Mounting coronavirus death toll in Canada’s elderly care homes

Penny Smith

Across Canada, care facilities for seniors are being devastated by the deadly spread of COVID-19. More than 600 nursing and retirement homes nationwide have reported a rapidly growing number of infections and fatalities, with Quebec and Ontario in Central Canada, and the west coast province of British Columbia hardest hit.

The abject failure of all levels of government to prepare for this foreseeable and foreseen viral pandemic, their criminal incompetence in combating the virus, and the decades-long ravaging of the public healthcare system have left care-home facilities especially vulnerable to COVID-19, and enabled the virus to spread like wildfire. To this must be added the fact that wide swathes of elderly care have been privatized, resulting in a race to the bottom in working conditions, and the running of facilities on tight budgets so as to boost corporate profits.

In Ontario, at least 40 seniors’ home residents have died from COVID-19, and nearly 80 seniors’ homes across the province have reported infections. At Seven Oaks nursing home in Toronto, eight residents have died, and 69 residents and staff have been listed as presumed coronavirus cases. At the Pinecrest Nursing Home in Bobcaygeon, fourteen residents have perished. “It’s a war zone. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years of nursing,” Sarah Gardiner, a nurse at Pinecrest, told the local media. “They’re so frightened ... and I don’t have anything to relieve that fear for them.”

The Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver, British Columbia—the site of the initial outbreak in the province—has recorded 51 infected residents, 26 infected staff, and 15 deaths. To date, at least 21 B.C. senior-care homes located mainly in the metro Vancouver area have reported cases. In total, the province has recorded 39 deaths linked to COVID-19, the vast majority of which have occurred at care homes for seniors.

The situation is even worse in Quebec, where, as of last week, almost a quarter of the province’s roughly 2,200 seniors’ homes and long-term care facilities had reported at least one infection.

The fatality rate among the elderly from COVID-19 is estimated at around 15 percent, much higher than the general population. Vulnerability to sickness and existing health issues, in addition to communal living arrangements and exposure to a transient workforce, has rendered them particularly vulnerable to the spread of the deadly virus.

Care workers are also extremely vulnerable, even if they are considered part of the young and healthy age group. Due to low wages and precarious working arrangements, they are often forced to work at several care homes, increasing the likelihood that the disease will be spread. In addition, the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), including masks and gloves, is even more pronounced in the care sector than in hospitals, where personal protective equipment is already being severely rationed. Care workers are thus more likely to become infected and have just as hard a time getting tested and treated as other sections of working people.

Under horrifying, prison-like conditions where a deadly outbreak has placed many seniors under strict quarantine orders, confused and afraid residents are forced into self-isolation indefinitely without contact with friends and family. Draconian restrictions on testing prevent them from knowing who is or is not infected, including themselves. In many cases, facility managers have failed to inform family members and the residents that an outbreak has occurred.

The terrifying viral outbreaks are made worse by the lack of care providers to assist with the daily basic needs of seniors in nursing homes—such as feeding and bathing—the tragic outcome of decades of wage and service cuts, and the corporatization within the public healthcare system. Worker absences from sickness and fear of infection from unsafe working conditions have only exacerbated the shortages.

The announcement by Ontario’s right-wing Premier Doug Ford that his government is creating an “iron ring” of protection around seniors is a hideous fraud. His government’s pathetic commitment of $243 million to protect workers and residents of long-term care facilities doesn’t even begin to address the corporate-friendly “efficiency” policies that have gutted the province’s healthcare system, sharply reduced the weekly hours of personal support workers and therapists in care homes, and in a disgraceful move, even reduced the minimum number of allowable baths for residents.

After announcing that the health and safety of seniors in residences “is a matter of life and death,” Quebec’s hard-right premier François Legault promised the lowly sum of $133 million in emergency assistance, while his big-business CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec) government deviously demanded still further concessions from the province’s 550,000 nurses and other public-sector workers currently on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis.

Only last week, and after numerous deaths in care homes in British Columbia, did the Green-backed New Democratic Party provincial government bother to include daily testing for care home workers in its COVID-19 “action plan.” Care workers who test negative for the virus will now be assigned to one care facility only, a measure that should have been taken years ago in the aftermath of the 2002-03 SARS crisis when the link between the transience in care home support workers and the spread of disease first became known.

The response of the federal government has been no less shambolic. While offering a paltry $3 billion in funding to the healthcare system, the majority of which will be directed through for-profit companies, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, with unanimous support from the “opposition” Conservatives, NDP, Bloc Quebecois, and Greens, is funneling over $650 billion at lightning speed into the pockets of the banks and big business.

The carnage from COVID-19 that has exploded in care homes underscores the immediate need for meticulous testing, systematic contact tracing and the urgent procurement of ventilators and personal protective equipment for all medical personnel. Yet, as is the case across North America and Europe, these critical resources are not being made available.

The ruling elite’s criminal indifference to the fate of elderly care home residents and low-paid workers is underscored further by their despicable efforts to shift responsibility for mass fatalities onto the shoulders of the general population. Some relatives of elderly residents in care homes are receiving letters from care providers claiming that there would be “no benefit” for their loved one to be hospitalized with COVID-19. At Pinecrest Nursing Home, the medical director sent out email correspondence preparing family members for the devastating choice of whether or not to permit their elderly loved ones to use a ventilator. “A frail nursing-home patient who is put on a ventilator,” the letter read, “is quite likely to suffer a great deal, and may not survive … I am asking all of you to think hard about what would be in the best interest of your loved ones.”

This campaign to effectively leave the elderly to die is being supported by the ruling class, and, it must unfortunately be noted, by much of the medical establishment across the country. In the Globe and Mail, Canada’s “newspaper of record,” a comment entitled “The coronavirus is the chance to have the end-of-life conversations we need,” one Gordon Rubenfeld, a medical professor at the University of Toronto, opined, “(T)he coronavirus is an opportunity to speak to your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and loved ones with chronic illnesses about life support. Because if you do not talk with them about this now, you may have to have a much more difficult conversation with me later.”

