As more infectious variants spread in Germany, rising number of COVID patients experience severe illness

Tamino Dreisam

As the number of severe COVID-19 cases rises and more infectious variants spread, politicians across party lines are showing their willingness to accept a new winter of death in the pandemic.

As of last week, between 700,000 and 1.6 million people in Germany were symptomatically infected with the virus. Although the autumn vacations, which are currently underway in many states, appear to have reduced the incidence of infection, the 7-day rate is still 464.1 infections per hundred thousand members of the population. However, due to the abolition of compulsory testing and infrastructure, official figures have long since inadequately reflected the actual incidence of infection.

An intubated COVID-19 patient gets treatment at the intensive care unit at the Westerstede Clinical Center, a military-civilian hospital in Westerstede, northwest Germany [AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

This is evident from the continuing rise in the number of outbreaks in hospitals and nursing homes. In medical treatment facilities, there were 274 outbreaks last week, 126 more than the previous week. In addition, 38 people died from past outbreaks. In nursing homes and homes for the elderly, the number of outbreaks increased from 567 the previous week to 687 last week, when 99 people died from previous outbreaks.

The seriousness of the situation is particularly evident in hospitals. The number of hospitalizations has been rising for weeks and, when adjusted, is 20 per 100,000, or about 16,000 hospitalizations per week. It has thus tripled within one month. 1,723 people need intensive care treatment.

Two weeks ago, the chairman of the German Hospital Association (DKG) Gerald Gaß told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND): “We have significant increases in Covid positive patients. Compared to the previous week, occupancy has risen by 50 percent. ... With around 19,000 positively tested patients, we are currently as high as at the peak times of the summer wave. ... We are heading for extremely difficult weeks across the board and not just in southern Germany.”

Christian Karagiannidis, head of the DIVI intensive care registry, also warned, “In some regions of Bavaria, Hesse and in several cities in North Rhine-Westphalia, we already have hotspots where there are hardly any free intensive care beds left because staff are often symptomatic and also absent for longer periods.”

Since then, hospitalization rates have risen steadily, bringing many hospitals to the brink of overcrowding. “The emergency centres are overcrowded, patients are piling up in the corridors,” complained the works council of the municipal Munich Clinic, for example. At Caritas Hospital in Bad Mergentheim, the medical director said more coronavirus patients were currently being treated than at any time in the last two years. Those experiencing severe illness as a result were also on the rise.

Hospitals are also burdened by a high number of staff absences, due to staff infections. For example, Detlef Troppens, chairman of the Brandenburg State Hospital Association (LKB), warned Monday, “We have 10 to 15 percent ward closures.” There are already restrictions in the treatment of patients.

Rising energy costs as a result of the war against Russia are also bringing numerous hospitals to the brink of collapse. “The financial situation continues to come to a head drastically and is assuming proportions that threaten hospitals’ existence,” reported Björn Saeger, management spokesman at the municipal hospital in Brandenburg an der Havel. Also, Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (Social Democrat, SPD) warned even that hospitals “face a completely drastic liquidity problem come in the next months.”

The increase in the number of those experiencing severe illness following infection with coronavirus has also resulted in a growing number of deaths. Since the beginning of the week, 895 people have already died—an average of 179 per day, which is more than twice as many as died at the same time a year ago and about five times as many as died at the same time two years ago.

The situation threatens to worsen in the autumn and winter with the spread of Omicron subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1. Both exhibit high immune escape, so that even the recently recovered and fully vaccinated can become infected with the variant.

According to Robert Koch Institute data, the BQ.1 variant currently accounts for 2 percent of infections and the BQ.1.1 variant for just under 3 percent. However, the figures are about three weeks behind the curve and are thus already much higher.

According to calculations by the German Cancer Research Centre, the proportion is already 6 and 7 percent. According to news magazine Der Spiegel, Cambridge scientist and bioinformatician Cornelius Römer suspects that the proportion of BQ.1.1 is already 10 percent.

He expects “that BQ.1.1 will drive a wave of variants in Europe and North America before the end of November. Its relative share has more than doubled every week.” The current autumn wave would then be joined by another—driven by the other Omicron subvariants. The result would be a double wave.

Numerous scientists share this opinion: according to Augsburger Allgemeine, the German Charité vaccine researcher, Leif Sander suspects, “In the next few weeks, BQ.1.1 could become the most widespread variant and displace BA.5.”

Friedemann Weber, director of the Institute of Virology at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, told Focus magazine, BQ.1.1 is “the fastest-growing virus variant in Germany at the moment. While its share of cases is relatively small and BA.5 remains dominant, that may soon change, as the BQ1.1 curve is much steeper.”

However, politicians from all parties have made it clear that they will not do anything about the rising number of those experiencing severe outcomes, nor about the spread of new variants. Despite the surge in recent weeks, no state government has introduced stronger infection control measures. On the contrary, numerous leading politicians openly proclaim their intention to accept the current conditions.

