Herd immunity policy creates explosion of COVID-19 infections in German nurseries and schools

Tamino Dreisam

Although the number of official COVID-19 deaths in Germany has exceeded 100,000, the infection figures are escalating and a new, dangerous variant (Omicron) of the virus is spreading, all the bourgeois parties refuse to take the necessary protective measures. Significantly, last Thursday in the Bundestag (federal parliament), the “traffic light” coalition members—Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, Liberal Democrats (FDP)—decided to end the designation of an “epidemic emergency” and thus removed the legal basis for comprehensive lockdowns.

A woman waits for her vaccination at a vaccination Drive-in center in Cologne, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Since then, the numbers of those infected have really exploded. By Friday morning, the seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants was 438.2, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), with more than 76,000 people confirmed infected with COVID-19 in the last 24 hours alone. With a mortality rate of 0.8 percent, about 610 of these people will succumb to the virus. Already, between 300 and 400 people are dying from coronavirus every day.

The incidence of infection is particularly drastic in schools and nurseries. In the 5- to 14-year-old age group, the seven-day incidence level of 1,021 is already in the four-digit range. In the last four weeks, 468 outbreaks at nurseries and 1,265 outbreaks at schools were reported to the RKI—values that are far higher than in all previous waves. And the statistics do not yet include the last two weeks.

In North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state, the number of infections at kindergartens more than doubled from 504 to 1,096 within one week. Later reports mean this number will also increase.

In Leipzig, a health office explained that due to the high incidence of infection, at times, children and nursery staff were no longer sent into quarantine in the event of positive cases. Since almost 20 nurseries are currently affected, the health department simply cannot manage to process infection cases until two to three days after the test results are available. In some cases, one-sixth of all staff in nurseries have already been infected.

The number of deaths among children and adolescents is also increasing. So far, “35 validated COVID-19 deaths among under-20s have been reported to the RKI,” the institute writes in its latest weekly report.

Yet schools and nurseries are to remain open at all costs. “It must now be our top priority to keep nurseries and schools open,” said German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) in a video address to the 10th German Congress of School Principals on Friday.

In Saxony, where the incidence rate among 5- to 14-year-olds is currently around 3,080, the Education Ministry writes on its web page on the Coronavirus School and Nursery Ordinance, “Despite restrictions in public life: schools and nurseries remain open.”

In the same way, the Ministry of Education in Bavaria, where the incidence rate among 5- to 14-year-olds is 1,330, declares that schools will remain open—explicitly “also in regional hotspots.”

Baden-Württemberg’s Minister President Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) also announced that schools should remain open “as long as possible.” In the southern German state, the incidence rate among 5- to 14-year-olds is 1,130.

In NRW, Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) claimed on Tuesday that the rising coronavirus numbers would have no effect on attendance—a bold-faced lie aimed at justifying the CDU-FDP state government’s criminal policy of deliberate mass infection. In NRW, even the compulsory wearing of masks in classrooms has been dropped for the last month. Since then, the number of infections among schoolchildren has increased fivefold.

Last week, the school policy spokesperson for the FDP parliamentary group in NRW triggered a wave of outrage on Twitter. She had called for cases to be reported to her where teachers were exerting “moral pressure or peer pressure” on students about wearing masks. The week before, NRW Education Minister Yvonne Gebauer (FDP) had already warned against exerting pressure on students to continue wearing masks in class.

In Hamburg, ruled by the SPD and Greens, the state is also relaxing protective measures. School Senator (state minister) Ties Rabe (SPD), for example, declared that in the future, there would be no contact tracing at schools if only one child was infected. At the same time, only the infected person would have to be quarantined. The rest of the class, including those sitting immediately adjacent, could continue to attend classes.

“I don't think it’s appropriate at all at this point to talk about further school restrictions,” Rabe said. Rabe believes even minimal measures, such as extended Christmas vacations or a suspension of compulsory in-person attendance—which so far only a few states with the highest incidence rates have adopted—are wrong. Schools are “one of the safest places in the pandemic,” he claimed provocatively.

The mass infection policy in the interests of the financial markets is also supported by the trade unions. “The GEW believes it is right to keep schools and nurseries open in the coronavirus pandemic,” reads a statement on the official website of the Education and Science Union on November 19.

While all the bourgeois parties and the unions are driving through a reckless herd immunity policy, resistance is growing among parents, students, teachers and scientists. In a poll conducted as part of broadcaster ZDF’s political barometer report at the end of November, 52 percent of all respondents said that the state’s coronavirus measures “should be tougher.” Only 15 percent described the existing measures as “excessive.”

There was a high risk of “losing control of the pandemic at schools,” Heinz-Peter Meidinger, president of the German Teachers’ Association, warned the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland. He said the governments responsible were putting their own political desires ahead of scientific expertise. “We can’t just accept this as if nothing were wrong. This is all the more true since there are also cases of Long Covid among children.”

Scientists are speaking out clearly about what is needed. “If policy-makers want to get anything done now, they need to act fast: Hard lock-downs and schools closed—that’s the only thing that can still help,” explains Professor Markus Scholz from the University of Leipzig, for example. The current measures were far from sufficient, he said. Last year, there were much harsher interventions at lower incidences, “And it took eight weeks for the numbers to drop.”

Scholz expects 2,500 to 5,000 additional deaths in the next few weeks in Saxony alone. A major driver of this, he said, was schools. “Until now, the entire school and youth sector has remained excluded from the measures. Although it is precisely there that the infection figures are particularly high. We’ve been talking about air filters for a year, but they’re still missing almost across the board.”