Almost every province has established so-called “medical ethics” committees to determine who should be denied care and effectively left to die, when totally inadequate supplies of ventilators, ICU beds, and other equipment run out.

The corporate media is promoting these “medical ethics” committees as a rational way of allotting scant resources and alleviating the psychological distress of frontline health workers. When it comes to the actions of the banks and big business, now lining up to gorge themselves on state largesse while the health and care sectors are starved of resources, the media, on the other hand, has no room for any discussion of ethics—underscoring that its “morality” is wholly determined by its mercenary class interests.

US military calls for another $20 billion to counter China

Peter Symonds

Far from easing international geo-political tensions, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has plunged capitalism into a deep crisis and exacerbated pre-existing rivalries. Beneath nominal international co-operation, the preparations for war continue apace.

In an article on Sunday entitled “US Military Seeks More Funding for Pacific Region After Pandemic,” the New York Times featured a report by the US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) to Congress calling for an additional $20 billion over the next five years to bolster its military capacities against China.

The report was mandated by Congress as part of the fiscal 2020 military budget reflecting the bipartisan character of its increasingly hawkish anti-China stance. Congress specifically required that INDOPACOM, in other words the frontline command, rather than the Defence Department, set out what it needed to maintain military superiority over China.

The funds would be spent on new radar warning systems and cruise missiles, and would also pay for more exercises with allies, deployments of additional forces and new intelligence-sharing centers. The efforts would help improve the U.S. military’s ability to deter the People’s Liberation Army.

INDOPACOM commander Admiral Phil Davidson couched his spending plan, which he termed “Regain the Advantage,” in defensive terms, saying that it was “designed to persuade potential adversaries that any preemptive military action will be extremely costly and likely fail by projecting credible combat power.”

His proposals, however, include weaponry of a decidedly aggressive character, including $1 billion to be spent on long-range precision missiles such as the Navy’s Maritime Strike Tomahawk and the Air Force’s JASSM-ER weapon. These would be part of “highly survivable, precision-strike networks along the First Island Chain, featuring increased quantities of allied ground-based weapons.”

The First Island Chain refers to the string of islands running from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines down to Indonesia that would hem in Chinese forces in any conflict. All of the countries near the islands are either US military allies, strategic partners, or in the case of Taiwan, heavily dependent on US protection.

The other measures include a major build-up of anti-missile systems on Guam, the key forward US military base in the western Pacific, as well as a boosting of radar systems on Palau and Hawaii, and a space-based radar tracking system. While they are construed as “defensive,” such systems are also designed to protect US military assets from Chinese retaliation in the event of a US first strike.

The report also calls for greater funding for joint US military exercises with allies and partners throughout the region as well as for stepped-up intelligence sharing. The US already has close intelligence ties with allies such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, but Davidson advocates the establishment of a counter-terrorism center, an Oceania fusion center and other intelligence facilities in the region.

In US ruling circles, there is a fear that the COVID-19 pandemic could further enhance the position of China at the expense of American imperialism. The apparent ability of the Chinese regime to contain the spread of the virus and to offer aid to other countries in the midst of the crisis, stands in marked contrast to the rapidly mounting death toll and numbers of infections in the United States.

Already, the US administration has sought to deflect attention from its own failings by lashing out at China, with Trump and other senior officials branding COVID-19 as the “Wuhan virus” or the “Chinese virus.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo effectively blocked a joint communiqué at the G7 meeting last month by insisting that it name the germ as the “Wuhan virus.”

In remarks at the State Department after hosting the G7 meeting, Pompeo provocatively declared: “The Chinese Communist Party poses a substantial threat to our health and way of life, as the Wuhan virus clearly has demonstrated.” He slammed Beijing for providing aid to other countries and then “claiming that they are now the white hat [good guy].”

This campaign has been accompanied by a barrage of US criticisms of China for initially attempting to cover up the outbreak and not alerting the world sooner. Several US politicians have even asserted, without any evidence, that the virus had been produced in a Chinese bio-weapons laboratory. A Chinese official retaliated by suggesting the virus had been developed in a US defence laboratory.

Trump last week dialed back his inflammatory rhetoric after a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping as the anti-China barbs threatened to get in the way of shipments of vital Chinese medical supplies to the US. Pompeo, however, continued the attacks. A State Department release reported that Pompeo had raised with NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg the need to counter attempts by China and Russia to “spread disinformation and propaganda related to the virus.”

Congressional advocates of an aggressive military build-up against China have seized on the INDOPACOM report to push for greater defence spending in the Pacific.

Senator Josh Hawley, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the New York Times that the COVID-19 pandemic threatened to upend the status quo around the world, particularly in Asia.

“China understands that the global pandemic is an inflection point,” he said. “They are trying to turn this to their advantage. Make no mistake, they are still pursuing their global strategic ambitions. The need for us to laser focus on China’s economic and military ambitions is going to be more urgent once we beat this pandemic, not less.”

US imperialism is determined to maintain the “status quo” in which it was the dominant global power, by all means including if need be through war. The US military expansion that began under President Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” has been aggressively accelerated under Trump, coinciding with his trade war measures.

While the US health system has proven inadequately funded and equipped to handle the pandemic and the death toll has risen past 10,000, the political establishment in Washington is preparing a new disaster in the form of a war between nuclear-armed powers.

Refugees left to die as COVID-19 spreads across Greece

George Gallanis

Nearly 42,000 refugees housed in overcrowded, festering detention camps remain trapped on Greece’s islands as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across Greece. With refugees lacking access to soap and water—as part of a lack of basic health care—and crammed into clustered living quarters, the camps on the islands Lesbos, Chios, Kos, Samos and Leros are the perfect breeding grounds for the virus.