For example, Federal Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) warned against closing schools or children’s and youth facilities in the coming months. “Under no circumstances should day-care centres and schools, gymnasiums and youth clubs be shut down this autumn and winter. Not because of coronavirus and also not because of energy savings.”

Brandenburg’s SPD state parliamentary group leader Daniel Keller rejected the call for an expansion of the mandatory mask-wearing requirement, saying, “The incidence rate in hospitals is in the red, but in terms of the occupancy of intensive care beds, we are not yet in the critical area,” He warned against “political actionism”: “We have a mandatory mask requirement where it is relevant.”

In his speech at the Christian Social Union (CSU) party conference, Bavarian state Prime Minister Markus Söder also ruled out any real measures to combat the pandemic: “We will no longer do cordoning off in winter. No way.” He added that COVID-19 in Germany was on its way to becoming endemic and that the state government would also set its sights on relaxing quarantine rules.

Last week, the Green Party-Christian Democrat state government in Baden-Württemberg even went so far as to overturn the mask-wearing requirement in nursing homes.

Lula is elected president of Brazil as Bolsonaro maintains silence on results

Guilherme Ferreira

Workers Party (PT)’s candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, defeating the incumbent fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro. Lula won 60.3 million votes (50.9 percent), against 58.2 million votes (49.1 percent) for Bolsonaro. This was the smallest margin of victory in a presidential race since 1989, the first election after the end of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

Even with both candidates receiving record votes, a quarter of Brazilian voters refused to vote, either by not showing up to the polls (20.57 percent) or by casting blank or invalid ballots(4.59 percent).

Brazil's president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva addressing supporters in São Paulo [Photo: Rovena Rosa/Agência Brasil]

Inspired by former US President Donald Trump and trying to repeat in Brazil a “Capitol Hill scenario,” Bolsonaro has carried out, with the support of the armed forces, a systematic campaign to discredit the Brazilian electoral system. He will undoubtedly seek to exploit the divisions exposed in the election, with two months to escalate his dictatorial conspiracy up until the presidential inauguration on January 1, 2023.

Of the 27 Brazilian states, including the Federal District, Lula won in 13 and Bolsonaro in 14. Lula had the most votes in the nine states of Brazil’s impoverished Northeast, while Bolsonaro won in every state in the Midwest, the South, and in three of the four states in the Southeast.

Sunday’s election also chose the governors of 12 Brazilian states. Along with the right-wing União Brasil party, whose origins date back to the ruling party of Brazil’s military dictatorship, the PT was the party with the most elected governors. It won in the four Northeastern states it already ruled, Bahia, Rio Grande do Norte, Piauí and Ceará. In São Paulo, Brazil’s largest and richest state, the PT’s candidate for governor, Fernando Haddad, was defeated by Bolsonaro’s ally, Tarcísio de Freitas.

Lula’s victory was hailed by leaders of imperialist powers and the self-proclaimed “leftist” presidents of Latin America, which in recent years has seen a return to power in several countries of bourgeois nationalist politicians linked to the “Pink Tide.”

“Congratulations, dear Lula, on your election that begins a new chapter in the history of Brazil,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz tweeted, “I look forward to close and reliable cooperation.” In November of last year, Lula met with Macron and Scholz on a trip to Europe that sought the legitimization of his candidacy by the European imperialist powers.

US President Joe Biden wrote: “I send my congratulations to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on his election to be the next president of Brazil following free, fair, and credible elections. I look forward to working together to continue the cooperation between our two countries in the months and years ahead.” The New York Times also hailed Lula’s victory after endorsing his candidacy in an editorial on Thursday titled “Brazil’s Presidential Election Will Determine the Planet’s Future.”

In his speech after the announcement of the election results, Lula emphasized that he intends to form a government of national unity with the political right to “rebuild” Brazil. His victory, he said, was the result of “an immense democratic movement that was formed, above political parties, personal interests and ideologies, so that democracy would emerge victorious.”

He claimed that the fight against hunger was the number one priority of his government, while also promising to “reestablish dialogue between government, businessmen, workers and organized civil society” and to “regain the credibility, predictability and stability of the country, so that investors— national and foreign—will regain confidence in Brazil.”

Recognizing Lula’s efforts to win the support of the section of the bourgeoisie which opposed him, and to form “a government beyond the PT,” the São Paulo stock market closed up on the first day after the election, and the dollar was down.

Regarding policies for the Amazon, Lula made a point in his speech that was a signal to the imperialist governments, especially those of Macron and Biden, who had criticized Bolsonaro’s management of the rainforest. “We are open to international cooperation to preserve the Amazon, whether in the form of investment or scientific research,” Lula declared.

On Paulista Avenue in São Paulo, where Lula’s supporters celebrated the victory of the PT candidate, Lula also said that “In any place in the world, the defeated president would have already called me to concede defeat, but so far he hasn’t. I don’t know if he will call. And I don’t know if he will acknowledge it.”