In July 2021, the German government had allocated €200 million on paper for mobile air filters. So far, however, not a single euro has been called upon. Many schools are not in a position to raise the contribution they are required to make. In addition, air filters are only subsidized for classrooms in which the windows “can only be tilted” and in which children under the age of 12 are present. Education officials estimate the percentage of eligible classrooms is about 10 percent.

The lack of protective equipment in classrooms, as well as the murderous reopening policy in general, stem from deliberate political decisions. Politicians of all the bourgeois parties have worked throughout the pandemic by downplaying the virus, organising cover-ups, spreading falsifications, and misinformation to keep businesses open under deadly conditions and to ensure the maximization of profits.

New Zealand Labour-led government continues attacks on immigrants

John Braddock

The immigration minister in New Zealand’s Labour-led government, Kris Faafoi, announced in September that migrants living in NZ on temporary work visas would be “fast-tracked” for residency. Trumpeted as a major breakthrough, the decision provides for a one-off residency “pathway” for an estimated 165,000 migrants.

Applications for the new residency process will be opened up between December and July. “Critical workers” who cross the border before the end of July next year will also be eligible. Faafoi said family members who meet certain criteria will be able to join migrants already in NZ.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern answers a question during a press conference at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. (Robert Kitchin/Pool Photo via AP)

The Labour-Green Party government has come under mounting pressure over its stalled, chaotic and inhumane immigration system. The COVID-19 pandemic was used to bring immigration to a virtual halt, with a net migration gain of just 6,600 people last year. Labour suspended the processing of residency visas under the Skilled Migrant Category in March 2020, blaming the impact of COVID-19, leaving more than 30,000 applicants in limbo.

Millions of immigrants and refugees around the globe are being subjected to vicious anti-democratic measures. Like governments internationally, New Zealand’s ruling coalition, which is backed by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, is actively discriminating against migrants, in order to divert popular anger over worsening poverty and the spiraling cost of living.

The Indian Weekender reported in July that around 60,000 Indian migrants with temporary work or student visas faced “uncertainty and despair,” as the government continued to “throttle the pathway to residency.” A decision to lapse 50,000 temporary visa applications, filed offshore after August 2020, and bar visa holders from re-entering the country, prompted protests in India and fueled fear among current residents. Many partners and children, trapped overseas, have still not seen their family members for nearly two years due to NZ’s border restrictions.

The announcement of the new policy was understandably met with considerable relief and jubilation among the immigrant community. Hundreds of migrants and supporters participated in a series of protests and a petitioning campaign organised by the Migrant Workers Association, and pseudo-left Unite Union, since last year.

Claiming credit, the Unite Union declared the “pathway” decision was a “win for all working people.” Unite praised the NZ Council of Trade Unions, along with some employers and the Green Party which came “fully on board” the campaign. The “victory” was attributed to the protests which the union said it led “from the beginning” and which were “getting bigger and bigger as the year went on.”

In fact, Labour’s shift had nothing to do with the protests, which were oriented towards petitioning the government and to which it, in turn, paid little attention. Rather, it dovetailed with the government’s preparations to “transition” from its perspective of eliminating COVID-19 to one of “opening up” the borders and the economy, in line with the increasingly strident demands of big business and announced by Prime Minister Ardern on October 4.

Business NZ chief executive Kirk Hope declared the immigration reset would provide “welcome relief” to employers who had been trying to retain workers to remain “globally competitive.” With major skill shortages across a number of industries and regions, and ongoing pressures at the border, “New Zealand cannot afford to lose any more skilled people from the workforce if we want to maintain economic momentum and bounce back from the latest Auckland lockdown,” he said.

The policy remains highly restrictive, offering an opening only to those migrants deemed a benefit to the economy. According to Stuff, applicants must meet one of six criteria: “have lived in New Zealand for three or more years, earn above the median wage ($NZ27 per hour or more), work in a role on the long-term skill shortage list, hold occupational registration and work in health or education, work in personal care or other critical health worker roles, or have jobs within the primary industries.”

Faafoi said that initially 5,000 health and aged care workers, 9,000 primary industry workers, and 800 teachers would be eligible. A “portion” of the 15,000 construction and 12,000 manufacturing workers on temporary visas could be eligible. Some 910 people meanwhile signed a petition to parliament protesting against the exclusion of international PhD students from being able to apply.

Such selective measures are in line with Labour’s long-standing anti-immigrant stance. The Labour Party’s platform for the 2017 election, carried through with its then-coalition partner, the right-wing anti-immigrant NZ First Party, was to cut net migration—at that time around 70,000 a year—by up to 30,000 by winding back on international students and “low skilled” workers.

In a major policy speech in May, Economic Development Minister Stuart Nash said the government intended to make it harder for employers to take on workers from overseas, other than in areas of “genuine skills shortages.” Wealthy investors were targeted while entry for those classed as “low-skill” and low-wage workers closed off. Labour has also kept the annual refugee intake at just 1,500, one of the lowest in the world.

Endorsing the ongoing clamp-down, the Productivity Commission reported this month that pre-pandemic rates of immigration were “unsustainable” in the face of an “inability or unwillingness” to build the infrastructure to support would-be migrants. Higher levels of immigration without the necessary support had added to “burdens for the wider community,” the commission declared.

Cruel attacks on the conditions of migrants continue. Since September’s announcement, the rights of tens of thousands of immigrants, would-be immigrants, family members, foreign students and visa holders stuck offshore have continued to be systematically abridged, with devastating results.

