European states scrap social distancing as COVID-19 pandemic surges

Jacques Valentin & Alex Lantier

The COVID-19 pandemic, driven by the Delta variant, is surging in Europe. New COVID-19 infections across Europe rose by 43 percent over the last week to 548,000, as European governments end social distancing measures. Over 80 percent of the cases were concentrated in Britain (190,294 cases), Russia (168,035) and Spain (89,036), where cases rose 148 percent.

A COVID-19 patient under Ecmo (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) remain unconscious, at Bichat Hospital, AP-HP, in Paris, Thursday, April 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly)

In several countries with smaller caseloads, however, infections are spreading even faster, pointing to the danger of a catastrophic rise of COVID-19 cases, despite ongoing vaccination campaigns. Weekly COVID-19 cases quadrupled in Luxembourg to 961, tripled in the Netherlands (to 11,480) and Greece (8,504), and doubled in Denmark (3,208). They rose around 50 percent in France (19,364) and Portugal (16,469).

On July 1, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge had said: “Last week, the number of cases rose by 10 percent, driven by increased mixing, travel, gatherings and easing of social restrictions.” He also warned that the Delta variant will dominate in Europe by August, under conditions where 63 percent of Europe’s population still has not received its first vaccine dose. Half the elderly and 40 percent of health care workers are unvaccinated. On this basis, he warned that “there will be a new wave in the WHO European region.”

Kluge’s projections and warnings of a new wave of the pandemic exploding across Europe are being realized. Over 1.1 million people have already died of COVID-19 in Europe, but European governments are pressing ahead with unabashed contempt for human life, adopting opening policies leading to a new surge of millions of cases.

By eliminating social distancing rules that undermine business profits, they thus hope to intensify the funneling of social wealth to the top of society, after the pandemic last year saw bank bailouts increase Europe’s billionaires’ collective wealth by €1 trillion.

Britain is leading the trend that is unfolding across Europe. After France scrapped social distancing rules for businesses on July 1, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson aims to end mask requirements and social distancing measures by July 19. Epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson has warned that the UK could see 150,000 to 200,000 by the end of the summer, but Johnson bluntly demanded that the economy and corporate profits take priority over lives.

“We’re seeing rising hospital admissions, and we must reconcile ourselves, sadly, to more deaths from COVID,” Johnson said, adding: “We have to balance the risks of the disease and of continuing with legal restrictions, with their impact on people’s lives and livelihoods.”

An indication of the scope of the disaster that could result was a study last month from Public Health England. It showed that so far, 117 people have died of the Delta variant in Britain, including 50 who were doubly vaccinated, as vaccinations bring down the death rate to 0.13 percent. However, even if this far lower death rate were to maintain itself despite the vast increase in circulation of the virus, this would mean 200 to 250 deaths per day in Britain by the end of the summer if Ferguson’s projections were realized.

On the European continent, where vaccination rates are substantially lower, this could lead to even greater levels of death.

Yesterday, Russian officials rejected calls for more social distancing measures, as over 700 people die of COVID-19 every day. Russia, Europe’s largest country with a population of 146 million, leads Europe for COVID-19 deaths, at 140,775, just ahead of Britain (128,336) and Italy (127,731). Yet Russian Human Well-being Commissioner Anna Popova blandly declared, “there is no threat or risk now that would force us to go into lockdown or introduce tougher restrictive measures, there is no need for that today.”

In Spain, the incidence rate has surged to over 200 per 100,000 inhabitants, and over 600 among those under 30. The reproduction rate (R0), the number of people whom each infected person then goes on to infect, now stands at 3.3, the highest since the pandemic began. Super-spreader events at school holidays and nightclubs have played a major role. The region of Catalonia, where the incidence rate is at 380, said on Tuesday that it will close discos for 15 days starting this weekend.

Underscoring the risks faced by young people, El Pais reported that at the beginning of July, at least 600 people under age 30 were in intensive care and 80 had died due to COVID-19 in Spain.

This exposes the bitter cost in lives of the false reassurances spread by officials of Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government. Last month, Fernando Simón, the head of the Centre of Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies (CCAES), said: “We know that until we have at least 70 percent immunity things can happen, but we also know they cannot be like the past. … In no way can they be like what happened in winter, and that is true of Britain, too.”

Simón added that he was confident in supporting the elimination of the use of masks: “I believe that it will not cause any risk at all.”

As COVID-19 explodes in the Netherlands, Health Minister Ferd Grapperhaus said only that the government would see “in the coming days if tightening up the rules is justified.” The Dutch public health institute RIVM said that one in five new infections can be traced to a café, bar or club and that over 60 percent of cases are in among people under 30.

One so-called “COVID-free” party in Enschede on June 28 turned into a super-spreader event, after 180 of the 800 people attending tested positive. The party required a “corona admission ticket” showing that partygoers were vaccinated or had tested negative for the virus. Once admitted, however, they did not have to wear masks. Several people reportedly falsified their corona admission ticket, sharing a single QR code certifying they could safely attend the party.

In France, government spokesman Gabriel Attal reported Wednesday on a national security council meeting held by President Emmanuel Macron. He said that COVID-19 affects the 20-29 age bracket most heavily and is accelerating in 11 of France’s 12 regions, with the Paris and Marseilles regions worst hit. Inside the Paris city limits, the incidence rate has again climbed over 50 per 100,000, the government’s official “alarm limit.”

Nonetheless, Attal announced no new measures, merely asking citizens to get vaccinated. Only 34 percent of French people are fully vaccinated, compared to 51 percent in Britain.

Macron also intends to make users pay for COVID-19 tests starting immediately for foreign visitors in France, and in the autumn for citizens and permanent residents. While officials have said this aims to eliminate “comfort” testing and encourage everyone to get vaccinated, there are also reports that the government was concerned that the total cost of the tests could rise to several billion euros this year. And so, the government is abandoning one of the principal methods through which a track-and-trace policy would be implemented.

