Students in Austria strike against government’s herd immunity policies

Markus Salzmann

In more than 100 schools across the country, pupils went on strike Tuesday against the homicidal herd immunity policies of the conservative Austrian Peoples Party (ÖVP) and Green Party coalition government. In view of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant and daily new record infection figures, the government has openly acknowledged its policy of deliberate mass infection. With the return to face-to-face teaching and compulsory oral final examinations in high schools, this inhumane course is being pushed even further.

In the capital, Vienna, many students gathered in protests at several schools. In the Ottakring district, about 150 pupils protested on Schuhmeierplatz. With posters and chants, they demanded a safe pandemic policy and the suspension of the oral exam. Under the hashtags #WirStreiken (#WeAreStriking), #NichtMitUns (#NotWithUs) and #DurchseuchungOhneUns (#MassInfectionNotWithUs), the students documented their activities and spread their demands.

Around 100 students also demonstrated against the oral examination in front of the Bundesrealgymnasium in Linz. Participants from the graduating classes were supported by pupils from the 6th and 7th grades, as well as pupils from other schools. In Bregenz, about 100 students from the upper school protested.

During protests in Salzburg, student representatives announced that they would go on strike again next week if the government did not respond to the students’ demands. In Klagenfurt, pupils also took part in the strike, although both the Federal Pupils’ Representation and the Carinthia Regional Pupils’ Representation had spoken out against the strike.

In addition to the Aktion kritischer SchülerInnen (AKS, Critical Pupils Action), which is close to the Austrian Social Democratic Party, SPÖ), numerous school representatives supported and called for protests. Some limited their protest to the fact that the oral exam was not compulsory for graduation, which is absolutely justified in view of the pandemic, as well as because of inadequate preparation.

Striking students at the ORG Vöcklabruck (Photo: Twitter)

In the last two years, the oral exam has been voluntary. However, ÖVP Education Minister Martin Polaschek, one of the most aggressive advocates of a radical pandemic policy in the cabinet of Chancellor Karl Nehammer (also ÖVP), now wants to make it compulsory again.

An open letter from about 300 student representatives had appealed to the federal government for sufficient protective measures for Austria’s schools. It says: “The pandemic is now spreading over a considerable period of our lives and is placing an increasing burden on us. Your task would be to counteract this development. Instead, you are exacerbating it through your policies. You are breaking the camel’s back. This can’t go on any longer. #NotWithUs!”

The letter demands not only fair conditions for the final exams and an increase in staff at schools, but first and foremost a “clear no to the deliberate infection of children and young people,” as well as implementation of safety measures and awareness campaigns. Already, 30,000 pupils have signed the petition “gerechte Matura” (fair school-leaving exams) condemning the plans of the education minister.

But the ÖVP and the Greens are willing to impose face-to-face teaching under any conditions. Education Minister Polascheck recently cold-bloodedly declared that the current coronavirus figures “do not really matter” for the start of school.

Katharina Reich, the head of the COVID Crisis Coordination (Gecko), freely admitted that there would be widespread infection of the population. She complained that Durchseuchung (endemic contamination) was a “negative word” that caused fear. Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein (Greens) spoke of a “paradigm shift” towards an open strategy of allowing the virus to become endemic.

The indifference of Polascheck, Reich, Mückstein and the other government representatives to the health and lives of teachers, pupils and parents is also shown by their handling of the PCR tests for pupils, which are supposed to make schools safe.

The original plan was for a totally inadequate two tests per week per student. But now, not even that is being implemented. Due to “technical difficulties,” only one test per week is evaluated.

Nevertheless, even this far too low number of tests is already providing an insight into the dramatic incidence of infections in schools.

In Vienna alone, 229 classes at 224 schools had to be closed due to massive outbreaks. In addition, 146 kindergartens were partially closed and three were completely closed. In Tyrol, 190 school classes are undertaking distance learning because of extremely high infection rates.

Since the end of the partial lockdown in mid-December and the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant, infection numbers have been shooting up rapidly. On Tuesday, the nationwide seven-day incidence rate reached a new record high of 1,288 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES). In Salzburg, it was as high as 2,187. Tyrol and Vienna also reported new records with 1,967 and 1,737, respectively. Even in Burgenland, the province with the lowest incidence, the figure now stands at over 700.

The school strike in Austria is part of a growing international movement against the policy of deliberate mass infection. Everywhere, governments are keeping schools and factories open to maintain the flow of profits to big business. But resistance to this is growing worldwide.

In protest against the high risks involved in reopening schools after the winter holidays, students in Greece occupied 350 schools. Local protest rallies by teachers also took place there during the first week of school.

In Germany, 13-year-old Yasmin from North Rhine-Westphalia received a wave of sympathy and support. The student refused to attend classes in an unsafe classroom, and instead followed lessons at a desk in the cold schoolyard. Several student representatives in Germany also recently called for a school strike.

