Johnson government lies that main danger of COVID spread comes from Europe

Robert Stevens

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has spent the last week pouring out propaganda that any danger it is prepared to acknowledge from the spread of COVID comes not from Britain, but the European continent.

At a Downing Street press conference Monday, Johnson declared, “We don’t yet know the extent to which this new wave will wash up on our shores, but history shows we cannot afford to be complacent. Indeed, in recent days cases there have been rising here in the UK, so we must remain vigilant.”

In this Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021 file photo, Critical Care staff prone a COVID-19 patient on the Christine Brown ward at King's College Hospital in London. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, Pool)

The official narrative is that Britain got its pandemic policy right in July by fully opening the economy in the summer, creating an early surge of infection and so avoiding an increase in cases and deaths this winter. Europe, goes the argument, is now suffering the full impact of the spread of the Delta variant because it did not bite the bullet.

One would think that Johnson was speaking from a country where the pandemic was all but over. None of this bears any relation to reality, with the UK firmly in the midst of a raging pandemic. Britain has recorded around a thousand COVID-19 deaths a week for the last 20 weeks. Daily cases have remained at between 30,000 and 50,000 for months.

On what Johnson dubbed “Freedom Day” July 19, as he flung open the economy, including all non-essential business, and later schools, some 5.5 million cases of the disease had been officially recorded in Britain. In just the four months since, another 4.2 million people have contracted the disease, including hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. Based on the current trajectory, Britain will have recorded 10 million infections by the end of the month.

On July 19, there were 129,007 deaths according to the government’s manipulated statistics. Four months later there were 143,799, meaning almost 15,000 more people have died of COVID as the price so far of Johnson’s reopening, supported by the Labour Party. The true death toll is substantially higher. The Office for National Statistics (ONS), based on fatalities where COVID is listed on the death certificate, has the death toll approaching 167,000.

Close to 47,000 infections were registered yesterday, and 199 deaths.

On Tuesday, Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, a public health researcher at Queen Mary University in London, tweeted of the results of the government’s homicidal policy: “I’m shocked by what we’ve normalised and ‘accepted’ in the UK: 18 continuous wks of excess mortality over previous yrs since July; 20,800 excess deaths since July '21; 50-60% of excess deaths explained by COVID-19; highest current weekly deaths from COVID-19 since March 21.”

Professor Christina Pagel, the director of University College London’s clinical operational research unit, answered Johnson’s portrayal of COVID as a continental European problem by tweeting the same day: “since July 1, The UK has the highest overall number of cases (per population)—far higher than most of western Europe. For deaths, Eastern Europe has by far highest due to its much lower vax rates & existing poor health & high cases. UK has had highest deaths in W Europe apart from Greece (which has lower vax rates than others). UK 2x or more deaths than France, Italy, Germany, Portugal.”

Britain’s huge toll of disease and death is not a foreign import, but the product of the government’s own policies, carried out with the declared aim of making the UK the first country in which COVID is endemic.

Johnson’s urging the UK to “remain vigilant” in practice amounts to scrapping all public health measures except vaccination. But vaccination alone, without the strictest measures in place such as lockdowns and school closures, social distancing and the mandatory wearing of masks, is inadequate to combat the disease.

Around 20 percent (approximately 11.5 million people) of Britain’s population aged 12-plus are not double-vaccinated. Only around 13.9 million people (less than a quarter of the population aged 12-plus) have received a third booster vaccine. A demographic time bomb has been planted, with vaccination rates having dropped off at every age level except 12-15 and 16-17, and this because they have only begun to receive a first dose in recent weeks. All those under the age of 12 have been denied a vaccine, despite experience in other countries showing that vaccination in that vulnerable age group is safe.

This callous policy has resulted in the tragic and preventable deaths of 112 children and adolescents, with a surge taking place in the months since the reopening of schools throughout August and September. The savage treatment of the youngest in society was summed up in a Twitter posting by a member of the SafeEdforAll (Safe Education For All) campaigning group, Monday, “Child Covid, where we are. We're averaging around 80-100k child cases a week. Around 250 hospital admissions pw [per week], 3000 children with Long Covid pw, And between 3-7 child covid deaths a week.”

On Wednesday, the ONS finally tweeted what could no longer be denied: “Adults who lived with someone aged 16 or under were more likely (than those who don't live with people of these ages) to test positive for #COVID19 in the fortnight ending 6 November 2021.”

The claim that vaccination alone will end the suffering of the pandemic is refuted by the growing number of people who have been reinfected with COVID, including the double vaccinated. In June, Public Health England (PHE) published data noting that there had already been 15,893 possible reinfections identified up to May 30, 2021, in England. The danger of reinfection is heightened by the fact that COVID is constantly mutating. PHE discovered a further 478 probable reinfections among people who have tested positive for a variant that was not circulating the first time they got COVID.

Last week, the government’s homicidal agenda was laid out in a batch of documents marked “official sensitive” leaked to the Mail on Sunday. Operation “ Rampdown” is a plan to end all remaining mitigation measures by next spring.

The terrible fate in store for millions of people who face the consequences of “living with the virus”, i.e. suffering and dying with it, is being concealed by the cynical language of Johnson and his cronies, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Office Sir Patrick Vallance. Underplaying the scale of the crisis underway, as the National Health Service is already overwhelmed at the onset of winter, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, said the country faces “a bumpy few months ahead.”

In a November 14 editorial, the Financial Times spelled out the government’s policy. Unabashed in its critique of policies aimed at eliminating COVID and achieving “Zero COVID”, the article’s main theme was that the capitalist class must be able to return to unhindered profit making.

