Residuals, streaming and the class assault against writers and actors

Gabriel Black

A “dual strike” of writers and actors has effectively halted the US entertainment industry, and with it a large portion of global movie and television production. On July 14, some 65,000 actors, members of the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), joined 10,000 writers from the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who have been striking since May 2. This is the first combined strike of writers and actors since 1960.

A militant, determined mood prevails among the strikers. In the lead-up to the initial July 1 deadline, thousands of actors—including prominent figures—signed a sharp open letter to the SAG-AFTRA leadership warning that actors needed nothing short of a “transformative deal.”

The letter told the union leadership, “We hope you’ve heard the message from us: This is an unprecedented inflection point in our industry, and what might be considered a good deal in any other years is simply not enough… We feel that our wages, our craft, our creative freedom, and the power of our union have all been undermined in the last decade.”

The actors were speaking not just for themselves, but large numbers of workers who similarly feel they are at an “inflection point,” following years of attack on their jobs and livelihoods.

Strikers July 14 in New York City

In only a week, 340,000 UPS workers could go on strike over low pay and insufficient hours. In seven weeks, the contract expires for 170,000 autoworkers in the US and Canada. Autoworkers are fighting against the tier system, plant closures and job cuts imposed on them by the company and the unions, the UAW and Unifor.

In taking up what many entertainment workers rightfully see as a historic, even “existential” struggle against the giant firms such as Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, Amazon and the rest, it is critical that actors and writers understand the fundamental driving forces behind the assault on their profession.

Yes, greed flourishes in entertainment. Just ten individuals—the heads of the major entertainment companies—made over $2 billion in the last five years, according to CNBC. The ‘average’ American, making $55,000 a year, would have to work over 3,600 years to match these overlords’ pay. While Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, froths at the mouth over the “very disturbing… unrealistic” strike of actors, he takes home almost $200 million every five years.

However, greed is not the root cause of the assault underway on the livelihood of actors and writers. The entertainment companies’ ferocious competition for “eyeballs” and profit is driven not primarily by the psychologies of those involved. Behind this, there is the developing crisis, not just of the entertainment industry, but of the capitalist economy as a whole.

Residuals

At the center of the writers and actors’ strike is a battle over residual payments from streaming.

Residuals refer to the pay actors, writers and some other “creative” workers receive in addition to their base pay. These are longer-term payments to actors, writers and others who worked on films and television shows, as Fortune explains, “for reruns and other airings after the initial release. … Traditionally, actors and writers are paid for each time a show runs on broadcast or cable television, or when someone buys a DVD, a Blu-ray disc or (long ago) a VHS tape.”

The payments, “which decline over time, are pegged to several factors including the length of a movie or show, the size of a role, the budget of a production, and where the film or show is offered. While streaming companies technically pay residuals, both unions and their members say the amounts and pay timelines leave actors and writers with a pittance of what they once received—and those who were once paid for reruns of network shows often get nothing now.”

Because most actors and writers spend the majority of their time auditioning, pitching, and struggling to get work, it is extremely rare to be continuously employed in the industry. The vast majority of actors in SAG-AFTRA struggle to make the $26,470 required to be eligible for the union health care plan. Before COVID it was less than 20 percent of the membership! Variety, in May, estimated that only 5-15 percent of actors qualified.

Residuals were adopted in 1960 by SAG as a means to provide a steadier form of income for so-called “working actors.” Working actors are not “A-list” stars making huge amounts, or even “B-list” celebrities. The term refers to the lesser-known actors taking relatively smaller parts in movies and television series, who are nonetheless essential to the continuation of the industry. In SAG-AFTRA, there are some thousands of such “working actors”—neither big stars nor unsuccessful–who are trying to cobble together a living in the industry. Many of them have to work outside of the profession to live.

In the last dual strike of actors and writers, in 1960, SAG won residuals for its membership. However, the leadership of the union (then under future President Ronald Reagan) gave up all claims to residuals for previous content.

For decades, residuals have been a steady source of income for actors in between jobs. In the 2008 contract struggle, residuals became a major issue when it came to streaming. The entertainment companies tried to push for no residuals for streaming. It was settled that actors would get some residuals for streaming but that it would be substantially less than television; in effect the issue was pushed off towards a later date. The WGA claimed it had reached a “historic” deal. Everything that is happening now proves that was a lie.

Another issue in the payment of streaming residuals arises from its dependence on the viewership of a  particular series or film. However, the streaming companies refuse to share viewership data, leaving workers in the dark as to how pay is fully calculated.

Phil, a writer the WSWS interviewed on the picket line, remarked that “back in the day, you know, once you were off a show, you may not work for a long time, but writers could live on their residuals.” Today, though “they’re minuscule.”

Shana, an actress we spoke to, explained that “residuals keeps us alive… it’s kind of like being a waiter and you get paid barely anything and then they give you a tip, you live on tips, that’s our residuals.” She added they were essential to making the cut for healthcare when you did not have work.

The issue of residuals has become more widely understood in the last few weeks, especially following a viral TikTok video showing actress Kimiko Glenn’s measly $27.30 in quarterly residuals from Netflix. She appeared in 45 episodes of the hit series Orange Is the New Black. The show was instrumental in Netflix’s growth as an original content creator. Major shareholders and executives have made a killing as a result, the actors almost nothing.

Streaming

The film and television companies, including the new tech streaming companies (Amazon and Apple), are using the historic shift away from traditional film and television to carry out a massive pay cut at the expense of their workforce, by lowering residuals and pay generally. In effect, the entertainment companies are dealing with their own mounting problems by foisting the difficulties onto their workforce, trying to make them poorer and more disposable.

Netflix began the first major streaming subscriber service in 2007. This was followed by Hulu (2010), Prime Video (2011), Disney Plus (2019), HBO Max (2020) and several others. In 2019, global subscriptions stood at 642 million. Within a year, subscriptions had increased to 1.1 billion, partially driven by the pandemic. By 2025, global subscriptions are expected to climb to 1.6 billion.

The surge in streaming subscriptions reflects, first and foremost, the decline of traditional TV and cable use worldwide. More and more, people use their laptops or televisions to log in to streaming services, not traditional television. This is particularly the case with younger generations.