In France, thousands of teachers went on strike and demonstrated January 13 against the Macron government’s herd immunity policies and unsafe conditions in schools. According to the French teachers’ unions, 75 percent of primary school teachers and 62 percent of secondary school teachers took part in the strike. About half of schools remained completely closed. Strikes are planned again this Thursday.

A strong strike and protest movement against keeping schools open is also developing in the US. In numerous metropolitan areas—Chicago, San Francisco and Oakland, California—educators are organising spontaneous walkouts, sickouts and strikes to end face-to-face classes. In doing so, they are opposing the trade unions, which, as in Europe and Austria, vehemently defend opening schools.

Modi pledges to defend financial oligarchy’s profits as Omicron tsunami rips through India

Wasantha Rupasinghe

As a tsunami of COVID-19 cases spreads throughout India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has once again promised the financial oligarchy that no national lockdowns will come to interrupt the flow of profits to the financial oligarchy. All industries and businesses are to continue to function, forcing workers to work despite the dangerous pandemic situation.

On January 13, Modi chaired a “high-level meeting” on the pandemic with state Chief Ministers to “review Public Health Preparedness for COVID-19 and Vaccination Progress,” the Indian prime minister’s official website reported. Modi’s “review,” however, did not aim to highlight the danger posed by the highly infectious Omicron variant, which is now driving an exponential rise in coronavirus infections.

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

Actually, Modi, in his remarks at the meeting, has once again made clear that his government’s policy, like that of many other capitalist governments around the world, is to allow the coronavirus to infect literally every single Indian. Noting that the Omicron variant is “infecting the masses many times faster than the earlier variants,” he blandly declared, “we have to ensure that there is no panic.”

Modi’s remarks were not aimed to prevent panic but to prevent action to halt mass infections. His ruling Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) was holding massive election rallies in five poll-bound states, including Uttar Pradesh, until the country’s Election Commission finally forced a ban on rallies in the beginning of the year.

Other public events in which thousands of people are gathering are also proceeding. One such superspreader event was the 47-day annual religious fair “Magh Mela-2022,” where tens of thousands of Hindu devotees swim in three rivers in Prayagraj, in BJP-controlled Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with over 200 million inhabitants.

When it comes to talk about the profit interests of the financial oligarchy, on the other hand, Modi was very firm. “While devising any strategy” on COVID-19, he insisted that “we must keep in mind there should be minimum damage to the livelihood of the common people and economic activities, and the momentum of the economy should be maintained.”

Given that Modi’s policies have driven hundreds of millions of people into extreme poverty during the pandemic, his reference here to “common people” is entirely bogus. His message is not to Indian toilers but to the financial aristocrats who have increased their personal wealth during the pandemic by tens of billions of dollars. Amid an exponential surge of Omicron cases, Modi’s word has only one meaning: whatever disaster is going to emerge, “the momentum of the economy,” that is, the superexploitation of workers, “should be maintained.”

To justify this pro-business policy amid massive surge of COVID-19 cases, he proposed to “focus more on local containment” rather than on a national lockdown, and “home isolation” rather than strict contact tracing, mass testing and other key public health policies.

Modi and his policy makers are well aware that even these limited measures are not effective in a massive country like India, where most Indians live in small tenements, overcrowded slums and small huts without any hygienic conditions or clean water. While calling for home isolation of COVID-19 patients, he did not say a word on providing financial assistance or food for those who are infected and their families. Nor did he say a word on assistance on medical expenses for those needing care.

His call to “focus more on local containment” marks not only the abandonment of even a limited nationally coordinated programme to fight the pandemic.

On the very day that Modi made these remarks, India witnessed more than 247,000 daily cases in 24 hours, up 27 percent from the previous day’s count. On the same day, 380 new deaths were confirmed, bringing the highly undercounted official toll to 485,035. As of January 19, six days after Modi’s speech, the total number of infections reached 33.2 million cases, and the active cases count was nearing 2 million.

In reality, scientific studies have shown the real death count in India is fully 10 times higher, between 3 and 5 million deaths.

Moreover, experts are raising serious doubts about the official numbers of COVID-19 cases and tests. On January 15, an NDTV report showed how India’s daily tests have not been kept up with the speed at which cases have shot up in December indicating serious under-reporting of COVID-19 cases. “Cases are up 265 percent, but tests are up only 4 percent,” it noted. Referring to the positivity rate—currently at 19.65 percent, and continuously increasing—NDTV concluded, “This shows that more and more tests are turning out to be positive.”

Yet, neither Modi nor Indian ruling elite as a whole sees the situation as alarming enough to press the warning button.