Asserting that the “challenge for Asian nations now,” specifically China, “is to open up to the rest of the world,” it insisted, “The bottom line is that Covid elimination is simply not possible. Even with an effective vaccine drive, the Delta variant is simply too infectious and too entrenched around the world. No matter how many times a country eliminates the disease, it will come back and keep coming back. At this stage, therefore, border closures and draconian lockdowns simply postpone the moment when Covid-19 will inevitably become endemic in a population while limiting citizen’s freedom.”

A programme of elimination for COVID-19 is not only possible, but vitally necessary to avoid the loss of countless more lives and years of good health. It requires the international working class to take the response to the pandemic out of the hands of the murderer Johnson, his accomplices in the Labour Party and the trade unions, and their equivalents across the world.

Rail and airport workers strike in France for wage increases

Anthony Torres

Workers at the national railways and airport security in France are striking against worsening working conditions and for wage increases. These strikes are part of an international resurgence of working-class struggle against the attacks by the state and employers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A nationwide action called by the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and Sud Rail began on Wednesday, demanding wage increases to coincide with mandated annual salary negotiations between the unions and management. According to the unions, the railway management wants to impose yet another wage freeze for the seventh straight year in 2021.

Several train lines are being disrupted. Four out of five trains on the Paris-Regional B line and three out of four trains on the D line are running and one out of two trains on the N line. In the provinces, disruptions are also expected. In Occitania, the strike began on November 16, and in the Alpes-Cote D’Azur region, traffic will be disrupted from November 16-18.

After being on strike on October 11 and 26, rail agents in the Île-de-France region surrounding Paris will be on strike on December 1 against a restructuring plan that includes layoffs and additional workloads, to be implemented in April 2022.

For three days since November 16, airport security agents have been on strike against the renegotiation of local contracts that reduce annual bonuses. The strike affects the airports of Roissy, Toulouse, Marseille, Mulhouse, Clermont-Ferrand, Lyon and Nice with strike participation rates between 70-100 percent.

According to Nordine Kebbache, a delegate of the CGT at Transdev in Roissy, employees of the subcontracted airport security guards are demanding “more than maintaining the annual bonus, a 10 percent increase in wages, improvements in working conditions,” or an additional bonus.

The international financial aristocracy is responding to the pandemic by restructuring the global economy to impose poverty wages and destroy jobs. Rising prices due to raw material shortages affect every aspect of workers’ lives as their real wages are falling. At the same time, the collective wealth of billionaires has increased scandalously from $5 trillion to $13 trillion in one year, while the pandemic has killed millions.

In France, in the space of 10 years, the 500 largest fortunes have seen their wealth triple from €211 billion to €731 billion, or 30 percent of French GDP.

The strikes in transport and airport security are part of a growth of working-class struggle against the attacks by the ruling class throughout the pandemic. Last summer, German railway workers went on strike for weeks, and private bus drivers in Britain were on strike last month. In the US, auto workers have repeatedly rejected sellout agreements negotiated by the UAW and Volvo Trucks and struck for weeks in a rebellion against the UAW at John Deere, the equipment manufacturer.

In France, last month Transdev bus drivers in Seine-et-Marne and Val d’Oise went on strike for weeks against a work restructuring, threatening to paralyse the Ile-de-France region’s transportation. Garbage collectors in the Aix-Marseille metropolitan area went on strike for more than two weeks against the increase in working hours. Fearing the combativeness of the transport workers, the president of the Île-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse, who is also a candidate in the Republican presidential primaries, threatened to break the bus drivers strike by sending the police against the pickets.

However, the legitimate demands of the workers cannot be won via a movement organized by the trade unions. The latter are calling for strikes not because they want to develop a movement against the policies of Macron and the EU but because they want to divert the rise of working-class struggle.

Discredited by decades of betrayal, the unions are attempting to secure credibility among the workers, while negotiating the lowering of working conditions and a reduction in real wages. This is one element of the coronavirus policy advocated by European governments, to “learn to live with the virus,” involving the full operation of workplaces and schools in the midst of the spread of the pandemic. This exposes workers and their children to mortal danger as Europe is once again the epicenter of the global pandemic.

The struggle for the defense of workers’ social rights is closely linked to the struggle against the pandemic. To break the accelerating spread of the virus in March 2020, workers had to mobilize independently of the unions and political establishment, carrying out wildcat strikes in Italy and Spain to demand that workers be allowed to shelter at home. Fearing a social explosion, governments accepted strict lockdowns.

The strikes were initiated from below, and the capitalist class with the help of trade unions was able to use this period to push through trillions of euros in bailouts, before imposing the reopening of workplaces and reopening of schools, without adequate measures to prevent the accelerated spread of the virus. This has produced a wave of death—and an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top of society. The trade unions’ collaboration with Macron has contributed toward the resurgence of the pandemic, despite the impact of the initial lockdowns.

Eastern Europe teeters on war

Andrea Peters

Tensions over refugees at the Polish-Belarus border, Ukraine’s conflict with Russia, and NATO’s aggressive actions in the Black Sea threaten to provoke a military conflict in Eastern Europe involving the world’s major powers.

In this handout photo released by State Border Committee of the Republic of Belarus on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021, a view of a tent camp set by migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere gathering at the Belarus-Poland border near Grodno, Belarus. (State Border Committee of the Republic of Belarus via AP)

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that as part of exercises in the Black Sea, NATO bombers had flown within 20 kilometers of his country’s borders, an act that he described as “crossing the line.” In April of this year at his annual address to the nation, Putin used similar language to warn that his government would take “asymmetric, rapid, and tough” actions when it determined that “red lines” were crossed.

In his remarks yesterday to a gathering at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Kremlin leader accused the West of aggravating the situation in Ukraine by providing Kiev, which is currently waging a civil war to retake two breakaway pro-Russian regions in its east, with modern weapons. He said that in addition to its maneuvers along Russia’s southwestern flank, NATO has been conducting training operations very close to other parts of Russia’s borders.

