Almost 200,000 dead as new COVID wave rips through UK population

Robert Stevens

July 19 will be the first anniversary of what Conservative government Prime Minister Boris Johnson dubbed “Freedom Day”, as he tore up almost all COVID safety measures. Speaking for the ruling elite, Johnson declared that a largely vaccinated population meant that it was time to “live with COVID”.

On that date, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) more accurate record of total UK deaths where COVID is mentioned on the death certificate, 155,502 had already died due to the government’s criminal herd immunity policy. By June 17 this year almost 200,000 people (199,422) were reported dead from COVID in Britain.

Office for National Statistic data table showing the 199,422 COVID deaths reached on June 17. [Photo by screenshot (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk)]

As the ONS “Daily deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate by date of death” data gives a lag in reporting of at least 11 days as it is based on death registrations, 200,000 deaths may have already been reached.

With no mitigations in place, COVID spreads without hindrance, while evolving into more dangerous variants. The latest wave of COVID is being spread by the now dominant Omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5. BA.4 and BA.5 make up more than half of all new COVID cases in England.

The latest surge is part of a global wave of cases, amid a warning from the World Health Organisation that more than 100 countries have reported an increase.

In what is already the fifth COVID wave to hit Britain, infections shot up by more than a third (34 percent) with the number of people estimated affected reaching 2.3 million in the week ending June 25. This equated to one in 30 people in England, (with 56.4 million of Britain’s almost 67 million population)—a sharp increase over the estimated 1.8 million people infected the previous week.

Sarah Crofts, ONS head of analytical outputs for the COVID-19 infection survey, said, “This rise is seen across all ages and regions of England.”

The number of cases has fueled an increase in the seven-day average of people of hospitalised for COVID. It has reached close to 7,400, a 45 percent increase over the level reached in early June. The continuation of the current trend will mean hitting the high hospitalisation levels seen during the devastating Delta wave.

For months no daily data on COVID infections and deaths have been made available by the government. On July 2, Dr. Joe Pajak, a Public Governor at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, published a tweet noting, “Reminder: in the absence of official UK #Covid data: hospital admissions increasing for weeks, hospital numbers rising for weeks, intensive care admissions rising for weeks, deaths now also rising; and today, @Join_ZOE reports infections still rising. Living with #CovidIsNotOver”.

He reported, “England 01 Jul 2022: 1,572 admissions [on 29 June]: highest in 9 weeks. 9,389 in hospital: highest in 9 weeks. 132,638 cases in 7 days: highest in 9 weeks. 219 mechanical ventilation beds: highest in 8 weeks. 473 deaths in 7 days: highest in 5 weeks.”

Every part of the UK has seen a significant increase in COVID cases in the last two weeks. The highest infection rate is presided over by Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party government. Scotland has a population of just over 5 million, but last week approaching 300,000 people (288,200) were infected with COVID. This equates to one in 18 people, up from the 250,700 infected (or one in 20) the previous week. A sharp rise was recorded in Labour Party-run Wales where 106,500 people, or one in 30, is infected up from 68,500, or one in 45. In Northern Ireland, infections rose to an estimated 71,000 people, or one in 25, and up from 59,900 (one in 30).

Everything is being done to play down the surge. On June 24, Dr. Helen Salisbury, a BMJ columnist and member of Independent SAGE wrote of the now knighted former deputy chief medical officer for England, Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, “Disappointed to hear Jonathan Van Tam… equating Covid with flu and saying he doesn't wear a mask.”

In pursuit of their goal of reopening the economy, the ruling elite rejected all scientific advice and lessons of the initial waves. Super-spreader events of tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people have been encouraged.

Data shows that the current surge began after mass gatherings took place during the queen’s jubilee weekend events last month. Among other super-spreader events are the many music festivals going ahead this summer, including Glastonbury held over five days from June 22 with at least 200,000 in attendance. Many attendees reported contracting COVID.

According to the UK-wide data released last Thursday, the highest number of new infections nationally are among under-18s, with 550 infections per 100,000 people. Among the 18-34 and 35-54 age groups, a festivals attending demographic, there was a marked increase in COVID cases in June, with both recording more than 400 cases per 100,000.

This weekend the Pride event went ahead in London with an estimated more than 1 million on the streets. This will be followed by enormous crowds gathering in August for the Notting Hill Carnival and at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland.

However, Professor Tim Spector, lead scientist behind the ZOE Covid Study told the Independent, “Events like Glastonbury will drive up cases but the question is how much do they account for. We’ve relaxed everything, most people don’t think there’s a Covid problem at the moment, most people don’t wear masks, or even worry about cold-like symptoms.