Twenty-four hours after Lula’s victory on Sunday night, Bolsonaro had still refused to comment on the election results. His ominous silence comes on top of the military’s refusal to present the conclusions of its “parallel count” of the vote before the inauguration of the new president. This intervention by the armed forces was initiated on the basis of false allegations of a “risk of fraud” at the polls,

The coming weeks will be marked by an escalation of political tensions in the Brazilian state and society.

The week before the election had already seen new attempts by Bolsonaro’s supporters to cast doubt on the legitimacy of election results. Last Monday, Bolsonaro’s campaign organizers and his minister of communications, Fabio Faria, alleged that radio stations in the Northeast had stopped broadcasting their electoral propaganda, giving an advantage to the PT candidate. Politicians linked to the fascistic president, among them his son Eduardo Bolsonaro, used these allegations as a pretext for demanding that the elections be postponed. The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) found that the accusations were backed by no evidence.

In a flagrant attempt to make it harder for voters to reach the polls on election day, the Federal Highway Police (PRF) conducted more than 600 operations against public transportation, half of them in the states in the Northeast. The decision to organize the blockades came directly from the president on October 19, who met with the justice minister who oversees the PRF.

A ruling by TSE president Alexandre de Morares, the day before the elections, prohibiting operations that interfered with the transportation of voters was provocatively ignored by the PRF. The TSE has sought to avoid a confrontation by declaring that the illegal operations did not alter the electoral outcome.

Both Bolsonaro and the military are looking for a pretext to advance their authoritarian agenda after his electoral defeat.

Last week, the far-right Gazeta do Povo website published an article titled “Military worries about disorder in the streets after Sunday’s vote count.” The article stated: “The perception among active and reserve military personnel speaking to Gazeta do Povo is that an eventual defeat of Bolsonaro at the polls could further inflame the spirits of voters and lead them to the streets in demonstrations and protests against the TSE and the Supreme Court (STF).” In this case, the report continued, “the Armed Forces would be responsible for establishing order by means of an Operation to Guarantee Law and Order [that is, a domestic intervention by the military].”

Retired General Maynard Santa Rosa, former head of the Secretariat of Strategic Affairs of the Presidency of the Republic at the beginning of the Bolsonaro administration, was further quoted in the article: “I think it’s not only possible, but probable. If there is some climate of uprising and conflict that gets out of the control of the civil authorities, it is possible that there will be a participation of troops. It is worrying. I think we are in a climate of potential crisis.”

Initial demonstrations of this character began shortly after the announcement of the election results, with Bolsonaro supporters blocking roads across the country, especially in regions dominated by sections of agribusiness and corporations linked to the fascistic president. As of early Monday afternoon, 81 protests had been registered on highways in 14 states across Brazil. The protesters, some identified as truck drivers, have as their main demand an intervention by the military.

In Brasilia, traffic on the Esplanade of the Ministries was blocked by the Public Safety Secretariat of the Federal District after “identifying a possible act scheduled for the location on social networks.” In addition to the seats of the legislative and executive branches, the Supreme Federal Court, one of the main targets of Bolsonaro’s threats, is located on the Esplanade.

Should Lula make it through the turmoil that is expected in the coming months, he will lead a government even more to the right than his previous two administrations (2003-2011), and one marked by deep political instability.

US GDP up but recession trends grow

Nick Beams

The US economy grew at an annual rate of 2.6 percent in the third quarter after experiencing contractions of 1.6 percent and 0.6 percent in the first two quarters respectively.

But the latest data have not dispelled fears that the world’s largest economy could move into a recession next year. In fact, some of the figures show this prospect is becoming increasingly likely as the Federal Reserve continues to lift interest rates to slow the economy as it tries to suppress the wage demands resulting from 40-year high inflation.

A man shops at a supermarket on Wednesday, July 27, 2022, in New York. [AP Photo/Andres Kudacki]

Recession fears have been heightened by the figures on consumer spending. These showed an increase of only 1.4 percent for the quarter, a slower rate than the 2 percent rise over the previous three months, a sign that inflation is having its effects.

While consumer spending is the largest item in gross domestic product (GDP), accounting for around 70 percent, investment by businesses is one of its key driving forces.

Gross private investment fell by 8.56 percent with the biggest drop in residential spending, down by 26.4 percent—a result of the Fed’s rising interest rates that have pushed home mortgage rates to 7 percent.

The major source of the increase in the GDP number was export growth, which added 2.7 percentage points to overall GDP. But this is not likely to be sustained as the high US dollar—up by 17 percent against a basket of the currencies of major economies so far this year—hits the sales of major US corporations, especially high-tech companies.

Much of the rise in exports came from the sale of oil and natural gas to Europe as US corporations cashed in on the shortages caused by the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

While US President Biden said the GDP number showed the economy continued to “power forward,” some economists have described it as a mirage. This assertion is backed by reports of growing problems for major tech companies that play a central role in the US economy.