Green Party MP Ricardo Menendez March recently admitted that thousands of migrants are still excluded under the policy because they are on an ineligible visa, they are not paid enough to qualify as “essential work,” are stuck offshore, or don’t meet the “settled” criteria. “It is a shame that we have to fight for a review of something that we were initially very excited about,” March told the Indian Weekender.

Labour’s stance has provided the opportunity not only for the Greens—who are part of the government—but the right-wing opposition parties, National and ACT, to falsely pose as supporters of immigrants, asserting that their conditions can be addressed by pleas to parliament. Indicating the illusions being promoted, one post to the Facebook group ‘NZ Work Visa Holders Stuck Overseas’ declared: “Support friendly MPs... Left for Green, Centric for National, & Right for ACT. Make them raise more & more voices against the Labour party that has made our life hard & difficult.”

However, anti-immigrant laws and harsh bureaucratic measures have been imposed by successive governments of every stripe. Labour’s record demonstrates that it has zero concern for the rights of migrant workers. But the same goes for the entire ruling elite, which pursued a racist “White New Zealand” policy for much of the past century, with the support of the unions. The major parties still routinely demonise immigrants for everything from low wages to job losses and the housing crisis.

TotalEnergies Startupper of the Year Challenge 2021/2022

Application Deadline: 23rd December 2021

Eligible Projects: All projects are eligible regardless of the type of business or activity, as long as they share the characteristics common to creative start-ups: innovation, competitiveness, growth boosting and job creation.

About The TotalEnergies Startupper of the Year:

The Startupper of the year Challenge by TotalEnergies is back for its 3rd edition in 32 African countries! Its goal is to support young African entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 35.

All business creation’s project holders and young innovative startups with a positive impact on their communities and the planet can participate!

Tell us how your project will help more and more people over time, at home or even abroad. Tell us how it empowers people, improves living conditions, and contributes to overall economic well-being.

Through TotalEnergies Startupper of the Year, 3 winners from each country will receive financial support, extensive publicity and coaching. From among these 3 winners per country, we will select grand winners by region, who will be offered additional support.

Anyone can change the world — teenagers or graduates, men or women. As long as you believe in your project and want to make things better, take this opportunity to participate. You could be the next Startupper of the Year or the Top Female Entrepreneur!

Type: Contest

Eligibility

• Best business creation project
• Best startup under 3 years old*
• Best female entrepreneur

Selection Criteria: 

• Sustainable Development
• Innovation
• Project feasibility

Target Countries

• North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia)
• West Africa (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo)
• Central Africa (Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo)
• East Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Reunion Island-Mayotte Island, Madagascar, Uganda, Tanzania)
• Austral Africa (South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe)

Number of Winners: up to 3 winners per country

Value of TotalEnergies Startupper of the Year: 

• Financial support
• Media
  visibility
• Coaching

How to Apply for TotalEnergies Startupper of the Year: Click on the continent for the list of participating countries. By clicking the name of the country, you will be directed to your local website to participate. Don’t forget you must be a country national to participate!

Visit TotalEnergies Startupper of the Year Webpage for Details

Justin Trudeau and Liberals inaugurate third term in office—austerity and mass infection at home, militarism and war abroad

Roger Jordan

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to reporters from the roof of the Canadian Embassy in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]

With the presentation Tuesday of the Speech from the Throne that inaugurates a new session of Canada’s parliament, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his minority Liberal government laid out their agenda at the start of their third term in office. Whilst there was much media hype over it being delivered by Canada’s first indigenous Governor General and it abounded with vapid election rhetoric, the throne speech made clear the government is moving sharply right. The main thrusts of its program will be austerity and mass infection for workers at home, coupled with militarism and war abroad.

The cutting edge of the Trudeau government’s stepped up onslaught on working people is its elimination of the limited pandemic relief provided workers. Late last month, Trudeau announced that the Canada Recovery Benefit, which paid workers a miserly $400 per week if they were unable to work due to COVID-19 restrictions, would be immediately abolished.

In its place, a new benefit is to be introduced that will be available to workers only in the event of an anti-COVID-19 lockdown and limited to just $300 per week. Given that all of Canada’s provincial governments have ruled out future lockdowns even as they let the virus run rampant, this effectively means an end to all financial support for workers.

To underscore its determination to deny further financial aid to working people, the Liberal government unveiled even more stringent requirements for the new lockdown benefit this week. According to the bill introduced in parliament Wednesday, the Liberal cabinet will have the power to determine what constitutes a lockdown. As a minimum, workers must be ordered to stay home for 14 straight days by their employer. In addition, the government intends to bar any financial support to unvaccinated workers.

The “best way” to get “the pandemic under control” is “vaccination,” declared the Throne speech. In fact, the Liberal government’s reliance on vaccines alone, with virtually all non-pharmaceutical anti-COVID-19 public health measures now withdrawn, has facilitated widespread transmission of the virus.

Reports of the emergence of a new (Omicron) variant in southern Africa that potentially is resistant to existing vaccines underscores just how dangerous is the ruling elite’s rush to “reopen” the economy and its class-based opposition to implementing a science-based strategy to eliminate the deadly virus.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, the Liberal government’s spending cutter-in-chief, summed up the ruling elite’s callous indifference to the lives and well-being of working people, declaring that the bill establishing the bogus new Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit is “the last step in our COVID support programs. It is what I hope and truly believe is the final pivot.”