“We’re heading towards a quarter of a million cases a day. The question is whether it stops and comes back again, everyone is predicting an autumn wave but I don’t think anyone predicted this summer wave—that’s the difference. None of the modelling allowed for this, it didn’t take into account the effect of BA.5 variant which is dominant now.”

The National Health Service (NHS) is already unable to cope with the backlog of people requiring treatment. In February 2020, the month before the pandemic forced the Johnson government into a first lockdown, there were 4.43 million people on a waiting list for care. Latest figures for April 2022 show 6.48 million are now waiting for treatment.

Spector warned, “Having our NHS, which already on its knees, working like it’s in the middle of winter, we’re getting up to 1,000 hospitalisations a day now, it’s not good news, that figure is going to go up.”

In a further interview with the Independent July 1, he said of the BA.5 Omicron sub-variant, “This variant is particularly good at immune escape, causing an increase in reinfections in people in spite of vaccines and natural immunity, particularly over the past few weeks.

“There will definitely be disruption this summer, we know four in 100 people have this [variant] for longer than a month, and many people end up long-term sick.”

Foremost among those involved in the tearing up of every mitigation was Dr. Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency. The outcome of this savage policy cannot be concealed, with Harries telling the BBC's Sunday Morning programme, “It doesn’t look as though that wave [BA.4 and BA.5.] has finished yet, so we would anticipate that hospital cases will rise. And it’s possible, quite likely, that they will actually peak over the previous BA.2 wave.” She added, without recommending any new safety measures, that people should still “go about their normal lives but in a “precautionary way”. The Guardian noted, “At its peak in April, the BA.2 wave in England hospitalised more than 2,000 people a day, making it more dangerous than the first Omicron wave in January.”

From July 7, the Department of Health and Social Care is axing special sick pay arrangements for NHS staff off work with COVID. During the pandemic the government allowed staff special sick pay if they had to isolate because of COVID, including receiving 12 months’ full pay if they were suffering from Long COVID. NHS staff with Long COVID will now only receive six months’ full pay and six months’ half pay. NHS Employers chief executive Danny Mortimer said, “This is a sensible step given where we are now in relation to the pandemic… as we learn to live with Covid over the long term…”

Indian government proposal to study “racial purity” draws widespread attack from scientists

Philip Guelpa

On May 28, The New Indian Express, a major Indian daily, citing “highly placed government sources,” reported that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s Ministry of Culture has plans to fund a project designed to “trace the purity of races in India.” The study, it said, would be undertaken by the Anthropological Survey of India, some scientists at the Lucknow-based Birbal Sahani Institute of Paleo Sciences (BSIP), and prominent archaeologist, Vasant Shinde. 

The Express quoted Professor Shinde, currently adjunct professor at the Bangalore-based National Institute of Advanced Study and director of the Rakhigarhi Research Project, as stating during a phone interview, “We want to see how mutation and mixing of genes in the Indian population has happened in the last 10,000 years. Genetic mutation depends on the intensity of contact among populations and the time that this process takes. We will then have a clear-cut idea of the genetic history. You may even say that this will be an effort to trace the purity of races in India.” The article adds that the project was originally conceived in 2019. 

It should be noted that the statement by Professor Shinde, who is an archaeologist, not a geneticist or a biological anthropologist, that “genetic mutation depends on the intensity of contact among populations” is inaccurate. Mutations occur independently, not from contact between populations. Contact results in gene flow, not mutation. Furthermore, it is well established that genetic diversity creates what is termed “hybrid vigor,” which tends to inhibit the expression of genetic diseases, thus improving the health of a population. Inbreeding, on the contrary, tends to expose genetic diseases, rendering a population less healthy.  

In response to the article, on May 31 the ministry tweeted that the report is “misleading, mischievous and contrary to facts.” It further stated, “The proposal is not related to establishing genetic history and [to] ‘trace the purity of races in India’ as alluded in article.” It did not, however, specifically disavow the statement by Professor Shinde. Shinde himself has subsequently complained that his statements were twisted and fabricated and criticized the article’s use of the term “racial purity.” He further stated that “It is a known fact that no race on the earth is pure due to people’s movements and mingling.” It is notable that in his statement Shinde still employs the concept of race, implying that such groups had “purity” at some time in the past, which has subsequently been diluted. 

To add further confusion, the Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI), the presumed principal authority in such matters, has reportedly declined to participate in the proposed study. However, the government has responded that a genetic study will be conducted by AnSI but will not be aimed at assessing “racial purity.” Its purported goal is not made clear. 

Not satisfied with these ambiguous denials, over a hundred Indian scholars wrote an open letter to the ministry sharply criticizing the project. It stated, “[T]he notion of tracing the ‘purity of races,’ whether in India or elsewhere, is extremely worrisome. A plan to do so would be both absurd and dangerous.” The group urged the ministry to “issue public disavowals of any present or future project related to race, especially one for studying racial purity.” 