But streaming growth is also driven by the proliferation of such services. Globally there are now more than 200 major streaming services, including many new platforms oriented towards specific countries and regions. Most people in the US and Europe have probably never heard of Shahid, Canal Plus, iQIYI or Showmax, but these are popular streaming services in Africa, Asia, and other regions in the developing world.

Netflix, once the only major service, now faces intense competition. Not just in the distribution of films and television, but in its production too. This is reflected in the relative plateauing of Netflix’s subscriber basis at around 220 million subscribers in 2021, after years of rapid growth. More than two-thirds of Netflix subscribers reside outside the US.

A ferocious zero-sum game has emerged among the major streaming services. Netflix has begun a “password-sharing crackdown,” which in its most recent earnings report is credited for adding 5.9 million viewers. But still, lower than expected revenues caused the company’s stock to plummet by more than 20 percent over the past week.

In regard to Netflix’s sliding stock price, ABC News commented that “the reaction on Wall Street marks the latest indication of a profound shift in investor priorities away from subscriber growth and toward the bottom line, which holds implications for striking writers and actors.”

The entertainment industry and the global economic crisis

A major factor influencing this “profound shift… toward the bottom line” is the broader crisis of the capitalist economy. Following decades of growth, the US, Europe and the other major capitalist countries now face a future of stagnation, intensifying competition and worker rebellion.

Competition rages in every industry, from auto, tech and pharmaceuticals to entertainment. Only a few major companies now dominate each industry, running massive vertically and horizontally integrated conglomerates. Thin margins ensure that only the largest players survive.

The rapid rise of interest rates over the last year has also taken away the seemingly endless stream of cheap credit major companies relied on for years. This reversal in monetary policy has facilitated this shift from corporate growth to austerity typified by Netflix.

The net result of all these changes is an intensified assault by the ruling class against workers.

Left and right, companies are putting pressure on wages and benefits. Healthcare and retirement plans are being slashed, or furtively degraded. Pay, especially when adjusted for inflation, is being lowered.

Actors are not some special section of the workforce—whatever the peculiarities of their profession. Their deteriorating conditions reflect a global trend. The move to substantially reduce their pay and residuals is part of this and can only be combated on the same terms, as a struggle against capitalist exploitation.

The growth of the internet and other competition

A final, major source of difficulty for the movie and television industry is the vast expansion of other forms of entertainment content that eat into and erode its traditional viewership.

Twenty-five years ago, the internet was not yet widespread. While home videos existed, they were clunky affairs largely accessible only to the well-to-do. Social media had not really begun, and phones were still relatively primitive devices.

Today, the “entertainment industry” is transformed. Access to the internet provides a portal to an endless stream of free content, from websites to discussion forums, to social media, to music, to videos and games.

These sites, to the extent that they are monetized, largely operate on the basis of small amounts of advertising revenue. Facebook, Google and Twitter can all, in a sense, be seen as entertainment companies. While some of them directly invest money in entertainment production (Google), they are all purveyors of entertainment, taking away viewers from film and television. What is more, most of the ‘entertainment’ that exists on social media—on YouTube, for example—is made by the users for free.

According to Pew Research, today one in five teenagers are “almost constantly on YouTube” throughout the day. Another 41 percent of teens watch YouTube several times a day.

Gaming is also another major competitor that has exploded over the last 25 years, surpassing film and television. Since 2018 alone the global gaming industry has grown from $131 billion to $227 billion in revenue. In contrast, the global film and television industry was worth $94 billion in 2022. In fact, many actors, once working exclusively in film and television, increasingly find themselves doing voice acting for video games. These contracts, however, pay significantly less, and almost never have residuals.

Collectively, the surging use of the internet, free video streaming platforms like YouTube and TikTok, social media platforms and videos games have cut into the relative power of television and film in the overall entertainment industry. As the availability of free content grows and grows (both through amateur creations and older, more easily accessed material), the competition between the remaining corporate producers of entertainment intensifies.

Resisting the class assault on actors and writers

The entertainment industry is a pressure-cooker. Beset by problems and intensifying competitive pressures, the Wall Street backers of the major entertainment companies demand ruthless cuts to enforce the “bottom line.”

Actors and writers are no more immune than anyone else to the vagaries of the global economy, where the same Wall Street players order giant multinational corporations to enforce cuts to living standards to preserve profits.

Though unique in some regards, the entertainment industry is beset by the same woes of competition and austerity that characterize capitalism as a whole today. The battle being fought by actors and writers, in this sense, is not just a local skirmish, but a fight against banks, corporations and hedge funds that span the world, influencing every industry. It is a global fight of workers as a whole against the ruling financial and corporate class.

Most Australians unable to afford an unexpected major expense as cost of living crisis deepens

Vicki Mylonas

Fifty-one percent of Australians would struggle financially if they had to cover the costs of an unexpected major expense, according to recent polling conducted for Nine media. Of the more than 1,600 people surveyed, 40 percent believe the economy will get worse over the next year.

Unemployed workers registering to receive social welfare outside Centrelink office in Sydney in 2020.

The percentage of Australians who would struggle to cover unexpected costs, such as the repair of a car, or the replacement of major household appliances, has in fact increased by 10 points since a previous poll in February. Among low-income earners, the figures are higher, with 64 percent unable to cover a sudden expense, but the survey showed that 49 percent of respondents on medium incomes and 46 percent of those earning higher incomes share similar concerns.

Workers confront economic pressure on multiple fronts—interest rate hikes, growing housing costs, and surging inflation in the price of essentials, such as utilities and groceries.

Over the past year, across Australia’s capital cities, average house rents have increased 11.5 percent, while apartment prices have soared more than 26 percent.

The cost of living is increasing at a far higher rate than wages, with low-paid workers particularly affected. The official inflation rate for the 12 months ending in March was 7 percent, while the Wage Price Index increased by just 3.7 percent over the same period.

As a result, increasing numbers of workers are having to rely on credit cards for ordinary bills. More and more Australians are falling behind on debt repayments, with one in six struggling to pay off credit card debt, according to credit reporting agency Illion. Over the past year, there has been a 5 percent increase in “delinquent” home loans, i.e., those with payments more than 30 days overdue. Across the country, savings account balances have fallen by at least 40 percent since October last year.

Electricity and gas bills are soaring. At the start of July, many customers were hit with sudden increases of 50 percent or more in the price of electricity. At the same time, energy companies are recording massive profits.