Ignoring countless reports showing that a vaccine-alone policy cannot fight COVID-19 and particularly highly infectious and vaccine-resistant variants like Omicron, Modi in his remarks to the Chief Ministers, said that “vaccination is the most effective weapon to fight against corona.”

During the meetings, Modi boasted of India’s vaccination figures. However, even in this arena, he covers up critical figures. Of 940 million adults over 18 in India eligible for vaccination, 640 million have received at least one dose, leaving 300 million adults at risk of infection.

Even though the Modi government has announced vaccination for the 15-18 age group from January 3, NewsClick wrote: “It is progressing at a slow pace as usual.” Meanwhile, as schools and colleges reopen, the under-18 population has been increasingly getting infected. Meanwhile, unlike many other countries, India is not providing third “booster” doses to the population. Though Modi recently promised the booster shots for 30 million health care and other frontline workers, even that is “shockingly lagging,” reported the news website.

To pretend that his government does care about the pandemic, Modi claimed: “We have to continue scaling up our medical infrastructure and manpower with an emphasis on science-based knowledge on the awareness front.” The bitter experience of the past two years tells an entirely different story.

Even after disastrous pandemic experiences, India’s budget allocation for health care stood at 1.8 percent of its GDP, among the lowest of any government in the world. Despite empty talk of “scaling up medical infrastructure and manpower,” thousands of frontline workers including health employees have been repeatedly coming onto the street in protest on several demands, including decent wages.

Modi and the Indian ruling elite have left the people in the dark on this unraveling situation. Already, media reports show rising numbers of hospitalized cases. After the deaths of at least 1,700 doctors in India during the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of health care workers are falling ill in hospitals in Delhi, Mumbai and across Maharashtra state. This is forcing a number of hospitals to stop treating non-COVID patients with critical non-communicable diseases like chronic diabetes.

For all of Modi’s references to “science-based knowledge on [the] awareness front,” he has from the beginning of the pandemic promoted superstitions, invoking cosmic energy to drive out the SARS-CoV-2 virus by exhorting the public to beat gongs and blow conches at auspicious hours. Two years later, scientists are worrying about the lack of proper scientific data on literally every aspect of COVID-19, including infections, deaths and vaccine effectiveness.

Modi is notorious for these types of public stunts aimed at gaining petty popularity, like printing his image on vaccine certificates. However, history will record that the Indian ruling elite’s pandemic policy was a horrific failure, driven entirely by the profit interests of Indian and international capital.

Tonga faces “unprecedented disaster” following volcanic eruption

John Braddock

The tsunami destroyed buildings and flattened trees in coastal areas. (Image credit: Facebook/Joanna Michael Stanley and Kofeola Marian Kupu)

Tonga is facing an “unprecedented disaster,” according to the government, from the massive volcanic eruption last Saturday. It covered the Pacific nation in ash, triggered a 15-metre tsunami that destroyed almost all homes on two small islands and damaged undersea communications cables, largely cutting off the country.

The eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano—65 kilometres from Tonga’s main islands—is being described by some experts as the most explosive volcanic eruption in 30 years. The volcanic mushroom plume from the eruption reached the stratosphere and extended radially over all Tonga’s islands.

The full scale of devastation caused by the tsunami is becoming clearer. The first official government statement on Tuesday said three people had died so far, including a British national, a 65-year-old woman from Mango Island, and a 49-year-old man from Nomuka Island.

Every home on Mango Island, where about 50 people live, has been destroyed. Multiple injuries were reported across the country, but the extent of casualties remains unclear.

The Tongan navy has deployed health teams and taken water, food and tents to the Ha’apai islands, closest to the volcano. One aerial image taken by a New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) aircraft showed catastrophic damage to Mango: no houses, just a few temporary tarpaulin shelters could be seen.

Tonga’s deputy head of mission in Australia, Curtis Tu’ihalangingie, described the NZDF images as “alarming,” adding that they showed numerous buildings missing on Atata Island as well. Nomuka Island in the Ha’apai group was also extensively damaged.

Parts of the western side of the main island of Tongatapu were evacuated after dozens of houses were destroyed. According to Stuff, on the island of ‘Eua two homes were “flattened” and 45 severely damaged, and eight houses in Kolomotu’a, in the centre of Tongatapu, were left uninhabitable.

Water supplies have been seriously affected by volcanic ash. Most people rely on rainwater, often gathered from rooftops. They have been frantically cleaning ash from their houses. Scientists have warned that the eruption could cause acid rain for some time to come, which could damage food crops and kill off fish supplies. People are being warned to remain indoors in the event of rain.

Ash covering a car on Tongatapu. (Image credit: Facebook/Joanna Michael Stanley and Kofeola Marian Kupu)

Undersea internet and telecommunications cables were severed by the tsunami, largely cutting Tonga off from the rest of the world. Tongans living in New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere have been unable to contact their families on the islands. On Thursday, major communications provider Digicel said it had restored some services via satellite, but it will take a month of repairs before the network is fully operational.

