The pandemic in Russia and the bankruptcy of national-chauvinist politics

Andrei Ritsky

On Tuesday, July 19, the Rospotrebnadzor press service reported the detection of the new Omicron BA.2.75 subvariant in five people in Russia. The press service wrote, “The material was sampled in July. The material was collected in the city of Moscow. The disease had a mild form in all the patients. There are no hospitalized patients.”

Previously, this heavily mutated Omicron subvariant has been found in India, Australia, Germany, Great Britain, the United States, Canada and the Netherlands. With the Omicron BA.5 subvariant currently dominant in Russia and throughout the world, it is difficult to say whether this new BA.2.75 subvariant can be considered particularly dangerous, capable of causing another wave of coronavirus around the world. What is certain, however, is that Russia’s health system is unlikely to be able to continue to withstand blow after blow from the pandemic.

According to official figures, which are significant undercounts, the pandemic has already killed about 382,000 people in Russia. Estimates of excess deaths place the real death toll in Russia above 1.2 million, among the highest per capita excess death rates in the world.

Over the past few weeks, there has been a gradual increase in the number of official cases, typical of all initial periods of coronavirus waves, indicating a real threat of a new pandemic wave in the coming weeks and months. Since reaching a trough on July 1, the seven-day average of daily new cases has risen by 79 percent, from 2,941 to 5,264. Genomic sequencing data from Russia is only available through July 4, but by that point the Omicron BA.5 subvariant already accounted for 33 percent of all cases and likely became dominant the following week and is fueling the current rise in cases.

Medics wearing special suits to protect against coronavirus treat patients with coronavirus at an ICU of a hospital in Volgograd, Russia, Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexandr Kulikov)

Officially, roughly 18.5 million people have been infected with COVID-19 in Russia, also known to be a vast undercount. As is the case globally, the health care system has been under constant pressure for the past two-and-a-half years. Amid this deepening crisis, the Putin regime is gradually changing its own propaganda. It is increasingly ignoring the issue of the pandemic, bringing to the fore the “special military operation” in Ukraine, where Russia is not only waging a war against Ukraine, but also a proxy war against the US-NATO powers.

According to Russia’s draft federal budget for 2022–24, Russia has no plans to increase spending on health care by 2024, while adopting a 7.1 percent and 8.5 percent increase in spending on “national security” and “national defense,” respectively.

It is possible that BA.5 or BA.2.75 could trigger a new pandemic wave. For the working class, the hard times of confronting a pandemic are once again approaching. The class struggle could deepen in tandem with the new wave, beginning with health workers and then spilling over to other sectors of the country’s economy.

While the COVID-19 pandemic presents ongoing dangers to millions of workers across Russia, the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as public scientists such as immunologist Vladislav Zhemchugov, have downplayed the severity of the threat to the population.

Zhemchugov has repeatedly made contradictory and revealing statements on the pandemic. It is around such personalities that the propaganda that coronavirus is now “safe” is built. In June of this year, commenting on the origins of the coronavirus, Zhemchugov provocatively stated that it is impossible to fully deny that it originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In April, according to Rambler, Zhemchugov claimed that Omicron would help “renew collective immunity.” Also, Zhemchugov stated that the Omicron variant would look for a new host instead of humans. As with official scientists internationally, including Drs. Ashish Jha and Anthony Fauci in the United States, Zhemchugov said that Omicron could supposedly cause the last wave of the pandemic. Most recently, he has decided to “correct” himself and expresses the position that the new wave will be the very “tail” of the pandemic.

All of these statements must be scrutinized critically. What are the guarantees that the new BA.5 and BA.2.75 strains will not be so deadly? What are the guarantees that the coronavirus will be done away with for good? Why would coronavirus outbreaks suddenly stop? And why should we ignore the threat to life posed by COVID-19? Under the current social and economic system, there are no guarantees.

These same conceptions were advanced by the Putin government. In January 2022, as the Omicron BA.1 subvariant was surging throughout Russia and internationally, Putin declared, “The pandemic is indeed gradually receding. The number of people sick is decreasing; the number of people who, thank God, have gotten better, has been steadily exceeding the number of those who got sick recently.”

Putin’s speech at that time was built on imaginary hopes that the virus will gradually go away. But in June 2022, reality forced him to admit that “the pandemic is not over.” Still, admissions alone are not enough. What is required is a clear policy of action against the pandemic, based on the scientific method, not on the interests of the ruling elites of Russia or internationally.

Recently, since about March of this year, more and more regions and cities have abandoned all restrictions on the fight against the pandemic. What is quite telling is that all this began precisely after the start of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. Putin’s propaganda is now working in a different direction, seeking to deflect blame for all of Russia’s problems onto an outward enemy. He is attempting to “whitewash” himself and his elite while “denigrating” the Western ruling capitalist elite.

Putin’s message to the Russian worker is that if they are exploited by their own people, “in our own way, the Russian way, the national way,” that is fine. Exploitation and illness are only bad if they are the work of “foreign agents” and “Russophobes.”

