Six hundred children have been killed by COVID-19 in the US

Renae Cassimeda

The latest data from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released Monday shows yet another week of mass infection among children in the US. During the week ending October 28, 100,630 new cases were officially reported, marking the 12th straight week that official cases among children have surpassed 100,000.

Preschoolers eat lunch at a day care center, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021, in Mountlake Terrace, Wash. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Sixteen additional child deaths were also reported by the AAP, bringing the cumulative death toll to a grim 600 child deaths since the AAP reports began in May 2020.

Given the deliberate cover-up of reporting of child infections, hospitalizations and deaths in many states across the US, in addition to a lack of systematic testing of symptomatic and asymptomatic children and contact tracing, the numbers are a clear underestimate of the real impacts of COVID-19 on children. The ongoing surge in mass infections coincides directly with the reopening of schools under conditions where community transmission has remained high throughout the US and mitigation policies have been severely limited or entirely scrapped. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that 74 percent of counties in the US still have high levels of community transmission with over 100 new cases per 100,000 persons in the past seven days.

Since schools began reopening for the fall semester three months ago, one third of total reported cases, or 2.2 million, and nearly one third of deaths among children, or 242, have occurred.

Federal and state governments are knowingly allowing for mass infection and deaths among children in order for parents to remain at work to maintain capitalist production. They are doing so on the basis of lies that children are less likely to catch or transmit COVID-19, which were first advanced by the Trump administration and then by Biden. In February 2021, when the Biden administration was pushing its campaign to fully reopen schools across the US, the president told a concerned second-grade child on national television, “Kids don't get… COVID very often. It’s unusual for that to happen,” adding, “You’re not likely to be able to be exposed to something and spread it to mommy or daddy.”

This was nothing but a bald-faced lie. Nine months later, millions of children have been infected, potentially hundreds of thousands are currently experiencing Long COVID, and hundreds have died in the US.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), among children ages 5-14, COVID-19 was the sixth leading cause of death in August and September. For young people ages 15-24, the virus is now the fourth leading cause of death.

At least 140,000 children in the US and over 5 million children internationally have lost a caregiver since the pandemic began. There is no doubt that children not only are significantly affected by the pandemic now but will also experience significant impacts well into the future. Such a catastrophe has been entirely preventable, yet continues in the US and internationally due to the “herd immunity” policies driven by the prioritization of profits over human lives.

With the approval of the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5-11 in the US finalized on Tuesday, there is a growing push by government leaders to lift all remaining mitigation measures in schools where they still exist. While vaccinating children is a necessary component to combat COVID-19, vaccines alone are not enough to curb mass infection and deaths.

Emily Oster, an academic who advocated for the reopening of schools before the vaccines were even approved in fall 2020, recently promoted an opinion piece published in the New York Times by Jessica Grose, which calls for “an off-ramp for in-school masking.” Oster tweeted the article with the comment, “Masking off-ramps are necessary. I will admit I have been reluctant to talk about this, in part due to fear of being yelled at. This wasn’t brave. I will try to be braver.”

Oster, an academic with no expertise in epidemiology or virology, co-authored a study last year which significantly downplayed the impacts of COVID-19 on children and was utilized by the CDC and both the Trump and Biden administrations to push forward the reopening of schools. Her call for policies to lift mask mandates in schools, which is being pushed by other media outlets and corrupt scientists, is part of a broader promotion of “herd immunity” policies to spread the virus throughout society and cause it to become endemic.

Despite continued efforts to downplay the dangers of school reopenings, data recently published in the Journal for Infectious Diseases provides yet more evidence to confirm prior studies which show infants, children and adolescents are in fact able to spread the virus and carry potentially dangerous variants similar to adults, regardless of severity of infection.

Lael Yonker, pediatric pulmonologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author of the study, notes that “Kids with COVID-19, even if asymptomatic, are infectious and can harbor SARS-CoV-2 variants. Variants could potentially impact both the severity of the disease and the efficacy of vaccines, as we are seeing with the Delta variant. When we cultured the live virus we found a wide variety of genetic variants.”

Another survey by KFF found that only one third of children ages 5-11 are expected to be vaccinated by early 2022. Coupled with ongoing high community transmission across the US and the looming winter surge, the threat of mass infection and the spread of more infectious variants among a vulnerable population is increasingly likely. Currently, just 48 percent of US children 12-17 have received one dose of the vaccine.

Roughly 69 percent of US school districts require mask use indoors for students and all staff. Multiple districts that still have limited mitigation measures in place, including Los Angeles Unified School District with over 600,000 students, have language in their contracts to revisit COVID-19 safety protocols at the end of 2021.

Other districts with limited mitigation policies already have policies in place to soon lift mask mandates, including in Massachusetts and Nevada. Massachusetts has a state policy that allows an individual school to provide mask mandate exemptions once a school population reaches the 80 percent vaccination threshold, with two districts in the state already reaching this threshold. On Monday, Hopkinton High School will begin a three week trial allowing for mask use to be optional for students and staff, as 95 percent of the school’s students and staff are vaccinated.

The effort to lift all mitigation measures in indoor settings is part of an international trend, most acutely expressed by the Johnson administration in the United Kingdom. Open “herd immunity” policies implemented in UK schools have resulted in a catastrophic surge in child cases, with an average of 20,000 children infected with COVID-19 each day and a total of 103 child deaths in the country.