Tonga’s international airport was reportedly cleared of ash by Thursday morning, meaning supplies can finally be delivered by air.

International efforts to deliver aid, however, threaten to introduce COVID-19 into the country, which has so far remained almost free from the virus. Tonga’s only recorded case of COVID-19 entered from New Zealand after Wellington began lifting travel restrictions.

A UNICEF spokesman in Fiji said that relief efforts had to be conducted without “doing anything to threaten the safety of the population.” Jonathan Pryke from the Sydney-based Lowy Institute told the New York Times: “Whatever goodwill might be built up by the response would be completely undone if they bring Covid into Tonga.”

Aid agencies say shops have begun running out of food. Tonga Red Cross has enough supplies stockpiled to support 1,200 households, but Sophie Ford, international response coordinator for the Australian Red Cross, told the Guardian these will need to be replenished in the coming days and weeks.

It appears that a great deal of necessary emergency support will come, not from the regional powers but from voluntary agencies, particularly the Tongan diaspora in New Zealand, Australia and the US. In New Zealand, a newly-established relief committee is calling for donations of containers and goods to send to families in Tonga.

Australia and New Zealand sent surveillance flights on Monday to assess the damage. New Zealand has dispatched two naval ships with food and water supplies, and air force transport planes will start flights today.

Australia and New Zealand both regard the southwest Pacific as their neo-colonial patch. Their financial and aid contributions are inevitably tied to protecting their own interests. The strings attached are increasingly resented by local Pacific leaders.

As global tensions escalate amid Washington’s build-up to war against China, the US and its allies, Australia and New Zealand, are seeking to strengthen ties with Pacific countries and boost their military presence in the region, to push back against Beijing’s influence.

There is no doubt concern over the potential for political instability in Tonga. The volcanic eruption follows the installation of a new government last December. Siaosi Sovaleni defeated former Finance Minister ‘Aisake Eke and took office as prime minister with the support of the monarch, King Tupou VI, and the hereditary nobles.

Under Tonga’s undemocratic parliamentary system, there are 17 so-called “People’s Representative” seats, and eight members elected by 33 hereditary nobles. The prime minister is elected by the parliament. Sovaleni took office following behind-the-scenes intrigues in which, according to Radio NZ correspondent Kalafi Moala, the nobles played a critical role.

The election was a major defeat for the incumbent PATOA Party, with five sitting MPs losing their seats, including Siaosi Pohiva and Mateni Tapueluelu, the son and son-in-law of the late “pro-democracy” Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva.

The turn-around followed repeated interventions last year by the king, who made trenchant criticisms of the previous government in the midst of a deepening social crisis including a widespread methamphetamine epidemic.

Addressing the opening of parliament on January 12, Tupou VI declared the kingdom must “support the private sector” and face the ongoing challenges of a “fledging economy,” as well as the threat of Covid and illegal drugs. “In order to advance we must have an accounting of where the nation is financially now. Our local market cannot sustain our balance of payments,” he said. The speech portends a fresh round of attacks on the working class, many of whom are dependent on the public sector for jobs and services.

In the event of growing popular discontent and a major crisis, military intervention by Australia and New Zealand cannot be ruled out. In 2006, the two countries dispatched more than 150 soldiers and police after riots erupted in Nuku’alofa, leaving six people dead and destroying 80 percent of the central business district. The unrest came amid deepening hostility towards the country’s absolute monarchy from both ordinary Tongans and dissatisfied sections of the business and political elite.

Solomon Islands’ government imposes snap lockdown after COVID outbreak

Patrick O’Connor

Honiara Hospital, August 2019 [Source: Wikimedia]

The Solomon Islands’ capital, Honiara, was placed in lockdown from yesterday evening after health authorities detected a COVID-19 cluster.

The outbreak marks the first time there has been community transmission of the coronavirus since the beginning of the global pandemic. Due to a combination of the Pacific country’s geographical isolation, low population (around 700,000) and strict border controls, at the beginning of this month there had only been 24 total confirmed cases. These were all detected in incoming travelers, and quarantine measures prevented any wider spread.

The current outbreak involves six confirmed positive cases, but there are widespread fears of as yet undetected transmission within Honiara’s impoverished areas known as informal settlements, effectively slums. It remains unknown what variant of COVID-19 people have contracted.

The index case has been traced to January 9, when a Papua New Guinean medical doctor who had COVID travelled by boat with nine of his family members from Nukumanu Islands (also known as Tasman Islands) to Solomon Islands’ Ontong Java Atoll, reportedly to attend a wedding.

