UK school ceiling collapses after a decade of austerity cuts and lifting of safety regulations

Margot Miller

Last week, 12 children and one adult were taken to hospital after a school ceiling collapsed at a primary school in London. The London Ambulance service treated a further three people at the scene.

Three fire engines and 20 firefighters attended the incident at Rosemead Preparatory School & Nursery in Dulwich, after the ceiling of a second floor Year 3 classroom caved in on November 15. Luckily, no one sustained serious injury, though one child was detained in hospital under observation, after what must have been a terrifying experience.

The Urban Search and Rescue team were sent to the school and, while staff and pupils were evacuated temporarily, determined that the building “was at no further risk of collapse.”

An ambulance and fire engine outside Rosemead Preparatory School in London (Credit: London Fire Brigade/Twitter)

The other classes in the school resumed as normal for the rest of the day, despite the psychological trauma suffered by all concerned. A mother waiting to pick up her eight-year-old son told the Daily Mail, “Fortunately my son was not involved but it must be traumatising to have seen their friends covered in blood.”

Rosemead is a private school for children aged two to 11 years. With 325 children on rolls, annual fees range up to almost £15,000. The school acquired the 156-year-old building in 1974 after a group of parents bought it from the Old Vic theatre.

The Health and Safety Executive have begun “initial inquiries” into what could have been a tragic outcome.

Since the 2008 financial crash, every government department has suffered crippling cuts, including the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Since 2010, the HSE has lost 500 frontline inspectors as part of budget cuts of 50 percent.

Each local authority in the UK, responsible for enforcing building regulations, have been subjected to draconian cuts since 2008. Rosemead Preparatory School is in a district run by Southwark Council. The Labour-run council has implemented tens of millions in cuts after having its funding cut by more than £146 million by central government since 2011.

When Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron took office in 2010, he implemented a “bonfire of regulations,” relaxing restrictions to create a bonanza for profiteers. Cameron openly pledged to “kill off safety culture”, declaring, “We need to realise, collectively, that we cannot eliminate risks and that some accidents are inevitable.”

The Department for Education advice on standards for school premises in England, last updated March 2015 applies to all schools, including private and local authority-run schools and Academies. It states: “This advice is non-statutory, and has been produced to help recipients understand their obligations and duties in relation to the School Premises Regulations 2012…

“There are fewer regulations than previously and they are less prescriptive, allowing schools more flexibility in how they use their premises. Many regulations state that provision must be ‘suitable’. This is not precisely defined, but schools must take into account the age, number and sex of pupils, and any special requirements they have, when determining whether provision is suitable.”

Successive governments, including Labour, have subordinated every aspects of society, including the safety of school buildings, to the grotesque bloating of wealth of the billionaires.

· In September, Ford Primary School run by the Horizon Multi Academy Trust in Plymouth suffered a partial collapse of the school hall roof.

· A secondary school in Berkshire suffered a partial roof collapse over a walkway on November 15, 2020. Sandhurst school, with 1,000 pupils on its rolls, was forced to use 10 temporary classrooms. The headteacher said she felt, “Relief of course that nobody was hurt - that just does not bear thinking about.”

· In October 2019, part of the roof and brickwork at St Anne’s Catholic Primary School in Sutton, St Helens collapsed, exposing a classroom to the elements. Fortunately, this occurred during half term so there were no injuries. The Liverpool Echo reported “one worried parent said: 'It's scary to think what could have happened if they were in school as builders said nobody would have survived that.”

· On May 10, 2018, a teacher and three pupils, aged between six and seven, suffered minor injuries when part of the ceiling fell in a Year 2 classroom at Nechells Primary School, Birmingham. Nearly 330 sq. m (3,552sq ft) worth of ceilings at the Grade II listed building were replaced.

· Edinburgh Council commissioned an investigation into school building safety after a disastrous collapse of a wall at Oxgangs Primary School in February 2017, leading to the subsequent closure of 17 schools for checks. The schools were procured under the Public Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

A report published in 2018 following an investigation into the Oxgangs Primary School collapse led by construction and procurement expert Professor John Cole was damning. It stated: “The fact that no injuries or fatalities to children resulted from the collapse of the gable wall at Oxgangs School was a matter of timing and luck. Approximately 9 tons of masonry fell on an area where children could easily have been standing or passing through. One does not require much imagination to think of what the consequences might have been if it had happened an hour or so later…

“The Inquiry has become aware that this was one of five avoidable incidents of external masonry panels failing in strong winds at Scottish schools in the last few years… in all cases it would appear that proper quality control at the time of building could have identified and have rectified the basic defects in construction that led to the failures.

An example of the tearing up of regulations was summed up by Cox who stated, “Despite the significant increasing reliance being placed on the quality assurance by contractors of their own work, there is no formal requirement for the personnel within contracting organisations charged to have undergone any recognised test of competency to do so.”

· Weeks before the beginning of the 2018 autumn term, the ceiling of soon-to-be opened North-West Community Campus school in Dumfries caved in due to a leak caused by a badly fitted sprinkler. The school was built with a private finance initiative (PFI) costing £28 million.

Under the PFI system, in operation until 2018, private contractors built public buildings and maintain sites in exchange for mortgage-style payments, usually over 25 years paid for by public funds. The 17 Edinburgh schools cost £130 million to build but will eventually cost taxpayers £531 million. The scheme was initially introduced under the Conservatives in 1992 and then vastly expanded by the 1997 Blair Labour government.