The Commonwealth Bank’s Household Spending Intentions index for June showed an overall month-on-month decline of 1.7 percent in customers’ planned expenditure. While a 26.2 percent decline in home buying plans was the main contributor, the report also noted a 5.6 percent drop on health and fitness, 5.4 percent on entertainment and 2.5 percent on travel.

While there has been a significant reduction in “discretionary” spending, recently leaked data from major supermarket chain Coles confirm that Australians are now cutting back on cleaning products and other basic essentials. This includes a 33 percent drop in spending on bath soap and body wash, as workers reduce their consumption or opt for cheaper brands.

But this increasingly frugal and cautious spending has not hurt supermarket chain’s bottom line. In the second half of 2022, Coles increased its gross profit margin by 0.43 percentage points to 26.5 percent and recorded a 10.6 percent rise in before-tax earnings to $991 million.

Other retailers are also reporting a downturn in customer spending. Discount department store chain Best & Less declared recently that sales in May and June were 11.7 percent lower than the same period last year. According to the Australian Financial Review, sales in the last week of May were 20 percent lower than in 2022 for Premier Investments clothing and stationery businesses, which include Smiggle and Just Jeans.

The growing financial pressure has also led to an increase in the number of people relying on charitable organisations for basic groceries. Around one million people each month use Foodbank Australia, the country’s largest provider of food relief. For some, it is a matter of starving or not starving, even for those with paid work. Some 54 percent of food-insecure households have at least one person employed.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has recorded an increase of 19,000 multiple job-holders since the December quarter, with one in fifteen Australians holding more than one job. This is the result of decades of stagnant or declining wages and the destruction of full-time jobs, starting with the federal Labor governments of the 1980s and 90s and aided by the corporatised trade unions.

The cost of living crisis has seen a surge in calls to organisations such as Lifeline, a suicide prevention service, with research showing that individuals confronted with financial stress are more likely to experience psychological issues such as depression.

In the face of this mounting social crisis, the federal Labor government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, delivered a Budget in May that offered only sham relief, including one-off rebates for power bills and an insulting $40 per fortnight increase in welfare payments. It was, all in all, an offensive against the working class, with cuts to social spending such as health and education and vast sums set aside for military expansion and tax cuts for the wealthy.

Past promises of rising wages and a “better future” are a distant memory, with workers now being told to make sacrifices and instructed that there are hard days to come. Labor governments at the state and federal level are imposing real wage cuts throughout the public sector, while the Albanese government recently backed the Fair Work Commission’s decision to slash the real wages of 2.5 million low-income workers.

In lockstep with Labor, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), the country’s central bank, has lifted interest rates 12 times since May 2022 and is warning of further increases. This is placing even more pressure on working-class households, with average monthly mortgage repayments already up by $1,200. While RBA governor Philip Lowe has acknowledged that wage growth is not the source of inflation, it is workers that are being forced to pay the price.

In fact, the RBA and the federal Labor government share the same goal—driving down wages and increasing unemployment, even if means crashing the economy.

Netanyahu’s coalition rams through judicial coup law in Israel despite largest ever protest movement

Jean Shaoul

On Monday, just before the Knesset’s summer recess, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, of his right-wing Likud Party, ultra-religious parties and fascist parties based on settlers on the West Bank, rammed through the first in a series of laws aimed at curtailing the powers of the Supreme Court.

The bill passed 64-0 after the opposition boycotted the vote in protest and stormed out of the chamber chanting “shame.” There are 56 members in the various opposition parties, so Netanyahu’s bid for absolute power by ending judicial oversight of his government is based on a narrow majority.

The law, enacted as a Basic Law that is the nearest Israel has to a constitution, ends the Court’s power to strike down the decisions of elected officials on the grounds of “unreasonableness,” by granting the Knesset the power to overturn the Court’s ruling with a simple majority.

Demonstrators block the traffic on a highway crossing the city during a protest against Netanyahu's dictatorial measures aimed at the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Monday, July 24, 2023. [AP Photo/ Oded Balilty]

It will enable Netanyahu to reappoint his key ally, Shas party leader Aryeh Deri, as head of the Health and Interior Ministries, an action the Supreme Court overturned as being “unreasonable” due to Deri’s multiple convictions for fraud, bribery and tax evasion, as well as his pledge as part of a plea bargain not to seek public office again.

Even more importantly, the legislation will enable Netanyahu to press ahead with other dictatorial measures secure in the knowledge that the Court—the only state institution that is able to hold Israel’s single-chamber parliament to account and which his right-wing cabal does not control—will be unable to overturn them. It would also facilitate legal moves that would enable Netanyahu, currently on trial on corruption charges that could put him behind bars for years, to evade conviction or see his case dismissed.

Netanyahu’s fascistic coalition partners are openly bragging about their power to do whatever they like. They have long railed against the Court for its occasional restrictions on the settler outposts, deemed illegal even under Israeli law. Speaking to reporters after the bill became law, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler leader who heads the fascistic Jewish Power, said the passage of the law was “only the beginning” and that “There are many more laws we need to pass as part of the judicial overhaul.”

Netanyahu has pledged to defy international law and annex the West Bank, illegally occupied by Israel since the 1967 war with its Arab neighbours. This land seizure is in pursuit of his coalition’s twin aims of establishing a Jewish-supremacist state in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and increasing the power of the religious authorities over everyday life.  

Far-right ministers have called for laws banning Arab parties from participating in elections and discriminating against Israel’s own Palestinian citizens, as well as gay and non-religious people, and enforcing gender separation in public places. Their next step is legislation granting the government greater power in appointing the judiciary.

Monday’s passage of the “reasonableness override” law took place in the face of the largest demonstrations on Saturday and Sunday that Israel has ever seen, a movement that Netanyahu says is endangering Israel’s democratic system.

Demonstrators block the traffic on a highway crossing the city during a protest against Netanyahu's dictatorial measures aimed at the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Monday, July 24, 2023. [AP Photo/ Oded Balilty]

Tens of thousands took part in a five-day march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in scorching heat to protest outside the Knesset on Saturday, while more than 100,000 people flocked to Tel Aviv on Saturday evening for the 29th consecutive week of demonstrations, and similar numbers took part in rallies in towns and cities across the country. Israel’s doctors went on a two-hour strike in protest, while tens of thousands of protesters shut down roads and infrastructure, sparking fears of violent confrontations between protesters and the government’s far-right supporters.

