France and the Fraying of NATO

Gary Leupp

Biden has infuriated France by arranging the agreement to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. This replaces a contract to purchase a fleet of diesel-powered subs from France. Australia will have to pay penalties for breach of contract but the French capitalists will lose around 70 billion dollars. The perceived perfidy of both Canberra and Washington has caused Paris to compare Biden to Trump. The UK is third partner in the agreement so expect post-Brexit Franco-British relations to deteriorate further. This is all good, in my opinion!

It’s also a good thing that Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was poorly orchestrated with the lingering “coalition partners” such as Britain, French and Germany, producing angry criticism. It’s great that the British prime minister proposed to France a “Coalition of the Willing” to continue the fight in Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal—and better that it was dead in the water. (Maybe the French better than the Brits remember the Suez Crisis of 1956, the disastrous joint Anglo-French-Israeli effort to reimpose imperialist control over the canal. Not only did it lack U.S. participation; Eisenhower rationally shut it down after warnings from the Egyptians’ Soviet advisors.) It’s good that these three countries heeded the U.S. command to uphold their NATO promise to stand with the U.S. when attacked; that they lost over 600 troops in a fruitless effort; and that in the end the U.S. didn’t see fit to even involve them in the end plans. It’s good to wake up to the fact that the U.S. imperialists could care less about their input or their lives. but only demand their obedience and sacrifice.

It’s wonderful that Germany, despite obnoxious U.S. opposition, has maintained its involvement in the Nordstream II natural gas pipeline project along with Russia. The last three U.S. administrations have opposed the pipeline, claiming it weakens the NATO alliance and helps Russia (and urging purchase of more expensive U.S. energy sources instead—to enhance mutual security, don’t you see). The Cold War arguments have fallen on deaf ears. The pipeline was completed last month. Good for global free trade and for national sovereignty, and a significant European blow to U.S. hegemony.

It’s great that Trump in Aug. 2019 raised the ridiculous prospect of purchasing Greenland from Denmark, indifferent to the fact that Greenland is a self-governing entity, within the Kingdom of Denmark. (It is 90% Inuit, and led by political parties pressing for greater independence.) It’s marvelous that when the Danish prime minister gently, with good humor, refused his ignorant, insulting and racist proposal, he exploded in rage and cancelled his state visit including state dinner with the queen. He offended not only the Danish state but popular opinion throughout Europe with his boorishness and colonial arrogance. Excellent.

Trump personally, needlessly insulted the prime minister of Canada and the chancellor of Germany with the same childish language he’d used against political opponents. He raised questions in Europeans’ and Canadians’ minds about the value of an alliance with such vileness. That was a major historical contribution.

Good also that, in Libya in 2011, Hillary Clinton working with the French and British leaders secured UN approval for a NATO mission to protect civilians in Libya. And that, when the U.S.-led mission exceeded the UN resolution and waged full-out war to topple the Libyan leader, enraging China and Russia who called out the lie, some NATO nations declined to participate or turned back in disgust. Another U.S. imperialist war based on lies creating disorder and flooding Europe with refugees. It was good only in the fact that it exposed once again the utter moral bankruptcy of the U.S.A. so widely now associated with images of Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo. All in the name of NATO.

***

Over the last two decades, with the Soviet Union and “communist threat” receding memories, the U.S. has systematically expanded this anti-Soviet, anti-communist postwar alliance called NATO to surround Russia. Any unprejudiced person looking at a map can understand Russia’s concern. Russia spends about a fifth of what the U.S. and NATO spend on military expenses. Russia is not a military threat to Europe or North America. So—the Russians have been asking since 1999, when Bill Clinton broke his predecessor’s promise to Gorbachev and resumed NATO expansion by adding Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—why do you keep trying to expend to surround us?

Meanwhile more and more Europeans are doubting the leadership of the United States. That means doubting the purpose and value of NATO. Formed to confront an imaginary Soviet invasion of “western” Europe, it was never deployed in war during the Cold War. Its first war indeed was the Clintons’ war on Serbia in 1999. This conflict, which severed the Serbian historical heartland from Serbia to create the new (dysfunctional) state of Kosovo, has since been repudiated by participants Spain and Greece who note that the UN resolution authorizing a “humanitarian” mission in Serbia explicitly stated that the Serbian state remain undivided. Meantime (after the bogus “Rambouillet agreement” was signed) the French foreign minister complained that the U.S. was acting like a hyper-pouissance (“hyperpower” as opposed to mere superpower).

The future of NATO lies with the U.S., Germany, France and the UK. The last three were long members of the EU, which while a rival trading bloc generally coordinated policies with NATO. NATO has overlapped the EU such that virtually all of the countries admitted to the military alliance since 1989 have first joined NATO, then the EU. And within the EU—which is after all, a trading bloc that competes with North America—the UK long served as a kind of U.S. surrogate urging cooperation with Russian trade boycotts, etc. Now the U.K. has split from the EU, unavailable to, say, pressure Germany to avoid deals with the Russians Washington opposes. Good!

Germany has a number of reasons to want to increase trade with Russia and has now shown the will to stand up to the U.S. Germany and France both challenged George W. Bush’s Iraq war based on lies. We should not forget how Bush (promoted lately as a statesman by the Democrats!) rivaled his successor Trump as a vulgar, lying buffoon. And if Obama seemed a hero in contrast, his magnetism ebbed as Europeans learned that they were all being monitored by the National Security Agency, and that the calls of Angela Merkel and the Pope were bugged. This was the land of freedom and democracy, always boasting about liberating Europe from the Nazis and expecting eternal payoff in the form of bases and political deference.

*****

It has been 76 years since the fall of Berlin (to the Soviets, as you know, not to the U.S.);

72 since the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO);

32 since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the promise by George W. H. Bush to Gorbachev NOT to expand NATO further;

22 since the resumption of NATO expansion;

22 since the U.S.-NATO war on Serbia including the aerial bombing of Belgrade;

20 since NATO went to war at U.S. behest in Afghanistan, resulting in ruin and failure;

13 years since the U.S. recognized Kosovo as an independent country, and NATO announced the near-term admission of Ukraine and Georgia, resulting in the brief Russo-Georgia War and Russian recognition of the states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia;

10 years since the grotesque NATO mission to destroy and sew chaos in Libya, producing more terror throughout the Sahel and tribal and ethnic violence in the crumbling country, and producing more waves of refugees;

7 since the bold, bloody U.S.-backed putsch in Ukraine that placed a pro-NATO party in power, provoking the ongoing rebellion among ethnic Russians in the east and obliging Moscow to re-annex the Crimean Peninsula, inviting unprecedented ongoing U.S. sanctions and U.S. pressure on allies to comply;

5 since a malignant narcissist moron won the U.S. presidency and soon alienated allies by his pronouncements, insults, evident ignorance, a belligerent approach, raising questions in a billion minds about the mental stability and judgment of the voters of this country;

1 year since a career warmonger who has long vowed to expand and strengthen NATO, who became the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine after the 2014 coup, his mission being to clean up corruption to prepare Ukraine for NATO membership (and who is the father of Hunter Biden who famously sat on the board of Ukraine’s leading gas company 2014-2017 making millions for no apparent reason or work done) became president.

