Moscow mayor rules out extension of COVID-19 restrictions amidst surge in cases and deaths

Clara Weiss

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin declared Wednesday that the “workfree week” in Moscow, which began on October 26, would not be extended beyond November 7 because the pandemic situation had been “stabilized.” This statement flies in the face of reality.

Russia continues to report near-records of cases and deaths almost daily, with 40,443 new cases (slightly less than the record of 40,993) and 1,189 deaths on Wednesday, the highest number of daily deaths yet. The surge has been virtually unbroken for over a month. Over 242,000 deaths have been officially reported since the pandemic began. The true death toll is believed to be far higher, and Russia has reported an excess death toll of over 723,350 since the beginning of the pandemic.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin attends a cabinet meeting with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in Moscow, Russia, Monday, March 30, 2020. (Alexander Astafyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

The capital has been and remains the center of the surge, with Moscow and the Moscow region accounting for almost one-fourth of all cases in the country. About one-tenth of the total population lives in Moscow, which is the center of Russia’s economic, political and cultural life.

On Wednesday, 6,827 new cases and 95 deaths were reported in the capital, with the second highest number of cases, 3,269, less than half, being reported in St. Petersburg. The Moscow region reported the third highest number of cases (2,744).

For the past 10 days, over 1,500 people and between 20 and 30 children were hospitalized in the capital every day. As of Monday, 10,000 people were hospitalized in serious condition, among them 300 children. Several of the 751 people currently on ventilators in the capital are children.

Russia has very low vaccination rates, with just about a third of the population fully vaccinated and less than 40 percent having received at least one jab. At the current rate of vaccination, over two months will be needed to vaccinate another 10 percent of the population.

Seventy-five percent of those who have not received the vaccine have indicated in polls that they do not intend to get vaccinated. The main reasons for the reluctance to get vaccinated are the enormous popular distrust, if not hatred, of the state and the systematic promotion of anti-scientific, irrational and religious conceptions since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

However, the low vaccination rates are just a part of the explanation for the current surge. The ruling class in Russia, mirroring the criminal policies of Washington, Berlin, Paris and London, has allowed the virus to rip through the population largely unchecked for well over a year. Schools were reopened in September at the height of the previous wave, and major factories have been open non-stop since April 2020.

The “workfree” week recommended by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the regional authorities for the week of October 30-November 7 was from the beginning a much belated and wholly inadequate measure.

Only a few regions imposed full-scale lockdowns, and many of the country’s biggest state-owned enterprises were exempt from the order from the beginning. No travel restrictions were imposed, and there was a reported spike in vacation bookings for Egypt and the Black Sea.

In an indication of the unserious attitude toward the coronavirus crisis that has been promoted, some businesses announced their closures by wishing their employees and customers a “happy vacation.” Major sports and cultural events were allowed to go ahead, and mask mandates are still not being enforced.

So far, only the Novgorod region has announced that it will extend the “workfree week” until November 14. A doctor from the region earlier revealed that infections had risen by 22 percent last week.

About half of the cases are occurring in the working population, and 30 percent among pensioners. The rest (about 20 percent) were accounted for by children, most of them between 7 and 17 years old. Only between 11 and 13 percent of those infected were not showing any clinical symptoms.

While the Russian education ministry has announced that college education might continue on a remote basis for the foreseeable future, the end of the “workfree week” will mean the reopening of schools under conditions of what is already a horrifying scale of infections among children. Last week, the Russian health minister revealed that almost 60,000 children in the country were being treated for COVID-19, with half of them showing “acute” symptoms. Cases and hospitalizations have since grown further.

On Monday, the Russian health ministry’s expert for infectious diseases, Yuri Lobzin, stated that between 1 and 12 percent of all children in the country’s regions are falling ill with the virus, with a 7.6 percent nationwide average.

While 60 percent of those infected have “mild” cases or show no symptoms, a staggering 40 percent do show clinical symptoms. Moreover, a medical expert earlier estimated that about 13.5 percent of all children who have been infected in Russia suffer from Long COVID, which can include respiratory as well as neurological symptoms, such as fatigue, the inability to concentrate and the loss of several IQ points. Many of those who suffer Long COVID initially showed only “mild,” if any, symptoms.

Hospitals, including special COVID-19 hospitals for children, are still being opened up across the country to deal with the surge in hospitalizations. The country now has 290,000 hospital beds opened up for COVID-19 patients, well above the 270,000 hospital beds that were needed during the previous peak of the pandemic.

Critical shortages of oxygen have been reported in several regions, including the Altai region, North Ossetia, the Chuvashia region and the Komi republic. A doctor at Infectious Diseases Hospital in the Chuvashia region told the Moscow Times, “We are getting to the point where we will have to choose who gets the oxygen.”

The governor of the small northern republic of Komi said that the situation was about to “burst” and described oxygen as “the new gold.” A medic working in an infectious diseases hospital in the region described the mood there as “tense, borderline dramatic.” He added, “Sometimes the oxygen gets here at the very last minute, [and] we feel like we are living on the edge.”

Dmitriy Kuznetsov, the general manager of a major producer of medical oxygen, Cryogenmash, told the newspaper, “I don’t want to sound hysterical, but the situation is very tense. There isn’t really a way we can scale up our production.”