Simultaneously, in an effort to demonstrate that it is Paris and Berlin, and not Moscow, that are behind the failure to tamp down the crisis in Ukraine’s east, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov published private correspondence with the governments of France and Germany, indicating that Russia has been insisting on direct talks between the warring parties in an effort to implement the Minsk Accords.

As this has been unfolding, there are reports in the Russian press that Ukrainian forces shelled parts of the Lugansk People’s Republic, one of the areas seeking to separate from Kiev, this week. The government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, which recently sent an additional 8500 troops to its border with Russia, said that its marines are now carrying out drills near the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea.

Ukraine and its Western backers are demanding that Russia draw down troops massed along its borders with Ukraine, with Kiev and much of the media declaring that Moscow is on the verge of invading. Having just met with his Ukrainian counterpart to give public assurances of Washington’s support, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stopped short of the same accusation, stating, “We’ll continue to call on Russia to act responsibly and be more transparent on the buildup of the forces around on the border of Ukraine.” “We’re not sure exactly what Mr. Putin is up to,” he added.

Meanwhile, the situation along the Polish-Belarusian border remains fraught. On Wednesday, Polish forces unleashed tear gas and water cannons on thousands of primarily Iraqi refugees trying to enter the country in order to make their way to Germany. With Warsaw, Brussels, and Washington accusing Minsk of engaging in “hybrid warfare” by allegedly causing a migrant crisis along Poland’s border, the same day German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the Polish prime minister to declare “Germany’s full solidarity with Poland.”

The G7 issued a statement 24 hours later stating that it “condemn[s] the Belarus regime’s orchestration of irregular migration across its borders. These callous acts are putting peoples' lives at Risk [sic].”

“We are united in our solidarity with Poland, as well as Lithuania and Latvia, who have been targeted by this provocative use of irregular migration as a hybrid tactic,” said the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US.

The men, women, and children being drenched with freezing water, gassed, and left to die in the forests along Poland’s borders are all fleeing countries that have been laid waste by the very powers now applauding their persecution on the basis of the inverted reality that somehow Belarus’ decrepit dictatorial regime is the real source of their misery.

Imperialism is relentless towards its victims. At least eleven refugees have frozen to death so far, and volunteers from both the Polish and Belarusian sides of the borders who have been trying to bring food, tents, and medicine to the migrants say they expect to find many more bodies.

Following Wednesday’s assault by Polish forces and a second conversation with Merkel, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko ordered the removal of a thousand refugees to a nearby hangar where they are being given food and shelter. While thousands more remained in the forest about a mile away, his government said the area is being cleared.

Coming out of his discussion with Merkel, Lukashenko began deporting migrants, with nearly 400 sent back to Iraq on Thursday and plans to return another 5000. Belavia, Belarus’ national carrier, has stopped transporting people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Yemen who are seeking to fly to Minsk through Tashkent, Uzbekistan but do not have Polish entry documents. Other airlines are also refusing to provide passage to Iraqis traveling from Turkey, Iran, and Dubai to Belarus.

Lukashenko’s press secretary said Thursday that an agreement was also reached with Merkel to create a humanitarian corridor through which 2000 refugees can make their way to the EU.

The character of the arrangement made between Lukashenko and Merkel remains unclear, with Berlin describing the discussion as merely “underlin[ing] the need to provide humanitarian care and return options for the people affected.” Minsk declared that the two leaders “agreed that the problem will be addressed at the level of Belarus and the E.U., and that the two sides will designate officials who will immediately enter into negotiations in order to resolve the existing problems.”

Regardless of the developments of the last two days, it is clear that the campaign against the Lukashenko regime, which is ultimately directed against Russia, will continue.

The EU is preparing new sanctions against Belarus, and on Tuesday US cyber security firm Mandiat issued a report stating that it has “high confidence” that a hacking and disinformation campaign titled “Ghostwriter” is “aligned with Belarusian government interests” and it “cannot rule out Russian contributions” even though it has “not uncovered direct evidence of such contributions.”

The statement that someone “aligned with Belarusian government interests” —which could mean anything, including false flag operators— has been transformed in the Western press to mean, as a recent AP article stated, that there is “compelling forensic evidence that Belarus was involved in the hacking.”

NATO members Estonia and Latvia, who criticized Merkel for meeting with Lukashenko, have both announced the immediate deployment of troops to their Russian and Belarusian borders, respectively. The two Baltic countries called snap military exercises this week. Prior to these events, Lithuania had already begun building a steel and barbed wire wall on its border with Belarus.

On Tuesday, Germany announced it was suspending the certification of Nord Stream 2, a Russian-German natural gas pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea to deliver supplies to Europe. The process of bringing online the transit route, which is of critical economic and geopolitical significance to both Moscow and Berlin, is now allegedly being held up because Gazprom needs to create a German subsidiary to handle its European operations. The US as well as countries such as Ukraine and Poland have long bitterly opposed the pipeline but Germany had insisted on building it anyway.

On Wednesday, John Bolton, who served as the US National Security Advisor under President Donald Trump and has had diplomatic posts in every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan, called for ousting Lukashenko.

“So, our strategy, I think, should be how to get Lukashenko out of power and finding him a nice villa on the Riviera or something like that. [It is] something we ought to consider because if he invites Russia in, I don’t think they are leaving,” Bolton stated.

PSOE-Podemos sends police to attack Spanish metalworkers strike in Cádiz

Alejandro López & Alex Lantier

For four days, over 22,000 metalworkers have been on an indefinite strike in the southern Spanish province of Cádiz, as strikes mount across Europe and internationally. Workers in Cádiz are demanding wage increases and bonuses, including for hazardous work, and opposing the planned closure of an Airbus plant.