It is clear that the policy of Western imperialism resorts to Russophobia as part of its anti-Russian campaign. However, every class conscious worker should understand that it is not Putin who is the defender of Russia, but the international working class. It is their capacity for revolutionary action that can save the world in general, and Russia in particular, from the destruction of the productive forces and cultural heritage as a result of the struggle for profits and spheres of influence between the capitalist powers.

The Putin regime has no way out of the current crisis in the country. It is only capable of adventurist actions, such as the invasion of Ukraine, which ultimately plays into the hands of Western imperialism and does nothing to stop its desire for future expansion against Russia and China. Its “social” policy is only a policy of handouts, which will not work for long with the increasing food cost inflation that is hitting the majority of the population hard.

The world bourgeoisie in general, and the Russian bourgeoisie in particular, are incapable of solving any of the looming crises characteristic of the current era of capitalism. This applies both to the persistent economic crises and to pandemics, social inequality, the impending ecological apocalypse by the end of this century, the threat of a new world nuclear war and much more.

UK Johnson government imposes massive real-terms pay cut on millions as unions suppress strikes

Robert Stevens

The Conservative government, immediately following the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the triggering of a leadership contest, last week announced massive de facto pay cuts for more than two million public sector workers.

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [AP Photo/Neil Hall Pool via AP]

On the same day that Retail Price Index (RPI) inflation rose to almost 12 percent, Tory ministers announced that more than a million National Health Service (NHS) workers will receive a pay rise equivalent to just 4 percent, or £1,400 annually. Consultant doctors will receive a pay award of just 4.5 percent. According to research by the Trades Union Congress, hospital porters’ real-terms pay will be down £200 this year, nurses will suffer a £1,100 cut and paramedics a cut of £1,500.

All teachers, except the newly qualified outside London, will receive only a 5 percent increase.

None of the miserly pay deals above the originally planned 3 percent will be paid for by new funding. Any increases above 3 percent must therefore come from cuts to departmental budgets. The Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates these will total £7 billion.

The government was emboldened by the fact that hardly any industrial action was underway. With the exception of a few thousand criminal lawyers, no national strikes have taken place for weeks.

From the start of the year, figures in ruling circles have raised the threat of a “summer of discontent” with workers resisting a new offensive on their wages, pensions, working conditions and jobs. Instead, the unions have stymied a movement that had the potential to throw out Johnson’s entire government.

Only token strikes, including the just three days of national strike action by the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, have taken place.

How grotesque is this betrayal by the trade unions was made clear in a piece in Sunday’s Observer, the sister newspaper of the Guardian. The article’s headline, “Paralysis from Tory leadership race is damaging pay talks, say doctors and teachers”, is misleading as the “doctors and teachers” referred to are leading figures in the union bureaucracy.

Observer Policy Editor Michael Savage comments, “Figures from both teaching and health unions said that with a new prime minister due to be in place by the autumn, they feared the temporary status of the current government was affecting the ability of ministers to take the necessary decisions.”

He continues, “Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said that when challenged over funding increases for next year in a call last week, newly appointed education secretary James Cleverly ‘wouldn’t answer straightforwardly and had the very good excuse that he might not be secretary of state’.

National Education Union joint leader Kevin Courtney speaking at a Trades Union Congress rally in London, June 18, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

The article cites Courtney’s response, “This does indicate that they’re not firing on all cylinders, and that’s not good… They are not dealing with the things that matter.”

Courtney, who jointly leads a union of nearly half a million members, speaks for the union bureaucracy everywhere. He is declaring that the desperate situation facing millions of workers can only be resolved in negotiation with a functional Tory government, for which they must wait until September!

It would seem unarguable to any worker that the crisis of the Tory government be used to press home a struggle against it. But the NEU and other unions will not do this because they are not adversaries of the government, but its de facto partners. They have called virtually no action halfway into the year to ensure that the “summer of discontent” did not become a summer of action. And they fear any false step on their part, giving workers’ anger an outlet, will unleash a movement beyond their control during a crisis of rule facing the ruling class.

Already, the Observer admits on the unions’ behalf, strikes in the public sector are disappearing over the horizon to the “autumn and the new year”, which it claims, “could see an unprecedented wave of strike action among teaching staff and doctors after a pay deal that is set to see their wages falling in real terms in the face of the cost of living crisis.”

Dispensing with the rhetoric, what is being prepared by the unions is an autumn and winter of evasions, betrayals and the suppression of every struggle that seriously threatens whichever right-wing monster—likely the Thatcher-worshipping Liz Truss or near billionaire Rishi Sunak—emerges as Johnson’s successor.

Britain’s main pseudo-left outfits the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Socialist Party (SP)—who count among their membership a significant number of local, regional and national union officials—have responded by doubling down in defence of these organisations.

The SWP offered advice to Courtney et al that they should try to present a more militant face and preserve whatever dwindling support they retain among workers. They wrote July 19, “The all too familiar pattern—consultative ballots followed by weeks of talks, then formal postal ballots followed by weeks more talks and maybe a strike in months afterwards—falls far short. At the very least there should be more strikes and protests.”