These announcements show that workers cannot rely on governments to stop the pandemic. The building of independent safety committees in workplaces and schools to monitor and adopt relevant safety measures to halt the spread of the virus is the way forward for workers and youth. The critical question is mobilizing the independent strength of the working class across Europe and internationally to impose a rational, scientifically guided health policy to prevent the coming surge from claiming further millions of lives in Europe and around the world.

Pentagon cancels JEDI contract and plans more advanced cloud-based warfare platform

Kevin Reed

The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced on Tuesday the cancelation of its $10 billion, 10-year commercial contract solicitation called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) along with plans to seek a more comprehensive request from the private sector for an advanced “cloud ecosystem” for “non-traditional warfighting domains.”

The Pentagon in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

In a press release entitled, “Future of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud Contract,” the DoD said it had determined that due to “evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs.”

The DoD statement went on to say the department “continues to have unmet cloud capability gaps for enterprise-wide, commercial cloud services at all three classification levels that work at the tactical edge, at scale ...”

The original contract solicitation for JEDI was issued in early 2018. The project was defined as a single source offering to be awarded to one cloud computing services company that would assist the DoD in modernizing its IT infrastructure by consolidating the networks and data centers across all departments. At that time, it appeared that the contract would be awarded to Amazon because the company had won other major cloud computing bids with the US military-intelligence state.

However, before the arrangements with Amazon could be finalized, then-President Donald Trump intervened and forced the contract to be signed with Microsoft in October 2019. Amazon sued and, in February 2020, a judge imposed an injunction on the deal with Microsoft. The conflict over the JEDI contract remained unresolved when Biden was sworn in as president.

According to the New York Times, an unnamed Biden White House official said the administration “began a review that quickly concluded that the costly arguments over JEDI had been so lengthy that the system would be outdated as soon as it was deployed.”

While the corporate media has focused in on the three-year battle between Amazon and Microsoft, as well as others such as Oracle, over the highly lucrative JEDI contract, the DoD press release says nothing about it. Instead, the Pentagon statement says that its cloud computing needs “have only advanced in recent years.”

The DoD press statement quotes John Sherman, acting Pentagon Chief Information Officer, who said, “JEDI was developed at a time when the Department’s needs were different” and “our cloud conversancy was less mature.” Sherman goes on to say that “the evolution of the cloud ecosystem within DoD, and changes in user requirements to leverage multiple cloud environments to execute mission, our landscape has advanced and a new way-ahead is warranted to achieve dominance in both traditional and non-traditional warfighting domains.”

With the development of computer and information systems moving rapidly—especially the speed of data transmission across wireless networks and the development of artificial intelligence and “neural” processing along with the practical implementation of robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles (drones)—the technical details in the JEDI contract are now completely out of date. The Pentagon has acknowledged that the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT)—the intelligent connection of every device and apparatus with the Internet—has exceeded the capability of the present infrastructure of the US military to process it.

In place of JEDI, the DoD is issuing a new request for proposals called the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC) which “will be a multi-cloud/multi-vendor Indefinite Delivery-Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract.” According to a Wikipedia description, IDIQ contracts only spending minimums and are used when the government, “cannot predetermine, above a specified minimum, the precise quantities of supplies or services that it will require during the contract period.”

What this means is that the Pentagon considers the procurement of a centralized cloud computing platform across all departments of the US military so strategically important that it is prepared to enter an open-ended agreement with a group of private sector tech monopolies of an unknown duration and an unknown cost. The press release says that both Amazon and Microsoft will be included in the new solicitation.

The DoD statement references two specific initiatives that have contributed to the maturity of its “cloud conversancy” along with the development of the technology of the “cloud service providers” Amazon, Microsoft and others. It says that the cloud computing needs of the US military have advanced in recent years “with efforts such as Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Acceleration (ADA) initiative.

The JADC2 initiative has been in development for at least 18 months. A DoD News report from November 2020 states that JADC2 is “warfighting business” and is an effort by the Pentagon to “amalgamate sensors with shooters across all domains, commands and services.” For example, the report says, “A threat could be sensed by an Air Force unmanned aerial vehicle but the best weapon against it could be a Navy missile fired from offshore” or “A call for fire from an infantry battalion could be answered by tube artillery, rocket artillery, naval gunfire, close-air support from any service or something else.”

The DoD News report includes an interview with Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Dennis A. Crall, who runs the communications systems for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Crall says of JADC2, “Does it increase lethality? The answer should be yes. [JADC2] makes us more lethal. We’re a warfighting organization. That’s what this is designed to do.”

The Artificial Intelligence and Data (ADA) initiative was announced by the Pentagon on June 22 of this year by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. Speaking for ten minutes via video feed, Hicks emphasized the importance of artificial intelligence as a strategic concern for the US military: “A key part of an AI-ready department is a strong data foundation. Data enables the creation of algorithmic models, and, with the right data, we are able to take concepts and ideas and turn them into reality.” In other words, the future of US imperialist warfare depends upon the mastery of these advanced technologies.

Hicks explained that the ADA initiative involves the creation of “operational data teams that will be dispatched to all 11 combatant commands.” The teams will “rapidly work, catalog, manage and automate data feeds that inform decision making.”

On Wednesday, the Washington Post published an article that said artificial intelligence in warfighting is not some future prospect because “missiles, guns and drones that think for themselves are already killing people in combat, and have been for years.” The Post article describes a scene in June 2020 in which the US military sent a squadron of quadcopter drones with “cameras to scan the terrain and onboard computers to decide on their own what looks like a target,” and attacked soldiers “loyal to the Libyan strongman Khalifa Hifter,” and hunted them down as they fled.