Yet, the right-wing New Democracy (ND) government has stalled moving refugees off the islands to mainland Greece, allowing for the virus to infect and possibly kill thousands.

The COVID-19 death toll in Greece rose to 73 yesterday, with total confirmed cases standing at 1,735. According the daily Kathimerini, the economic strain caused by the pandemic may lead to cuts in workers’ wages in the public sector, and possibly massive unemployment in the coming weeks or months, while Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said recently that “no such issue is being discussed given that we expect a return to normality soon.”

Syrian boat refugees from Turkey arriving on Lesbos, Greece, September 2015 (AP Photo / Petros Giannakouris)

Greece’s health care system can barely keep up with the required amount of testing needed to contain the virus, let alone treat those infected. Years of European Union (EU) austerity, enforced by the previous pseudo-left Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) government, have gutted Greece’s public health care.

Attempting to wipe its hands clean of the growing social disaster, Alexis Charitsis, a Syriza representative, accused ND of “insisting on focusing its rhetoric entirely on the citizens’ personal responsibility” and it “cannot and should not overshadow the government’s responsibility to immediately support the health system.” He added that the “sloppiness, ineffectiveness and interventions” are “clearly an issue of political will.”

Syriza laid the groundwork for ND’s anti-refugee policies with a brutal campaign including attacks by riot police, forced evacuations and the establishment of concentration camps. In 2016, the EU, Turkey and the Syriza government brokered a deal establishing Greece as the EU’s prison camp for refugees at its southern border. It then forced all refugees entering Greece via “irregular” routes—those making the dangerous journey via boat from Turkey to Greece—to be deported back to Turkey. In other words, most refugees.

The ND government is continuing and building upon these anti-refugee policies. Refugees have been shot at by Greek police and been the victims of fascistic violence, while the government allows the continued practice of illegal pushbacks where refugee boats are forced back as they approach the Greek shoreline.

The government is using the limited number of COVID-19 tests and the growing threat of the virus on Greece’s native-born population as a reason to leave refugees trapped in a hell in which the pandemic can spread like wildfire in the camps. Hundreds or even thousands of refugees, including children and the elderly, may die.

The pandemic has already made its way to Greece’s islands. On Lesbos—where some 20,000 people live in and around the notorious Moria detention camp designed to house 3,000—a 40-year-old woman returning from holidays in Egypt and Israel was confirmed positive for COVID-19 over two weeks ago and was placed in quarantine.

The limited amount of testing in Greece points to a very real possibility that COVID-19 is spreading undetected on Lesbos and other islands. This poses a looming nightmare for those housed in refugee camps. It could easily be spread by new arrivals who could also receive the virus from asymptomatic detainees. A lack of space means 120 people who recently arrived on Lesbos have not yet found shelter on the island as they have to be placed into separate shacks from those already present.

Last week, it was revealed 20 refugees tested positive for COVID-19 at the mainland camp of Ritsona, home to 2,300 refugees and 43 miles north of Athens. The camp is now on lockdown for two weeks, with police on hand to enforce the action and prepare the way for possible attacks on refugees.

Tests are being administered and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is onsite tending to refugees. On Sunday, the government was forced to place a second migrant camp on the mainland under quarantine. After a 53-year-old man tested positive for coronavirus, the Malakasa camp 25 miles north of Athens was locked down for two weeks and is also being guarded by police with reinforcements to arrive.

Ritsona and Malakasa have the benefit of being on the mainland, putting them closer to much needed resources in Greece’s major cities like Athens, as opposed to camps located on the islands. Nonetheless, with so many refugees forced to live in packed quarters, the camps face the possibility of a rapid outbreak.

EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson has requested the ND government move refugees with the highest risk of contracting COVID-19—the elderly and children—from the overcrowded island camps to mainland Greece.

“We are working together with the Greek government and the Greek authorities to agree on an emergency plan to help reduce the risk as much as possible in the overcrowded hotspots on the islands,” Johansen said. “It could be relocation of the most vulnerable individuals from the overcrowded camps to other areas on the islands.”

But as many NGOs and refugee groups have said, there are virtually no tests available for refugees and therefore it is nearly impossible to determine who in the camps may be positive for the virus.

The ND government is stalling, putting at risk thousands of refugees.

For the past few weeks, human rights groups have urgently called upon ND to act. One group said, “Thousands of people, including older people, those with chronic diseases, children ... pregnant women, new mothers, and people with disabilities, are trapped in dangerously overcrowded, deplorable conditions on the islands amid the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said over three weeks ago. “We must act now. ... When the virus hits overcrowded settlements in places like Iran, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Greece, the consequences will be devastating.”

The conditions in the camps make it nearly impossible for refugees to protect themselves from an outbreak.

George Makris, a medical doctor and a coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Greece, said the water and sanitary conditions in the Moria camp on Lesbos and others are “tragic.” He added: “The transmission of the virus cannot be contained there. We have warned this repeatedly in the past in the context of other infectious disease outbreaks like meningitis and measles. Our message is simple. … As health authorities are saying all mass gatherings are prohibited, mass containment should also be avoided.”

Gerald Knaus, one of the leading architects of the 2016 deal between the EU, Greece and Turkey, which resulted in thousands of refugees being forcibly returned to Turkey, said refugees could be moved to safety in a matter of weeks.

Speaking to DW.com as the devastating human toll of his policies becomes ever more apparent with the pandemic, Knaus said, “You have to evacuate 35,000 refugees as quickly as possible from the islands to the Greek mainland. You could quickly have 15,000 additional beds in temporary tent camps. The International Organization of Migration (IOM) is capable of building these within a few weeks.

“Another 10,000 people can be accommodated in now-vacant Greek hotels. Finally, 10,000 people could easily be accommodated in places already paid for by the EU—places where recognized refugees are hosted right now. If countries like Germany could take in these recognized refugees quickly, they would create space for families from the islands immediately. This would also send a strong signal to the Greeks that they’re not alone.”