Among other points made in the letter, the signatories reject the idea of racial purity, since it implies that some groups are less or more pure than others. Furthermore, “Racial stereotyping of humans has been discarded, and there should be no attempt to revive the concept in India.” 

The signatories warn that “one guaranteed outcome [of such a project] will be the exacerbation of disharmony among Indians.” 

As of this writing, the Indian government has not responded to the scholars’ letter. 

Model of a DNA molecule [Photo by Wikimedia Commons]

Human populations have been moving and mingling from time immemorial. Any genetic configuration of a particular population at a given time and place is merely a momentary snapshot of this ever-changing mosaic. Genetic studies in conjunction with archaeological and linguistic data can be used to trace the ebb and flow of populations through time and space. However, no particular genetic configuration of a population has any historical permanence. Furthermore, genetic studies have repeatedly shown that genetic diversity within groups is greater than that between groups, rendering the concept of “racial purity” meaningless. 

The very concept of “race” is a social construct which has no scientific validity. Attempts to define racial purity harken back to the concepts of racial superiority and inferiority promoted by the Nazis and to the totally discredited “science” of eugenics. 

Any proposed attempt to define rigid racial distinctions among India’s population of over a billion people, even if honestly undertaken, would quickly run counter to well-established scientific research that has demonstrated the immense diversity of India’s current inhabitants with respect to genetics, language, and culture. In reality, any such attempt should be viewed with extreme skepticism, likely having as its true purpose the serving of political rather than scientific goals. 

The current Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which came to power in India in 2014, has demonstrated time and again that it uses racial, cultural and religious distinctions to divide the working class in order to defend capitalist rule, especially now under conditions of a rapidly deepening world crisis. This includes continual efforts to incite communal tensions and scapegoat, humiliate and terrorize Muslims, as in the recent state violence visited on Muslims who protested against statements by two top party officials denigrating the Prophet Mohammad.   

The BJP and their far-right Hindu allies depict Muslims—who compromise almost 15 percent of India’s population and have been living in South Asia for more than 1,300 years—as “outsiders” and “invaders” who must acknowledge that India is a “Hindu nation.” Towards this end, they have mounted multiple campaigns to “purify” India of Muslim influence. This includes everything from purging Hindi of Persian-derived words and renaming cities like Allahabad, to the building of a temple to the mythical Hindu god Lord Ram at the former site of the Babri Masjid—a historic mosque razed by Hindu fanatics in 1992 at the instigation of top BJP leaders.      

It also should be noted that a BJP government study into “racial purity” in India would be very much in line with the Hindu right’s long history of promoting religious obscurantism and scientific quackery. Among other outrages, the Modi government has sanctioned the teaching of astrology and palmistry at universities and colleges accredited by the Education Ministry. In 2015, at the 102nd annual conference of the Indian Science Congress, the country’s premier scientific congress, the Modi government organized a session on the supposed achievements of ancient Indian civilization, which included claims, based on purported readings of the Vedas, that ancient India had airplanes and even rocket ships. Similar claims were made at the next four congresses, causing an outcry among genuine scientists and finally forcing the congress authorities to impose procedures to better vet the scientific quality of proposed papers. 

The science is clear. The concept of race has no validity. In the current historical context, the proposed study, no matter how it is couched or soft-pedaled, has the most reactionary consequences.

Half year of financial turbulence set to worsen

Nick Beams

Warning lights in the global financial system are starting to flash red as a result of the persistence of rising inflation and the drive by central banks to sharply lift interest rates, even as this provokes a recession.

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Friday, July 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Wall Street has recorded its worst opening six months of a year since 1970, when the US economy was in recession. On Thursday, the S&P 500 index dropped 0.9 percent leaving it down by 20.6 percent for the year. The fall in the tech-heavy NASDAQ index was even larger, with losses for the year approaching 30 percent.

According to calculations by Bloomberg, around $9 trillion has been wiped off the share market, with the total value of the broad-based S&P 1500 index falling from $45.8 trillion, at the end of 2021, to just over $36 trillion.

Summing up the situation, Wall Street Journal financial columnist James Mackintosh noted that halfway through the year “markets are beginning to fear we’re not even halfway through the bad news 2022 has in store,” as he pointed to the “surprises” of the first six months.

These included, inflation, the biggest sell off in bonds in four decades, “a plunge in tech stocks rarely matched in history,” and the “implosion” of crypto.

There are indications that the turmoil is spreading from high-risk areas to supposedly more secure areas of the market. According to a report in the Journal, bonds rated as investment-grade posted a fall of 11 percent in the first six months, “their worst start to a year in history.”

