Pfizer’s anti-COVID pill Paxlovid shows no benefit for younger adults

Benjamin Mateus

In its latest guidelines, from August 8, 2022, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) gave one of its strongest recommendations to Paxlovid for patients at high risk of progressing to severe COVID-19, regardless of vaccination status. The list of underlying medical conditions that raise one’s risk of severe COVID-19 is long and accounts for more than four out of 10 adults (138 million Americans, including 54 million who are 65 or older). Close to 4 million prescriptions have been filled since Paxlovid was authorized.

However, the results of a new retrospective observational study out of Israel published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) seem to place a question mark over the strength of these recommendations, in particular, with the Omicron subvariant.

The report’s authors found that Pfizer’s antiviral medication Paxlovid offered little to no benefit for younger adults. However, it did reduce the risk of hospitalization for high-risk seniors. Notably, supplementary material from the original study of Paxlovid in high-risk non-hospitalized adults with COVID-19 during the Delta wave had demonstrated benefits in those younger than 65, albeit the difference compared to the placebo was much less than in those 65 and older.

The study’s authors utilized the electronic medical records from almost 110,000 patients enrolled in Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest state-mandated health service organization. Nearly 4 percent, or 3,900 of the patients, had taken Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir) after contracting COVID-19.

Among those over 65, there was a 73 percent decrease in the hospitalization rate and a 79 percent reduction in the risk of death. However, patients between the ages of 40 and 65 saw no benefit in taking the antiviral medication in either category, regardless of previous immunity status.

One of the study’s primary limitations is that it was non-randomized, which can introduce bias in its conclusions. The authors remarked: “Our study showed that only a minority of patients who were identified as high risk and eligible for nirmatrelvir [Paxlovid] therapy received the antiviral therapy. We do not know why other eligible patients did not receive treatment, and there may be some selection mechanism that is not explained by the observed confounders.”

These findings have significant implications, as the use of Paxlovid is rising amidst repeated surges of infections that run roughshod over the population, as COVID-19 is allowed free reign as a matter of policy. People are turning to these medications to reduce their risk of severe disease and lessen their symptoms, without a clear understanding among patients, medical providers and pharmacies of the indication for these drugs. This has consequences for the availability of and access to these medications and raises additional issues, such as the potential development of a Paxlovid-resistant variant.

In the context of potential misuse of Paxlovid, the recent announcement before the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation by White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha that the Biden administration will soon be shifting responsibility for procuring tests and therapeutics to the commercial sector has dire consequences for the working class.

Paxlovid (Credit: Kches16414 License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

On the near horizon is the lifting of the pandemic emergency measures that cover COVID-related care for all Americans. The implications of returning to the usual business of medicine is that those who are uninsured or underinsured will forgo these life-saving measures when they contract COVID-19 so as to save money for groceries and fuel or pay their rent. Even the new bivalent vaccines will arrive with a price tag. Meanwhile, the more affluent will have no qualms in accessing them, further deepening the class distinctions that the pandemic has exposed.

However, the results of the recent study out of Israel are not surprising. In June, Pfizer announced it was discontinuing enrollment in its EPIC-SR [Evaluation of Protease Inhibition for COVID-19 in Standard-Risk] trial. Preliminary results indicated it had no significant benefits for unvaccinated adults without any risk factors or for previously vaccinated people with at least one risk for progressing to severe disease.

Another critical study from Hong Kong published in Lancet Infectious Diseases on the same day as the Israeli study but which went unmentioned in the press offered further evidence of Paxlovid’s limited therapeutic role. The authors reviewed their clinical experience with Paxlovid and Lagevrio, Merck’s antiviral pill, Molnupiravir, in hospitalized patients. They compared them to hospitalized patients who did not receive those medications during the horrific wave of infections that slammed into the semi-autonomous region in February and March.

Though Lagevrio has been essentially dismissed for its comparatively lower efficacy (30 percent versus 90 percent in initial trials) compared to Paxlovid, a head-to-head test has never been conducted. However, the Lancet study found that hospitalized patients receiving either oral antiviral medication had a reduced chance of dying compared to those who did not receive them.

The mortality risk reduction for Lagevrio was 52 percent, and for Paxlovid it was 66 percent. Those receiving antivirals had a lower risk of their disease progressing, but the drugs did not significantly impact their need for mechanical ventilation or ICU admission. The patients in the study averaged in age from mid-70s to early 80s.

The authors wrote: “Results of our subgroup analyses suggested a possible lack of significant benefit in younger patients (aged ≤ 65 years) and those who had been fully vaccinated, which would support prioritizing the prescription of oral antivirals to older people and those not adequately vaccinated, who are also likely to be at increased risk of progression to severe COVID-19.”

Given the results of these studies, it bears mentioning that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently estimated that approximately 95 percent of Americans aged 16 and older have some level of immunity against COVID-19.

Dr. David Boulware, a University of Minnesota physician and researcher, told MarketWatch, “Paxlovid will remain important for people at the highest risk of severe COVID-19, such as seniors and those with compromised immune systems. But for the vast majority of Americans who are now eligible, this really doesn’t have a lot of benefit.”

These studies come on the heels of recent reports that First Lady Jill Biden, who was recently infected with COVID-19, was confirmed to be reinfected, having suffered a rebound infection after completing her Paxlovid course. She is in isolation again. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is donning his mask for the proscribed 10 days as a close contact, per the new CDC guidelines.