Another war being fought with artificial intelligence-equipped drones is in Syria, where Turkey has been equipped with the same quadcopters to patrol the border. The Post report says the Turkish military has “drones that can autonomously patrol an area and automatically divebomb enemy radar signals.” These drones are a smaller version of the remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles “used extensively by the U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflicts,” but instead of humans using remote controls to launch missiles, the quadcopters have built-in munitions and fly into their targets and explode on impact.

A primary concern of the Pentagon is to maintain technological superiority over international rivals such as Russia and China. According to Peter Asaro, a professor at the New School in New York and a cofounder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, “The advanced militaries are pushing the envelope of these technologies. They will proliferate rapidly.”

Misinformation and Mythology and the Mainstream Media

Melvin A. Goodman

Too much reporting on national security in the mainstream media is based on official government sources, consisting of assessments and interpretations that the government wants to circulate.  The fact that it is difficult for contrarians or dissidents to get their views into the media adds to the one-sided nature of reporting and editorializing, which limits the public debate.  This oped is the first of several occasional pieces that will expose what I consider to be myths or beliefs that have been given uncritical acceptance by the media and the general public.  These myths are far too prevalent in the field of national security.

The CIA’s Intelligence Failure Regarding 9/11.  For the past 20 years, oped writers have indulged the myth that the Central Intelligence Agency provided genuine warning to President George W. Bush for al Qaeda’s attack on 9/11.  The most recent example appeared in the Washington Post in an oped by James Hohmann titled “An Insurrection hiding in plain sight.” Hohmann wrote that on August 6, 2001, the CIA’s Presidential Daily Brief “cautioned” Bush that Osama bin Laden was “determined to strike in the U.S.” and that CIA director George Tenet warned that the “system was blinking red” during the summer.

The CIA warnings were formulaic and very general, and not very helpful.  In actual fact, the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General prepared an authoritative account of the 9/11 intelligence failure, which pointed to the failures of Tenet and CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, but the Obama administration failed to release of the report.  The public still lacks a comprehensive understanding of the intelligence failure that contributed to the tragedy of 9/11.

In this particular case, Bush correctly dismissed the CIA’s very general warning that was based on no new information, but his lies in the run-up to the Iraq War two years later cast a cloud over the account in his memoir (“Decision Points,” 2010).  Bush accurately stated that the CIA had been worried about al Qaeda prior to 9/11, but “their intelligence pointed to an attack overseas.”  In response to a request from the president, the CIA prepared an item for the PDB that stated “We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that…bin Laden wanted to hijack U.S. aircraft.”  Bush told the briefer that he thought the CIA was using the PDB item to “cover its ass” on al Qaeda and terrorism.

Hohmann also indulges the myth that the 9/11 Commission did a thorough analysis of the terrorist attacks.  In fact, the Commission focused on budgets and funding for the intelligence community; organizational problems; and structural problems within the community.  The failure was about personal failure; accountability; and bureaucratic cowardice.  As a result of the Commission’s work, we ended up with the Office of National Intelligence that relies on government contractors and hasn’t reformed the intelligence community.  The Democratic and Republican members of the Commission spent much of their time protecting the reputations of former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, respectively.  President Barack Obama contributed to the failure of accountability because—similar to his position regarding CIA’s program of torture and abuse—he wanted to look ahead and not “look into the rear view mirror.”

Misinformation Regarding Afghanistan.

Several general officers, who oppose President Joe Biden’s decision to end the war, have been predicting that the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan would lead to civil war.  In fact, Afghanistan has been in a civil war since the early 1970s when a bloodless coup removed the King, whose forty-year reign was relatively peaceful and prosperous—for Afghanistan.  An overwhelming majority of the Afghan population has known only war.

For nearly fifty years, Afghanistan has been in a state of chaos and discontinuity as Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Hazara, and Tajiks—among others—have been fighting for control of the country’s regions and district capitals.  The media treat the Taliban as outliers, but in fact the Pashtun represent Afghanistan’s major tribal group.  Their majority status as well as their sanctuary in Pakistan have assured a Taliban victory over the long term.  The U.S. military has been unwilling to accept the humiliation of its defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and have tried to place the blame on external factors such as congressional opposition or premature withdrawal.  The wars were never winnable, as the guerrilla fighters in both wars had sanctuaries across the border.  The military and the media indulged the myth that the Taliban were simply “accidental” guerrillas, initially underestimating the organization and discipline of the Taliban.  Even President Obama was susceptible to this misinformation and mythmaking, giving uncritical acceptance in his presidential campaign to the absurd notion that Afghanistan was the “good war.”

As far as Pakistan is concerned, U.S. media for too long treated that country as an ally. Another myth!  While we have spent more than $1 trillion to defeat the Taliban, Pakistan has been spending far less to ensure the Taliban’s return to Kabul so that Islamabad could focus on its genuine enemy—India.  Pakistan and the Taliban wanted to start negotiations with the United States soon after our success against al Qaeda and bin Laden, but the Bush administration had no interest in talks that possibly could have prevented a twenty-year disaster.  The United States successfully toppled the Taliban and ousted al Qaeda from Afghanistan in 2001 within 90 days and could have withdrawn the very small force of Green Berets and CIA special forces soon after and claimed victory.

Meanwhile, the intelligence community, including CIA director William Burns, is circulating the notion that our military withdrawal from Afghanistan would hamper our intelligence collection in Afghanistan.  The United States does not have to be on the ground to collect intelligence regarding Afghanistan.  In fact, much of our actionable intelligence comes from foreign liaison sources who warned us twenty years ago about the threat of weaponizing commercial aircraft; the planning of al Qaeda to attack vulnerable U.S. targets; and bin Laden’s focus on hijacking aircraft from American Airlines and United Airlines.  A blizzard of such warnings went unheeded, while the media perpetuates the myth of the failure to “connect the dots.”  The real failure was one of rigor and imagination as the CIA lacked a system for collecting intelligence against such indicators as the weaponization and hijacking of commercial aircraft.