More than 10,000 army reservists—including hundreds of air force pilots, cyber warfare experts, and commanders of elite units upon which the IDF depends—have announced they will refuse to serve if the judicial coup goes ahead, saying they are unwilling to continue risking their lives for a government that is no longer democratic. Netanyahu has lambasted them for “crossing a red line” when Israel faces external threats and depends upon a reservist army. Security and defence officials have written to the government warning that this could have a significant impact on the air force and its operational readiness.

The unprecedented opposition to the Netanyahu government’s abandonment of bourgeois-democratic norms is fueled as well by the widespread economic hardships produced by the soaring cost of living, including the sky-high cost of housing, as well as deepening concerns over failing public services, such as education, health and transport, and the increasing role of ultra-orthodox religious groups over everyday life. No less important are the deep fears that the US-NATO-led war in Ukraine against Russia will escalate into a far broader conflagration, even as the government stokes war against the Palestinians, Iran and its allies in the region.

It is expected that the Supreme Court will review the legislation and strike it down, leading to a constitutional showdown with the government and a broader political crisis that commentators fear could escalate into civil war.

The Movement for Quality Government argues that the law is unconstitutional, as “it fundamentally changes the basic structure of Israeli parliamentary democracy and the nature of the regime, while de facto abolishing the judiciary and seriously damaging the delicate fabric of the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances in the State of Israel.” It has petitioned the Court to rule against the law, saying, “The government of destruction has raised its malicious hand against the State of Israel; now it’s the Supreme Court’s turn to step up and prevent this legislation.”

Mass rallies against the bill continued on Monday, with protesters blocking roads, to which the police responded by using water cannon to disperse them and arresting at least 20 people. Israel’s Medical Association has announced a 24-hour hospital strike for Tuesday.

The self-proclaimed opposition leaders, including former ministers, generals and security and intelligence officials, many of whom have served under Netanyahu, have pledged to continue the anti-government demonstrations and rallies. They have no fundamental policy differences with the government, but fear that Netanyahu is going too far in establishing a personalist dictatorship based on fascist and ultra-religious groups, which will destabilize the country politically and socially. Israel is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with enormous wealth accumulated by a handful of super-rich families, while most Israeli workers, Jewish and Arab alike, struggle to survive.

Like former Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Defence Minister Benny Gantz, they are no less committed than Israel’s far-right government to the Zionist state and its oppression of the Palestinian people. They have drowned the mass rallies in a sea of Israeli flags and refused to make any appeal to Israel’s Palestinian citizens, much less to the Palestinians in the occupied territories, who have long suffered under Israel’s savage military repression and brazen vigilante and settler violence—all upheld by the Supreme Court and reinforced by the protest “leaders” when they were in office.

These opposition leaders sought to “negotiate” with Netanyahu—fruitlessly as it turned out--after he agreed to “pause” the legislation at the end of March in the face of the largest outpouring of popular opposition in Israel’s history, which included massive street protests and a full-scale walkout by large sections of the Israeli working class.

Lapid and Gantz duly fell in line and gave Netanyahu their full-throated support when he used the “pause” to mount a series of criminal provocations against the Palestinians in the West Bank, which Israel has illegally occupied for 56 years. They also backed his military operations against Iran, Syria and Lebanon, whose aim was to deflect tensions outwards and create a sense of national unity.

Now Lapid has promised to petition the High Court against the new law, calling it an abuse of power, while urging military reservists to wait before pulling out of military service, saying, “Don’t stop serving, while we still don’t know the High Court of Justice’s ruling.”

The working class has the power to bring down Netanyahu’s far-right coalition through a general strike, which would have the support of the majority of the Israeli population. However, a major obstacle has been the corporatist Histadrut trade union federation that has from its establishment been committed to the Zionist project. It has refused to mobilise its members against the government, pushing frantically for some kind of “mediation” or compromise. The only time in the last seven months of mass weekly protests that Histadrut chief Arnon Bar-David called a general strike was in response to Netanyahu’s sacking of his defence minister Yoav Gallant after Gallant had called on him to abandon the plan to neuter the judiciary because the political conflict over it was splitting the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

Now Bar-David, who is coming under increasing pressure to call a strike, is preparing a token stoppage to allow his members to let off steam. He declared, “From this moment on any unilateral advancement of the reform will have grave consequences, up to and including a full strike” of workers’ unions throughout the country. No trust can be placed in this faithful servant of the Israeli bourgeoisie.

Ukrainian drone strikes target Moscow as fighting intensifies in Black Sea region

Clara Weiss

Early Monday morning local time, Ukrainian forces carried out drone strikes on Moscow, including on a building affiliated with the Ministry of Defense. No casualties were reported. Ukrainian officials boasted of their responsibility for the drone strikes.  

The Russian Ministry of Defense on Monday also accused Ukraine of launching 17 drones on the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea, which Russia annexed in 2014. The Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea with the Russian mainland, was attacked by Ukraine last Monday.

Shortly after the attack on the Kerch Bridge, Russia announced its withdrawal from a deal that had been brokered by the United Nations and Turkey between Moscow and Kiev to ensure grain shipments from Ukraine through the Black Sea to international markets. Russia and Ukraine both count among the world’s largest agricultural producers, supplying above all countries in Africa and Asia.

The agreement provided for monitored Ukrainian grain supplies via a planned route through the Black Sea, large portions of which are controlled by the Russian navy and mined by both Russia and Ukraine.

The Kremlin said it withdrew because the obligations toward Russia as part of the deal had not been met. At the same time, Moscow indicated that Russia would consider rejoining the deal if these obligations were fulfilled and if financial sanctions on the Russian Agricultural Bank were lifted. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that the grain deal had “lost its meaning” and assured African countries that Russia could make up for Ukrainian grain supplies.

Following the collapse of the deal, the Russian Ministry of Defense declared it would impose a “blockade” on Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea and that, from July 20 onward, it would consider any foreign ship seeking to enter Ukrainian Black Sea ports a legitimate target. 

The Zelensky government has insisted that it would continue grain shipments regardless.