New studies show mood disorders heighten risk of severe COVID illness and death

John Mackay

It has been well documented internationally that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented impact on the mental health of broad layers of the world’s population. This includes people with existing mental health problems as well as those previously unaffected prior to the coronavirus crisis.

A new study published this month in The Lancet attempted to quantify the global prevalence and burden of depressive and anxiety disorders, finding substantial increases worldwide. The study was a systematic review of published data that reported the prevalence of depression and anxiety before the pandemic, then compared this using 48 papers published during the first 12 months of the pandemic in 2020.

Health care workers transport a COVID-19 patient from an intensive care unit (ICU) at a hospital in Kyjov to hospital in Brno, Czech Republic late last year (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

The study, performed by investigators from the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research and the University of Queensland in Australia, presented data compiled from 204 countries and territories. If the pandemic did not occur, model estimates suggest there would have been 193 million cases of major depressive disorder (2,471 cases per 100,000 population) globally in 2020.

However, the study's findings show there were 246 million cases (3,153 per 100,000), an increase of 28percent, an increase of 53 million cases. Similarly, cases of anxiety increased by 76 million, 26 percent above what was expected had there not been a pandemic. More than 35 million of the additional cases were in women, compared with close to 18 million in men.

The study also found younger people were more affected by major depressive and anxiety disorders in 2020 than older age groups. The additional prevalence of both disorders peaked among those aged 20-24 years, translating into 1,118 additional cases of major depressive disorder per 100,000 and 1,331 additional cases of anxiety disorders per 100,000. This was found to decline with increasing age.

Further, the study indicated that some regions of the world fared worse than others, particularly those experiencing military conflict such as North Africa and the Middle East. The latter registered the largest rise in depression of 37 percent. South Asia saw the biggest increase in anxiety of 35%.

The heightened prevalence was associated with increasing COVID-19 infection rates as well as decreasing human mobility. The authors cited “the combined effects of the spread of the virus, lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, decreased public transport, school and business closures, and decreased social interactions, among other factors.” Further, it was estimated that countries more negatively impacted by the pandemic during 2020 were those with the greatest increases of these disorders.

The lead author of the study, Dr Damian Santomauro said in a press release “Our findings highlight an urgent need to strengthen mental health systems in order to address the growing burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders worldwide.”

The authors noted that mental health disorders are among the leading causes of the global health-related burden, with the two most disabling conditions, depressive and anxiety disorders, both ranking among the 25 leading causes of burden worldwide in 2019. This was the case internationally, and across gender lines, a trend that had held since 1990.

Dr Santomauro stated: “Even before the pandemic, mental health-care systems in most countries have historically been under-resourced and disorganised in their service delivery. Meeting the added demand for mental health services due to COVID-19 will be challenging, but taking no action should not be an option.”

The implications of this were highlighted by a study earlier this year which found that sufferers of the mood-related conditions were twice as likely to suffer severe adverse consequences from COVID infection, including serious illness, hospitalisation and death.

Published in July in JAMA Psychiatry, a Journal of the American Medical Association, it was a review and meta-analysis of 21 published studies that included more than 91 million people worldwide.

In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Health Report, senior author Dr Roger McIntyre stated, “…. we've all been familiar with the risk that is afforded if you have cardiovascular disease and obesity, and what we've learned is that the risk with these well-known pre-existing conditions……having a depression or bipolar disorder is in many cases doubling the risk, if not more than doubling the risk. So it is an extraordinary risk.”

While it is as yet unclear the relationship between mood disorders and risk from COVID-19, the authors state that sufferers can show immune dysfunction that may lead to deficiencies in coping with viral infections. Further, people with mood disorders can be at greater risk of cardiovascular disease and obesity which are known to increase the dangers of COVID.

In addition, there are social factors that exacerbate adverse outcomes for those with mood disorders. These patients are increasingly poor, and have limited timely access to preventative health care.

The study authors note that “many individuals with mood disorders reside in congregate facilities, such as psychiatric inpatient units, homeless shelters, community housing, and prisons, where risk of COVID-19 transmission is increased because of the inability to effectively socially distance and/or quarantine.”

Professor Iain Hickie of the Brain Mind Institute at the University of Sydney, added: “One of the mistakes about depression is to think of it as just a psychological response. It's a physiological perturbation. The body is perturbed, in the immune system, in the neuroendocrine or cortisol or stress response system, in the sympathetic nervous system, and in its metabolic system. So, depression is much, much more than just in your head, it's in your body, and your body is perturbed and has trouble then coping with things like infection, with viral illnesses.”

Youth are particularly vulnerable. Professor Hickie explained that mood disorders start in young people, with most before the age of 25 years.

The findings of the report are supported by a similar study design in May 2021 in the journal Psychiatry Research. In over 600,00 COVID19 patients, investigators from the University of Jordan found that a pre-diagnosis of mental health disorders increased the risk of COVID19 mortality and disease severity. Higher mortality occurred in patients with disorders such as schizophrenia.