A recent survey of 1,500 British state school leaders commissioned by the National Association of Head Teachers found that 83 percent of schools lack funds to repair dilapidated school buildings. The survey confirm those of a Department of Education study, which found that schools in England alone face a repair bill of £11.4 billion. It concluded that £2.5 billion was needed for electrical and IT repairs, £2 billion for boilers and air-conditioning repairs, and £1.5 billion for mending roofs, windows and walls.

Despite the collapse of the school ceiling in a Victorian-era building, resulting in hospitalisations, Rosemead Preparatory School remained open. The school commented, “Parents and families can be reassured that the school day is continuing as usual today for the rest of the school.”

This decision was taken under condition in which there is a hysterical campaign by the ruling party, backed by Labour and the trade unions, that schools must remain open at all costs during the pandemic.

The government and Labour claim that schools must remain open in the best interests of children, but what is driving this policy is the imperative of big business is that they be kept open in order to allow parents to go to work and prevent any curtailment of the accumulation of profit.

The run-down state of schools can only exacerbate the transmission of COVID-19 in schools—which will only be safe for face-to-face teaching when the virus is eliminated. Children are crammed into overcrowded classrooms, in run-down school buildings which in some cases are structurally unsound. They are catching and spreading COVID, and in thousands of cases developing Long COVID with unknown long term health consequences. There have been 112 child COVID fatalities to date, and more will succumb to this dreadful disease.

Coronavirus pandemic in Austria runs out of control

Markus Salzmann

The unscrupulous policies of Austria’s ruling parties in recent months have led to mass coronavirus infections and high death rates. On Friday, the country of 8.9 million people recorded 15,809 new infections, one of the highest infection rates in all of Europe. Over the weekend, around 15,000 people were also infected daily. On Thursday, the threshold of one million infections was exceeded.

People wait to get COVID-19 vaccines in Vienna, Austria, Monday, Nov. 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

More than 12,000 people have lost their lives since the pandemic began. The country’s hospitals are collapsing under the high number of intensive care patients. The 7-day incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants has been above 1,000 for days. In several provinces, it far exceeds that. In Salzburg, it was 1,805 on Friday and in Upper Austria 1,677. The vaccination rate of 66 percent is very low compared to other European countries.

The ferocious wave of infections has been raging for weeks in all sectors of society. In addition to hospitals and nursing homes, schools and kindergartens, in particular, have been exposed to the contagion. In the second week of school after the autumn vacations in the middle of the month, 3,520 PCR tests returned positive results at schools.

According to the Ministry of Education and the City of Vienna, there were 965 positive tests in Vienna alone (862 students, 103 teachers), in Upper Austria there were 673 students, in Lower Austria 406, in Styria 328, in Tyrol 248, in Carinthia 235, in Salzburg 209, in Vorarlberg 96 and in Burgenland 73. Since there is no thorough testing regime, the number of unreported cases is many times higher.

The long-term consequences of this policy are not even foreseeable yet. Since spring 2021, the Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES), MedUni Graz and the Austrian Society for Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (ÖGKJ) have been conducting a study into this. Most recently, the first interim results from 755 children up to 14 years of age were presented.

The Salzburger Nachrichten quoted Daniela Schmid, the AGES study coordinator, saying, “Sixty percent of the children who tested positive developed clinical symptoms of COVID-19 disease. Just under 7 percent presented to a physician; 2.4 percent were hospitalized.” Later than four weeks after infection, Long COVID symptoms were observed in 11 percent of children under 10 years of age. Ten- to 14-year-old children were affected even more frequently, at 15.5 percent. The most common Long COVID symptoms observed were generally increased fatigue (4.2 percent), followed by impaired sense of smell and taste (3 percent) and shortness of breath. Symptoms were still observed in 6.2 percent of respondents more than three months after infection.

Staff in the country’s hospitals have long since reached the limit of their capacity, and regular care of patients is no longer possible. A nurse from a hospital in Upper Austria told the APA news agency about the dire conditions there. From Sunday night to Monday the previous week, she said, there were so many deaths in her hospital that the pathology department was already at its limit. “Bodies had to be deposited in the corridor because of overcrowding.”

In hospitals in the province of Salzburg, virtually all intensive care beds are occupied. Last Wednesday, 30 of the total 136 intensive care beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients. Under these conditions, triage measures—i.e., the selection of which patient can be treated and which patient is doomed to die—are being prepared concretely. A spokesman for Salzburg regional hospitals explained that a team of doctors had been nominated to decide which patients could still be treated with intensive care. It was necessary to warn “the population and politicians from this time on that we are up against the wall,” the hospital spokesman said.

In this small state alone, there is currently a shortage of 272 hospital beds. In addition, there is a shortage of medical and nursing staff. Because of the sharp rise in the number of infections, the state of Salzburg also expects a further massive increase in COVID-19 patients.

The federal government coalition of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Green Party, as well as the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), which is in government in several states, is responsible for the catastrophic situation in the Alpine republic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, all parties have all been implementing in essence the policies of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), which most openly advocates the criminal and murderous policy of deliberate mass infection.