In other words, as a winter wave of infections and death gathers pace, which current developments in Europe suggest could prove to be the worst yet, Trudeau’s Liberal government is telling workers, “You’re on your own.” This is no different from the fascistic let-it-rip pandemic policy pursued by the German establishment, whose political representatives voted this week to declare the COVID-19 emergency over. Freeland and Trudeau would no doubt agree with German Health Minister Jens Spahn, who asserted chillingly that by the end of this winter, people would either be “vaccinated, recovered, or dead.”

While the Liberal government strips workers of any financial aid so they are forced to return to the labour market to generate profits for big business, the government’s support for corporate Canada continues to know no bounds. After transferring over $650 billion to the banks and corporate elite virtually overnight in the early stages of the pandemic, the Liberals made clear that wage and rent subsidies for a wide range of businesses will continue at least until May 2022. These programs have largely functioned throughout the pandemic as slush funds for corporate executives and super-rich shareholders. Canada’s 48 billionaires saw their combined wealth shoot up by $78 billion during the pandemic’s first year.

Under conditions where British Columbia is being devastated by floods in the latest in a series of climate change-driven extreme weather events that have ravaged the country’s West Coast province since June, the Liberals’ throne speech again made clear that any action they take to mitigate global warming will be entirely subordinate to the profit and geo-political interests of the Canadian elite. It called for Canadian capitalism to seize on the climate change crisis to become a leader in clean tech. “By focusing on innovation and good, green jobs, and by working with like-minded countries—we will build a more resilient, sustainable, and competitive economy,” stated the speech. “As a country, we want to be leaders in producing the world’s cleanest steel, aluminum, building products, cars, and planes.”

The Throne speech underscored that the Trudeau government intends to heed the demands drummed home by Canada’s corporate elite in recent months for a pivot to austerity and will dramatically curtail social spending. “[W]ith one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world, and employment back to pre-pandemic levels, the Government is moving to more targeted support, while prudently managing spending,” the speech declared.

Tellingly the government has dropped all talk of incorporating the millions of gig economy and other involuntarily self-employed workers into the Employment Insurance system, meaning they will continue to have no protection against a sudden loss of income.

The main area to which “fiscal responsibility” and “prudence” do not apply is military spending. The Trudeau government remains committed to hike military spending by over 70 percent compared to 2017 levels by 2026. But even this vast increase, which amounts to the allocation of more than $12 billion in additional spending each year on weapons of destruction and death, is a mere down payment.

The Throne speech referred to comprehensive plans for an aggressive militarist foreign policy across wide swaths of the globe. “A changing world requires adapting and expanding diplomatic engagement,” stated the speech. “Canada will continue working with key allies and partners, while making deliberate efforts to deepen partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and across the Arctic.” Discussions are reportedly ongoing about an expanded deployment of Canadian troops to Ukraine, justified with lurid claims of “Russian aggression,” although it is NATO that has systematically encircled Russia and ratcheted up tensions.

Coming just five days after Trudeau met with US President Joe Biden and pledged his government’s firm support for Washington’s diplomatic, economic, and military offensive against China, the Throne speech’s reference to the “Indo-Pacific” is highly significant. It underlines that Canada’s foreign and military policy is being adjusted to conform even more closely with the Pentagon’s aggressive plans for an all-out conflict with Beijing, which top military commanders have asserted is only a few years off.

Senior foreign policy experts speaking to the right-wing National Post described the Throne speech as offering “a new foreign policy direction.” Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, told the newspaper, “This is not only about bringing India and the Indian Ocean into perhaps greater emphasis in Canadian activities, but Indo-Pacific as a frame is essentially a response to the rise of Chinese influence and power.”

On the eve of the federal election campaign, the Trudeau government signed an agreement with the Biden administration to modernize NORAD, the Canada-US aerospace and maritime defence command. This Cold War-era bilateral alliance for continental defence is to be upgraded with the aim of providing Washington and Ottawa first-strike capabilities against rivals like Russia and China and enabling the North American imperialist powers to wage a “winnable” nuclear war.

The fact that no party, apart from the Socialist Equality Party, raised Canada’s NORAD modernization commitment during the election campaign was tacit admission that they all unreservedly support this provocative move. The multibillion-dollar bill for upgrading NORAD is not included in Canada’s planned defence spending increases.

To enforce this deeply unpopular agenda of austerity at home and militarism and war abroad, the minority Liberal government can rely on an effective all-party coalition in parliament. Over recent weeks, Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats held secret, high-level talks with the Liberals on concluding a formal confidence-and-supply agreement, under which the social democrats would be committed to propping up the Liberals in parliament for two or more years. Singh bluntly explained why this plan was shelved last week, telling the media that Trudeau could rely on the Conservatives or the Bloc Québécois—a close ally of Quebec’s chauvinist, unabashedly pro-big business CAQ government—to impose the elimination of COVID-19 supports for workers, and the NDP to secure a majority for other policy items, like the Throne speech.

Outside of parliament, the Trudeau government will rely on an even closer corporatist alliance between government, big business and the trade unions to suppress working-class opposition. As the speech noted with respect to the government’s climate change policy, which is in reality a massive government subsidy program to make corporate Canada profitable in the emerging “clean energy” economy, “The Government will bring together provinces, territories, municipalities, and Indigenous communities, as well as labour and the private sector, to tap into global capital and attract investors.”

UK COVID cases pass 10 million: Health Secretary Javid warns of Omicron variant impact while rejecting containment measures

Chris Marsden

The number of COVID-19 cases in the UK has passed 10 million since the start of the pandemic. Yesterday Health Secretary Sajid Javid guaranteed that millions more cases will be recorded in the next months.

