The CDC approves vaccines for children under five: An advance, but with many limitations

Benjamin Mateus

Over the weekend, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted unanimously to approve the COVID vaccines for the youngest in the population. Based on these endorsements, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that children between six months and five years of age should be vaccinated with either Pfizer or Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines.

Arihana Macias, 7, gets a compress after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children five to 12 years at a Dallas County Health and Human vaccination site in Mesquite, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. [AP Photo/LM Otero]

There are 19.3 million in this age group for whom the COVID vaccines remained out of reach since the vaccines were first ushered in in December 2020. 

While the number of young children who have died from COVID has so far remained low, some 442 under the age of five according to the CDC, this figure is far greater than the death toll from influenza in the same age bracket. As the pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Yvonne Maldonado of Stanford University noted, “Children shouldn’t be dying of anything.” 

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), children represented nearly 19 percent of all cumulative COVID cases in the US. However, seroprevalence data based on blood samples, published by the CDC, indicated that approximately 75 percent of all children 18 and under have been infected, far above the 60 percent figure for the whole population.

This means that children represent the most infected group, a point that should be contrasted with the incessant claims by capitalist politicians and the media bears that children were somehow immune to the ravages of the virus. 

Since the pandemic, AAP reported that over 1.3 million children have been hospitalized for COVID, a number known to be a vast undercount. Nearly a quarter million of these were during the three months of the first Omicron wave that began in early December 2021 and ended in February 2022. Per the CDC’s provisional count of COVID deaths, 1,257 children have died during the pandemic, 20 percent of them during the Omicron wave.

These figures might seem low compared to the horrifying death toll among the elderly and immunocompromised, but they are far greater than the toll in terms of hospitalizations and death from the flu among the same age group.

There were 42,386 pediatric hospitalizations during the 2017-2018 flu season, the worst in the last decade, as compared to the quarter million hospitalized in the first three months of this year due to COVID.

There were also 110 deaths among the youngest and, in total, 526 children died that flu season compared to the over 1,200 who have been killed by SARS-CoV-2. In the current flu season, only 29 children have died, in large part to the limited mitigation measures in effect, including masking. In just the last month alone, almost 60 children died from COVID.

A study released in preprint by the Imperial College of London, reviewing COVID deaths among children, found, “COVID was a leading cause of death in CYP [children and young people] aged 0-19 years in the US between March 2020 to April 2022, ranking #9 among all causes of deaths, #5 in disease-related causes of deaths (excluding accidents, assault and suicide), and #1 in deaths caused by infectious/respiratory disease.” Specifically, for those under the age of five, it ranked in the top five.

All these figures do not even address the broader issue of Long COVID and its unknown long-term impact on the health of children, who have much longer to live and develop symptoms than the elderly.

These realities make the approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines a welcome step forward, albeit with significant limitations, as we shall see.

Both Pfizer and Moderna had presented their clinical-trial data to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) advisory panel on June 15, highlighting that these vaccines are both safe and produce an antibody response that is similar to that in older children and adults. The panel recommended the vaccines unanimously by a 21-0 vote.

There are differences between the two pediatric version of the mRNA vaccines that are important to review.

Pfizer’s regimen consists of three shots, each containing three micrograms, or one-tenth of the adult dose. The second shot is given three weeks after the first and the third two months later, with a total of three months required to complete the series. 

The pediatric trials were small, with fewer than 1,000 participants. Only 10 children actually contracted COVID, seven in the placebo group and three in the vaccine group. Pfizer’s original two-dose regimen had not generated a sufficient immune response, leading the company to announce in December 2021 that it would add a third dose to its regimen.

As STAT News noted regarding Pfizer’s limited effectiveness data, “This was a result of the fact that the Pfizer shot was not effective enough as a two-dose vaccine to warrant authorization. The company, consulting with the FDA, decided to test a third dose, but there has simply not been enough time for cases of COVID to occur. FDA officials say they are confident the three-dose regimen protects as well as two doses in other age groups.”

It bears mentioning that the FDA’s confidence was based on the level of immune antibodies generated after participants had completed the vaccine series. As Pfizer noted in its review of the results for children aged 2-4 years and infants 6-23 months, “The antibody responses in both age groups were comparable to those recorded in people 16 to 25 years of age immunized with two 30-µg doses and met the pre-specified success criteria ...”

Moderna’s vaccine is a two-dose regimen, each containing 25 micrograms, or a quarter of an adult dose. The shots are given four weeks apart. Though children complete the vaccination series sooner with Moderna, the side effects, albeit transient, may be harsher. Whereas Pfizer’s were limited to pain at the injection site and some fatigue that resolved quickly, in the Moderna trial one child had a seizure presumably triggered by a high fever after vaccination.