This cannot be obscured even by the lockdown that went into effect on Monday, which the government only decided upon on Friday. The same regulations now apply that were used in previous lockdowns in Austria. For example, there are restrictions on leaving homes. This is now only allowed for shopping, visits to doctors and relatives, work or outdoor exercise. Only supermarkets and stores supplying daily needs remain open; other stores are closed. The same applies to cultural institutions and indoor sports facilities. In addition, the introduction of a general vaccination requirement is being discussed.

As with previous measures, those now adopted come much too late and are far from sufficient. Initially, the measures are to apply for only 20 days, until December 12. This period is not enough to reduce the number of infections to the extent that would be necessary.

The government is trying to maintain the “profits before lives” policy at all costs. Despite the explosion in infections, businesses and schools remain open. Although parents are free to choose not to send their children to in-person classes, the unrestricted opening of businesses means that parents have little opportunity to make that choice.

Last year, under then Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP), Austria was already the pioneer in its reopening policy. Although the country was one of the starting points of the pandemic in Europe, the People’s Party and the Greens have always refused to impose the scientifically necessary protective measures, citing economic interests. Half-hearted, short “lockdowns” were ordered several times. After they ended, wide-ranging reopenings always resulted in a huge increase in the number of infections.

Last month, Kurz was forced to resign after the Central Public Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Economic Crimes and Corruption searched the Federal Chancellery, the Ministry of Finance and the ÖVP party headquarters. Kurz and his closest associates have been accused of serious embezzlement, bribery and making false statements.

But policies have not changed in any way as a result. Kurz’s successor, Alexander Schallenberg, declared just a few days ago that there would be no “lockdown in solidarity with the unvaccinated.” Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler and Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein (both Greens) also resisted the urgent advice and demands of doctors and scientists who had been warning for months of the catastrophe that has now occurred.

The government’s unscrupulous herd immunity policies, largely in line with those of the FPÖ and QAnon types, have strengthened these far-right forces.

While tens of thousands are becoming infected daily and dozens die from COVID-19, large demonstrations against coronavirus protections were again permitted in Vienna and were escorted by police. Predominantly right-wing and openly fascist groups called for participation in these demonstrations and, according to media reports, mobilized about 30,000 people from Austria and abroad. The demonstrators included convicted neo-Nazi Gottfried Küssel and Identitarian leader Martin Sellner.

Although there were indications of possible attacks on hospitals and vaccination centres, the Vienna police said they did not expect the situation to escalate. And even after demonstrators carried out attacks, the protests could be carried out and ended unhindered. The close ties between the state and right-wing extremist elements were also shown by the call of high-ranking military representatives to participate in the protests.

CVS announces 900 US store closures over next three years

Jessica Goldstein

CVS Health announced last Thursday that it plans to close 900, or 9 percent, of its US stores by 2024. The company will begin the closures in 2022 and will close about 300 stores each year, according to a report by CNBC.

CVS/pharmacy on Garrett Road in Durham, NC. [Credit: Ildar Sagdejev / Wikimedia Commons]

The corporation said that its decision was based on needs to adjust to consumers shifting to shopping more online, in spite of in-store retail sales increasing over the last year as shoppers made more visits to its stores which provide COVID-19 tests and vaccinations. CNBC reports that the corporation will shift its focus to “digital growth and turning its stores into health-care destinations.”

The store closures are a part of the decade-long decline of the brick-and-mortar retail industry, supplanted by the growing online retail industry, dubbed the “retail apocalypse.” The onset of the coronavirus pandemic accelerated this trend. According to the Week, “Major retailers closed 12,000 stores in 2020, after an already devastating 2019, when more than 9,300 stores closed. Another 80,000 stores—9 percent of the nation’s total—will close in this ‘retail apocalypse’ over the next five years as e-commerce sales grow, predicts a report from financial services company UBS.”

The announced closures are part of a strategy to continue to shore up the corporation’s profits to meet the demands of its major shareholders in the face of major technological shifts in the industry and supply chain shortages that are expected to impact profits on a global scale for an indefinite period of time.

After Thursday’s announcement, the company’s stock rose 2.81 percent, closing at $95.34. According to CNBC, the company has outperformed its own targets and competitor drugstore chains, such as Walgreens, on Wall Street this year. Its shares are up 40 percent over the last year and the corporation has a market value of over $125 billion. Its three largest institutional shareholders, BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, are among the largest asset management firms in the US and control a majority of stock market wealth.

CVS did not disclose the locations of the stores slated to close, nor the number of workers that would lose their jobs as a result of the closures. Even without exact numbers, it is reasonable to predict that several thousand workers will lose their jobs every year over the next three years. The company has mentioned that “it will help those who are impacted find a different opportunity or role at another location,” but without the prospect of new locations or jobs for lower-skilled workers in the company’s plans, it is likely that most retail workers affected by the layoffs will be turned out on the street to fend for themselves.

The corporation’s booming assets are not simply the result of increasing sales after the onset of the pandemic and lifting of very limited lockdown measures across the US. CVS retail locations were considered essential businesses during the brief period of nationwide shutdowns from March through May of 2020, and workers at the retail locations could not stay home.