Though it was assumed that rebound was a rare phenomenon, the repetition of the phenomenon first in Dr. Anthony Fauci, then President Joe Biden and now his wife Jill Biden brings to the fore the question of whether rebound is far more common than most had anticipated in an Omicron-dominant pandemic.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has tasked Pfizer with conducting a trial to be completed by September 30 of next year to see if a second five-day course of the drug would help prevent the “rare” phenomenon. The official request was sent by letter on August 5 during Biden’s second convalescence.

Pfizer responded in an email confirming the assignment, saying: “We are working with the FDA to finalize a protocol to study patients who may be in need of retreatment. We will share updates in due course.” However, as experts have noted, there do not appear to be any additional benefits from the second course of Paxlovid in regard to preventing severe disease and hospitalization.

In April, Bloomberg reported that the Biden administration was “on the hook to pay Pfizer nearly $5 billion for pills it’s already ordered to treat COVID-19.” The White House was planning to use the $10 billion in COVID-19 funding from the Senate to cover the cost of 20 million courses of the COVID-19 antiviral pills. The other half has been designated for purchasing the bivalent COVID-19 boosters. However, as funding has been exhausted, there has been a decisive shift to commercializing these treatments, leaving millions in the lurch as the fall and winter seasons fast approach.

Meanwhile, Pfizer is teaming up with the Chinese pharmaceutical firm Zhejiang Huahai in a five-year deal to manufacture and sell Paxlovid exclusively in China. Huahai announced the agreement on August 17, though Pfizer has remained publicly silent.

In February, the drug was given emergency use authorization in China, where a large part of the elderly population has remained unvaccinated and at risk of severe COVID-19 should an outbreak reemerge in the only remaining country that has maintained a Zero-COVID policy.

South African trade unions organise “stay away” as warning to ANC

Jean Shaoul

Thousands of workers took to the streets of Pretoria, Cape Town and other major cities across the country Wednesday. They were protesting the skyrocketing cost of living, power cuts and widespread unemployment that have made living conditions intolerable for workers and their families.

Mine workers sing as they wait for the start of commemoration ceremonies near Marikana in Rustenburg, South Africa, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022. South Africa marks on Tuesday 10 years since the Marikana massacre, where 44 people were killed during a mine strike at a platinum mine near Rustenburg, North West province in August 2012. [AP Photo/Themba Hadebe]

In Pretoria, workers marched on the Union Buildings where South Africa’s presidency is housed, holding placards saying, “Stop Taxing Basic Food Items.” They called on President Cyril Ramaphosa and his African National Congress (ANC) government to bring down the rising cost of living.

One woman told the BBC, “We’re tired. The cost of living is too high now—we can’t afford anything anymore. It’s school fees, it’s transport, it’s rent, it’s everything.”

She added, “We can’t live anymore, and we’ve been without a [pay] increase for four years now, and things are getting hectic now. The government must intervene and do something now.”

Inflation is at its highest rate since the rise in global food prices in 2008-09. Consumer prices rose by 7.8 percent in July, and basic foods have gone up by 10 percent in the last year, with a loaf of white bread now $1.05 compared with $0.91 a year ago and the price of fuel increasing by 56.2 percent from last year.

Last week, the South African rand fell a further 5 percent against the US dollar as the Federal Reserve discussed further interest rate hikes, a move that will exacerbate the economic crisis engulfing the already heavily indebted country.

South Africa is the most unequal society on the planet. A staggering 46 percent of workers have no jobs, 30.3 million of the country’s 59 million population live in poverty and 13.8 million face food scarcity.

It was under these conditions that the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu), two of the largest trade union federations, called a “mass stay away” of non-essential workers, demanding the ANC take action. The Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) and the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu) along with several transport and taxi drivers’ unions, did not join the action, although several civil society and community organisations joined the marches.

The last time COSATU called a National Day of Action was in October 2020 in protest of the government’s response to the pandemic—including curfews implemented with horrific police brutality—that fueled unemployment and poverty while protecting the corporate and financial elite. According to official figures, a gross underestimate given the lack of testing, more than 102,000 people have lost their lives to COVID-19.

COSATU has for decades been in a Triple Alliance with the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Together, they worked to suppress workers’ struggles and prevent them taking a revolutionary path to ending apartheid, thereby ensuring the survival of South African capitalism and averting the eruption of political and social conflict in all the former African colonies of the imperialist powers.

Since the ANC’s accession to power after the 1993 elections, COSATU has done everything in its power to keep its members in check. But along with Saftu, it called for a national walkout to stem mounting anger over the government’s lack of response to the cost-of-living crisis. Their hope is that this limited action, combined with left-sounding rhetoric against Ramaphosa’s 3 percent pay award to himself and ministers, will defuse workers’ anger.

COSATU and Saftu are desperately seeking to restore the credibility of the trade unions, guaranteeing the political ties necessary for the capitalists to maintain their exploitation over the working class, and to warn the ANC it is sitting on a social volcano. Ramaphosa is now so widely reviled that the party long associated with the fight against the hated apartheid system could lose the elections in 2024.

In 2017, COSATU backed Ramaphosa as the successor to Jacob Zuma, who was forced to resign amid mounting allegations of corruption, as ANC president. Ramaphosa, who once headed the country’s largest union, the National Union of Mineworkers before exploiting the structures of the ANC’s Black Economic Empowerment to become a multimillionaire, used his position as a non-executive director of the mining conglomerate Lonmin to call for the government to take action against striking miners in 2012. The ANC responded, sending in security forces to close down the strike. In the resulting clashes, they shot and killed 34 miners and wounded 78 others.

