Australian COVID-19 hospitalisations and deaths reach record levels

Clare Bruderlin

COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths continue to surge across Australia, reaching record highs over the past week. 157 deaths were reported on Friday, the highest number on any single day of the pandemic. In the week ending Sunday, 674 Australians died from the virus, an average of 96 per day, more than double the rate at the end of June.

It took 547 days for Australia to reach the grim milestone of 1,000 total COVID-19 fatalities. The last 1,000 deaths were recorded in just 12 days.

COVID-19 deaths in Australia in 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

In the early stages of the pandemic, Australian governments were forced by the demands of workers to implement public health measures including border closures, partial lockdowns, free PCR testing and mask mandates. As a result, by December 31, 2021, the country had recorded only 2,239 COVID-19 deaths. The more than 9,700 deaths that have occurred in the past seven months are the direct result of the dismantling of virtually all such mitigations by every Australian government, state, territory and federal, Labor and Liberal-National alike.

Despite multiple claims throughout the year by government health officials and in the media that cases and deaths have “peaked,” the weekly death toll has remained above 100 since January. The reality is, the homicidal “let it rip” agenda has created the conditions for an unending series of COVID-19 “waves,” each potentially more infectious and deadly than the last.

Prior to the December reopening, the highest number of new infections recorded in a seven-day period was just over 16,000. By contrast, every week this year more than 130,000 new cases have been recorded, despite the tearing down of mass testing facilities and the removal of requirements for regular surveillance testing of workers and school students. Over the past two weeks, an average of more than 45,000 new infections have been reported each day.

The latest surge in Australia and worldwide is being driven by the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants, which are extremely immune-evasive and almost as infectious as measles. Despite this, the ruling class, with recently elected Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the helm, has made clear it will do nothing to address the soaring rates of infection and death.

In line with the demands of big business, and in open defiance of the advice of disease experts and health authorities, governments are refusing to reinstate mask mandates or other basic public health measures and are continuing to remove the few remaining protections.

There have now been more than 9.4 million infections recorded across Australia, 96 percent of which have occurred since January 1. Under conditions where testing and contact tracing has been dismantled, even these figures are likely vast undercounts.

Based on a recent serological survey of blood donor samples, researchers at the Kirby Institute estimate that at least 46 percent of Australian adults had been infected with COVID-19 by early June, almost three times the level of infection found in February.

The continual emergence of new variants as a result of capitalist governments worldwide, with the exception of China, allowing COVID-19 to spread unchecked means that reinfection is increasingly common. The extremely limited reinfection data published by Australian health authorities show that tens of thousands of people across the country have already been infected with COVID-19 multiple times.

Growing sections of the population are developing lingering symptoms known as Long COVID, which can affect nearly every organ in the body. An estimated 10-30 percent of those who contract COVID-19 will be hit by Long COVID.

Hospitalisation is at record levels, surpassing the January peak, with 5,571 COVID-19 patients in Australian hospitals on July 26, more than twice the number reported on June 1.

Several major hospitals, in particular in Victoria and Queensland, have again been forced to postpone elective surgery due to the COVID-19 surge. Dr Patrick Lo, a neurosurgeon, told the Age that the mental toll of repeated delays is akin to psychological torture for the more than 80,000 Victorians on the surgical waitlist.

The hospital system was in crisis even before the pandemic, but the surge of COVID-19 infection has both increased demand for patient care and exacerbated staff shortages. In New South Wales alone, more than 2,600 health care workers are currently unable to work due to COVID-19 infection or exposure.

In an anonymous interview with the Canberra Times, one nurse from the Canberra Hospital emergency department described patients lining the walls of corridors and said: “It’s very, very, very common for nurses to be going to afternoon tea, lunch, a break… and you’ll walk past someone and they’re barely conscious. They’re grey, they’re blue, they’re having a fit and no one is there looking after that person. Every time I walk down a corridor, I’m terrified I’m going to find someone dead in a bed.”

Similar reports have emerged across every state and territory, with continued ambulance ramping and life-threatening delays of care.

Rebecca Thompson, a nurse from Western Australia who resigned last month, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that both junior and senior nurses are leaving the profession in droves due to the intolerable conditions.

She said: “One of the biggest things that hit me most was some dear friends of mine who are senior nurses came away crying from their shift because they had three palliative care patients and we’re not a palliative care ward… You don’t have time to safely see your patients anymore, the patients are in the corridor, you can’t give them any dignity.”

The virus is being allowed to tear through aged care facilities, with more than 1,000 active outbreaks in facilities across the country. Since the beginning of the year, 2,477 COVID-19 deaths have been recorded in aged care, out of a total of 3,394 since the start of the pandemic.

The surging death toll and refusal to reinstate public health measures to stop the spread of the virus demonstrates the commitment of the federal Labor government, like its predecessor, to implement the demands of big business and profit over the lives of the population. The lies of Labor’s election campaign, including that Labor would “bring back dignity to aged care,” have been thoroughly exposed.

