COVID-19 surges in Australia’s remote Aboriginal communities

Martin Scott

A surge in COVID-19 infections in the Northern Territory (NT), coupled with the poor underlying health conditions in impoverished Aboriginal communities and limited health facilities in remote areas, is resulting in a major crisis.

Yuendumu in central Australia

Since quarantine requirements for domestic visitors to the NT were dropped on December 20, more than 11,000 new infections have been recorded in the territory. Prior to the border reopening, just 363 cases had been detected in the 21 months following the first positive test in the territory. Almost two thirds were overseas arrivals in quarantine.

There are currently 95 people hospitalised for COVID-19 in the NT, up from 13 on December 20. The territory has officially recorded two COVID-19 deaths, both in the last two months, and both in Aboriginal communities. The first was a woman in her 70s from the Binjari community near Katherine, and the second a fully-vaccinated woman in her 40s from the Bagot community in Darwin, the NT capital.

Another death was reported yesterday, of a man in Tennant Creek, who died of a cardiac arrest while in the “early stages of COVID,” according to NT Health Minister Natasha Fyles, but this has not been included in official figures “at this stage.”

In a joint open letter sent to Michael Gunner, chief minister of the NT Labor government, the Central Land Council, Central Australian Aboriginal Congress and the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance NT said the territory’s failure to act quickly had “directly led to Covid spreading out of control in the Aboriginal communities of Central Australia and beyond.”

The groups called for an “immediate lockdown” of Central Australia, in the southern part of the territory.

The region is currently under a limited “lockout,” meaning unrestricted movement is allowed within the area for people who have received at least two doses of vaccine, while unvaccinated people are limited to a 30-kilometre radius and only allowed to leave home for essential goods and services, medical treatment and masked exercise. An indoor mask mandate is in place for all residents.

Since reopening the border, the territory government has done little to stop transmission. Mask wearing was not mandated until December 31 and, while QR-code check-ins were required, the check-in app sent no exposure alerts for 10 days over Christmas, just as the surge was picking up speed.

Under these circumstances, when people have not been provided with the necessary resources or public health education to prevent the spread of the virus, the role of lockouts is to punish the most vulnerable layers for the reckless policies of government.

On Monday, the Guardian reported that an elderly woman with COVID-19 was forced to sleep outside and self-isolate under a tree in an effort to avoid infecting her relatives, including a person on dialysis and a young child.

One of the woman’s relatives said: “Positive people have been staying in their houses, in every house in Yuendumu [a remote Aboriginal community 260 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs], that’s how the spread went really fast.”

More than 140 people in the community of around 800 have contracted the virus since the outbreak was first reported on January 8. Yuendumu is just one among dozens of Aboriginal communities across the territory in which COVID-19 is circulating.

While 95 percent of the NT’s population is fully-vaccinated, only 67 percent of Yuendumu has received two vaccine doses. In some remote Aboriginal communities, that figure is as low as 38 percent.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 through Aboriginal communities is a stark expression of the class issues at the centre of the pandemic. Decades of oppression and malign neglect have resulted in widespread poverty and third-world health and living conditions. According to 2016 census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, just 10.8 percent of Yuendumu residents work full time, and 50 percent of the population is unemployed.

In 2019, 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker was shot by police in Yuendumu and bled to death without receiving professional emergency care. The local health clinic had been closed by NT authorities the day before.

Across Australia, 98 deaths were reported today, 39 in Victoria, 35 in New South Wales (NSW), 18 in Queensland, 5 in South Australia and 1 in the Australian Capital Territory.

Of the deaths in NSW, 8 people had received three vaccine doses, 15 had received two, and 12 were unvaccinated. One of those who had received two vaccine doses was a man aged in his 40s.

As fatalities mount, government figures around the country continue to claim the Omicron surge has peaked or soon will, as part of a propaganda barrage to force teachers and students back to school, and parents back to work.

While daily infection numbers do appear to be declining in most parts of the country, the complete breakdown of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing since late December and the lack of availability of rapid antigen tests (RATs) mean the official figures are a vast underestimation of the true extent of the spread.

Over the past two years, private pathology companies have raked in billions of dollars from government-funded PCR testing. With test positivity rates at 1 percent or lower throughout much of the pandemic, these companies were able to maximise profits by pooling up to 20 samples in each test run, reducing the need to invest in more lab equipment.

When the more infectious Omicron variant arrived, and was met with the repudiation of virtually all public health measures, positivity rates soared to 30 percent or more, meaning samples had to be run individually.

Without the testing capacity to do this, testing sites were shut down, and people waited days for test results, which in some cases never came.

The response of Australia’s governments to this crisis was to change the rules, limiting PCR testing to close household contacts and people with symptoms.

Despite the complete breakdown of testing, more than 2 million COVID-19 infections have been recorded in Australia this year, more than four times as many as in 2020 and 2021 combined.