The current surge threatens to overwhelm the already overburdened and exhausted medical workforce. A poll revealed that almost 30 percent of health care workers who are taking care of COVID-19 patients are close to handing in their resignation because of exhaustion. Some 37 percent are suffering health problems because of emotional exhaustion. Only 12.6 percent of doctors and nurses who are working in COVID hospitals and departments indicated that they are still “full of energy” and “enjoy going to work.”

In neighboring countries across Eastern Europe, including the Baltic States and Ukraine, as well as the UK, the virus also continues to surge.

The ending of the restriction measures under these conditions can be described only as a crime against entire generations of young people, their parents and the working class as a whole. It comes in the context of the aggressive push by the ruling class in countries such as the US, UK and Germany to put an end to all, however limited, efforts to mitigate the spread of the pandemic and growing pressure on countries like China to abandon their “zero COVID” policy.

Rampant inflation pushing Canada’s low-income workers even further into poverty

Omar Ali

Inflation, which has accelerated dramatically across Canada in 2021, is gouging evermore deeply into workers’ real incomes, placing serious strain on their ability to make ends meet and even afford basic necessities.

At the same time, it is propelling ever broader layers of the working class into struggle against a cabal of ruthless employers, big business governments, and their junior partners in the trade unions, who have collaborated to enforce low and stagnant wages for more than three decades.

According to Statistics Canada, the past two months saw the biggest year-to-year increases in the Consumer Price Index in nearly 20 years. In August, Canada’s annual inflation rate reached 4.1 percent, higher than any month since 2003; but this was surpassed in September, when the year-to-year increase in prices jumped to 4.4 percent.

All the major categories used to calculate the consumer price index have posted significant gains, including energy (transportation and heating), housing and food.

September was also the first time since 2003 that the inflation rate exceeded the Bank of Canada’s official target range of 1-3 percent for six consecutive months. Among G7 countries, Canada’s inflation rate currently trails only that in the United States.

Inflation is impacting all sections of the working class. Low-income workers, the unemployed and those forced to survive on welfare are especially hard hit, as an even bigger share of their small incomes goes to food, housing and energy.

Statscan claims that food prices overall were 3.9 percent higher this September than in September 2020, but Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab puts the increase at closer to 5 percent. Both agree, however, that meat prices have increased the most, with Statscan pegging the year-to-year increase in September at 9.5 percent. Beef prices were 13 percent higher and poultry 11 percent, while the cost of dairy products and eggs had increased 5.1 percent.

A recent Dalhousie Food Lab survey of more than 10,000 consumers found that two in five have changed their shopping habits due to food price increases and that nearly half have reduced their consumption of meat. Food Lab Director Sylvain Charlebois told the Canadian Press, “Every section of the grocery store is impacted by inflation—there’s not one single section that has not been impacted.”

Pandemic related supply-chain issues have combined with last summer’s catastrophic wildfires and droughts to disrupt the food supply and create a significant gap between the supply of goods and consumer demand.

Energy prices have also spiked. In many parts of the country, gasoline prices reached all-time highs in the run up to the early October Thanksgiving weekend. According to Natural Resources Canada, a litre of gas cost on average $1.45 in the first week of October, up more than 40 cents from last year.

Natural gas distributors have also hiked, or plan to hike, their prices, citing increases at the wellhead. Enbridge Gas says that costs are likely to increase for Ontarians who heat their homes with gas by approximately $7-$44 a year. Manitoba Hydro has said that households can expect an 8.7 percent increase in their energy costs.

Increased heating bills will also impact rents across Canada. Housing costs—both rents and housing prices—have risen so sharply in recent years that even the big business politicians were forced to concede that Canada faces a “housing crisis” while campaigning for the Sept. 20 federal election. The home replacement cost index, which is tied to the cost of purchasing new homes, increased 14.3 percent in the year ending August 2021.

The rising cost of living is pushing more and more workers and their families into dire financial straits. A recent Food Banks Canada survey found a large increase in foodbank visits throughout the pandemic. Its CEO, David Armour, told the media, “We're seeing high food prices, we're seeing high housing prices, we're seeing an anticipated pullback of government [aid] and we're seeing high unemployment continuing through the COVID pandemic.” He added that food banks are bracing for even greater demand in the coming months.

Last week, Food Banks Canada released its annual HungerCount Report, based on foodbank use in March 2021. It found that there were 1.3 million foodbank visits that month, a 20.3 percent increase from 2019, and the sharpest increase since the Great Recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis. The increases were most pronounced in large cities like Toronto, where foodbanks reported that visits by first-time users appeared to outstrip repeat users.

Another survey on affordability, conducted by BDO Debt Solutions, found that 43 percent of respondents saw an increase in their debt during the pandemic. Of these, 70 percent reported that their new debt is making their quality of life worse, as inflation is undercutting the ability of Canadians to save and make repayments. Indicating the extent to which substantial numbers of workers have survived during the pandemic on the margins, the survey found that 29 percent of respondents accessed government benefits. Of these, 76 percent described the benefits as very important or essential in maintaining their quality of life.

Last month’s decision by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government to end the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) is the culmination of a more than yearlong drive on the part of corporate Canada and their political representative to prematurely declare the pandemic over as part of their profits-before-lives back-to-work drive. Fully 800,000 people still relied on the CRB when it was scrapped, with just two days’ notice.