Last week, according to a Financial Times (FT) report, “Microsoft warned… of a marked slowdown in the cloud computing business as large customers pause their spending in the face of a slowing economy.” The article said Microsoft expected revenue from software sales to PC makers to fall more than 30 percent in the current quarter.

As with other companies, Microsoft has been hit by the rise in the dollar, making its products more expensive in international markets, leading to a fall in revenue of $2.3 billion.

Apple has also warned it will have a difficult December quarter as it faces “significant” foreign exchange headwinds. In a conference call last Thursday, finance officer Luca Maestri said the company could be hit with a loss of revenue of around $12 billion because of the effects of the rising dollar.

He said the company expected revenue from the sale of its Mac computers to “decline substantially year-over-year.”

Amazon has said consumer spending is in “uncharted waters” as it downgrades its revenue forecasts. The company’s chief financial officer, Brian Olsavsky, said rising inflation and higher energy costs had led to businesses and consumers reassessing their purchasing power.

Amazon is planning for job cuts with the company becoming “very careful” in its hiring policies.

“We are preparing for what could be a slower growth period. We certainly are looking at our cost structure and areas where we can save money,” he said.

There are also significant signs of a downturn in online advertising on social media. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, last week reported the lowest third quarter growth of revenue since 2013, except for a contraction at the start of the pandemic.

Commenting on the result, Evelyn Mitchel, an analyst at Insider Intelligence, told the FT: “It’s a bad omen for digital advertising at large. This disappointing quarter for Google signifies hard times ahead if market conditions continue to deteriorate.”

Alphabet chief Sundar Pinchai said on a conference call last week that it was a “tough time in the ad market” as the company’s chief financial officer, Ruth Porat, said the strong US dollar has sliced 5 percentage points from revenue growth.

The hardest hit high-tech and social media company is Meta, the owner of Facebook. Besides the problems affecting the other firms, its worsening situation is being compounded by fierce competition from rivals such as Tik Tok and the spending of billions of dollars to create what its owner, Mark Zuckerberg, regards as the next stage of the internet.

He is out to create a so-called metaverse in which people would communicate in a virtual world. But the project has generally been given the thumbs down by the financial markets. As one analyst told the Wall Street Journal: “We’re incredibly frustrated to see expenses balloon with an almost total disregard for investor expectations.”

On Wednesday last week investors wiped off more than $65 billion from Meta’s market capitalisation after it had reported another quarter of falling revenues as investors remained unconvinced that the metaverse project was going to succeed, despite Zuckerberg’s entreaties that they should stay in for the long haul.

Such has been its fall that whereas Meta was in the top 10 companies of the S&P 500 at the start of the year, today it is not even in the top 20.

But the malaise extends more broadly across the high-tech sector where share values, boosted by ultra-low interest rates, are now falling because of the tighter monetary regime being imposed by the Fed.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the total value of the tech-heavy NASDAQ index has fallen by $8 trillion this year putting it on a par with the $5 trillion loss (equivalent to $8.6 trillion in today’s terms) in the years of the so-called tech-wreck 2000–2002.

The interest rate hikes are also creating turbulence and dangers in financial markets. At the end of last week, the WSJ joined other sections of the financial press in warning of the growing problems in the $24 trillion US Treasury market, the basis of the US and global financial system.

These problems centre on liquidity—the ability of traders to easily make large deals without causing major movements. Tight liquidity can set off a panic as happened in March 2020 when, for several days, there were virtually no buyers for US government debt, supposedly the safest financial asset in the world.

The WSJ article noted that while there had not yet been a serious breakdown, “the possibility is far from unthinkable given the tumult this year.”

“Many traders and portfolio managers,” it continued, “warn that such a development would tear through other markets, potentially requiring intervention from the Federal Reserve to prevent a full-blown crisis.”

Andrew Kreicher, a director at Wells Fargo, told the WSJ that liquidity in Treasury bonds recently was the worst he had seen over a sustained period.

“There are so many systems in other asset classes that use Treasury's as a building block. If you have rot in the foundation, the whole house is at risk,” he said.

US to station nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in Australia

Oscar Grenfell

An Australian television program yesterday revealed advanced plans for the US to station B-52 bombers in northern Australia. The deployment of the nuclear-capable bombers, which are crucial to US strike capabilities, marks a significant escalation of the militarisation of Australia, the Indo-Pacific region and the world.

The target is clear. The representatives of pro-war think tanks who spoke on last night’s episode of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Four Corners” program, and those who have commented in the press since, have openly stated that the bombers are being dispatched to prepare for a war with China that would threaten a global nuclear catastrophe.

In other words, even as the US and its allies are continuously escalating their war with Russia over Ukraine, they are transforming the entire Indo-Pacific into a powder keg that could erupt at any point.