In response, Russia has launched a series of strikes on Ukrainian port cities. Over the past week, Russia launched several missile strikes on Odessa, a strategic port city on the shores of the Black Sea. Missile strikes have also hit the ports in Nikolaev and Chernomorsk. Further strikes since have hit Reni and Izmail, two port cities on the Danube River, which flows into the Black Sea. Russian media reports suggest that a number of both grain and ammunition depots were destroyed in those strikes. The Ukrainian military has confirmed that the grain depot of the Odessa port was destroyed. 

Romania, a NATO member on the Black Sea, has declared that it would make its Constanta port on the Danube River available to Ukraine for additional shipments until mid-August.

In addition to its role in the global food supply, the Black Sea is of fundamental geostrategic significance to both the imperialist powers and to Russia, as well as countries like Turkey. The Black Sea forms a bridge between Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Russia and the resource-rich Caucasus and Middle East. In a 2021 webinar by the hawkish Washington D.C.-based think tank Atlantic Council, Alton Buland, the director for European policy at the US Department of Defense, described the Black Sea as “Russia’s geostrategic center of gravity” and its “gateway south, the gateway to the Middle East [and] … the gateway to Asia.” 

Because of the immense significance of the Black Sea for Russia, the country’s encirclement by the imperialist powers since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 has centrally involved the incorporation of most countries bordering the Black Sea into NATO. Apart from Russia, the only non-NATO member states on the Black Sea are Georgia and Ukraine, which is heavily supplied by NATO weapons and integrated into NATO’s war machine.

The escalating fighting in the Black Sea region also has significant implications for Turkey, which so far has tried to maintain a precarious balancing act between Russia and NATO in the conflict. Over the years, the Erdogan government has developed extensive military ties with Ukraine, and Turkey has never recognized Crimea and the waters off the peninsula as part of Russia. Ankara also recently dropped its previous opposition to Swedish membership in NATO and declared that Ukraine “deserves” NATO membership.

However, Turkey has not aggressively sided with NATO in the conflict and continues to maintain close economic ties with Russia. Erdogan has announced that he would be speaking with Putin in an effort to rescue the grain deal. 

In the wake of the collapse of the grain deal, retired Admiral Cem Gürdeniz declared that conflicts over the grain deal could end Turkey’s policy of “active neutrality” in the Black Sea, i.e., potentially trigger Turkey’s direct military involvement in the conflict. He warned that Turkey would commit “geopolitical suicide” if Ankara were to allow for Ukrainian grain shipments through its straits in the Black Sea, in opposition to Russia.

A meeting between the newly created NATO-Ukraine Council is scheduled for Wednesday to discuss the situation in the Black Sea. 

The escalation of the conflict between Russia and NATO in the Black Sea region began just days after the NATO summit in Vilnius concluded in mid-July. Held amidst the debacle of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which is taking a tremendous human toll and has cost tens of billions of dollars without resulting in any serious military gains, the summit was focused on discussing plans for global conflict in a new imperialist redivision of the world, including an expansion of the war against Russia.

In addition to the infighting in the Black Sea region, the summit has also been followed by growing tensions between Russia and Poland. In the lead-up to the Vilnius summit, former NATO General Secretary Anders Rasmussen had raised the prospect that countries like Poland and the Baltic states might “engage even stronger … maybe including the possibility of troops on the ground.”

On Friday, in a meeting with his national security council, Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the prospect of a direct military conflict with Poland. Commenting on reports that Poland is planning to deploy a newly founded Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Corps (LITPOLUKRCORPS) to West Ukraine, Putin said that such a deployment would mark the beginning of a Polish “occupation of West Ukraine” and that Russia would respond militarily.

In a meeting with Putin on Sunday and Monday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko reportedly showed Putin a map of Polish troop deployments to just 40 kilometers off the Belarusian border city of Brest. In a press conference, Lukashenko hinted that troops of the mercenary leader Evgeny Prigozhin, who launched an insurrection a month ago, are now stationed in Belarus and could be deployed in such a conflict. The Wagner troops were, in Lukashenko’s words, “in a bad mood” and eager “to go on an excursion” to Poland. Lukashenko then said that he was still holding them back and urged Putin to do the same.  

In the weeks following the coup attempt, which Prigozhin launched with an open appeal to pro-NATO forces within the Russian oligarchy and state, Prigozhin and Wagner have effectively been given carte blanche. Neither Prigozhin nor his mercenaries have faced criminal charges, and Putin met with 35 Wagner commanders, including Prigozhin, just five days after the coup attempt.

In an indication of ongoing conflicts within the Russian military and state apparatus, the Kremlin on Friday arrested Igor Strelkov (Girkin), a well-known ultranationalist and longtime separatist leader in East Ukraine, charging him with “extremism” based on allegations of a former Wagner employee. Strelkov denounced Prigozhin’s coup attempt as treason but has also long criticized Putin’s conduct of the war, demanding that the president enact a mass mobilization. Most recently, Strelkov attacked Putin as a “nonentity,” stating, “the country will not survive another six years under the rule of that cowardly mediocrity.”

The summer surge of COVID infections is accelerating across the United States

Benjamin Mateus

Even with the extreme scarcity of available data, there is sufficient information from the limited reporting on levels of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater to conclude a summer surge in COVID infections is well under way in the United States. It began even before mid-May, when President Joe Biden terminated the national COVID emergency response, effectively turning out all the lights on any direct measurement of the state of the pandemic. 

As shown by the CDC graph below, in April 2023 levels of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater began to rise steadily, an indirect indicator of community-level spread. Over the month of June, there was a more than 60 percent rise in wastewater levels of the virus, with more than 1,300 sites participating in providing the public health agency with data. 

It is worrisome however that in the last two weeks of July there has been a precipitous drop in the number of sites reporting these figures (a 22 percent decline) with a corresponding blunting of the SARS-CoV-2 levels reported. Although the CDC explained that this is a normal lag and data would be added retroactively, given the agency’s previous lack of transparency, such assurances cannot be taken as read. 

Percent of sites in each percent change category over time, United States. [Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

For instance, a similar phenomenon occurred in late December 2022 when there was a precipitous drop in SARS-CoV-2 wastewater levels with a corresponding drop in the number of sites reporting, amid an ongoing winter surge of infections. 

The CDC blamed the Christmas holiday season for the aberration, but this was completely irresponsible. Precisely when a massive surge in cases was under way, the necessary data to “inform the public” was conveniently unavailable. There was a huge drop in the virus level, but that is likely due to the sites that contribute most, in metropolitan areas, going dark.