An FDA panel member, who is a pediatric infectious-disease specialist from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, said, “Beyond one febrile seizure, there wasn’t anything that was highly concerning. That was very reassuring to me.”

Moderna’s trial was larger, at almost 5,000 participants. The efficacy against symptomatic infection ranged from around 37 to 51 percent with 265 children contracting COVID, making the data more robust and applicable. Additionally, in the Moderna trial more participants who received the active ingredient developed a fever after the second vaccine dose, while the adverse reactions among Pfizer recipients and the placebo arm had similar complaints.

Other side effects of the vaccines include loss of appetite, nausea or vomiting, irritability, fever, and pain at the site of injection. With Moderna, children can develop swollen lymph nodes in the inoculated arm. The trials were too small to evaluate for heart inflammation, which has occurred infrequently in adolescent boys. Questions about boosters have already been raised, as immune waning is rapid with the vaccines and the subvariants of the Omicron strain of SARS-CoV-2 are known to have significant immune evasion capacity.

As critical as it is to ensure all children have access to life-saving vaccines, the CDC and the Biden administration will use this advance to reinforce their claims that a vaccine-only approach is a viable response to the pandemic. They seek to justify the abandonment of all-inclusive public health measures to ensure mask mandates are in place, all COVID cases are tracked, and public health departments provide robust and accurate data that includes infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

More than 18 months into the era of COVID vaccines, the vaccine-only strategy has proven an abysmal failure. Breakthrough infections are very common, and vaccines have not alleviated the risks of Long COVID nor the impact on various organ systems. The campaign for Zero-COVID remains the only viable solution to a pandemic that continues to wreak havoc on the population of the working class across the globe.

Crypto currency meltdown points to deeper financial crisis

Nick Beams

It has been described as the week when the financial world shifted—the business channel CNBC described it as a “new reality”—when it became apparent global central banks were intent on lifting interest rates, come what may.

An advertisement for Bitcoin cryptocurrency is displayed on a street in Hong Kong, Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022. [AP Photo/Kin Cheung]

The major action was the decision by the US Federal Reserve to raise its base rate by 0.75 percentage points, the biggest single increase since 1994, with more to come.

The Bank of England lifted its rate for the fifth time and predicted the UK inflation rate would rise to 11 percent. Smaller central banks, such as the Reserve Bank of Australia, have indicated further rate rises are in the pipeline.

One of the most significant decisions was that of the Swiss National Bank which lifted its base rate by 0.5 percentage points. Previously it had been one of the firmest advocates of maintaining rates at historic lows.

The official reason for the rate rises is the need to combat inflation, but the central banks are well aware that their actions will not reduce price hikes. Their concerted action has another target. As inflation reaches its highest levels in four decades, it is aimed at clamping down on the wage demands of the working class around the world by inducing a recession, if that proves necessary.

The interest rate hikes have resulted in a sharp fall on stock markets around the world led by Wall Street. The broad-based S&P 500 is down by around 22 percent from its previous high, and the fall in the Dow is approaching 20 percent. The tech-heavy and interest-rate sensitive NASDAQ index has fallen by more than 30 percent, with significant stocks dropping by more than 50 percent from their highs.

One of the indications of the growing instability is the precipitous fall of crypto currencies, and the decisions by traders to suspend operations because of turbulent market conditions.

The crypto currency lender Celsius Network, which sent a shock wave through the crypto market last week when it suspended withdrawals, has said it will “take time” to normalise its operations. In a blog post message yesterday, it said it would continue to work “with regulators and officials regarding this pause and our company’s determination to find a resolution.”  But it provided no details.

The chaos began last month when the so-called stablecoin TerraUSD, used to facilitate crypto currency trading by providing a link to the US dollar, failed to maintain dollar parity.

The shutting down of withdrawals has extended beyond Celsius. On Friday the crypto lender Babel Finance, based in Hong Kong, said it was pausing withdrawals because of “unusual liquidity pressure” and the Singapore-based crypto hedge fund Three Arrows has failed to meet margin calls from lenders.

Yesterday the Hong Kong-based crypto exchange Hoo halted transactions which were threatening to exhaust its funds. It said it was trying to reconfigure its medium- and long-term assets in an “orderly and reasonable manner.”

Previously, the swings and gyrations in the crypto market were regarded as somewhat isolated from the equity market and the broader financial system. That was generally the case in the period prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a comment piece published in the Australian Financial Review, columnist Karen Maley drew attention to an analysis from an International Monetary Fund staffer published in January which pointed to the growing correlation between the crypto and stock markets.