Javid addressed parliament to warn that the recently identified B.1.1.529 variant, now named Omicron by the World Health Organization (WHO), is of “huge international concern”, is likely more transmissible than Delta, “may pose substantial risk to public health”, and that vaccines “may be less effective against it”.

It was, he added, highly likely to have spread further than Botswana, where it was first discovered, and South Africa—two of six countries along with Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Namibia where flights to the UK have once again belatedly been banned as of midday yesterday.

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)

Javid said there were no known cases yet in the UK, but precautions were being taken because current vaccines may be less effective, and because it may be more transmissible than other variants.

In fact, data from South Africa shows the mutation appears to be significantly more infectious than Delta. Javid is employing soporific phrases and proposing only the most minimal measures to justify the Johnson government’s policy of letting the virus rip through the population.

“One of the lessons of this pandemic has been that we must move quickly, and at the earliest possible moment,” he said. “We’re heading into winter and our booster programme is still ongoing, so we must act with caution.”

But when asked whether minimal public health measures such as mandatory masking in public places and a return to social distancing would be reimposed, he made clear the government’s position. “The plan A, the policies that we put in place, they remain the policies that I think we need at this time.” The government’s entire pandemic response is based solely on vaccination, even though there is a massive question mark over the effectiveness of vaccines against the Omicron variant.

It is highly likely the variant is already in the UK. As of yesterday morning, there were only 100 cases of the variant confirmed in South Africa, and numerous others in Botswana. But South African healthcare professionals say it has likely spread throughout the country, is now the dominant strain and has spread more widely on the continent. Cases have already begun to spread globally, including two in Hong Kong, after a traveler returned from South Africa, one in Israel, of a traveler recently returned from Malawi, and two more suspected cases in Israel.

After Javid’s appearance in the House of Commons, it was confirmed the variant has hit Europe, with Belgian officials saying they had detected a case in an unvaccinated woman who had returned from Egypt on November 11. She first experienced symptoms on Monday November 22, according to reports.

Up until yesterday afternoon, between 500 and 700 people were flying into the UK from South Africa every day, walking through customs and getting into taxis, buses and trains, meaning thousands of potential infections. Thanks to the Tories’ ending of all measures of containment, anyone unknowingly infected with the new variant may already have come into contact with hundreds of other people. Anyone who has arrived in the UK from South Africa in the past 10 days is only being required to take a PCR test on day two and day eight, and to isolate at home along with the rest of the household. Flights from the six countries resume on Sunday, with the caveat that arrivals must enter hotel quarantine.

Information available to date about the new variant is chilling. South Africa’s surge has seen cases double in just two weeks, with fears the new variant accounts for most of them.

The variant has multiple mutations that might help it evade the body’s immune response, thwart vaccines and make it more transmissible. Along with 45 amino acid changes there are over 30 changes in the spike protein of the virus. A senior scientist said, “One of our major worries is this virus spike protein is so dramatically different to the virus spike that was in the original Wuhan strain, and therefore in our vaccines…”

The spike protein is targeted by most vaccines because it is the mechanism through which the virus gains access to the body’s cells.

Professor Christina Pagel from University College London said, “We don’t have definitive evidence on transmission advantage or immune escape, but we have plenty of cause to suspect both.”

Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, said the variant could be “of real concern” because of its “horrific spike profile”.

Contrary to government and media lies, the UK is already heading towards a massive escalation of the pandemic and is not “bucking the European trend” at all.

Today the UK reported 50,091 cases and 160 deaths, compared to 47,240 infections and 147 fatalities reported Thursday.

Daily cases have been above 25,000 since Johnson’s Freedom Day on July 19, when almost all mitigation measures were dropped in workplaces, public transport and social settings, after which children were sent back to school in September. Cases reached a high of 51,484 October 20, before falling back to 29,843 on November 6. They have since begun to climb inexorably and are now just below their previous post-Freedom Day peak.

Prior to yesterday’s dramatic rise, COVID cases had jumped by 74 percent in a week.

One reason for the increase was the spread of the AY.4.2 variant of Delta, accounting for 15 percent of UK cases. It was only designated a “variant under investigation” on October 20 and is thought to be up to 10 percent more infectious than the original Delta variant first detected in India in late 2020. Delta was around 60 percent more transmissible than Alpha. It is one of nine known versions of Delta present in the UK.

The higher infectivity of the Omicron variant is not yet known conclusively, but initial estimates are that it is six times more transmissible than the original Alpha variant and twice as transmissible as the Delta variant.

In the face of this threat, not only the Johnson government but the Labour opposition and the trade unions are guilty of premeditated mass murder for their shared insistence that vaccination alone or a few paltry additional measures is enough to curb the pandemic. They intend to build on the mountain of 167,000 corpses left by the pandemic and the tens of thousands left incapacitated by Long COVID.

UK midwives hold vigils protesting acute staff shortages

Sascha Woodson

Midwives along with students of midwifery and support staff up and down the country held protest vigils on November 21, drawing attention to the dire conditions and staff shortages affecting maternity services across the UK.

Protests were held in 50 different towns and cities, with maternity workers marching through Sheffield, Bristol, Manchester, Peterborough and elsewhere. They chanted “More midwives now”, holding placards proclaiming, “Save the midwife”, “Midwives are an endangered species!” and “Safe staffing saves lives”.

Midwives protest in Manchester, UK on November 21

In Manchester, some 600 midwives, student midwives and other maternity workers and supporters marched outside the Town Hall. Some of the mainly handwritten banners read, “Pushed to the limit”, “We need a break. Literally,” and “Stop calling us ‘heroes’ Start treating us like humans.”