Since then, the “Butcher of Marikana” has done everything he could to prop up South African capitalism, cutting corporate taxation as he drove down workers’ pay, reneging on public sector wage deals and slashing living standards. It has earned him the undying hatred of South African workers.

Striking gold miners at Sibanye-Stillwater booed Ramaphosa—COSATU’s guest of honour off the stage at the May Day rally in Rustenburg, the centre of the country’s mining region. While COSATU spokesperson Sizwe Pamla apologized for such “regrettable” and “unacceptable” actions, he said it was an understandable expression of workers’ frustration with the ANC government.

He warned the ANC, “Historically Worker’s Day is a day where workers reflect on their struggles and push for change. This is a message that the ANC cannot claim to misunderstand and that cannot be ignored anymore. The Marxist revolutionary and political theorist Leon Trotsky once said: ‘The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave’.”

Ramaphosa and the ANC government ignored the warning and continued with business as usual, using the security forces to intimidate workers and suppress protests.

In the last week, council workers on pay strike in Middelburg, Mpumalanga faced violence at the hands of security guards employed by the council. The council suspended 100 workers who walked out on August 15 demanding an increase to salary scale level 5. When workers entered the council premises to collect their letters of suspension, security guards opened fire, leaving one dead and hospitalising three more.

It follows the killing of at least four workers and the wounding of thousands by the police during protests over service delivery, high taxes and the exorbitant cost of electricity in Thembisa township, Johannesburg, after the authorities cancelled free electricity and water.

Last month, hundreds of ANC supporters marched through Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial capital and largest city, with a list of economic demands and calls for Ramaphosa, now mired in scandals, to go. In the most recent scandal, he is accused of covering up the alleged theft of $4 million hidden in his Phala Wildlife farm, with the help of Namibian officials and his personal security guards who are accused of kidnapping and torturing the thieves. The ANC rally followed calls by opposition parties for Ramaphosa to step down, with the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EEF), Julius Malema, calling for his impeachment over the affair. The EEF was set up by Malema, a former African National Congress Youth League, in 2013.

Former ANC President Thabo Mbeki issued a rare criticism of Ramaphosa, saying he had no plan to address the poverty, unemployment and inequality, and predicted civil unrest that might “spark our own version of the Arab Spring.”

Despite the widespread unrest, COSATU and Saftu made little effort to build for the “mass stay away,” issuing few substantive demands on the government. Saftu’s General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi even told reporters the unions were not expecting large numbers of people to join marches, blaming this on the abysmal state of public transport. He said that it was more important that workers took part in the nationwide strike. In the event, the call received a limited response from workers. 

Britain’s TUC launches farcical campaign for £15 an hour minimum wage by 2030

Laura Tiernan

On Wednesday afternoon, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) proclaimed with great fanfare that it would make an “announcement TONIGHT 10:30PM”, advising on Facebook and Twitter “STAY TUNED” in glowing neon font.

Safe to say, the TUC’s trailed announcement passed unnoticed by tens of millions of workers. Its complacent pronouncements have long been a matter of complete indifference to those who have experienced decades of betrayals rubberstamped by Britain’s trade union federation.

For several hours though, speculation among left-wing followers of the TUC’s social media accounts ran hot. A Twitter poll posted by a Rail, Maritime and Transport union member asked, “Do you think the announcement is for a General strike?” with 58 percent of 3,904 respondents voting “yes”.

Comments included: “This had better be an announcement of a general strike. You lot need to get up and fight for us”, “Nothing less than an announcement for a General strike will do. No half measures! Blow that whistle!!” Another, invoking the TUC’s refusal to call a general strike in support of striking miners in 1984-85 wrote: “Anything other than a general strike and it's the miners all over again”.

Amid the most devastating cost-of-living crisis since the 1930s that has fueled a wave of strikes, such comments reflect widespread sentiments in the working class for a general strike to oust the Tories, “General strike beginning the day Truss enters No10?” asked one, a reference to Liz Truss who is expected to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister next month.

Others demanded the TUC end its support for Labour, with comments including, “General strike and defund the red Tories please”, “De-fund the Shadow Tory Party” and “Let's get all of these blue and red Tories back from the Maldives......... GENERAL STRIKE!!” and “Please all unions disaffiliate from the Labour Party under [Sir Keir] Starmer. Why don't you use your power.”

To describe such comments as wishful thinking is generous, but the pseudo-left Socialist Party’s intervention was politically mendacious. The Socialist Party, an organisation dedicated to bolstering the grip of the trade union bureaucracy, tweeted, “Tell the TUC that you want to see workers out on STRIKE TOGETHER”.

It called on workers to “Rally with Sharon Graham [General Secretary of Unite], Mick Whelan [General Secretary of ASLEF] and more” at a public event called by its National Shop Stewards Network titled, “Strike Together, Coordinate the Action” being staged during the TUC Congress at the Brighton Conference Centre venue. Its listed speakers are the same officials working to suppress and divide industrial action and block a general strike.

At 10.30 pm, the TUC’s social media team put their followers out of suspense, with the announcement: “BREAKING… We’ve just launched our campaign for a £15 an hour minimum wage”. TUC President Frances O’Grady (annual salary package £167, 229) retweeted the demand, “It’s time to put an end to low-pay Britain”.