The relentless promotion of the idea that the virus has peaked deliberately obfuscates the fundamental character of pandemic viruses. The return to in-person learning around the country will lead to a surge in infections, as has been acknowledged by the very leaders forcing the reopening.

Dr. Gaetan Burgio, from the Australian National University, told NCA NewsWire: “In my view, it is too early for Australia to ease restrictions given schools are reopening and another spike in infection is anticipated.”

The onset of winter, Burgio said, “will certainly impact the transmission of the virus and its spread.” Burgio noted: “With the Omicron surge, it is now clear that Australia is no longer different to Europe or the US.”

Already, a new sub-variant of Omicron, BA.2, is circulating in at least 40 countries. University of Melbourne epidemiologist Professor Nancy Baxter yesterday warned that initial data showed “it could be more contagious than Omicron.” Baxter said “if it gets here, it may extend our waves and they may take a lot longer to get out of.”

This is the direct result of “let it rip” policies imposed by virtually every capitalist government worldwide—with the notable exception of China—which continue to ensure mass infection and continuous mutation of the virus.

As the current surge of infection in Australia’s Aboriginal communities makes clear, it is the most vulnerable layers of the working class who will suffer the worst consequences of the subordination of public health to the profit demands of big business. This includes schoolchildren and teachers who are currently being forced back into unsafe face-to-face learning.

Albert Baker Fund 2022

Application Deadline: 31st January 2022

About Albert Baker Fund: The Albert Baker Fund (ABF) is a Christian Science non-profit organization based in the U.S.A. ABF provides post-secondary educational grants only (no loans) for active Christian Scientists who are citizens of one of the 13 countries where ABF has established a program. Our awards are based on the applicant’s good academic standing and demonstrated financial need.

For more than 50 years, the Albert Baker Fund has been helping Christian Scientists pay for higher education. Like the Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, and her elder brother Albert Baker, we appreciate the value of education. Since 2004, we have expanded to now providing grants to eligible students in 13 African countries, as well as the UK, Europe, and The Philippine's.

Type: Undergraduate, Graduate

Eligibility for Albert Baker Fund: Applicants for funding toward university, college, or vocational training must be active Christian Scientists, verified through church references and interviews with the In-Country Representatives in their region

Technical Eligibility Requirements (All Applicants)

• Applicants must be a citizen of Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, DRC, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, or Zambia.
• Applicants must reapply for funding each new academic term (year, semester, or length of vocational course).
• Applicants must be enrolled in or admitted to an accredited educational institution.

Scholar Eligibility Requirements (All Applicants)

• Applicants must be active and sincere students of Christian Science.
• Applicants must currently be a member of The Mother Church or Branch Church/Society.
• Applicants must take full responsibility for the application process and all communication with ABF Staff.
• Applicants must actively ‘pass their blessings forward’ by enriching the lives of the people they touch either through altruism, spiritual activism, or volunteerism.

Selection Criteria:

• Education Levels: Undergraduate, graduate, and vocational
• Institutions located in: Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, DRC, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania (Mwanza only), Togo, Uganda, or Zambia
• Expenses: Funding awards can go toward paying for tuition, books, exams, housing, and transportation
• Awards Types: Grants (no loans)
• Award distribution: Grants made payable only to educational institutions; approved online courses are eligible

Eligible Countries for Albert Baker Fund:

• Benin
• Burundi
• Cameroon
• Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
• Ghana
• Kenya
• Nigeria
• Republic of the Congo
• Rwanda
• Tanzania
• Togo
• Uganda
• Zambia

To be Taken at (Country): Candidate’s country of choice

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Albert Baker Fund:

• Expenses: Funding awards can go toward paying for tuition, books, exams, housing, and transportation
• Awards Types: Grants (no loans)

Duration of Award: One academic year or one vocational course length

How to Apply for Albert Baker Fund:

1. Application Creation and Submission: Once the Submission Guidelines and Apply Online instructions (including “What You Need to Know Before You Apply) have been read, an account can be created by completing our Online Registration Form. Upon receipt of our Login Activation email, entry to our online application system has been granted, and a new financial aid application form can be created. All applications must be submitted, complete, during the intake dates listed on our Application Deadlines page.
2. Application Review: Once an online application is submitted, reviewed, and judged complete, applicants will be contacted to schedule an interview with one of our In-Country Representatives (ICRs). This interview is required and can be conducted over the phone or face-to-face.
3. Result Notification All applicants are notified by email of the award decision, so we encourage applicants to check their email regularly during this time.

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

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How the 13th Amendment’s Fatal Flaw Created Modern-Day Convict Slavery

Kwasi Konadu & Clifford C. Campbell

The 13th Amendment is having a moment of reckoning. Considered one of the crowning achievements of American democracy, the Civil War-era constitutional amendment set “free” an estimated 4 million enslaved people and seemed to demonstrate American claims to equality and freedom. But the amendment did not apply to those convicted of a crime.