The Trudeau government’s goal is to force workers back into low-wage, dangerous jobs. Canada added a further 157,100 jobs in September, raising the total number employed to about where it stood when the pandemic began. Wage growth has been anemic, at only 1.7 percent on a year-to-year basis in September. This falls well short of the rate of inflation, meaning that workers are experiencing significant real-terms pay cuts.

By contrast, Canada’s financial oligarchy has never had it so good. The country’s 48 billionaires increased their wealth by $78 billion during the first year of the pandemic, and lavish bonuses continue to be paid out to top executives. Amid the unseemly squabble at telecommunications giant Rogers, the Globe and Mail reported last Thursday that had the company’s principal shareholder succeeded in firing CEO Joe Natale he would have been offered a severance and post-firing consultation package of $200 million!

The social and political consequences of the impoverishment of vast swathes of workers on the one hand, and the unrestrained enrichment of a corrupt and selfish oligarchy on the other, cannot be overestimated. A wave of militant strikes has swept the United States and Canada over the past six months, including workers in mining, manufacturing, food processing, auto, and auto parts suppliers. On Tuesday, over 10,000 workers at US agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere voted down a rotten union-backed contract and are continuing their three-week strike for wage increases and an end to the hated, multi-tier wage system. In New Brunswick, 22,000 of Canada’s lowest-paid public sector workers enter the seventh day of their strike today for wage increases after 15 years of real wage cuts.

This upsurge of workers’ struggles has been marked by an increasingly open and widespread rebellion against the pro-capitalist trade unions, which since the 1980s have done so much to enforce “wage restraint” and slash worker rights in the interests of big business.

This reality was on full display Tuesday, when Jerry Dias, the president of Canada’s largest private sector union, Unifor, joined hard-right Ontario Premier Doug Ford at a press conference to champion Ford’s increase of the provincial minimum wage to a meagre $15 per hour—three years after Ford rolled back a planned increase to $15, as part of a volley of anti-worker measures.

Tuesday’s “increase,” which will only take in effect in January, amounts to a mere 65 cents. It will not even bring Ontario’s minimum wage close to a living wage. According to a report released by the Ontario Living Wage Network Monday, workers in Toronto must earn $22.08 per hour just to afford basic necessities. These necessities include housing, food, clothing, transportation, childcare, medical care, and recreational activities. Figures for other Ontario regions included $19.80 for the Peel Region, which comprises much of Toronto’s western suburbs, and $20.75 for workers in the adjacent Halton Region. Even in Sault Ste. Marie, the region with the lowest cost of living, a basic lifestyle requires an hourly wage of $16.20.

The fear that persistent inflation combined with low wages and precarious employment could prompt a social explosion is clearly felt within the ruling elite. Asked in early October during an American Council on Foreign Relations forum whether inflation was really transitory as the Federal Reserve has maintained, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem joked nervously, “It’s the job of central banks to say it is.” However, in a press release last week, the Bank of Canada was forced to concede that high inflation will persist longer than it had thought and that interest rate hikes will soon be needed to curb it. This will drive up the cost of consumer debt, one of the chief mechanisms working people have used to offset stagnant and declining real wages.

New Zealand COVID-19 cases surge as government plans to lift more restrictions

Tom Peters

On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an “in principle” decision to remove more COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. On November 10, retail businesses and public facilities such as libraries will reopen, and outdoor gatherings of up to 25 people will be allowed.

This is another reckless decision that will accelerate the spread of the deadly virus. There are now 2,139 active cases—a nearly tenfold increase since September 22, when the Labour Party-led government eased Auckland’s lockdown from “level 4,” the strictest, to “level 3.”

Medical staff take a COVID-19 test from a visitor to a drive through community based assessment centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Hundreds of thousands of people returned to workplaces and thousands of secondary school students to classrooms, fueling the outbreak. Parts of the Northland and Waikato regions are in a “level 3” lockdown after cases spread from Auckland. Christchurch, in the South Island, is not under lockdown despite four active cases being found there last week.

Three Auckland high schools (Macleans College, Mount Albert Grammar and Liston College) and one primary school, which had partially reopened, were forced to close this week after positive cases were found among students and staff.

There are currently 64 people in hospital with COVID-19—the biggest number so far in the pandemic—compared with just 13 on September 22. This includes three residents of the Edmonton Meadows aged care facility, where 15 residents and four staff tested positive.

Yesterday, an Auckland resident who had tested positive on October 24, died while self-isolating at home. The cause of death has not yet been confirmed, but it highlights the fact that management of positive cases has been significantly loosened.

When the lockdown began in mid-August, most positive cases were isolated in special quarantine hotels if they did not require hospitalisation. These facilities are currently accommodating only 294 people, with everyone else instructed to self-isolate at home.

Ardern told the media on Monday that case numbers were “within some of our expectations and modelling” and that “public health” officials said reopening retail was unlikely to cause a “marked increase in new cases.”

In fact, the government’s own modelling predicts a continued surge. Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said that by the end of this month there could be more than 1,400 new cases per week, and the number of people in hospital will be 150, with 20 in intensive care. This morning, Bloomfield revealed to TVNZ that he had advised the government not to ease restrictions next week.