The prospect of a recession is rising, with the US economy recording an annualised contraction of 1.6 percent in the first quarter, amid predictions the result for the second quarter will be little better. Economists polled by the Journal said they saw a 44 percent probability of recession in the next 12 months, compared with 18 percent in January.

As it began its rate tightening, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and other central bank officials maintained it was possible to engineer a “soft landing” for the US economy without bringing about a recession. But that scenario has gone by the board with Powell stating that interest hikes—aimed at ending what he has repeatedly called a “very tight” labour market—will cause some “pain.”

Research by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis on monetary tightening cycles over the past four decades concluded that the US economy went into recession four out of the last six times it began raising rates.

It has been reported that major investment banks, including Bank of America, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs, as well as others, could collectively lose billions of dollars on leveraged buyout operations, in which they provide loans for takeover operations that they then sell off.

But according to a Journal report, as of June 23, they were receiving an average of 94.8 cents on the dollar for newly-issued buyout debt, as compared to 99.2 cents at the end of January.

It is expected that losses on the $15 billion private-equity-backed leveraged buyout of the cloud-computing company Citrix, the largest such operation this year, could total as much as $1 billion.

Financial conditions in Europe are also rapidly worsening. A Financial Times (FT) report published at the weekend drew attention to the situation in the corporate bond market where €40 billion worth of debt is now trading at “distressed” levels, compared to $6 billion at the end of last year. And the slide appears to be accelerating.

“The stock of distressed corporate debt more than doubled from May 31 to June 30 alone, underscoring how quickly concerns are mounting that central banks’ decisions to tighten monetary policy could tilt major economies into recession,” the article said.

Last week, the ratings agency S&P Global warned of the “increasingly murky outlook for credit quality” in Europe.

“Credit ratings are likely to come under pressure into 2023 as supply constraints keep food and energy prices elevated, households increasingly struggle with falling real incomes, and central banks prioritise inflation over growth,” it said.

According to calculations by Ice Data Services, reported by the FT, in the euro-denominated junk bond market—those with less than an investment grade rating—8.8 percent were now trading at “distressed” levels. That is, they were more than 10 percentage points above government bonds, compared to 1.3 percent at the end of last year.

But it is not only the riskier portions of the market that are being impacted by the growing fears that higher interest rates will bring about a recession. A note issued by JPMorgan European credit analysts on Friday said, there was an “alarming freeze in capital market lending conditions, which has gradually spread up the quality curve.”

One of the sharpest expressions of the results of higher central bank interest rates and tightening credit is the meltdown in the crypto currency markets—a kind of “canary in the coal mine” for the financial system as a whole.

Three weeks after the crypto lender Celsius Network halted customer withdrawals, investors are faced with prospect that they will never get their money back. On Thursday it issued a blog post saying it was continuing to “take important steps to preserve and protect assets and explore options available to us.”

Celsius is reported to have hired attorneys and consultants for a possible bankruptcy filing under which customers may not be able to recover crypto currencies in their accounts or collateral they put up for loans. Many individuals, lured in by the crypto hype and the promise of 20 percent returns, will be affected, with the possibility that major financial players could also be involved.

On Friday, the crypto hedge fund Three Arrows filed for bankruptcy in the US after it was pushed into liquidation in the Virgin Islands when it failed to pay $80 million to the digital asset exchange Deribit.

Major crypto firms stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. The Toronto-based crypto lender Voyager Digital said late last month it could lose more than $650 million and has suspended withdrawals and halted trading as it examines “strategic alternatives.”

The FT said the failure of Three Arrows was the latest example of the how crypto turmoil had wrong-footed some of the industry’s biggest players and how “trouble at one firm can ricochet across the sector due to opaque links between investors, crypto exchanges and lending firms.”

Since reaching its high of $3 trillion last November, the market value of crypto has fallen to under $1 trillion. The question is how much of this loss has been incurred by major hedge funds that moved into the crypto market over the past two years.

The significance of the collapse of crypto is that while it was regarded as something of an outlier, its modus operandi was the same as the rest of the financial system. It used the essentially free money provided by the Fed to finance ever-riskier financial bets.

It is worth recalling that when the problems in the sub-prime mortgage market first emerged in 2007, the then chairman of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, insisted that because it was only a small segment of the financial system it would not have broader effects. But as the financial crisis of 2008 revealed, it was the trigger for a collapse because the practices developed in sub-prime, some of them of a criminal character, were rife throughout the system.

Australia’s official COVID-19 deaths toll surpasses 10,000

Clare Bruderlin

Australia’s official COVID-19 death toll reached 10,014 yesterday, amid an ongoing wave of infection, illness and death. Almost 7,800 Australians have died from the virus in 2022 alone.