It would not be surprising to see this effective blackout repeated, so that in the next few weeks we might hear the CDC claim that the summer break led to a decline in participating facilities, hiding the advance of another surge.

If one were to extrapolate the end of June projections into July, they suggest not only has the peak in cases not been reached, but that it will match or exceed the level of COVID in previous winter and summer peaks. Data from Biobot Analytics, which is considered more reliable than the limited CDC reporting, confirms the ongoing surge in wastewater coronavirus right up to the present. 

Biobot explained that they use statistical techniques that adjust for dilution and population size and, as wastewater-based epidemiology advances, they will adjust to account for the technical factors and introduce “the concept of effective concentration as a transparent and future-proof approach” that will ensure the data reliably reflects trends in the population-wide COVID-19 burden.”

As Biobot noted, the current epicenters for the summer 2023 COVID surge are in the Northeast and South, where in conjunction with the rise in wastewater virus levels, the heat wave and the air pollution from the Canadian forest fires have driven people indoors. In California, Los Angeles has recently reported a rise in COVID cases although their figures, as they note, represent only a fraction of actual COVID cases, suggesting the summer COVID wave is just beginning in the second largest US city.

The reliance by the CDC on wastewater surveillance underscores the reality that such indicators lack any real-time value, are prone to manipulation and provide little clinical guidance to direct local public health authorities and health systems. The agency uses wastewater tracking to inure the population against the threat posed by COVID or any other pathogen, while maintaining the farce that the national public health edifice is functioning to protect the population, although hardly anyone believes that any more.

As data scientist and modeler JWeiland noted on his Twitter social media account, the current wastewater SARS-CoV-2 levels correspond to an estimated daily infection rate of more than 310,000 or a ratio of one in every 1,060 people becoming infected every day and at least one percent of the population currently infected. Irrespective of the current low fatality rate which is still higher than the flu and could skyrocket should viral evolution produce a more deadly variant, as it has in the past, one in 10 people infected with Omicron sub-variants develop Long COVID, regardless of disease severity or age. 

US COVID Projections July 18, 2023. [Photo by J. Weiland]

As Dr. Marc Sala of Northwestern University Medicine recently said, “You will have many patients come to us still in good numbers to fill up our clinic with maybe the third, fourth, fifth infection and now having finally developed post-COVID syndrome … with symptoms that are enough to be disabling to their lives as previously known.” Although these patients are filling up hospitals and ICUs as in the past, the long-term implications are even worse. Long COVID is already the third leading cause of neurological disorders.

In children, the lingering effects after a COVID infection can include various neurocognitive complaints like loss of smell, fatigue, and brain fog. These lead to the inability to think or remember clearly. More serious signs include atrophy of the brain’s grey matter, which can be associated with cognitive dysfunction and symptoms like anxiety and depression. These findings have been repeated internationally and will have long-lasting consequences and harken back to the lie perpetrated during the first years of the pandemic that children are immune to the ravages of the disease.

Nonetheless, the current surge has finally provided the first clinical glimpse of its impact on the national arena despite the very limited surveillance capacity. Emergency room visits climbed 7.1 percent compared to the previous week. The test positivity rate, which must be considered flawed data due to extremely limited numbers actually being reported, is up a half-percent to 6.3, though it is higher in areas corresponding to the highest wastewater metrics. And according to Weiland’s modeling, COVID hospital admissions may triple by the end of August.

Despite all this, there is no urgency on the part of the Biden administration to heed the data, as they prefer to tell the country to forget about the coronavirus. Meanwhile, they are amply briefed on the state of these pathogens and take measure to employ every means possible to protect themselves, including using frequent testing, as Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre admitted last week.

A reporter found that a COVID-positive delegation from Israel had recently visited the White House, and asked whether Biden had been potentially exposed. Jean-Pierre replied, “As you know we have testing protocols whenever someone meets with the president. So, I can tell you that anyone that meets with the president gets tested. I do. We all do.”

As experience at the meeting of the world’s elites at Davos, Switzerland, had shown, no expense or technology is spared to protect the wealthiest. Meanwhile, any talk of future COVID vaccines for the mass of the population has assumed a rhetorical character. Only 17 percent of the US population has received the updated “bivalent” boosters, meaning population immunity to any of the subvariants is essentially negligible. And rather than bringing attention to the current surge and moving to vaccinate the immunocompromised and the elderly, the shift to a newer monovalent COVID vaccine for the fall using the XBB subvariant is moving at a snail’s pace. 

By the time the latest and greatest vaccines are finally on the commercial market by late September, as is being promised, new strains such as EG.5 and XBB.2.3, which are gaining momentum, will become dominant, making these vaccines outmoded once more.

Kenya’s President Ruto unleashes mass violence against austerity protestors

Kipchumba Ochieng

Kenya’s President William Ruto has drowned mass protests against International Monetary Fund-dictated austerity measures and high living costs in blood.

From Wednesday to Friday last week, successive protests called by the Azimio La Umoja (One Kenya Party), the main opposition party led by billionaire Raila Odinga, were attacked by police with live ammunition and teargas across Nairobi and other major cities, including port-city Mombasa and opposition stronghold Kisumu. At least six demonstrators were killed last week, hundreds left injured and over 300 arrested around the country.

Kenyan police arrest a protester in the Kibera neighborhood of Nairobi, Kenya, Wednesday, July 12, 2023. Anti-government protesters are demonstrating in a number of Kenyan cities against newly imposed taxes and the cost of living. [AP Photo/Samson Otieno]

Earlier in the month, police killed as many as 23 people during the crackdown on protests, and injured hundreds of others, including 53 children who required hospital treatment after tear gas was thrown inside their classroom by police.

Protests are now regularly outlawed, with police setting up blockades to stop marching demonstrators and refusing to provide details of the rising numbers of dead, injured and arrested.

According to the Independent Medico Legal Unit (IMLU), across twelve protests called by Azimio they have monitored since the beginning of the year, there were 68 injuries and 37 deaths due to the use of live bullets and suffocation caused by teargas. Amnesty International has documented at least 30 deaths by police action.

IMLU has warned about rising cases of “non-uniformed officers” using “vehicles with either distorted or no number plates” to “bundle protesters into car trunks and speed off to unknown locations.”