With the stench of eugenics, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly last week described the thousands of coronavirus deaths of elderly people as a delayed “reaping” after the first eighteen months of the pandemic, during which COVID-19 rates were relatively low and influenza virtually non-existent.

This declaration, by the country’s highest-ranking health official, that those killed by the pandemic are too old and frail to be worth protecting, is a sharp expression of the callous and homicidal attitude of the entire ruling class, in Australia and around the world.

It is also bound up with the lie that young people are not seriously affected by COVID-19. On July 24, a girl died of COVID-19 two weeks before her second birthday and there have been at least 15 COVID-19 deaths recorded in children less than nine years old. New infections are predominantly among young people and are rampant throughout schools.

In line with the role of the unions throughout the pandemic in enforcing the “let it rip” policies of governments, at the cost of workers’ health and lives, Health Services Union president Gerard Hayes recently rejected any suggestion of a nominal right to work from home clause in enterprise agreements. Hayes declared on July 22: “It may prevent the spread of COVID, it may go some way to prevent the spread of flu, but it may well go to spread more mental health issues.”

The relentless campaign by governments, health officials, unions and the corporate media to downplay the severity of COVID-19 underscores their motivation to silence principled health professionals and scientists such as Dr David Berger, who are not only warning about the dangers of the pandemic, but advocating for the reintroduction of measures to protect health and lives.

Monkeypox continues its global assault as governments do nothing to bring the pandemic to an end

Benjamin Mateus

It has been more than 10 days since the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declared the multi-country global outbreak of the monkeypox epidemic a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on July 23, 2022.

The overruling of the emergency committee’s majority opinion against such a declaration was unprecedented. However, the response to the monkeypox pandemic on the part of countries hardest hit has been characterized by continued inaction and paralysis, mirroring the crisis in the international health agency.

In the three months since the global outbreak commenced, almost 23,008 cases have been confirmed. The global seven-day moving average of monkeypox infections is approaching 1,000 per day, according to the detailed tracker by Antonio Caramia, an Italian data scientist who has provided this writer permission to use his work.

Currently, the US is the largest epicenter in the monkeypox pandemic with close to 5,200 confirmed cases. Canada has seen 818 monkeypox cases. Brazil (1,377) and Peru (307) are leading in Latin America. In Europe, Spain (4,300), Germany (2,677), the UK (2,359) and France (1,955) make up the lion’s share of cases. On a per capita basis, Spain’s rate of monkeypox cases is six times higher than in the US and the highest in the world. Some 87 countries and territories have documented monkeypox within their borders.

Daily confirmed cases of monkeypox across the world and select countries. Source: Our World in Data [Photo by Our World in Data / CC BY 4.0]

At the WHO press brief July 27, 2022, Director-General Ghebreyesus said during his opening remarks, words reminiscent of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, “This is an outbreak that can be stopped if countries and communities and individuals inform themselves, take the risk seriously, and take the steps needed to stop the transmission and protect vulnerable groups.”

Deep frustration and fatigue punctuated his warnings and call to action, with many powerful national governments refusing to act on the WHO’s warnings. Specifically, in the US, the White House has failed to declare a national emergency and has used the corporate media to tamp down public concerns about the WHO action by claiming to have increased testing and placed orders for more vaccines.

Despite this posturing, however, there is a repeated refrain from states that there are insufficient quantities of vaccines to administer, and testing is being conducted predominately within clinics for sexually transmitted infections (STI).

Meanwhile, the White House is pushing back against these complaints, with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra stating at a Thursday press brief that state and local governments “ultimately are the ones that determine how health care is administered in their jurisdictions.”

More concerning, there continues to be a severe lack of awareness on the part of health care workers and physicians on the signs and symptoms of monkeypox, which means that community transmission is occurring undetected.

Professor Jay Varma of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, an expert on population health sciences, told Bloomberg, “It’s likely that we will see an increasing number of cases transmitted in other social networks and settings. No social network is self-contained. They all bridge to other networks.”

Congress has yet to hold any hearings or give any thought to the growing crisis. Local health officials and LGBTQ community leaders in major cities such as New York City, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, New Orleans and Miami have indicated they have run out of vaccines, prompting the city of San Francisco and the states of New York and Illinois to declare a state of emergency to encourage federal officials to respond to their concerns. Only Montana, Wyoming and Vermont have yet to report a monkeypox case.

Dr. Ghebreyesus added, “Although 98 percent of cases are among men who have sex with men, anyone exposed can get monkeypox, which is why WHO recommends countries take action to reduce the risk of transmission to other vulnerable groups including children, pregnant women, and those who are immunosuppressed. In addition to transmissions through sexual contacts, monkeypox can be spread in the household through close contact between people such as hugging and kissing and on contaminated towels or bedding.”

Health officials are targeting the available vaccines against monkeypox to those with known exposure to someone with a monkeypox infection and a high risk of exposure, including health care workers and those with multiple sexual partners.