The reality is that Germany, the EU’s leading power, has played a critical role in the formation of the bloc’s refugee policy and bears central responsibility for the terrible plight facing refugees and immigrants imprisoned on the Greek islands.

The role of the EU, ND, Syriza and capitalist government across the world in facilitating attacks on refugees and allowing COVID-19 to spread uncontrolled makes clear the urgent need for the working class to intervene and place life over profit.

The spread of COVID-19 in Greece has been grossly exacerbated but the socioeconomic policies of ND and Syriza. The defence of refugees in Greece must be taken up by the Greek and the international working class, in opposition to the policies of ND and Syriza who represent the interests of the upper middle class and the financial elite.

COVID-19 pandemic threatens millions in war-torn Libya and Syria

Kumaran Ira

With well over a million infected and the number of dead soon to reach 100,000, the worldwide spread of COVID-19 threatens the lives of millions worldwide. In particular, it is threatening warn-torn countries like Libya, Syria and Yemen, where imperialist-backed wars have led to devastating humanitarian crises and destroyed critical health infrastructure. Millions of refugees, many living in crowded and unsanitary refugee camps, are desperately vulnerable to the virus.

Libya and Syria, both targeted by wars launched by the NATO imperialist powers after the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution in 2011, are desperately trying to avert a devastating mass outbreak. While Libya has 19 confirmed COVID-19 cases so far, including one death, Syria has 19 cases and two deaths. However, their shattered health systems are in no position to properly monitor the outbreak, let alone treat and halt it.

The health catastrophe facing Libya and Syria again expose the fraudulent “humanitarian” pretexts that pseudo-left academics and parties like France’s New Anti-capitalist Party used to justify their support for these imperialist wars. They presented NATO military interventions as wars for “democracy” and to protect the population of these countries from their dictatorial governments. In fact, these wars of plunder shattered the lives of tens of millions and now could cost hundreds of thousands more lives lost to COVID-19.

Treating the COVID-19 pandemic requires an internationally coordinated campaign to deploy critical food and health supplies to Libya, Syria and other war-torn countries around the world. This requires the mobilization of the mass anti-war sentiment in the working class internationally, as such a coordinated response is impossible under the domination of imperialist powers still intervening to fan the flames of war in these countries.

In Syria, the NATO imperialist powers armed various Islamist terrorist militias and later backed ethnic-Kurdish militias as proxies in a bid to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The war has claimed more than 500,000 lives and displaced up to 10 million internally while over 3 million fled abroad. NATO-backed militias looted pharmaceutical factories during the war and attacked hospitals, leaving Syria’s essential health infrastructure in ruins.

The confirmed cases in Syria are the “tip of the iceberg,” said UN aid official Mark Lowcock in a briefing to the UN Security Council last week. “Judging from other places, that is the tip of the iceberg. The virus has the potential to have a devastating impact on vulnerable communities across the country,” he warned. “Syria’s health services are extremely fragile. Only around half of its hospitals and primary healthcare centers were fully functional at the end of last year.”

Without a massive international inflow of resources to allow for social distancing and proper hygiene, a disaster threatens. More than 11 million people inside Syria require humanitarian aid, including nearly five million children; and nearly eight million lack reliable access to food. “We are for example seeing increased rates of stunting—a consequence of child malnutrition, from which it is rarely possible fully to recover,” said Lowcock, who added that 30 percent of displaced children in northwest Syria suffer from it. “They will live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.”

Thousands of refugees live in overcrowded camps in horrific conditions in Idlib province, where Syrian government forces are fighting NATO-backed Islamist militias to retake the area. As many as 10 people reportedly share small tents—sleeping, eating and living together at close distance, with no access to clean water and only a small number of toilets.

As for Libya, it is, according to the Global Health Security Index report published last month, one of the 27 countries “most vulnerable to emerging outbreaks.”

NATO’s bombing of Libyan cities in the 2011 war was followed by a devastating civil war since 2014 between the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj in the capital, Tripoli, and warlord Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) to the east. Fighting has intensified since Haftar launched an offensive last April on Tripoli. Essential services are unavailable in Libya, whose oil industry has collapsed, devastating its economy.

Cash shortages in every part of the economy mean that Libya cannot purchase medicines to keep hospitals running or pay the salaries of medical staff, of which there is an acute shortage. Before the war, Libya had foreign doctors and nurses from Egypt and the Philippines, but they left the country starting in 2011, and especially after 2014. Last month, Badereldine al-Najar, the head of the Libyan National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), told Reuters: “In light of the lack of preparations, I now consider Libya not in a position to confront this virus.”

War has left Libya with “limited financial resources and shortages of basic equipment,” while the “pandemic represents an additional challenge,” the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) declared.

In recent years, Libya has become a hotspot for immigrants desperately trying to reach Europe.

The United Nations has warned that the pandemic constitutes a “truly catastrophic” danger for the internally displaced people and about 700,000 refugees and migrants in Libya.

In a bid to stop refugee flows, the European Union (EU) has financed the construction and upkeep of prison camps controlled by the rival militias inside Libya. In those camps, reports by CNN and UN officials have revealed that refugees are subject to horrific torture, rape, murder and sale into slavery. Detention centers and prisons are reportedly overcrowded with unhygienic and inhumane conditions, while suffering shortages of food and drinking water.

These immigrants are at a great risk of being contaminated by the virus. Tarik Argaz, a spokesman for the UNHCR in Libya, told Al Jazeera: “Detained asylum seekers are particularly vulnerable and exposed. They are staying in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions [in detention centres] and have access to very limited health assistance. Many centres are located in areas close to fighting.”

Al Jazeera cited Amira Rajab Elhemali, national field operations assistant for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), saying “The conditions are dire. Hundreds of people are locked in crowded hangars with no access to proper sanitation facilities. Many of them have been detained for months or even years. Worry is all they know.”