Workers at the stores must accomplish unreasonable workloads with fluctuating hours for very low pay. The job posting site Glassdoor cites the average store associate and cashier’s pay at poverty wages of $13 per hour, or just $27,040 per year for workers who work 40 hours per week. Many workers work only part time, however, and are ineligible to receive most benefits while being required to fulfill the same tasks on their shifts as full-time workers. Pharmacy technicians do not fare much better, with an average annual pay estimated at just $17 per hour, or $35,360 per year.

In contrast to these poverty wages, former CEO Larry Merlo “earned” $36.5 million in total compensation in 2019, over a thousand times the lowest-paid CVS workers, who ensure that the stores run and their products are delivered on a daily basis. Merlo was the highest-paid health insurance CEO that year, according to industry website Fierce Heathcare. CVS acquired health insurance payer Aetna in 2019, establishing the company’s foothold in the private health insurance industry.

Merlo announced plans to retire in late 2020 and was replaced by current CEO Karen Lynch in early 2021. Lynch was a president and insurance executive at Aetna before she was named Merlo’s successor.

Workers who posted job reviews on Glassdoor offer insight into the company’s exploitative practices, which have allowed it to extract massive amounts of value from its low-paid workforce over the years to satisfy the profit aims of its wealthy shareholders and corporate managers.

A former store manager from Orlando, Florida, who worked at the company in 2014 described long hours and short staff situations. “Work hours were excessive. To be successful, hours worked were borderline slavery… Vacations were almost nonexistent due to constant visitors from corporate stopping in to do reviews. Holiday weeks were paid 4 days regular, 1 holiday, and you worked all 5… Company preaches quality of life for their clients while quality of life for their employees is nonexistent. As a ‘manager’ in your average store you will be ‘managing’ a total of one person during your shift, with a total of 10 people at location.”

In 2021, conditions were no better. A current full-time store associate wrote, “They do not believe in you spending time with family. Full timers ARE FORCED to work every major holiday, including Christmas and Thanksgiving. You work more than 48 hours a week. Managers… choose favorites. You are forced to become an acting store manager (with no managerial authority). They bounce you around from store to store without really giving you a say.”

A current pharmacy technician writes, “There is little room for advancement when it comes to moving up in the industry. The pay is not at what it should be, especially if you’re certified (or not) for the amount of work a technician does. Underappreciated and promised for compensation when marks are hit with a store, but given no incentive or reward for doing so… It is all about the numbers, there is less ability to create a good work environment or a good customer relation with the ratio of 1 pharmacist and maybe (if lucky) 1 technician at some stores, and at core stores, it’s being understaffed.”

The experiences of workers at CVS echo other corporations that have continued to demand greater productivity under more stressful conditions and lower real wages when inflation is factored in, which currently stands at about 6 percent for consumer goods in the US. Workers at John Deere in the US were sent back to work this month after a bitter strike when the UAW and Deere pushed through a concessions contract with below-inflation wage increases, in spite of the company making record profits this past year.

Workers who will lose their jobs at CVS are likely to face a bleak employment landscape. According to the New York Times, the US economy is not near “recovered” from the shock of the pandemic. Remarking on the October jobs report, the Times reports, “Total employment is 4.2 million below—and the unemployment rate remains more than a full percentage point above—where it was in February 2020.”

Most jobs available to workers who are looking for work, especially those who lack education or certifications, are low-paying and are in more dangerous work settings under conditions of the pandemic. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, four of the top five occupations projected to have the most growth through 2030—home health and personal care aides, restaurant cooks, fast food and counter workers and waiters—all have a median pay of under $30,000 per year.

The closures will not just impact workers who will lose their jobs, but also access to medications for many working class Americans. The company’s retail locations are a major provider of vaccines and prescriptions across the US. The decision to close nearly a thousand of these locations while the pandemic continues to kill over 1,000 people in the US each day is another exposure of the travesty of the capitalist system placing profit before the most basic necessities for human life.

Nearly 3/4 of the World’s Dictators Receive US Weapons and Military Assistance

Matthew Hoh

The US supports nearly 75% of the world’s dictators, autocracies, monarchies, military regimes, etc., with weapons, military training and money. Please remember this the next time someone tells you the US should do X or Y because such and such a nation is bad…

Comparing Freedom House’s list of Not Free nations* to FY 2020 US overseas weapons sales, military training and financial assistance**, we find that of the 57 nations considered undemocratic, 42 receive weapons, training and/or money for their military and security services. This means 74% of the non-democratic nations of the world are supported militarily by the US. Interestingly, the remaining 15 nations are nearly all sanctioned. The world’s countries can be divided into two parts: those who buy/receive weapons from the US and those sanctioned. It seems like it’s a pretty simple arrangement.

74% is a slight increase from four years ago when Rich Whitney at Truthout utilized the Freedom House list and compared it to FY 2015 military assistance data. It is likely no surprise to anyone that US support for non-democratic governments increased under President Trump, but, to be fair, it was a minor increase. The hypocrisy and dissonance between stated US support for democracy, liberty and freedom, and how the US government conducts itself exists whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House.

The list of nations is below. I have listed occupied territories with the nations that are occupying them; so, Gaza and West Bank are under Israel, Western Sahara is under Morocco, Tibet is under China, and Donbas and Crimea are under Russia. Also, please note, this list only includes nations not considered democracies. Nations that are listed as partly free or free by Freedom House, but are clear and gross violators of human rights, and that are recipients of US weapons, military training and military assistance funding, like Columbia, Honduras, India, Pakistan, Philippines, and Ukraine are not included.