Daily confirmed cases of monkeypox across the world and select countries. Source: Our World in Data [Photo by @antonio_caramia]

Currently, the Jynneos (MVA-BN) vaccine manufactured by Bavarian Nordic is the only vaccine approved for use in the US, Canada and the European Union. It requires two doses scheduled four weeks apart, with the immune response taking several weeks to be generated.

Two other vaccines developed against smallpox—LC16 and ACAM2000—are being considered but are known to have considerable side effects. The director-general added that the effectiveness of these vaccines and the number of doses required for the world remain to be determined.

Vaccine inequity has been in play for many years and continues during the current pandemic. Only Denmark, Japan and the US are producing vaccines; though there are 16.4 million vaccines in bulk globally, vials for injections remain to be filled. And while the US has already distributed more than 191,000 doses of Jynneos, added 131,000 to its stockpile, and with 786,000 more expected soon, the devastating poverty of Africa, where monkeypox is endemic in several countries, means that more than 1.2 billion people will have to fend for themselves.

One can add the need to increase the national testing capacities by several orders of magnitude, since confirmation requires complex PCR diagnostics. Currently, there is no approved rapid antigen test for monkeypox.

In post-exposure treatment, vaccines will not provide instant protection against infection and disease, possibly only dampening the symptoms of infection and potentially avoiding any fatal turns. Such individuals must isolate appropriately under the guidance of knowledgeable health officials and infectious disease experts.

Presently, about 10 percent of all confirmed cases require hospitalization to treat severe pain associated with their lesions. An unnamed man in Louisiana told the local news station, “The pain that you receive from that [infection] is just indescribable. I could sleep maybe one to two hours before getting woken up. The pain wakes you up. [And] the mental hell that you go through in your head too. I mean, not knowing and when is it going to end? And how am I going to get help? This pain isn’t stopping…”

Though the current focus is on reducing transmission among men who have sex with men, the United Nations indicated last week that more than 81 children have already been documented with monkeypox infection, which means this layer of the population is rapidly becoming a growing concern, especially as the return to school after the summer break is fast approaching.

Varma said, “It is inevitable that some kids will become infected and attend school while infected. What we don’t know is how likely it is that kids will transmit to other kids while in school, and, if transmission occurs, whether it will be limited to a few cases or cause a large outbreak.” Jynneos is still not approved for those under 18 and would require approval from health regulators.

Also, last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) informed the media that a pregnant woman infected with monkeypox had given birth. Her infant received intravenous vaccinia immuno-globulins that act as antibodies. Mother and baby are doing well, but the event underscores the dangers posed to vulnerable people.

Monkeypox can be transmitted to the fetus during pregnancy, leading to spontaneous pregnancy loss, stillbirth and preterm delivery. The antiviral tecovirimat, approved in the treatment of smallpox in adults and children, has been given expanded authorization by the Food and Drug Administration for this indication.

Since the current outbreak of monkeypox began to sweep across previously non-endemic regions of the globe, a total of 10 deaths have been confirmed due to complications of infections. Spain has seen two, while India and Brazil each have documented one. However, Nigeria has noted five deaths and Ghana recently reported one. The case in Brazil occurred in a patient who had lymphoma and was immunocompromised.

Since last week, when the European Union approved Nordic Bavarian’s Jynneos vaccine, demand for the Danish companies has soared, prompting the company to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet the demand. It had received funding from the US government to develop the vaccine as a defense against any accidental reintroduction of smallpox.

The vaccine maker can only produce 30 million doses each year. However, Nordic Bavarian’s head of investor relations Rolf Sass Sørensen told Bloomberg, rather than sourcing out the manufacturing to increase production, “[That would] take a lot of time and would be expensive, so we’re trying to avoid that.”

He then added, “The product is not something that easily can be copied, so it’s highly unlikely that anyone but us would be able to quickly ramp up production of the vaccine. It’s not a standard type of product that can be copied; you need a lot of expertise to get the vaccine to work. I would say it’s an art form.”

The Danish company’s stock value had risen 150 percent to 342.6 kroner since the beginning of May when the outbreak began.

UK Higher Education Partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa (HEP SSA) 2022

Application Deadline:

6th September 2022 1.00pm BST.

Tell Me About Award:

Grants are awarded to universities in sub-Saharan Africa for projects ranging from six months to two years. The purpose of the funding is to strengthen relationships between academia and industry. To maximise the impact of this collaboration, universities are funded to undertake bilateral secondments with local industry partners, and in turn, share their experiences with a larger number of spoke universities through a series of knowledge sharing workshops, secondments, reports and other collaborative activities.

HEP SSA aims to ensure that the higher education system in sub-Saharan Africa produces engineers with the skills and knowledge required to meet the needs of industry, tackle local challenges, and address the engineering skills shortage in sub-Saharan Africa.

What Type of Award is this?

Grants

Who can apply?