B-52 bomber flies over Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. The US is preparing to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in northern Australia. [AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File]

For the strategists of American imperialism, the war that is already underway against Russia is the necessary prelude to war against China, the chief threat to US global dominance. This was spelled out in the latest US National Security Strategy, released last month, which proclaimed a “decisive decade” of “geopolitical conflict between the major powers.” China, it stated, was “the only competitor with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order,” something the US would combat with everything at its disposal.

The stationing of the bombers points to the disastrous implications of this program, driven by the long-term decline of American imperialism and the deepening crisis of the entire global capitalist system.

“Four Corners” revealed that the US is preparing to build a “squadron operations facility” at the Tindal air force base in northern Australia. It will include a vast hangar and logistical facilities that can equip six B-52 bombers, which will be rotated out of the facility, likely being based there during the tropical dry season. The US will construct jet fuel tanks at Tindal and an ammunition base. An Australian “upgrade” of the facility is expanding its runways and other capabilities.

Meanwhile, the US is building eleven giant jet fuel tanks in Darwin.

The US air force confirmed the plans, declaring: “The ability to deploy US Air Force bombers to Australia sends a strong message to adversaries about our ability to project lethal air power.”

“Four Corners” also reported a major expansion of the joint US-Australian Pine Gap facility in Central Australia. The military-intelligence facility plays a central role in the technical planning and waging of US military operations throughout Eurasia. The Nautilus Institute has found that the number of its super-powerful satellite antennas has increased from 33 in 2015 to 45 today. The quantitative expansion has been accompanied by the deployment of increasingly sophisticated equipment.

Becca Wasser, of the hawkish Centre for New American Security, told “Four Corners” that “having bombers that could range and potentially attack mainland China could be very important in sending a signal to China that any of its actions over Taiwan could also expand further.” She blithely declared that the deployment would ensure that Tindal and Darwin, with a population of 150,000 people, would inevitably be a target in any US war between China and Australia.

Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of the Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper, who has close ties to US and Australian military and intelligence circles, wrote this morning that the B-52 deployment heralded a “growing ‘pre-war’ environment,” adding: “The drumbeats of potential war are sounding across the world. This is not alarmist, it’s reality.”

Sheridan bluntly stated: “The B-52 bombers will have the ability to deliver powerful strategic strikes on Chinese bases and assets in the South China Sea, and indeed in the South Pacific should any ever be developed there. They could also fly from the Northern Territory to mainland China itself, unleash a payload and fly back.”

A Chinese spokesman warned this morning that the deployment was part of a broader US drive which “increased regional tensions, seriously undermined regional peace and stability, and may trigger a regional arms race.”

The dispatch of the fighters to northern Australia is part of a US program to diversify its strike capabilities and to align regional allies ever more closely with the war preparations. Northern Australia has been earmarked to play a particularly crucial role. Unlike the US base on Guam, where the B-52s are often located, Australia is out of reach of most conventional Chinese missiles, though not of its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

In justifying the deployment, various pro-war commentators and the “Four Corners” program itself have claimed that the dispatch of the B-52 bombers is a defensive response to the threat of a war triggered by a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

This, however, is a lie. It is the US that has deliberately transformed Taiwan into a major flashpoint of war. Successive US administrations have undermined the decades-long norm, under which the American government and the international community de facto recognised the Chinese Communist Party regime as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan. The US has greatly boosted its arms sales to Taipei, along with military trainers, stoked Taiwanese separatism and conducted one provocative diplomatic visit after another.

This has nothing to do with a newfound concern for “little Taiwan.” Instead, the territory, located just 160 kilometres off the Chinese mainland, is to play a parallel role to Ukraine that the US exploited to provoke war with Russia. The aim is to goad China into an invasion, which would be used as the pretext for open war waged by the US.

The militarisation of northern Australia gives the lie to the claims that the heightened US aggression is a response to the recent developments relating to Taiwan.

In 2011, the then Labor government signed on to the US “pivot to Asia,” a vast military build-up throughout the Asia-Pacific, directed against China. That included the establishment of a new US base in Darwin, which now hosts more than 2,000 marines and other measures integrating Australia into the US war machine.

Under the Pentagon’s “Air-Sea Battle” strategy, sketched out when the “pivot” was launched, Australia and its north is to play a decisive role as a “southern anchor” during war with China. It is to be a launching point for US and allied war planes and the staging ground for imposing a blockade of the key shipping routes in the region, which China is dependent upon for most of its raw materials and trade.

The deployment of the B-52s is a warning that these long-running plans are now being activated.

This, along with the entire US-led program of global war, takes the form of a conspiracy against the population. The plans to dispatch the B-52s have never been debated in the Australian parliament, much less publicly-announced. Instead, they have been hatched in closed-door discussions between the US and Australian governments, militaries and intelligence agencies. They were found by “Four Corners” in US tender documents.