This is exacerbated by the fear of contracting the virus, becoming seriously ill, the impact of lockdown and decreased social interaction. An earlier study in December 2020 of over 90,000 people from eight countries in the Journal of Affective Disorders revealed substantial increases in the rates of; anxiety (6 to 51%), depression (15 to 48%), post-traumatic stress disorder (7 to 54%), psychological distress (34 to 38%), and stress (8% to 82%).

The situation facing those with mental illness is not the result of the pandemic. The coronavirus has instead exacerbated what was an already existing crisis. This is due to the slashing of mental health care budgets in virtually every country, including the closure of care institutions, the cutting of staffing and beds in hospitals and the increased cost for private mental health treatment.

The World Health Organisation's Mental Health Atlas 2017 report found in a survey of 169 countries that spending on mental health on average was less than 2 percent of health budgets. Development assistance for mental health has never been more than 1 percent of global development assistance for health.

These research findings suggest that the crisis triggered by COVID will see a drastic increase in morbidity and mortality for those suffering from mental health disorders globally, not only during the pandemic, but for many years to come.

In addition to the toll taken by cuts to mental health services, the criminal response of governments to the pandemic has greatly exacerbated the pressures facing working people. While bailing out the banks, and forcing the working class to pay, capitalist governments have lifted lockdowns and other essential safety measures, allowing the virus to circulate, and millions to die, to ensure that corporate profit-making and capitalist exploitation can continue.

Anglo-French tensions overshadow opening of COP26

Thomas Scripps

Outside of the stage-managed proceedings of the conference chamber, the global COP26 climate summit has been dominated by the breakdown of Anglo-French relations.

Amid the talk of “international unity” and “global solutions”, Britain, the summit’s host, and France have been unable to put to bed a dispute over a few dozen fishing licenses in the English Channel.

The fishing industry as a whole represents no more than 0.1 percent of each country’s annual GDP.

Far from defusing the issue, the governments of Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron escalated the conflict to the point of issuing threats of “force”, trade wars and international legal action.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron at the COP26 summit. 01/11/2021. Glasgow, United Kingdom. (Credit: Picture by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street/FlickR)

For several months, France has accused Britain of maliciously refusing to grant fishing licenses to some of its trawlers. Last Wednesday, French authorities detained a British vessel, the Cornelis Gert Jan, in Le Havre port, claiming it “was not on the list of fishing licenses granted to the United Kingdom” by French and European Union (EU) authorities.

French ministers then threatened a series of intensified checks on goods heading from France to Britain, and on British vessels in French waters, if licenses were not granted to all French ships by November 2, amounting to a semi-blockade. Other threats were made to shut off French electricity supplies to the island of Jersey, a British crown dependency.

Fisheries Minister Annick Girardin declared, “Now we must speak the language of force because I believe unfortunately that this British government understands nothing else.” This May, both Britain and France sent gunboats to the waters around Jersey during a protest of roughly 60 French vessels outside its capital, St Hellier’s port.

As COP26 delegates began to arrive in the UK Saturday, Britain’s Brexit minister Lord Frost threatened to invoke Article 16 of the UK’s withdrawal agreement with the EU, unilaterally suspending elements of the deal.

President Macron and Prime Minister Johnson held a half-hour one-on-one discussion on Sunday but emerged bellicose. Macron insisted, “The ball is in Britain’s court. If the British make no movement, the measures of 2 November will have to be put in place.”

Johnson accused France of trying to “punish” the UK for Brexit, adding, “It will be for the French to decide if they want to step away from the threats they have made in recent days about breaching the Brexit agreement… Our position has not changed.”

With COP26 underway, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss set a deadline of 48 hours for France to withdraw its proposed additional checks on UK goods and fishing ships before initiating legal action. Truss accused France of making “completely unreasonable threats” and behaving “unfairly”.

Commentators began to issue dismayed statements that this affair was upstaging an international gathering of the world’s governments, supposedly meant to coordinate a response to the existential threat of climate change.

The Observer ’s front page on Sunday warned, “France and UK told: End dispute or you’ll wreck Cop26 summit”. It quoted Chris Venables, head of politics at environmental charity Green Alliance, saying, “It’s quite frankly ridiculous that this row could destabilise the start of Cop26.”

Ian Dunt, a columnist for the i newspaper, wrote, “COP26 is being undermined by nationalist jingoism”. He concluded, “here we are, squabbling like children, while the world burns around us.”

At the eleventh hour, Macron told reporters Monday evening that France had suspended its planned measures against Britain. He explained, “Since this afternoon, discussions have resumed on the basis of a proposal I made to prime minister Johnson. The talks need to continue.”

Frost will meet France’s minister for European Union (EU) affairs Clément Beaune in Paris Thursday.

Whether or not Britain and France manage to keep up appearances for the duration of COP26, the fundamental tensions between the two will remain unresolved. The fact that the first days of the summit were overshadowed by such a fierce dispute over so miniscule an economic issue points to the major geopolitical interests at work under the surface.

Britain continues to pursue membership of an inner circle of a US-led political and military alliance, directed primarily against China, which it hopes will help sideline the EU. Crossed swords with France are an opportunity to put pressure on European fault lines.

