Murray, last year outlined his view that Scottish secession could be based on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision on the right of Kosovo to secede from Serbia.

Murray, speaking at an AUOB rally, avoided referring to the succession of civil wars, NATO bombing and catastrophic levels of poverty that were imposed on the working class across the Balkans during the breakup of Yugoslavia, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. But he made clear he viewed a British civil war over Scottish independence as something for which preparations should be made: "There is going to be no process of Independence agreed with the British government. We have to take Independence, not beg for it. At some stage, there is always the danger that the British government may try to react by sending in the British Army to enforce Westminster’s will. If we believe we are an independent nation, we have to be prepared to defend ourselves as an independent state should the worst happen."

Now Scotland seeks to cover for the reactionary implications of its separatist strategy by relying on the hysterics of the middle class identity politicians and appeals to the trade union bureaucracy. These work to divert immense class tensions, intensified by the pandemic—which objectively tend to unify workers in Britain and internationally—along nationalist anti-English lines that portray Scotland as an oppressed nation, rather than part of an imperialist state ruled by a unified imperialist bourgeoisie for more than 300 years.

Opening a new axis of struggle for workers in Scotland, across Britain and internationally is urgent. Opposition to imperialism, war and mass poverty cannot be mounted through the creation of a new minor imperialist power in Scotland, with a state apparatus staffed by pseudo-left careerists. It demands a unified movement of the working class across all borders, for an end to capitalist rule and the division of the world into antagonistic nation states, for a socialist Britain, within a United Socialist States of Europe.

Golf star Tiger Woods seriously injured in an automobile accident

Alan Gilman

World-renowned golf player Tiger Woods sustained serious injuries in a near-fatal one-car accident that occurred Tuesday in the Los Angeles community of Palos Verdes. Woods, who may have been speeding or distracted, lost control of his vehicle as he was driving through a curvy, steep stretch of road that has been the scene of numerous accidents in the past.

Law enforcement officers watch as a crane is used to lift a vehicle following a rollover accident involving golfer Tiger Woods, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021, in the Rancho Palos Verdes section of Los Angeles. Woods suffered leg injuries in the one-car accident and was undergoing surgery, authorities and his manager said. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

His vehicle was extensively damaged, having rolled over several times requiring the fire department to use specialized tools to extricate him from the vehicle. Woods suffered compound fractures to his right leg as well as a fractured ankle and, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, “is lucky to be alive.”

Woods had been rehabilitating for the last several months from his latest back surgery and had hoped to compete at the Masters Tournament this April. The severe leg injuries that the 45-year-old Woods has just sustained, coupled with numerous back and leg surgeries he has endured during his career, have now placed any future athletic activities in grave doubt.

For the past 25 years, Tiger Woods has been the world’s most popular and famous golfer. His unparalleled success from modest beginnings and his ancestry (his father was African American, his mother Thai) were novelties in what was once considered to be a sport limited to the wealthy and privileged of society. He greatly expanded the interest and participation in golf among masses of ordinary people.

As is often the case with extraordinarily talented individuals in capitalist society, Woods was marketed as a commodity that enriched the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA), the television networks, and the brands that employed him as an icon (particularly Nike), as well as himself, only to have the same forces exploit his personal scandals and tragedies, reviving and rehabilitating his image after each episode in a seemingly never-ending soap opera.

Woods grew up in Southern California and was taught golf by his father Earl, who had a military career that included a tour in Vietnam. Earl met Tiger’s mother Kultida when he was stationed in Thailand. He was himself a single-digit-handicap amateur golfer, and because he was a member of the military had playing privileges at military golf courses and was able to introduce Tiger to golf as soon as he could walk.

Tiger was a child prodigy and at the age of two he putted against comedian Bob Hope in a television appearance on the Mike Douglas Show. At age three, he shot a 48 over nine holes at a Navy course. At age five, he appeared in Golf Digest and on ABC’s That’s Incredible.

Before turning seven, Tiger won the Under-10 section of the Drive, Pitch, and Putt competition, held at the Navy Golf Course in Cypress, California. In 1984, at the age of eight, he won the age 9–10 boys’ event, the youngest age group available, at the Junior World Golf Championships. He went on to win the Junior World Championships six times, including four consecutive wins from 1988 to 1991.

Following an outstanding junior, college, and amateur golf career, Woods turned professional in 1996 at the age of 20. With this remarkable resume, Woods immediately signed advertising deals with Nike and Titleist that ranked at the time as the most lucrative endorsement contracts in golf history.

By the end of April 1997, Woods had won three PGA Tour events in addition to his first major, the 1997 Masters, which he won by 12 strokes in a record-breaking performance. He reached number one in the world rankings for the first time in June 1997, less than a year after turning pro. Throughout the first decade of this century, Woods was the dominant force in golf. He was the top-ranked golfer in the world from August 1999 to September 2004 (264 weeks) and again from June 2005 to October 2010 (281 weeks).

The next decade of Woods’s career was marked by a roller-coaster of setbacks and comebacks from personal problems and injuries. He took a self-imposed hiatus from professional golf from December 2009 to early April 2010 in an attempt to resolve marital issues with his wife that had become a public spectacle, as the press promoted and sensationalized multiple infidelities for which Woods was eventually forced to apologize. Woods soon after divorced, lost several sponsorships and fell to number 58 in the world rankings in November 2011 before ascending again to the number-one ranking between March 2013 and May 2014.

Injuries led him to undergo four back surgeries between 2014 and 2017. Many feel the power of Wood’s swing and his playing so much golf at such an early age have contributed to his chronic injuries. Woods competed in only one tournament between August 2015 and January 2018, and he dropped off the list of the world’s top 1,000 golfers.

The physical and emotional pain that Woods was enduring again become a public spectacle when in 2017 he was found passed out in his car as a result of being under the influence of pain and sleep medications.

On his return to regular competition in 2018, Woods made steady progress to the top of the game, winning his first tournament in five years at the Tour Championships in September 2018 and his first major in 11 years at the 2019 Masters.

Throughout his career, Woods has won 15 professional major golf championships, trailing only Jack Nicklaus’s 18, and 82 PGA Tour events, tied for first with Sam Snead. During his career it is estimated that he has earned more than 1 billion dollars in endorsements and golf winnings.

Besides the profound personal impact Tuesday’s automobile accident will have on Woods, immense commercial interests are also at stake. It is estimated that TV ratings of golf have declined at times by almost 50 percent when Woods is absent from the PGA Tour. What has been described as the “Tiger Effect” has resulted in significantly decreased TV viewership and golf equipment sales whenever Woods is unable to play.

In addition to the PGA and its television contracts with the networks, Woods currently has endorsement deals with eight companies, ranging from golf equipment brands to beverage makers to automakers to trading card companies.

One can hope that Woods is happy to be alive and will focus on his physical recovery rather than any quick return to competitive golf, where he has nothing to prove. But it is to be expected that commercial interests will be putting enormous pressure on him to profit from yet another “comeback” chapter for Tiger Woods.