1 year since the world saw repeatedly on TV the 9 minute video of an open, public police lynching on the streets of Minneapolis, surely many among the views wondering what right this racist nation has to lecture China or anyone on human rights.

9 months since the U.S. capitol was stormed by U.S. brown shirts brandishing Confederate flags and fascist symbols and calling for the hanging of Trump’s vice president for treason.

It is a long record of terrifying Europe with seemingly unstable leaders (Bush no less than Trump); harassing Europe with demands it minimizes trade with Russia and China and obey U.S. rules on Iran, and demanding participation in its imperialist wars far from the North Atlantic to Central Asia and Northern Africa.

It is also a record of provoking Russia while expanding the anti-Russian juggernaut. It has meant actually using NATO militarily (as in Serbia, Afghanistan, and Libya) to cement the military alliance under U.S. direction, the stationing of 4000 U.S. troops in Poland, and threatening flights in the Baltic. Meanwhile, multiple U.S. agencies work overtime to plot “color revolutions” in the counties bordering Russia: Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine.

NATO is dangerous and evil. It should be terminated. Opinion polls in Europe suggest a rise in NATO skepticism (good in itself) and opposition (better). It was already split seriously once: in 2002-2003 over the Iraq War. Indeed the manifest criminality of the Iraq War, the obvious willingness of the Americans to use disinformation, and the buffoonic personality of the U.S. president probably shocked Europe as much as the beastly Trump.

The amusing thing is that Biden and Blinken, Sullivan and Austin, all seem to think none of this happened. They really seem to think that the world respects the United States as the (natural?) leader of something called the Free World —of nations committed to “democracy.” Blinken tells us and Europeans we’re confronting, “autocracy” in the form of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela all threatening us and our values. They seem think they can return to the 1950s, explain their moves as reflections of “American Exceptionalism,” posture as champions of “human rights,” cloak their interventions as “humanitarian missions,” and arm-twist their client-states into joint action. At present NATO is being pushed by Biden to identify (as it did in its last communique) the PRC as a “security threat” to Europe.

But the reference to China was controversial. And NATO is divided on the matter of China. Some states do not see much of a threat and have every reason to expand ties with China, especially with the advent of the Belt and Road projects. They know that China’s GDP will soon exceed that of the U.S. and that the U.S. is not the economic superpower it was after the war when it established its hegemony over most of Europe. It has lost much of its basic strength but, like the Spanish Empire in the eighteenth century, none of its arrogance and brutality.

Even after all the exposure. Even after all the shame. Biden flashing his trained smile announces “America is back!” expecting the world—especially “our allies”—to delight in the resumption of normalcy. But Biden should recall the stony silence that met Pence’s announcement at the Munich Security Conference in February 2019 when he conveyed Trump’s greetings. Do not these U.S. leaders not realize that in this century Europe’s GDP has come to match the U.S.’s? And that few people believe that the U.S. “saved” Europe from the Nazis, and then staved off the Soviet Communists, and revived Europe with the Marshall Plan, and continues to this day to protect Europe from the Russia that threatens to march west at any moment?

Blinken wants to pick up and move on and lead the world forward. Back to normal! Sound, reliable U.S. leadership is back!

Oh really? the French might ask. Stabbing a NATO ally in the back, sabotaging a signed $66 billion deal with far-off Australia? “Doing,” as the French foreign minister put it, “something Mr. Trump would do”? Not only France but the EU has denounced the U.S.-Australia deal. Some NATO members question how the Atlantic Alliance is served by a business dispute between members that pertains to what the Pentagon calls the “Indo-Pacific” region. And why—when the U.S. is attempting to secure NATO’s participation in a strategy of containing and provoking Beijing—it is not bothering to coordinate with France?

Is Blinken unaware that France is an imperialist country with vast holdings in the Pacific? Does he know about the French naval facilities at Papeete, Tahiti, or the army, navy and air force bases in New Caledonia? The French conducted their nuclear blasts at Mururora, for god’s sake. As an imperialist country, does not France have the same right as the U.S. to gang up on China with Australia, in France’s corner of the Pacific? And if its close ally the U.S. decides to undermine the deal, should not etiquette have dictated that it at least inform its “oldest ally” about its intentions?

The French condemnation of the submarines deal has been unprecedentedly sharp, in part, I imagine, due to the implicit disparagement of France as a great power. If the U.S. is urging its allies to join with it in confronting China, why does it not consult with France about an arms deal designed to do that, especially when it supplants one already openly negotiated by a NATO ally? Isn’t it clear that Biden’s appeals for “alliance unity” mean uniting, behind U.S. leadership around preparations for war on China?

Gradually NATO is fraying. Again, this is a very good thing. I had worried that Biden would quickly work to integrate Ukraine into the alliance, but Merkel seems to have told him no. Europeans don’t want to be dragged into another U.S. war, especially against their great neighbor whom they know much better than Americans and have every reason to befriend. France and Germany, who (recall) opposed the U.S. war-based-on-lies on Iraq in 2003, are finally losing patience with the alliance and wondering what membership means other than joining with the U.S. in its quarrels with Russia and China.

Neo Liberalism And The Decline Of The Roadster In India

T. Vijayendra

Roadster

Roadster is the standard or as in Bengal we call it the ‘Bangla’ cycle. Its design was perfected around 1890 and it has not changed significantly since then. Many people think it is old fashioned and they want to go for ‘fancy’ cycles. However the roadster has a great resilience and remains the choice for millions all over the world. What is more in some parts of the Western world, where its popularity had declined after the Second World War, it is making a comeback.