France is seeking to stop these plans in their tracks and build the EU into a bloc capable of striking agreements with America on its own terms, especially as regards differing agendas for conflict with Russia and China. It hopes to make the UK an example of the fact that, in the words of French Prime Minister Jean Castex writing to President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen last week, “leaving the Union is more damaging than remaining in it.”

Both Johnson and Macron are also playing to their right-wing constituencies—Johnson over asserting post-Brexit sovereignty and Macron on the question of French fishing, which has a symbolic status with the far-right whose candidates are hotly contesting him for the presidency in next year’s election.

The concern expressed by political commentators over this Anglo-French conflict is motivated less by its impact on potential climate agreements—except to the degree that it threatened to shatter the fraud of serious international action—but its implications for the stability and predatory ambitions of world imperialism.

Financial Times columnist Gideon Richman was most explicit, writing on Monday, “UK-French rivalry puts the west at risk”. He warned, “The western alliance cannot afford that. The poison between the UK and France is liable to spread and infect Nato, the G7 and international negotiations on everything from climate change to trade.

“UK-French frictions will also make it harder to form common western positions in disputes with China and Russia. Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution worries that Britain and France risk turning into ‘the Japan and South Korea of Europe’—two close American allies that are also bitter rivals.”

Rachman’s proposed solution only emphasises how deep the inter-imperialist crisis goes. “To use the language of counselling,” he writes, “the Americans need to ‘stage an intervention’.” But he is forced to acknowledge, “America’s ability to play the role of honest broker is complicated by Aukus [the agreement on nuclear military technology between the US, UK and Australia which overwrote a prior agreement between Australia and France].”

“Complicated” is an understatement. The other diplomatic fiasco vying for top billing at COP26 is the feud between Macron and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

On Sunday, Macron accused Morrison of lying about his intentions to renege on the original submarine deal with France. Morrison accused Macron of levelling “slurs” and “sledging off Australia”. He responded on Tuesday by leaking a private text sent to him by the French president ahead of the AUKUS announcement, a move denounced by French officials.

Macron’s hostility to Morrison is a none-too-veiled expression of frustration and distrust with the chief architect of the AUKUS deal, the United States, which President Joe Biden’s admission of “clumsy” diplomacy will do nothing to placate.

Although technically playing out on the sidelines of COP26, these conflicts present a far more accurate picture of international relations and capitalism’s response to climate change than the main event. The imperialist interests and tensions on show exclude any measures which impinge on the profit motives of each state’s major corporations and vital national industries. They make impossible any genuine global collaboration on any of the crises confronting humanity.

Rising prices and falling wages deepen UK cost of living crisis

Simon Whelan

Rapidly rising prices and wages failing to keep pace with rising inflation have resulted in a what has been dubbed by the media a “cost living crisis” for British workers.

UK household incomes could be down £1,000 next year, according to analysis by the Resolution Foundation think tank, as rising prices combine with welfare benefit cuts and rising taxes. The Institute for Public Policy Research says a typical family will lose £500 a year because of the planned increase in national insurance taxes and an expected 5 percent rise in council tax.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says the consumer prices index eased to 3.1 percent, from 3.2 percent in August and fell back slightly in September too. However, before August, the last time overall inflation was at 3.1 percent or higher was back in 2017, and the ONS warns upward pressure on living costs continues.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak leaves No 11 Downing Street to deliver his 2021 Budget to the House of Commons. 27/10/2021. (Picture by Luca Boffa / No 10 Downing Street/FlickR)

The current hiatus in the CPI measure of inflation is temporary. Conservative government Chancellor Rishi Sunak acknowledged in this month’s budget that CPI, which doesn’t include rising housing costs, would top 4 percent next year. Capital Economics described the present period is “the lull before the storm”. The economic research consultancy believes inflation could reach 5 percent by April 2021. Other analysts agree the levelling off in the headline rate of inflation will prove temporary, with further pressure on living costs expected amid soaring wholesale gas and electricity prices and the lifting of Ofgem’s consumer price cap on household bills. Reflecting increases in business costs that will hit consumers down the line, inflation in factory gate prices rose from 6 percent in August to 6.7 percent in September, the highest level for almost a decade.

The more accurate measure of inflation, RPI, which includes housing costs, is already at 4.9 percent and expected to soon top 5 percent.

Energy bills may rise as much as 30 percent, petrol prices recently reached a record high, home rental is up 8.5 percent, and household debts are soaring. The Food and Drink Federation believe food prices will rise by 9 percent in time for Christmas.

As the prices of essentials soar, the gap between workers' falling wages and living costs is becoming insurmountable, especially with the onset of winter. Workers are tightening their belts but still cannot make ends meet.

Responding to the Budget, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), Paul Johnson, described projections of UK household incomes in the Independent newspaper as “pretty stagnant” over the next five years. “That’s partly because of inflation” said Johnson, “that’s partly because of the big tax rises that we’ve seen imposed, that’s partly because growth is so poor...”

Johnson warned, “Those almost non-existent increases in living standards over the next half-decade are a big blow to all households, and families of course…”

Household fuel bills were rising sharply before the regulator Ofgem increased the energy price cap at the beginning of October. The End Fuel Poverty Coalition warned that rising household prices, by as much as £400 per year for some, will push another half million of the UK poor into “fuel poverty” whereby households are forced to cut other essentials like food in order to heat their homes.