Writing in response to the fall of bitcoin to below $20,000 over the weekend—down from near $70,000 in November, amid predictions that it would go to $100,000—she said more conservative investors “might be quietly congratulating themselves on their sagacity in not succumbing to the crypto craziness. But their smugness may be premature. That’s because the sharp drop in the bitcoin price will inevitably rattle global equity markets.”

According to the IMF research note entitled Cryptic Connections, “the analysis suggests that crypto and equity markets have become increasingly interconnected across economies over time.”

The research note detailed the extraordinary expansion of the crypto market, particularly following the bailout operations launched by the major central banks in response to the March 2020 crisis at the start of the pandemic.

“Launched in 2009,” the note began, “the total market capitalization of crypto assets has increased exponentially from less than $20 billion in January 2017 to more than $3 trillion in November 2021. Much of this increase has occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic as trade in crypto assets has accelerated, leading to a twentyfold increase in the market capitalization of crypto assets between March 2020 and November 2021.”

The IMF research found that in September 2021 two major crypto currencies, bitcoin and ether, “ranked among the world’s top traded assets, competing with the market capitalization of some of the world’s largest companies.”

While the risks from crypto were deemed to be minimal until a few years ago, “their widespread adoption could pose financial stability risks given their highly volatile prices, the rising use of leverage in their trading, and financial institutions’ direct and indirect exposures to these assets. Because of the relatively unregulated nature of the crypto ecosystem, any significant disruption to financial conditions driven by crypto price volatility could potentially be largely outside the control of central banks and regulatory authorities.”

The findings of the research, the IMF note said, “suggest that the interconnectedness between crypto and equity markets has increased notably over 2017-2021.”

Together bitcoin and the stablecoin tether explained about 19-23 percent of the variation in the volatility of major global equity markets and about 12-17 percent of the variations in their return in what it called the “post-pandemic period.” Spillover effects went both ways—from crypto assets to equity markets and vice versa. Crypto assets could no longer be considered as a fringe asset class and “could pose financial stability risks due to their extreme price volatility.”

The movement in bitcoin prices was associated with a nontrivial share of the variation of US equity prices, accounting for about one-sixth of the volatility in US equity prices and about tenth of the variation in US equity returns.

It described these results as “quite remarkable” given that five years ago, “the contribution of crypto assets to explaining the variations in US equity markets was one percent at the most and suggest a significant integration of the crypto asset markets, most likely because of the increased adoption of crypto assets by retail and institutional investors.”

The crypto crash also attracted the attention of academic economist Robert Reich, the labor secretary in the first Clinton administration.

He characterised the crypto markets as a Ponzi scheme which was now crashing, citing the words of Securities and Exchange Commission chief Gary Gensler who has characterised crypto investments as “rife with fraud, scams and abuse.”

“There are no standards for risk management or capital reserves. There are no transparency requirements. Investors often don’t know how their money is being handled. Deposits are not insured. We’re back to the wild west finances of the 1920s,” Reich wrote.

But as always with Reich and other would-be reformers of the capitalist system, there is no explanation of the underlying objective dynamic which has led to the increasing integration of criminality into the very centre of the financial system. Reich simply claimed that by the 1980s, “America forgot the financial trauma of 1929.”

Reich’s answer was a call for increased regulation to the crypto world. But in doing so he revealed the bankruptcy of even that limited perspective, pointing to the revolving door which exists between the financial system and the regulatory bodies that supposedly control it.

He noted that the crypto industry had hired “scores of former government officials and regulators” to lobby on its behalf against controls. These included “three former chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission, three former chairs of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, three former US senators, one former White House chief of staff, and the former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.”

Former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers advises a crypto currency investment firm and is on the board of a financial technology firm investing in crypto currency payment systems.

The mounting turmoil in crypto and the financial system is not the result of forgetfulness but is rooted in response by governments and central banks to the deepening crisis of the capitalist system.

Over the past period, starting with the stock market crash of 1987, and intensifying after the 2008 crisis, financial authorities have pumped in still more money as the “solution” to the growing storms.

But the effect of these actions has only been to the create the conditions for the re-emergence of the crisis at a higher level. This essential dynamic is once again at work as the central banks move to deal with rocketing inflation which their previous policies have created.

Study suggests more than half of all Australians may have caught COVID-19 in 2022

Martin Scott & Clare Bruderlin

A recent study by the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) and the Kirby Institute at University of New South Wales has found that twice as many Australians as previously reported may have been infected with COVID-19 during the country’s first Omicron wave.