In much of the world, the roadster is still the standard bicycle used for daily transportation. Mass-produced in Asia, they are exported in huge numbers (mainly from India, China, and Taiwan) to developing nations as far afield as Africa and Latin America. India’s Hero Cycles and Eastman Industries are still two of the world’s leading roadster manufacturers, while China’s Flying Pigeon was the single most popular vehicle in worldwide use. Due to their relative affordability, the strength and durability of steel frames and forks and their ability to be repaired by welding, and the ability of these bicycles to carry heavy payloads, the roadster is generally by far the most common bicycle in use in developing nations, with a particular importance for those in rural areas.

Traditional roadster models became largely obsolete in the English-speaking world and other parts of the Western world after the 1950s with the noticeable exceptions of the Netherlands and to a much lesser extent Belgium along with other parts of North-Western Europe. However, they are now becoming popular once more in many of those countries that they had largely disappeared from, due to the resurgence in the bicycle as local city transport where the roadster is ideally suited due to its upright riding position, ability to carry shopping loads, simplicity and low maintenance.

Neo Liberalism

Neo Liberalism appeared in 1979, with capitalism wanting more freedom for itself and less control by the state. So the Reagan – Thatcher consensus or privatization (what is now referred to as the neo-liberalism) gained currency in the West. In England, Thatcherism represented a systematic and decisive rejection and reversal of the post-war consensus, whereby the major political parties largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalised industry and close regulation of the British economy. In its place, Thatcherism attempted to promote low inflation, a smaller state and free markets through tight control of the money supply, privatisation and constraints on the labour movement. Neo – liberalism came to India in 1991, where it was presented as a package of ‘economic reforms’ for ‘Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation.’ It ended the ‘permit quota raj,’ allowed foreign companies to import, invest and set up their enterprises in India, and ushered in an era of new wealth for the rich and the middle classes at a tremendous cost to ecology.

Indian Bicycle Industry

India is the second largest manufacturer of bicycles in the world. The industry is classified into four segments — standard, premium, kids and exports. Demand for standard/roadster bicycles, which is the largest segment (accounting for half of all bicycles sold in 2020) is driven by government purchases. Government departments procure these bicycles through a tender process and distribute under various welfare schemes. Demand for premium and kids bicycles (nearly 40 per cent) is driven by fitness and leisure needs. Exports and sales of other kinds of bicycles constitute the remaining 10 per cent demand.

Decline of the Roadster

In 1990, 90 percent bicycles produced in India were roadsters. By 2020 it has been reduced to 50 percent. What has happened?

After independence the import of bicycle was banned and India started manufacturing its own bicycles. Several important bicycle companies came up – Sen Raleigh in Asansol, Hercules/BSA in Chennai, Atlas, Hero and Avon in Punjab (In those days Haryana was not formed).

However in 1991 imports again began. Neo liberalism also brought new wealth and an affluent middle class was born. At the same time concern about climate, global warming and health consciousness increased. This gave rise to a new demand for bicycles from this class and the market for Premium/Fancy cycle was born. And in a few years along with the new generation of kids, the market for kids also came into being. Since then the market share of fancy and kid’s bicycles has continuously increased.

The Problems of Fancy Bicycles in India

The fancy bicycle is transitory in nature – both in history and in the life of the owner of the bicycle. In the world it appeared in the West with MTB after the Second World War and the prestige of the roadster declined. Now the roadster is coming back because it is a more comfortable and reliable machine.

As the word suggests the fancy bicycle is neither utilitarian like the standard/roadster nor professional. It is just fancy used for recreational purposes. Most of the owners use it for weekends only. They normally have a fossil fuel based vehicle – a motor cycle/scooter/car for daily use. Today many of them are environmentally conscious and promote bicycle for environment and health reasons. Many of them are members of the cycle clubs, Rotary clubs, Lions clubs etc. Obviously they belong to relatively affluent middle class.

However in most cases this fancy lasts a few years only. A few of them graduate to professional levels. Most give up after a few years. There are many reasons. As they grow, other pressures – job, family, relatives, and friends grow and they increasingly don’t find time during the weekends. The very jobs that gave them high salaries to indulge in buying these bicycles, do not allow them, within a few years, the time to ride these bicycles! Then they are not able to maintain it. In India the infrastructure for maintenance for bicycle with gears is not very good. Upper class/caste Indians have very poor culture of maintenance – they don’t dirty their hands. Soon the cycle gathers dust. Most gated communities in big cities are full of these abandoned fancy bicycles. The second hand market for them is not good either. So they are offered at half the cost within a few years. It is another example of wasteful nature of the capitalist society.

Role of the Bicycle Clubs

The bicycle clubs have played a big role in promoting these fancy bicycles. In most cities in India the owner of these fancy bicycles is also a good cyclist and is often a prominent member of the local cycle club. In some cases a prominent member of these clubs graduated in starting a shop sensing that in the city there is no good shop or maintenance facilities for these bicycles.

Kolkata Cycle Samaj

However among these clubs the Kolkata Cycle Samaj is an exception. The main reason is its history. In Kolkata about a decade ago, under the pressure of car owners, the Kolkata police banned bicycle on more than hundred roads. They also started making cyclist pay a fine of hundred rupees for violating the ban. Naturally there was uproar. The greatest sufferers were the working class members for whom the bicycle was a necessity and their jobs involved in travelling on these roads. Kolkata Cycle Samaj was born with the objective of removing this ban. While they have not fully succeeded in it they have created a great awareness about the bicycle and urban transport issues all over the country and even abroad. Its face book page has 5800 members!

What can the Bicycle Clubs do?

1. In my opinion bicycle clubs should promote bicycle among common people and help them to acquire one. Most poor people aspire to own a bicycle. Our general aim should be every Indian family should own at least one ladies roadster bicycle. I say ladies because a ladies bicycle can be used by both men and women in the family. Also it has been shown that for normal commuting a ladies bicycle gives a more comfortable ride.
2. Every bicycle club should run a bicycle gift programme for the need person in their locality/town/city. On an average for every fancy bicycle you can purchase two roadsters. So if someone buying a new bicycle and has a budget of more than ten thousand it will be a good idea to purchase tow roadster – one for herself and one to gift.
3. Every bicycle club should have a good relation with a good bicycle maintenance mechanic. They should support him; help him to acquire a good location, a good shop/kiosk. In a small town it can even be a cycle assembly shop or used for restoring old cycles.

The Future

The world is going through a global emergency and we have a window of just about a decade to act to survive! If we do survive than much of the present wasteful society will have to go and with that the fancy bicycles will also go along with all the fossil fuel based transport. Cities will shrink in size. Urban transport will mainly depend on roadster and roadster based cycle rickshaws, cargo cycles and so on.

We live on hope. To keep the hope alive, in the bicycle sector let us promote the roadsters and get rid of our fossil fuel based vehicles!