Marchers chanted, “What do we want? Happy women,” and “More midwives”.

Student midwives speaking to WSWS reporters in Manchester told of the “difficult and dangerous conditions” under which they are working and training. Tragic incidents included students needing to look after dead babies, “This is traumatic, but you do not have any time to deal with how you feel.”

Midwives stage protest outside Leeds Town Hall (Credit: WSWS Media)

In Sheffield, a midwife told The Star that after working for ten years, the pressure was greater than she had ever experienced.

“We are seeing droves of midwives leaving the profession because of the strain. They were already under strain pre-Covid, but since Covid it has become completely unsustainable. For every 30 midwives that go into the service, 29 leave.”

In Nottingham, a community midwife of 25 years told the BBC, this was the “first time I have felt I need to act.” They were “expected to look after three to four labouring women at one time. How can you give them your undivided attention?”

In Leeds, an ante-natal educator said midwives were “burnt out, they're ready to leave and It’s about the safety of the birthing women, the parents and the midwives as well.”

A petition on change.org demanding more government funding for maternity services “to solve the staffing crisis” has received almost 115,000 signatures.

Many of the signatories left messages of support, including mothers who expressed their gratitude for the help they had received during and after childbirth. Lynn wrote, “I was lucky to have the help of several wonderful midwives when my boys were born. They were not rushed off their feet, it gave them time to relate to me and my family. It meant a lot.”

Paula wrote, “I'm signing this petition as a mother. The service Midwife’s provide is a vital one. Remember Children are the future!”

Another signatory explained, “I’m signing this petition as a midwife who has had enough. Burnout comes as part of the job description, anti-anxiety meds are prescribed as soon as you have your degree in your hand and some form of alcohol is the normal end of work routine. This is not okay.”

Research conducted by Oxford Academic into occupational medicine and substance abuse among maternity staff found that substance abuse by midwives regularly goes under reported as the consequences are sackings rather than support. Their report found that 37 percent of respondents had indicated concerns about a colleague’s substance use, noting that “stigmatizing attitudes and punitive actions can dissuade help-seeking.”

Placards from the Manchester protest of UK midwives (Credit: WSWS Media)

Staffing numbers in maternity units have been in decline for years. In 2010, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron promised to boost numbers by 3,000. More than a decade on, this figure is still not within the reach of Boris Johnson’s Tory government.

Skeleton staffing levels have already had serious consequences for pregnant and labouring women. To cite one example, a woman was forced to give birth at home assisted only by her husband as there was a shortage of midwives, and their local maternity delivery suite in Peterborough had to be closed.

The harsh reality facing midwives is a familiar one to anyone working within the National Health Service. Years of austerity and budget cuts have pushed staffing to critical levels. During the pandemic, maternity staff have been one of many departments redeployed to help with the surge of patients needing care in hospitals. This has led to crippling staff burnout and many reluctantly walking off the job in order to save their sanity.

The government has declared they are looking to recruit a further 1,200 midwives. New data released from the Nursing and Midwifery Council shows where these numbers are coming from. Rather than improving pay and conditions in the UK, thereby retaining those who study midwifery, recruits are being sought from poorer countries to the detriment of maternity services for their own populations.

The latest figures for March-September 2021 show 1,334 nurses joined the UK nursing and midwifery register from Nigeria--a country on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Red recruitment list. This means that active recruitment should not be taking place in these countries as they are required domestically once trained.

Contrary to the claims of Health Secretary Sajid Javid, NHS workers are confronted with unsustainable conditions and poor pay. Moreover, the service is being subject to “stealth” privatisation, being sold off piece meal, in order to enrich the profit-hungry private health care companies.

Significantly, the March with Midwives protests and petition were organised by rank-and-file health workers. The Royal College of Midwives, which is affiliated to the Trades Union Congress, played no part in organising or promoting the protests. Union banners were noticeably absent on most of the protest vigils.

This speaks to the role of the trade unions as the junior partners of the employers. In the NHS, despite massive votes against the government’s paltry three percent pay increase—a real terms cut given inflation is already above four percent—all the trade unions are delaying calling any form of strike action until 2022.

51 workers die in Siberian mine disaster

Clara Weiss

Kemerovo Governor Sergei Tsivilyov, center, speaks to the media in the Listvyazhnaya mine building, near Belovo, in the Kemerovo region of southwestern Siberia, Russia, Friday, Nov. 26, 2021. (AP Photo/Sergei Gavrilenko)

A suspected methane gas explosion killed 51 people on Thursday in Belovo, a mining town in the Kemerovo region (also known as Kuzbass) in Siberia. Many of them were in their 20s and 30s, with the youngest just 23 years old.

Almost 50 miners are still being treated in a hospital. Several of them are in serious condition. It is the worst mine disaster in Russia since the 2010 Raspadskaya mine explosion, which left 91 people dead, and one of the worst in the three decades since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

At around 8:20 a.m. local time, 283 miners were in the Listvyazhnaya mine when a methane gas explosion occurred. Those who died are believed to have suffocated. The high level of the deadly gas in the mine made the rescue operation, which lasted over a day, extremely difficult. It is also assumed to be the reason for the death of five rescuers. One rescuer, who had been believed dead, was found alive on Friday. Many bodies still have to be recovered.