The COVID-19 pandemic now ravaging the imperialist centers of America and Europe is an urgent warning. The wars in Libya and Syria must be ended, the imperialist powers’ supply of weapons and financing to their proxies cut off, and social resources mobilized to fight the pandemic, not to fight wars. Fighting the pandemic requires the provision of tens of billions of euros of international emergency assistance, including for the purchase of food and medical supplies.

German government expands war operations despite coronavirus pandemic

Johannes Stern

The dramatic spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which threatens the lives of millions of people worldwide, has done nothing to change German war policy. On the contrary, the ruling class is using the crisis to push ahead with its foreign policy offensive and Germany’s return to an aggressive foreign and great power policy.

When Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) announced on Thursday on the ARD morning show the largest deployment of the Bundeswehr (armed forces) at home in post-war German history, she made it clear that the Bundeswehr’s foreign missions will also continue unabated. “We must also ensure that the core mission we have, namely alliance and national defence, the provision of external security, but also our international obligations are safeguarded. The missions continued as normal” and “in all missions, in all international areas, our performance is maintained.”

Indeed, in recent days, the grand coalition of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats has extended and expanded numerous war missions in Africa, the Near and Middle East and Central Asia.

On March 25, the Bundestag (federal parliament) decided to “supplement the deployment of armed German forces” in Syria and Iraq. The new mandate provides for Bundeswehr A400M transporters from the Jordanian airbase al-Azraq to continue to refuel the fighter aircraft of the so-called anti-IS coalition. In addition, the transport aircraft are now also to be used for flights to Iraq. In addition, the deployment of air surveillance radar in Iraq is also planned. The training mission of German soldiers in central Iraq is to be placed under the command of NATO rather than the US-led Operation Inherent Resolve.

On March 13, the Bundestag had already extended the NATO-led “Sea Guardian” military mission in the Mediterranean and the “Resolute Support” mission in Afghanistan by a further year in each case. Above all, the mission in Afghanistan, where thousands of German soldiers have been stationed since 2001, shows the sinister tradition to which German imperialism is returning. On April 2, Kramp-Karrenbauer issued an order of the day for Kunduz province on the tenth anniversary of the so-called “Good Friday Battle,” which states:

“These were not the Bundeswehr’s first and not the last battles in Afghanistan. But with the events of this day, it became visible for many citizens in Germany for the first time that the soldiers of the Bundeswehr must also kill and can die in combat. For the Bundeswehr, this day illustrates what ultimately defines the profession of the soldier: the ability to survive in battle. And also, the willingness to risk one’s own life for the mission that the German Bundestag gives the Bundeswehr.”

This is the language of German militarism. Contrary to official propaganda, the Bundeswehr’s foreign missions are not about “peace” and “democracy,” but defending geostrategic and economic interests with war, annihilation and death.

This also applies to “Sea Guardian” and the naval mission “Irini” off the Libyan coast, which was decided by the EU at the end of March. The missions in the Mediterranean, in which the German armed forces are involved with warships, reconnaissance planes and hundreds of soldiers, serve to seal off Fortress Europe against refugees from the war zones in the Middle East and from Africa and to prepare new neo-colonial incursions on the resource-rich continent.

Last week, the federal government declared its support for an expansion of the French-led war offensive in the Sahel. A newly formed “task force” would be integrated into the command of Operation Barkhane under the name of “Takuba” and “would be composed mainly of European special units, supported by the main commanders and offering a high degree of autonomy,” according to an official statement by the French Ministry of Defence.

The explicit goal of the offensive is to combine all previous missions, in which Germany is already involved with over a thousand soldiers, into one comprehensive war mission. The new task force will “advise, support and accompany the Malian armed forces in coordination with the G5 Sahel partners, the UN mission (MINUSMA) and the EU missions (EUTM Mali, EUCAP Mali and EUCAP Niger).”

Additional war missions are already being prepared behind the backs of the population. In an interview with the news portal t-online.de, Lieutenant General Martin Schelleis, who as territorial commander of the Bundeswehr is leading the “Corona mission” in Germany, emphasised, “Training and basic operations must also be maintained at least to the extent that operational readiness does not suffer in the long term. After all, we do not know where the Bundeswehr might soon be in demand for further foreign deployments as a result of the corona crisis.”

As in Germany itself, the ruling class, especially in the less-developed countries, fears revolutionary uprisings due to the dramatic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The situation is dramatic, because with a delay of two months, the virus is now arriving in developing and emerging countries,” warned Development Minister Gerd Müller at the weekend in an interview with the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper. In Mali, “with its 18 million people,” he said, “there are only four ventilators.” And “the economic consequences of the worldwide corona shock” are already leading “in many countries to mass unemployment. The structures are collapsing.” He “is very concerned that unrest will break out in fragile states, including civil wars. The impact on us would be incalculable.”

Instead of respirators and medical equipment, Germany and the other imperialist powers are sending weapons and soldiers to oppress the impoverished masses. In return, the astronomical sums already spent on armaments and war will be further increased. Last Thursday, before a NATO meeting, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic Party, SPD) reiterated his commitment to the military alliance’s 2 percent of GDP spending target. “As far as the two percent target is concerned, what we have said so far applies. We have increased our defence spending by 45 percent since 2014 according to NATO criteria,” he boasted. “We also stand by our commitments and we prove it every day.”

British Queen appeals for national unity across an unbridgeable class divide

Laura Tiernan

On Sunday night, an estimated 28 million people watched a prerecorded speech by British monarch Queen Elizabeth II on the coronavirus pandemic.

The four-minute speech, broadcast on BBC One, ITV, Channel 5, Channel 4, Sky News and the BBC News Channel, was the Royal Family’s appeal to “Keep Calm and Carry On” faced with a global social crisis ravaging millions.