The Bankruptcy of ‘Great Power Competition’

Daniel Larison

A militarized rivalry between the US and China will be costly and dangerous for all concerned, but the people most likely to suffer from it will be found in the countries that the two major powers choose to turn into their battlefields. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union split Europe down the middle, but it was in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that massive bloodletting took place during the so-called “Long Peace.” Vincent Bevins, author of The Jakarta Method, recently observed, “If a new cold war is anything like the last one, it will not principally be American or Chinese citizens who suffer. During the confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union, huge numbers of people were reduced to collateral damage, far away from famous First World flashpoints such as Berlin, their deaths seen as acceptable, if not celebrated.” As Paul Thomas Chamberlin documented in his history, The Cold War’s Killing Fields, tens of millions perished in the conflicts caused or exacerbated by four decades of superpower rivalry, including the genocides in Bangladesh and Cambodia and the mass murder in Indonesia. If the US and China go down the same road of confrontation, the casualties could well be even higher in the proxy and direct wars of the future. If we want to prevent such horrors from happening again, Americans must demand that our government stop pursuing the militarized “great power competition” that it has been embracing for the last several years.

Major powers always have divergent interests to some degree, but how they choose to manage those disagreements determines whether they can coexist as peaceful competitors or whether they condemn themselves to decades of fruitless militarism and strife. What these states decide to do has ramifications not only for their own people, but for many other nations that are caught in between them. Once major powers have decided on a militaristic, confrontational course, it becomes extremely easy for their political leaders to justify any number of atrocities against innocent people in neutral or contested countries in the name of preventing the rival from “advancing” in some peripheral theater. If the Cold War experience is any guide, the countries that end up in the sights of one or both rivals are devastated and take decades and sometimes generations to recover from what was done to them.

It is not surprising that almost all states in Southeast Asia want nothing to do with the militarized anti-China coalition that the U.S. is trying to assemble. Having endured some of the worst losses during the Cold War, the nations of Southeast Asia do not want to be forced to choose sides or to become pawns in someone else’s struggle yet again. The reaction of the Malaysian and Indonesian governments to the recently announced AUKUS partnership is typical of this aversion to heightened US-Chinese tensions. While China hawks in Washington cheered the new partnership, Malaysia expressed fears that it would provoke more aggressive behavior in the region and Indonesia worried about an intensifying arms race. As the US makes military efforts central to its approach to China and the surrounding region, it makes conflict more likely to happen and it makes it more likely that it will have very few other states willing to cooperate with the US otherwise.

One danger in any great power rivalry is that one or both rivals will conclude that they should interfere in the affairs of other states to gain an advantage against the adversary. If the US finds few states that want to join its anti-China coalition, there are always plenty of hard-liners eager to advocate for covert or overt regime change to install more pliable rulers. Great power rivalry worsens existing imperialistic practices and creates the excuse for new ones, because imperialists will claim that virtually anything is justified in the name of security.

Consider how much bloodshed and misery the US has helped to cause in the Middle East in the name of “countering” Iran: Yemen bombed and driven into famine, Syria devastated by almost a decade of war, and tens of millions of people in Iran collectively punished with sanctions. Now imagine what the result would be across Asia and farther afield from a full-blown militarized rivalry with one of the most powerful countries in the world. And that’s assuming that the US and China don’t directly come to blows and end up launching nuclear weapons at each other. It is not too late to back away from such a ruinous rivalry. Americans need to understand that it would not only be a huge gamble for our country, but it would also be a disaster for many other parts of the world as well.

“Far from restraining conflict, the superpower confrontation actually fueled greater violence around the world,” Chamberlin wrote in the conclusion of The Cold War’s Killing Fields, and that is what rivalry with China threatens to do again. We do not have to turn more countries into new killing fields, but if the US continues down its current path that is what will very likely happen in the decades to come.

Strike by German health care workers continues in Berlin

Markus Salzmann

Health care workers at the state-owned Charité and Vivantes hospitals have been on strike for more than three weeks in the German capital of Berlin. While corporate management and the Social Democrat (SPD)/Left Party/Green Berlin state government, known as the Senate, refuse to make concessions, the Verdi trade union is desperately trying to shut down the strike and codify the constant overworking of staff in collective agreements.

With over 25 days of strike action, the labour dispute at the two hospital groups is one of the longest strikes in the history of the German health care system. Since all campuses of the Charité and eight clinics of the Vivantes group are still affected, thousands of operations and treatments have been postponed or cancelled since the beginning of the strike. Around 1,200 beds are currently out of service and around 2,000 patients are waiting for an operation or appointment for treatment.

Health care workers in Berlin

Although the strike is extremely stressful for patients and for those employees who are unable to participate because of the need to provide necessary patient care, support for the strikers remains unbroken. The catastrophic working conditions in the clinics, which endanger the health of patients every day, are plain for all to see.

The Berlin strikers are representative of the many hundreds of thousands of health care workers across Germany who are confronted with the same working conditions.

This was recently made very clear in a damning letter from the nursing staff at the Hamburg University Hospital (UKE). In it, two-thirds of the approximately 300 intensive care staff at the UKE described their working conditions and demanded that the legally applicable regulations are enforced at a minimum. Even the legally applicable minimum staffing levels, which are totally inadequate to guarantee quality patient care, are consistently not adhered to.

Instead of the required minimum ratio of one nurse for every intensive care patient, the ratio is sometimes one to four. As a result, important medications are not administered in a timely manner and treatments such as caring for wounds cannot be carried out correctly.

“Unfortunately, patients often have to lie in their own faeces for a considerable amount of time,” the nurses wrote with regard to the hygiene situation. This suggests that under these conditions, measures of basic hygiene, which are all the more important during the pandemic, often cannot be adequately observed.

“In order to ensure that the patient is cared for, many colleagues regularly forego their breaks outside of the ward,” write the nurses. Many suffer from “the feeling that they are doing more than is actually humanly possible.” Many colleagues cry during or after work and no longer have the strength for leisure activities after work.

These descriptions do not differ from the conditions in Berlin hospitals. In numerous interviews, nurses report on completely overworked employees and poorly cared for patients due to major staff shortages.

While the nursing staff at Charité and Vivantes are fighting for better working conditions and relief from unbearable workloads, Vivantes management interrupted the negotiations for several days until Monday this week.

The last offer from management was an outright provocation. The offer not only contained no improvements for nursing staff, but even called for further concessions in some areas. For example, a staff-to-patient ratio on a normal ward of 10 patients to every nurse during the day and 20 patients to one nurse at night. It is impossible to provide quality care under these conditions.