Y denotes received weapons, military training or military funding assistance, or a combination.

Afghanistan Y
Algeria Y
Angola Y
Azerbaijan Y
Bahrain Y
Belarus N
Brunei N
Burundi Y
Cambodia Y
Cameroon Y
Central African Republic Y
Chad Y
China (includes Tibet) N
Cuba N
Democratic Republic of the Congo Y
Djibouti Y
Egypt Y
Equatorial Guinea N
Eritrea N
Eswatini N
Ethiopia Y
Israel Y
Jordan Y
Gabon Y
Iran N
Iraq Y
Kazakhstan Y
Kyrgyzstan Y
Laos Y
Libya Y
Mali Y
Morocco (Western Sarhara) Y
Myanmar Y
Nicaragua N
North Korea N
Oman Y
Qatar N
Republic of the Congo Y
Russia (includes Crimea and Donbass) N
Rwanda Y
Saudi Arabia Y
Somalia Y
South Sudan Y
Sudan N
Syria N
Tajikistan Y
Tanzania Y
Thailand Y
Turkey Y
Turkmenistan Y
Uganda Y
United Arab Emirates Y
Uzbekistan Y
Venezuela N
Vietnam Y
Yemen Y
Zimbabwe Y

*This is not an endorsement of Freedom House or its methodology. However, Freedom House is an excellent source for this purpose as no one will accuse Freedom House of being anti-American, pacifist or isolationist in their ideology, leftist or libertarian in their political leanings, non-believers in American Exceptionalism, etc.

**Information on FY 2020 US weapons sales, training and military assistance provided by Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor Program.

Herd immunity policy leads to four-digit COVID-19 incidence levels in German schools

Tamino Dreisam

Daily infection levels are at an all-time high in Germany, currently doubling every 14 days. The seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants was more than 340 on Friday, after 65,371 people were infected in a single day on Wednesday. The increase runs across all age groups, but children and adolescents have the highest rates. The seven-day incidence level is currently 395 in the 15- to 34-year-old age group and 819 among 5- to 14-year-olds.

Incidence rates are highest in Saxony, with 935 among 15- to 34-year-olds and 2,284 among 5- to 14-year-olds. This means that one to two percent of all schoolchildren in Saxony are becoming infected every week. In Brandenburg, Berlin, Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt, the incidence level among 15- to 34-year-olds is also in the four-digit range.

Pupils go to school in Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

According to figures from the Conference of State Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs, there were around 45,000 known coronavirus cases among schoolchildren last week—almost double the figure of 23,000 cases in the previous week. Currently, nearly 87,000 of 10 million students nationwide are in quarantine. In addition, there are about 2,100 teachers quarantining.

The number of coronavirus outbreaks in schools remains higher than in any previous wave, according to the weekly report by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). In the last four weeks, 856 school outbreaks have been recorded, although the last two weeks cannot be conclusively assessed yet because of late reports. On average, there are five to six cases per outbreak.

The catastrophic increase among largely unvaccinated—and thus defenceless—schoolchildren is a consequence of the criminal policy of deliberate mass infection supported by all parties. After the summer break, all federal states started with full in-person classes and gradually dismantled protective measures that were still in place.

Regulations benchmarking the level above which distance learning had to take place were eliminated. Even the requirement to wear a mask was suspended in some states. Students told the WSWS that quarantine regulations were mostly reduced to requiring only the infected person themselves to be quarantined—not even those who sit in their immediate vicinity. Since testing is usually only provided for unvaccinated students, those who are vaccinated often unknowingly infect fellow students. Also, very few schools are equipped with air filters, so ventilation must continue with open windows, even as winter approaches.

These deadly policies are being implemented by all bourgeois parties. Currently, Saxony (governed by the Christian Democratic CDU, Greens and Social Democratic SPD) has the most infections, followed by Bavaria (governed by the Christian Democratic CSU and the right-wing Free Voters) and Thuringia (Left Party, SPD and Greens). The parties of the planned federal “traffic light” (SPD, Greens and the Liberal Democrats-FDP) government under Olaf Scholz decided on Thursday to end the designation of an “epidemic emergency of national scope” on November 25, thus removing the basis for important protective measures.

The unions also support the removing of all barriers to the spread of the virus. GEW education union President Maike Finnern spoke out against school closures in late October.

On the other hand, opposition to this policy of deliberate mass infection is growing. In a joint press release, the State Parents’ Association for High Schools (LEV), the Association of Directors of Bavarian High Schools (BayDV) and the Bavarian Philologists’ Association (bpv) recently stated, “Parents, school administrators and teachers are unanimous: Talking up the situation at schools won’t help!”

They write, “In the first few weeks, work habits and structure had to be practiced again in class, and that took up a lot of time. Add to that the growing number of students in quarantine: they have to be provided with materials, they must not lose touch.” Due to quarantining and the first waves of illness, there had been a lot of coming and going in the classroom, and regular lessons were often impossible, they said. “Maintaining normal operations and managing coronavirus at the same time—this balancing act has become too great in many places.”

“The situation at schools is coming to a head,” reports LEV chairwoman Birgit Bretthauer from the parents’ point of view. “We receive reports every day that the mental health of many students has declined significantly and that gaps in subject matter are also increasingly causing problems in everyday school life.” Walter Baier, Chairman of the School Directors’ Association, said, “The wish for a normal school year has unfortunately not become reality—and everyone must admit this and draw immediate conclusions from it.”