Nukumanu Islands and Ontong Java Atoll are separated by a small body of water that the Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Solomon Islands border traverses. The peoples of the neighbouring islands have longstanding historical and cultural ties and are of Polynesian origin (as distinct from the Melanesian majority in both PNG and the Solomons).

Last Tuesday, authorities announced that five Solomon Islanders living on the Atoll had tested positive. The government immediately placed the small island community in lockdown and barred all travel in and out of the area.

However, a small passenger vessel, the MV Akwa, had already transported a group of people from Ontong Java Atoll to Honiara, arriving January 10. One of the passengers was directed to get tested, following the Tuesday local lockdown announcement, and found to be positive. Several other people who were on the vessel have reported feeling unwell and are awaiting test results.

Authorities are now desperately contact tracing in Honiara and more widely. According to the Solomon Star, immediately after the MV Akwa transported the COVID infected passenger, the vessel travelled to Malaita province and then returned to the capital “fully packed with traveling passengers.”

In Honiara, authorities said they had identified four main areas where the passengers who travelled from Ontong Java Atoll disembarked. One of these, the Lord Howe settlement, is of special concern. This is an impoverished slum, where most homes consist of shacks constructed from wood and corrugated iron. Basic infrastructure is lacking, including sewerage and related sanitation. Like other informal settlements, Lord Howe is periodically affected by disease outbreaks caused by poor sanitation, such as E.coli and diarrhoea.

A 2019 public health research project found that within the Mataniko River settlements, of which Lord Howe is a part, 46 percent of parents reported that their young children had suffered at least one episode of diarrhoea during the previous two weeks. Across Solomon Islands, diarrhoea is the second leading cause of under-five mortality, with a shocking 10 percent of all children dying from the condition before reaching five years.

The threatened COVID outbreak within Solomon Islands’ most oppressed communities is another reflection of the global pandemic’s intersection with pre-existing crises created by capitalism.

Climate change is threatening to destroy the Polynesian community on Ontong Java Atoll. In the last two decades, rising sea levels has wiped out low-lying villages on the atoll. Salination has destroyed fresh water sources and made growing crops impossible. As a result, only a couple of thousand people remain on the atoll. Many others have fled, effectively as climate change refugees, including to the Lord Howe settlement in Honiara.

Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare announced the snap lockdown of the capital yesterday morning at 10 a.m., with restrictions taking effect from 6 p.m. The lockdown is scheduled to last at least 60 hours. No movement in or out of the capital is permitted. Everyone is required to stay in their homes, except for authorised essential services workers. All domestic flights are suspended. International airline passenger services were already suspended, with only humanitarian cargo planes permitted.

The lockdown announcement triggered a rush on shops and banks. According to the Solomon Star, some bank outlets closed their doors early, “leaving many customers disappointed and angry... some said many families would go hungry for the next few days.”

The COVID-19 vaccination rate in Solomon Islands remains low. According to the Our World in Data website, approximately 9.5 percent of the population have received two doses of vaccine, with another 18 percent having received one dose.

As in other Pacific countries, vaccine hesitancy is a problem. According to one poll conducted last year, 48 percent said they were willing to be vaccinated while the same percentage of respondents said they were not willing. This partly reflects low literacy levels and limited public education infrastructure, but also the reactionary influence of evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity in the country. Missionaries played an important role in subordinating the Solomons’ population to British colonial rule prior to independence in 1978 and their influence continues. Ludicrous social media posts have been circulated that associate the COVID vaccine with Satanism.

Impoverished health infrastructure is a significant barrier to the delivery of vaccines, especially in the rural provinces. According to a 2016 report, there are only 13 practicing doctors in all the 12 provincial hospitals in Solomon Islands. Some of these hospitals lack reliable electricity supplies. A 2015 World Health Organization review found that just two-thirds of local health facilities had vaccine refrigerators.

The threat now posed by COVID-19 to the country’s population is an indictment of Australian imperialism. In 2003, Canberra launched a neo-colonial takeover of the country on the basis of a bogus humanitarian pretext. Between 2003 and 2017, the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) involved nearly $3 billion in Australian government spending. The vast majority of this was funneled to Australian contractors and the security apparatus. Only a pittance was allocated to social services and basic infrastructure, including health.

New projections estimate that up to 304,000 in the US could die from COVID-19 by mid-March

Benjamin Mateus

This week the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, co-led by Professor Katriona Shea of Pennsylvania State University, projected that by March 12, 2022, the United States could see between 409,000 to 2,380,000 cumulative hospitalizations and 54,000 to 304,000 additional COVID-related deaths before the Omicron surge subsides. The Penn State modeling center utilizes multiple datasets to forecast their projections, which are then shared with the White House.

Such a grim prognosis demands the immediate mobilization of all public health measures to stem the tide of infections and prevent such a massive additional loss of life.