The government is deliberately letting the outbreak expand out of control, ignoring the pleas from scientists and public health experts for tighter restrictions. Ardern announced on October 4 that the government was “transitioning” away from its previous policy of eliminating COVID-19, which has so far limited New Zealand’s death toll to just 28.

The elimination policy was supported by scientists and working people internationally, who viewed NZ as a model, in contrast to the “let it rip” policies adopted in most other countries, which are responsible for an estimated 16 million deaths worldwide.

The Labour government has caved in to the pressure from big business, which insists that the working class must accept COVID-19 becoming endemic as the “ newnormal .” No country can be allowed to stand as an example showing that the disease can be eliminated and millions of lives saved, if public health is prioritised over private profit.

On Monday, COVID-19 modeler professor Shaun Hendy, who has provided advice to the government, called for a return to a “level 4” lockdown in Auckland, saying the case numbers and hospitalisations were “concerning.” He told TVNZ: “If we get up to 200 to 300 cases [a day] that will put a lot of strain on the healthcare system in Auckland.”

Contact tracing is not keeping up with the outbreak, resulting in a growing number of unlinked cases. As of yesterday there were 441 cases with no known source, up from about 20 a month ago. Without a lockdown, this will make it impossible to stop the virus from spreading.

Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker told TVNZ on Tuesday he was “concerned about any relaxation of controls at the moment in Auckland,” while cases were rising. Speaking to Newshub last Saturday, Baker also raised concerns about the government’s plan to fully reopen primary schools on November 15, saying it could lead to cases of Long COVID in unvaccinated children.

Overall, 74 percent of people aged over 12 are fully vaccinated, i.e. 62 percent of the total population. Singapore and Australia, which have a higher vaccination rate and have been touted as models by the New Zealand media, are both experiencing a surge in cases, with 91 and 103 COVID-19 deaths respectively in the past 7 days, according to the Worldometers website.

Doctor Rawiri Jansen, a public health expert working with the National Maori Pandemic Group, told Radio NZ on Tuesday that he had a “feeling of impending doom” and the government’s decisions would create a “perfect f---ing storm.” Maori account for about half of the current cases and have a lower vaccination rate.

According to Stuff, the Ministry of Health says there are 284 intensive care or high dependency units across the country. Around 62 percent of ICUs, and 83 percent of all hospital beds are currently occupied.

Whangarei Hospital, the main hospital in Northland, is severely dilapidated and overcrowded. Radio NZ reported that since 2017, overall demand for emergency care, intensive care and inpatient services has surpassed capacity. Emergency medicine consultant Dr Gary Payinda said: “If on a regular day we can’t cope with patient demand, how the heck could we possibly be expected to cope with a surge [from coronavirus]?”

There is considerable unease in the working class over the decision to lower restrictions. Surveys in August and September found a significant majority supported “level 4” lockdowns and an elimination strategy. Stuff reported today, however, that its recent poll of nearly 10,000 Auckland residents found that 43 percent now “believed authorities had done a terrible or bad job at managing the outbreak.”

Meanwhile, anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protests are continuing, organised by the extremely unpopular Destiny Church and similar groups. The latest gathering in Auckland last Saturday reportedly attracted 5,000 people—up from 1,000 at a protest one month ago.

The far-right rallies are being emboldened by sections of the political and business establishment and the media. This morning, Newstalk ZB’s Kate Hawkesby suggested that “there is sympathy for them, especially in Auckland, where everyone’s a bit grumpy and a bit over [the lockdown].”

The business group Retail NZ, and several business associations in Auckland, wrote to Ardern last week demanding the “urgent” reopening of businesses. Yesterday, on Newshub, opposition National Party leader Judith Collins criticised the government for not considering “localised” lockdowns in particular suburbs, essentially calling for an end to the Auckland lockdown.

Crisis in Sudan is a lesson for the U.S.

Wim Laven

About 2,700 years ago a storytelling slave named Aesop told tales of political, religious, and social themes. They have been popularized for their ethical dimensions and utilized as children’s’ stories for the morals and wisdom they deliver.

In “The Four Oxen and the Lion” Aesop tells of a powerful lion who prowls a field in search of a hearty meal. The four oxen who live there stand tail to tail and offer The Lion horns regardless of the direction of the approach. One day, however, an argument causes the the four oxen to go their separate ways. On their own the oxen do not stand a chance against the lion, who picks them off one by one with great ease.

The moral of the story: united we stand, divided we fall.

Issues of collective security are timeless. In the United States collective security was so important that a 3/5ths Compromise (making slaves 3/5ths of a person for purposes of the census and political power), which inflated the power of slave states, a prohibition against the abolition of slavery (Article I Section 9 of the Constitution prevents Congress from banning the importation of slaves before 1808), and the electoral college (Virginia slaveholder James Madison famously admitted that direct vote of the President was the “fittest” but would hurt the South because they had so many nonvoting slaves) in order to create ‘unity.’

Compromise is a strategic effort where parties to a dispute make concessions—give up some of the demand—in order to achieve other goals or meet other needs.

Sudan is currently in headlines because the military has dissolved the alliance between military and civilian groups effectively blocking the power-sharing Sovereign Council and agreed-upon transitional government. To be clear, the transition from the brutality of Omar al-Bashir’s three decades of power, which ended in a 2019 nonviolent grassroots insurrection to democratic civilian rule was on shaky ground because the Sovereign Council was unelected.