Staff prepare to collect samples at a drive-through COVID-19 testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

The researchers tested 5,185 samples taken from blood donors for antibodies produced by infection, but not by vaccination. Based on the results, the scientists concluded that around 3.4 million adults (17 percent of the population) had been infected by the end of February. According to the survey, this was “at least twice as high as indicated by cases reported to authorities by the end of February.”

A comparison of the infection rates in different states illustrates the disastrous impact of the “let it rip” policies now adopted by all governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, across the country.

The samples, collected just before Western Australia’s Labor government dropped its “hard border,” indicated that just 0.5 percent of blood donors in that state had contracted the virus. In Queensland, where the state Labor government threw open the border on December 23, despite surging cases in neighbouring New South Wales (NSW), 26 percent of the samples tested contained COVID-19 antibodies.

Since the period in which these samples were collected, regular surveillance testing in schools and workplaces has been almost entirely eliminated, asymptomatic close contacts are no longer required to test or isolate in most states, and free polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing programs have been slashed, forcing people to rely on less accurate, self-reported rapid antigen tests.

This means the drastic under reporting of infections revealed by the study is only likely to have worsened. The clear implication is that at least 14 million Australians, or well over half the population, may have contracted the virus since the beginning of the year, based on a doubling of the official figure of more than 7 million.

Further indicating that the impact of COVID-19 has been far worse than the official statistics show, the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Provisional Mortality Statistics for January and February 2022 reveal 5,052 excess deaths, compared to the historical average, almost 3,000 more than have been reported as directly caused by the virus.

The doubled infection rate calculated in the NCIRS study also raises the spectre of mass Long COVID. Estimates of the incidence of Long COVID vary, but even using conservative figures of 5 to 10 percent of all infections, 700,000 to 1.4 million Australians could already be facing ongoing debilitating illness.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday that demand for neuropsychological treatment is reaching record levels and people seeking treatment for Long COVID are waiting between six and twelve months for an appointment.

While governments have been virtually silent on the issue, federal Health Minister Mark Butler admitted this morning that Long COVID was proving to be a “major health challenge” as a result of “millions and millions of Australians” contracting the virus this year.

Labor, no less than the Liberal-National Coalition, is directly responsible for those “millions and millions” of infections. In line with the demands of big business, all Australian governments have reopened workplaces and schools and abandoned virtually all public health measures.

The newly-elected federal Labor government has made clear that these homicidal policies will continue. Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese admitted last week that the pandemic “clearly isn’t over yet,” but only extended the federal government’s pandemic health funding by three months, to the end of December.

The $760 million pledged over this period will do nothing to address the crisis in the health system, which is being pushed to breaking point with a combination of surging COVID-19, widespread influenza, understaffing and decades of cuts under Labor and Liberal-National governments alike.

Emergency department wait times are at record highs and ambulances in every state and territory are routinely ramped outside hospitals for hours, waiting to offload patients.

At the same time, even the most basic and limited public health measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 infections continue to be removed, at the behest of the corporate and financial elite.

Last Tuesday, the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC), the body that supplies official health advice for government leaders to justify their edicts, released a statement calling on state and territory governments to end mask mandates for airport terminals from as early as June 17.

This has nothing to do with the protection of public health, but was because “all states and territories have relaxed mask mandates in most settings within the community.” What follows from this is the pretext for the removal of masks in every other setting where there are still mandates in place, in particular on public transport.

After the statement, Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory scrapped mask mandates in airports. From next week, mandatory mask wearing in Victorian airport terminals will no longer be required. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce used the announcement to demand the new Labor government scrap mask mandates for passengers on planes.

In Victoria, further public health measures are being wound back, with three-dose vaccine mandates to be scrapped in education, food distribution, meat and seafood processing and quarantine accommodation sectors. Changes are also being made to isolation requirements for positive cases, with Victorians who test positive for COVID-19 being able to leave home to drive a household member to or from education or work.

All of this takes place as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Australia approaches 8 million and the official death toll surpasses 9,300.

Tens of thousands of new infections are being recorded every day across the country, with 3,000 people now hospitalised and 113 in ICU. At the current rate, basic arithmetic indicates that some 15,000 Australians could die from the virus by the end of the year.

In fact, all of the conditions have been created by the ruling class for forthcoming waves of COVID-19 to cause even greater amounts of infection, illness and death.

While only a tiny fraction of COVID-19 samples detected in Australia—mostly those found in incoming international travelers—are subjected to genomic sequencing, there are signs that Omicron BA.5 is set to become the dominant strain. A recent Japanese study has shown that the sub-variant is more contagious than earlier forms, and more resistant to immunity from vaccination or previous infection.