And one group of people are disproportionately, though not solely, criminalized – descendants of formerly enslaved people.

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,” the amendment reads, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

In other words, slavery still exists in America, but the only people whose labor can be enslaved are those convicted of a crime.

To some lawmakers and human rights advocates, that exception is a blight on democracy and the very idea of freedom – even for those convicted of a crime. As scholars of slavery and the histories of African America, our research shows the 13th Amendment’s exception clause reinvented slave labor and involuntary servitude behind prison walls.

Free labor

Since the late 1700s, U.S. states have used the labor of convicts, a predominantly white institution that came to include people of African ancestry. Convict slavery and chattel slavery co-existed. In Virginia, the state that had the largest number of enslaved Africans, inmates were declared “civilly dead” and “slaves of the State.”

It wasn’t until the early 1900s that states ended convict-leasing, the practice whereby wealthy farms or industrial business owners paid state prisons to use inmates to work on railroads and highways and in coal mines. In Georgia, for example, the end of convict-leasing in 1907 caused severe economic blows to several industries, including brick and mining companies and coal mines. Without access to cheap labor, many collapsed or suffered severe losses.

Today, the United States has the largest prison population in the world, with an estimated 2.2 million incarcerated people. For many of them, the 13th amendment’s exception has become a rule of forced labor. Over 20 states still include the exception clause in their own state constitutions. Thirty-eight states have programs in which for-profit companies have factories in their prisons. Prisoners perform everything from picking cotton to manufacturing goods to fighting forest fires.

In a 2015 story, “American Slavery, Reinvented,” The Atlantic magazine described the consequences of refusing to work. “With few exceptions,” wrote the story’s author, Whitney Benns, “inmates are required to work if cleared by medical professionals at the prison. Punishments for refusing to do so include solitary confinement, loss of earned good time, and revocation of family visitation.”

In some cases, inmates are paid less than a penny an hour. And many who served their sentences leave prison in debt, having worked without the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act or the National Labor Relations Act.

In Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Texas, penal plantations exist where predominantly Black men pick cotton and other crops under the watchful eyes of typically armed white men on horseback. Some of the largest cotton production prisons are in Arkansas, helping to make the United States “the third-largest producer of cotton globally,” behind China and India.

Ironically, many of the prisons, like Louisiana State Penitentiary, or “Angola,” are located on former slave plantations.

Modern-day convict slavery

Late in 2021, on the 156th anniversary of ratification of the 13th Amendment of Dec. 6, 1865, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, introduced a bill to eliminate the exception. Known as the Abolition Amendment, the resolution would “prohibit the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime.”

“America was founded on beautiful principles of equality and justice and horrific realities of slavery and white supremacy,” Merkley said in a statement, “and if we are ever going to fully deliver on the principles, we have to directly confront the realities.”

Based on our research, those realities are steeped in the mythology that America is a “land of the free.” While many believe it is the freest country in the world, the nation ranks 23rd among countries that uphold personal, civil and economic freedoms, according the Human Freedom Index, co-published by the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

For U.S. analysts who examine the nation’s constitutional pledges and its actions, the country is less free than often assumed.

Over time, those realities demonstrate a conflict in U.S. history, illustrated by the 13th Amendment. Some states approved the amendment in 1865. Others, like Delaware, Mississippi and New Jersey, rejected it. Free labor was at stake. America embraced the idea of freedom, but it was economically powered by slave labor. Today, the net result is that America is a nation with “4 percent of the planet’s population but 22 percent of its imprisoned,” according to Bryan Stevenson writing in The New York Times Magazine.

Some readers might be puzzled by our discussion of “slavery” in modern life. The Slavery Convention was an international treaty created in 1926, and it defined slavery as “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership is exercised.” The “right of ownership” includes buying, selling, using, profiting, transferring or destroying that person. This legal definition of slavery has been upheld by international courts since 1926.

The U.S. government ratified this treaty in 1929. But in doing so it opposed “forced or compulsory labour except as punishment for crime of which the person concerned has been duly convicted,” according to the treaty. The wording of the U.S. government’s opposition is the same as the 13th Amendment. Sixty-four years after passing that amendment, the U.S. government affirmed the use of prisons for forced labor or convict slavery.

It is, then, unlikely the Abolition Amendment will become law despite the authority to do so granted by the second section of the 13th Amendment. A constitutional amendment would have to pass both the House and Senate by a two-thirds majority, then be ratified by three-quarters (or 38) of the 50 state legislatures.

Interest by lawmakers in abolishing modern-day slavery is nothing new.

Back in 2015, President Barack Obama issued a proclamation to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment’s passage. He praised the amendment for “the protections it restored and the lives it liberated,” but then conceded work still needed to be done to fully abolish all forms of slavery.

The interest in the 13th Amendment has also been widespread throughout popular culture. Films, books, activists and prisoners across the United States have for some time linked that amendment to what legal scholar Andrea Armstrong calls “prison-created slavery.”