Instead of intensifying and expanding the strike in response to management’s provocations, Verdi is determined to reach an agreement as quickly as possible. At the Charité, the negotiations between Verdi and the management are well advanced and Verdi believes an agreement is possible in the next few days. While concrete terms for minimum staffing levels on wards are currently still being negotiated, the parties have agreed on what they refer to as burden compensation. The system awards a point to a staff member who works five shifts while understaffed. Each point can be converted into eight hours of free time. However, days off accruing from this scheme will be capped at five per year.

Such an arrangement would neither end the overworking of nurses nor improve patient care. If a nurse works two shifts lasting eight hours while understaffed, they are not even entitled to two hours of free time. With the Verdi proposal, the company would still make a hefty profit with every overworked nurse and health care worker who breaks down crying at the end of the shift.

In view of the real situation of constant overwork, the capping of time off at five days means that it would have little impact. Most nurses already work massive amounts of overtime that is almost impossible to reduce due to the lack of staff. Verdi’s proposal aims merely to legally codify this permanent state of overwork in a collective agreement.

Nursing staff cannot expect much from the minimum staffing rules under negotiation. As early as 2016, after the conclusion of the “historic collective bargaining agreement” with similar rules, Verdi announced with great fanfare that working conditions would improve massively. In fact, nothing has changed. On the contrary, the situation is so catastrophic today that nurses are prepared to strike for over three weeks.

At Vivantes, the management recently offered one day of leisure time compensation after 12 hours of understaffed work. Trainees would only receive the free day after working 48 shifts. Nonetheless, union representatives expressly stated that here, too, they were optimistic that an agreement could be found soon.

Verdi’s despicable role is also evident in the negotiations for the workers employed by Vivantes’ subsidiaries. The staff in the cleaning, catering, laboratory and security services departments have also been on strike for many weeks. These workers receive up to €900 less for the same work as employees in the parent company. According to the union, many do not even receive the minimum wage of €12.50.

Vivantes, whose supervisory board chairman is the Berlin Senator for Finance Matthias Kollatz (SPD), has refused to give any ground. Verdi and the employers have agreed to call on the former Brandenburg Minister-President Matthias Platzeck (SPD) to serve as a mediator. The worn-out Social Democrat was not chosen at random. Under Platzeck’s leadership, the strike by workers at Charité subsidiary CFM, which had been rumbling on for years, was only settled at the beginning of this year.

Verdi and Charité management sought to appease the approximately 2,500 employees with the prospect of an adjustment of wages to the TVÖD (public sector collective agreement) after they had previously earned several hundred euros less for years. Even today, wages are still well below the TVÖD. Verdi deliberately excluded the CFM from the current strike at the Charité. Platzeck is now supposed to enforce a similar fraud at Vivantes.

This shows how closely Verdi, management and the political establishment work together against the workers. This week, incoming mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) met again in the Zionskirche with employees of the state-owned hospitals. Workers can only expect a further deterioration in their conditions under a new state government formed in the House of Representatives.

Giffey stated that “in the upcoming exploratory talks with all parties, hospital financing will be an important topic.” The main focus will be on how savings can be made at the state-owned hospitals. In the past few years, the municipal hospitals have received only a small amount of funds for investments, so that they had to finance them with their own funds that could actually have been diverted into patient care. The SPD has headed the Berlin government since 2001 and is therefore responsible for the current miserable conditions, together with the Left Party and the Greens.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the health care workers at Charité and Vivantes have to organize themselves in rank-and-file committees independently of Verdi in order to successfully lead the fight against the SPD/Left Party/Green Senate. The strike must be extended across the country and internationally. The whole working class must take action to come to the defence of health care workers.

The strike vote on an unlimited strike at the Brandenburger Asklepios hospitals in Brandenburg/Havel, Lübben and Teupitz concluded on October 5. Workers at these facilities recently organised a four-day warning strike. They are fighting for an increase in salaries, some of which are more than €10,000 per year below those of other Asklepios hospitals.

China contains infections but virus outbreaks continue from global pandemic

Jerry Zhang

In recent months, multiple outbreaks of the epidemic have occurred in various southern provinces of China, caused by the worldwide spread of the Delta variant.

According to a report from the National Health Commission of China, on October 3 there were 27 new confirmed cases in China, including 26 imported cases and one local case in Harbin. At the same time, there were 15 new asymptomatic infections, of which 13 were imported from abroad and two were local residents in Yili, Xinjiang.

A subway station during morning rush hour in Beijing, August 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Although the scale of the repeated outbreaks is small, the continuous eruption of cases has highighted the danger of the Delta mutation. At present, there are still three high-risk areas and 28 medium-risk areas in China, located in Heilongjiang and Fujian provinces.

At the end of July, an epidemic erupted, centred on Nanjing. The Delta variant entered from Moscow by Air China flight CA910, which quickly infected the crew members. The epidemic was discovered on July 20. At the outbreak’s peak, there were cases in more than 10 provinces, and over 140 people were infected each day, before finally being suppressed.

Then, on September 10, an outbreak was discovered in Fujian in an elementary school at Putian, after it had already spread for more than 10 days. The source was believed to be a parent of a student who returned from Singapore.

By September 14, the outbreak had affected eight schools, with 52 students and children infected—the youngest being only three years old. Subsequently, infections spread to factories.

At the same time, Delta spread to Xiamen, the capital of Fujian province, on September 12. According to reports, the Xiamen infections also occurred in factories and workshops that lacked protection. At the peak of the outbreak, more than 200 confirmed cases occurred within six days. The Fujian event has caused more than 400 people to be infected and has not yet fully subsided.

Then a worrying mass transmission event broke out in Heilongjiang. The epicentre was Bayan County under the jurisdiction of Harbin City. The epidemic first appeared in an entertainment venue, but its earliest source remains unclear. On September 25, the epidemic began to appear in other areas of Heilongjiang province, spreading at multiple points. According to reports, there are more than 70 infected people in Heilongjiang province.

The increasing frequency of international and domestic flights has made the spread of the virus more common and rapid. At noon on October 1, a close contact of a confirmed case was found on a flight from Harbin to Guangdong. As a result, 184 people on the flight were quarantined. On October 3, the third day of the National Day holiday, two cases of asymptomatic infections occurred in Yili, Xinjiang. Local tourists in Yili were asked not to leave Yili temporarily.