Striking steelworkers march in southern Spanish province of Cadiz. (Credit: Twitter, Raul Martinez @raulmtt)

The struggle has rapidly developed into a rebellion against the union bureaucracies and a clash with Spain’s government coalition, made up of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the pseudo-left Podemos party.

Workers occupied the Puerto Real industrial area and built barricades with industrial equipment, burning cars and rail tracks to block police from the area. Bonfires have been lit at the entrances to the factories, manned by pickets, halting production. Military shipbuilder Navantia, European multinational aerospace firm Airbus, construction multinational Dragados, aerospace supplier Alestis and stainless steel manufacturer Acerinox, and their subcontractors are all affected.

Workers at petrochemical plants in La Linea, Algeciras, and Los Barrios have also stopped work, and picketers there blocked major highways.

The strike is widely supported in the region, which has the highest unemployment rate in Spain, with 23 percent unemployment and over 40 percent among youth. The trade unions report that 98 percent of workers are striking as anger surges across the region.

One Cádiz worker wrote on Facebook: “I am the daughter and sister of metalworkers. I remember strikes of the 1980s when my father and mother went onto the streets to look for bread for their six children not knowing whether that night they would sleep in prison or the hospital. … Cádiz is that, STRUGGLE, it is not always carnival, cruises, beaches and bars to look good in the New York Times. Cádiz is First World poverty, working sunrise to sunset but still not making it to the end of the month, shortages, problems and needless workplace accidents to save company profits.”

She appealed for workers more broadly to support the strike, saying: “Even if you don’t work in metalworking, you eat thanks to metalworking.”

The PSOE-Podemos government, however, is supporting the Federation of Metal Companies of Cadiz (FEMCA), which has refused any concessions, only proposing a 0.5 percent wage increase. The trade unions—the Podemos-linked Workers Commissions (CCOO) and PSOE-aligned General Workers Union (UGT)—are calling for 2 percent this year and 3 percent the following year. This is still way below inflation and means the union would impose a massive paycut on workers.

The PSOE-Podemos government mobilized riot police against the strike. It deployed a special surveillance unit, with many officers from the Police Intervention Unit dispatched from the nearby city of Seville, together with the provincial Prevention and Reaction Unit. These forces are now backed by local police and paramilitary Civil Guards, who are now deployed in the industrial zones.

On Tuesday, the government gave the order to attempt to crush the strike, with police marching on the occupied plants and assaulting workers with truncheons, pepper spray and firing rubber bullets. However, police were thrown back without being able to retake the plants by the workers.

While it sends cops to try to directly crush the strike, Podemos and the PSOE are also using bureaucrats in their affiliated trade unions to try to demoralize and sell out the workers. The unions initially called one-day protests to try to blow off steam, with one called on November 10 gathering 4,000 protesters in Cádiz and 2,000 in Algeciras. With CCOO and the UGT having recently agreed to close an Airbus factory in Cádiz, however, they felt obliged to call an indefinite strike, fearing that they would lose control as anger surged among workers.

Now, union executives are openly admitting that they have lost control of the situation and do not know how to order workers to end the strike and accept wage cuts and job losses. The regional secretary of the Stalinist CCOO, Fernando Grimaldi, said, “People are extremely angry; we are going to see how this can be controlled.”

Grimaldi went on to denounce the strikers for setting fires outside refineries to help keep riot police outside of the plants. He complained, “The access routes to the refineries were cut this morning at 6:30 a.m. I saw a fire in Guadarranque, and I raised the alert immediately, because I do not agree at all with that type of action. But people are very angry, and there are outbursts all the time.”

The UGT and CCOO national federations issued a statement demanding that strikers stop blocking highways. “We must manage this conflict well,” they declared, “and therefore we believe it is necessary to concentrate our actions at the entries of the principal workplaces. Therefore, we are asking that highways be left open.”

Workers can give no confidence to these bureaucrats, who are political allies of the ruling parties against the strike and the working class. Their policy is two-faced, claiming to support workers while agreeing to slash their wages and shutter plants where they work, calling to demobilize protests, and coordinating closely with parties of government who are assaulting workers with rubber bullets and pepper spray.

The same goes for Cádiz Mayor José María González, member of Anticapitalistas, a petty-bourgeois tendency affiliated with France’s Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) that helped found Podemos in 2014. Addressing protesters yesterday in Cádiz, González assured them that “the Cádiz City Council was, is and will be with the workers struggle.” At the same time, his wife, national Anticapitalistas leader Teresa Rodríguez, is appealing for an alliance to Podemos General Secretary Yolanda Díaz.

Anyone “who is [in] our ideological spectrum, and Yolanda is, will be able to talk to us face to face, they will have an ally in us,” Rodríguez said. She said, “We are interested in supporting courageous policies, wherever they are made but carried to the end.”

The greatest allies of workers in Cádiz are workers around the world fighting for better wages and against mounting social inequality and the criminally-negligent official handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States, the same issues that are driving the Cádiz strikes are driving the largest strike wave in decades, including major struggles at Volvo, Deere, Dana and other major firms.

Strikes involving tens of thousands of workers across multiple industries have erupted throughout Portugal. In September and October, rail workers, teachers, pharmacists, subway workers, emergency medical technicians, tax office workers and prison guards all struck.

In Spain, strike notices have multiplied in recent weeks. Meatpackers are to strike at the end of November and another four days in early December, against precarious conditions. Lorry drivers are set to strike in late December, threatening to put Spain in standstill amid the Christmas season. Farmers have also threatened to join their strike in protest at the rising costs of living.

In the region of Castilla y Leon, around 2,000 supermarket workers are set to strike for several days in December. Yesterday saw a city-wide strike in the Galician city of A Mariña and a 10,000-strong protest in a region with little over 80,000 people against factory closures and job losses.