A nurse holds a phone while a patient affected with COVID-19 speaks with his family from the intensive care unit. (Image Credit: AP/Daniel Cole)

While governments, health authorities and the corporate media pretend the pandemic is over, the virus remains among the three leading causes of death in Australia. In June, an average of almost 46 COVID-19 deaths were reported each day, a rate not seen since February.

With hospitals, ambulances and other health services constantly overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and staff shortages exacerbated by mass infection among staff, the virus has also indirectly contributed to thousands of otherwise preventable deaths.

According to data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics last month, total deaths from all causes in the first quarter of 2022 were 17.5 percent higher than the historical average.

More than half of the 6,609 excess deaths were not directly caused by COVID-19. Deaths from diabetes were 20.7 percent higher than average, while dementia deaths were up 19.7 percent to 3,859, making it the leading cause of death over the period.

This devastating loss of life, on a scale not seen outside of war, is the result of a deliberate program. State and federal, Labor and Liberal-National governments openly adopted “let it rip” COVID-19 policies last December, sacrificing the health and lives of the population for corporate profits.

Every major political party bears responsibility for this program, which amounts to social murder, along with the trade union bureaucracies, which have done nothing to protect their members or the general population from the spread of COVID-19. Instead, the unions have worked hand-in-glove with governments to force workers back into unsafe workplaces and promoted the slashing of COVID-19 public health measures.

Australia’s per capita infection rate remains among the highest in the world, with more than 30,000 new cases recorded every day across the country. Hospitalisations are again rising, with 3,511 people now hospitalised and 118 in ICU.

Global studies indicate that between 10 and 30 percent of those who contract the virus will suffer from Long-COVID—one or more COVID-19 symptoms persisting more than 12 weeks after infection. This means as many as 2.5 million Australians may already be suffering long-term illness as a result of the virus.

Long-COVID patients face lengthy wait times. In New South Wales (NSW), the country’s most populous state, the only specialist Long-COVID treatment centre in Sydney has more than 100 people on its waiting list.

In Victoria, demand for neuropsychological treatment is reaching record levels. Neuropsychologist Associate Professor Charles Malpas of the Royal Melbourne Hospital told the Sydney Morning Herald last month that he has seen a rising number of distressing neurological complaints, including “brain fog” and memory loss. 

People on Victorian public waiting lists could wait between six and twelve months for an appointment, or be forced to pay thousands of dollars to seek treatment through private health providers. 

Contrary to the baseless claims by governments and the corporate media that the coronavirus is evolving into milder versions, the circulation of the BA.4 and BA.5 variants is fuelling the growth in cases, including reinfections, hospitalisations and deaths. 

Queensland’s chief health officer Dr John Gerrard told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last week that 38 percent of genome sequences for SARS-CoV-2 in the state are these newer, more virulent subvariants. He warned of “a stress on the hospitals in the next few weeks as more and more people get admitted.”

NSW Health noted on June 23 that the emergence of these new variants was “likely to result in an increase in infections, including in people who have previously had Covid-19.” 

Despite this, state and federal governments alike have made clear that they will do nothing to stop the wave of infections and deaths.  

While acknowledging the call by scientists and epidemiologists for the reinstatement of mask mandates, Dr Gerrard, speaking for the interests of the government and corporate elite, said: “We want to move away from restrictions, towards more self-regulation and self-responsibility—that means being up-to-date with your vaccines.”

In reality, the experiences in Australia are a damning refutation of this vaccine-only strategy, used to justify the elimination of other crucial public health measures. 

While the vaccines are a major scientific advance, the decision by governments to allow the virus to circulate created the conditions for increasingly vaccine-resistant variants. When the Omicron surge began last December, Australia had one of the world’s highest double-dose adult vaccination rates, but two doses provided little protection against the new variant.

Now, even the inoculation efforts are being wound back.

With 67 percent of the adult population having had a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, a fourth dose is currently only available to those over the age of 65 and the immunocompromised. There is no indication of any further roll-out. 

Numbers of major COVID-19 vaccination hubs across the country are being closed down, reducing access to vaccines. In South Australia, where one mass vaccination clinic closed last month and another is set to be shut on July 14, Health Minister Chris Picton said that this was due to falling demand and also to “free up nursing staff to provide much-needed frontline services at our busy hospitals.”

The crisis in hospitals, the product of decades of funding cuts to public healthcare by both Labor and Liberal-National governments, has been exacerbated by the influx of COVID-19 patients and now a deadly flu season.

Virtually all public health measures to stop the spread of COVID have been systematically dismantled. From Wednesday, overseas travellers arriving in Australia will no longer need to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Mask-wearing in airport terminals was scrapped last month across Australia, not based on the protection of public health but because “all states and territories have relaxed mask mandates in most settings within the community.” This provides the pretext for the removal of mask mandates in the limited settings where they remain, including public transport and hospitals.