But given the political realities and economic imperatives at play, free prison labor will persist in America for the foreseeable future, leaving in serious doubt the idea of American freedom – and abundant evidence of modern-day convict slavery.

Workers devastated as UK cost-of-living crisis worsens

Barry Mason

Workers in Britain are being engulfed by a cost-of-living crisis as inflation soars and wages fail to keep up. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) of inflation is at 5.4 percent, the highest for nearly 30 years, while the Retail Price Index (RPI) which includes housing costs is at 7.5 percent.

Workers face rising energy bills, housing costs and food prices, tax increases and higher travel costs.

A Citizens Advice charity report last November noted that around 20 percent of families had already cut back on the amount they spend on food shopping or had turned off heating in an attempt to save money.

A shopper enters a supermarket in London, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021 during England's third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

It stated, “New research on the cost-of-living crunch by Citizens Advice reveals one in ten families—equivalent to 3.2 million households—are facing financial crisis this winter.”

The charity continued, “even if living on a minimal budget—the financial plan its [Citizens Advice] advisers use to support people through a debt management process—more than three million households would be in the red or unable to cover the essentials.

“A further 380,000 households have less than £50 spare each month after covering their basic living costs, putting them at risk of hardship if they faced an unexpected bill.”

A survey by the debt counselling charity Step Change showed nearly a third of British adults, around 15 million, say they are struggling financially, twice the number reported in March last year.

Its recent report, “Falling behind to keep up: the credit safety net and problem debt”, detailed how many workers have to resort to borrowing just to exist day to day.

Step Change said, “Over the course of the year before our survey was conducted, (up to October 2021) we estimate that 4.4 million people struggling to keep up with household bills and credit commitments borrowed £13 billion to pay bills and make it through to payday.”

It added, “Two-thirds (65%) of those using credit as a safety net have kept up with credit repayments by recently missing housing or utility bills, using more credit or cutting back to the point of hardship.”

Increasing energy prices will have a huge impact. Currently there is a cap on gas and electricity charges set at £1,277 a year. This figure, decided in October last year, was a massive £139 increase on the previous cap. From April, it will increase again, with the new amount to be announced by domestic fuel regulator Ofgem on February 7. It is expected to be lifted by around a staggering 50 percent, setting the cap at £2,000.

The rises will badly hit those on default tariffs or on prepayment meters. Those on fixed-rate deals will also be impacted. People have been advised to shop around to find cheaper deals. However, with gas at such a high world price, these are disappearing. TheEnergyShop website reported that 226 current cheaper deals will no longer be available past the end of March.

In a recent statement on the energy crisis, the fuel poverty charity National Energy Action (NEA) noted that at the beginning of October last year around four million UK households were in fuel poverty, struggling to keep their homes warm. It said the October energy cap rise pushed a further 500,000 households into this position.

NEA estimates the April rise will add another 1.5 million households to the total, taking it to 6 million. This would represent a 50 percent rise in just six months. With around 28 million households in the UK, it would see over a fifth experiencing fuel poverty.

Housing costs are also on the rise, particularly in the rental sector. The latest HomeLet Rental Index figures show average monthly rental costs in the UK rose by 8.6 percent, with the average rent being £1,060.

An article on the cost-of-living crisis in the homeless charity magazine, The Big Issue, noted, “Already, data shows that private rents are unaffordable for the poorest in the country, with data from 2021 showing that there are just two areas in England where the poorest families spend less than 30 per cent of their income on rent costs.”

In April, two-thirds of English local authorities will increase council tax, many implementing the maximum 2.99 percent increase allowable without having to hold a consultation with council taxpayers. For those paying the average D band figure it means a £57-a-year rise.

Following recent Bank of England interest rate increases, homeowners with mortgages are expected to see an average £15-a-month increase.

For the majority of workers, the surge in food prices is a critical element in their rising cost of living. Many staples have shot up in price, including pasta which has gone up 26.3 percent in the last 12 months. According to data analyst company Kantar, food prices overall increased by 3.5 percent in the four weeks leading to Christmas. Retail research body Assosia has calculated that a basket of common grocery items increased by six percent over the last year.

The Trussell Trust, a leading food bank charity, issued a press release on November 24 on the demands for their services. It stated, “New figures released today reveal more than 5,100 emergency food parcels were provided for people every day from April until September this year on average, by food banks in the Trussell Trust network. That’s at least three parcels given every minute and is an 11% increase compared to the same period in 2019, as need for emergency food remains well above pre-pandemic levels.

“Alarmingly, families with children have been hit the hardest, with food parcels for children increasing at double the rate for adults, compared to pre-pandemic levels. Between April and September 2021, almost 2,000 parcels were provided for children every day on average, compared to almost 1,700 in 2019.”