Working class households are most vulnerable to increases in the cost of living. Those in poverty already spend the highest share of their incomes on daily essentials. Poorer households already pay as much as 50 percent more on their utility bills than those with more money, according to data analysed by the Labour Party. Their figures show Britain’s poorest 10 percent of households pay on average £756 a year per person for gas and electricity. A far smaller average of £504 per person is spent in the richest households with the national average spent being £530 on utility bills. The poorest households spend proportionately around seven times as much of their funds on energy as the richest households, and three-and-a-half times the national average.

Another integral cause for the rocketing cost of living are government benefits cuts. These include this month’s £20 a week cut to Universal Credit (UC) which alone slashes £1,040 from the annual incomes of at least 5.5 million people. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says the cut, the largest one-off welfare cut in UK history, costing the poorest in society a collective £6 billion a year, will push half a million more people into poverty. Approximately 40 percent of those claiming UC are employed at poverty-level wages and receive the benefit because their income doesn’t cover basic living costs like rent and utility bills.

Planned National Insurance (NI) increases will decrease incomes further, with workers paying an additional 1.25 percent more in tax from their wages. The increase will come into effect in April next year, just at the point when energy bills are expected to increase once more.

The Demos think tank found that those aged from 18 to 30 face the “greatest uphill battle” to make ends meet. Nearly half of young people told Demos they would not be able to ride out price rises and falling wages because the combination of their substantial debts and insecure and low wages means they already struggle to pay essential bills.

The ONS calculated supermarket prices have experienced their sharpest rise since the 2008 financial crash, rising by 1.1 percent in August alone. Price inflation for food and drink is expected to continue beyond the end of the year, according to the Morrisons supermarket chain. Food prices could increase further by as much as 2.3 percent within the next three months, research by Capital Economics claims.

Responsibility for the protracted decline in working-class living standards belongs to the pro-capitalist trade unions and the Labour Party. Throughout the pandemic, Labour and the unions have worked in alliance with the Johnson government to suppress workers’ opposition to attacks on their health and safety; ensuring that workplaces and schools remain open so profitability is maintained, frequently at the cost of worker’s lives.

Responding to the budget, Trades Union Congress General Secretary Frances O’Grady noted families faced “a triple whammy of a £1,000 universal credit cut, tax hikes and fast-rising energy and food bills.” But O’Grady uttered only shallow soundbites in response, such as, “The chancellor has gone from pay freeze to pay squeeze.”

O’Grady is silent because the unions are deepening their collaboration with employers in preventing the outbreak of strikes—many aimed at opposing corporations’ attempts to force down pay even further. The unions are working day and night to settle disputes with agreements that always result in a lowering of workers’ pay and attacks on terms and conditions.

World Health Organisation warns “pandemic is far from over” as COVID-19 surges through Europe

Thomas Scripps

Europe is driving a new global upsurge of COVID-19. Total worldwide cases have now increased for the last two weeks to an average of over 430,000 recorded infections per day. With cases falling or stable in every other region, the growth is entirely down to a massive spread of the virus on the European continent.

Cases rocketed from mid-June to late July, driven overwhelmingly by the United Kingdom. After falling slightly in the period to mid-September, they have shot up again as part of a more generalised spread of the disease, concentrated particularly in Eastern Europe as well as the UK.

Medical staff treat a patient with coronavirus at an ICU of the city hospital 1 in Rivne, 300 kilometers (190 miles) west of Kyiv, Ukraine. Ukraine is suffering through a surge in coronavirus infections, along with other parts of Eastern Europe and Russia. Friday, Oct. 22, 2021 file photo, (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

In the week to last Sunday, the seven-day European average of daily new cases increased by nearly 11 percent. Over 220,000 people are now being infected every day. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, Europe is registering more than twice the number of daily cases per million (299) than the next-highest region, North America (139). Over 3,000 people in Europe are being killed by COVID-19 each day—34 percent higher than the same time last year.

World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus commented last week, “The global number of reported cases and deaths from COVID-19 is now increasing for the first time in two months, driven by an ongoing rise in Europe that outweighs declines in other regions. It’s another reminder that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over.”

Expressing the homicidal policies of the entire ruling class, however, WHO Regional Director for Europe Dr. Hans Kluge urged the continent’s governments to keep schools open this winter, accompanied by a range of (inadequate) mitigation measures. He claimed, “Last year’s widespread school closures, disrupting the education of millions of children and adolescents, did more harm than good, especially to children’s mental and social well-being. We can’t repeat the same mistakes.”

The cost of keeping open schools and the economy in the middle of a raging pandemic—a policy driven by the profit motives of the ultra-wealthy—is already playing out across the continent, even before the winter months begin to bite.

The growth of infections in many Central and Eastern European and Balkan countries is astronomical. Official daily case rates are the highest they have ever been in Estonia (1,286 per million), Latvia (1,268), Slovenia (1,095), Slovakia (715), Bulgaria (685), Ukraine (526), Greece (355) and Russia (259), and are rapidly on their way to their highest ever values in Lithuania (1,090) and Croatia (876).