Trades Union Congress General Secretary Frances O'Grady speaking at the TUC "We demand better" demonstration in London on June 18, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

This was bad enough, but on closer inspection the TUC’s call was for a raise in the minimum wage to £15 only by 2030. This would be achieved by setting “a new minimum wage ‘bite’ target at 75 per cent of median hourly pay” by “the end of the decade”. The TUC politely suggested, “The Low Pay Commission should be tasked with progressing the minimum wage to this higher target based on prevailing economic circumstances.”

On social media the response was scathing. “Min wage of £15 per hour – BY 2030? That’s exactly like something weasel Starmer would come up with, to let bosses off the hook – is that it? You don’t want to piss off Amazon, Starbucks?” Another wrote, “Won't bother in future”, and “underwhelmed”, with someone else pointing out, “The way inflation is going—still bound to be a pay cut.”

The TUC’s announcement reveals an organisation deeply hostile to the working class, and indifferent to the social distress gripping millions. Last week National Health Service (NHS) chiefs warned thousands will die this autumn and winter from fuel poverty in what it described as a looming “humanitarian crisis”. Average annual energy bills will rise to £3,576 from October 1, likely nearly doubling to £6,552 in April 2023.

The TUC’s £15 minimum wage by 2030 is a slap in the face that will do nothing to address this emergency.

Inflation, at a 40-year high of 12.3 percent (RPI)—fueled by energy companies’ profiteering from NATO’s proxy-war against Russia—and is predicted to reach 21 percent by early next year. In the three months to June, workers suffered a pay slump of 4.1 percent. This follows the longest period of wage suppression in 200 years. More than a decade on from the global financial crisis, workers are earning £88 a month less in real terms than they did in 2008. Similar indices could be cited internationally.

More than two million workers are forced to survive on the National Minimum Wage for adults of £9.50 per hour (£361 per week before tax), £6.83 for 18–20-year-olds, and £4.81 for under-18s and apprentices. By the time the TUC’s higher £15 minimum wage is introduced in 2030, it will amount to a real terms pay-cut as it is dwarfed by inflation.

Yet for the Guardian, the voice of desiccated English liberalism, the TUC’s announcement was a masterstroke. Its online edition led with the headline, “Minimum wage should be increased to £15 an hour as soon as possible, says TUC”, alongside a separate article, “TUC picks opportune moment to call for rise in minimum wage”. Martin Kettle, the newspaper’s associate editor and columnist, described £15 as an “ambitious target”.

Neither Kettle, nor his fellow Guardian writers would be willing to submit to such an “ambitious” hourly rate now, let alone in 2030. Their real concern was made clear in the newspaper’s editorial, “The Guardian view on raising the minimum wage: winning the fight for £15 an hour”, which warned, “Britain may be as close now to a general strike as it has ever been. To resolve industrial tensions means thinking big.”

It concluded, “Sir Keir [Starmer] won’t stand on a picket line to show solidarity. But Labour should express its affinity with working people in clear policy terms, by backing a higher minimum wage.”

The Guardian’s promotion of the TUC proposal is driven by fear. They are ransacking their cupboards, searching for something—anything—to throw to the angry hordes below. They view the trade unions as a bulwark against the class struggle and are eager to promote the TUC’s pitiful announcement, urging Starmer to embrace it.

German workers pay the cost of war as gas and electricity prices skyrocket

Peter Schwarz

A tsunami of price rises is racing toward working class households, spelling ruin for many. After the price of natural gas, which many families use to heat their homes, the price of electricity is now also going through the roof. This weekend, the rebate on gasoline and diesel expires and average producer prices have risen by 37 percent in a year, which will inevitably impact consumer prices.

Gasoline prices soon to rise above two euros a litre again

Experts predict that the official inflation rate at the end of the year will be 10 percent, several times higher than the wage settlements agreed by the trade unions. In this way, the “traffic light” coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens is forcing working people to shoulder the costs of the Ukraine war, which it intends to continue (in the words of Ukrainian President Zelensky) until complete “victory” over Russia.

Meanwhile, the energy companies are celebrating a profits bonanza. Previously unimaginable record prices on the energy exchanges are bringing them speculative profits in the billions. On the European Energy Exchange (EEX) in Leipzig, the price for a megawatt hour of electricity climbed to over €550 last week. That is a good 2,000 percent more than a year ago. At that time, the price fluctuated between €20 and €80 per megawatt hour (MWh). In France, over €1,000 per megawatt hour was even offered on the futures market.

High speculative profits are also being made on natural gas, which has become extremely scarce due to the sanctions imposed on Russia and the non-operation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. European futures reached a record €292.50 per MWh on Monday. The average gas prices in the European Union have thus doubled in just one month and are 14 times higher than the average value of the last 10 years.

The energy companies’ orgy of enrichment takes place with the blessing of the traffic light coalition. It introduced a gas surcharge that compensates intermediaries for the difference between high stock market prices and the previous low import prices for Russian gas and thus flows directly into the bank accounts of the large energy corporations. It is levied on all gas customers as a kind of war tax. For a family household with a consumption of 15,000 kilowatt hours per year it means an additional burden of around €400. Added to this is the rising gas price, which is horrendous, especially for new customers.

So far, 12 companies have filed claims for compensation from the gas levy, totaling €34 billion. That is more than the sum of the two “relief packages” adopted by the German government this year to ease the burden of inflation.

Among them are groups that operate as both intermediaries and energy suppliers and report high profits. OMV, for example, made a profit of €5.6 billion and Gunvor €2 billion in the first half of 2022. Both have applied for money from the gas surcharge. Uniper, which is the biggest importer of Russian gas to date and claims around two-thirds of the gas levy, had been split off in 2016 from energy group E.ON, which made a profit of €5.3 billion last year.