The cost of travel is increasing too. In March, rail fares will increase by 3.8 percent. Petrol prices reached a record high in October of around £1.43 a litre and have only dropped back slightly. According to motoring organisation the RAC, it costs around £15 more to fill an average family car than it did a year ago.

Workers have meanwhile seen their incomes hit hard. Furlough payments issued to workers laid off because of the COVID-19 pandemic have ended, as has the £20-a-week supplement to the Universal Credit welfare payment, which has devastated 6 million of the poorest, including the lowest-paid employees.

In April, National Insurance contributions will increase by 10 percent, leaving a worker on £30,000 a year around £5-a-week worse off.

Wages are rapidly falling behind these rising costs. On January 17, Sky News quoted an economist at recruitment firm Indeed Hiring Lab, who said that despite increased demand in some job sectors as the economy opened up, “we’re not seeing any signs of any real gains for the average worker, which is concerning given the squeeze on energy bills and the general cost of living.”

In the same news item, Institute for Fiscal Studies associate director Peter Levell stated, “nominal wage growth would have to accelerate quite a bit to ensure that people’s living standards for this year haven’t fallen relative to the previous year.”

School-driven explosion of COVID cases in children linked to alarming spike of MIS-C

Linda Rios

As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise exponentially throughout the world, the toll that the disease is having on children finds expression in increasing numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. According to the latest report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), for the week ending January 20, 2022, child COVID infections surpassed 1.15 million, in the worst week of the pandemic, while the death toll of 27 children was the second-worst week.

In addition to these tragic figures, thousands of children are suffering crippling outcomes, as COVID-19 infections cause Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome-Children, or MIS-C, a condition characterized by inflammation of vital organs such as the heart, lungs and brain.

As of January 3, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 6,431 children have developed MIS-C, and 55 have died. This means that the number of children with MIS-C has more than doubled in the past nine months from the 3,185 cases reported as of last April.

Child with COVID-19 in hospital bed (Medical University of South Carolina)

Even this is likely an undercount.

The state of Virginia reported its first MIS-C death last November, the day after Thanksgiving. The child, who was between the ages of 10 and 19, lived in Prince William County in the Washington D.C. suburbs.

No other details have been released regarding the child or the family. At that time, the CDC had reported 48 child deaths from MIS-C. Seven more children have died from the sickness since that time, yet the media has been silent on this tragic syndrome.

MIS-C develops two to six weeks after initial exposure or infection. Children who develop MIS-C experience symptoms such as fever, heart palpitations, rapid breathing, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, headache, enlarged lymph nodes or redness and/or swelling of the eyes, lips, tongue, hands, or feet.

Perhaps the most problematic of these conditions is inflammation of the heart. In some cases, the progression of the condition can cause heart dysfunction, and cardiogenic shock. This effectively impedes the heart’s ability to circulate enough blood to the entire body.

Additionally, children can develop cardiomyopathy, a stiffening of the heart muscle, or experience an abnormal heartbeat.

Dr. Sophie Katz of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee and an assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases told U.S. News: “Whenever that happens, usually we see children who are pretty seriously ill—kind of in shock—and their heart … doesn’t pump quite as well as it normally should.”

Last April, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics reported that the vast majority of young children and adolescents who went on to develop MIS-C had suffered only mild or asymptomatic forms of COVID-19. Of the 1,000 cases studied, 75 percent of children did not display symptoms, demonstrating COVID-19’s sinister ability to wreak havoc on the youngest of its victims despite their cases presenting as asymptomatic.

Parents often don’t connect their child’s symptoms of MIS-C to their previous infection of COVID-19 and some families are even unaware that their child contracted the coronavirus until a diagnosis of MIS-C is made.

On January 6, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published updated guidelines, which will no longer require hospitals to report deaths of COVID- 19 to the federal government. States such as Nebraska, South Dakota, Maine, Michigan and Alaska have stopped reporting or have altered the days they report COVID-19 cases and related deaths.

The lack of reporting coincides with a general movement by states and the federal government to minimize the health impact of COVID-19. According to the AAP, for the week ending January 13, 21.4 percent of all positive cases were those for children under 18. This represented over 981,000 positive child cases, a 69 percent increase over the week ending January 6.

This alarming upward trend will no doubt lead to many more cases of MIS-C, with debilitating medical conditions and even death.

In the aftermath of a record-breaking holiday travel season and the reopening of schools closely after, a crushing new wave of infections has devastated already overwhelmed hospitals and other health care facilities

In Atlanta last Thursday, several representatives of the local health care systems met to issue a statement about the dire situation facing their medical facilities, announcing that care would be rationed to treat only the most ill patients. Dr. Andrea Shane of the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta told WSB-TV2 Atlanta that there was an alarming spike in the number of child hospitalizations, stating, “In the past three, four weeks, we’ve seen more than 100 children with post-COVID complications.” She added that “the way to prevent MIS-C is to prevent COVID-19.”