The SP wrote on July 20 of its efforts to encourage a more militant response, “The leadership of the union in the ‘NEU Left’ grouping previously told us [national action] was fantasy, and that in reality only school-by-school action was possible. But we argued that the union needed to lead from the front as well as build from below.

“Now we must build a mighty campaign, starting immediately, and then getting ready to hit the ground running when the schools start in September.”

These organisations deliberately avoid the central question: why has there been no co-ordinated, national strike action organised by the unions this year, despite the eagerness of millions to take the fight to the Tories as expressed in a series of near unanimous ballots for strikes among rail, bus, postal and other key sections of workers.

Calls for the union leaders to act as if they are actually in a fight against the government and the employers are used to conceal the actual character of the trade unions as organised opponents of the class struggle—an industrial police force for the corporations and the state.

Central to the chloroforming of the working class by the unions and their pseudo-left apologists is their covering over the fact that every significant dispute, especially in the public sector, is a struggle against the government. They therefore offer no perspective for the working class to intervene in the government crisis, even under the extraordinary conditions of the resignation of a prime minister.

New Sri Lankan president appoints his predecessor’s cabinet

Saman Gunadasa

Last Friday, Sri Lankan president Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed virtually the same cabinet of 18 ministers as his predecessor, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, making clear that there will be no change in the government’s agenda. In response to the country’s unprecedented economic and political crisis, it will impose the austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and brutally suppress any opposition.

Army soldiers stand guard as protesters shout slogans at the site of a protest camp outside the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, July 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Just prior to appointing the cabinet, in the early hours of Friday, Wickremesinghe gave the go-ahead for a violent crackdown on unarmed, anti-government protesters on Galle Face Green in central Colombo demanding his resignation. Thousands of soldiers and police attacked protesters and journalists and tore down tents and makeshift structures. Galle Face Green has been the central protest site in the three months of mass strikes and protests, fueled by extreme shortages and skyrocketing prices for essentials, which forced Rajapakse to flee the country and resign.

Wickremesinghe was appointed “acting president” by Rajapakse as he fled then installed as president in a parliamentary vote last week. Wickremesinghe, a longstanding right-wing political hack known for pro-US and pro-IMF loyalties, has no popular support and depended on the votes of Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). He has assumed the powerful ministerial posts of defense and finance, as well as wielding the sweeping autocratic powers of the executive presidency.

As prime minister, Wickremesinghe has appointed Dinesh Gunawardane, a close confident of the Rajapakse brothers and parliamentary leader of the House who has held senior ministerial posts in SLPP-led governments. Gunawardane, who entered parliament in 1983, is leader of the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP), a Sinhala chauvinist party established by his father Philip Gunawardene—a renegade from the Trotskyist movement in the 1940s.

Gunawardene takes over from Wickremesinghe who was appointed as prime minister in May, after Mahinda Rajapakse was compelled by mass strikes to step down. The only other change in the cabinet line-up is the omission of the previous foreign minister, G.L. Peiris, who refused to back the Rajapakses’ choice of Wickremesinghe as president. Instead, Peiris openly called for the SLPP to vote for one of its own MPs, Dallas Alahapperuma, in last week’s parliamentary vote.

The Rajapakses strongly supported Wickremesinghe, even though he is the only parliamentarian of the rump United National Party (UNP), as the political figure most able to carry out the anti-working class agenda demanded by the ruling class. He also undoubtedly had strong backing from the country’s corporate elite, US imperialism, the IMF and Sri Lanka’s international creditors.

Ranil Wickremesinghe [Source: United National Party Facebook]

Ali Sabry, Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s personal lawyer and trusted confidante, was appointed foreign minister. He was justice minister in the Rajapakse government then briefly finance minister in April.

According to media reports, Wickremesinghe told the first cabinet meeting that the security forces are empowered to uphold the constitution and to create an environment for people to live without fear. This is a pledge to the ruling class, not working people, that the government will do whatever is necessary to protect the wealthy, their property and bourgeois rule. The attack on the Galle Face Green protesters on Friday was to underscore this promise.

Wickremesinghe had already declared a state of emergency which gives the military wide powers to ban protests, arbitrarily arrest and detain people, and carry out searches. He issued another decree on Friday, deploying the military throughout out the island to maintain “public order.”

On Friday evening, Wickremesinghe, along with Inspector General of Police and foreign ministry officials “unofficially” briefed Colombo-based diplomats. This followed token expressions of concern by some diplomats, including US ambassador Julie Chung, over the early morning raid on protesters. These “concerns” were not for the protesters, but rather that the crackdown could provoke further widespread popular unrest.

The social crisis facing working people is dire. Annual inflation has hit nearly 60 percent and there are chronic shortages of essential foods, fuel and medicines. A recent FAO report found “6.3 million people are food insecure, while another 6.7 million people are not consuming acceptable dietary food as of June” in Sri Lanka.