Eligible costs:
• The funding should be used to fund knowledge-sharing workshops; bilateral secondments between local industry and academia; training fees; travel and accommodation; resources and materials; and host institution expenses such as temporary replacement of staff or resources. This list is not exhaustive – please get in touch if you have queries on eligible costs.
• No more than £10,000 of the total project may be utilised on consumables and equipment costs. Consumables include equipment, computer software licences or publication costs.
• This programme also offers support for travel, subsistence and salary support costs related to conducting visits and exchanges in support of collaborative activities among industry and academic partners.
Costs for travel and subsistence will be reviewed at application stage and throughout the project and looked at alongside previous projects from the same country for comparison. Please note, the
Academy will query costs if deemed unreasonable.
• Up to a maximum of 20% of the award (£20,000) can be used on project-specific staff salaries. You must demonstrate how you will fund these costs beyond the grant duration or show that they are only temporary roles needed to carry out short-term specific grant activities.

Ineligible costs:
• Activities that have already been funded by a previous Academy grant.
• Activities that are not Official Development Assistance (ODA) eligible and do not meet the grant objectives.
• Per diem expenditure.

Eligibility criteria:
• The proposed project should clearly align with the overall aims and objectives of the scheme. However, original ideas and local solutions are actively encouraged.
• The lead applicant will be employed by a university in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Applications must include a detailed budget delivered over a maximum of two years.
• Project activities must run between October 2022 and August 2024.
• The application must propose a means of collaboration with at least one industry partner, one UK institution and at least three spoke universities nationally or regionally.
• The application must be designed to meet the ODA objectives: promote the welfare and economic development of a country or countries on the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) list of ODA recipients; address a development need; and focus on a specific challenge affecting a lower income country. For further guidance on ODA compliance, please follow this link.

Which Countries are Eligible?

For the purposes of the programme, the Academy considers the following 51 countries to be part of sub-Saharan Africa:
Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Réunion, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

How Many Positions will be Given?

Not specified

What is the Benefit of Award?

As part of the 22/24 Higher Education Partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa call, grants of £100k will be awarded to universities in sub-Saharan Africa for two-year projects. The focus of these projects will be on building partnerships with industry in order to enhance engineering curricula and strengthen institutional research and innovation capacity.

The projects will be implemented through a ‘hub and spoke’ model. In this model, the hub universities will lead the project, facilitating bilateral secondments with local industry partners, and coordinating knowledge sharing workshops, reports, curriculum review and research projects with a large number of spoke universities, as well as with industry and UK partners.

How to Apply for Program?

1. Register and create a profile via the grant system
2. Read the Applicant Guidance notes – these will help you complete your online application
3. Apply by 6 September, 1.00pm BST

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Al-Sadr supporters storm parliament to prevent formation of Iraqi government

Jean Shaoul

Supporters of the nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stormed Baghdad’s Green Zone, the heavily fortified area that houses the US Embassy, military forces and contractors, and occupied the federal parliament Saturday. Al-Sadr’s spokesperson said, “The demonstrators announce a sit-in until further notice.”

About 125 people were injured in the protests, 100 protesters and 25 members of security forces, as demonstrators called for an end to corruption and the political system put in place after the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq to unseat the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003. It follows a similar storming of parliament Wednesday.

Iraqi protesters fill the parliament building in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, July 31, 2022. Thousands of followers of an influential Shiite cleric stormed into Iraq's parliament on Saturday, for the second time in a week, protesting government formation efforts led by his rivals, an alliance of Iran-backed groups. [AP Photo/Anmar Khalil]

The sit-in, a direct threat to al-Sadr’s rivals, is aimed at preventing legislators convening to form a government. Parliament Speaker Mohammed Halbousi has suspended future sessions.

The turmoil underscores the worsening political crisis in Washington’s puppet state that has become a proxy battle ground for regional and international political conflicts. Some 1.2 million people are still internally displaced due the many conflicts that have beset the country, which also hosts at least 250,000 Syrian refugees. Food insecurity is rife.

Iraq has seen numerous protests over endemic corruption, the terrible social and economic conditions reflected in unemployment and poverty rates of 40 percent and 32 percent, and water and power outages. This has been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has taken a terrible toll on people’s lives—around 25,000 deaths have been officially recorded—health and livelihoods.

Adding to the deep sense of crisis have been the sandstorms that have hit a country already suffering from soil degradation, intense droughts and low rainfall linked to climate change. At least 5,000 people have been hospitalised with breathing problems, while airports, schools and public offices across the country had to close.

Last October’s elections saw al-Sadr’s Sairoon movement win the most votes on a voter turnout of just 41 percent, even lower than in the 2018 elections, as hostility towards the sectarian-ethnic political regime and its rival backers in Washington and Tehran soared. Ten months later, Iraq’s venal political factions have still not agreed on a new government.

Muqtada al-Sadr in Tehran in 2019 [Photo / CC BY-NC 4.0]

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, a former intelligence officer seen as Washington’s man in Baghdad, has continued in a caretaker role, unable to set a budget for 2022, despite the increase in oil prices that could help alleviate the acute social crisis.

He came to power in May 2020 after months of mass protests, the largest since the 2003 US invasion, brought down the government of Adil Abdul-Mahdi. Mahdi’s government had sought to suppress the protests with lethal force, deploying the security forces and paramilitary groups to shoot down more than 600 protestors, further inflaming tensions until the pandemic and the accompanying restrictions emptied the streets.