The excitement with ousting al-Bashir has faded and conflict over power has increased political pressures and tensions between both sides; the future of Sudan is uncertain, the coup was not a surprise, but neither is the resistance; the streets are full of peaceful pro-democracy protesters, but while the efficacy of nonviolence is clear the outcome remains to be seen.

Al-Bashir’s loyalists have initiated the military coup d’etat, which bears some parallels to Trump’s illegitimate power grabs and the criminal efforts of his loyalists. But the similarities are limited; where most of the officers pushing for al-Bashir in Sudan last month were arrested, the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol say they will get justice, yet nine months later no officials nor Trump have been charged for their efforts intended to overthrow American democracy.

Al-Bashir’s loyalists in Sudan chanted “down with the hunger government” just like Trump’s scream “Stop the steal!” The former demand reforms to the Forces of Freedom and Change coalition, the replacement of the cabinet in power, and a coup overthrowing the government. The latter, according to a recent poll, which found that 66 percent of Republicans believe that “the election was rigged and stolen from Trump,” while only 18 percent believe “Joe Biden won fair and square.”

The rule of law is under attack in both countries. And just like Aesop delivers a lesson on standing together, the people of Sudan present important reminders on the importance of people power and the role of nonviolence safeguarding democratic institutions.

It is easy enough to hope that Trump loyalists will not make a repeat attempt at an insurrection, but the evidence suggests otherwise and the political threats and violence of 2020 and 2021 should be a wake-up call.

There have been too many plots to list and at seemingly every level of government; there have been plans to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Michigan, who, in June, said: “Threats continue, I have looked out my windows and seen large groups of heavily armed people within 30 yards of my home. I have seen myself hung in effigy. Days ago at a demonstration there was a sign that called for ‘burning the witch.’”

The National Association of School Boards has asked President Joe Biden for federal assistance to investigate and stop threats in a letter outlining 20 cases of threats, harassment, disruption, and acts of intimidation in California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and other states. The board argues that: “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

The U.S. and Sudan showcase different stages of division. The people of the U.S. are well served to learn and get involved in Sudan through solidarity. People of the world can all push for frozen assets and travel bans on those responsible for the coup and thank President Biden for his swift action in suspending $700 million in aid to Sudan. Nonviolent but coercive measures like these can pressure the military to yield to the people’s demands. We can also make strong condemnations to the use of political violence and the detainment of political prisoners—who should be immediately released.

When we watch what is happening in Sudan we become better global citizens. We learn about other cultures and struggles, and we increase our empathy for others. We live up to the moral demands that we respond to the injustice that others experience and they gain strength through the increases in unity. But we also learn valuable lessons for the protection of our own fragile democracy. As long as there are people who threaten a violent takeover there must also be people prepared to use the power of nonviolent struggle—to amply the voices of the people—in resisting them.

Trump and al-Bashir may be the lions. But we are the many oxen who can thwart their attacks.

Ecuador’s Neoliberal Government Announces State Emergency to Impose Austerity

Vijay Prashad & Taroa Zúñiga Silva

On October 18, 2021, Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency for 60 days. This declaration led to the constitutional rights of Ecuadorian nationals being suspended and heavily armed troops flooding the streets in Ecuador. The immediate reason for the declaration was the murder of an 11-year-old boy named Sebastián Obando, who was killed in a crossfire between “an armed robber and a police officer” on October 17 at a cafeteria and ice cream parlor in the Centenario neighborhood in Guayaquil.

The boy, who was shot three times, was shot in the heart, right arm and his back, said his father Tomás Obando. Lasso’s declaration of emergency built on the public outcry relating to this murder. The president said that he needed to suspend the constitutional rights of the people of Ecuador to confront the grip of the drug gangs on the country.

On October 19, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Quito to provide U.S. support for Lasso. Blinken met with Lasso, affirming the close ties between the United States and Ecuador. At a press conference held by Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Mauricio Montalvo and the U.S. Secretary of State, Blinken said, “in democracies there are times when, with exceptional circumstances, measures are necessary to deal with urgencies and urgent situations like the one Ecuador is experiencing now.”

Lasso, who was elected in April, has presided over one extraordinary moment after another. The economy of Ecuador splutters as the government struggles to respond to an increase in violent incidents in the country. In September, a prison riot in the Litoral Penitentiary (Guayaquil) resulted in the loss of 116 lives. Earlier, in February 2020, a coordinated series of riots in four prisons led to the death of 79 inmates in Ecuador. Responding to the recent incident in September, Lasso declared a state of emergency inside Ecuador’s prisons, which was a precursor to the national emergency.

Structural Problem, Not Extraordinary Moment

Lasso’s decree suggests that there is something pressing taking place in Ecuador that requires action. Nela Cedeño, a youth leader of the Citizen Revolution of Ecuador, told us that Ecuador has been in a long-term crisis. Just this year, she says, there have been 1,213 murders, many of them unrelated to the drug trade. “The decree [state of emergency] is not justified,” Cedeño said. The data shows an “increase in violence in the country over the past six years, which we understand as a structural problem and not an exceptional situation,” Cedeño added.