Wickremesinghe emphatically defended the military’s actions, reportedly asking the assembled diplomats whether “protesters could illegally occupy the President’s Office in their respective countries.” He called on diplomats “to check with the relevant officials when making statements, as statements based on social media reports alone could damage Sri Lanka's image.”

Wickremesinghe is attempting to dress up his regime as an all-party government. Prime Minister Gunawardane has been assigned to negotiate with opposition parties and, if one or more is prepared to join the government, the cabinet reportedly could be expanded from the current 18 to 25 or more members with parliamentary approval. Wickremesinghe is desperate to present a united political façade for the brutal measures that the government will carry out.

The Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), led by opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), led by former president Maithripala Sirisena, had indicated their willingness to join an all-party government depending on what was proposed. However, last Friday’s attack on protesters prompted them to maintain their distance for the time being.

Premadasa declared last weekend: “We are prepared to play a role in the government through (parliamentary) committees, but do not intend to accept ministerial portfolios.” After meeting with some trade union leaders, he announced that he will set up a national council including representatives of the trade unions and civil organisations on Tuesday that will function from his office.

All of the government and opposition parties are committed to carrying out the IMF’s austerity agenda but are fearful of the reaction of the working class and rural masses to the intolerable conditions they confront.

Over the past three months, the opposition parties and the trade unions have been instrumental in undermining the mass popular uprising and sabotaging the independent intervention of the working class. All of them have backed the formation of an all-party, interim government as the means of keeping working people shackled to the political establishment and blocking a political struggle against the source of the social crisis—the capitalist system. A “national council” is just a variant of the same political trap.

WHO Director-General declares monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern

Benjamin Mateus

On Saturday, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the unprecedented global outbreak of monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), the highest alert before declaring the outbreak a pandemic. In doing so, he overruled the decision of the International Health Regulations (IHR) Emergency Committee (EC) which had reconvened on July 21 to address the continued “unexpected” spread of the disease in non-endemic regions across the globe.

When they first met a month ago, on June 23, the EC decided against declaring monkeypox a PHEIC by a vote of 11 to three. The cumulative case count at the time was 3,621 infections, and the seven-day rolling average was just 225 per day. Since then, cases have exploded to over 16,000 cases in at least 75 non-endemic countries, with a seven-day rolling average of 535 per day.

Despite this massive and global spread of the virus, after several hours of deliberations last Thursday the EC reached a vote of nine to six that there were still insufficient grounds to declare monkeypox a PHEIC. Dr. Ghebreyesus’ decision to overrule this vote is the first such overruling in the history of the WHO.

The head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaks during a media conference at an EU-Africa Summit in Brussels on February 18, 2022 (Johanna Geron, pool photo via AP, file)

During a press briefing following the announcement, Dr. Ghebreyesus noted, “Nine and six are very, very close. Since the role of the committee is to advise, I then had to act as a tiebreaker. We believe this will mobilize the world to act together. It needs coordination and not only coordination but solidarity.”

He added, “There are now more than 16,000 reported cases from 75 countries and territories and five deaths. WHO’s assessment is that the risk of monkeypox is moderate globally and in all regions except in the European region, where we assess the risk is high. Although I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern for the moment, this outbreak is concentrated among men who have sex with men [MSM], especially those with multiple sexual partners. That means this outbreak can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups.”

It has been the failure of governments and their public health institutions over the last three months to contain the spread of the infections that have pressed the Director-General to declare the monkeypox outbreak a PHEIC. Basic tenets of isolating cases and contact tracing could have brought the outbreak under control by late May.

The unprecedented inaction by governments in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as growing criticism that the WHO was once again failing to act to swiftly contain what could become another uncontrolled pandemic, clearly played a significant factor in this decision.

Figure 1: Monkeypox cases across Europe. (Source @antonio_caramia)

Announcing the PHEIC, the WHO included a lengthy list of recommendations and guidelines on conducting surveillance, managing cases and reporting these for various groups of states based on their epidemiological situation, transmission patterns and capacities.

Under the 2005 IHR agreement, states have a legal duty to respond to the declaration of PHEIC, which is defined as “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response,” especially when the situation is “serious, sudden, unusual, or unexpected.”

It must be recalled that smallpox, a deadly disease endemic throughout human history, was infecting 50 million people globally during the 1950s, despite the fact that a vaccine had existed for more than 150 years. Precisely because a globally-coordinated effort to address the scourge had never been attempted, smallpox remained a threat to most of the world’s population.

When the WHO targeted smallpox for eradication in 1967, the annual global caseload was around 10 to 15 million. Ten years after proclaiming the initiative for the eradication of smallpox, the last known case was reported in Somalia in 1977. More than 40 years have passed since smallpox was conquered and the international experiences amassed since then are considerable. Given the resources and technology available today, one must ask how quickly a coordinated effort could end the monkeypox pandemic with only tens of thousands infected?