The German government explicitly supports the enrichment of energy companies. Asked why profitable companies could also pocket the gas levy, Susanne Ungrad, spokeswoman for Economics Minister Robert Habeck, replied at a press conference on Tuesday: “Our position is that a company must also make profits.”

A windfall tax, which would skim off at least part of the horrendous profits, is being strictly rejected by the traffic light coalition. With the gas surcharge, it is doing the opposite—financing the billions in profits of corporations with money that it extracts from working class households via the utility bill.

What the explosion in energy prices means for individual households can currently only be estimated.

Households that heat and cook using gas will face triple-digit price increases due to the gas surcharge of 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour, despite the subsequently announced reduction in value added (sales) tax. From October, two further levies will also come into force: 0.57 cents per kilowatt hour for so-called balancing energy costs and 0.06 cents for filling gas storage facilities before winter, which means an additional annual burden of more than €100 for an average household.

The biggest cost increase, however, comes from the rise in the price of gas itself, which experts say has by no means peaked. According to the Federal Statistical Office, power plants paid 235 percent, industrial consumers 195 percent and resellers 187 percent more for natural gas in July than a year earlier. It is only a matter of time before these increases are fully passed on to private households. For new customers, this is already partially the case.

The price increases for electricity are just as dramatic. The consumer comparison website Verivox assumes that the average price in the coming year will be over 45 cents per kilowatt hour. That would be around 50 percent more than in the last three years, when the average price ranged between 30 and 32 cents.

Some energy suppliers have already raised their prices. For example, EnBW customers will have to pay 31.1 percent more for household electricity under the basic tariff from October. Verivox registered 123 price increases from basic suppliers for August, September and October, with an average increase of 25 percent. For a three-person household with a consumption of 4,000 kilowatt hours that means on average annual additional costs of €311. Check24, another comparison website, reports a price increase of 47.4 percent.

Here, too, the peak is far from being reached. In addition to the high price of natural gas, which is used to generate about 13 percent of Germany’s electricity, other factors are contributing to the rise in electricity prices. The extreme drought has led to the failure of hydroelectric power plants and cooling systems. Coal and oil for power plants can no longer be transported on rivers due to low water levels. In France, which gets 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, 29 of 56 nuclear reactors are currently idle because they cannot be properly cooled or need urgent maintenance. The country, which otherwise exports electricity, is currently importing larger quantities of gas-generated electricity from Germany.

The electricity supply is also particularly susceptible to crises because it cannot be stored in large quantities and even minor voltage fluctuations can lead to the failure of computer networks and internet applications or even to the collapse of power grids. Grid operators are therefore urgently dependent on buying the required quantities as the need arises to meet demand, which makes the power exchanges correspondingly susceptible to speculation. The current crisis underscores how absurd it is that a basic social necessity such as the supply of electricity is subject to private profit interests and is at the mercy of speculators.

The rise in energy prices is only the tip of the inflation iceberg. According to the Federal Statistical Office, overall producer prices in July were 37.2 percent higher than a year earlier. Although energy prices contributed the most, with an average increase of 105 percent, producer prices of consumer goods also rose sharply by 16.2 percent. Food items were as much as 21.1 percent more expensive than a year earlier—butter 75.2 percent, milk 32 percent, coffee 31.6 percent and meat 23.5 percent.

Gasoline prices will also climb above €2 per litre again in September when the fuel rebate, the three-month reduction in energy tax, expires. The €9 ticket, enabling travel throughout Germany on local and regional trains, also ends this month. For working people who rely on their cars or public transportation, this means yet another painful burden.

The price explosion is a direct consequence of the proxy war that NATO is waging against Russia in Ukraine. Although Germany’s energy supply was heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies, for which no substitute was available for the foreseeable future, the German government decided to isolate Russia economically and not bring the completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline into operation.

The Ukraine war was not triggered by President Putin’s decision to attack the country militarily, as reactionary and short-sighted as this was. The US, Germany and other Western powers had been systematically preparing and provoking it since 2014, when they brought a pro-NATO regime to power in Kiev through a right-wing coup and massively rearmed the country. Now, they are sabotaging any approach to a negotiated settlement, supplying billions worth of weapons, and directing the war in the background.

Their stated goal is not to let up until Russia is defeated and they can subjugate, divide and plunder the giant, resource-rich country, even at the risk of a nuclear world war. Germany’s ruling circles are using the war to carry out their long-cherished rearmament plans and to triple military spending.

French police shoot two dead amid growing wave of police murders

Samuel Tissot

On the night of Thursday, 19 August, police in Vénissieux, a suburb south of Lyon, shot and killed two men during a traffic stop. The passenger, aged 20, was killed instantly; the driver, aged 26, was taken to hospital where he was declared dead on Saturday. After being taken into custody for an interview after the incident, the officers involved in the killing were released without charge on Friday.

According to the police account of the incident, the two men were in a stationary car when they were approached by police. After police had surrounded the car, the driver began to move the vehicle and hit a police officer. Then the other fired eight rounds into the vehicle, killing its two occupants. So far, no witnesses have come forward to verify or contradict the official account. The officer who was allegedly struck by the car did not suffer any serious injuries.

This is the third police shooting of this kind since Macron’s re-election on April 24. The first occurred that very night of Macron’s re-election, when police killed two occupants of a car on Pont Neuf bridge in central Paris. Then, on the morning of June 4, a passenger was killed after police fired nine rounds into a car in Clignancourt in the north of the city.