Speaking from Windsor Castle, amid the gilt rococo surrounds of the White Drawing Room, the stony faced and immaculately coiffed 94-year-old monarch invoked a mythical spirit of shared sacrifice. The personal embodiment of hereditary privilege and obscene wealth—who is “worth” an estimated £1.6 billion—lectured working people on the need for “national unity,” “self-discipline” and “restraint.”

The Queen delivering her address at Windsor Castle

Queen Elizabeth, who decamped from London weeks ago with Prince Phillip to the Berkshire countryside, surrounded by a retinue of servants in the world’s largest occupied castle, described the pandemic as, “A time of disruption in the life of our country: a disruption that has brought grief to some, financial difficulties to many, and enormous changes to the daily lives of us all.”

Her speech sought to paper over the explosive social divide revealed by the pandemic—a truly impossible task. Carefully crafted, her address featured cut-away shots of National Health Service (NHS) nurses, doctors and paramedics, supermarket warehouse staff, and construction workers building the NHS Nightingale field hospital in London’s Docklands which may soon hold thousands of patients.

“Together we are tackling this disease, and I want to reassure you that if we remain united and resolute, then we will overcome it,” she declared.

Expunged from the Queen’s narrative was any hint of the mounting public fury over horrific conditions endured by NHS staff—deprived of masks, gloves and other essential personal protective clothing, and of ventilators to treat the dying. Of bus and train drivers, warehouse and delivery workers, whose lives have been needlessly sacrificed to the criminal incompetence, negligence and greed of the political and financial elite.

Instead, the Queen sought refuge behind the outpouring of public support for the NHS, claiming, “The moments when the United Kingdom has come together to applaud its care and essential workers will be remembered as an expression of our national spirit; and its symbol will be the rainbows drawn by children.”

Not since Margaret Thatcher invoked St Francis of Assisi on the steps of Number 10 in 1979 has there been such a cynical invocation of social harmony. In reality, the only “symbols” remembered by millions in the months and years ahead will be of body bags, doctors and nurses forced to wear bin liners and homemade goggles while intubating patients lucky enough to access a ventilator, empty supermarket shelves, and graphs charting the daily rise of pandemic victims. While the Queen’s 71-year-old son Prince Charles received immediate testing and the very best treatment imaginable for “mild symptoms” of coronavirus, NHS doctors and nurses in repeated contact with those wracked with disease have been denied testing and succumbed themselves—to date at least a dozen have died.

These are the symbols of an entirely preventable global pandemic, repeated across Europe, the United States and Asia.

Notably, the Queen made no reference in her speech to the Prime Minister. Like his mentor Donald Trump, Boris Johnson personifies the ignorance, incompetence and indifference to human life of the capitalist class. He has now been hospitalised, a victim of his own reactionary policies of “herd immunity.”

According to BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell, the Queen’s decision to deliver Sunday’s address was made “in close consultation with Downing Street.” The Guardian reported, “A senior No 10 official said the palace and the prime minister, Boris Johnson, ‘have been speaking throughout’ about the timing.” Just one hour after the Queen’s speech, Number 10 announced that Johnson had been admitted to hospital after being diagnosed with coronavirus 10 days previously and showing signs of worsening health.

The entire media was on hand to promote the Queen’s call for national unity. The night before, Channel 5 televised “The Queen Mother’s Blitz,” a documentary showing “The Queen Mother’s efforts to improve the British people’s morale during the Second World War” and “how her personality and determination made a remarkable difference to the war effort.” Needless to say, the BBC omitted any reference to the royal family’s support for Hitler.

By Monday morning, Britain’s media had declared with one voice that the Queen’s speech was an historic masterstroke. “‘We will meet again’: Queen urges Britons to stay strong” (Guardian); “Queen’s coronavirus speech: ‘Ambitious’ words ‘to reassure and inspire’” (BBC); “Better days will return. We will meet again” (Telegraph); “The Queen’s address has lifted our spirits” (Telegraph); “As ‘mother of the nation’ her words spoke volumes” (Telegraph); “Brits unite in awe of Queen’s speech: ‘Nobody could have rallied the country, the world the way she did’” (Evening Standard).

Why is this nauseating blanket of sycophancy necessary? In the face of a crisis of the entire social order, the political and moral authority and legitimacy of capitalism has been shattered. Yesterday’s Financial Times editorial warned of “social unrest” unless governments act quickly to reduce the death toll from coronavirus, introduce widespread testing and containment, and provide hospitals with resources to deal with the surge in patients.

The Queen, who has weathered nearly a century of global class struggle as a conscious representative of the oldest and most experienced ruling class on the planet, sought to preempt an emerging social eruption. BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond noted, “There was no talk of fighting, of struggle, of conflict. Instead she spoke of more peaceful national traits—‘self-discipline,’ ‘quiet, good-humoured resolve’ and ‘fellow-feeling.’”

Standing at the apex of the British state, the Queen was issuing orders to its underlings—the working class, the producers of all wealth—that it must do as it is told, accept the situation and above all not question the existing social order. She even suggested that self-isolation was “an opportunity to slow down, pause and reflect, in prayer or meditation”!

This message was warmly endorsed by Labour’s new leader, Sir Keir Starmer, who tweeted Sunday night, “The Queen speaks for the whole country and our determination to defeat coronavirus.”

Starmer’s Twitter account was immediately inundated with angry replies. “Being ‘holed up’ at Windsor Castle with hundreds of rooms and acres galore and not having to worry about running out of loo paper or vital supplies doesn’t really speak for me!” wrote Julie Ambrose.

“Did she give up the crown jewels to benefit the food banks? Did she open up Buckingham Palace to the homeless to be safe whilst on her isolation trip? No, I didn’t think so,” wrote Stevelkeys. “Did she mention if she too has been forced to sign a DNR [Do Not Resuscitate] order, like others her age?” wrote another.

Social reality cannot be fixed by a royal sticking plaster, even one administered by the Queen herself. Her desiccated nationalist appeals to the memory of the Blitz and the “British spirit” are a ridiculous anachronism and pure political fiction. The coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis and requires a global solution, based on the unification of the world’s working class in the struggle for socialism, i.e., a social and economic order that prioritises human need not private profit.