A miner who survived the disaster in the conveyer building provided a harrowing account to a local radio station: “You know, I was saved from death by a few minutes. I was just looking at Tik-Tok. Then the explosion occurred, the methane exploded. The whole conveyor line stopped, I could hear it. It was the one that carries the coal.”

He described how his colleagues, upon hearing the explosion, immediately grabbed respirators and went down into the mine to save their colleagues. “They were very brave, you know, really. It makes me want to cry. These people should be given a medal. My brothers, comrades, they just ran there.” They were able to bring 10 miners up alive, and two others who had already died.

“You cannot imagine what was going on there. … They were all terrified, very sick. They were black and wheezing, they could hardly breathe, but they were breathing.” He added that his colleagues could not go further down to save more of their brothers because their respirators were not working properly.

The miner stressed that the disaster was both predictable and preventable.

“They (the mine management) don’t do anything about the rules of industrial safety. We need to make public what is happening in the mine.

“I have read that the mine was in a state of emergency [because of the violation of safety regulations], but that’s ridiculous. It’s been in this kind of state for a month, even more. You know, this all happened because there is no ventilation in the mine. Imagine, every time you’re going into the mine, you have to think about what might happen if you run out of oxygen.” He added that he had worked as a miner all his life but never under such horrendous conditions. The only reason he had stayed on the job was because he received 50,000 rubles a month for it, roughly $660, two or three times more than other jobs in the town.

The head of the mine, his first deputy and chief of the section of the Listvyazhnaya mine were arrested on Thursday.

What occurred on Thursday was an act of social murder. Responsibility lies not just with the mine management but the government and the entire Russian ruling class.

There is no question that the mine should have stopped operations long ago.

According to Russian media reports, just this year 914 safety violations were registered in 127 safety checks. Operations had to be stopped nine times because of these violations. The mine had neither proper ventilation nor a working fire alarm system. The methane and air control systems were also known to be defective.

Yet the mine management was let off the hook with a ridiculously small fine of 2.8 million rubles (about $37,000), little more than a slap on the wrist. The mine employs almost 1,700 people and produced 4.7 million tons in 2020, resulting in a net profit for its owners of 836.7 million rubles (about $11.06 million) and revenues of over 9.4 billion rubles (over $120 million).

The Listvyazhnaya mine belongs to the SDS-Ugol (Coal) company, which is owned by Vladimir Gridin and Mikhail Fedyaev, both of whom were counted by Forbes among Russia’s 200 richest individuals. They are part of a section of the oligarchy that has made its fortunes through the hyper-exploitation of the working class in Russia’s coal sector, which is one of the largest in the world.

The same dynamic that underlay the disaster at the Listvyazhnaya mine—the conscious violation of even the most basic safety standards for the sake of profit and de facto cooperation between the state and the oligarchy—has led to countless similar disasters in Russia’s mining sector since the restoration of capitalism. Many of these have occurred in the Kuzbass region, the center of Russia’s coal production.

Between 2003 and 2010 alone, over 270 workers died in the five biggest mine disasters in the Kuzbass. At the Listvyazhnaya mine itself, there have been several fatal incidents in the past two decades, with the last occurring in 2017. In March 2018, a horrific fire at the shopping mall “Winter Cherry” in Kemerovo, the regional capital, killed 64 people, among them 41 children, who were trapped in the burning building. Yet again, the cause was the violation of safety standards by management, with the full knowledge of the authorities.

While particularly stark in the heavily working-class region of Kemerovo, these conditions are not unique to the Kuzbass. Hardly a week goes by without reports in the Russian press about factory fires or explosions.

These conditions are a direct result of the restoration of capitalism by the Stalinist bureaucracy three decades ago. The Stalinist bureaucrats-turned-oligarchs systematically dismantled the social and industrial infrastructure that had arisen as a result of the 1917 October Revolution. The level of safety standards is no higher than it was in mid-19th century England, as all the conquests of the workers’ movement in this regard were rolled back.

The same criminal indifference to the lives of workers and the subordination of every aspect of social life to the private profit interests of the oligarchy has guided the response of Russia’s ruling class to the COVID-19 pandemic, just as it has in Europe and the US. With the pandemic completely out of control in Europe, it still claims over 1,200 lives every day in Russia, more than during any previous wave. The Kremlin rejects any public health measures that could curtail, let alone stop, the spread of the virus.

Nursing staff in Germany on strike during contract negotiations for public sector workers

Marianne Arens

Nurses, educators and other public employees are currently protesting and striking for better wages and working conditions throughout Germany.

Nursing staff at Germany’s university hospitals, which are directly subordinate to the country’s state governments, took strike action on Tuesday and Wednesday last week. The strike took place during negotiations for a new contract for public services workers. Nursing staff are among those who have made the biggest sacrifices during the twenty months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, the university hospitals of Aachen, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Essen, Cologne and Münster were hit by the strikes, and in Bavaria, clinics in Munich, Augsburg, Erlangen, Regensburg and Würzburg. In Berlin, mainly nursery school teachers and district council workers were on strike. Workers in all spheres of state-run enterprises, including hospitals, nursing homes, day-care centres, schools, universities and social welfare centres, are affected by the contract dispute.

“Halloween is over—here the HORROR continues,” strikers at Bonn University Hospital sarcastically painted on their banner. The pandemic in particular has intensified this horror in the last two years. According to WHO estimates, up to 180,000 nurses worldwide have died from COVID-19. The number who have died in Germany is difficult to determine, with the figures kept carefully hidden from the public.