The horrific toll of MIS-C on children and their families is a damning indictment of the ruling class and its murderous “herd immunity” strategy. The CDC, in concert with the Biden administration, continues to peddle the lie that the pandemic can be fought by immunizations only, with a secondary emphasis on masking.

Likewise, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), have followed suit by pushing for the forced reopening of schools across the country in order for parents to return to work. Both organizations have echoed the claim that schools are “the safest place” for children to be, feigning concern over the consequences of remote learning for students’ mental health. This despite the evidence to the contrary that schools are a main driver of COVID-19 transmission.

Between the Biden administration, the CDC and the openly right-wing, fascistic elements in the Republican Party, the barbarism of American capitalism is on full display. The ruling class has decided that it will not intervene to save the lives of working people or their children, but will continue to bear down upon them to ensure the uninterrupted flow of profits to the ultra-wealthy.

Opposition to these deadly policies is finding expression through walkouts, sickouts and strikes from students, teachers and other workers, alike.

Last week, 1,000 students in Montgomery County, Maryland walked out over unsafe conditions, as did students in Texas and Colorado, while 500 students and teachers in Oakland held an online Zoom meeting to discuss COVID-19 safety concerns. Graduate students at the University of Oregon organized a walkout due to insufficient COVID- 19 measures. Students at Pasadena City College have gathered at least 1,800 signatures to demand the continuation of online instruction.

Internationally, thousands of educators and students around the world have joined together to oppose in-person instruction. In Greece, France, Austria, the United Kingdom and in Manitoba, Canada demonstrations took place in the form of strikes and walkouts.

US charged with war crimes in Syria prison siege

Bill Van Auken

The Pentagon’s proxy ground force in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia, claimed to have retaken a jail in the northeastern city of Hasaka Wednesday following a week-long siege that saw extensive US bombing and the deployment of hundreds of American troops.

In announcing their purported victory, neither the predominantly Kurdish SDF nor their controllers in the US military offered any information on the fate of between 700 and 850 children held at the detention facility together with alleged supporters of the Islamic State (ISIS).

Reports from the city indicated that hundreds were killed in the fighting, which began last Thursday after ISIS fighters seized control of the prison following an inmate riot and the demolishing of its gates with explosive-rigged vehicles. Many more have been wounded, and thousands of families were forced to flee the fighting and the US bombing raids carried out against urban neighborhoods.

Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces Humvee patrols in Hasaka, northeast Syria, Monday, Jan. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad)

The World Health Organization reported that as many as 5,000 families had fled their homes under bitter winter conditions to government-held areas.

Syria’s state media agency Sana quoted the country’s Foreign Ministry as denouncing the actions of the US and its puppet Kurdish-led militia as tantamount to “war crimes.” It demanded the immediate withdrawal of both US troops from northeastern Syria and the Turkish military from the northwest of the country.

Sana reported Wednesday that SDF forces had brought in heavy equipment to demolish at least 10 houses in the Ghweiran neighborhood of Hasaka city near the prison, while airstrikes by Apache attack helicopters and other US warplanes demolished other homes and public buildings.

Approximately 200 US troops were reportedly deployed in the fighting, backed by American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

The aid agency Save the Children said it had received reports that children were among the hundreds killed and wounded in the siege. The SDF had charged that ISIS fighters were using the child detainees as “human shields,” a time-worn alibi of the Pentagon for the slaughter of unarmed civilians.

Letta Taylor, from Human Rights Watch, told the Washington Post that she had spoken directly to inmates from Canada and Australia during the siege. “They sound desperate,” she said. “They say they’ve had no food or water for days; describe dead and wounded everywhere.”

A similar account was provided by a 17-year-old boy from Australia, who was able to send out messages to his family. “There’s a lot of people dead in front of me, I’m scared I might die any time because I’m bleeding, please help me,” he said.

His voice notes to his family, obtained by the Telegraph, continued: “I’ve seen a lot of bodies of kids, eight years, 10 years, 12 years. My friends got killed here. I’m by myself, I’m very scared, there’s a lot of people dead, a lot of people injured … People are screaming next to me, people are scared. I really need help, I really want to come back home. Please help me.” The boy said he had been wounded in the head and the hand during a US Apache helicopter attack on the prison.

This grossly disproportionate armed violence—the use of Apache helicopters and heavy bombardments to pursue fugitive prisoners—is of a piece with the entire criminal enterprise carried out by US imperialism in Syria under the pretext of combatting ISIS.

The scope of these crimes has been partially uncovered with publication of the so-called “Civilian Causality Files” obtained by Azmat Khan, an assistant professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, exposing the killing of thousands of civilians in US airstrikes and the systematic coverups conducted by the Pentagon.

Among the latest of these revelations, published in the New York Times last week, concerns a March 2017 Special Operations bombing of a Syrian dam on the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, which had been on a Pentagon “no-strike list.” Only the failure of a “bunker-buster” bomb to explode and the desperate intervention of Syrian engineers prevented the collapse of the dam, which would have unleashed a wall of water killing tens of thousands downstream. Workers involved in this rescue effort were then assassinated in a follow-up drone strike.