Instead, the Biden administration is offering the country hundreds of millions of adult non-surgical N95 respirators sourced from the government’s Strategic National Stockpile. According to White House officials, these will be made available at local pharmacies and health centers by early February. These will barely suffice for a day or two and come at a moment when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) forecasts suggest that the peak in infections will have passed.

National Guard members assisting with processing COVID-19 deaths and placing them into temporary storage at LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner Office in Los Angeles, Jan. 12, 2021. (LA County Dept. of Medical Examiner-Coroner via AP)

Additionally, each US household is to be provided four free test kits, shipped in seven to 12 days once ordered through an online portal, covidtests.com, or they can be remimbursed for purchased tests by their insurance comapny after a three-page form is completed, printed, and mailed or faxed. Worse, some of these rapid antigen tests are temperature-sensitive and, if exposed to the cold for too long, can impact the test results.

Simply put, the latest steps taken by the White House—which has ruled out any action to stop of the spread of virus, including lockdowns and school closures—are largely performative and an insult to the population, demonstrating the Biden administration’s criminal indifference to mass suffering and death.

There are currently more than 156,000 people admitted to hospitals across the United States, a pandemic high, as the variant continues to surge, diving deeper into more rural regions. With staffing shortages and sickened staff, rising admissions are pushing hospitals to overcapacity, which inevitably means that even more may die.

Marc Lipsitch of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who is also scientific director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) forecasting center, explained to the Associated Press (AP), “In places with extremely short staffing and overloads of patients, as the medical professionals have been telling us, the quality of care begins to suffer. That may also lead to higher death rates, but that’s not in any of the models I’m aware of.”

As internationally renowned infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist, Dr. Raina MacIntyre, who heads the biosecurity program at Kirby Institute in Sydney, Australia, recently noted, Omicron might be half as severe as Delta. However, Delta was twice as severe as the ancestral variant.

Even if Omicron has a predisposition to the upper airways and predilection for less severe disease, the sheer exponential rise in cases is having untold consequences in the US. New COVID-19 cases continue to be reported at blistering rates of over 730,000 per day. It also puts more children into hospitals and kills more of them than any other previous strain. University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi, speaking with AP, warned that “a lot of people are still going to die because of how transmissible Omicron has been.”

According to Dr. Shea, for the period encompassing mid-December to mid-March, the central estimates predicted bythe model are that 1.5 million people will be admitted to hospitals and 191,000 will perish. The cumulative death toll for the pandemic has already surpassed 850,000, with the daily average in COVID-19 deaths over 1,800, as it continues its upward trend expected to overtake the Delta peak.

If the current projections hold, the US will record more than one million COVID deaths in the two years of the pandemic. And, as Biden celebrates his first year in office, it is noteworthy that there is hardly a distinction in the handling of this public health crisis by his administration compared to Trump’s. When one follows the cumulative trajectory of deaths, a seamless ascent underscores the malignant policy pursued by the ruling elite.

Speaking with AP, Professor Shea warned, “Overall, you are going to see more sick people even if you as an individual have a lower chance of being sick.” Further, she made the point that “this is Omicron driven,” refuting the repeated claims that the current variant only causes mild illness.

The attempt to characterize the Omicron surge as benign and just another respiratory virus is part of the attempt to reopen schools and force workers back on the job. On Sunday, during a winter storm briefing, New York Governor Kathy Hochul reported that “the COVID clouds are parting.” This is in reference to the drop in positivity rates across New York State. “Overall, the prognosis, the forecast, for COVID is much brighter than it has been before.”

Even as case numbers are trending downward, deaths in New York continue climbing, with the daily average matching those from last winter’s peak of 205 deaths per day. On January 18, 2022, New York State reported 404 deaths. The last time such a figure was seen was in mid-May 2020.

Interestingly, many on social media, including epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, have noted that COVID-19 deaths and excess deaths in South Africa continue to climb even though confirmed daily cases have declined and the country’s leadership has put the pandemic in its rearview mirror. Journalist Chris Turnbull noted on Twitter that COVID-19 deaths are up nearly ten-fold from back in November, with 130 dying per day. At least 7,700 are still admitted to hospitals, of which 1,025 remain on oxygen and 1,169 are in intensive care.

The decline in new COVID cases in the country where Omicron was first reported is plateauing, and the seven-day moving average remains over 4,000 infections per day. Placing developments in context, schools in South Africa closed their doors on December 12, and a week later, cases across the country began to decline. On January 12, when schools across the country for primary and secondary grades resumed, the declines started to stall. The following week university students are expected back in class.