Out of Ecuador’s approximately 18 million people, 5.7 million live “in poverty,” and out of “these 5.7 million people, about 2.6 million” Ecuadorians are living “in extreme poverty,” according to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses. UNICEF calculates that three out of every 10 children in Ecuador under the age of two suffer from chronic child malnutrition. “The country is the second with the highest proportion in Latin America and the Caribbean, after Guatemala,” according to UNICEF. Everyday life in Ecuador deteriorated sharply ever since the implementation of an International Monetary Fund-driven austerity program under the previous President Lenín Moreno. Moreno’s agreement with the IMF in March 2019 resulted in widespread protests across the country.

As part of Moreno’s deal with the IMF, he cut government funding for health care, including firing 3,680 health care workers. As a result, in Guayaquil—where the prison riot had taken place and where Sebastián was murdered—dead bodies were left on the streets during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic because the health care system was underfunded and overwhelmed. Guayaquil was the “epicenter of the outbreak” during April 2020 and Ecuador had one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in Latin America as a result of the broken health care system. Lasso, whose party only has 12 of 137 seats in the National Assembly, wishes to deepen the austerity program of Moreno; this program includes tax cuts for the wealthy and withdrawal of rights for workers as well as the allowance for foreign companies to continue to operate in Ecuador’s mining sector.

Lasso’s austerity agenda, Cedeño told us, does not solve the problems of the people. There is no agenda to tackle the precariousness of employment, the need for a minimum support price for farmers, the need for subsidies for fuel, the exploding social crisis in prisons, and the general problem of violence in society. The Lasso government is “politically incapable” of dealing with the real problems, so it takes refuge in the militarization of a social crisis, Cedeño said.

Militarization of a Social Crisis

Lasso’s emergency, Cedeño said, has not calmed a “terrified and worried citizenry.” In fact, it was even more frightening when Lasso fired his Defense Minister Fernando Donoso and replaced him with a former general, Luis Hernández. Putting the military on the streets of Ecuador and pushing for laws to allow them to operate without scrutiny (and to give them immunity of action) creates the conditions for a military dictatorship with a civilian fig leaf of a government. Lasso’s emergency decree gave amnesty to the security forces who, he said, are “unjustly condemned for their work.”

Since 2019, Ecuador’s social movements, including the Indigenous movement, have frequently taken to the streets to demand an alternative path. This year, Cedeño said, “we have had several stoppages and protests against the various measures adopted by the government of Lasso. Farmers, teachers, and transportation workers have been in the lead. Teachers [even] went on hunger strike.”

The decree by Lasso came, Cedeño pointed out, just when the people’s movements gave a call for social mobilizations against the rise in fuel prices and Lasso’s austerity proposals. “It is easy for us to assume that the state of exception [was] declared at the convenience of Lasso,” to protect his policies, and “not because of the violence that plagues the country.”

Protests against the emergency decree began on October 26. Led by the United Front of Workers (FUT), the National Union of Educators (UNE), the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and the Citizen Revolution, the protests took off in earnest. While these protests were met with stiff resistance from the armed forces, they did not fade away. Roads were blocked in key areas in the Sierra and the Amazon and mass demonstrations gathered in front of the Carondelet Palace, the seat of the president in Quito. After a few days of protest, on October 28, CONAIE leader Leonidas Iza called for their suspension to honor the Day of the Dead holidays. Iza said that the protests will start-up again after the celebrations.

Chilean government slashes health staff, critical beds as Delta becomes dominant strain

Mauricio Saavedra

In an astonishingly reckless move, the outgoing right-wing Chilean government in October cut 8,000 positions within the public health system and plans on eliminating 31,000 by the end of the year. Critical and ICU beds are earmarked to be halved from the current level of 4,300. The slashing operation is all the more significant as the Delta variant of COVID-19 has become the dominant strain, and the Health Ministry is progressively removing restrictions, including to international travel.

On September 30, the administration of President Sebastian Piñera not only ended the State of Emergency that placed the deeply unpopular National Defense forces in charge of regional and national borders since March 2020, it simultaneously ended lockdowns and discontinued the supplementary health fund to deal with the pandemic.

A division of labor exists where the ultra-right government proposes, the parliamentary left disposes and the corporatist unions impose. The Health Ministry announced with much fanfare that the Senate joint commission had approved the government’s 2022 budget. Meanwhile the health unions conduct half-hearted and demoralizing token protests, stoppages and marches that convince no one and change nothing.

The Health Ministry is trumpeting the country’s high inoculation rate to justify a homicidal return to pre-pandemic activity that includes reducing expenditure on the public healthcare workforce. It is preparing projected cuts in public spending of up to 22.5 percent next year, even though there are no signs of the pandemic abating. Daily cases dropped during August and September, but October cases again shot past 2,000 in Chile, while in the northern hemisphere Europe is driving a new global upsurge .

While health, education and other social areas will bear harsh cuts, one area that will receive an increase in funding is the forces of repression that since the mass anti-capitalist mobilizations in 2019 have been accused of countless human rights abuses, including crimes against humanity.

Distribution of the number of reported COVID-19 cases (confirmed and probable) by age group and sex. Chile, 24/10/2021(Source: Ministry of Health)

In a televised address, Piñera reported that the 2022 Budget will increase “resources to modernize the infrastructure, equipment and technology of the Carabineros and the PDI [Investigations Police of Chile], to strengthen crime prevention and the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism…”

In September, hospitals in Santiago and the regional centers reported that they didn’t have enough funds to pay thousands of fixed-term employees and were obliged to reduce the number of critical beds available. Primary Health Care centers, run through the municipalities, were forced to cut thousands of personnel dedicated to overseeing contact tracing, testing and isolation measures. Private health conglomerates such as BUPA Chile carried out their own mass dismissals earlier in the year.