The siege of the Hasaka detention center has called attention to the barbaric treatment meted out by Washington and its local allies to thousands of men, women and children who survived the massive bombing campaign unleashed by the US military to crush the last ISIS strongholds in Syria in 2019.

A report issued last May by the United Nations human rights office condemned the “traumatic” and illegal culling of boys over the age of 12—and some younger—from their mothers and their imprisonment at the Hasaka facility under conditions that the UN defined as tantamount to torture.

A UN Special Rapporteur denounced the “abhorrent conditions including inadequate shelter, no bedding provision, unmanaged overcrowding, no access to sunlight, insufficient latrine access and virtually no shower access.”

The report added: “Malnourishment is rife. Boys held in these facilities suffer from scabies and other skin conditions, they are vulnerable to HIV, Tuberculosis and COVID-19 exposure. Boys in these detention facilities endure untreated war injuries, missing limbs, and severe trauma. These conditions meet the threshold for torture, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law, and no child should have to endure them.”

The report also indicted the governments of Western Europe, the United States and Australia, which have rejected all appeals for the repatriation of their citizens, including the child prisoners who were brought to Syria by their parents.

In addition to the child prisoners at the Hasaka detention facility, tens of thousands of others captured during the US-led war are held elsewhere in make-shift jails in Syria, while an estimated 60,000 women and children are held in squalid camps, suffering from hunger, disease and routine violence.

The US has approximately 900 Special Operations troops deployed in northeastern Syria, with supplementary forces brought in periodically from among the 30,000 US military personnel based throughout the Middle East. Under an order issued by the Trump administration and continued under Biden, these troops have seized control of key Syrian oil fields, where crude is being pumped out under barrels of guns and then shipped via military convoys into neighboring Iraq. The principal aim of this theft—itself a war crime—is to deny the Assad government critical resources needed for Syria’s recovery from more than a decade of war.

Washington is continuing its illegal occupation of Syria not to combat ISIS—its own Frankenstein’s monster—or “terrorism,” but to counter the influence of Russia and Iran, which provided crucial military support to the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad against US-backed Islamist militias, and China, which is cementing economic ties with Damascus.

It is more than a coincidence that the eruption of the biggest US military operations in Syria since 2019 coincided with the rabidly aggressive war provocations against Russia over Ukraine. Moreover, they follow by barely a week the signing of an agreement between Damascus and Beijing to incorporate Syria into China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Even as it shifts the focus of US militarism toward the preparation of war with Russia and China, Washington continues its strategic aim of asserting US imperialist hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East.

This finds expression in not only the fighting in Syria, but also the turn toward greater US involvement in the near-genocidal Saudi-led war in Yemen, which, according to UN estimates, had killed upwards of 377,000 people, both directly and indirectly, by the end of 2021.

The Pentagon revealed that its forces participated Monday in the defense of the United Arab Emirates against a missile attack in retaliation for a Saudi bombing raid against a prison that killed nearly 100 and wounded hundreds more last week. The UAE joined Saudi Arabia in the bloody onslaught launched in 2015 with the aim of suppressing Yemen’s Houthi rebels and installing a puppet regime controlled by Riyadh.

The Biden administration recently approved a $650 million sale of missiles to Saudi Arabia—like the Raytheon-made weapon used in last week’s massacre—while signing off on a $24 billion arms package for the UAE.

Meanwhile, Biden has signaled that he may reimpose the US designation of the Houthi rebels as a terrorist organization, a move that has bipartisan support in the US Congress. The effect would be to further starve the majority of Yemenis living in Houthi-controlled areas, triggering a mass famine that could kill millions.

As COVID-19 surges, deaths exceeded births in half of US states

Kate Randall

The United States saw an additional 2,611 deaths from COVID-19 on Tuesday, bringing the death toll from the virus to 894,880, according to Worldometer. The US leads the world in pandemic deaths as it fast approaches 1 million lives lost from the disease.

Compared to last winter’s peak, US cases of COVID-19 are dramatically higher, up 266 percent, hospitalizations have just surpassed the previous record, while deaths, a lagging indicator, are at 62 percent of last January’s worst days, according to New York Times data. There has been a 35 percent increase in COVID-19 deaths over the past two weeks.

New York registered the highest number of deaths from COVID-19 of any state on Wednesday, at 387, with 2,189,795 active cases. Other northeastern states continued to rank near the top in new deaths, with Pennsylvania reporting 189 deaths; Massachusetts, 155; and New Jersey, 151.

An unidentified COVID-19 patient is attached to life-support systems in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H., Jan. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

While cases per 100,000 residents have fallen in the Northeast since January 10, cases in the Midwest and South have declined only marginally in this period. Cases in the West have remained steady, although in California cases are up 358 percent compared to last winter’s surge.