These developments underscore the dangerous transmission capacity and speed of the Delta variant. Because of the global pandemic, China remains exposed to the risk of a severe epidemic. According to incomplete statistics from the official Health Times newspaper, foreign epidemics triggered more than ten outbreaks in China in 2021 alone.

The main victims of the epidemic have been working-class people, with most of the few large-scale mass transmissions occurring in factories, airports and docks where protection measures were not in place.

Zhang Boli, an academician of the Faculty of Medicine and Hygiene of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has warned that the risks will rise this fall and winter. While outbreaks would be “strictly prevented and controlled ... the risk of multiple outbreaks and local outbreaks cannot be completely avoided. We need to be more vigilant.”

Although the outbreaks in China are worrying, the government has not given up on strict prevention policies. The government’s response demonstrates the potential for scientific policies to eradicate the virus, but only if it is implemented at a global, not just a national level.

The government’s measures include large-scale testing of affected areas, intensive contact-tracing, timely lockdowns and continuous mobilisations for vaccination. This week, the health authorities have reported double vaccinating almost 75 percent of the population. China’s public health system has become increasingly proficient in applying these methods, enabling the effective control and calming down of dangerous infection events.

Although the epidemic in Fujian province is continuing, according to the report at a Xiamen epidemic prevention and control press conference on September 27, Xiamen has basically blocked the path of community transmission.

Before last week’s Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, Xiamen’s lockdown policy and travel ban prevented the further spread of the virus and effectively controlled the local outbreak. Heilongjiang province also implemented effective isolation and lockdown measures before the National Day holiday.

This response is in contrast to those of the imperialist countries and most of the rest of the world, where governments have rejected lockdown measures and other scientific responses, sacrificing working class health and lives for the sake of corporate profit.

However, China’s ruling capitalist class, with its own nationalist outlook and calculations, is incapable of solving the broader problems arising globally from the pandemic. It can only continuously strengthen its domestic mobilisation, leaving the working class still facing the grave risks of a serious epidemic.

Over 173,000 children infected and 22 killed by COVID-19 in the US last week

Evan Blake

On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released its weekly report on COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths among children across the US. The results are once again horrific, with 173,469 children testing positive for COVID-19 and 22 dying from the virus last week. In total, some 5.9 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 and 520 have died in the US since the start of the pandemic.

Since schools began reopening throughout the US in late July, more than 1,772,578 children have officially tested positive and 171 have died from COVID-19, as the highly transmissible Delta variant has spread rapidly in poorly-ventilated, overcrowded classrooms across the country.

Students and parents walk to class at Tussahaw Elementary school on Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

After more than 200,000 children officially tested positive over the previous five weeks, this figure decreased slightly last week. However, this is known to be a vast undercount of infections due to inadequate testing and various efforts by state governments to cover up cases.

Underscoring the ongoing severity of the crisis, the number of child deaths last week increased from the weekly figure throughout the previous month and nearly set a record for the entire pandemic.

Across the US and internationally, opposition is building among parents, educators and students to the homicidal school reopening policies that have infected millions of children and killed thousands worldwide. This was sharply expressed in the October 1 global school strike, with the central hashtag #SchoolStrike2021 trending for hours that day and used over 26,000 times in the week leading up to and including the strike.

Contrary to the lies advanced by the Democratic Party and the teachers unions that children are only at risk of infection and death from COVID-19 in Republican-led states that have no mitigation measures whatsoever, pediatric infections, hospitalizations and deaths have approached or exceeded all-time highs throughout the US in recent weeks. Child deaths took place last week in Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

The South remains the geographic region with the most COVID-19 infections and deaths among children and the broader population due to lower vaccination rates and the complete lifting of all mitigation measures, with the brutal “herd immunity” strategy in full effect.

Over the past week, five children died from COVID-19 in Texas, the most of any state in the country. Sha’Niyah McGee, a 16-year-old junior at Berkner High School in Richardson, died last week from COVID-19. Known as “Nienie,” she was a peer mediator at the campus. Another student in the same district is currently in an intensive care unit, and on Monday it was announced that a fully-vaccinated teacher in the district, 71-year-old Eroletta Piasczyk, also succumbed to the virus.

Texas accounts for roughly one-tenth of all deaths among educators in the US, with an unofficial tracker logging 54 since late July. In total, at least 405 educators have died from COVID-19 across the US since July 1, 2021, and more than 1,430 since August 2020.

Three children died from COVID-19 in Florida last week, the second highest figure for any state. None of the children’s names have been made public. In Mississippi and Virginia, four children died from COVID-19 last week. These included 10-year-old Teresa Sperry of eastern Virginia and 16-year-old Landon Woodson of North Mississippi.

In Louisiana, the state Department of Health reported Monday that a child between the ages of 12-17 died of COVID-19, becoming the ninth pediatric death in the state during the current surge of the Delta variant. The latest pediatric death took place only three days after another child under 4 years old died from COVID-19 in the state.

In total, 18 children have died from COVID-19 in Louisiana, with half taking place this school year alone. Across the state, 19,683 K-12 students and 2,339 staff have officially been infected with COVID-19, while some of the larger school systems have reported thousands of cases each week.

As with many other Democrat-led states across the US, Louisiana is increasingly lifting all mitigation measures. State Superintendent Cade Brumley recently announced a change in quarantine policies, allowing local school districts to decide whether or not to quarantine close contacts or to allow parents the “choice” to quarantine their children. Only a handful of districts have said they will not adopt the new policy.

In Georgia, 44-year-old teacher Heidi Hammond died from COVID-19 on September 24, less than one month after her husband, 51-year-old middle school football coach Sean Hammond, succumbed to the virus on August 30. The two left behind an orphaned 12-year-old son, Marshall.

Throughout the rest of the US outside the South, the pandemic continues to rip through schools wherever they have reopened, including in Democrat-led states where limited mitigation measures have only minimally slowed the spread of the virus.

In California, which is run by the Democratic Party and has a statewide mask mandate in all K-12 schools, a child under age 17 died from COVID-19 last week in Tulare County, the second pediatric death in the county since the start of the pandemic. Another child under 5 years old died in Orange County in early September, also the second COVID-19 death of a minor in that county.

In New York, also run wholly by the Democrats, there have been numerous outbreaks in K-12 schools across the state. In New York City, the largest school district in the US with roughly 1.1 million students, 2,672 students and 1,026 staff have officially been infected with COVID-19 since the start of this school year, despite the fact that 95 percent of all staff are fully vaccinated. Last school year, more than 25,000 students and staff tested positive for COVID-19 in the district.