Al-Kadhimi not only continued the economic and social policies of his predecessor, but also implemented new measures aimed at securing loans from the International Monetary Fund that have devastated workers’ incomes. He continued the intimidation and repression of oppositionists as militias affiliated to the various political parties assassinated political activists, local leaders and outspoken journalists and critics. He reneged on his pledges to investigate the killings by the security forces and to introduce legislation that would overturn Iraq’s sectarian political system, key demands of the protest movement, because the established parties refused any changes that would encroach on their privileges, patronage and wealth.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi (Wikimedia Commons)

While al-Sadr and his Sairoon bloc won the most seats (73) in the 329-seat parliament, up from 54 in 2018, at the expense of his Iran-allied Shia opponents in the Coordination Framework, it was far short of a clear majority.

The former militia leader from a leading Shia clerical family, who led the main Shia resistance to the US occupation, has no progressive answers to the immense suffering of the Iraqi people. Posing as a nationalist opposed to foreign interference in Iraq, he has in the past been close to Iran and acted as kingmaker in forging ruling coalitions. He has put his men in most arms of the state, including in the cabinet, the state-owned oil company, powerful ministries and local authorities, where they take a cut on government contracts to pass on to his organisation that provides jobs and social welfare for its impoverished supporters in Baghdad’s slums and runs a militia.

Al-Sadr announced his intention of forming a government with the largest Sunni and Kurdish blocs, leaving the Iran-aligned Shia parties in opposition, an arrangement that breaks with the custom followed since 2003 whereby all parties are represented in government. Not wanting to be excluded from the patronage system, his Shia opponents maneuvered to block his coalition-building process via a series of procedural and legal interventions, including using the Federal Supreme Court to block the nomination of a president and launching missile attacks on his Kurdish allies.

In June, al-Sadr announced that his entire bloc would renounce their seats in parliament in a move aimed at forcing his rivals to agree to a new government and opening the door to street protests, counter-demonstrations and instability to force the dissolution of parliament and new elections.

In the event, new lawmakers were sworn in accordance with the constitution, making the pro-Iran bloc, the Coordination Framework, under former premier Nuri al-Maliki’s party, the State of Law Coalition, and the pro-Iran Fatah Alliance, the political arm of the Shia-led former paramilitary group Hashed al-Shaabi, the largest in parliament. There is little agreement between them on any of the major political issues confronting the country.

When the Coordination Framework nominated Mohammed al-Sudani for the premiership, al-Sadr objected and mobilized his supporters to storm the parliament, which was not in session, with the security forces standing by. Before al-Sudani can officially be nominated as premier-designate, parliament must first select a president from the Kurdish parties, a process that has been no less contentious.

The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional government (KRG) had originally backed al-Sadr’s bloc, but tensions between Erbil and Baghdad escalated after the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court ruled in February that the KRG’s oil and gas law was “unconstitutional,” meaning that the KRG’s oil and gas sector had no legal basis for keeping its revenues, largely derived from sales to Turkey. The KRG rejected the ruling, calling it “unjust” and “unconstitutional.” KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani began to push for a new constitutional arrangement that would cede more power to the Kurds and other ethnic constituencies.

US President Joe Biden has sought to distance Baghdad from Tehran, urging Washington’s regional allies, including Saudi Arabia, to restore diplomatic relations with Iraq as a means of containing Iranian influence and bolstering al-Kadhimi’s political legitimacy. He invited al-Kadhimi to talks with the Gulf States, Egypt and Jordan in Saudi Arabia’s port city of Jeddah in an effort to broker an anti-Iran alliance as part of Washington’s broader preparations for war with Russia and China—with whom Tehran has forged increasingly close relations.

Iraq has, however, passed a law in May making it a crime to normalise relations with Israel, visit the country, or promote normalisation, with violations of the law punishable with life in prison or the death penalty.

Further roiling the Iraqi state has been the bombing on July 20 of Barakh in the KRG’s Duhok province that killed nine Iraqi tourists. Iraqi and Kurdish officials blamed the attack on Turkey.

According to a Defense Ministry report, Turkey, a NATO member, has set up more than 100 military bases and outposts on Iraqi territory and has stationed more than 4,000 troops inside Iraq, along with tanks, armored vehicles, helicopters and heavy weapons as part of Ankara’s decades-long war with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Turkey’s troops far outnumber even those of the US (2,500) and France (800).

Ahmed al-Sahaf, Iraq’s foreign ministry’s spokesperson, said Iraq had recorded 22,740 violations of Iraqi sovereignty by Turkish forces since 2018, with 296 official complaints submitted to Ankara. Al-Sahaf denied there was any “security or military” agreement with Turkey and accused Ankara of having “expansionist goals behind the attacks it is carrying out.” Al-Monitor cited Turkey’s Presidential adviser Ayhan Ogan warning on July 21 that “if Turkey’s security concerns are ignored and, moreover, provoked, Turkey would create a new security belt all the way from Aleppo to Mosul.” This would mirror Ankara’s plan for a 30-kilometer-deep safe zone in northern Syria.