Last week, the Bondi Beach drive-through COVID-19 testing clinic was shut down. The closure of what was formerly the busiest test facility in NSW is a strong signal that the entire public testing infrastructure will soon be eliminated as part of the bipartisan campaign to cover up the continued spread of the virus.

The newly-elected federal Labor government has made clear that these homicidal policies will continue. Whilst Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has admitted the pandemic “clearly isn’t over yet,” any remaining public health measures continue to be stripped away and the federal government’s pandemic health funding has only been extended 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 and influenza, chronic understaffing, and lack of resources.  Emergency department wait times are at record highs and ambulances in every state and territory are routinely ramped outside hospitals for hours, waiting for beds to become available.

There is mounting anger and opposition from workers, including health workers, teachers and rail workers, who have taken strike action in recent months over these intolerable conditions and real wage cuts. This fight comes up against the trade union bureaucracy, which is isolating workers’ strikes and has worked with governments and management to enforce the dire conditions.

Official monkeypox cases surpass 6,000 as model projects over 1 million cases globally by this fall

Benjamin Mateus

The unprecedented global outbreak of monkeypox is deepening throughout the world, raising concerns among scientists and physicians internationally that another pandemic is now unfolding alongside the COVID-19 pandemic.

On July 1, a record 781 new cases were identified worldwide, more than half of which were in Spain, bringing the seven-day rolling average to 402 cases per day, a 10-fold increase since May. Over the past four weeks, the number of infections worldwide has risen more than sixfold to 6,229 total cases, with 6,178 confirmed and 51 suspected infections. There are now 459 official infections in the US, an almost 20-fold increase over the past four weeks.

The global outbreak has quickly expanded to 67 non-endemic countries and territories across every part of the globe. Spain, England and Germany have each surpassed more than 1,000 confirmed cases, while the US has 459. Given the Biden administration’s laggard response to the unfolding crisis, public health advocates and infectious disease experts believe that the US will soon catch up with its European counterparts.

Daily monkeypox cases in Spain, England, Germany, and the US. Source @antonio_caramia

As of Sunday evening, 32 states and the District of Columbia have reported monkeypox infections since the first case was identified six weeks ago. The states leading in the number of confirmed infections are California (95), New York (90), Illinois (53) and Florida (50), given their immediate connections to international travel and population density. Public health authorities have affirmed that official figures are certainly undercounts, as medical professionals are missing cases due to a lack of widespread testing and unfamiliarity with the signs and symptoms of the disease.

Over the weekend, a TikTok video went viral in which a young woman named Halle shared her experience attempting to get tested for monkeypox, revealing how totally unprepared the American health care system is for this growing outbreak.

After contacting two urgent care centers and two primary care physicians who were unaware of the monkeypox outbreak and even the disease itself, she was told to return to work and prescribed antibiotics. A dermatologist she was to consult with canceled her appointment and told her to contact the CDC.

Halle noted, “I called the CDC. The CDC says, ‘Call your PCP [primary care provider].’ The lady I talked to at the CDC had no idea what she was talking about and couldn’t answer any of my questions. I have not been able to get tested anywhere. Doctors have refused to see me, and I have this mysterious and painful rash all over my face, chest, arms and back… The CDC has no idea what they are doing, nobody is educated, not even doctors, and doctors will refuse to see you, treat you or test you. And the CDC does nothing about it.”

White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha recently commented on the monkeypox outbreak in his typically complacent manner, stating, “We as a global community have known about it for decades. We know how it spreads. We have tests that help identify people who are infected. We have vaccines that are highly effective against it.”

Jha’s first pronouncement on monkeypox is as false and empty as his threadbare refrain regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, “We have the tools.” In reality, while the “tools” may exist, they are not being deployed and managed in a coordinated fashion due to the decades-long dismantling of public health, which has been starkly revealed and exacerbated during the coronavirus pandemic.

James Krellenstein, a co-founder of the HIV treatment advocacy group Prep4All, gave the opposite assessment of Dr. Jha to The Hill, stating bluntly, “We’ve been sort of screaming for a month about how bad the diagnostic situation is for monkeypox. And that really was a clear error, preventable, and it’s very clear that this administration has not learned lessons from early COVID.”

David Harvey, Executive Director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, told The Hill, “Where we have lagged is streamlining testing, making vaccines available, streamlining access to the best therapeutics. All three areas have been bureaucratic and slow, and that means we haven’t contained this outbreak.”