Defense Budget Myths.

There are many media myths associated with our bloated defense budget, but the notion that the United States devotes as much spending to defense as the next ten leading countries is particularly risible.  In fact, the United States spends more than the entire global community on defense when the entire investment devoted to the military is taken into account.  It is insufficient to cite only the spending of the Pentagon (roughly $750 billion) when an additional $500 billion is spent by such agencies as the Department of Energy, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Intelligence Community.  The VA is devoted to the terrible costs of our mostly unnecessary wars; the Energy Department is responsible for our nuclear inventory; the DHS includes the Coast Guard; and the military dominates the spending of our $70 billion intelligence community, which now includes 17 different departments and agencies.

Future articles will deal with media mythology that exaggerates the threat from China; places far too much blame on Russia for disputes over Ukraine; and indulges the self-proclaimed notion that the United States has been pursuing a “rules-based” international order.

UK will see millions of COVID-19 infections this summer

Thomas Scripps

Boris Johnson’s Conservative government is not only openly pursuing a herd immunity policy. It is reveling in its own indifference to the prospect of mass infection, illness and death.

From July 19, all businesses will be allowed to reopen and mass events authorised. Mask requirements and social distancing will be ended. Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced Wednesday that, from August 16, double-vaccinated adults and all under-18s will no longer have to self-isolate if they have been in close contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19. Quarantine bubbles in schools will be scrapped at the end of the summer term.

Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty speaking at Monday's press conference in Downing Street. July 5, 2021 (credit: Picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr)

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is expected to announce that fully vaccinated adults will soon be allowed to travel abroad to amber list countries without quarantining, as will unvaccinated children if they travel with family.

Yesterday evening, 60,000 football fans were encouraged to pile into London’s Wembley stadium to watch the England-Denmark semi-final of the European Football Championship. Asked Wednesday morning if he was concerned about the match becoming a “super spreader” event, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng replied, “There’s always risk in life… We’ve just got to see what happens.”

Johnson has said bluntly that the UK “must reconcile [itself] to more deaths” and that infections will rise to 50,000 a day. Javid, demanding the population “learn to live with the existence of Covid”, admitted that daily case totals could reach 100,000 before the end of summer. Professor Neil Fergusson, an epidemiologist and modeler for the government, has warned that there is “the potential for the UK to have a very large number of cases, 150,000 to 200,000 a day.”

The Guardian newspaper reports that there could be a staggering two million cases in the remaining six weeks of summer, but this is based on a very conservative estimate of an average 35,000 cases a day between now and July 19 and 60,000 from then until August 16.

A frenzied bloodlust has gripped Britain’s boardrooms and editorial offices who are pushing to tear away the last vestiges of a public health response. Yesterday’s front pages were filled with complaints that the date for ending self-isolation requirements was too delayed, meaning millions would be forced to stay at home and causing “chaos” for employers.

The Daily Mail proclaimed, “Isolation Insanity”, warning, “You cannot lose your nerve now, Mr Javid”, calling for him to scrap restrictions “right away” and telling the nation, “It’s time to let go of nurse”. The Daily Telegraph declared that isolation rules “slam the breaks on freedom”, quoting Tory right-winger and former party leaders Sir Iain Duncan Smith saying the government’s plan “makes a mockery” of “Freedom Day”. Its editorial said of ending self-isolation “why wait?... This country needs to move on”.

Kate Nicholls, head of Hospitality UK, complained that self-isolation was causing “carnage” for businesses, and the plan to scrap it “doesn’t go far enough, quickly enough.”

The Labour Party weighed in, with Sir Keir Starmer telling Johnson in Prime Minister’s Questions, “It won’t feel like freedom day to the businesses who are already warning of carnage because of the loss of staff and customers.” Labour accuses the government of a “reckless” reopening, but calls only for window dressing “baseline protections”.

The logic of the government’s policies leads to the August 16 date on self-isolation being brought forward. Based on the Guardian figures, some 10 million people will be forced to self-isolate this summer given the surge in infections. Every effort will be made to prevent this disruption to the profit making of big business. According to a Whitehall source, speaking to the i newspaper, the government scrapped mandatory mask wearing after being told keeping them risked losing the events and hospitality industry £4 billion due to their increasing public hesitancy.

The consequences of this criminal abandonment of public health measures will be terrible.

Vaccines have substantially reduced the mortality rate of COVID-19, with most estimates agreeing that the UK now sees one death for every thousand infections. However, this still translates to between 100 and 200 deaths a day in just a few weeks’ time. Increased pressure will be placed on a health service still reeling from the last year.

Modelling by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) suggest there will be 1,300 COVID hospitalisations a day by late July-early August, if daily cases reach 100,000. Coronavirus admissions are already surging, rising by 70 percent in England in the week to July 5 to 416 people.

Vast numbers of people will also contract debilitating Long Covid. The British Medical Association (BMA) told the Independent that as many as 10,000 people a day could develop the condition, with 20 percent of them likely to be unable to work, study or do normal day-to-day activities for more than a year. Two million people have so far been affected by Long Covid and 385,000 have lived with it for more than a year—only 9 percent of those were hospitalised when they were first infected. Dr David Strain, speaking for the British Medical Association, said there is currently no evidence of vaccines causing a decline in the 10-17 percent of infections estimated to result in Long COVID.

The highest levels of infection will be among the partially vaccinated and unvaccinated, young adults and especially children. Figures from the Department for Education show that, on July 1, 640,000 children were absent from school and 560,000 self-isolating due to COVID, a 66 percent increase on the week before. This includes 28,000 children with a confirmed case and 34,000 with a suspected infection.