The timing of WHO’s declaration of a PHEIC on monkeypox, which takes place as the Omicron BA.5 subvariant continues its assault across the globe, underscores the significant challenges facing depleted public health institutions globally. Nearly every country outside China has allowed the coronavirus to surge without considering its impact on the well-being of its population. The tattered state of public health raises the question whether these countries will do anything to address any infectious disease that threatens the public?

Last week, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci stated bluntly that the COVID-19 pandemic will go on for another quarter century, while White House COVID Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha claimed, “This virus is going to be with us forever.”

These very same officials whose responsibility is to protect the public from dangerous pathogens are promoting the idea that becoming infected with COVID-19 is no longer a critical or serious matter. In short, they encourage the subordination of public health to the demands of the markets.

Under such conditions, it remains doubtful if much will be done to stem to tide of monkeypox infections across the globe. As Dr. Ghebreyesus said at Saturday’s press conference, current mathematical models suggest that the reproduction number (R0) among the MSM population is above one, meaning there is continued growth in cases among this group. For instance, in Spain, the R0 is around 1.8, and for the UK at 1.6.

It bears reviewing what is known about the virus and the infection it causes.

The following video with Dr. Lisa Iannattone, Canadian dermatologist, on signs and symptoms of monkeypox, has been viewed widely. We encourage our readers to watch the very informative presentation:

The monkeypox virus is an enveloped double-stranded DNA virus, unlike the RNA single-stranded coronavirus. It belongs to the orthopoxvirus genus of which the vaccinia virus, cowpox virus and variola virus (the virus that causes smallpox) are related. The current clade causing the monkeypox pandemic is from West Africa and is known to cause less severe disease.

The demographics of the concurrent monkeypox outbreak in West Africa affect women and children most. However, on Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that two children in the US contracted monkeypox through household transmission. With summer ending, schools and day cares will open their doors again in the coming weeks for the new school year, raising concerns about the monkeypox virus taking hold in these high-risk and vulnerable groups.

One of the features of the monkeypox virus is its ability to resist drying and tolerate changes in temperature and pH on surfaces. The crusts of lesions from infected people or fomites in bed linen can remain infectious for months or years. However, they are sensitive to common disinfectants but less to organic disinfectants.

Air samples have indicated that these infectious particles could become airborne. And though the primary mode of transmission is through contact with infected lesions, if these are on the mouth and oral membranes, there is the risk that the virus can be transmitted via respiratory droplets and aerosol. For these reasons, health care workers should don PPE for airborne precautions.

The incubation period for monkeypox infection can range from five to 21 days, usually around one to two weeks. Symptoms of the disease begin with a combination of fever, headaches, chills, exhaustion, fatigue, muscle aches and swelling of lymph nodes. Three days after these prodrome symptoms, a reddish rash begins at the site of infection and spreads to other body parts.

The lesions progress over a 12-day window from macules to papules, vesicles, pustules, crusts and scabs before falling off. They can be painful or itchy, and secondary bacterial infections can occur if patients scratch themselves. The illness lasts from two to four weeks, and people confirmed to have monkeypox should isolate for the duration under medical supervision.

The current outbreak in non-endemic regions has been more atypical and milder, meaning awareness of the possibility of infection can be overlooked by the infected and physicians treating patients with these symptoms. However, complex and more invasive modes of exposure (i.e., bites from animals) may lead to more severe forms of the disease than through skin contact.

In endemic regions of Africa, the case fatality rate for monkeypox can range from 0 to 11 percent. Complications of monkeypox include encephalitis, skin infections, dehydration, infections involving the cornea and conjunctiva of the eyes, and pneumonia. Mortality with monkeypox has been seen mainly among young children, and the immunocompromised are especially at risk of severe disease.

As of July 23, 2022, there have been 16,353 confirmed and suspected cases. Eighty countries and territories have reported monkeypox cases, and the seven-day global average of cases has plateaued at around 535 cases per day. One could surmise that if testing capacity remains limited, these figures are underestimates, as public health officials have indicated.

Though Europe is the region most severely affected, cases in the US (2,581) and Brazil (614) continue to climb exponentially, accounting for more than 50 percent of all daily cases on July 22 combined. Only Spain leads the US with 3,125 monkeypox cases. It is expected that the US will soon surpass Spain and become the global epicenter of the monkeypox pandemic.

Figure 2: Daily, seven-day, and cumulative cases of monkeypox in the US. (Source @antonio_caramia)

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a statement on July 15, 2022, that an additional order for 2.5 million doses of Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccine was placed above the 2.5 million doses ordered on July 1.

The initial order will arrive in the Strategic National Stockpile over the next year. The HHS anticipates it will have 7 million doses by mid-2023. A course of the vaccine requires two doses given four weeks apart. Currently, only 300,000 doses have been available to states and jurisdictions.

Dr. Boghuma K Titanji, an infectious disease physician at Emory University in Atlanta, who recently published a contemporary review for health care professionals on monkeypox in the journal Open Forum Infectious Disease, said of the WHO’s declaration, “[It’s] better late than never … [but] one can argue that the response globally has continued to suffer from a lack of coordination with individual countries working at very different paces to address the problem. There is almost capitulation that we cannot stop the monkeypox virus from establishing itself in a more permanent way.”