Coronavirus in Germany: Infection and death rates explode during summer months

Tamino Dreisam

Although the number of coronavirus infections in Germany is exploding during the summer months, hospitals are filling up and an even bigger wave is looming for the fall, the Bundestag (federal parliament) has gone into summer recess until September without adopting any protective measures against the spread of the virus.

Currently there are about 1.8 million people in Germany infected with the disease and the 7-day incidence rate is 679 (infections per 100,000 people). In the state of Saarland and 59 counties, the incidence is over 1,000, meaning that 1 percent of the population there is freshly infected every week. In the district of Wittmund, the incidence is 2,290, and in the district of Wunsiedel it is as high as 2320, where the incidence tripled within a week’s time.

Medical staff wearing protective clothing on Ward 43 of the Charité hospital in Berlin (Image: DOCDAYS Production)

And even this is a suppressed incidence rate due to the summer vacation season. With the end of the summer holidays, there is a real threat of further increases due to the return of travelers and the start of school. Furthermore, those who have already suffered infection this year are at risk of reinfection.

Hajo Zeeb of the Leibnitz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology in Bremen warned in the news magazine Der Spiegel: “We are dealing with variants with a high immune escape potential. So you can’t feel particularly safe regarding infections in the winter if you were infected during the summer, since there are clearly reinfections.”

The official figures themselves represent an inadequate reflection of the actual incidence of infection. First, mandatory testing in many areas as well as testing capacity have been restricted and free testing has been abolished. Second, many of those infected no longer have a PCR test conducted, yet only these tests count in the statistics. In recent weeks, the rate of positive test results exploded from a very high 28.4 percent in the 21st calendar week to 53.7 percent in the 27th week. A high rate of positive tests indicates a high number of unidentified infections.

Vulnerable groups have been increasingly affected by the massive rise in contagion. Outbreaks have been growing for weeks in both medical treatment facilities and nursing homes. In the former there were 157 outbreaks last week, up from 108 the previous week; 12 people died. In nursing homes and homes for the elderly, there were 300 outbreaks (235 the previous week), with 58 deaths.

Hospitals are again filling up. The adjusted hospitalization incidence is now 12.5, which corresponds to over 10,000 hospitalizations per week. Just a month ago, this figure was only half as high.

Likewise, the number of patients surviving on intensive care is on the rise. Currently, there are 1,330, compared to 1,238 a week ago. The number of COVID-19 patients treated in hospitals is currently twice as high as in the previous summers. The number of COVID-19 deaths is also rising. According to Johns Hopkins University data, the 7-day average doubled from 53 on June 17 to 104 on July 25. This means that more than 700 people are dying per week.

An additional burden is the high rate of sick leave among hospital workers and the high number of absences due to infection and quarantine. Gerald Gaß, chairman of the board of the German Hospital Association, told the Funke Mediengruppe newspapers, “In many hospitals, scheduled operations have had to be postponed and, at times, entire areas have had to be shut down.”

The situation is particularly dramatic at the Würzburg University Hospital. Currently, 59 COVID-19 patients are being treated there and six others are in intensive care, more than at any time since the beginning of the pandemic. A week ago, there were 47 infected patients and two weeks ago 39. Due to the high workload, the hospital management has already announced that scheduled treatments may be postponed in all areas.

If the situation at the clinics is already dire, it will become catastrophic in the fall. Gaß warned, “The numbers make it clear that the fall could again be an extreme stress test for the clinics.”

The chairman of the World Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, told Funke Mediengruppe that he has called for the possibility of lockdowns to be included in the new Infection Protection Act: “Anyone who categorically rules out measures such as contact restrictions or lockdowns from the outset has neither understood the meaning of the law nor grasped the seriousness of the situation.”

The government is entirely aware of the consequences of its coronavirus policy. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) recently said, “If we went into the fall as we are now, that is, without further protective measures, without masks, without anything, it would mean that the number of cases would rise sharply, as well as that the intensive care units would be overloaded.”

He added, “It’s like a candle burning at both ends: staff burning away at the bottom and patients burning away at the top.” If appropriate measures were not put in place soon, he said, the population would face a “catastrophic” pandemic development.

As Minister of Health, Lauterbach is the individual responsible for taking appropriate action. In fact, he is doing just the opposite, dismantling nearly all the protective measures that still remain in place.

His tenure in office includes the government’s decision to end the epidemic state of emergency, the new Infection Protection Act that had been in effect since March and provides only “basic protection,” the rejection of general mandatory vaccination, the reduction of the quarantine period to five days and the end of free testing.

Health Minister Lauterbach explicitly did not adopt any safety measures for the current summer wave, rather only recommended wearing masks indoors and a fourth vaccination for people with many contacts. So far, the federal government’s planned “Coronavirus Autumn Strategy” does not include a single mandatory measure, instead focusing on a vaccination campaign and the procurement of updated vaccines.