These comments only begin to get to the heart of the matter. The entire public health infrastructure is underfunded and in complete disarray, meaning the mistakes made previously will continue unless serious measures are taken to restore the edifice. The inability to fund one of the most important social functions of government while making available all resources for permanent war is not simply a mistake of omission or want; it is a deliberate and bipartisan policy decision made on behalf of the corporate-financial oligarchy.

At the global level, the World Health Organization IHR Emergency Committee met on June 23 and refrained from formally declaring the global monkeypox outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), opting to wait for an unspecified period of time until more data is accrued.

This decision draws comparisons to the WHO’s delayed response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was not declared a PHEIC until January 30, 2020, at which point there were already 7,818 confirmed cases in 19 countries throughout the world. Not until March 11, 2020, did the WHO formally declare the coronavirus a pandemic. As the WHO continues to drag their feet, modeling estimates predict dire consequences as the number of cases continues to rise exponentially.

The results of a recent modeling study published on June 21, 2022, in The Conversation by Adam Kleczkowski, a professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Strathclyde, offered four scenarios for how the monkeypox outbreak could play out in the UK. The second scenario, which estimates that monkeypox infections in the UK could reach as high as 60,000 cases per day by the end of the year, appears to be the most plausible given the current exponential trajectory.

As Kleczkowski noted, “The size of the outbreak is already well beyond the most prominent 2017–19 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (760). It is possible that large gatherings, including raves and festivals, have created new transmission clusters.”

This is in line with projections made by data scientist J. Weiland that without any mitigation measures the total number of monkeypox cases worldwide could reach 100,000 by August and 1 million by late September.

As the global monkeypox outbreak continues its assault everywhere, the demand for resources will likely soon outstrip the available supply of vaccines and therapeutics. Bavarian Nordic, a small Danish company, is the manufacturer of Jynneos, the only vaccine developed against the monkeypox virus.

On Friday, the company announced that US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) had ordered an additional 2.5 million doses of liquid frozen Jynneos. With previous orders from BARDA, a total of 4.4 million doses are being delivered to the US in 2022 and 2023. The current stockpile is around 56,000 doses, with 300,000 more expected in the next several weeks.

However, Bavarian Nordic’s manufacturing capacity for the monkeypox vaccine has been reduced due to the partial shutdown and planned expansion of its facilities since last August. As a result, the rest of the world will have to wrangle over the limited doses of vaccines (enough for possibly 2.5 million people) available to them.

According to the New York Times, the vaccine production facility is not expected to reopen until late summer at the earliest, and any additional vaccines would not be available for at least six months. That means the company would only be able to produce, at most, less than five million doses of the two-dose Jynneos regimen for the rest of the world through 2022.

Professor Angela Rasmussen, a research scientist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, observed that the current supply of monkeypox vaccines “is certainly not enough to vaccinate everybody who’s going to be at risk.”

In Europe, Spain has been the first to initiate vaccination of high-risk individuals. Last week, the country received 5,300 doses from the European Commission’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), out of 109,090 doses they procured from Bavarian Nordic.

The vaccines will be administered through a ring vaccination program where close contacts of cases at risk of contracting the virus, including health care personnel, will be targeted. The European Medicines Agency is also eyeing the use of the smallpox vaccine Imvanex, which provides nearly 85 percent protection against monkeypox. However, the safety profile of earlier generation smallpox vaccines can have significant consequences for certain individuals, including possible damage to the heart.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky reported last week that the public health agency had activated its Emergency Operations Center “to meet the outbreak’s evolving challenges.” New York City and Washington D.C. have offered a limited supply of the vaccines to residents that meet high-risk criteria, such as men who have sex with men, sex workers or workers at an establishment where sexual activities occur. However, while the current outbreak is primarily spreading within this section of the population, all of society is vulnerable to infection and it is only a matter of time before it begins spreading through all demographics.

Australia: Labor government implements new onerous welfare requirements

John Harris

Further onerous new requirements on the unemployed have come into effect with the new financial year. The imposition of the punitive regime by the new federal Labor government further underscores how quickly its sham election promises of a “better future” have given way to demands for sacrifices, and attacks on the most vulnerable sections of the working class.

Unemployed workers outside an inner-western Sydney Centrelink office in March 2020 [Source: WSWS Media]

The new “Points Based Activation System” (PBAS) mandates a series of tasks and criteria for the unemployed to receive their sub-poverty level JobSeeker payment.

The PBAS expands on the former mutual obligation system which required 20 job applications per month. The new system now requires those on welfare to accumulate 100 points per month by completing a range of activities. More than 30 such activities are listed. If someone does not meet the monthly points target, they can be punished with demerits and the suspension of their payment.

The points-based system has been implemented at the direct behest of big business. While supporting the victimisation and harassment of the unemployed, corporate lobbies have complained that the previous job search requirement had resulted in businesses being inundated with job applications, including from those not qualified for the position.