In the case of the B-52s, this secrecy is particularly significant. While the aircraft and other nuclear-capable strikers have previously stopped over in Australia, they have never been based in that country, which is officially a non-nuclear state. Yet, the US, as a matter of policy, refuses to confirm or deny whether any of its nuclear-capable war planes and warships are carrying nuclear payloads.

In other words, Australia’s status as a non-nuclear state has effectively been overturned without any public discussion. Significantly, the project, which appears to have begun under the previous Liberal-National government, is being completed by the current Labor administration.

It is likewise pressing ahead with AUKUS, the militarist alliance with Britain and the US, unveiled in September 2021. Under the pact, Australia is acquiring nuclear-powered submarines and has also been earmarked as a launch site for new era hypersonic missiles.

This militarist program is conducted under a veil of secrecy, in Australia and internationally, because the governments know that workers and young people oppose war and want peace.

Australian Labor government’s industrial relations bill aims to block strikes

Martin Scott

Last Thursday, the federal Labor government’s minister for workplace relations, Tony Burke, introduced a bill that would make repressive changes to Australia’s already draconian anti-strike industrial relations law.

Burke’s claim that the legislation is intended to “get wages moving” is utterly false. The “Secure Jobs, Better Pay” bill is designed to enhance the powers of the pro-business Fair Work Commission (FWC) to intervene in disputes, shut down strikes and impose upon workers the demands of the corporate elite.

Tony Burke holding a newly-printed copy of the “Secure Jobs, Better Pay” bill [Photo: Tony Burke]

The bill is also aimed at expanding trade union coverage over sections of the working class to enable the union bureaucracies to play an even greater role in suppressing workers’ struggles.

The union bureaucrats, whose fortunes are intertwined with finance capital, have enforced decades of attacks on jobs, wages and conditions, especially since the union Accords with Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983–96. But membership has plummeted as a result of these betrayals, leading to ruling-class concerns that the unions’ efficacy as an industrial police force is slipping.

Workers confront soaring increases in the cost of living, only partially reflected in the official inflation rate of 7.3 percent, and at least two more years of real wage cuts, as outlined in the Labor government’s first budget last week. With industrial action already at a level not seen in Australia for almost two decades, the government is seeking to prevent an eruption of working-class unrest.

The bill is a critical component of the broader agenda of Labor and the ruling class to slash jobs, wages and social spending in order to drive up corporate profits, recoup years of massive handouts to big business—accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic—and finance a major escalation in military expenditure in preparation for war with China.

This is reflected in last week’s austerity budget and successive interest rate rises by the Reserve Bank of Australia, aimed at driving up unemployment to push down wages.

A central objective of the bill is “to de-escalate disputes before industrial action is taken and after industrial action has been authorised.” To achieve this, the FWC will be granted greater powers to undermine the extremely limited right of workers to strike over wages and conditions.

Under the bill, after the FWC approves an application from workers for a “protected action” ballot, it will set down a voting period of at least two weeks, during which union and employer representatives must attend a “mediation and conciliation conference.” If a union does not attend, the workers it covers will be legally prohibited from taking industrial action over the dispute.

These conferences “must be conducted in private,” underscoring their purpose as a mechanism for unions and management to negotiate behind the backs of workers to prepare regressive deals stamped with the authority of the industrial court.

Currently, after workers vote to take industrial action over an enterprise agreement, they have 30 days to begin that action before another ballot is required. Once started, the action can continue indefinitely. Under the new bill, workers will have three months in which they can take protected action after a successful ballot. The explanatory memorandum states that the intention of this is to “remove a perverse incentive for employees to take immediate industrial action,” i.e., to give the union bureaucrats more opportunity to delay strikes.

At the end of the three-month period, a new ballot, and therefore another union-management-FWC conference, will be required for industrial action to continue.

The bill will empower the FWC to declare a dispute “intractable,” which would prohibit workers from taking further industrial action and allow the court to determine the contents of a new enterprise agreement.

Multi-employer bargaining is the aspect of the bill that has been the subject of most discussion in the financial press. Three types of multi-employer bargaining are specified in the bill, each with different rules.

One, the “supported bargaining stream,” is an overhaul of the existing, but never used, “low-paid bargaining stream.” It is primarily intended to cover “low-paid industries such as aged care, disability care, and early childhood education.” Unions will be able to ask the FWC to order businesses with “clearly identifiable common interests” to negotiate a single agreement covering workers performing similar roles.

While non-union employee representatives also can apply for workers to be covered by these agreements, the FWC will not authorise “supported bargaining” unless at least one union is involved. This points to the real purpose behind multi-employer bargaining. It is not about improving the wages of highly-exploited workers in the care sector—in which wages are in any case largely determined by government funding—but about expanding the coverage of the unions to serve as an industrial police force.

“Cooperative workplace agreements” will replace existing provisions for multi-employer agreements, with workers still prohibited from taking industrial action. “Single-interest employer agreements” which have mainly covered franchisees, will allow unions or employers to seek FWC approval to negotiate, rather than be required to obtain ministerial approval.