In fact, the spread of the highly contagious and immune-resistant BA.5 Omicron variant, which already accounts for 87 percent of infection incidence, shows that it is impossible to combat the virus in the long term with vaccination alone. As the virus spreads unchecked, more and more dangerous variants are emerging.

The societal impact is extremely far-reaching. Tens of thousands are suffering long-term consequences from Long COVID and the mass deaths to date have also led to a significant decline in average life expectancy in Germany. Officially, more than 143,000 people have succumbed to the virus. The Federal Statistical Office calculated that life expectancy for girls born in 2021 has fallen by 0.4 years compared to those born in 2019, and by as much as 0.6 years for boys.

Biden tests positive again after completing Paxlovid course: The dangers of the “forever COVID” policy

Benjamin Mateus

Late Saturday morning, Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, physician to the President, sent a memorandum to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre informing her that President Joe Biden had tested positive for COVID again after his negative test on Tuesday evening after completing the Pfizer anti-viral medication Paxlovid.

He wrote, “After testing negative on Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning, Thursday morning, and Friday morning, the President tested positive late Saturday morning, by antigen testing. This, in fact, represents ‘rebound’ positivity.” He added, “The President has experienced no reemergence of symptoms and continues to feel quite well. This being the case, there is no reason to reinitiate treatment at this time, but we will obviously continue close observation. However, given his positive antigen test, he will reinitiate strict isolation procedures.”

Following the official announcement of Biden’s positive COVID test and the cancellation of his planned travel to Michigan and Delaware, Biden proceeded to minimize the significance of these developments by tweeting, “Folks, today I tested positive for COVID again. This happens with a small minority of folks. I’ve got no symptoms, but I’m going to isolate for the safety of everyone around me. I’m still at work and will be back on the road soon.”

Biden is not the only high-level figure in Washington laid low by COVID-19. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the decisive 50th vote in the Senate on most issues, including Biden’s latest environment and energy legislation, and Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin were also isolating with the infection. Others infected in July were Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with Democratic senators Tina Smith, Richard Blumenthal and Tom Carper, Republican senators Lisa Murkowski and Ben Sasse, and eight members of the House of Representatives.

The turn of events is a setback for the White House, which had hoped to bank on the president’s illness and quick recovery to assure Americans that coronavirus was now a walk in the park, given the use of the current vaccines and anti-viral therapeutics. Biden’s testing positive for COVID again coincides with Dr. Anthony Fauci’s similar rebound in late June, which has many questioning the complication’s rarity.

There is a clear sense of damage control behind the administration’s health advisers efforts to downplay the “rebound.”  The corporate media cooperated, barely mentioning in the Sunday interview programs that the 79-year-old US president had come down with a second infection from a disease whose most lethal effects have been on his age group.

Nor was anyone so rude as to suggest that having the 81-year-old Nancy Pelosi, second in line of succession to the presidency, traveling to a potential war zone around Taiwan at this time was a reckless endeavor.

Biden left isolation on Wednesday and triumphantly removed his mask before the media and cameras at a staged Rose Garden rally to celebrate his negative test. He boastfully declared his symptoms had always been mild, and his quick recovery was evidence of his administration’s progress in bringing the pandemic to heel. After giving thanks to God for his swift recovery, he said, “The entire time I was in isolation, I was able to work, to carry out the duties of the office without any interruption. It’s a real statement on where we are in the fight against COVID-19.”

President Joe Biden coughs as he speaks about "The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022" in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Since declaring his personal victory against the coronavirus, Biden has been recklessly attending public events unmasked, contrary to even the dubious and reckless guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) , which recommends that after five full days after testing positive and without any fevers for at least 24 hours, isolation can be ended, but that a “well-fitting mask must be worn for ten full days any time you are around others inside your home or in public. Do not go to places where you are unable to wear a mask.” The CDC specifically wrote, “If your test is negative, you can end isolation, but continue to wear a well-fitting mask around others at home and in public until day ten.”

Jean-Pierre, when asked why Biden had violated CDC guidelines, particularly when he addressed CEOs during a Thursday meeting at the White House complex, side-stepped the issue by saying, “They were socially distanced. They were far enough apart. So, we made it safe for them to be together, to be on that stage.” Clearly, she didn’t receive the memo that COVID is an airborne pathogen.

White House officials are, however, conducting extensive contact tracing, which has been essentially abandoned by all public health officials and directly conflicts with the precept being put forward by the White House that every American will get COVID and that the pandemic will be with humanity forever. Apparently, top US government officials deserve greater protection from an infected president than school teachers from children who bring COVID into the classroom.

As for workers in offices, factories, warehouses and other workplaces, Biden’s smug declaration that he was able to work throughout his infection is clearly aimed at setting an example. Stay on the job no matter how sick you are or how many people you may infect!