New Zealand’s COVID-19 outbreak grows as schools reopen

Tom Peters

On Wednesday, schools reopened in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, for all remaining primary and secondary students. The top three high school year levels returned to in-person classes late last month. Early childcare centres can now increase the number of children in each group from 10 to a maximum of 20.

A COVID-19 testing centre in Wellington (Source: Twitter)

The Labour Party-led government is racing to dismantle the city’s lockdown as COVID-19 continues to spread rapidly. Last week, retail businesses reopened in the city. Now hundreds of thousands of school staff and students have returned to classrooms, including under-12s who are ineligible for vaccination.

Over the past week, nearly 200 infections were detected per day. There are a total of 4,300 active cases in the community, most of them in Auckland, and 76 people in hospital.

This is up from just 272 cases on September 22, when the government began easing the lockdown, sending hundreds of thousands of Aucklanders back to work. In early October, at the behest of big business and against the advice of scientists, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the country would “transition” away from its previous policy of eliminating COVID-19 from the community.

The deadly virus has since spread to many parts of the country. There are 214 active cases in the Waikato region and 34 in Northland. Today, a suspected infection was reported in the capital, Wellington. Cases have been detected in recent days in Tauranga, Mount Maunganui, Taupo, Thames, Rotorua, Stratford, Levin, Masterton, Palmerston North and Christchurch. None of these places have been locked down.

A six-week lockdown in Waikato ended on Wednesday, with Ardern declaring that the outbreak there was “contained.” Waikato reported 17 more infections on Thursday and 30 today.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins said last week “the risk of reopening schools is outweighed by the benefits of kids re-engaging with their learning face-to-face in this context.” In fact, the decision has nothing to do with children’s wellbeing, but is aimed at forcing parents to go back to work in the interests of corporate profit.

Schools have proven to be major centres for the spread of infection, both in NZ and internationally. This month alone, at least 17 Auckland schools and 3 early childcare centres have reported cases of COVID-19. Most responded with temporary closures.

Claims that children are not seriously at risk from the coronavirus are false. In the United States, more than 700 children have died of COVID-19 and tens of thousands have been hospitalized. In Britain, 110 children have died and more than 69,000 have developed Long COVID, a debilitating illness which can be associated with serious damage to the lungs, heart, kidneys and the brain.

As in other countries, the New Zealand unions are working hand-in-hand with the government to sow complacency and to suppress opposition to the reopening. NZEI Te Riu Roa, the primary teachers union, posted on Facebook on November 11: “The news that schools can start to ease their way back to in-person from next Wednesday is a great sign that we’re getting this virus under control again”—a statement that flies in the face of reality.

The Post-Primary Teachers’ Association stated on November 10 that the government should “provide clearer, sharper, national guidelines for all schools, particularly around responses to COVID-19 cases occurring in the school community.” In October, the union described the reopening of schools as “reckless,” but it has not organised any industrial action against the decision.

Most Auckland primary students will return to school for reduced hours, with social distancing and other mitigation measures being left up to schools to organise. Masks are mandatory in Auckland and Waikato for schoolchildren from Year 4 (ages 7-8) up.

Stan, a parent in Levin, told the World Socialist Web Site following the announcement of a positive case in his town: “I am most concerned about under-12s that can’t be vaccinated. Delta is more contagious, lands more people in hospital and affects younger people.”

Stan noted that local school students are not wearing masks, and said “the government’s shift from elimination means that people are taking precautions less seriously and anti-vaxxers have become more vocal.”

Susan Bates, an early childhood education (ECE) teacher, researcher and co-founder of the Teachers Advocacy Group, told the WSWS that she is currently surveying ECE teachers on Facebook about their concerns. Out of more than 100 responses so far, a majority do not feel safe in their workplace.

She criticised the Ministry of Education and NZEI for providing no guidelines or information about ventilation, air filters and other mitigation measures for ECEs. She also questioned whether all cases detected in ECEs were being reported publicly, noting that she had received unconfirmed reports of infections which have not appeared in the media.

Bates welcomed the government’s decision to mandate vaccination for teachers, but said “the fact is that children still aren’t vaccinated, and they’re also likely to be asymptomatic carriers.” The Delta variant can easily be passed on by children to adults, even if children do not show symptoms.

Bates said governments internationally were “trying to normalize mass death” and this must not be allowed to happen in New Zealand. Some of the recently reported deaths in Auckland appeared to be middle aged and elderly people with underlying health problems “left to fend for themselves.”

She added that authorities were “not focusing on our vulnerable communities.” Māori and Pacific islanders are both less likely to be vaccinated, and more likely to suffer from underlying health problems, often related to poverty, putting them at much greater risk of severe illness from COVID-19.

Currently, just 67 percent of all New Zealanders are fully vaccinated; about 82 percent of the eligible population, and just 63 percent of eligible Māori. The government says once 90 percent of people aged over 12 are vaccinated it will cease to use lockdowns to suppress COVID-19. Preparations are underway for Auckland to completely reopen and travel restrictions in and out of the city to be eased next month.

Even if the target is met, it would leave one in four people unvaccinated. Speaking to Radio NZ on Wednesday, epidemiologist Michael Baker warned against the “feeling of exceptionalism in New Zealand about this virus.” He noted that Singapore, with a similar population size and 86 percent of the total population vaccinated, considerably higher than New Zealand’s rate, is seeing thousands of cases and more than 10 deaths per day.

New modelling by the research institute Te Pūnaha Matatini, commissioned by the government, shows that in a worst case scenario after restrictions are lifted, New Zealand could reach 16,000 cases per week by January, with around 800 needing hospital care.