Workers covered by supported bargaining or single-interest employer agreements will be allowed to take industrial action during negotiations, but must give employers five days’ notice, rather than the three currently required.

Some business lobbyists and corporate bosses have decried the changes to multi-employer bargaining, claiming they could set off a wave of industry-wide strikes. Conscious of the increasingly intolerable living and working conditions faced by workers, the ruling elite fears that strikes by highly-exploited workers previously not legally allowed to take industrial action could develop into a broader movement of the working class.

The unions are determined to prevent anything of the sort. Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said the unions “don’t want to see more strikes.” She noted favourably that the bill “adds more red tape” for workers applying to strike.

Workers will be excluded from multi-employer bargaining if they are covered by a union with “a record of repeatedly not complying with the Fair Work Act.” Specifically, this could be used to shut out workers with any court findings against them over the previous 18 months.

This has been described in the media as targeting the supposedly “militant” Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU), but the implications are far broader. This provision will be used by the unions to justify shutting down or limiting industrial action by all workers, whether in relation to multi-employer agreements or not.

The exclusion rule is particularly significant in relation to recent legal action by the New South Wales government, directed against striking workers. The state government has taken the Rail, Tram and Bus Union to court seeking millions of dollars in damages stemming from industrial action this year and has imposed more than $100,000 in fines over “illegal” stoppages by teachers and nurses.

The unions not only defend and enforce these laws, but they also rely on them as a basis upon which to tell workers that a genuine struggle is impossible. The new measures will provide the bureaucrats further ammunition to block strikes.

Business groups have welcomed the bill’s changes to the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) for enterprise agreements, which already does not prevent employers from slashing wages and conditions. The test merely requires that workers will not be worse off than if they were employed under an industrial award setting out the bare minimum wages and conditions permissible in a sector.

The FWC will be able to approve agreements that could leave workers earning less than the award if their circumstances change after the agreement is approved.

Workers could later ask the FWC to reapply the BOOT, meaning they must monitor every roster change, calculate the implications and apply to the FWC for a reassessment. This would take place outside an enterprise bargaining period, so workers would be barred from taking industrial action over such an attack.

Employers will no longer be required to provide workers with a copy of a proposed enterprise agreement seven days before they are asked to vote on it, thus hiding all the details. This will be replaced with a vague requirement for the FWC to be “satisfied” that workers “genuinely agreed” to the offer.

The bill will further tighten the stranglehold of the pro-business FWC. Established by the Rudd Labor government in 2009, the FWC already enforces some of the most draconian anti-strike laws of any advanced capitalist country.

Studies indicate that new Omicron subvariants could cause devastating COVID-19 surge in US

Benjamin Mateus

Over the past month, the United States has seen a steady rise in the prevalence of the dangerous new immune-evading Omicron subvariants of SARS-CoV-2, threatening yet another surge of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths in the coming weeks, and potentially millions more cases of Long COVID.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that the highly immune-evasive BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants increased in prevalence from 11 percent to more than 27 percent in just two weeks, or a doubling time of 10 days. By mid-November, these two subvariants will likely be dominant across the country.

White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. [AP Photo/Susan Walsh]

The anticipated COVID-19 surge will take place amid a flood of pediatric hospitalizations across the country for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and an unusually harsh beginning to the influenza season. The simultaneous surge of these three respiratory airborne pathogens will severely impact health care systems during the winter months, under conditions in which the industry is already on the verge of collapse three years into the COVID-19 pandemic.

While so far the crisis in children’s hospitals has been most acute, the elderly are particularly predisposed to complications with RSV and flu due to declines in their immunity. Among those 65 years and older, RSV leads to 177,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths annually.

The typical flu season causes upwards of 16,000 deaths among adults. However, a severe flu season can be far worse. In 2017-18, the US experienced 41 million flu-related illnesses, 19 million flu-related medical visits, 710,000 flu-related hospitalizations and 52,000 deaths. Data from the CDC for the first four weeks of October shows that outpatient medical visits for flu-like symptoms are two to three times higher than the five-year average baseline.

The exact magnitude of the next surge of COVID-19 is impossible to predict, but a number of recent studies indicate that it could potentially be the third catastrophic winter of the pandemic.

First, a preprint study by Dr. Yunlong Richard Cao and his team at Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center at Peking University, first released last month and updated regularly since then, found that the new Omicron subvariants render ineffective the monoclonal antibody drugs Evusheld and Bebtelovimab. The 9 million immunocompromised Americans eligible for these previously life-saving drugs will now have virtually no added protection against COVID-19.