In Michigan, the number of COVID-19 infections among students and staff tied to outbreaks in K-12 schools is already eight times the same figure last year, despite the fact that the state recently narrowed its definition of what constitutes an outbreak. The latest data released by the state found that as of September 30, there are 2,491 confirmed COVID-19 cases tied to new and ongoing outbreaks in K-12 schools, compared to 296 such cases at the same time last year.

The crisis in Michigan schools, as with schools across the US, is also being covered up. Renaissance High School in Detroit officially had only one infection last week. However, a student from the school told the World Socialist Web Site they estimate that roughly 400 out of 2,000 students are presently out with COVID-19 or in quarantine, saying, “They're keeping us in the dark about the cases, but we see who is out in our classes. They try to hide it from us, but we see it. I think the school will be shutting down soon.”

Significantly, Michigan is one of eight states that does not report pediatric deaths from COVID-19. However, multiple children in the state have died from the virus, including 14-year-old Honestie Hodges, and many have suffered traumatic damages from multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), believed to be triggered by COVID-19 infection.

The deepening catastrophe of school reopenings across the US, which has fueled the surge in child infections, hospitalizations and deaths, must be brought to an end. Children’s lives and long-term health must not be sacrificed to meet the needs of Wall Street and the major corporations, which have pushed for schools to reopen in order to send parents back to work producing profits.

The closure of schools and nonessential workplaces, while providing high-quality remote learning and social supports to all workers affected, is central to stopping the spread of COVID-19. This must be combined with the full deployment of all public health measures, including mass testing, contact tracing, masking, the safe isolation of infected patients and a globally-coordinated vaccination program, in order to eliminate COVID-19 in ever-broader geographic regions and ultimately eradicate the virus worldwide.

New Zealand government abandons elimination policy for COVID-19

Tom Peters

Since New Zealand first went into a nationwide lockdown in March 2020, it has been one of a very small handful of countries with a stated policy of eliminating COVID-19 from the community.

On Monday, the Labour Party Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that this strategy is now being abandoned—in the middle of an outbreak in the largest city, Auckland. She told a press conference that the highly-infectious Delta variant was a “game changer” and the government would be “transitioning from our current strategy into a new way of doing things.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addresses a post-Cabinet press conference at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand on October 4, 2021. (Mark Mitchell/Pool Photo via AP)

Ardern justified the about-face by saying that “long periods of heavy restrictions has not got us to zero cases... Elimination was important because we didn’t have vaccines; now we do, so we can begin to change the way we do things.” New Zealand would shift towards using “everyday public health measures” and relying on vaccination.

The announcement was gleefully reported in the media internationally, which insists that there is no alternative to allowing the virus to spread and infect the population, killing large numbers of people. The ruling elites in every country view shutdowns and school closures as an intolerable burden on profits. Their perspective was summed up by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s infamous statement: “No more f...ing lockdowns—let the bodies pile high in their thousands.”

New Zealand and China, and to some extent Australia, have demonstrated that it is possible to stamp out the virus and protect lives using strict lockdowns and other public health measures. Since the start of the pandemic, just 28 people have died from COVID-19 in New Zealand. The country’s record has been cited by workers internationally, including teachers and parents, who are seeking to fight back against the homicidal reopening of schools and workplaces which has led to countless preventable deaths.

Contrary to Ardern’s claims, even the Delta variant can be eliminated. New Zealand was on track to eliminate its current outbreak with a strict “level 4” nationwide lockdown imposed on August 18. The total number of active cases in the community peaked at 725 on September 2, then dropped to a low point of just 202 on September 28, as most people had recovered from the infection.

In response to pressure from big business, however, the government lifted the lockdown outside Auckland on September 8, and on September 22 lowered restrictions in the city to “level 3.” Against the advice of public health experts, it allowed more than 200,000 people to return to workplaces. Auckland schools and early childhood centres reopened for small groups. Following these changes, the size of the outbreak has again expanded, reaching a total of 350 active cases today.

The government is responding, not by reimposing restrictions, but by further easing the lockdown. Ardern announced that as of this week, people in Auckland can resume outdoor recreational activities, friends can meet outside in small groups, and more children can return to early childcare centres. In coming weeks, more retail outlets will open, and on October 18 the city’s schools are scheduled to reopen.

Echoing politicians in the US and other countries, Ardern said the reopening “roadmap” was safe because more people are now vaccinated. She told the media yesterday “the vaccine is a ticket to freedom, it is the most effective tool we have to lower restrictions.”

In fact, vaccination alone cannot stop significant numbers of deaths from COVID-19. Even countries where more than 80 percent of the population is vaccinated, such as Singapore and Israel, are experiencing a surge in cases and deaths.

In New Zealand, the risk is much greater because only 39 percent of the total population has been fully vaccinated (48 percent of the eligible population aged over 12). This is lower than in the UK, where up to 1,000 COVID-19 deaths are being reported each week and hospitals are in a state of crisis.

Modelling by Professor Shaun Hendy, one of the Ardern government’s key advisors, shows that even with 80 percent of eligible people fully vaccinated, New Zealand could experience 7,000 deaths from the virus, and more than 58,000 hospitalisations over the course of one year.

The hospital system is grossly understaffed and underfunded, and will be quickly swamped in a significant outbreak. Tania Mitchell, chairperson of the College of Critical Care Nurses, told Newshub on Monday: “I’m afraid for the public. I’m afraid for the hospitals, the health service. I’m afraid for my colleagues, our team… that this will be overwhelming for us.” New Zealand has 4.6 intensive care beds for every 100,000 people, fewer than the UK (6.4) and Australia (8.9).

Microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles pointed out that any outbreak will hit the poor and working class hardest, telling TVNZ: “What’s so distressing about the approach that we’re taking is the burden’s not going to be felt equally.” She pointed out that those calling for lifting restrictions were “the wealthy and the privileged, and that’s because they have access to private healthcare and they’re not going to be as affected.” Wiles was particularly concerned about reopening schools, which have been a major source of infections and deaths internationally.

These comments are especially significant because Wiles had previously broadly supported the government’s pandemic policies. In March, she was awarded New Zealander of the Year by Ardern.

The government’s decision has undoubtedly come as a shock to many workers, who overwhelmingly support lockdowns. A New Zealand Herald poll of 1,000 people in August found that only 13 percent believed the country should “learn to live” with the coronavirus, while 85 percent supported an elimination policy.