South Asian leaders join other heads of state to back bogus climate targets at COP26

Vijith Samarasinghe

The 26th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Glasgow, dragged to an end on November 13, with speeches at the “World Leaders Summit” demonstrating the event to be a cover for the ongoing capitalist pillage of the planet.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking in Houston in 2019. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

The more than 100 heads of states attending the two-week conference made pledges that they had no intention of keeping, for goals that will make no dent in the catastrophic climate-change trends predicted by scientists. Even the bourgeois media and commentators admitted it was an historic failure.

Tens of thousands marched in Glasgow condemning the “green wash,” while globally scientists, youth, students and others accurately denounced the event as a charade. Addressing protesters in Glasgow, climate-activist Greta Thunberg declared: “It’s not a secret now that COP26 is a failure, it has just become a PR event.”

In line with their international counterparts, South Asian leaders added their voices to the chorus of false promises. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina and Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba addressed the event live. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, however, opted out at the last minute citing “domestic issues.”

In a speech hailed by the mainstream media as a “game changer,” Modi declared that India was “the only big economy which has delivered in letter and spirit on the Paris Commitment [the previous CoP meeting resolution].” He went on to claim that “despite being 17 percent of the world’s population, India’s responsibility for emissions is only 5 percent.”

India’s “achievements,” Modi said, were that the country was fourth in the world in terms of installed renewable energy, its railways were targeted to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2030, and the government’s LED bulb campaign is projected to reduce 40 million tons of carbon emissions per annum. Modi said India would reach net zero by 2070.

The rest of his speech was dedicated to ludicrously portraying ancient religious texts as a policy guide, and promoting the so-called Lifestyle for Environment collective action movement, which places responsibility for the climate crisis on the masses. “A mass movement of an environmentally conscious life-style,” he declared, “is what is needed for mindful and deliberate utilisation, instead of mindless and destructive consumption.”

Modi’s speech was filled with deceit. India’s low per capita carbon emissions are not due to any sustainable or environmentally responsible practices adopted by profit-hungry Indian capitalism. Instead they are a reflection of the abject poverty of the masses, who are deprived of the most basic energy needs and requirements.

India is currently the fourth largest emitter of carbon to the atmosphere, after China, the US and the European Union. Even by conservative estimates, its annual emissions are close to 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Much of these emissions are from its predominantly coal-based power infrastructure and the diesel-guzzling buses and trucks that constitute India’s highly inefficient road-based transport system.

The country’s meagre reductions in emissions in the industrial sector, and its increase in the non-fossil fuel fraction of the national energy mix by a few percentage points, are nowhere near the emission cuts required to reverse climate change. Modi’s pledge of attaining net zero by 2070 is contemptible, even by the much-criticised target of the Paris commitments, which required net zero to be achieved globally by 2050.

In fact, the very concept of “net zero,” according to three leading environment scientists—James Dyke, Robert Watson and Wolfgang Knorr—is a “trap,” based on the untested theoretical possibility of offsetting carbon emissions in one place, with carbon removal elsewhere and using measures such as tree planting or carbon capture technologies (see: The Conversation). The concept, they write, diminishes the urgency of curbing gross carbon emission. “Offsetting” paves the way for various bargains and “market mechanisms,” such as carbon trading.

Modi’s fig-leaf pledges are bogus and have no possibility of being realised. A week before the summit, Indian authorities were refusing to give a commitment on net zero. The 2070 net zero target was a last-minute addition to Modi’s script, to try and appease those imperialist countries that were using CoP26 as a platform to wage diplomatic war against China and Russia, for their alleged lack of commitment to the climate issue. President Biden publicly criticised the Chinese leadership “for not showing up” to a summit on such a “gigantic issue.”

As Modi was speaking at CoP26, his government halved taxes on petroleum fuels, citing the need to “further spur the overall economic cycle,” in other words, to boost corporate profits. In October, his government was scrambling to increase coal production by any means, to avert a looming power generation shortage. Plans are also underway to significantly expand the country’s coal extraction capacity. Indian capitalism is looking at an exponential future growth of fossil fuel use, not a reduction!

India’s capital Delhi descended into yet another horrific episode of air pollution this month, demonstrating what the future holds for the South Asian masses if the current destruction of the atmosphere continues. The Air Quality Index (a combined measure of key pollutants) reached 499 on a scale of 500. Five major coal power plants around the city had to be shut down to prevent a further deterioration, and the Commission of Air Quality Management ordered schools to be closed indefinitely.

Although winter air pollution in Delhi was conveniently attributed, in the past, to post-harvest crop residue burning by poor farmers in the hinterlands, it is now evident that the real culprits are the power sector, major industries and traffic. Apart from the tiny minority of ultra-rich, who can afford to have air purifiers at their offices and homes, more than 20 million residents of Delhi are being forced to breathe toxic fumes for weeks to come.

Speeches by other South Asian leaders to COP26 were similarly bogus. Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse falsely promised that the island-nation would reach net zero by 2050 and said that Colombo would increase its renewable energy component of the national energy mix to 70 percent by 2030.

Rajapakse even claimed that his government’s disastrous agro-chemical ban would help curb carbon emissions. In fact, Colombo’s import ban on agro-chemicals, which is a desperate attempt to control the country’s massive balance of payments deficit, has devastated small farmers and posed an unprecedented threat to food security. Instead of decreasing, this will increase Sri Lanka’s contribution to carbon emissions exponentially, due to greater food imports and the rural to urban migration of affected farmers.

Both Rajapakse and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheik Hasina used COP26 to appeal for financial support and investment for climate mitigation and adaptation projects.

Confronting the worst economic crises since the end of British colonial rule, the ruling classes in South Asia see investment in renewable energy projects, and climate adaptation measures, not as essential steps to save the planet’s ecosystem but as financial lifelines for their failing business interests.

In the insane logic of capitalism, any misery of the masses can be turned into a profitable undertaking for the bourgeoisie.