“When the Corona pandemic started, I thought: this is the big bang now we all need to finally ensure we are heard,” nurse Lisa Schlagheck, 29, declared in a WDR media interview. “But at the end of the day, nothing has changed. Many of my colleagues are quitting one after the other because they simply can’t go on anymore.”

There is now a shortage of at least 100,000 nurses in German hospitals, and more and more nurses are suffering burn-out—under conditions where infection rates are exploding. Last week alone, five out of 100,000 of the population were hospitalised with COVID-19. More than 3,000 coronavirus patients are currently in intensive care units.

At the same time, state leaders and their finance ministers are determined to step up pressure on nursing staff. Highly indebted state coffers are to be relieved at the expense of workforces. Following a second round of negotiations on 1 and 2 November, the organisation of state employers (Tarifgemeinschaft der Länder, TdL) has still not presented an offer.

Leading the negotiations are Reinhold Hilbers (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), Finance Minister of Lower Saxony, and Andreas Dressel (Social Democratic Party, SPD), Finance Senator of Hamburg. Hilbers told the business daily Handelsblatt that the states want to “quickly return to balanced budgets without debt” and that this will only succeed “with structural savings.”

“Personnel costs, which account for 40 to 50 percent of our total costs, must take a share of the burden,” Hilbers declared.

State governments also know that the incoming new federal government is intent on intensifying the policies of the outgoing grand coalition (CDU/CSU plus SPD). In the midst of the country’s devastating fourth COVID-19 wave, the “traffic light” coalition of SPD, Free Democratic Party and Greens ended the “epidemic emergency of national scope” on November 25. The coalition has also spoken out against relaxing the existing “debt brake” and against higher taxes for the rich. In addition, the new government wants to provide more money for the German army, even exceeding NATO’s demand of two percent of GDP.

Meanwhile, for public service staff—whether they are regarded as “essential” or not—nothing is left. Workers in hospitals and intensive care units, retirement and nursing homes, day-care centres, schools, psychiatric wards and other institutions are expected to continue to slave away until the point of exhaustion. They confront further staff cuts and a massive reduction in real wages with inflation already at 5 percent and rising.

Workers therefore have every right to take up the fight against these inhumane policies. A great deal depends on the current wage struggle. Nationwide, 1.1 million state employees, including 850,000 full-time posts, are affected. In addition, there are 1.4 million civil servants and one million pensioners whose salaries and pensions are based on the TdL. The TdL also sets the parameter for the TVöD (Public service workers contract), which regulates wages and conditions in federal and municipal public services and is renegotiated one year after the TdL.

The contract struggle is doomed to failure, however, if it is left in the hands of Verdi, the main public service union, and the other unions involved. All of the unions support the government’s profits-before-lives politics, and they all conduct contract bargaining as a well-rehearsed ritual aimed above all at preventing any real struggle by the working class.

Neither Verdi and the German Civil Servants Federation (dbb), who are leading the negotiations in Potsdam, nor the GEW (teachers union), IG BAU (building workers) or the GdP (police union), which are all involved in the negotiations, question the government’s austerity policies. On the contrary, they are implementing them every day in practice in workplaces. Only two months ago, Verdi called off month-long strikes at the Berlin state hospitals Charité and Vivantes.

The Verdi national executive is closely linked via SPD and Green politicians to German business circles and the incoming “traffic light” government. Frank Werneke (SPD), the head of Verdi, was proposed a few days ago for the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank, as successor to Frank Bsirske, the former head of Verdi. The latter is leaving Deutsche Bank to take up a mandate for the Greens in the German parliament.

In an interview with Deutschlandfunk, Werneke described the federal government’s pandemic handouts to banks and corporations as “important and necessary.” In the same interview, he made it clear that the wage demands made by the union had no real content. Verdi had set them as a “signal,” Werneke said: “Let’s see if the employers then cross this bridge.”

GEW chair Maike Finnern has been pleading for months for schools to be kept open, no matter how high infection rates rise. Leading politicians at the forefront of the campaign for opening up schools are prominent Verdi members. They include Sandra Scheeres (SPD), education senator in Berlin, and Britta Ernst, education minister in Brandenburg, wife of the designated chancellor Olaf Scholz and president of the Conference of Education Ministers. Neither politician has been challenged by the Verdi national executive for their policies, let alone expelled from the union.

The decision made 16 years ago to divide public sector workers into different bargaining rounds with a host of different contracts has only served to divide the working class. Each sector is conducting its own contract bargaining round for its own contract agreement with its own isolated and demoralising “warning strikes,” armed with whistles provided free of charge by the union. Hospital staff are fighting separately from home care workers, airport workers separately from bus and tram drivers, and separately from postal delivery workers, train drivers or refuse collection workers. Yet they are all organised in Verdi—an ingenious system of divide and rule!

This alone shows that the unions are leading workers around by the nose. Officially, the unions are demanding a 5 percent wage increase for 12 months, or at least an extra 150 euros a month—in the health sector at least an extra 300 euros. In addition, the union is requesting a miserly increase of 100 euros per month for apprentices, while student assistants are to receive their own contract.

Three years ago, when their demands were somewhat higher at 6 percent, the same union officials ended up agreeing to a contract with a duration of 33 months. Salary increases then averaged less than 3 percent per year and working conditions during the pandemic have deteriorated massively since then.

The fact is that Verdi, GEW, IG Bau and dbb have so far ensured that public workers bear the consequences of the murderous contagion policy, both on the job, through increased workloads and wage dumping, and personally, through infection, illness and death. If these highly paid bureaucrats are allowed to continue, they will now saddle workers with the costs arising from the official COVID-19 policy.