Iran imprisons film directors amid escalating crackdown on dissent and protests

Jean Shaoul

In the largest crackdown on its film industry since 2010, Iran ordered internationally acclaimed filmmaker Jafar Panahi, 62, to serve a six-year jail sentence after he criticised the government.

Panahi was arrested on July 11 when he went to the prosecutor’s office to follow up on the arrest of Mohammad Rasoulof, another well-known filmmaker, and Mostafa Aleahmad. The two were detained on July 8 after criticising the authorities’ response to the collapse of a multi-story building in Abadan, in the oil-rich, southwestern province of Khuzestan, on May 23, that killed 43 people. The Iranian authorities accused the filmmakers of having links to opposition groups outside the country and plotting to undermine state security.

Jafar Panahii, 2007

Their imprisonment is part of a broader attempt by the clergy-led bourgeois nationalist regime of President Ebrahim Raisi to silence the filmmakers and politically threaten other critics of the regime. It takes place amid a government campaign of intimidation and repression against any opposition to the soaring cost of living that is making it impossible for workers and rural toilers, not just in Iran but across the globe, to feed their families.

This attack on democratic rights and free speech must be opposed and a campaign mounted by filmmakers, writers, artists, workers and youth everywhere to demand that the sentence be overturned immediately, and all filmmakers, artists and labour activists be released from Iran’s jails.

Following the Abadan building collapse in May, local officials, instead of sending in relief teams to help in the search, deployed anti-riot squads to disperse the crowds of volunteers and mourners and sent in security forces to demolish the building before the search for any survivors was complete. Angry crowds took to the streets to protest at the rampant corruption and breach of regulations that had led to the collapse, demanding the prosecution and punishment of officials.

Protests spread to other cities across the country that soon morphed into anti-government rallies. The authorities responded by shutting down access to the internet, ordering shops to close and sending in riot police to disperse the protests with teargas, warning shots, mass arrests and intimidation. Rasoulof wrote an open letter, signed by other filmmakers and artists, over the “corruption, theft, inefficiency and repression” relating to the building collapse and called on security forces to “lay down their arms.”

Panahi and Rasoulof were previously arrested in 2010 for “propaganda against the system,” critiquing the government in their films and at protests. Panahi was given a six-year suspended jail sentence after being imprisoned for two months before his trial. For the last 12 years he was subject to a travel ban and barred from making films, although his subsequent films, including his 2015 film Taxi, sought to evade these restrictions. He is now in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

Rasoulof was given a one-year sentence in 2011. Just months after his film There Is No Evil, which related four stories touching on the death penalty in Iran and personal freedoms won the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear prize in 2020, Rasoulof was sentenced to a year in prison for three films that authorities claimed were “propaganda against the system.” While he won on appeal, he was banned from making films and travelling abroad.

Firouzeh Khosrovani

Panahi’s imprisonment comes two months after security forces arrested Firouzeh Khosrovani (director of Radiography of a Family and interviewed by the WSWS in 2021) and Mina Keshavarz, two internationally renowned documentary filmmakers, and Reihane Taravati, a well-known photographer, and raided the homes of at least 10 other documentary filmmakers and producers, seizing their mobile phones, laptops and hard drives. The three women were released on bail after their families surrendered their property deeds as guarantees, although none of the three have been formally charged.

This crackdown on filmmakers comes as Iran’s kleptocracy sits atop a social volcano as poverty soars to encompass 80 percent of Iran’s 85 million population and the middle class has all but disappeared.

Iran’s economy has been devastated under the impact of years of harsh economic sanctions imposed by Washington. After the Trump administration unilaterally abandoned the 2015 nuclear accords with the major powers aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear programme, it reimposed sanctions and piled on additional measures targeting Iran’s economy, including its oil and gas exports and banking system, to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran.

As a result, Iran’s oil and gas exports, a key revenue source, have plummeted. Iran’s increasingly beleaguered government responded by incrementally rolling back some of its commitments made under the nuclear accord, including increasing its uranium enrichment up to 60 percent purity, some way off from the weapons-grade level of 90 percent, and turning off the cameras at some of its sites, in a bid to demonstrate its refusal to submit to US pressure and strengthen its bargaining position in the talks with the Biden administration over returning to the accords.

Tehran had hoped that a renewed agreement would rescue its economy, particularly as oil and gas prices soared following the US/NATO-provoked war against Russia in Ukraine. But now, as Washington seeks to cement an anti-Iran alliance as part of its broader preparations for war with Russia and China—with whom Tehran has forged increasingly close relations—such an agreement is looking increasingly unlikely.

The US’s ever tighter economic blockade has deepened the poverty of the Iranian masses and strangled the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic which, according to official figures, has claimed the lives of more than 142,000 people. The currency, whose official exchange rate is 42,000 rials to the US dollar, is now trading in the bazaars at about 320,000 rials to the dollar, meaning that Iran’s currency is now worth one tenth of its value at the time of the 2015 nuclear deal—making it hugely expensive to source external goods and services and increasing the cost of locally produced goods.