Furthermore, the same study demonstrated that immunity induced from currently existing vaccines will barely stand a chance in protecting against infection with the latest variants. The researchers procured antibodies from individuals previously vaccinated three times with the Sinovac vaccine who were subsequently infected with the Omicron BA.1 subvariant last winter and tested their serum against the new Omicron subvariants. Roughly 7.5 months after the individuals were infected with BA.1, their antibodies were almost entirely unable to neutralize the BQ.1.1 and XBB subvariants. Even individuals infected with BA.5 this summer showed a similar lack of protection against the new subvariants.

Dr. Cao noted, “Results from mRNA vaccines should have overall higher neutralizing titers. But the immunity waning trend and immune evasion pattern should be highly similar.”

The implication of these results is that the billions of people infected with BA.1 globally last winter, and even many who were just infected with BA.5 this summer, remain at risk of reinfection with the new Omicron subvariants this winter, compounding their risks of hospitalization, death and Long COVID.

Another recent report from the CDC showed that the efficacy of vaccines in protecting against hospitalization continues to erode with each new variant. The study found that after three doses of the monovalent COVID-19 vaccines, vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19 over just a few months, associated hospitalization declined quickly over a few months this year.

During the surge of the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants last winter and early spring, individuals who had been vaccinated within four months of being infected had a VE of 79 percent. During the surge of the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants over the summer, this same figure dropped nearly 20 points to 60 percent. Both figures are much lower than those seen with previous non-Omicron variants.

Significantly, four months post-vaccination, VE fell to 41 percent and 29 percent for the BA.1/2 and BA.4/5 subvariants, respectively. For this group, which now comprises the majority of Americans who last had a booster shot well over four months ago, the CDC authors concluded that “among immunocompetent adults hospitalized … a monovalent booster dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine had limited overall effectiveness against hospitalization caused by currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, likely because of waning immunity.”

They added, “These findings demonstrate the importance of staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccinations through receipt of booster doses, which currently consist of bivalent mRNA vaccines for all eligible adults.”

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 vaccines have been crucial in saving lives. But to continue to ask the population to get their boosters considering the steady decline in their efficacy is a tough pill to swallow.

Certainly, the working class must take these vaccines in order to prevent severe illness and death. But without a public health initiative to eliminate the virus and stop viral evolution, the “forever COVID” policy is becoming increasingly disastrous. The great danger remains that new variants could evolve that dramatically erode the vaccines’ ability to prevent hospitalization, or cause a higher infection fatality ratio (IFR), which would quickly overwhelm hospitals.

Even more disconcerting news has recently emerged about the benefits of the new bivalent COVID-19 booster shots that have been promoted as the latest and greatest. In two recent studies from Columbia and Harvard, researchers found the bivalent vaccines offered no better protection than the original booster based on the ancestral strain of SARS-CoV-2. Dr. David Ho, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia and an author of their study, told CNN, “We see essentially no difference.”

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha quickly sought to counter these findings and continue to promote the bivalent boosters, telling CBS News, “I do think that the protection against infection is going to be better than if you were getting the original prototype booster.” However, he acknowledged that he wasn’t “surprised” by the studies’ findings and offered no data to back-up his claim.

Drawing on studies conducted with the BA.1 subvariant, some scientists have speculated that the BA.5-based booster could potentially cause a “maturation” process in one’s immune system and provide slightly enhanced protection against future variants that descend from BA.5, but this remains to be proven.

The development of the new bivalent booster shots was predicated on warnings made by experts of a severe winter surge. However, without any clinical evidence to inform their decisions, the White House used the last remaining pandemic funds to buy millions of bivalent boosters from Pfizer and Moderna. Since the booster campaign was inaugurated at the beginning of September, less than 10 percent of the US population has availed itself of the vaccines.

One of the most glaring failures of the Biden administration’s response to the pandemic has been its lack of initiative to fund and promote the development of nasal and other vaccines that could potentially provide sterilizing immunity to entirely prevent infection. Since 2020, scientists have been warning about the shortcomings of the current vaccines and the need to explore more viable and enduring treatments to stop viral transmission.

In this regard, a recent study published in Science by Dr. Akiko Iwasaki and her team from the immunology department at Yale University bears mentioning. They showed that in animal models who received intranasal boosting after receiving systemic (a shot in the arm) vaccination, what they term “Prime and Spike,” subjects had a persistent and significant level of immunity against infection, severe disease and death.

The authors wrote, “We find that an intranasal unadjuvanted spike booster can be administered months out from primary immunization and that it offers comparable systemic neutralizing antibody booster responses to intramuscular mRNA boost. … [We] find that prime and spike leads to durable responses with protective vaccine efficacy 118 days from the initiation of vaccination.” However, funding to test these concepts in human trials is still lacking.

As the US enters another deadly winter of the pandemic, New York has once again become the bellwether for the rest of the country. The BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants now make up more than 40 percent of all variants in the state. Hospitalization rates are trending upwards rapidly, leading the New York State Department of Health to issue a warning on the “triple threat” posed by COVID-19, seasonal flu and RSV with hospital capacity in some regions reaching their limits.