These socially criminal policies are in line with demands from international capital that the working class “learn to live with the virus” a doublespeak catchphrase that in reality means sacrificing lives for the sake of profits. It is in keeping with the Chilean State’s response from the outset.

The free market policies imposed by the 17-year-long fascist-military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, and then preached under four decades of civilian center-left and right-wing administrations, have left a public health system starved of resources, PPE, infrastructure and personnel. This is what transformed Chile’s pandemic emergency into a catastrophe.

Beginning in March 2020, as the virus spread across Latin America, the Chilean Central Bank and the Piñera government prioritized a pro-corporate agenda of low interest rates, offering billions in liquidity and asset purchases, and providing loan guarantees that equaled 15 percent of GDP.

Mario Marcel, the Central Bank governor said in an annual address to the Senate that the measure is “comparable to the resources that have been committed in Brazil, but far above what has been done in other Latin American countries.”

Number of health personnel infected and dead from Covid in the Americas (Source: OPS. Infograph: Gina Domingos)

Mining, a non-essential but nationally strategic industry, remained open even though the northern regions where the main copper pits are located became hotspots for the virus. So favorable was the aid and policies that magnates of mining and forestry, banking, investment and retail—Luksic-Fontbona, Ponce Lerou, Paulmann, President Piñera, Salata, Angelini, Saieh, Yarur, Solari-Falabella—increased their fortunes by 70 percent in the last two years.

And so negligible were the government handouts to the poverty-stricken population in 2020 and the beginning of 2021 that the virus spread unabated through the congested and overcrowded working class communes and among the poorest sections of the population. Shantytowns, many of which lack basic necessities of modern life—sewerage, potable water, electricity—sprouted like mushrooms, especially in the northern regions during 2020 and 2021 as thousands of destitute families, especially migrants, faced the crisis with no help.

During the most difficult period the official unemployment rate surpassed 13 percent—though several university studies demonstrated that the real figure reached closer to 29 percent when the furloughed and those not actively seeking work were included. Many were forced to seek work in the informal sector that now accounts for 27 percent of the total workforce. As a result, the demographic most devastated by the virus was the working class.

In face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government began its response with outright lies about the nature of the virus so as to forestall as long as possible forking out financial resources. For months it minimized the significance of the pandemic; the ex-Health Minister Jaime Mañalich going so far as to claim it would become benign, “something like the common cold.”

From no known cases at the beginning of March 2020, the cumulative number of infections jumped to 184,500 in the middle of June 2020; to 622,000 infections and 20,473 deaths by the end of November. By March of this year, there were just under 1 million infections and 27,000 deaths, doubling to 2 million confirmed and suspected cases and 48,553 confirmed and suspected deaths by the end of October.

Following the removal of Mañalich for repeatedly fudging the COVID-19 infection and fatality figures, his successor, Enrique Paris, expanded an “integrated public-private health network”. This put at the disposal of concierge private clinics enormous state resources, while handing only a fraction to the public health system.

The liberal news site El Desconcierto gave one example of how the private networks profited: “The basic cost of an ICU bed in the Alemana Clinic is 1,066,094 pesos while the State pays 159,760 pesos to the public hospitals for the same service. Private clinics charge 6.7 times higher and the tab is picked up by 80 percent of the population who subscribe to the National Health Fund (FONASA).”

With only 2.5 doctors, 2.7 nurses and 2.0 beds per 1,000 inhabitants, prior to the pandemic, thousands of people on waiting lists were dying long before COVID-19 came around.

La Tercera published in September a detailed report on the number of patients who have died while waiting for specialist consultations and surgeries over the last five years, reaching a high point in 2020 with 16,300 deaths during the first semester—as many as in the whole of 2016. The average surgery waiting time today stands at 18-plus months, although there are cases of patients waiting five years for an operation.

Waiting list deaths. (Source: Ministry of Health, La Tercera)

The waiting list rose astronomically in 2020 due to the prioritization of COVID-19 patients to the exclusion of all chronic diseases. By the first six months of 2020, there were 2.3 million people who were on waiting lists and an untold number of chronic patients went without referrals for fear of becoming infected. Until around August of this year, hospitals had even suspended cancer treatment, according to a report in Cooperativa.

Even with the one-off infusion of resources and personnel, the hospital system has collapsed several times since March 2020. The bed occupancy rate in the Metropolitan hospital system peaked at 98 percent, and patients had to be directed to outlying regions to receive critical care.

COVID-19 positive cases among health workers has surpassed 52,000, and 129 workers have died due to the lack of resources and personal protective equipment, long working hours and moonlighting within the health care system.

“We have 30 percent of the workers on medical leave, including 18 percent on leave due to mental health problems,” said Patricia Valderas, head of the Confederation of Health Workers (FENATS Nacional). “Waiting lists are enormous and we need a good number of trained personnel to attend to the needs of the population.” Her solution was to call on the government to extend the State of Emergency!