The government has resorted to printing money to compensate for the loss of oil and other revenues and economic activities and to solve its budget deficit. It has dropped the official exchange rate of 42,000 rials for setting the price of necessities and food items in favour of the bazaar rate or “market approach” which is eight times higher, sending the cost of food sky high.

Iran’s official inflation rate has soared, with the monthly inflation rate reaching 12 percent in June, a 50 percent increase on a year ago, with no signs of slowing down. Food shortages and high prices, the drought that has affected the entire region, the decades-long mismanagement of the water system and agricultural production and the chronic shortage of electricity that has led to some factories operating at 50 percent capacity and others at 20-30 percent capacity, have combined to make living conditions intolerable.

The last few months have seen mass anti-government protests across the country, sparked by the government’s cuts to subsidies and the now worthless pensions. A major factor in the increasing poverty has been the ninefold increase in housing prices in the last five years that has priced the young middle class out of the housing market. Whereas 40 years ago, only one in five households rented their home, now one in three do so. The number of families renting is even higher in Tehran, where rents have risen by 50 percent this year alone, meaning that up to 60-70 percent of income goes on rent, under conditions where wages are low and often paid months in arrears. A shocking 19 million people are forced to live in slums.

With no respite from its imperialist foes, Iran’s ruling elite has responded to the protests with arrests, intimidation, violence and repression as it seeks to preserve its economic wealth and political power. The families of the trade unionists and labour activists imprisoned since May for leading or participating in the recent teachers’ protests in support of higher wages say that security agents have threatened them if they persist in publicising the arrests and detention of their relatives, while visits have been banned.

Coronavirus outbreak at children’s summer camp in Germany

Tamino Dreisam

Last week, a children’s summer camp of the youth association “Roter Baum” near Dresden was cancelled after a counselor and several children infected with the coronavirus were hospitalized. The case is symbolic of the federal and state government’s policy of mass infection and their propagation of “living with the virus.”

The summer camp in Karl May Village near Dresden, in which around 50 children from Berlin took part—most of them from socially poorer backgrounds—was originally scheduled to last 10 days. However, as early as Monday, July 11, a counselor had to be hospitalized with coronavirus symptoms.

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

The following day, July 12, a child likewise had to be hospitalized with coronavirus symptoms and three other children tested positive for the virus. The health department was informed about the outbreak and paid a visit to the camp the same day. Despite this visit, it decided to let the camp continue and only ordered a few basic hygienic regulations, such as regular testing and a mask requirement for camp counselors.

After yet another child had to be hospitalized the following day, July 13, the health department paid a second visit and again decided to let the camp continue. This time, too, only a few additional hygienic requirements were issued, “the implementation of which was to be monitored in a timely manner.”

It was not until the night of July 13-14 that a doctor acting on behalf of the health department called the camp director, telling him to close the camp. As of Friday afternoon the camp director had not received a written order, according to media reports.

Reports about the case have mainly focused on the question of the culpability of the camp management and the health department. Their complicity is indisputable: While the health department did not shut down the camp even after learning of the outbreak, the camp management is trying to downplay the situation.

For example, the managing director of the youth association, Tilo Kießling, a member of parliament for the Left Party in the Dresden City Council, spoke after the fact of only four or five positive cases, whereas counselors spoke of as many as 20 infected. Two counselors told the Sächsische Zeitung that the organizers initially refused to close the camp and only intervened after an emergency medical doctor advised to do so: “It is clear that the situation here is to be swept under the rug.”

This outbreak casts a spotlight on the criminal coronavirus policies of the federal and state governments, which are deliberately designed to allow the population to be infected. “Living with the virus” is the mantra in politics and the media, which is now being implemented with all its consequences so as not to diminish the profits of banks and large corporations.

When the Infection Protection Act expired in mid-March, the German government decided that in the future only “basic protection” would be required, essentially limited to wearing a mask in public transport, in clinics and old people’s homes. At the time, this was hailed by leading politicians as an “important step towards normality.”

In the following months, all parties in the Bundestag (federal government) and the state parliaments worked to abolish even the last measures. In April, for example, mandatory vaccination was rejected in the Bundestag; in May, quarantine was reduced to five days; and at the end of June, free testing for the coronavirus was ended.

The federal government is doing nothing about the rising summer wave of infections, which is already putting clinics under pressure with increasing infection and death rates. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democrats, SPD) only called for a recommendation to wear masks indoors and a fourth vaccination. Faced with a harsher wave in the fall, the federal government’s current plans do not include any measures beyond mandatory masks, social distancing recommendations and contact restrictions for those infected.

The fact that 50 children can come together in a camp for 10 days without having been tested even once beforehand is an expression of the new reality of “living with the virus.” The outbreak in the summer camp and its consequences are not only an indictment of the capitalist policy of mass infection, they also disprove the myth that the Omicron variant is “mild,” especially for children.