The concluding lines of the Queen’s speech invoked the lyrics of Vera Lynn’s World War II song, “We’ll Meet Again,” which promised soldiers a future “sunny day.” In her own speech on Sunday, the Queen also told working people, “We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return.”

Better days for whom? The working class should reject the Queen’s demands for endurance, delivered in the lap of luxury. One day the film of her speech will be a museum exhibit—demonstrating to future generations the stupidity, irrationality and hypocrisy of the Royal Family and all it represents.

Fiction, reality and the global crisis of capitalism

Joseph Kishore & David North

On Monday there seemed to be two different worlds: one based on reality and the other on fiction.

In the real world, the COVID-19 pandemic continued its deadly rampage within the United States and around the globe. The news was dominated by reports of overcrowded hospitals, exhausted doctors, nurses and support staff, and sick and dying patients.

But in the fictional world of global stock exchanges and finance, a mood of uncontrollable euphoria prevailed among investors, who, as if staging an orgy at a funeral, poured billions into equities and drove the Dow Jones Industrial Average up by nearly 7.5 percent. Substantial gains were also recorded by the German DAX (up 6 percent) and the British FTSE (up over 3 percent).

What motivated this shameful and shameless celebration?

On Monday, the US death toll surpassed the 10,000 mark. Despite a very slight decline in the daily total of new deaths in New York City on Sunday, there is no clear evidence that the virulence of the pandemic has peaked in this critical urban center.

Moreover, it is absolutely certain that other major urban centers and, more generally, large portions of the United States, are still to experience the full force of the pandemic. The level of testing remains so disorganized and primitive that there exists no objective data upon which reliable predictions can be made about when it will be possible for workers to return safely to their jobs.

The economic situation is dire and is deteriorating. Former Federal Reserve Chairperson Janet Yellen said in a CNBC interview on Monday that the US is in the midst of an “absolutely shocking” downturn. Unemployment is as high as 13 percent, Yellen estimated, and the overall contraction of the US economy is already at 30 percent.

Yellen’s views were seconded by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who, in his annual shareholder letter released on Monday, wrote that he expects a “bad recession.” According to Dimon, the gross domestic product could fall as much as 35 percent in the second quarter, and the downturn will probably last through the rest of the year.

Large sections of the global economy, beyond the US and Western Europe are in free fall. India, home to 17 percent of the world’s population, remains in lockdown, threatening global supply chains and food production. Former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan said yesterday that the country faces “perhaps its greatest emergency since independence.”

In Japan, a dramatic rise in coronavirus infections has finally compelled Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to declare a state of emergency, which will result in a shutdown of large portions of the country’s economic activity.

To the economic and health care crisis is added a deepening political crisis. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, having been infected by the coronavirus, was hospitalized and placed in intensive care on Sunday evening. Almost simultaneously, the 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth grimly addressed the entire country in a televised speech for only the fourth time (outside of the annual Christmas event) in her 68-year reign.

One might have expected that the hospitalization of an extremely sick prime minister in London, the financial center of Europe, would have sent the stock exchange into a tailspin when it opened for business on Monday morning.

But nothing of the sort happened. Investors plunged into the market with gusto and did not pause for even a minute to shed a tear for their ailing prime minister.

How can one explain the exuberance in global markets amidst such tragic and threatening conditions?

First, whatever anxiety Wall Street may have about the spread of the pandemic is offset by the expectation that the US government will continue to support its speculative activities with countless trillions. In fact, the direct transfer of resources into the markets, particularly by the Federal Reserve central bank in the US, is well underway. The Federal Reserve balance sheet increased last month by $1.6 trillion, approximately equal to the entire monthly gross domestic product of the United States. Every day, tens of billions are being digitally manufactured to buy up assets and debt from banks and corporations.

In other words, the policies that were implemented following the crash of 2008 are being taken to a new level. For more than a decade, the speculative mania on Wall Street has been financed through the infusion of cash from the US Federal Reserve in the form of “quantitative easing” (money printing) operations and low interest rates. In the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, the Fed added $4 trillion to its balance sheet by buying up mortgage-backed securities and other assets held by the banks.

To this was added the unending stream of money plowed into the markets in the form of corporate stock buybacks. The Wall Street Journal writes in an article published over the weekend:

Corporate buybacks, in fact, have been the only net source of money entering the stock market since the financial crisis in 2008, according to Brian Reynolds, chief market strategist at research firm Reynolds Strategy. Buyback programs, through which companies repurchase their own shares on the open market, can help boost share prices by reducing the amount of stock outstanding and lifting a company’s per-share earnings, though not its overall profit.

Since the beginning of 2009, Mr. Reynolds estimates, buybacks have added a net $4 trillion to the stock market. Contributions from all other sources—including exchange-traded funds, foreign buyers, pensions, hedge funds and households—netted out to roughly zero, he concluded, based on the Federal Reserve’s quarterly flow funds reports. The S&P’s 500 market value is $20.9 trillion.

To sum up, through the mechanism of buybacks, the price of shares could be endlessly driven up even without an increase of profit levels. The new intervention of the Federal Reserve, following the bill passed by Congress, has reassured Wall Street that there will be endless liquidity available to support rising share values under conditions of severe economic contraction.

The Fed is already buying up corporate debt, and Yellen raised yesterday the possibility that it might begin direct purchases of stocks for the first time in history. Yellen also indicated that officials at the Federal Reserve, with whom she remains in contact, are thinking about purchasing very risky corporate “junk bonds.”

The second factor behind Wall Street’s rise is its enthusiastic reaction to the international campaign by the political establishment and the media for a speedy return to work.

In the final analysis, the edifice of fictitious capital—wealth created through the massive and inflationary expansion of credit and debt—cannot be entirely liberated from a real productive process involving and requiring the exploitation of the labor power of the working class. If that real process stops, for whatever reason, the structure of fictitious capital collapses.