Broad opposition in the population to the herd immunity policy is particularly evident in a petition calling for protective measures in schools and day care centres, which received more than 45,000 signatures in less than a week. The initiators are largely teachers and medical professionals.

The petition calls on Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz (SPD) to “demonstrate leadership … in the fight against the pandemic.” The petition refers to a recent letter from 35 renowned scientists who stated, “Once again, the time for early action has passed, despite all warnings. Infectious disease is spreading unchecked. The health care system is in danger of collapse.”

The petition calls the impending end to the designated epidemic emergency “a serious political mistake [that] Germany may pay for with tens of thousands of additional coronavirus deaths. The overriding goal must be to contain new infections to low levels. High incidence levels overburden the health care system and put the entire population at risk—including the vaccinated.”

The strong support for these demands reflects immense opposition among workers and youth. But a humane pandemic policy cannot be achieved by appealing to the common sense of the politicians responsible for executing the herd immunity policy. Governments are not refusing to implement the necessary measures because they are ill-informed or unaware of the current situation.

Politicians like Olaf Scholz are regularly advised by leading scientists and are fully aware of the suffering their policies cause. In the penultimate debate in the Bundestag (federal parliament) to end the designation of an emergency situation, Scholz declared, “We know what the consequence will be: Very, very many of those who are not vaccinated will become infected, and many of those who become infected will become ill, and of those who become ill, some will be struggling for their lives in the intensive care units of our hospitals.”

Politicians of all the establishment parties are not implementing the necessary measures because above all else, they defend the economic interests of the banks and corporations. Even in the first lockdown, Scholz, as Finance Minister, organized the billion-euro handouts for the banks and corporations. The necessary coronavirus protection measures, however—such as the closure of schools and nonessential businesses—run counter to the profit maximization of the corporations and are therefore not taken.

US 2021 COVID-19 death toll now tops 2020

Patrick Martin

More Americans have died of COVID-19 in 2021 than in the first year of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The figures demonstrate the terrible human cost of the policy of “living with the virus,” pursued by the Biden administration and corporate America, which in reality means allowing hundreds of thousands to die from the virus.

US Army Capt. Corrine Brown, a critical care nurse, administers an anti-viral medication to a COVID-19 positive patient at Kootenai Health regional medical center during response operations in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on Sept. 6, 2021. [Credit: Michael H. Lehman/DVIDS U.S. Navy/via AP]

The figures from the CDC and Johns Hopkins were published by the Wall Street Journal, together with other information the newspaper collected from several health care and insurance company studies. The total number of deaths due to the pandemic hit 770,800 on Saturday, with 385,343 deaths in 2020 now surpassed by 385,457 deaths in 2021—and there are still six weeks remaining in the year.

The 2021 figure is particularly disastrous because vaccines have been available throughout the year, first for health care workers and the most vulnerable seniors, then more generally, for all adults and youth aged 12 and over. Most recently, vaccinations have been made available to children aged 5-11.

The most recent surge in COVID-19 has been in New England and the Upper Midwest, with the seven-day average for new cases hitting 93,196 on Friday, November 19, up 30 percent in just three weeks from 70,271 on October 25. The upcoming Thanksgiving holidays, filled with travel and family gatherings, will undoubtedly send the daily average rocketing past 100,000.

Among the worst-hit states is Michigan, which accounted for one in ten of all new coronavirus cases last week, even though the state has only three percent of the US population. According to the CDC, Michigan has the highest seven-day case rate in the country, 589.3 cases per 100,000, double that of neighboring Ohio. Hospitalizations have jumped 62 percent since November 1, and more than 400 people in Michigan died from COVID-19 last week.

The state’s fully vaccinated rate of 54.2 percent trails the US average of 58.9 percent. The state health department has issued an advisory urging everyone aged two years and older to wear a mask indoors except for family members who live under the same roof. This would apply to all Thanksgiving gatherings this coming week. At the same time, the state health director said there were no plans to stop in-person instruction in schools or impose mask mandates.

For the entire year, the worst-hit states are in the South: Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Florida. Mississippi has both the highest death rate per capita, and one of the lowest vaccination rates, only 47 percent.

While nearly 200 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated, and 450 million jabs have been delivered, there are tens of millions of adults still not vaccinated, and tens of millions of children have either not received shots or are under five and remain ineligible. The unvaccinated make up the bulk of new cases of infection, hospitalization and death.

The Journal cited figures reported by the public health department of Los Angeles County, which found that “unvaccinated people were nearly five times more likely to get COVID-19 and about 29 times more likely to be hospitalized than fully vaccinated people.”

The Delta variant has played a major role in the continually rising toll from the pandemic, as it is far more transmissible. There are also a significant number of breakthrough infections, although as a percentage of those vaccinated, breakthroughs still remain comparatively low—roughly one percent.

The Journal also reviewed state-by-state data which is collected inconsistently, but reveals definite patterns. Of the 195 million fully vaccinated, about 1.89 million have contracted COVID-19, with 72,000 hospitalized and about 20,000 deaths, according to the figures reported by the states.

This means that breakthrough infections account for about seven percent of the 27.6 million people who have contracted COVID-19 in the United States this year, while the unvaccinated constitute 93 percent of the total.