An anti-lockdown protest over the weekend by the far-right Destiny Church, which received a huge amount of coverage in the media after police allowed it to go ahead, prompted significant anger among ordinary people. An online petition for the church leader Brian Tamaki to be prosecuted quickly gained almost 150,000 signatures. Yesterday, police laid charges against Tamaki for breaking the lockdown.

There is clearly concern within the political establishment about a resurgence of opposition in the working class. A statement from the Green Party, which is part of the Labour-led coalition government, opposed Ardern’s announcement, saying: “Elimination has protected thousands of lives in Aotearoa [NZ]. We have to stay the course to keep everyone safe.”

The Greens and the Maori Party highlighted the vulnerability of Maori and Pacific Island people, who have lower vaccination rates and more health problems that increase the danger of severe illness if they get COVID-19. By encouraging the illusion that Labour can be pressured to change course, these parties are trying to ensure that opposition does not get out of hand.

Meanwhile, the “left” Daily Blog editor Martyn Bradbury, despite denouncing the opposition National Party as “death cult capitalists” for seeking a rapid end to restrictions, has leapt to the defence of Ardern’s reopening policy. Basically accepting that it is now impossible to eliminate the virus, he falsely declared: “Delta will become endemic and nothing short of perpetual lockdown will end that. You can’t tell double vaccinated people they must curtail their freedom forever.”

Working people must reject the abandonment of the elimination strategy, which threatens to unleash mass deaths and severe illnesses. This requires a conscious political break from Labour, the unions, and their apologists.

State governors mobilize National Guard amidst growing health care crisis in the US

Brian Gene

New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hotchu said last week she is prepared to deploy the National Guard to hospitals facing critical staffing shortages. On top of existing labor shortfalls, an estimated 8 percent of hospital staff are facing dismissal for refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine by the state deadline.

The deployment comes as over 2,000 nurses and other health care workers in Buffalo, New York, are on strike. In addition to protests and strike action by health care workers across the country to demand safe staffing ratios, many are leaving the profession due to stress and overwork caused by the massive surge in the pandemic. National Guard members are paid by the state and cannot refuse deployment without risking arrest, fines or even prison.

In addition to being deployed to shore up vacant medical staff positions, the National Guard has been activated to drive school buses and function as nursing home caretakers, construction workers, school cafeteria workers and meat processors. The widespread mobilization of the National Guard to fill positions underscores the state policy of maintaining production and reopening schools despite the catastrophic spread of the pandemic throughout the country.

Deployments have become more common in the health care industry. In the past month alone, thousands of National Guard have been called up to fill in vacant staffing at hospitals in Vermont, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Oregon, California and Georgia. They are also fulfilling roles in logistics, triage, administration and in some cases working as medics performing vaccinations. As Megan Wade-Taxter of the Indiana Health Department put it, the National Guard are being utilized to “support hospitals that have exhausted all other staffing options.”

Tristar Regional, the recipient of National Guard deployment in Kentucky, is a subsidiary of the largest health care organization in the United States. The company, which reported $1.45 billion in second quarter profits in 2021, is relying on state-funded labor to maintain operations. In fact, the three largest hospital companies in the United States, recipients of over $1.1 billion in federal stimulus as well as National Guard deployments, have posted over $2 billion in profits last quarter alone.

Guard deployments are not only a financial windfall for for-profit medical but also help spin a narrative that a shortage of doctors and nurses is due to vaccine hesitancy and not exhaustion and poor working conditions.A study by the American Nursing Association and a coalition of universities independently found that while peripheral health care workers may show higher rates of vaccine hesitancy that correlate to a number of factors, vaccination rates of doctors and nurses trend well above 90 percent.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta told CNN a week ago, “If you dig into the data in New York, 95 percent of nurses [are] vaccinated and 98 to 99 percent of doctors are vaccinated, but there are a lot of people who make up health care workers.”

The Republican Party is seeking to blame short staffing on vaccine mandates, while the Democrats are blaming it on the very small percent of nurses who remain unvaccinated. In fact, the crisis in health care is the product of the decades-long attack on the health care infrastructure, the subordination of the entire industry to private profit and the catastrophic impact of the reopening of schools and the economy, supported by both big business parties.

Many nurses have expressed concerns about the capability of field medics working in unfamiliar hospital situations. One pediatric nurse observed in a Reddit post that the deployments meant “the state is going to subsidize hospitals at the expense of nurses.” Another asked, “Isn’t this kind of a six of one, half dozen of the other solution? Most National Guard people I know who have medical Military Occupational Specialty also work in health care as their full-time jobs. Activating them helps out whoever they get sent to help, but it short-hands wherever it is that they usually work.”

These Guard personnel may also not have sufficient expertise to support civilian hospitals. One Guard member stated in a Reddit discussion on the deployments, “I was a medic with EMT-B certification. In a military hospital or clinic, I could do IVs, catheters, suture removals or placements, etc. But in a civilian hospital, our training would not be good enough.”

Staffing shortages have led to the relaxation of standards all over the country. In New York, executive orders have loosened medical practice requirements to allow the employment of retired professionals and former medics whose certifications have lapsed. One Florida nurse shared, “They have podiatry residents now working in the ER here.”

Short staffing will only continue to increase as COVID-19 hospitalization rates peak and medical professionals continue to quit. Surveys of doctors and nurses leaving their jobs cite overwork, disorganization, lack of agency in the workplace and, most tellingly, the trauma of witnessing so much death as their main reasons for leaving the profession, not vaccine mandates.

California and Maine also enacted vaccination mandates for health care workers on September 30 and October 1. The vaccination of health care workers is medically necessary to protect staff and patients from COVID-19, and mandates are proven to work to raise vaccination levels significantly where in place. In the week leading up to the mandate in New York, vaccination rates jumped from between 82-84 percent of all 650,000 hospital and nursing home workers to a total 92 percent by the deadline.

Mass vaccination must be accompanied by a scientifically driven comprehensive response to the pandemic, utilizing all public health measures to bring cases down to zero. What is needed is a clear, science-based plan for the eradication of COVID-19 combined with expansion of medical resources to treat those affected by illness.

Leading global scientists and epidemiologists insist that eradication is possible even now. Through vaccination, masking, robust contact tracing and social distancing measures, such as school closures and restrictions on public gatherings, experts predict that COVID-19 could be eradicated in as little as 60 days.

Instead of pursuing an end to the pandemic, the ruling classes have implemented the “herd immunity” policy which has morphed into insistence that workers must “learn to live with the virus.” They have called for the lifting of essentially all COVID-19 mitigations, relying solely on the vaccines. Meanwhile they are attempting to supplement the skeleton staffing at for-profit hospitals with military labor.