In reality, new infectious vaccine-resistant and deadly variants will continue to emerge if the virus is given free rein and is not eliminated. Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, recently stated, “Omicron subvariant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus yet. The already pronounced immune escape has increased even more.”

In Germany, BA.5 is now dominant, with increasingly dramatic consequences. Every week, around 10,000 people are hospitalized, including an increasing number of young people. About 6 percent of those hospitalized are under 14 years old, and another 9 percent are between 15 and 34 years old. Deaths from coronavirus are likewise on the rise, most recently reaching more than 600 deaths per week. Every week at least one of them was still shy of adulthood.

White House confirms plans to send US-NATO jets to fight Russia

Andre Damon

In what may be the most provocative escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia to date, the White House has confirmed that the US is planning to send NATO-made fighter jets to Ukraine.

John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, confirmed that the Pentagon is discussing “providing fighter aircraft to the Ukrainians.”

Kirby’s statement marks a rejection of the Biden administration’s previous refusal to send fighter aircraft to Ukraine because, in Biden’s words, such a move would lead to “World War III.”

Friday’s announcement confirms the earlier statement by Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.,  that “discussions are ongoing” to send US-NATO fighters to Ukraine.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Conference, Brown was asked, “[i]s it possible the U.S could sell or provide Ukraine more U.S fighter platforms?” To this, Brown replied, “[i]t'll be something non-Russian, I could probably tell you that.”

In May, the Pentagon rejected an earlier proposal by Poland to send Soviet-made MiG fighters to Ukraine, calling it “high risk.”

At the time, Biden declared that the move could start “World War III,” saying, “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand, don’t kid yourself, no matter what y’all say, that’s called World War III.”

In announcing the Pentagon plan, Kirby said the Pentagon is looking to solve logistical issues including training, maintenance, and spare parts.

The Wall Street Journal reported: “A former Pentagon official said F-15 and F-16 fighter jets have been discussed as options for Ukraine, though both aircraft require significant training and maintenance. The former official, now in private industry, says a separate contingent is pushing to get Ukraine A-10s.”

Also on Friday, the White House announced a further $270 million in weapons deliveries to Ukraine, in the 16th weapons package since the start of the war. The new package includes four additional HIMARS missile weapons systems, as well as hundreds of phoenix ghost “kamikaze” drones.

A clear strategy of the US in the proxy war against Russia is emerging. Washington apparently believes that by abandoning all restraints on the type of weapons systems being deployed to Ukraine, Kiev will be enabled to regain territories lost since the start of the war and achieve their aim, first stated in March 2021 as the official military doctrine, of retaking the entire Donbass (East Ukraine) and the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea.

“Our assistance is making a real difference on the ground,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said this week. “Russia thinks that it can outlast Ukraine — and outlast us. But that’s just the latest in Russia’s string of miscalculations.”

Under these conditions, Ukraine officials have categorically rejected peace talks. “All the territories must be liberated first, and then we can negotiate about what to do and how we could live in the centuries ahead,” Zelensky told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. “Our people are convinced we can do it. And the faster we do it, the fewer will die.”

In the process of building a fighting force they hope will be able to defeat the Russian military, the United States is supplying Ukraine with the exact same weapons systems used by the US military, and training Ukrainian forces to operate them just like the US military does.

To date, the United States has given Ukraine sixteen of its most advanced ground-based guided missile systems, the HIMARS, as well as its standard anti-ship missile, the Harpoon, and the anti-aircraft system used to guard the White House, the NASAMS, as well as over 100 top-of-the-line long-range artillery pieces, as well as hundreds of armored personnel carriers, and over a thousand lethal aerial drones.

In addition, the United States has provided hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery ammunition, and millions of rounds of small-arms ammunition.

Since the start of the war, the US has committed $7.6 billions in military aid to Ukraine. The flow of US weapons to Ukraine has been so enormous that military officials have expressed whether this would deplete the United States’ own military stockpiles.

US President Joe Biden has repeatedly placed limits on the level of US involvement in the war, only to then overstep those limits.

After claiming the US would not provide Ukraine with weapons capable of striking within Russian territory, Biden announced that the US would provide long-range missiles to Ukraine. Now, the White House is moving rapidly to send fighter jets in a massive escalation of the conflict.

Even as the US is recklessly escalating the war with Russia, US officials told the media that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would travel to Taiwan, prompting Chinese officials to demand a “military response.” After Biden said Thursday that the trip is “not a good idea right now,” broad sections of the Republican party demanded that the trip go forward.

In its second editorial on the proposed trip this week, the Wall Street Journal demanded to know whether “The Pentagon fears China might shoot down a U.S. aircraft carrying the person third (sic) line to the Presidency,” and declares, “If China can stop a senior U.S. official from visiting Taiwan, how resolute is America going to be in a shooting war?

Under these super-charged conditions, Foreign Affairs ran an article this week entitled, “What If the War in Ukraine Spins Out of Control,” declaring, “a nuclear attack is still in the realm of possibility.”