Locations with the highest hospitalization increases since last winter include Washington D.C., up 224 percent; Nevada, 161 percent; Alabama, 152 percent; West Virginia, 151 percent; and Missouri, 150 percent.

The devastation wrought by the pandemic has also led to an unprecedented situation in which deaths exceeded births in half of all US states in 2020. A study in May 2021 by the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy found, “In 2020, the impact of COVID-19 contributed to a record 3,376,000 deaths in the United States: 18 percent more than in 2019,” and that “births diminished by 4 percent to 3,605,000 in 2020.”

The surplus of births over deaths added just 229,000 to the US population in 2020, a decline of 74 percent compared to 2019. Combined with a decrease in immigration, this decline produced the smallest annual percentage population gain in at least a century.

In five states—Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and West Virginia—the decline in births compared to deaths began in 2019 and continued this trend in 2020. It is not coincidental that New England and Appalachia have been hard hit by the opioid crisis and “deaths of despair” in addition to pandemic.

In 2020, deaths exceeded births in 20 additional states. These states are all over the map, from New England, to the Midwest, South, Southwest and Northwest. As deaths rose, fertility declined sharply as women delayed pregnancies as the pandemic took hold. In December 2020 there were 8 percent fewer births than in December 2019. Researchers suggest a similar reduction in the birth rate in January 2020.

Michigan, which Tuesday added 17,639 COVID-19 cases and 223 deaths, is one of the states that actually saw more people die than were born in 2020, the first that this has happened since at least 1900. To date, Michigan has lost 31,762 lives to COVID-19.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reports in preliminary data that 104,166 people were born in the state in 2020 while 117,087 people died, for a net decline of 12,921. The pandemic has brought to the tipping point a situation that has existed for decades in which the birthrate has declined while deaths have risen.

“This is not a shock,” Kurt Metzger, demographer and director emeritus of Data Driven Detroit, told the Detroit News. “We’ve been talking about this coming for some time now.” With the decimation of industrial jobs, particularly in the auto industry, people have been leaving Michigan in droves in search of jobs.

Even with a net gain in population numbers from 2010 to 2020, Michigan lost a seat in the US House of Representatives because other states, including Montana, Oregon and Florida, grew faster in numbers. Estimates from the US Census Bureau indicate that there were about 17,000 fewer people in July 2021 than in July 2020. A decline in population will translate into fewer federal dollars for social programs and schools.

“It is, overall, this aging population in Michigan and the inability to attract young, educated workers that has been a characteristic of the state for quite a while and it doesn’t seem to be changing at all,” Metzger told the DetroitFree Press .

Hospitalizations in Michigan have risen 117 percent since last winter’s peak. Like states across the US, hospital staff are burned out, leaving the profession and succumbing to COVID-19 themselves after two years of battling COVID-19.

Sparrow Hospital in Lansing is the sixth hospital in the state to receive a federal medical team. A 25-member team from the Department of Defense will be brought in on February 7 for 30 days to provide support in the surge brought on by the Omicron variant. Teams have already been brought in at Beaumont Hospital, Dearborn; Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids; Covenant HealthCare in Saginaw; Mercy Health Muskegon; and Henry Ford Hospital in Wyandotte.

Like other states, instead of shutting down nonessential businesses and schools to stop the spread of the coronavirus and put an end to the pandemic, Michigan officials have allowed the virus to proliferate, sicken and kill.

In an interview with the Free Press, Michigan Health Department Director Elizabeth Hertel repeated the call for ineffectual mitigations, urging “Michiganders to do their part to support our state’s health care workers by getting vaccinated and boosted, if eligible, wearing a mask in public indoor settings regardless of vaccination status, social distancing and staying home and getting tested regularly.”

Mississippi is another state that saw a decline in the birth-to-death ratio in 2020. World Nation News reports on the situation at Singing River Health System, a county-owned network of three small hospitals on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, where 106 coronavirus patients were being treated on Sunday.

In Pascagoula, 40 percent of all COVID-19 tests came back positive over the weekend. The latest wave of Omicron has kept almost every emergency hospital in Mississippi full to overflowing. Patients seeking treatment for COVID-19 will find a similar situation at hospitals across the country.

Pascagoula is home to the state’s largest private, single-site employer, Ingalls Shipbuilding, owned by Huntington Ingalls Industries. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers rammed through a sellout four-year contract extension at the Ingalls shipyard in December.

An exodus of registered nurses at Pascagoula Hospital, the city’s only emergency care facility, has left a third of all beds unavailable. Recovering COVID-19 patients have been unable to leave the ICU because there are no other beds available for them, while critically ill patients in the emergency room could not be moved to the ICU.

The shortage of health care workers has been particularly severe at small, non-profit hospital systems like Singing River. Kelly Cambest, a registered nurse in the ER, said he had received only one application for 24 positions in his department in the recent period.