Those vaccinated who suffered the worst results—hospitalization in an Intensive Care Unit and/or death—were overwhelming drawn from the elderly and those suffering from serious health problems pre-COVID, and usually both. The Journal reported, “people with diabetes, chronic lung disease, kidney disease and compromised immune systems were at risk of serious outcomes from breakthrough cases, the data show.”

According to one research firm with access to hospital medical data, Truveta Inc., “among 1.7 million fully vaccinated people … those with diabetes, chronic lung disease and chronic kidney disease were about twice as likely to be hospitalized for breakthrough cases as vaccinated people without these conditions.”

Vaccinated people with those conditions were both more likely to suffer a breakthrough infection and more likely to be hospitalized if they did contract the virus.

A second research firm which shared its results with the Journal, Epic Health Research Network, found that 80 percent of breakthrough deaths were among people aged 65 or older. By comparison, those aged 65 and older accounted for 69 percent of all COVID-19 deaths this year, counting both the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

While people under 65 made up 19 percent of COVID-19 deaths in 2020, they accounted for 31 percent of all COVID-19 deaths this year. This is due in part to the much higher vaccination rate among the elderly, but the greater transmissibility of the Delta variant and the reopening of schools and workplaces must account for the bulk of this shift.

COVID-19 deaths among younger people more than doubled in 2021, although the death rate still remains far lower. About 10,000 of the 385,000 who died in 2020 were under 45 years old, while in 2021, that figure has risen to 20,563.

The Epic research found a “tipping point” for breakthrough cases at about 20 to 22 weeks after people received their second shot. This underscores the necessity for booster shots no later than six months after becoming fully vaccinated.

Behind Chinese President Xi’s populism, mounting social inequality

Peter Symonds

The Chinese leadership of President Xi Jinping has over the course of this year taken a distinctly populist tinge—including an emphasis on “common prosperity”—that is, prosperity for all; the announcement that absolute poverty has been abolished in China; and moves, limited in character, to rein-in billionaire tycoons such as Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma, as well as highly profitable private corporations that dominate the online education industry.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not about to seriously impede the operation of the market and privately-owned corporations in China that have flourished over the past four decades since Deng Xiaoping initiated the processes of capitalist restoration. The CCP bureaucracy and wealthy private entrepreneurs are closely intertwined—some of these successful capitalists are party members or sit on various government advisory bodies.

People wearing masks, walk in a subway station, in Hong Kong [Credit: AP Photo/Kin Cheung]

President Xi spelled out the regime’s chief fear in comments to provincial ministerial-level officials at the beginning of the year. “Achieving common prosperity,” he warned, “is not just an economic issue, but a significant political one that matters to the party’s basis to rule… We absolutely cannot allow [the] rich-poor gap to increase bigger and bigger, [resulting in] the poor poorer and the rich richer.”

In August, Xi told the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs that greater emphasis had to be placed on “common prosperity” and expressed the need to “regulate excessively high incomes” and “encourage high-income people and enterprises to return more to society.” However, corporate philanthropy and token government measures to help the poor are not going reverse the growing gulf between rich and poor in China or anywhere else for that matter, which is rooted in the profit system.

The processes of capitalist restoration, fuelled by a huge influx of foreign investment and technology to take advantage China large reservoirs of cheap labour, have certainly led to a huge economic expansion and lifted per capita GDP. However, as with other capitalist economies, social inequality has greatly widened and intensified social tensions. While absolute poverty, narrowly defined, may have been abolished, some 600 million Chinese are struggling to get by on a daily basis on a monthly income of less than Rmb1,000 or about $US155, while the country is now home to more dollar billionaires than the United States.

Many indices point to rising social inequality.

* The Gini coefficient is a standard measure of social inequality that ranges from 0, which represents absolute equality or all people earning exactly the same income, to 1, which represents absolute inequality or one person having all the income and everyone else having none.

China’s official Gini coefficient, has risen sharply since Deng’s “opening up” in 1978 from about 0.31 to 0.4 in 1997 and a high of 0.49 in 2008 before falling slightly to 0.47 in 2020. Any figure over 0.4 is regarded by the United Nations as indicating large inequality, while China’s leaders have themselves declared that level is potentially destabilising.

* According to the World Bank, in 1978, the top 10 percent of earners in China and the bottom 50 percent each accounted for about a quarter of the country’s total income. By 2018, the top 10 percent took more than 40 percent of total income, while the bottom half of earners received less than 15 percent.

In terms of wealth rather than income, the wealthiest 1 percent of individuals owned nearly 31 percent of China’s wealth in 2020, up from around 21 percent in 2000. In the US for instance, the share of wealth of the top 1 percent reached 35 percent in 2020. According to the Hurun Global Rich list, the number of dollar billionaires in China hit 1,058 last year, as compared to 696 in the US.

China has drawn the line for absolute poverty at $2.30 a day adjusted for inflation and claims to have lifted the income of 100 million rural residents above that level since Xi came to office in 2012. The World Bank, however, sets a higher poverty line of $5.50 a day for upper-middle-income countries like China. On this basis a quarter of China’s population is in poverty.