There have also been sharp increases in average daily cases in Hungary (up 82 percent in a week), Czech Republic (up 63 percent), Poland (57) and Austria (42 percent). Across the region, real rates of infection are likely to be far higher as inadequate testing infrastructure is overwhelmed by the spread of the disease. Last week, testing in the Croatian capital returned a positivity rate of 50 percent.

In many countries, the situation is exacerbated by low rates of vaccination. Less than half (43 percent) of Serbia’s population is fully vaccinated, 33 percent of Romania’s and Russia’s, 22 percent of Bulgaria’s and 17 percent of Ukraine’s. General distrust of the government and the healthcare system, the impact of government propaganda declaring the pandemic over or of little concern, and the agitation of far-right and religious forces have all contributed to this phenomenon.

Without even the protection of vaccines, the wave of infections is translating into unprecedented death tolls. Even official average daily COVID-19 death rates are at their highest levels since the start of the pandemic in Russia (1,104 deaths a day), Romania (439), Ukraine (581) and Serbia (64), with Bulgaria (132) on the way. Romania’s average daily death toll is more than 2-and-a-half times its previous peak, Ukraine’s is 44 percent higher, and Russia’s is 28 percent higher.

The burden of severe disease is straining woefully underfunded health infrastructure to breaking point. Intensive care units in Romanian hospitals are beyond capacity. Medical teams have been sent by Poland and Denmark to provide support and other European countries have donated oxygen concentrators and bottles of monoclonal antibodies. One of Bulgaria’s main suppliers of medical oxygen warned last week, “If the number of patients in hospitals continues to increase, there will be no oxygen next week.”

Even the more heavily vaccinated countries are suffering serious numbers of fatalities. Latvia, with 54 percent of its population fully vaccinated, is recording its highest average daily death toll of the pandemic. Similarly vaccinated Baltic states Estonia and Lithuania are not far behind.

The catastrophe unfolding in Latvia has forced its government to declare a one-month lockdown, switching some schools to online learning and some industries to remote working, banning indoor and outdoor gatherings, and closing the majority of shops and all restaurants, salons, cinemas, theatres, concert and sports venues.

This falls well short of what is required to stem the tide of infections and deaths. Other governments, however, have refused to go even this far, introducing only a patchwork of partial measures from vaccine and mask mandates, to COVID passes, curfews and limited restrictions on large gatherings.

In Western and Northern Europe, cases have risen dramatically in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Germany. In the last week, the seven-day average of daily new cases in Norway climbed 62 percent in the week to Sunday, in Belgium 49 percent, in Denmark 48 percent, in the Netherlands 42 percent, and in Germany 40 percent.

Belgium is on track to outstrip the UK in per capita figures, after a slight decline in Britain’s recorded infections over the last week. Its government has responded by introducing the most minimal measures, requiring face masks in public places and for bar, restaurant and fitness staff and mandating COVID passes for entry. The same is planned for the Netherlands.

The Danish government will review its measures on Friday but has already downgraded the threat status of COVID-19, limiting its options. Opposition parties the Red Green Alliance, Danish People’s Party and Conservative Party have all expressed their opposition to the return of restrictions.

The German parliament is planning to end the “epidemic situation of national scope” in November, leaving in place only mask wearing in public spaces and vaccine restrictions on entry to certain venues as protective measures. Dirk Wiese, deputy-head of the Social Democrats parliamentary group spelt out, “There will no more be school closures, lockdowns or curfews again.”

There have also been significant upticks in cases in France and Italy. COVID hospital admissions in Italy have increased 7.5 percent and admissions to intensive care units in France have climbed 12 percent.

In the UK, despite a small decline, daily infections remain extremely high and over 150 people on average are being killed by the virus every day. The virtually unchecked spread of the virus for the last few months appears to have given rise to a major growth of the AY.4.2 sublineage of the Delta variant, thought to be 10-15 percent more transmissible, which the WHO reported on October 26 has now reached 42 countries.

The initial resurgence of the pandemic in Europe, as the Northern hemisphere heads into winter, is an urgent warning of the dangers of “living with” COVID-19. Yet more waves of suffering and death will engulf the populations of the world if action is not taken by the working class to stop the murderous policy of herd immunity in its tracks, and implement policies for the elimination of the virus.

Worsening economic data coming out of China

Nick Beams

The economic news coming out of China is all pointing one way—downwards.

On Sunday, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for manufacturing dropped to 49.2 in October, the second straight month in which this key index for factory activity has fallen.

A worker wearing a face mask drills on a new apartment buildings under construction in Beijing on Oct. 26, 2021. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

With 50 marking the boundary between contraction and expansion, the October reading was lower than the 49.6 recorded for September and was the lowest since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in February last year. The figure was well below the 49.9 median forecast of economists polled by the Wall Street Journal.

The main factors in the lower result were rapidly rising raw material costs, a widespread power shortage and a sharp slowdown in the real estate sector. The property giant Evergrande continues to struggle to avoid bankruptcy and is leading a hand-to-mouth existence as it seeks to make interest payments on dollar-denominated debt.

Before the falls in the last two months, China’s manufacturing sector had enjoyed something of a boom as it recovered from the effects of the pandemic.

According to the Wall Street Journal, while some economists had expected factory output would improve as power curbs imposed last month eased, the PMI readings suggest that “the broader picture for China’s economy is deteriorating.”