After a series of exposures of official accounts of recent acts of police violence, there is little reason to accept the officers’ account of the Vénissieux shooting on face value. The accounts of passengers and witnesses in the June 4 killing contradicted the police account of the event, which was very similar to the explanation given for Thursday’s shooting. Witnesses of the June shooting claimed that police shot the driver before the vehicle began to move forward, not after, as the police claimed.

The official police account of the police rampage against Liverpool fans at the Champions League final in late May was also contradicted by subsequently released evidence. A massive cover-up involving the upper echelons of the police was indicated by the deletion of hours of CCTV from the Stade de France on the night of the final. The affair was so embarrassing for the French government that the chief of Paris police was forced to resign.

It is also highly significant that Vénissieux killing came amid a massive campaign recently initiated by the French state directed against working class areas of Lyon.

The transfer occurred after members of the public intervened to save a man being chased by three plainclothes officers in La Guillotière, a neighborhood of Lyon just 2.5 kilometers north of Vénissieux, at the end of July. The officers were chasing a man accused of petty theft. None of them were seriously injured during the public’s intervention.

The incident was the subject of a hysterical campaign by pro-government media denouncing as a “lynching” the intervention of the public to save a man being chased by cops whom residents could not in any way identify as law enforcement officers.

On a trip to Lyon in the aftermath of the incident, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin deliberately inflamed the situation, stressing the need to “retake control” of the district. As part of these measures, Darmanin sent 70 additional police officers to La Guillotière and added more cops to the newly formed Specialized Field Brigade (BST) unit in Lyon.

In response to this minor incident, the police-initiated a series of roundups in the city. The first saw the arrest of 18 individuals, a number with little connection to the incident in question. A week later, a further round-up involved 10 more arrests. It was in this extremely tense atmosphere that cops shot the two young men dead in Vénissieux on Thursday evening.

An official inquest into the officers’ actions has been opened but will be under the jurisdiction of the General Inspectorate of the National Police, which itself is a section of the national police answerable to Darmanin.

In response to Thursday’s incident, Darmanin made clear that police violence will continue to have the full support of the Macron government. Even before the conclusion of his own minister’s investigation, he presented the police account as established fact, denouncing, a “clear [act of] aggression against these police officers … I want to say to all the police and gendarmes of France, who face refusals to obey every day, since there is one every half hour, that I support them a priori.”

Darmanin’s promise of “a priori” support for police in the aftermath of deadly violence reiterates the government’s unconditional support for the police to shoot and kill individuals with impunity.

In the face of an escalating war with Russia, deepening economic crisis, and mass deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, the French capitalist state is fast dispensing with the last vestiges of respect for basic democratic rights.

Macron’s victory in the April 24 election has only accelerated his efforts to construct a police state in France. Amidst the crisis facing the French and European ruling class the president has vowed to “double” the number of police on the streets.

The French ruling class aims to have at its disposal a police force that is experienced in the use extreme violence against the population. Well-publicized “a priori” government support for cops involved in deadly shootings is aimed at normalizing police murder. This is manifestly a preventive measure against the outbreak of protests against Macron’s policies of war, slashing living standards through inflation, and mass infection with COVID-19, anticipating an eruption of protests in France and internationally that would eclipse even those of his first term.

In Lyon, the local section of pseudo-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) party, part of the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES), reiterated its support for the Macron government’s build-up of the police in response to the shooting.

While a communique from the LFI local 69 called for the abolition of newly introduced specialist BST units, it also stated: “We must significantly increase the training time for police officers, including on carrying weapons. We must also give them more means to investigate and prevent crimes.”

The explosion of police violence must be taken as a warning: a crisis-ridden capitalist state, pursuing fundamentally unpopular policies, aims to maintain its grip on power by brute force. The police’s role as defenders of the capitalist state mean they cannot be “trained,” as LFI claims, to avoid brutality. Police murder is the inevitable outcome of the ruling elite’s use of the police as the last line of defense against explosive popular opposition to Macron.

1,000 Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarships 2023/2024

Application Deadlines:

1st September 2022

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Universities, Universities of Applied Sciences, or Universities of the Arts in Germany

Accepted Subject Areas: Any subject area is applicable

About Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarships: The Heinrich Böll Foundation grants scholarships to approximately 1,000 undergraduates, graduates, and doctoral students of all subjects and nationalities per year, who are pursuing their degree at universities, universities of applied sciences (‘Fachhochschulen’), or universities of the arts (‘Kunsthochschulen’) in Germany.

The special focus regions for international students are Central and Eastern Europe; EU neighborhood countries and the CIS; the Middle East and North Africa; transition and newly industrialized countries; and conflict regions worldwide.

Selection Criteria: Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarship recipients are expected to have excellent academic records, to be socially and politically engaged, and to have an active interest in the basic values of the foundation: ecology and sustainability, democracy and human rights, self determination and justice.