The PBAS was passed through parliament in March this year under the former Morrison Coalition government with the bipartisan support of Labor as part of the Social Security Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. This followed localised trials of the points-based regime beginning in 2019.

Despite Labor having passed the measure, Labor employment minister Tony Burke cynically declared last month: “It's actually too late to not have a points system at all.” Burke added, “We want to make sure… that we can have a system that’s designed to get people into work.”

In other words, the PBAS scheme aims to make it harder for unemployed young people and workers to remain on welfare benefits. Its purpose is to force them into low-paid, temporary and casual work on whatever terms and conditions employers demand.

Burke also declared that Labor supports “mutual obligations,” that is the idea that the unemployed must perform services to society in return for their payments. This is directed against any conception of a social safety net, or welfare as a fundamental social right.

An indication of the pro-business character of the program can be gleaned from the activities and points distribution on the PBAS. If a person is a part of the government’s PaTH (Prepare, Trial and Hire) internship program, they will accumulate 25 points per week (100 points per month).

The PaTH program forces young people under the age of 25 into compulsory “pre-employment” training courses and has pushed thousands of unemployed young people into menial work for private employers. The program pays the equivalent of $4 an hour on top of the unemployment payment. 

The scheme was introduced by the Abbott Coalition government in 2016 with the bipartisan support of Labor allowing businesses to hire people on ultra-cheap wages. Under the program there is no guarantee that you will be covered by workers compensation if you are injured on the job.

Full-time work-for-the-dole or full-time study (25 hours per week) would still not be enough to obtain the required 100 points in a month. In both, participants only get 20 points per week and will still be required to carry out other activities such as job searching (5 points for every 5 jobs) to meet monthly obligations.

Those forced on to the work-for-the-dole program are effectively prevented from studying or seeking full-time employment. Instead, they must perform menial labour merely to receive their unemployment allowance.

Work-for-the-dole was introduced by the 1998 Howard Coalition government, as a rebranding of the Keating Labor government’s “New Work Opportunities” program. The scheme was continued under the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments.

Work-for-the-dole denies employee status under occupational health and safety, workers compensation and industrial relations laws, meaning that those workers have virtually no legal protections. Underscoring the dangers of this forced-work program, Josh Park-Fing, an 18-year-old unemployed youth from Meringandan, Queensland died in an accident in 2016 while on the program.

Immigrants who are learning English full-time (25 hours per week) will also receive only 20 points a week for that activity, forcing them to look for low-paid, part-time work.

Thousands of people have expressed their opposition to the new PBAS system on social media.

One comment which is indicative of the general discussion said, “this is a system designed to increase profits for the providers. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. It is about private business access to even more welfare recipients and ticking the payments for services rendered box… What it is not designed to do is help anyone. It is designed for the business to increase their own profits. It is not a thought-out social policy and it does not provide a social service… Stop the roll out!”

The new PBAS scheme threatens the 949,940 people who subsist on JobSeeker and the Youth Allowance with even further hardship. Unemployed workers and young people are constantly harassed by job providers and Centrelink over mutual obligation requirements. 

According to the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS), in a typical month more than 200,000 people have their JobSeeker payment suspended. This is nearly one in four of people using JobActive services. Around half of these suspensions were because people could not meet the job search requirements that they had been set, in many cases because there simply were not enough jobs.

The Roy Morgan Institute estimated the true jobless figures at 8.5 percent or 1.2 million workers in February, plus an “underemployment” level of 7.8 percent, approximately 1.12 million workers. That totals 16.3 percent, or 2.35 million workers who are looking for work or more work.

The PBAS is a step towards the abolition of the last remnants of the welfare system. The new Albanese Labor government has made it clear it has no intention of lifting the JobSeeker rate, which sits at roughly $46 a day or $642.70 per fortnight, well below the poverty line of $852 a fortnight.

The points-based system is part of a broader austerity agenda. In its first month in office, Labor signaled that it would impose deep-going cuts to social spending, to pay for the almost one trillion dollars of national debt, accrued primarily through massive handouts to big business over the past two years. Areas nominated for the chopping block include health, aged care and disability services.

This program is being rolled out, under conditions of a major social crisis, intensified by soaring inflation, with skyrocketing prices for petrol, rent, childcare, fresh food and other essentials.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) inflicted the largest interest rate hike in 22 years of 0.5 percentage points last month in a deliberate move to suppress growing demands by workers for wage increases. The RBA has indicated that further interest rate rises are on the horizon. With Australia having one of the largest ratios of household debt to income, the ongoing rate rises threaten hundreds of thousands of mortgage holders with financial catastrophe.