According to the predictions of climate scientists, South Asia is one of the most climate vulnerable regions in the world. Millions will soon lose their land and livelihoods as sea levels rise, while hundreds of thousands more will face death and destitution due to extreme weather events.

Reversal of the imminent global calamity posed by climate change requires revolutionary changes in industry, transport, agriculture and human consumption patterns. Such changes are not possible without a revolutionary social and economic reorganisation, which eliminates the capitalist profit system, with all strategic production and natural resources placed under the democratic and scientific control of the working class.

3.6 million UK families worse off after budget cuts

Simon Whelan

The £20 per week cut to the Universal Credit (UC) social security benefit, together with changes made to the way UC payments are “tapered” by Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, will leave 3.6 million families across the UK worse off.

This is the analysis of last month’s budget by the Resolution Foundation (RF). Changes to UC mean 40,000 fewer people in poverty within working families, but 160,000 more people in poverty in unemployed families, according to the think tank’s analysis.

A UK Jobcentre (Creative Comments)

UC was introduced from 2013 as a combination/replacement for several different previous welfare benefits. The taper rate is the amount of UC withdrawn for every pound a claimant earns through work. The work allowance, the amount some claimants earn before the taper is triggered, has been raised by £500 a year. The taper rate was cut by 8 pence from 63p to 55p. The £2 billion a year change means working benefit claimants keep 45p of every extra pound they earn, instead of 37p.

Of the measures, RF senior economist Karl Handscomb said, “These changes are not enough to offset the damage from the recent £20 a week cut to Universal Credit. While 1.3 million families on Universal Credit will be better off, almost three-quarters of UC families will see their incomes fall this autumn as the cost-of-living crunch bites. Universal Credit has performed extremely well during the crisis. But the recent cut in support means that our basic safety net remains far too weak to support families facing economic bad news.”

According to separate research conducted by the foundation, fiscal measures introduced in just the two years since Johnson came to power, including the recent budget, will increase the tax burden by £3,000 a year per household. The foundation found that the changes to the amount families can keep from their earnings if they are on UC only partially offsets the effect of withdrawing the £20-a-week boost put in place at the beginning of the pandemic. On average, recipients would lose £800 a year, the RF calculated. The £3,000 figure produced by the RF includes business taxes, which are regularly passed on to consumers.

The RF focuses on measuring and improving the living standards for those on low to middle incomes. It conducts research across a range of economic and social policy areas, including incomes, inequality and poverty; jobs, skills and pay; housing; wealth and assets; tax and welfare; public spending and the state, and economic growth.

The government removed the UC uplift payment, along with the jobs furlough scheme, which supported millions of workers, on the basis of lies that the pandemic is as good as over.

The UC £20 cut was the largest one-off reduction made to welfare spending in British history, removing a collective £6 billion from the poorest. Johnson’s savage cuts are worse than the Tories’ 1988 slashing of housing benefits and even the 1931 cut to unemployment benefit carried out during the Great Depression by the National Government under former Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald.

The entire edifice of UC is based on workers receiving poverty level wages. The tapering system is effectively a tax on the lowest paid. Approximately six million people receive UC payments in households containing 3.4 million children. UC is a punitive system, offering minimal financial support, often delayed, and reduced by cruel financial sanctions, payment reductions and financial caps. The benefit is pitched at such a low level that cutting the £20 uplift increase pushes millions of people, including children, into desperate financial circumstances.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that the £20 cut will on its own force 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 earned income does not cover basic living costs like utility bills, food and rent.

Cutting the UC uplift and reducing the “taper rate” will still mean a further 120,000 people driven into poverty. The Citizens Advice Bureau warned that the taper rate change does not “cushion the blow” of the £20 cut for those still looking for work, or the 1.7 million unable to work because of disability, health issues or caring responsibilities.

Approximately 73 percent of UK families on UC in 2022-23 will be worse off, with more than a quarter (27 percent), marginally better off. The RF says over half of families will be worse off by more than £1,000 a year when everything is factored in, and 75 percent will see a drop in income.

Millions of workers are constantly being churned between states of poorly paid part time or full-time employment, and unemployment.

The super exploitation and wretched low pay experienced by the working class negates last month’s increase in the National Living Wage (NLW). For those on zero hours contracts, what matters as much as the hourly rate, is the number of hours worked. Weeks with no work/no hours or too few hours, and therefore reduced/no wages, can plunge families into debt, especially when the benefit system is deliberately rendered laboriously slow to respond to changes in workers’ status.

The NLW rose but 55p in each extra pound is lost to workers as a result of changes to UC. With the end of the £20 weekly uplift, the RF found that despite the minimum wage rise the lowest paid fifth of households will still lose £280 a year.

The attack on workers’ income is taking place amid conditions of rapidly rising prices and wages failing to keep pace with rising inflation. On Wednesday, it was announced that the Consumer Prices Index measure of annual inflation rose to 4.2 percent in October. This was sharply up from 3.1 percent in September and is its highest level since 2011. The Retail Price Index measure of inflation, which includes housing costs, is already just short of 5 percent.

UK household incomes will be down approximately £1,000 next year, according to earlier RF analysis, 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.

US drug overdose deaths surged to 100,000 in first year of pandemic

Kate Randall

More than 100,000 people died of drug overdoses in the United States during the 12-month period ending April 2021, according to new provisional data published Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This staggering number, a dismal record for human misery, coincides roughly with the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 killed about 509,000 people during that same timeframe, from May 2020 to April 2021.