Vaccine immunity, already limited against Omicron, is waning. Just 67 percent of adults aged over 16 have received a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, because of the relentless campaign by governments and the corporate media to downplay the severity of the pandemic. A fourth booster shot is currently limited to those over 65 years of age and those with underlying health conditions.

COVID-19 continues to spread throughout aged care facilities, with over 600 active outbreaks, including 3,316 cases among residents and 1,689 among staff. Only 50 percent of aged care residents have received a fourth vaccine dose. Almost a third of the total recorded COVID-19 deaths have been in residential aged care.

The ongoing wave of mass infections and deaths was not and is not inevitable. It is the result of a deliberate policy, embraced by state and federal, Labor and Liberal-National governments, to sacrifice the health and lives of the population for corporate profits.

The mounting deaths and infections demonstrate that, contrary to the claims of the ruling class, the population cannot “live with the virus.” COVID-19 can and must be eliminated. The recent experience of China, where a two-month lockdown in Shanghai and other public health measures, including widespread contact testing and tracing, successfully suppressed the most infectious variant of COVID so far, demonstrates that the virus can be stopped.

NATO’s Baltic blockade opens new front in war against Russia

Andre Damon

On Monday, the Baltic state of Lithuania, a member of NATO, imposed an effective blockade on Russia, preventing the transportation of many goods, including steel and coal, between mainland Russia and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Traditionally, the imposition of a blockade has been seen as an act of war. With this reckless provocation, the United States and its NATO allies are seeking to goad Russia into a military attack on NATO territory, which would lead to the invocation of Article V of the NATO Charter and a full-scale war with Russia.  

Faced with a series of military reversals on the ground in Ukraine, the US, NATO and the European powers are seeking to open a new, northern front in the war. 

Lithuanian officials implied that the decision to implement the blockade against Russia was taken in close consultation with other NATO members and Washington. “It is not Lithuania doing anything, it is European sanctions that started working,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said.

Responding to the blockade, Russia’s foreign ministry bluntly warned, “If cargo transit between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of the Russian Federation via Lithuania is not fully restored in the near future, then Russia reserves the right to take actions to protect its national interests.”

A sharp warning must be made. The United States and European powers, each facing a raging economic, social, and political crisis and fearing a growing social movement of the working class, are recklessly escalating a war that threatens the use of nuclear weapons.

The imposition of a blockade against Russia by a NATO member comes just days after a series of highly provocative statements by European military and civilian leaders.

In an internal message to military service members, Sir Patrick Sanders, the Chief of the General Staff, declared, “There is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle.” In a chilling allusion to the First and Second World Wars, he concluded, “We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again.”

Speaking to the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, “We must not cease to support Ukraine. … we need to prepare for the fact that it could take years.”

Writing Saturday in the Times of London, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called on NATO to “finish this war on the terms that President Zelensky has laid out,” that is, to reconquer the Donbas and Crimea, which Russia sees as part of its territory.

In yet another blood-curdling threat, Ingo Gerhartz, head of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), declared that Germany must be prepared to use nuclear weapons, saying, “We need both the means and the political will to implement nuclear deterrence.”

Already, hundreds of Ukrainian troops are dying every single day. What would it mean for the UK and other European countries to fight “alongside” Ukrainian forces in a war against Russia and for this conflict to last “years”?

European officials are describing a war spanning the entirety of the European continent, with deaths in the hundreds of thousands or millions. All of Europe is to be transformed into a massive killing field.  

Who was it that decided that a new generation of the youth of Europe should be sent to die en masse in the trenches? Who asked the public if there should be a repeat of World War I?

These statements give the lie to the claims by the US and NATO powers that they are not at war with Russia. This claim, accompanied by the declaration that Russia is “unlikely” to use nuclear weapons, is a desperate attempt to lull the population to sleep while their governments embroil them in a war that threatens to kill millions.

In the latest pretense to further inflame the war, Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, accused Russia of war crimes for allegedly preventing Ukraine from exporting grains. Breaking the “blockade” of grain exports has been the pretext for an operation, first proposed by Admiral James G. Stavridis, to stage a naval battle between NATO and Russian warships in the Black Sea. 

The Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad was successively under Polish, Prussian and German control from 1525 to 1945. After the Second World War, it was annexed by the Soviet Union. Kaliningrad is the only Russian Baltic Sea port that remains ice-free year round, and it is critical to the maintenance of Russia’s Baltic Sea fleet. Polish officials, including the former commander of the Land Forces of the Polish Army, have claimed that Kaliningrad is part of Poland.

The Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have powerful right-wing movements in dominant government positions. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Landsbergis is the grandson of Vytautas Landsbergis, who founded the far-right Sąjudis movement and has advocated banning all symbols of socialism. 

The most recent cabinet of Estonia included the fascist Conservative People’s Party of Estonia, whose minister of the interior repeatedly photographed himself flashing a white power hand gesture. The current cabinet of Latvia draws its ministers for economics, culture and agriculture from the fascist and fanatically anti-Russian National Alliance.

These politically unstable statelets, dominated by the extreme right, are being given carte blanche and political support to provoke war with Russia by the imperialist powers. 

The actions by the NATO powers speak to a staggering degree of recklessness, which cannot be explained merely by the military setbacks suffered by Ukraine. 

Every imperialist country is facing an economic and social crisis for which they have no solution. The COVID-19 pandemic, having killed over 20 million people worldwide, is accelerating in its third year. The governments of the US, France, the UK and Germany are beset by crisis and instability. All over the world, the cost of living is surging out of control. 

In order to impose the cost of the inflationary crisis on the working class, the US Federal Reserve and other central banks are working to raise the unemployment rate by increasing interest rates, in the process triggering a selloff of every financial asset that is, by some measures, without precedent since the Great Depression.

The inflationary crisis is propelling workers into struggle, most visibly manifested in the UK rail strike that begins today. Historically, ruling classes have used war as a means to divert attention outwards, while using the war effort as a pretense to suppress strikes and working class opposition.

The response of the Putin government is completely bankrupt. Putin believes that through military brinkmanship, some settlement can be made with the imperialist powers allowing for a more egalitarian distribution of global power. His belief is that, by applying pressure on Russia’s “Western partners,” there could be some sort of settlement to the war.

But there can be no peaceful settlement of the global crisis that has led to the eruption of the war in Ukraine. The imperialist powers are bent on the subjugation and carve-up of Russia and China. They are engaging in a series of provocations that threaten a civilization-ending nuclear war. Any military escalation by Putin in response, like the invasion of Ukraine, can only produce a bloodbath that plays into the hands of the imperialist powers.

There is no military solution to the present crisis, which ultimately cannot be resolved within the framework of the nation-state system. The war is the most advanced expression of a crisis gripping all of capitalist society.

Decades of Research Document the Detrimental Health Effects of BPA

Tracey Woodruff

Whether or not you’ve heard of the chemical bisphenol A, better known as BPA, studies show that it’s almost certainly in your body. BPA is used in the manufacturing of products like plastic water bottles, baby bottles, toys and food packaging, including in the lining of cans.

BPA is one of many harmful chemicals in everyday products and a poster child for chemicals in plastics. It is probably best known for its presence in baby bottles due to campaigns by organizations such as Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families and Breast Cancer Prevention Partners.

An extensive body of research has linked BPA to reproductive health problems, including endometriosis, infertility, diabetes, asthma, obesity and harming fetal neurodevelopment.

After years of pressure from environmental and public health advocates, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agreed in June 2022 to reevaluate the health risks of BPA. This is significant because a vast body of research has documented that BPA is leaching from products and packaging into our food and drink and ultimately our bodies.

What is BPA?

BPA is not only used in plastics and food and drink containers but also in pizza boxes, shopping receipts, liners of aluminum cans and much more. Scientists have found that BPA is an endocrine disruptor, which means it disrupts hormonal systems that support the body’s functioning and health.

Hormonal disruption is a particular problem during pregnancy and fetal development, when even minor changes can alter the trajectory of developmental processes, including brain and metabolic development.

Over the last two decades, public awareness about the risks led many companies to remove BPA from their products. As a result, studies have shown that BPA levels in people’s bodies appear to be declining in the U.S. However, a nationwide research team that I helped lead as part of a national NIH consortium showed in a recent study of pregnant women that the decline in BPA could in part be explained by the fact that BPA replacement chemicals have been on the rise over the last 12 years. And other studies have found that many BPA substitutes are typically just as harmful as the original.

As an environmental health scientist and professor and director of the University of California, San Francisco Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment who specializes in how toxic chemicals affect pregnancy and child development, I am part of a scientific panel that decides if chemicals are reproductive or developmental toxicants for the State of California. In 2015, this committee declared BPA a reproductive toxicant because it has been shown to be toxic to ovaries.

BPA and the FDA

BPA was first approved for use in food packaging by the FDA in the 1960s. In 2008, the agency released a draft report concluding that “BPA remains safe in food contact materials.” This assessment was met with pushback from many health advocates and environmental health organizations. The FDA claimed BPA to be “safe in food contact materials” as recently as 2018.