Aldo Santibáñez, national leader of the National Federation of University Professionals of Health Services (Fenpruss) told Diario Concepción, “There are people who have not taken holidays for a year and a half or two. And in that sense one understood that the COVID reinforcements, who already have a year and a half of experience, were ideal to stay in the health services to deal with the waiting lists...”

The president of the Medical Association, Izkia Siches, said, “We had hoped that after the pandemic a new standard would be set for how we deliver care. Unfortunately that gap remains.”

But the government, with Senate backing, can completely disregard these and every other demand, knowing full well that the corporatist unions will keep their members in line, that is, until they can’t. The ongoing tragic toll on health workers, and more broadly the working class, is not only a damning indictment of the Piñera government, the parliamentary left and the unions, it presages an eruption of the class struggle that will dwarf the developments in 2019 and come into direct conflict with all the defenders of the capitalist state.

Global markets force Australian central bank to scrap major plank of monetary policy

Nick Beams

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) made a significant change to its monetary policy yesterday, abandoning so-called yield curve targeting. Its governor, Philip Lowe, sought to present the move as a response to the achievement of the central bank’s inflation target earlier than expected.

In fact, the decision signified the failure of the RBA’s efforts to maintain the yield on an Australian government bond maturing in April 2024 at 0.1 percent in the face of powerful global market forces that ripped through the bond market last week.

Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe (Credit: Wikimedia)

After the headline rate of Australian inflation hit 3 percent and the underlying inflation rate moved above 2 percent, there was a major sell-off of short-term bonds, reflecting investors’ opinion that Australia was joining the worldwide rise in inflation.

The sell-off was part of a global movement, with short-term bond markets experiencing “unprecedented volatility” according to George Saravelos, Deutsche Bank’s head of global currency research, in remarks cited by the Financial Times.

Saravelos said the moves in bond markets had been exacerbated by investors being forced to abandon bets that had gone sour, because markets had moved against them due to rising inflation. The situation was “the closest we can get to a distressed market.”

The sell-off in the Australian market, Saravelos said, was the most severe since 1996. As a result, bond prices fell last week and the yield on the targeted bonds rose eight-fold from 0.1 percent to 0.8 percent (the price of bonds and their yield has an inverse relationship).

Last week the RBA was faced with a situation where in order to maintain its yield target it would have had to buy up every one of the available bonds in the market.

In the event, the bank decided to stand aside and basically scrap the policy. Lowe told a webinar yesterday he took the decision using his “discretionary” powers, with the RBA board rubber-stamping the shift.

In yesterday’s statement on monetary policy, Lowe said the RBA board was confronted with three options: to continue the existing policy, lift the target yield or discontinue it altogether.

It decided to take the third option on the basis that the targeting policy, introduced in March 2020, was an “appropriate tool during an exceptional period, but not one to be used on an ongoing basis.”

Lowe sought to put the best face on a bad situation. “The decision to discontinue the yield target reflects the improvement in the economy and the earlier than expected progress towards the inflation target,” he said.

That did not cut much ice. The Australian Financial Review noted: “Lowe is not the first leading public figure to make a virtue out of the disintegration of a strategy that proved unworkable in the face of market forces.”

While it abandoned yield targeting, the RBA said it would continue its policy of quantitative easing—purchasing government bonds at the rate of $4 billion a week at least until February 2022—and maintain its base interest rate at 0.1 percent. Like those of its counterparts internationally, both RBA policies have provided major support for corporations and financial markets.

But the rise in inflation is putting these measures under pressure.

Seeking to reassure the markets, Lowe insisted the decision to end yield targeting did not “reflect a view that the cash rate will be increased before 2024.” But that was no cast iron guarantee. There was “genuine uncertainty as to the timing of future adjustments to the cash rate,” he said.

It was “still entirely possible that the rate will remain at its current level until 2024.” It was “also possible that an earlier move will be appropriate.” It was “plausible that a lift in the cash rate could be appropriate in 2023,” but Lowe ruled out any increase next year.

“I recognise that that some other central banks are raising rates, but our situation is different,” Lowe said.

This wheeling out of the old line of Australian exceptionalism stood in marked contrast to what had just taken place—the RBA had been battered around the head by the operation of global markets and suddenly forced to abandon a key plank of its policies.

On the economic outlook, Lowe said the Australian economy was “well placed to resume its expansion.” Gross domestic product was expected to record a solid gain for the current December quarter. The RBA’s scenario is for economic growth of 5.5 percent for 2022 and for around 2.5 percent in 2023.

Yet Lowe acknowledged that it was “also possible that we experience yet another setback that throws the economy off course.” The source of such a shock could be a new strain of the COVID-19 virus or a decline in vaccine effectiveness.

Financial conditions in Australia, Lowe said, remain “highly accommodative,” with lending rates at record lows. The RBA was “committed to maintaining highly supportive monetary conditions.”

The maintenance of this support to corporations and the financial markets, which is also fueling record housing price rises, depends on the suppression of wages, even as inflation starts to rise.

“While inflation has picked up, it remains low in underlying terms. Inflation pressures are also less than they are in many other countries, not least because of the only modest wages growth in Australia.”

This remark points to the crucial role of the trade union apparatuses in suppressing the growing demands among workers for higher wages under the impact of inflation. This helps the RBA continue with its cheap money policies that have enabled the siphoning of wealth to the upper echelons of society and the continued fabulous enrichment of the billionaires.