The drug overdose death toll jumped 29.5 percent from the same period a year earlier and has nearly doubled over the past five years. Synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl, caused 64 percent of these overdose deaths, up nearly 50 percent from the year before, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Sue Howland, right, a member of the Quick Response Team which visits everyone who overdoses to offer help, checks in on Betty Thompson, 65, who struggles with alcohol addiction, at her apartment in Huntington, W.Va., Wednesday, March 17, 2021. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Fentanyl was introduced in the 1960s as an intravenous anesthetic. Cheaper, legally or illegally produced fentanyl is often mixed with other drugs like heroin, cocaine or marijuana by drug dealers and sold to users who may not be aware of its presence.

Increases in overdose death counts were almost universal across states, while varying in magnitude. Year-over-year increases of 50 percent were seen in California, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia and Kentucky. Increases in deaths in the range of 40 percent were seen in Washington state, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota, Alaska, Nebraska, Virginia and the Carolinas.

Although the numbers were small, cases in Vermont increased by 85 percent during the year studied. Only New Hampshire, New Jersey and South Dakota saw overdose deaths drop.

Overdose deaths from methamphetamine and other psychostimulants also increased dramatically, up 48 percent in the year ending April 2021 compared to the year before, accounting for more than a quarter of all overdose deaths in the 12-month period studied. While previously fentanyl had been more widely used on the East Coast and methamphetamines on the West Coast, both drugs are now proliferating nationwide. Deaths from cocaine and prescription pain medication have also increased, although not as drastically.

The latest data from the CDC suggests that drug overdose deaths now kill slightly less than Alzheimer’s disease, which claimed about 121,000 lives in 2019, and slightly more than diabetes, about 88,000 lives. Heart disease was the leading cause of death in 2019, killing nearly 660,000 people, while cancer killed nearly 600,000.

Referring to the coming together of the COVID-19 pandemic and drug overdose deaths, Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told CNN, “In a crisis of this magnitude, those already taking drugs may take higher amounts and those in recovery may relapse. It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen and perhaps could have predicted.” The rise of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is as much as 100 times more powerful than morphine, has exacerbated this deadly explosion of opioid deaths.

The death toll of 100,000 Americans from overdoses was more than deaths from car crashes and guns combined. This number was up almost 30 percent from the 78,000 deaths the previous year and more than double since 2015. Most of these deaths occurred among people aged 25 to 55, the so-called prime of life.

By contrast, of the more than 787,500 who have died from COVID-19 to date in the US according to Worldometer, three-quarters have been over the age of 65. It is likely that among American adults under 50 years of age, more died from opioids last year than from the worst pandemic the world has seen in a century.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a perfect storm for the proliferation of drug overdose deaths. In the early stages of the pandemic, when lockdowns, school and business closures, and mask mandates were put in place in many states, resources to treat substance abuse were scaled back. Many suffering from addiction, particularly young adults, were isolated from their support systems and unable to access treatment. Many were left to overdose alone with no one with them to administer Narcan (naloxone) or call for help.

However, the loosening of restrictions—which has allowed the coronavirus to spread and kill—has not resulted in an improvement in access to care for substance abuse. “Even if COVID went away tomorrow, we’d still have a problem. What will have an impact is dramatic improvement to access to treatment,” Dr. Andrew Kolodny, medical director of opioid policy research at the Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management, told CNN. “These are deaths in people with a preventable, treatable condition,” he said “The United States continues to fail on both fronts, both on preventing opioid addiction and treating addiction.”

Due to the chaotic, unplanned character of the for-profit health care system and lack of resources, there is also no coordinated program to distribute naloxone (Narcan) widely and at no cost to health departments nationwide. This is also the case with fentanyl test strips, which can tell a user if the deadly opioid is present.

Substance abuse continues to be stigmatized in the US. Those suffering from addiction are chastised by the right and those in authority for their moral failings while programs and treatments are starved for cash. Presidential candidate Biden pledged to “Hold accountable big pharmaceutical companies, executives and others responsible for their role in triggering the opioid crisis,” but this was just hot air.

Lawsuits against such legal drug dealers have yielded a slap on the wrist or less. Earlier this month, a California judge said he would rule against several large counties in the state that accused four drug makers—Johnson & Johnson, Teva, Endo International and AbbVie—of fueling the US opioid epidemic, saying they failed to prove their $59 billion case.

In August, a bankruptcy judge approved a settlement by OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family that the company values at more than $10 billion—a drop in the bucket for the mega-wealthy drug company owners and cold comfort for the millions of Americans who have suffered due to their marketing of deadly opioids.

Over the past three years, the Department of Health and Human Services, through the Health Resources and Services Administration, has invested a paltry $384 million in community-based grants and technical assistance on prevention, treatment and recovery services in rural communities to fight opioid use and other substance abuse disorders.

Speaking on the release of the new overdose death figures, President Biden claimed, “We are strengthening prevention, promoting harm reduction, expanding treatment, and supporting people in recovery, as well as reducing the supply of harmful substances in our communities. And we won’t let up.” He added, “Together we will turn the tide on this epidemic.”

Biden’s false and cynical statements cannot hide the reality. The United States will no more “turn the tide” in opioid deaths than on COVID-19 deaths, although in both cases, there are practical solutions at hand, if the necessary resources were provided.

Instead, the White House turns a blind eye to the enormity of the crisis. Anne Milgram, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said, “This year alone, DEA has seen enough fentanyl to provide every member of the United States population with a lethal dose and we are still seizing more fentanyl each and every day.”

In a call with reporters Wednesday, in support of his anti-China campaign Biden attempted to shift the blame for the opioid crisis from the US to Mexican drug cartels sourcing drug-making chemicals from China.

Contrary to suggestions that the surging overdose deaths have come because health care resources have been diverted from substance abuse treatment to the pandemic, the US ruling elite and the profit-based health care system are responsible for both catastrophes. Those dying from drug overdoses and those cut down by COVID-19 are both victims of the homicidal policies of corporate America and its political representatives.