As before, the harm will fall overwhelmingly on the working class. A Health Foundation report published Tuesday found that, for people under 65, those in the most deprived 10 percent of areas had a COVID mortality rate 3.7 times higher than the most affluent 10 percent. Those in the 5th most deprived decile were still more than twice as likely to die than those in the 1st.

None of this matters to the ruling class, who feel liberated from even the pretence of concern. The reopening strategy is being backed by an open embrace of herd immunity, still to be achieved in substantial part by mass infection. The Daily Mail reported a government source who said, “There is an element of herd immunity in what we are doing… it is inevitable that some people are going to acquire immunity through infection”.

The government is seeking to rationalise lifting restrictions rapidly now based on the assertion that the resulting herd immunity will supposedly prevent a bigger surge later in winter, when children are back in school and the National Health Service is under greater strain. Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty told the Downing Street press conference on Tuesday, “At a certain point, you move to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalisations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them… going in the summer has some advantages”.

The blood price of illness and death will not buy an end to the pandemic. Professor Paul Hunter told the i on Wednesday that herd immunity was in reality “out of reach” due to Delta’s substantially increased transmissibility outstripping the protection against infection offered by the vaccines.

Moreover, the government has announced no plans for the vaccination of children, leaving a huge reservoir of potential infection. The result will be persistent waves of COVID-19, especially in the colder months. As the Guardian ’s science editor Ian Sample explained on Monday, “For the health service, living with coronavirus means learning to endure a double wave each winter as coronavirus and flu arrive together.” Whitty told the Local Government Association on Wednesday, “it will still be quite a difficult winter, especially for the NHS.”

The government is in fact creating conditions for the development of a new, more vaccine-resistant and potentially more deadly variant of the virus, which will be given ample opportunity to mutate by the surge of cases being prepared.

The UK is now a bellwether for the world, the vast majority of which faces an even more devastating scenario due to significantly lower vaccination rates. With governments globally rushing to remove all public health restrictions, Britain shows the deluge of infections which will inevitably follow. Its example must be taken as a warning to the international working class that it must act now to take the response to the pandemic into its own hands, based on the fight for a socialist programme which puts trillions at the disposal of a globally coordinated public health programme for the eradication of the virus.

All Covid safety measures being lifted in UK schools as Delta variant explodes

Margot Miller

UK Education Secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed Tuesday that all remaining safety restrictions in schools will be lifted in England in September, even as the new deadly, more transmissible Delta variant spreads exponentially.

The measures are part of the Conservative governments’ lifting of all mandatory Covid health protections to reopen the economy fully on July 19. This necessitates all children attending school so parents can be at work.

Teacher Miriam Mizzi talks to socially distanced year seven pupils during their first day at Kingsdale Foundation School in London, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020. From July 19, all Covid safety regulations in England will be scrapped. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Among the restrictions ending is the policy of sending “bubbles” of schoolchildren home to self-isolate if one child in the bubble comes into contact with a Covid case. Children will only have to self-isolate if they personally test positive. The policy of setting up “bubbles” in schools was always a token measure and could never have halted the spread of Covid, but ending it will escalate the spread of the virus and make schools more unsafe for children, education staff, other school workers and parents.

At the beginning of the autumn term, secondary school children will have two lateral flow tests—which are not accurate—and then twice weekly tests at home until the end of September.

The UK now has more daily Covid cases than the whole of the European Union combined, recording case numbers similar to the high point of the virus in December/January. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said on Tuesday that daily cases could reach 100,000 by August.

Department for Education (DfE) figures recorded 640,000 (8.5 percent) pupil absences on July 2 associated with Covid, the highest since schools reopened in March. This was a leap from 375,000 the previous week. Public Health England (PHE) figures revealed 151 new school outbreaks in school week ending June 20, compared to 96 the previous week. In the week ending June 27, 15,000 children tested positive for Covid and 24,000 were absent with suspected Covid.

While children are less likely to become ill than adults, a proportion end up hospitalised while others develop debilitating Long Covid symptoms.

The advocacy and support group Long Covid Kids provided the following alarming statistics for England, compiled from Office for National Statistics and Public Health England data.

• Hospital admissions rose 28 percent to 6,129, week ending June 21.

• Children's covid hospital admissions are rising faster than in wave 2 of the pandemic last autumn.

• 8 percent of all Covid hospital admissions are children.

• One in every 100 child Covid cases result in hospitalisation.

• Infections are rising fastest in 5-14 year olds.

• Outbreaks in school nearly match those in December.

• 9,000 children have Long Covid extending beyond 12 months.

• One quarter of those hospitalised experience Long Covid symptoms for an average eight and a half months.

• There have been 59 paediatric deaths due to Covid.

The full consequences of Long Covid, including evidence of brain damage potentially impairing cognitive development, are unknown. Allowing the new variant to run rife as the government is doing, without any opposition from the Labour Party or the trade unions, means these figures could rise hugely.

Dr. Zubaida Haque of Independent SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) said July 2, 'I don't think we can do anything but conclude that this government is seriously carrying out its herd immunity policy through natural infection, through school children.'

Professor James Naismith, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, said Prime Minister Boris Johnson 'is effectively conducting a mass experiment on young people as he lifts coronavirus restrictions.”

To justify its homicidal mission, the government and supporters assert that schools are overzealous in sending children home to isolate. They cite the damage disruptions in education—which are in fact due to them allowing the virus to spread—is doing to children’s mental health and lost learning, including among the disadvantaged.

The Conservative supporting Telegraph launched a “Campaign for Children” to stop sending “bubbles” home, backed by former Education Secretaries, Tory Kenneth Baker and Labour’s Lord David Blunkett, the Archbishop of York, head of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Peter Wanless, Javed Khan, the chief executive of Barnado's, and Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza.