Meanwhile, since 2011, Canada and Europe have taken steps to ban or limit BPA in children’s products. In 2021, the European Union proposed “dramatic” decreases in BPA exposure limits due to a growing body of evidence linking BPA to health harms.

One of the major challenges to limiting harmful chemicals is that regulatory agencies like the FDA try to figure out the levels of exposure that they consider harmful. In the U.S., both the FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency have a long history of underestimating exposures – in some cases because they do not adequately capture “real-world exposures,” or because they fail to fully consider how even small exposures can affect vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and children.

Latest research

A large body of research has explored BPA’s effects on reproductive health. These studies have also revealed that many BPA substitutes are potentially even worse than BPA and have looked at how these chemicals act in combination with other chemical exposures that can also come from a variety of sources.

And while much attention has been paid to BPA’s effects on pregnancy and child development, there is also significant research on its effects on male reproductive health. It has been linked to prostate cancer and drops in sperm count.

In a study our research team conducted that measured BPA in pregnant women, we asked study participants if they knew about BPA or tried to avoid BPA. Many of our study participants said they knew about it or tried to avoid it, but we found their actions appeared to have no effect on exposure levels. We believe this is, in part, because of BPA’s presence in so many products, some of them known and some unknown that are difficult to control.

What you can do

One of the most common questions our staff and clinicians that work with patients are asked is how to avoid harmful chemicals like BPA and BPA substitutes. A good rule of thumb is to avoid drinking and eating from plastics, microwaving food in plastic and using plastic take-out containers – admittedly easier said than done. Even some paper take-out containers can be lined with BPA or BPA substitutes.

Our recent review of the research found that avoiding plastic containers and packaging, fast and processed foods and canned food and beverages, and instead using alternatives like glass containers and consuming fresh food, can reduce exposures to BPA and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Research has shown that when heat comes into contact with plastic – whether water bottles, Tupperware, take-out containers or cans – BPA and other chemicals are more likely to leach into the food inside. One should also avoid putting hot food into a food processor or putting plastic containers into the dishwasher. Heat breaks down the plastic, and while the product might appear fine, the chemicals are more likely to migrate into the food or drink – and ultimately, into you.

We also know that when acidic foods like tomatoes are packaged in cans, they have higher levels of BPA in them. And the amount of time food is stored in plastic or BPA-lined cans can also be a factor in how much the chemicals migrate into the food.

No matter how much people do as individuals, policy change is essential to reducing harmful chemical exposures. A large part of our work at UCSF’s Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment is to hold regulatory agencies accountable for assessing chemical risks and protecting public health. What we have learned is that it is essential for agencies like the EPA and FDA to use the most up-to-date science and scientific methods to determine risk.

Hung parliament emerges from French legislative elections in debacle for Macron

Kumaran Ira & Alex Lantier

President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble (“Together”) coalition failed to win a majority of France’s National Assembly in the second round of the French legislative elections yesterday. The result, coming amid a wave of strikes and protests against inflation, is a stinging defeat for Macron. It is the first time since 1988 that the president’s party failed to win an absolute majority of 289 in the 577-seat Assembly in legislative elections immediately following a presidential election.

French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his speech during a presidential campaign news conference in Aubervilliers, north of Paris, France, Thursday, March 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

According to Interior Ministry figures early this morning, Ensemble won 246 seats, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s New Popular, Ecological and Social Union (NUPES) 142, Marine Le Pen’s neo-fascist National Rally (NR) 89, and the right-wing The Republicans (LR) 64. Abstention hit a record high of 54 percent.

Macron campaigned on an anti-worker programme of raising the retirement age by three years to 65, forcing welfare recipients to work for their benefits, and hiking university tuition. Coming amid strikes in airports, health care, trucking and mass transit against the surge in prices and to demand wage increases and more purchasing power, the result was a disaster.

Leading Ensemble candidates suffered humiliating defeats. Former Interior Minister and parliamentary group chairman for Macron’s Republic on the March (LREM) party Christophe Castaner lost to NUPES candidate Léo Walter in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Former National Assembly speaker and LREM leader Richard Ferrand was beaten in the Finistère region of Brittany.

Several ministers of the interim government Macron installed after the April 24 presidential elections failed to win re-election. Health Minister Brigitte Bourguignon, Sea Minister Justine Benin and Ecology Minister Amélie de Montchalin were all eliminated and will now have to leave the government. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne narrowly won re-election with 52 percent of the vote against a young and unknown NUPES challenges, Noé Gauchard.