It is worth recalling that the CDC had halved its isolation guidance back in December 2021 not based on any science but at the behest of Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian to decrease the isolation period to five days “to address the potential impact of the current isolation policy” on their bottom dollar. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky noted at the time that her decision to change guidelines were made to “keep the critical functions of society open and operating.” She added, “We can’t take science in a vacuum. We have to put science in the context of how it can be implemented in a functional society.”

In a study published in a preprint in March 2022, Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital found no difference in viral kinetics [length of time someone remains infective] between people infected with Delta or Omicron with non-severe symptoms regardless of vaccine status. The authors wrote, “Over 50 percent of individuals had a replication-competent, culturable virus at day five, and 25 percent had a culturable virus at day eight.”

Dr. Amy Barczak, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and co-author of the study, told Nature in May, “The facts of how long people are infectious for have not really changed. There is no data to support five days or anything shorter than ten days of isolation.” A recent study from the UK appears to corroborate the Harvard study’s concerns over reduced isolation times, meaning that current public health guidance is assisting in keeping the coronavirus around forever.

Others, like infectious disease specialist Dr. Yonatan Grad of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, cautioned that some might remain infectious beyond the 10-day window. He told Nature that the phenomenon might be linked with those taking the two-drug combination nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, known under the brand name Paxlovid.

He added, “There’s a rebound phenomenon where people will see that their symptoms seem to resolve, and they may even test negative on a rapid test, but then a few days later symptoms and the virus come back.” In such instances, such people may continue infecting and be unaware of it.

The CDC issued on May 24, 2022, a health advisory stating that “COVID-19 rebound has been reported to occur between two to eight days after initial recovery and is characterized by a recurrence of COVID-19 symptoms or a new positive viral test after having tested negative.” They advised that additional Paxlovid is not required but that such people should re-isolate for at least five days.

On Sunday, the New York Times, writing on the President’s rebound, referred to a study in a preprint published in June that reviewed the electronic health records of 13,644 people and found that rebound affected a little more than 5 to 6 percent within 30 days. However, the data set predates the much more contagious and immune-evading BA.5 subvariant that has recently become dominant, and rates of reinfection within 90 days are higher than ever. Dr. Eric Topol critiqued the study as being “way off the mark” and argued that the only valid study trial would require a prospective approach where participants are frequently tested.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, tweeted on Saturday on the White House’s disclosure, “I think this was predictable. The prior data suggesting ‘rebound’ Paxlovid positivity in the low single digits is outdated and with BA.5 is likely 20 to 40 percent or even higher.”

Data from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) indicates that more than 3 million courses of Paxlovid have been administered across the US, and nearly 5.7 million have been ordered at a current rate of 40,000 prescriptions per day. Placing this figure into scale, the Atlantic recently compared this to the rate of daily oxycodone usage.

Not being mentioned in the media is the financial bonanza the pandemic has been for the drug companies that managed to edge out their competitors in the burgeoning field of vaccine development. Pfizer recently reported its single largest quarterly sales in its history, bringing in $27.7 billion in revenues, of which $8.8 billion came from their COVID-19 vaccines and $8.1 billion from Paxlovid, beating Wall Street’s estimates. Meanwhile, it is competing with Moderna to ensure it gets its BA.4/BA.5-specific vaccines into US markets by the fall of this year.

The need to develop new generations of vaccines is a direct result of the policies that have allowed the coronavirus ample opportunities to mutate by having unimpeded access to the population. And what vaccine manufacturers have not been able to accomplish thus far is to develop products faster than the virus develops significant mutations. To say nothing of the inability of global capitalism to deliver vaccines of any kind to the world’s population more quickly than virus variants can reach vulnerable unvaccinated people in the poor countries.

Given the vast number of mutations permitted by the “COVID forever” policy, natural selection will produce not only more vaccine-evading variants of the coronavirus, but variants that can resist anti-virals like Paxlovid. Dr. Derek Lowe, a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Duke with experience in the pharmaceutical industry on drug discovery projects, wrote in Science, “Pfizer’s coronavirus protease inhibitor Paxlovid is being widely used now, and it’s been clear since the beginning that resistant strains of the virus could appear against it. After all, that’s what viruses do. With their vast numbers, fast generation time, and number of mutations, resistance to a given small molecule is generally just a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if.’”

And with millions of people becoming infected daily across the globe, the playing field is rigged in favor of the virus. A June 29, 2022, report in Science indicated that researchers conducting genomic sequencing had found mutations in variants circulating in infected people that can resist Paxlovid.

Conceivably, the idea of living with COVID forever also means that the vaccines and therapeutics that keep the virus at bay may soon run their course and exhaust themselves. Such a situation can be compounded by the development of multiple virulent forms of the Omicron subvariants that can co-exist and circulate simultaneously without competing with each other, as was seen early in the pandemic with Alpha, Beta and Gamma variants. This means people may find they are infected with two or more sub-variants at the same time.

The essential lesson of “forever COVID” and the façade that is unraveling in the White House should alert the working class to the immense dangers posed by the pandemic and the demands placed on them by Wall Street that it is safe to return to work and become infected. In yet unforeseen ways, the policy of forever COVID can make the last two years seem child’s play by comparison.