The state has also escalated repression against the opposition. Last week, Babu Owino, an opposition MP, was arrested for “conducting subversive activities”. The house of the son of former President Uhuru Kenyatta, associated with Odinga, was raided in a search for weapons. Azimio spokesman Kalonzo Musyoka is reportedly under house arrest as he held closed-door meetings with a group of imperialist diplomats from the European Union and the United States.

The two parties that make up Kenya’s “official” left have also been savagely targeted. A member of the Maoist Communist Party of Kenya (CPK), Harris Ochieng, was shot dead earlier this month and 37 of its members were detained for two nights. Members of the Kenyan Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), a section of the International Socialist League (ISL), were also arrested in protests.

The mass violence is reminiscent of the rule of pro-Western dictator Daniel Arap Moi between 1978 and 2002, when thousands of students, workers, peasants and left-wing opponents of the regime were tortured, killed and imprisoned.

Ruto’s brutality is a signal to international finance capital that he will not back down from the IMF-austerity package he imposed last month.

His Finance Bill is opposed by 90 percent of Kenyans according to surveys. It includes raising the gross sales tax from one to three percent, doubling the rate of Value Added Tax on petroleum products from 8 percent to 16 percent, tripling taxes on sales to 3 percent for small businesses, and raising income tax for high-earning employees from 30 percent to a maximum of 35 percent. It includes a 1.5 percent housing levy on employees’ pay supposed to fund housing construction for the less well-off.

These measures are being imposed on workers already suffering under the collapse of the Kenya Shilling, job losses and precariousness, and soaring inflation provoked by speculation in commodities by hedge funds, the profit gouging of major global corporations and NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine.

A third of Kenyans already suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition. Prices of key food products have risen over the past year, with staples maize, grain and flour increasing by up to 30 percent, rice and potatoes by nearly 20 percent and sugar by 60 percent.

In a cynical statement, the US, UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and others, including their stooge Ukraine, posted a joint statement by ambassadors declaring themselves “saddened by the loss of life and concerned by high levels of violence, including the use of live rounds and the destruction of property, during the recent demonstrations.”

It added, “We recognize the daily hardship faced by many Kenyans and urge all parties to table their concerns through a meaningful dialogue and resolve their differences peacefully to build the nation together, ensuring no further loss of life.”

If the imperialist powers are crying crocodile tears over the violence in the streets of Kenya’s major cities, it is only because they are concerned that the ruling class is losing control. These same countries are waging a de facto war against Russia in Ukraine that has intensified the soaring of costs of living across the world, particularly on the African continent. With its systematic military encirclement of Russia, NATO deliberately provoked the reactionary intervention of the Putin regime. Since then, it has continued to fuel the conflict, sending billions of dollars in weaponry to the Ukrainian army.

Over the past months, Germany, Japan and Washington, which seems to be sending a high-ranking representative of the Biden administration every month, concerned for its military bases in Kenya, have flocked to Nairobi to back Ruto in search of African energy and raw materials, lucrative sales markets and cheap labour. All of them are aggressively pursuing the goal of increasing their political, economic, and military influence on the resource-rich continent.

Azimio’s aim in calling protests is to contain and control rising opposition. Odinga has been calling them under mounting pressure from below and then scrambling to call them off in backdoor negotiations with Ruto and the imperialist powers. There is now a sense that he is losing his grip, with former Police Spokesperson Charles Owino stating, “If you are calling citizens to go out and demonstrate, you must be able to control them. If Raila [Odinga] cannot control his support base, the country [will] break into anarchy and violence”.

Odinga, with an estimated net worth of $3.3 billion, has refused to present any concrete demands besides starting to collect signatures on the streets to express opposition to the Finance Bill and making vague calls for Ruto to reintroduce food and fuel subsidies. He has ludicrously asked Kenyans to walk to work to “deny Ruto the fuel tax.”

He knows that more serious measures would impinge on the wealthy layers he represents and anger his imperialist backers, including the IMF, which he refuses to even mention in his speeches. Odinga is part of the 0.1 percent of the Kenyan population (8,300 people) which according to Oxfam own more wealth than the bottom 99.9 percent (more than 48 million people). Not surprisingly, 28 MPs of his party openly supported the Finance Bill.

The allies of Kenyan workers are not Raila, Kenya’s Supreme Court which has temporarily paralysed the Finance Bill, or the imperialist governments. A new socialist leadership must be built.

Parties like the CPK and the Revolutionary Socialist League are not socialist, but parties of the middle class that oppose socialist revolution. The CPK, whose leaders deserted the party and backed Ruto last year, are, like Odinga, making empty appeals to Ruto. Their main statement on the Finance Bill argues that he “must listen to the voices of the people and amend the Finance Bill 2023 accordingly. Failure to do so will only deepen the poverty and inequality that already exists in our society.”

The RSL, which supports the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, under the banner of a fight against “Russian imperialism” in defense of “democracy”, attacked the bill from a nationalist perspective. The Bill, they stated, is “counterproductive as far as national development is concerned,” promoting illusions in the Kenyan capitalist state.

In 1963, the emerging comprador bourgeoisie in the country worked with British imperialism to create a new capitalist state on the borders drawn by the imperialist powers at the end of the 19th century. First Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta promised “a country where every citizen may develop his talents to the full, restricted only by the larger aim we have of building a fair society. There will be no privileges for any minority. Equally, we shall see that no member of any group undergoes discrimination or oppression at the hands of the majority.”

Sixty years later, the broad masses see this as a fraud. An entire generation born 20 years after the end of Moi’s rule knows no life other than the gangster capitalist politics of all Moi’s hirelings—Mwai Kibaki, Uhuru Kenyatta, Odinga and Ruto.

Study shows substantial increase in childhood diabetes rates during COVID-19 pandemic

Bill Shaw

A study published last month in JAMA Network Open found that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of new cases of type 1 diabetes mellitus in children has increased far beyond expectations. The study pooled the data of 17 prior, published studies to arrive at the result. Because of the size of the pooled data analysis, the study authors could conclude with confidence that the increase is real, and that it is significant.

Type 1 diabetes is an incurable disease with dramatic consequences. It frequently degrades the functioning of the eyes, kidneys, and nerves, ultimately resulting in the failure of these organs in a significant proportion of patients. It predisposes the patient to atherosclerosis that can result in heart attacks and strokes.