Former Health Minister Olivier Véran told TF1 television that despite failing to win a majority, Macron would manage to keep ramming through his social cuts. “We will very rapidly build a majority so it becomes absolute in the National Assembly, we will see what the conditions involved will be,” Véran said, adding: “Other parliamentary groups will provide us with enough votes to present reforms and get them passed.”

LR parliamentary group president Christian Jacob announced that his deputies would not support Macron’s agenda. “As far as we are concerned, we campaigned in the opposition, we are an opposition, and we will stay in opposition,” Jacob said.

Mélenchon, whose NUPES coalition is now the principal parliamentary opposition party, said that the “debacle of the presidential party” was “total.”

Mélenchon repeated his argument that France is now polarized in three camps, between Macron’s “liberals,” the far right, and his “popular” party. He said, “France expressed itself, insufficiently it must be said, because the abstention levels are still far too high, which means that much of France does not know where to turn, and the three blocs are at similar levels.”

He criticized Macron’s party for not clearly calling to vote for NUPES against RN candidates and thus helping the RN reach its record score in the elections. “It’s the failure of Macronism, the moral failure of all those who lectured everyone. They reinforced the RN. The Macronists lectured us but they were not able to give a clear vote call in 52 districts, which means that they can’t give us moral lessons about anything at all.”

Mélenchon won a large vote by pledging to bring the retirement age back to 60, freeze prices, and oppose Macron’s anti-social agenda. However, it is also clear that his entire perspective for the legislative elections, based on ignoring the class struggle and making no attempt to mobilize his millions of working class voters in mass protests or strikes, has failed. He said he could impose his social agenda by winning a majority of the Assembly and becoming prime minister.

While polls always showed that the NUPES would fail to win a majority, Mélenchon claimed that his parliamentary actions would stop Macron’s cuts and impose a more progressive government.

The hung parliament reveals the rapid escalation of political tensions in France and internationally. It portends a protracted crisis, as Macron scrambles to rally support for his legislative agenda, perhaps from either LR or Mélenchon’s NUPES. At the same time, the ruling class is channeling enormous efforts and resources behind neo-fascists and allied elements of the officer corps who have called for the deployment of the army in France to carry out domestic repression.

Le Pen hailed her RN’s parliamentary group, noting that it is “by far the largest in the history of our political tendency. … The people has decided to send a very powerful parliamentary group of deputies from the National Rally to the Assembly.” She declared forthrightly that she plans to take power after Macron’s term is over.

Calling the newly-elected RN deputies the “vanguard of the new political elite that will take power when the Macron adventure ends,” she said: “We have attained the three objectives we set ourselves. These were: making Emmanuel Macron a minority president; … seeking to carry out the necessary political recomposition; … and building a viable opposition group to both the deconstructionists from above, the Macronists, and the deconstructionists from below, the anti-Republican far left.”

The hung parliament, the collapse of Macron’s party and the rapid growth of both the far right and of Mélenchon’s party are so many warnings that irreconcilable political and class conflicts are mounting in France and across Europe.

France and the entire NATO alliance are recklessly waging war with Russia in Ukraine, and Macron has called to issue requisitions to French industry and impose a “war economy” on the workers. At the same time, the explosive growth of inflation is provoking an upsurge of class struggles across the region. There have been nationwide public sector strikes in Tunisia and Italy, there will be similar national strikes in Morocco and Belgium today, and airports are on strike across Europe. In France, truckers and public transport workers are preparing a wave of strikes over the next two weeks.

Mélenchon’s failure to call substantial protests or become prime minister, as he had claimed he would, must be taken as a warning. Amid an explosive upsurge of the class struggle in France and across Europe, the ruling class is responding by putting forward law-and-order figures like Macron and supporters of far-right repression like Le Pen. Mélenchon himself, who has remained virtually silent on the coup threats from General Pierre de Villiers and his entourage, has outlined no clear perspective to mobilize a struggle against them.

Instead, when Macron traveled to Kiev to pledge Ukraine military assistance and put France in a “war economy” to prosecute war with Russia, Mélenchon supported him. Mélenchon told France Bleu radio: “I want to first of all echo [Macron’s] message of solidarity with Ukraine. I did this during the entire presidential campaign, I think it is good for the president to recall what side the French people are on—all of them, without exception.” This capitulation to Macron’s arguments for imperialist war sets the stage for capitulation to Macron all down the line.

The solution to the mounting crisis of capitalism will not be found in the French parliament, or in the manoeuvres of Mélenchon and the French union bureaucracy, but in the global class struggle. A powerful and growing movement of strikes is opposing mass impoverishment via inflation and the mounting danger of all-out war between the major nuclear powers.