Eligibility: The following general requirements apply to international student applicants (except EU citizens) who wish to study in Germany:

• You must be enrolled at a state-recognized university or college (e.g. Fachhochschule) in Germany at the time the scholarship payments begin.
• You should provide proof that you have already graduated with an initial professional qualification. This programme mainly supports students aiming for a Masters degree.
• You need a good knowledge of German, and require you provide proof of your proficiency. Please note that the selection workshop (interviews, group discussions) will normally be in German. Exceptions (interview in English) are, however, possible.
• Unfortunately, the current guidelines specify that the foundation cannot support foreign scholarship holders for stays abroad in third countries for more than four weeks.
• You should definitely apply for a scholarship before the start of your studies, in order to ensure long-term support and cooperation.
• The Heinrich Böll Foundation cannot award you a scholarship, if you are studying for a one-year Masters degree and were not previously supported by the foundation.
• Applications are possible before you begin your study programme or within the first three semesters.
• Applicants must provide proof that they have been accepted as a doctoral student by an institution of higher education in Germany or an EU country (for doctoral scholarship).

Number of Scholarships: Approximately 1000

Duration of Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarships: Scholarship will be offered for the duration of the undergraduate, Masters or Doctoral programme

How to Apply: The application form will be completed online; additional application documents will be submitted as PDF.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details 

Biden announces limited student debt relief

Andy Thompson

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced that his administration is moving forward with plans to cancel $10,000 of student debt for those who earn less than $125,000 per year. A total of $20,000 will be forgiven for recipients of Pell grants, who are students from low-income backgrounds.

While student debt relief is urgently needed, the Biden administration is carrying out the debt decision on the most cynical grounds. The $10,000 amount of relief is entirely inadequate at addressing the pressing needs of millions of Americans saddled with debt and struggling to make ends meet.

About 15 million students and former students will see their debt entirely erased. For students owing the average total debt of $30,000, about one-third will be erased. For those with much higher debts, however, particularly those with debt from graduate and professional education, the proportion will be much lower.

Graduating college students (Wikimedia Commons)

The measure is a carefully planned maneuver, timed to coincide with the upcoming midterm elections, hoping to encourage votes for Democratic candidates. This political calculation is also demonstrated by the extension of the payment moratorium, set to expire in September, until January 1, 2023.

The moratorium was first provided by the Trump administration in March 2020 in the initial response to the COVID pandemic, applying to 41 million student loan borrowers. It has been subsequently extended, most recently by Biden in May, until August 31, 2022, with the first payments due by October 1, 2022, only a month before the midterm election.

In his remarks at the White House announcing the plan, Biden said, “the cost [of a college degree] is so heavy that even if you graduate you may not have access to the middle-class life that the college degree once provided.”

The White House stated that the cancellation will go into effect sometime before loan payments resume at the end of the year and that in the next few weeks an application process will be created to prove income qualifications.

In total, the cancellation would cover about $300 billion of the over $1.6 trillion in total student loan debt. The cancellation applies only to loan debt held by the federal government through the Department of Education and not any privately held debt.

A total of 45 million people in the United States now have student loan debt to the government. An additional 3 million have debt through private financiers that is unaffected by the president’s decision.

Biden also said that under the decision, monthly payments for loans will be reduced to a maximum of 5 percent of an individual’s income and that debt not paid off after 20 years of consecutive payments will be forgiven.

While millions of debt holders will welcome the relief the cancellation will provide, the fact is that the vast majority of student debt remains and the cancellation plan removes only a fraction. Well over $1.3 trillion dollars in students’ debt will still remain after the forgiveness takes full effect.

In his remarks the president made several references to his “Republican friends” who oppose the cancellation of debt. Biden stressed that the cancellation will not significantly add to the inflation crisis, at least not more than the forgiveness of business loans that Republicans supported.

What was not mentioned at all by Biden, and is missing from the reports in the major media, is that the government has raised the interest on current student loans in keeping with the rate rises set by the Federal Reserve, most recently (in July) from 3.7 percent to 5 percent. This means that current and future students will accumulate debt even faster than the previous generation of borrowers.

And rates can only be expected to increase further as Kansas City Federal Reserve President Esther George said in an interview the same day as the president’s announcement, “We have to get interest rates higher to slow down demand and bring inflation back to our target.”

For example, taking the average amount of loan debt of $30,000 over 10 years at a 5 percent rate, a borrower will pay $8,183 in interest on top of their loan principal. If rates are increased to 6.5 percent, future students will pay over $10,000 in interest on their loans.

Much of the Democratic Party congressional leadership was pushing for a much larger cancellation, closer to $50,000 per student, in a desperate effort to strike a populist stance before the midterm election, but Biden decided on a policy that represents essentially the least he could do, while still hoping to generate some electoral payback.

At the same time, the move is under ferocious right-wing attack, from business interests, the right-wing media, the entire Republican Party, and the most right-wing sections of the Democratic Party, including Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell absurdly denounced the action as “socialism,” while the Wall Street Journal postured as the defender of Fedex drivers and construction workers who, they claimed, would be paying for student loan forgiveness for privileged youth.

The CDC minimizes the danger of monkeypox among children as students begin returning to school

Aaron Edwards

The United States has assumed a commanding lead as the global epicenter of the monkeypox pandemic, far outpacing other countries in Europe and the Americas. As of August 25, 2022, the US has reported over 16,500 monkeypox infections out of almost 46,000 such cases worldwide. Every state in the country has reported cases, with New York and California leading. The seven-day average of new cases has consistently been over 1,100 in August.

Monkeypox

Early during the global outbreak the World Health Network (WHN), concerned about the dangers posed by the growing outbreak, declared monkeypox a pandemic on June 22, 2022, ahead of the first emergency committee meeting held by the World Health Organization (WHO). It would be more than a month later and under extraordinary circumstances that Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus overruled the committee’s opinion at its second reconvening and declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). 