“Domestic demand, in particular remains weak, held back by an ailing property market under pressure from Beijing’s tightening rules [the so-called three lines that have restricted credit] as well as widespread power shortages and sporadic virus outbreaks that have halted consumption and production activity.”

The lower PMI figures come on top of national accounts data which showed that in the third quarter the annual rate of growth had fallen to 4.9 percent—the lowest level in a year, with the economy expanding by just 0.2 percent over the previous three months.

The Financial Times reported that pressure is growing on Beijing to loosen the credit restrictions that have been blamed for the mounting problems in the property sector.

It cited a note from analysts at Gavekal Dragonomics who maintain that the source of the slowdown is not on the supply side, such as power shortages and lockdowns. Rather, “the real problem is on the demand side” leading to the transition from an expected slowdown to a “shocking loss of economic momentum.”

They pointed to the loss of demand because of the troubles in the real estate sector. “Since the property sector is the most important driver of cyclical activity, overall growth will weaken further [in the fourth quarter] and into 2022,” they wrote.

The contraction is evident in other areas. While the non-manufacturing PMI was 52.4, indicating an expansion, it was down from 53.2 the month before.

Citi analysts have warned that weaker manufacturing activity is being accompanied by rising prices and features of stagflation—lower economic output combined with rising prices—that have “become more evident and would limit near-term policy options.”

In the middle of last month, as the debt problems of Evergrande continued to mount, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) issued a statement that the financial fallout would be able to be contained and risks were “controllable.”

That may still be the case so far as banks and other financial institutions are concerned. But a comment in Bloomberg yesterday drew attention to the fact that banking and finance are not only areas of the economy to be affected by the crisis.

“The key to managing the crisis is not just to contain the risk of financial loans, but also the other two-thirds of the liabilities owed by the distressed real estate developer to a vast network of companies and enterprises in its supply chain—including providers of construction services and material as well as contractors and subcontractors supplying needs raging from labour to decoration.”

China, it said, had the world’s most complete supply chain because of its vast manufacturing range but this came with the risk that “the sudden collapse of a large non-financial company could cause cascading effects for the real economy at a scale unseen in any other part of the world.”

Evergrande did not just borrow from the banks and other financial bodies. In the common practice of many large corporations around the world, it borrowed from its suppliers and contractors by forcing them to accept longer payment terms. When a payment falls due, the smaller companies are asked to accept commercial bills instead of cash—in effect a further extension of payment—which they can then sell to brokers at a discount.

This had the potential to cause a large group of suppliers and contractors to not only lose business but to experience financial distress “possibly creating a chain of bankruptcies upstream,” the Bloomberg article said.

It noted this situation was “new territory” for China’s central bank, the PBoC. While it had a good record of rescuing financial institutions that had failed, “the restructuring of a large non-financial institution with liabilities on the same scale as Evergrande is unprecedented.”

The crisis is by no means confined to Evergrande. According to a report by the research firm China Real Estate Information Corp. (CRIC) released yesterday, new home sales for the country’s top 100 developers fell by 32 percent in October. The CRIC report said that the outlook for the property market did not look promising and sales could continue to slow for the rest of the year.

In another report on the debt crisis facing many developers, Bloomberg said the key question was becoming “who will survive in China’s property sector” as the country’s credit market “undergoes its biggest shakeout in years.”

In the past, offshore borrowing arranged through Hong Kong has been a means by which cash-strapped companies have been able to raise funds. But with junk bond yields reaching as high as 20 percent it has become “all but impossible for stressed developers to refinance their maturing debt.”

According to Bloomberg calculations, Chinese developers have more than $2 billion of onshore and dollar-denominated payments due in November. It reported that at least four building companies defaulted last month while Evergrande twice averted being declared in default only by making interest payments at the last moment. But it is living from day-to-day with the 30-day grace period on another $148 million of interest payments ending this month.

FDA approves Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 5–11

Benjamin Mateus

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration almost unanimously, 17–0 with one abstention, authorized the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine under emergency use for children aged 5–11.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is scheduled to convene today to recommend who might receive the vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director must then endorse these recommendations, meaning that the soonest that children can begin receiving vaccinations will be on Wednesday.

PS 245 elementary school in New York City, September 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

In anticipation of the regulatory approval, the Biden administration is relying on hospitals, clinics and pharmacies to inoculate children rather than public vaccination centers. “Kids have different needs than adults, and our operational planning is geared to meet those specific needs, including by offering vaccinations in settings that parents and kids are familiar with and trust,” said Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, to reporters.

Sonya Bernstein, a senior policy advisor on the COVID-19 response for the White House, explaining the hazards at play in trying to get children vaccinated, told the New York Times, “We know that access is going to be critical here. The administration has in recent weeks explored ways to provide a kid-friendly experience that makes sure that we’re getting shots in arms with trusted providers in ways that make parents feel comfortable.”

Approximately 28 million children in this age grouping would be approved to receive the Pfizer vaccine. The formulation contains only a third of the adult dosing, or 10 micrograms. The vaccines can be stored at standard refrigeration temperatures for up to 10 weeks. As with adults, the vaccine is given as a two-dose regimen 21 days apart.