This hogwash is not gaining traction with educators and parents. On the twitter page of SafeEdForAll—a group of parents “sharing a strong concern about the lack of Covid19 safety” in schools—someone tweeted that pupils are not sent home lightly from schools. Headlines in newspapers should reflect the truth and read, “pupils sent home to safeguard them from highly contagious chronic disease.” Another commented in support, “Schools not sent home because of overzealous isolation policy, they’re closing because infection is exploding.”

Many tweets complain about lifting mask wearing, and the lack of funding for Co2 monitors and adequate ventilation systems.

Feigned handwringing over disadvantaged children and the need to “catch up” on missed education is belied by ongoing education cuts and the redistribution of wealth to the richest in society. According to the National Audit Office, education funding is being shifted from schools in the more disadvantaged areas to those in less disadvantaged areas.

Despite scientists recommending the roll out of vaccines to children over 12 to halt further spread of the virus, the government remains reticent about vaccinating. The UK’s medical regulator MHRA approved the use of Pfizer in 12-15 year olds, but the government is awaiting further data. The US, Israel and France have begun inoculating this age group.

The fascistic herd immunity policy that has cost over 150,000 lives is epitomised by comments by Nervtag (subcommittee of SAGE) member Sir Robert Dingwall.

Dingwall is also a member of the government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. He declared “children are better protected by natural immunity generated through infection than asking them to take a possible risk of a vaccine.” Without a shred of evidence, welcoming the lifting of safety measures in schools he said, “A last wave of mild infections in unvaccinated younger people may well be what we are now seeing.”

Dingwall urged the government to stop spreading “panic” by disclosing daily Covid cases. “Medicine cannot deliver immortality. We’re all going to die one day,” he added.

Labour insists, in the words of leader Sir Keir Starmer, that children should be in school, “No ifs, no buts, no equivocation.” Shadow Education Secretary Kate Green urged the government to publish data before the end of term on pilot schemes in 200 schools to compare sending bubbles home to daily testing.

School are only open and contributing to the surge in cases because the education unions sabotaged large-scale opposition by parents and educators. National Association of Head Teachers leader Paul Whiteman, ASCL’s Geoff Barton and the National Education Union’s Kevin Courtney and Mary Bousted wrote a joint letter to Williamson asking for clarity as schools “still have little idea” how prepare for next term.

On Tuesday, Courtney said “It seems clear that the government policies are based on a new form of herd immunity strategy. They are hoping that the increase in vaccination rates and the increase in infection rates across the summer will eventually get cases to fall simply because there is no one left to infect.” Bousted said in a press release regarding the lifting of restrictions in education, “This is neglectful and reckless decision-making, when schools and colleges quite obviously need the backing of Government to ensure their workplace remains safe.”

Yet again, as the pandemic significantly worsens, there is no talk by the pro-capitalist unions about calling their members out on strike—only appeals to the government on how they should work with the unions as the proven means to keep education settings open.

Another 43 refugees drowned off the coast of Tunisia as a result of the EU’s fortress Europe policy

Martin Kreickenbaum

According to the Tunisian Red Crescent, 43 refugees drowned off the Tunisian coast near the town of Zarzis on 2 July, when their completely overcrowded boat capsized. Of the 127 on board, only 84 could be rescued. The refugees, who came from Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Chad, and Bangladesh, set out last week, near the Libyan town of Zuwarah.

The cemetery for migrants who have died trying to reach Europe, in the village of Zarzis, Tunisia, Saturday June 12, 2021. (AP Photo/Mehdi El Arem)

Four other boat incidents off the Tunisian coast have claimed the lives of almost 50 more refugees in the last ten days alone.

The situation for refugees in North Africa has worsened in recent weeks. The European Union is stubbornly refusing to take in refugees from the horrific, completely overcrowded detention camps in Libya and is not even sending an independent rescue mission to the central Mediterranean. Instead, the EU is cooperating closely with the criminal gangs known as the Libyan Coast Guard, notorious for interning, torturing and enslaving refugees.

The criminal character of the European Union is revealed nowhere more clearly than in its brutal treatment of people seeking refuge.

The 127 refugees had been wandering in the south-central Mediterranean for three days until their boat finally capsized off Tunisia. Those rescued included many minors and even a three-year-old. Quite a few had previously escaped the hellish torments of the Libyan internment camps. A woman from Cameroon who was rescued by the Tunisian Red Crescent reported that they were “treated like rubbish and raped” there.

A spokesman for the Tunisian Red Crescent, Munji Salim, said Tunisian reception centres were already overcrowded because many more refugees had met with an accident off the Tunisian coast this year while trying to reach Europe. The Italian immigration authorities have already registered nearly 21,000 refugees landing this year, more than three times as many as in the same period last year.

Added to this are almost 15,000 refugees who were picked up by the so-called Libyan Coast Guard in the first half of 2021 and brought back to Libya. According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), at least 720 refugees have drowned in the central Mediterranean this year, almost twice as many as at the same time last year, although the number of unreported cases is far higher.

Worrying incidents have been mounting in recent weeks. The Ocean Viking, belonging to the private aid organisation SOS Méditerranée, has rescued 572 people from distress at sea in six missions in Maltese and Libyan waters in the past five days and is now desperately seeking a safe harbour to bring them ashore. Of these, 369 refugees came from a wooden boat rescued in distress in Libyan waters that was in danger of capsizing. In two previous rescue operations in Maltese waters, more than 130 refugees were taken from boats rescued in distress.

Among others, 183 minors are now on board the Ocean Viking. Many of those rescued are suffering from fuel burns, sunburn, dehydration and extreme exhaustion after spending extended time at sea. Despite this, the ports on the European coast are refusing to allow the Ocean Viking to enter to bring the refugees to safety and provide them with medical care.