The developments in South Africa with schools are analogous to those in the US and every other country facing Omicron. The current revolt and resistance of both students and teachers are a response to the repeated infections that have devastated their communities. It is well established that schools are drivers of the pandemic. Workers in every industry must follow students and teachers and take action to bring an end to the pandemic. The political establishment that serves the financial markets cares not one iota for their well-being or safety.

As to claims that the pandemic will burn itself out after causing mass infection this winter, during Tuesday’s World Health Organization COVID press conference, Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the pandemic is far from over.

“Omicron may be less severe, on average of course. The narrative that it is mild disease is misleading. It hurts the overall response and costs more lives,” Dr. Tedros noted. “Make no mistake, Omicron is causing hospitalizations and deaths and even the less severe cases are inundating health facilities. The virus is circulating far too intensely with far too many still vulnerable. For many countries, the next few weeks remains critical for health workers and health systems…Now is not the time to give up and wave the white flag … This pandemic is nowhere near over and with the incredible growth of Omicron globally, new variants are likely to emerge.”

Rentier Capitalism and Class Warfare in Kazakhstan

Balihar Sanghera & Elmira Satybaldieva

Protestors setting up a yurt in Aktobe, 4 January 2022. Photograph Source: Esetok – CC BY-SA 4.0

Blame ‘free’ market reforms that benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of the working class for the country’s recent protests.

The recent protests in oil-rich Kazakhstan have highlighted the devastating effects of rent extraction. The country’s largest sellers of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), including KazMunaiGas, Kazgermunai, CNPC-AktobeMunaiGas and Kazakhoil, have been accused by the government of increasing fuel prices by abusing their oligopoly power. When the state lifted its price cap on LPG at the start of 2022, the market price doubled within a couple of days. The impact was immediately felt by poor and vulnerable sections of Kazakhstani society, which relied on the commodity for heating and vehicles.

Ultimately, the price hike was a violent attempt by powerful oil corporations to extract rent – they knew that most of the population had no alternative but to pay up or go without. Akin to social historian EP Thompson’s moral economy of the 18th-century English crowd that rioted against soaring food prices, Kazakhstan’s working class revolted against the market price and the injustice of the ‘free’ market.

‘Free’ market

Kazakhstan’s government justified the removal of the price cap by saying that it was complying with market principles. It wanted to liberalise the market by ending the price subsidy on LPG, and allowing the ‘free’ market to dictate the price. This policy is based on mainstream economic thinking that a commodity’s price and value should be determined by demand and supply to reflect its scarcity and costs.

Moreover, the government argued that the price subsidy had created a domestic shortage of LPG. Illegal traders were said to have exported LPG to neighbouring countries, where prices were significantly higher than in Kazakhstan. The market reform would incentivise oil corporations to reduce their exports overseas, and sell domestically at a better price.

But such justifications and faith in market forces proved to be seriously flawed and fatal. Whereas the price cap had previously limited the powers of natural monopolies, the government was now proposing that large oil corporations dominate the market and dictate and raise prices to what the market could bear. The price jump from 60 tenge ($0.14) to 120 tenge ($0.28) per litre was a sheer exercise in economic power and rent extraction, which was initially defended as an outcome of impersonal electronic market trading.

The price rise came as a shock to most working-class people, who had already seen higher inflation and interest rates increasing their living costs over the past year. For the working class, LPG, dubbed “road fuels for the poor”, was cheaper than alternative fuels, such as diesel and gasoline, which can cost 180–240 tenge ($0.40–0.55) per litre. In the south-western region of Mangystau, and many other parts of the country, it is estimated that 70–90% of vehicles use LPG.

Facing abject poverty, immense inequality and blatant value-grabbing, a large section of the working class, in many districts, revolted against the introduction of a market reform that clearly favoured the rich and powerful propertied class, including oil and gas executives and shareholders. In cities across the country, violent clashes between protesters and security forces left many people injured or killed, and numerous buildings and cars set alight and destroyed. Almaty, the commercial capital, looked like something from an apocalyptic film.

What is a Rentier Society?

Rent arises from unequal power relationships between the powerful propertied class (the asset-rich, or rentiers) and those without property (the asset-poor). The former can extract income because they own and control assets that the latter want or need, but lack them. There are different forms of rent, including interest, land and housing rent, capital gains, dividends, access fees, road tolls and price markups arising from monopoly power. Rentierism refers to often dominant and legalised economic practices and arrangements to extract rent. Rentiers obtain income because they have power over others, not because they deserve or have earned it.

In a frantic effort to deflect criticism and apportion blame, energy minister Magzum Mizagaliyev accused the country’s petrol stations of price-fixing and price speculation. As natural monopolies are wont to do, major petrol stations marked up LPG prices as much as possible to reflect their economic power, rather than the commodity’s scarcity or costs.