Back in June the WHN had warned that though the disease was so far found predominantly among men who have sex with men, inaction on the part of governments and federal public health agencies would lead to the expansion of the outbreak among vulnerable populations, such as children, pregnant women and immunocompromised individuals. 

Historically, the case fatality rate with Clade I of the monkeypox virus (also known as the West African clade) has been around 1 percent but higher among those with HIV and the youngest. The WHO has said there have been 12 deaths confirmed so far during the present outbreak.  

Indeed, concerns over the spread of monkeypox among the pediatric population is mounting. According to the tracking website Tableau Public, 44 pediatric cases have been reported so far in the US. Florida, where the fascistic Governor Ron DeSantis has repeatedly dismissed the dangers of the pandemic, has recorded the most with 18 of the state’s 1,669 confirmed cases among children. Notably, Florida’s K-12 schools opened on August 10. California has reported six pediatric cases, Texas five, and Virginia four.  

There is much that remains unknown about the way monkeypox transmits, duration of contact needed, how the virus enters the host’s cells, and the course of the disease. This includes the risk of asymptomatic transmission during the incubation period and after all lesions have healed. The route of transmission has been speculated to be predominantly through close contact with lesions on the skin, though indirect contact through contaminated clothing or bedding of an infected person and airborne transmission have been found. 

Previously, experts on monkeypox had recommended PCR testing on respiratory mucosa to prove the disease is cleared after lesions had healed, before allowing infected individuals to leave isolation. Though quarantine as a result of close exposure has not been recommended by the public health officials, a quarantine period under medical observation ensures attention can be provided immediately and prevents others from inadvertently being infected.

The precautionary principle requires an earnest and transparent approach given the limits of our understanding of the disease. This means employing appropriate measures until researchers can test these critical questions and analyze the data. 

However, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to play fast and loose with its guidelines, recalling CDC Director Rochelle Walensky’s criticisms of the agency in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not a failing of the CDC’s medical and research functions but a demonstration of its role in doing the state’s bidding. In this regard, current CDC guidance on monkeypox for schools is analogous to its previous guidelines on COVID-19: enforcing the reopening of schools by downplaying the dangers posed by monkeypox’s entry into pediatric populations. 

As an example, in the instructions posted as Frequently Asked Questions, the CDC claims that “at this time, there is no need for widespread vaccination for monkeypox among children or staff at K-12 schools or early childhood settings.” It added, “children, staff, and volunteers who are exposed to a person with monkeypox do not need to be excluded from an educational setting in most cases.” It also noted, “Individuals exposed to monkeypox virus can continue their routine daily activities (e.g., go to work or school) as long as they do not have signs or symptoms consistent with monkeypox.”

Even if not fatal, the course of the disease can be quite debilitating, with as many as 13 percent of those infected needing hospitalization. Besides suffering from high fevers, malaise, headaches and very tender and enlarged lymph nodes, patients find the lesions quite painful and possibly prone to infection. Involvement of eyes is not uncommon, and even blindness can result, although it is rare. Some patients have developed painful groin and rectal lesions and mouth sores that have been described as incapacitating. Yet the CDC has not requested the current vaccines be authorized for children as post-exposure prophylaxis. For them to be effective they should be given as soon as possible, within four days of exposure.

The shift of the virus into the pediatric population has also been confirmed by Brazilian health officials, who have reported 77 such cases. According to a report in the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) published August 23, more than 25 percent of Brazilian pediatric cases were in children under five. 

So far, a large majority of confirmed cases in the US and UK have come from men who have sex with men. However, as the social network for monkeypox continues to grow, the demand for vaccines will outstrip availability. There is already a national and global shortage of the Jynneos Bavarian Nordic smallpox vaccine, a problem that is very far from being remedied. 

The White House’s response continues to focus on the LGBTQ+ community through a vaccine-only approach. Experience with COVID-19 has demonstrated the failure of this approach, which ignores the tenets of public health: contact tracing, testing, case detection and confirmation, isolation and ring vaccination. Additionally, frequent and open communication about the status of the outbreak with communities is critical to gain their trust and cooperation. 

Scientists, doctors, educators and parents have expressed alarm on social media in response to the CDC guidelines. The handling of the COVID-19 pandemic by the Trump and Biden administrations has been widely seen as disastrous. Increasingly it is being recognized that the public health guidelines are being shaped by political policy aimed at maintaining private profits at all costs over human life.

The distrusted and discredited CDC and the entire political establishment in the United States are once again pushing children back into underfunded and poorly ventilated schools after another summer of doing little or nothing at all to improve the safety conditions for children, teachers and support staff. 

The National Education Association estimates that there are 300,000 teacher and staff vacancies in the US after two years of mass resignations and early retirements. Under these conditions how can children be properly supervised? How can undetected cases of monkeypox and COVID-19 be avoided? 

It is also worth noting that there are incalculable dangers posed by the unfettered spread of two global pandemics at the same time. Post COVID-19 studies have shown that the virus can cause damage to nearly every organ system in the body, including the neurological and immune systems. It has affected young and old patients alike, in both severe and mild cases of the disease. The consequences can be considerable in light of the rise of large outbreaks of new pathogens in rapid succession. In just the last two decades we have faced SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Ebola, SARS-CoV-2, monkeypox and polio. 

At the same time, environmental destruction causes other species of animals to seek out new habitats and come into more frequent contact with humans, increasing the likelihood of the emergence of new zoonotic diseases in the human population, posing new risks. The possibility of other pandemics emerging is a looming threat the world over.