The Ocean Viking rescue mission exemplifies the European Union’s murderous policy towards refugees. The EU is deliberately driving hundreds of people to their deaths as it seals off its external borders.

The Ocean Viking is currently the only boat belonging to a private rescue organisation operating in the central Mediterranean. Other rescue ships are being detained by the Italian authorities on flimsy grounds and prevented from leaving. This currently affects, among others, the Geo Barents of Médecins Sans Frontières, the Sea-Eye 4 and the Sea-Watch 4. The Sea-Watch 3 has been allowed to sail to its homeport in Spain for repairs.

Since the EU and NATO have also completely stopped their rescue missions, the Ocean Viking is, in fact, the only remaining rescue ship in the central Mediterranean. The fact that the number of refugee crossings has nevertheless risen sharply refutes the EU’s claim that the presence of rescue ships constitutes a “pull factor” and encourages refugees to venture across the sea to Europe. It is the threatening situation in Sudan, Eritrea, Chad, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Bangladesh that forces these desperate people to make the life-threatening journey to Europe despite the risks.

Instead of rescuing refugees, the EU is working ever more closely with the so-called Libyan Coast Guard and is handing the refugees back over to the henchmen from whom they had escaped shortly before. The brutal means used by the Libyan Coast Guard against refugees are shown in a film by aid organisation Sea-Watch, which was recorded by the reconnaissance plane Seabird on 30 June.

The Seabird intercepted a distress call from a boat with 50 people on board in Maltese waters. On its way to the refugee boat, the Seabird encountered the Libyan Coast Guard vessel Ras Jadir. The Seabird then informed the Maltese Coast Guard of the threat of the refugees’ illegal repatriation from international waters to Libya, but the Maltese authorities simply hung up the phone.

When the Seabird spotted the wooden boat with 50 refugees on board, it witnessed a brutal attack by the Libyan Coast Guard. The Coast Guard fired at the refugee boat and only stopped firing after the Seabird had warned them several times. Then it sailed at high speed towards the small wooden boat and threatened to ram it. The refugees’ lives were in danger, and they were lucky to escape. According to current information, they reached the Italian island of Lampedusa safely.

In the meantime, the public prosecutor’s office in Agrigento, Italy has started an investigation based on the footage from Seawatch. Chief prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio, however, said the Italian Ministry of Justice would have to agree to the investigation as their target was a foreign authority. The Ras Jadir was provided to the Libyan militias by the Italian government, along with three identical ships.

The responsibility for the violent attacks on refugees by the “Libyan Coast Guard” lies with the governments in Rome, Berlin and Paris, who want to keep refugees out of the EU at all costs. Deliberately looking the other way and waiting for their Libyan stooges to do the dirty work has now become standard practice.

An incident that occurred on June 13 is significant. A wooden boat overcrowded with 170 refugees in distress at sea sent out a distress call. However, the Maltese and Italian authorities, as well as the European border protection agency Frontex, refrained from taking any rescue action for more than ten hours, although the situation on board was becoming worse.

Finally, the merchant ship Vos Triton, which flies the Gibraltar flag and belongs to a Dutch shipping company, took the refugees on board in international waters. Immediately afterwards, it handed the refugees over to a Libyan Coast Guard vessel, which brought them back to Libya against their will, where they were interned.

It was obviously a set-up. A merchant ship was brought in and secretly ordered to hand over the refugees to the Libyan henchmen. In the process, international maritime law was blatantly violated, and an illegal pushback operation carried out through middlemen. That the European Union simultaneously claims to uphold human rights is cynical and mendacious.

The cooperation with the Libyan militias goes so far that the EU is even indirectly involved in the internment camps for refugees in Libya.

Conditions in these camps are so atrocious that Médecins Sans Frontières recently withdrew from the last three camps where it had been providing medical care. The aid agency’s head of mission in Libya, Beatrice Lau, justified this step by saying that “the persistent pattern of violent incidents and serious injuries to refugees and migrants, as well as the danger to our staff, has reached a level that we can no longer accept.”

In mid-June, allegations emerged that minors had been sexually abused by guards at a camp run by the EU-funded Libyan Centre for Combating Illegal Immigration. The United Nations has long warned of the inhumane conditions in Libyan detention camps, which are particularly worrying in the Mabani, Abu Salim and Triq al-Sika camps.

The sharp increase in the number of victims and refugees illegally returned to Libya is a direct consequence of the European Union’s inhumane refugee policy. It wants to repel refugees from its own borders at all costs and does not shy away from cooperating with the most criminal elements to this end.

The EU’s claim to be acting against human traffickers in the central Mediterranean is also just a pretext. In April, the Libyan government released Abdulrahman Milad, one of the most wanted international human traffickers, “due to lack of evidence.” Now, he earns his living as a commander of the Libyan Coast Guard and serves the EU as a stooge in its restrictive fortress Europe policy.

Haiti under state of siege after president’s assassination

Bill Van Auken

Haiti’s interim prime minister Claude Joseph declared a state of siege throughout the impoverished Caribbean country Wednesday after the early morning assassination of de facto President Jovenel Moïse.

Soldiers patrol in Petion Ville, the neighborhood where the late Haitian President Jovenel Moise lived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, July 7, 2021 (AP Photo/Joseph Odelyn)

Moïse was shot dead at 1 a.m. by a commando squad armed with military-grade assault rifles. His wife, severely wounded, was flown via air ambulance to a trauma center in Florida. According to witnesses and an audio recording of the raid, the members of the death squad spoke English and Spanish.

Sustained gunfire was preceded by one of the members of the squad shouting out in American southern-accented English, “DEA operation! Everybody back up, stand down!”, an apparent ruse aimed at identifying the gunmen as members of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

The US State Department issued a denial that the assassins were American agents.