Public anger, civil unrest and government pressure escalated, and the petrol stations reduced their prices to 85–90 tenge (c. $0.20) per litre. It was a collective endeavour by the state and oil corporations to appease the growing crowd of protesters. Finally, as demonstrators’ demands and actions intensified further, the government was forced to re-introduce a temporary price cap, slashing prices to 50 tenge ($0.11) per litre.

Class warfare

At the heart of the crisis is a fundamental question: what kind of a ‘free’ market and capitalism operates in Kazakhstan?

For supporters of neoliberalism, a ‘free’ market means that economic actors are free to extract rent, free of state controls. Rent refers to income generated by the mere virtue of owning and controlling scarce assets, such as credit money, land, retail estate, natural resources, digital platforms and patents. This ideal of a ‘free’ market has hugely benefited Kazakhstan’s banks, property developers, oil, gas and mining corporations and retail chains, collectively known as the rentier class.

Rent extraction contributes to inflated prices, indebtedness and precarity in the wider society

These rentiers receive income by partly siphoning off surplus value that others produce. It is unearned income, and their rent extraction contributes to inflated prices, indebtedness and precarity in the wider society. Their income is parasitic and harmful to most of the population.

Moreover, capitalism is organised around rent extraction rather than wealth creation, in which the rentiers, not the producers, dominate economic and political practices and institutions through regulatory and state capture. The emergence of rentier capitalism as an economic order has produced income inequality and plutocracy in Kazakhstan.

The truth is that Kazakhstan’s government and the rentier class did not care about addressing the domestic LPG shortage. The price ‘liberalisation’ was merely another attempt at unjustly enriching the country’s rentier class at the expense of the working class (including rural migrants and the unemployed).

In 2019, Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and one of the richest persons in the country, privatised a large network of petrol stations belonging to the national company KazMunaiGas. He benefited from the subsidy given to LPG as state income was transferred to his company. Then when the price cap was lifted, he benefited from the freedom to charge customers more.

Political theatre

In an effort to discredit and delegitimise the protesters, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called them ‘terrorists and bandits’ – a familiar trope that has been used in the past to justify violent and brutal crackdowns on the working-class’s legitimate economic grievances.

A few days later, when order had been restored, President Tokayev spoke in a more conciliatory tone. He highlighted how his predecessor Nazarbayev had allowed the super-rich to thrive in the country. He also said that wealth should be redistributed, by demanding that the rich and powerful make a tribute to the people through a social fund.

But this is political theatre – to show the nation Tokayev’s firmness and even-handedness, masking the state’s strategic selectivity and bias towards investors’ and rentiers’ short-term interests over sustainable economic and social development.

Amid this class warfare, some middle-class people –who were largely unaffected by the price hike – merely looked on or seemed irritated by the unrest. Some were hopeful that so-called ‘peacekeeping’ forces from Russia would quickly restore law and order. They also felt that the government should have used greater force at the start to quell the unrest.

Aynur Kurmanov, co-leader of the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, who is outside the country, bemoaned the lack of social solidarity in the uprising against rentierism. He noted that plutocrats, rentiers and post-Soviet states were better organised to suppress or co-opt the working-class movement in the country:

You shouldn’t idealise the current protest movement either. Yes, it is a grassroots social movement, with a pioneering role for workers, supported by the unemployed and other social groups. But there are very different forces at work in it, especially as workers do not have their own party, class trade unions, a clear programme that fully meets their interests. The existing left-wing groups in Kazakhstan are more like circles and cannot seriously influence the course of events. Oligarchic and outside forces will try to appropriate and or at least use this movement for their own purposes.

Indeed, the LPG price hike has highlighted a crucial feature of rentier capitalism: the role of government in creating and facilitating rent extraction, and privileging foreign and domestic rentiers. Since the 1990s, Kazakhstan’s government has fashioned a parasitic economic system of private quasi-monopolies in the oil and gas sector. It gave a handful of US, European and Chinese oil producers lucrative property rights over natural resources, and several domestic and foreign oil sellers profitable distribution and retail rights.

The government has shielded these oil companies from criticism of their exploitative and harmful labour and environmental practices, and their anti-competitive market behaviour. It has also shielded rents from tax through generous production-sharing agreements with oil companies, who are protected from expropriation via international investment treaties, arbitration courts and powerful state connections. On top of that, oil corporations have benefited from state subsidies. The rentier class has successfully privatised colossal rewards that are hugely disproportionate to their contributions and risks.

Our sense of anger and horror over the recent events in Kazakhstan needs to start from an understanding of how rentierism has become an economic norm, which has legitimised and normalised unearned income, inequality, precarity and social suffering. Rentierism consists of many forms of economic exclusion and income entitlement, all legalised and justified.

Once this is grasped, the existing economic order can be critically evaluated, and the economy can be transformed and democratised to serve people’s needs and ensure their well-being.