The reduced dosing was selected based on the outcomes in the phase one trial for its safety, tolerability and immune response. The phase two and phase three trials that included 2,268 participants who were 5–11 years of age received the two-dose regimen.

A month after completing the series, antibody titers against the SARS-CoV-2 virus were comparable to the levels for those participants aged 16 to 25 who received the full adult-sized 30 microgram vaccines. Shots for those six months to four years of age remain under investigation.

With the FDA’s announcement has come an about-face in the mainstream media’s attitude on the dangers of the pandemic to children and schools as vectors for community transmission. Previously they had downplayed these concerns in order to push for a complete reopening of schools for in-person instruction.

Even as late as October 4, 2021, the Washington Post published an op-ed column by Jeffrey Vergales and Monica Gandhi, in which the authors claimed “in many cases, quarantines are probably doing more harm than good—given the well-documented costs, intellectual and social, of keeping children out of schools closed for in-person learning longer than many of its peer nations, despite evidence that schools could open safely.”

The evidence has been contrary to these assertions. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), one of the few reliable sources of information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children, at least 6.3 million children have tested positive for COVID-19. They account for 16.5 percent of all coronavirus infections in the country. More recently, they have accounted for 25.1 percent of weekly reported cases. For 11 straight weeks, more than 100,000 children have become infected each week. Almost 600 children have died from COVID-19 during the pandemic, 42.6 percent of them in the last four months.

With the FDA announcement, the Post now suddenly discovers the dangers to children from the coronavirus, which can be overcome through the new vaccine, which will now overcome all resistance by parents to sending their children into social settings rather than protecting them at home.

The article notes: “A pediatric vaccine has been eagerly anticipated by many parents who want to ensure their children’s safety and holiday gatherings. Experts say the immunizations [of children] will represent a milestone in a pandemic that has killed more than 737,000 people in the United States.”

The Post cites critical expert testimony. Patrick S. Moore, a University of Pittsburgh microbiologist and committee member, declared, “To me, it seems that it is a hard decision but a clear one. Ninety-four children between five and 11 have died of COVID-19, and all have names. All of them had mothers.”

These tragedies could have been avoided had the government taken the appropriate cautionary note and pursued an elimination strategy that had proven effective in many countries when resources and political will were committed to ensuring the virus was kept at bay.

The New York Times wasted no time with an opinion piece that followed the FDA announcement, calling for the end to mask mandates. In their usual attempt to offer a “balanced” portrayal of the issue, Jessica Grose, who is the parenting columnist at the Times, as if it was a foregone conclusion, said, “But it’s time to start a serious discussion about taking off masks since it will take time to institute policies after communities—hopefully—come to some degree of consensus. Maybe the carrot of mask-free schools will inspire some more hesitant families to get their children vaccinated.”

Not surprisingly, in a follow-up Tweet to the Grose opinion piece, Professor Emily Oster, one of the main propagandists for reopening schools, wrote, “Masking off-ramps are necessary. I will admit I have been reluctant to talk about this, in part due to fear of being yelled at. This wasn’t brave. I will try to be braver.”

Clearly, behind the shifting winds in the bourgeois press is a consistent social interest: to vaccinate children is to once and for all put an end to all mitigation strategies and open the country to all commerce and travel and ensure schools remain open regardless of infection rates in classrooms. And with vaccines now available for children, the doors will be flung open.

New evidence, however, pours cold water over such rosy appraisals. In a recent study published in The Lancet: Infectious Diseases, the authors investigated the “transmission and viral load kinetics in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals with mild Delta variant infection in the community.” Though vaccines have shown high efficacy against severe disease and death, their ability to protect against asymptomatic transmission and mild disease has been far less effective, and the level of protection appears to decline more rapidly over a short time.

When they calculated the Secondary Attack Rates (SARs) [when an infected person spreads the disease in a family home or dwelling unit ] in household contacts, they found that the SARs in “household contacts exposed to the Delta variant was 25 percent in vaccinated and 38 percent in unvaccinated contacts,” according to a comment in The Lancet by Dr. Annelies Wilder-Smith, underscoring the fact that though better protected against serious infections and death, breakthrough infections continue to occur among the vaccinated. They also found that though vaccinated individuals cleared the virus sooner, peak viral loads were similar between vaccinated and unvaccinated.

According to the CDC, there have been 10,857 deaths and more than 30,000 non-fatal hospitalizations among the vaccinated population. A recent Twitter thread provided these glaring statistics. Out of 119,752,227 fully vaccinated people in 41 US jurisdictions that publicly report COVID-19 breakthrough cases and deaths, 1,338,315, or 1.12 percent, have experienced a confirmed breakthrough case, and 12,339, or 0.01 percent, have died following a breakthrough case.

Vaccines alone will not end the pandemic. Allowing the virus to persist in the human population will only lead to more deaths and disease as it becomes endemic, to say nothing of the danger of further and more deadly mutations. It has been estimated that COVID-19 would kill up to 100,000 people per year in the US if allowed to exist in the population, a toll almost four times above that of the flu.

Although immunization of children is critical, it is more important to eliminate the coronavirus from human populations rapidly. The notion of allowing the virus to become endemic is a dangerous policy. Yet, every time daily cases of new infections begin to decline, there is repeated push to lift more restrictions.