* The focus on rural poverty highlights the gulf between urban and rural areas where some 40 percent of China’s population reside. Figures published in the Australian Financial Review in September show that by 1997, urban household incomes were on average 83 percent higher than those of rural households. This rose to 167 percent in 2009, declining to 132 percent in 2019—still more than double the rural average.

An article in US magazine Foreign Affairs earlier this year explained that a person on the median urban income in China is in the 70th global percentile—in other words richer than 70 percent of the world’s population, whereas a person with the median rural income is in the 52nd global percentile. “Differently put, the average urban person in China is as rich as the average person in Hungary, whereas the average rural person in China is as poor as the average person in Vietnam,” it stated.

* The rural-urban divide is also manifested in the cities and major manufacturing centre where nearly 300 million internal migrant workers from rural China constitute a large proportion of the working class. Not only are they generally on lower wages and conditions and suffer discrimination but the overwhelming majority do not have an urban hukou, an official residency document that provide full access to local public services such as schools and hospitals. It is a system designed to provide cheap, easily exploitable labour to industry and services in the huge manufacturing hubs in the eastern coastal areas of China.

* Social inequality is also perpetuated in education where entrance to China’s elite universities and thus well-paid jobs in the government apparatus or private enterprise is determined by college entrance results. According to the Foreign Affairs article, “Average families in some top-tier cities have spent one-quarter of their take-home pay on tutoring… About 22 percent of students enrolled in China’s prestigious Tsinghua University in 1990 were from rural China, but by 2016, that percentage was 10.2 percent.” Urbanisation may account for some, but certainly not all of this huge change.

* The author of the Foreign Affairs article, Branko Milanovic, a London School of Economic professor, led a study into the changing social composition of what he termed China’s “elite”—the top 5 percent of the population—over the period 1988 to 2013. Whereas in 1988 three quarters of the elite were government-employed, 25 years later half were either capitalists or professionals. Moreover, that social divide was perpetuated within the CCP. When the study examined “rich members” of the CCP, “about half belonged to the private-sector-oriented classes.”

The last statistic is a significant indicator of the class-character of the CCP. Far from being a political vehicle for reducing social inequality, it is a mouthpiece for the bourgeoisie that has emerged out of the processes of capitalist restoration and the looting of the state-owned sector. Private entrepreneurs have relied on relations with the CCP hierarchy to advance their business interests, fuelling the corruption which is endemic at all government levels in China,

While Xi initiated a campaign against corruption on coming to office, he has no intention of carrying it through to the end, as that would destabilise the entire rotten bureaucratic apparatus on which he and the CCP rely to rule. Likewise, his calls for “common prosperity,” philanthropy from the super-rich and the need to reduce social inequality are aimed at deflecting mounting discontent and opposition among workers and young people that have the potential to erupt in widespread social unrest.

A comment by Chinese academic and venture capitalist Eric Li in the US-based Foreign Policy points to the fears in Chinese ruling circles of a political radicalisation taking place among layers of young people concerned about the gross social inequities in China.

Li, a strong CCP supporter, declared, “Whereas my generation was primarily concerned with China being poor and, as a result, focused on market economics, jiulinghous and linglinghous [those born after 1990 and 2000 respectively] see the main challenges to them and Chinese society as being rooted in inequality.

“Even in the extraordinarily entrepreneurial tech sector, calls by young people for stopping excessive exploitations, both of lowly paid delivery workers and more highly compensated but overworked technical and professional workforces, are becoming louder.”

Li also noted a growing hostility to the market and capitalism, and growing support for socialism and communism.

Farm Laws Repeal: A Historic Day For India

Bharat Dogra

On November 19 the Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi announced the important decision of repealing three highly controversial farm laws. This decision should be widely welcomed cutting across narrow narrow political divides.

The Prime Minister has  been full of praise for his government’s farm policies and in fact even for the farm laws even while agreeing to repeal the three farm laws, saying only that as the government was not able to convince the farmers regarding the usefulness of the three laws these are being repealed. This praise is not justified, but we can leave this debate for another day. Now is the time to celebrate the victory of farmers, and also pay our homage to the nearly 700 farmers who died in the course of the year long agitation.

The movement on Delhi borders was only a week away from completing its one year. However if we count the earlier days of sporadic protests then the movement has already completed about 16 or 17  months. The fact that such a long movement continued peacefully while gaining strength and spread, culminating in the acceptance of its most important demand, is quite an important and wider victory for democratic struggles in India and should be celebrated as such.

At the same time this should also be seen as a reconciliation gesture. If the difference between government and opposition becomes so wide that there is no room for dialogue, then this is not good for democracy. So the opposition should on the whole welcome at least this single step of the government, although of course there is need to remain critical about the overall farm policy of the government.

The Modi government has been known to be very unresponsive to criticism in the past and this is for the first time that in a  very important context it has taken back something that it had been defending and propagating very strongly. Whatever may have been the political compulsions of this decision with approaching elections in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh , this decision  of the Modi government should be nevertheless  welcomed for its willingness at last in listening to public criticism and dissenting views regarding its policies and responding to them in a democratic way.

The fact that such a conciliatory gesture has been made on such an auspicious occasion as Guru Nanak Jayanti adds further to our happiness. This is a long awaited day of happiness and we will celebrate it with a great sense of solidarity, at the same time remembering the martyrs who sacrificed their life in the course of this great movement which, despite several limitations, will be remembered for a long time in the history of democratic struggles in India.