While Moïse’s black-clad killers have been widely described as “mercenaries,” there were indications of a high level of sophistication in the attack, as well as of apparent support from within the Haitian regime. Witnesses reported that drones were seen flying above the home of the Haitian president during the raid and also heard the sound of a grenade.

Moïse’s private residence, where the killing took place, is located in the wealthy Pelerin 5 district of Pétionville, an area of fortified villas in the hills above the capital, Port-au-Prince. The only road leading to and from it is routinely guarded by Haitian security forces. Militarized police only arrived on the scene after dawn, while the media had free access, photographing abandoned black balaclavas and spent shell casings on the ground.

The normally crowded streets of Port-au-Prince were deserted Wednesday as the population waited with dread for a response to the assassination. Justifiable fears range from a bloody state crackdown to an escalation of violence by armed gangs linked to the security forces or even an armed intervention by the United States and other foreign powers.

With a population of 11 million, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

“In line with article 149 of the Constitution, I have just chaired an extraordinary council of ministers and we have decided to declare a state of siege throughout the country,” Joseph said during a speech broadcast on social media Wednesday. He added, “You can kill President Jovenel Moïse, but you cannot kill his ideas.”

The pretense that the actions of Joseph have anything to do with the constitution is laughable. As for Moïse’s “ideas,” there is no indication that they consisted of anything beyond securing his own power and the interests of his imperialist patrons.

Joseph is attempting to succeed Moïse, who was himself regarded by the majority of the Haitian population as an illegitimate president, even as Washington, the other major imperialist powers and the Organization of American States continued to lend him support.

Moïse came into office as a result of fraudulent elections, the first round of which had to be nullified in 2015. He was installed through a second election the following year in which barely 23 percent of the electorate participated. Under Haiti’s constitution, his five-year term ended in February, but he refused to step down, insisting on remaining in power for another year.

In the meantime, he sought to consolidate a presidential dictatorship. After the country failed to hold parliamentary elections, Moïse ruled by presidential decree for more than a year, with his appointments, including that of Joseph, never legitimately approved. On Monday, Moïse had announced that Joseph would be replaced as prime minister by Ariel Henry, a longtime US stooge, who would have been the sixth to hold the post since 2017. With the president’s assassination, the line of succession is far from clear.

Moïse had also replaced local mayors with his own supporters and was preparing to ram through an illegal constitutional referendum aimed at further consolidating a presidential dictatorship and protecting presidents from prosecution for any crimes committed while they were in office.

Moïse was the hand-picked successor of Michel Martelly, a former singer known as “Sweet Micky,” who was installed as president as the result of direct intervention into the 2010-2011 Haitian elections by then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Martelly, like Moïse, had close political ties to former members of the US-backed Duvalier dictatorship, which ruled Haiti for three decades before “Baby Doc” Duvalier was toppled by a popular revolt in 1986. Both of them made it a political priority to refound the Haitian Armed Forces (FAd’H) which were disbanded in 1995.

While Martelly received the backing of the Clintons (Bill Clinton was then the UN special envoy to Haiti) as the man to lead the recovery from Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, Moïse cast himself as the “Haitian Trump” based upon his equally suspect claims about success as a businessman. Both were supported by Washington because of their unconditional support for IMF-dictated policies that subordinated the interests of the Haitian masses to the drive by foreign capital for profits based upon sweatshops, agribusiness, mining and tourism.

Moïse confronted mass opposition in the streets since 2018, when his government suddenly announced a 50 percent hike in gas prices as part of an IMF “readjustment” program. Mass demonstrations continued as it emerged that some $4 billion in oil import subsidies supplied by Venezuela under its Petrocaribe program, supposedly meant for Haitian development, had been pocketed by the government and its cronies. In the bargain, the corrupt Haitian government managed to solidify support from Washington by backing its regime-change operation against the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Demonstrations erupted once again in February against Moïse’s refusal to step down after the end of his term and his assumption of increasingly dictatorial powers. Popular anger has only grown as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads through the impoverished country, without the government providing a single vaccination.

To the extent that demonstrations have waned, it is largely due to the government’s unleashing of violent repression, including by gangs linked to the police force, with opposition figures assassinated and inhabitants of Port-au-Prince’s shantytowns massacred.

No doubt reflecting urgent discussions within the US state apparatus, the Washington Post quickly posted an editorial Wednesday warning that Haiti was on the brink “anarchy,” posing “an immediate humanitarian threat to millions of Haitians and an equally urgent diplomatic and security challenge to the United States and major international organizations.” The Post editorial board’s conclusion? “Swift and muscular intervention is needed.”

The Post continues: “To prevent a meltdown that could have dire consequences, the United States and other influential parties—including France, Canada and the Organization of American States—should push for an international peacekeeping force, probably organized by the United Nations, that could provide the security necessary for presidential and parliamentary elections to go forward this year, as planned.”

The Post is apparently suggesting a revival of the “blue helmets” of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which conducted military operations in which hundreds of people were killed in various impoverished neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince between 2004 and 2017 under the command of Brazilian generals. The MINUSTAH deployment also triggered a cholera epidemic, the first in the country’s modern history, which claimed roughly 10,000 lives.

US President Joe Biden issued a statement Wednesday describing the assassination of Moïse as “heinous,” and declaring, “we stand ready to assist as we continue to work for a safe and secure Haiti.”

The last assassination of a Haitian head of state took place in 1915, when Jean Vilbrun Guillaume was captured and butchered after he himself had ordered the mass execution of his opponents. The day after his killing, US Democratic President Woodrow Wilson ordered the Marines to invade Haiti, where they stayed for nearly 20 years, ruthlessly suppressing a popular revolt.

The United Nations Security Council has scheduled a meeting on the situation in Haiti for today.