In the past, type 1 diabetes shortened lifespan dramatically. Today, with modern treatments, life expectancy among sufferers of type 1 diabetes has lengthened considerably in more developed countries, but still falls approximately 8 years short of average according to recent studies. In less developed economies, the disease remains very dangerous for most patients.

The incidence rate, or the number of new cases of type 1 diabetes in children per year in the United States divided by the total population, increased by 14 percent in the first 12 months of the pandemic versus the 12 months prior, while the incidence rate during the second year of the pandemic was 27 percent higher than the pre-pandemic period.

The incidence rate of type 1 diabetes had been increasing by 3-4 percent every year prior to the pandemic, meaning that the 14 percent increase during the first year of the pandemic is 3.5 times greater than the higher bound of 4 percent. Thus, the increase in incidence rate far outstripped the expected increase based on pre-pandemic historical trends.

The study looked at two sequential 12-month periods of the pandemic to avoid suffering from a potential bias known as the “catch up effect.” This effect is caused both by barriers to accessing care resulting from the shutdown of significant portions of the healthcare system and by patient and parent reluctance to seek care. The result of the effect would be delayed diagnosis of type 1 diabetes onset in children during those periods with a “surge” in diagnoses resulting from past missed diagnoses due to patients not visiting the healthcare system.

The study avoided catch up effects by covering two, sequential 12-month time intervals where healthcare systems reopened and reluctance to seek care diminished, especially during the second year of the pandemic. Thus, any delayed diagnoses would be accounted for in the numbers and were not a significant factor in explaining the significantly increased incidence.

The study also attempted to look at the incidence rate of type 2 diabetes in children before and during the pandemic, but the data on this disorder were too limited to conclude one way or the other that there was a significant increase. Only 10 prior studies included in the meta-analysis reported on type 2 diabetes, and only one of those reported the population size (i.e., the denominator) needed to calculate incidence rate.

The results obviously beg the question of whether COVID-19 is directly responsible for the increase, and if so, what is the biological mechanism by which it does so? Notably, the SARS-CoV-2 virus attaches to the ACE2 cellular receptor in order to enter cells. This receptor appears in significant quantity on the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas that are affected by type 1 diabetes.

This process of viral entry via ACE2 receptors is known to damage beta cells, resulting in abnormal glucose levels in many COVID-19 patients. It also can cause beta-cell “exhaustion,” a state where otherwise normal-appearing beta cells fail to produce insulin.

Given that seroprevalence studies show that the vast majority of children globally have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 at least once, this would seem to be the leading candidate for explaining the massive increase in type 1 diabetes.

Another hypothesis is that COVID-19 has numerous impacts on the immune system, and type 1 diabetes is nearly always an auto-immune disease whereby the patient’s immune system destroys insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. However, the details of how COVID-19 might induce this autoimmune reaction are unclear and demonstrating such a connection requires substantial further study.

Nevertheless, the pandemic erased the seasonal pattern of type 1 diabetes onset. Prior to the pandemic, the incidence rate of type 1 diabetes was greater during winter months and lower during summer months. During the pandemic, however, the incidence rate has not significantly varied from winter to summer months, and the seasonal pattern has not returned despite re-opening of the healthcare system and the complete ending of lockdowns. These observations suggest, but do not prove, a direct effect of COVID-19 on type 1 diabetes onset.

Another hypothesis is that the measures taken to control the pandemic might have increased behaviors associated with the development of type 1 diabetes. In particular, it is suspected that weight gain in young children is associated with a risk of autoimmunity and thus development of type 1 diabetes. Children under lockdown might have had reduced physical activity levels and increased obesity, which could potentially contribute to the observed increase in type 1 diabetes. The study was not designed to provide evidence in support of or against this hypothesis, however.

The study also looked at the frequency with which new type 1 diabetes cases were associated with a condition called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) at the time of initial diagnosis. DKA is a life-threatening condition nearly always requiring hospitalization. If a child has DKA at the time of diagnosis of their type 1 diabetes, it is a potential indicator of both severity and duration of illness prior to diagnosis.

The study found that the increase in DKA at diagnosis seems to be more likely related to delays in seeking and having access to care. For example, one study included in the meta-analysis from Germany found that the frequency of DKA at initial diagnosis did not vary regionally based on varying levels of COVID-19 transmission, suggesting that uniform lockdown regulations across Germany were the main factor. Nevertheless, the evidence is not conclusive and further study is required here, too.

A key limitation of the study is that, due to the lack of information in the prior studies it had available, it could not examine the impact of access to healthcare and reluctance to seek care. Relatively few of the prior studies included variables on socioeconomic status, which is typically a proxy for access to care, especially in the United States where healthcare is not guaranteed to all.

Another limitation of the study is that the prior studies only represented certain regions of the world including North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, but not Africa. Some of this bias could have resulted from limiting to articles published in English.

An accompanying editorial to the study adds an additional hypothesis to the mix to account for any effects of COVID-19 on the increase. In particular, it mentions that COVID-19 infection might directly change the makeup of gut bacteria (also called the microbiome) in children, or the pandemic control measures might have indirectly affected the microbiome through various means. Regardless, there is significant evidence that a less diverse microbiome is associated with type 1 diabetes patients, and thus could be the mediating effect.

Given the potential enormous toll of future morbidity and mortality from excess type 1 diabetes, further elucidation of the causes of the increased incidence is imperative. The indifference of the capitalist ruling elites to the long-term effects of COVID-19 has already led to potentially hundreds of millions worldwide suffering from Long COVID.

The additional potential toll of increased type 1 diabetes compounds dramatically the crimes of the ruling class, for they bear responsibility no matter which hypothesis proves correct. The hypotheses of direct effects from COVID-19—either through direct viral injury to beta cells, through induction of autoimmunity against beta cells, or through viral-induced changes to the makeup of the gut microbiota—most obviously implicate the ruling class’s “let it rip” policies.

However, the ruling class is no less implicated via the indirect hypotheses. If the haphazard, ill-considered, poorly implemented, and arbitrarily managed lockdowns are responsible for long periods of inactivity or reduced gut microbiome diversity as causes of the increased incidence of type 1 diabetes, then the ruling class is also criminally liable. From the very beginning of the pandemic, the experience in China and other countries proved that a global elimination strategy was possible, but the prioritization of capitalist profits overrode this public health program.