This is why the calls for a return to work—regardless of the state of the pandemic—have been taken up internationally by the capitalist media. The prospect of an early return to work, under conditions of intensified exploitation, generated Monday’s euphoria.

Of course, the euphoria may not last long. Reality, not fiction, determines the course of events.

The class conflict and the logic of the opposing classes are starkly posed: For the ruling class, it is a question of securing its wealth, returning the workers to the job under unsafe conditions, and tearing up whatever remains of social programs. For the working class, it is a question of saving lives, stopping all nonessential production, and restructuring economic life on the basis of social need, not private profit.

The one path leads to authoritarianism, the other leads to socialist revolution. This is the irrepressible social and political logic of the fundamental reality of our epoch: the global crisis and death agony of world capitalism.

Joint Japan World Bank Group Scholarship Program 2020/2021 for Students in Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 23rd April, 2020

About Scholarship: The Joint Japan/World Bank Graduate Scholarship Program (JJ/WBGSP) is open to women and men from developing countries with relevant professional experience and a history of supporting their countries’ development efforts who are applying to a master degree program in a development-related topic.
After earning their degree, developing country scholars commit to return to their home country to use their new skills and contribute to their countries’ social and economic development.

Type: Masters

Selection Criteria: Eligible applications are assessed according to three main factors: academic excellence, professional experience, and relevance of program of study. Priority is given to candidates from the public sector with a high potential to impact the development in their own countries after completion of their studies

Eligibility: Details on Eligibility Criteria for each call for applications are provided in that call’s Application Guidelines, and these detailed eligibility criteria are strictly adhered to. No exceptions are made.
Broadly speaking, Developing Country nationals must:

• Be a national of a World Bank member developing country;
• Not hold dual citizenship of any developed country;
• Be in good health;
• Hold a Bachelor’s (or equivalent) degree earned at least 3 years prior to the Application Deadline date;
• Have 3 years or more of recent development-related work experience after earning a Bachelor’s (or equivalent) degree;
• Be employed in development-related work in a paid full- time position at the time of submitting the scholarship application.  The only exception to this criterion is for developing country nationals from a country that will be on the updated list of Fragile and Conflict States provided to applicants in the Application Guidelines for each call for scholarships.
• On or before the Scholarship Application Deadline date, be admitted unconditionally (except for funding) for the upcoming academic year to at least one of the JJ/WBGSP preferred university master’s programs and located outside of the applicant’s country of citizenship and country of residence listed at the time the call for scholarship applications open.
• Not be an Executive Director, his/her alternate, and/or staff of any type of appointment of the World Bank Group or a close relative of the aforementioned by blood or adoption with the term “close relative” defined as: Mother, Father, Sister, Half-sister, Brother, Half-brother, Son, Daughter, Aunt, Uncle, Niece, or Nephew; *Please note: All eligibility criteria are strictly adhered to. No exceptions are made.
• Eligibility criteria WILL NOT change during an open call for applications. However, this information is subject to change between the close of one application process and the opening of the next.

Number of Scholarships: Several

Scholarship benefits: The JJ/WBGSP scholarship provides annual awards to cover the cost of completing a master’s degree or its equivalent. The awards are given for one year and, provided that the academic program is longer than one year, may be renewed for a second consecutive year or a portion thereof, subject to satisfactory academic performance in the first year and the availability of funds.
The scholarship provides benefits for the recipient only, covering:

• economy class air travel between the home country and the host university at the start of the study program and one return journey following the end of the overall scholarship period. In addition to the ticket, scholars receive a US $500 travel allowance for each trip;
• tuition and the cost of basic medical and accident insurance usually obtained through the university;
• a monthly subsistence allowance to cover living expenses, including books.

Duration: The proposed program of study should start during the academic year 2020/2021 for a maximum duration of two years.

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

To be taken at (country): One of the preferred universities (see in Program Webpage Link below)

How to Apply: Applicants are strongly encouraged to use the online application form available in  English, French, or Spanish.
It is very necessary to go through the instructions in ALL application documents before applying.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Mest Africa Challenge 2020 (Win up to $50,000 equity investment)

Application Deadline: 18th April 2020

Eligible Countries: Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, South Africa, Senegal, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda.

About the Award: Calling all tech start-ups in Abidjan, Accra, Addis, Kigali, Dakar, Dar Es Salaam, Lagos, Nairobi, and Johannesburg!
The MEST Africa Challenge is the African tech startup pitch competition for early-stage companies based in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Senegal, Ethiopia or Tanzania.
Winners of each country’s semi-final competition will compete in the Challenge finals at the MEST Africa Summit 2020. Finalists will compete on a global stage in front of entrepreneurs, investors, corporate partners and ecosystem players for the chance to win $50k in investment from the Meltwater Foundation, and the opportunity to join the MEST Africa incubator community.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility:

1. Pre-seed or seed-stage (have raised $100k total or less cumulatively since inception)
2. Currently generating revenue
3. Can demonstrate traction in one or more of the nine MAC Markets (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda)
4. Has been in operations for 2 years or less
5. Tech-enabled (software company)
6. Industry agnostic
7. Any business model (B2B, B2C, B2B2C, B2G etc…)
8. *Francophone applicants must pitch in English

Number of Awards: 10

Value of Award: Finalists will compete on a global stage in front of entrepreneurs, investors, corporate partners and ecosystem players for the chance to win $50k in investment from the Meltwater Foundation, and the opportunity to join the MEST Africa incubator community.

Duration of Programme:  May 1 – May 22

How to Apply: 

• Apply here for the 2020 MEST Africa challenge.

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Cuba’s Promising Approach to Cancer

Cesar Chelala

In 1991, I headed a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) mission of Latin American physicians to evaluate a national Cuban project involving the use of interferon to treat inoperable lung cancer. At the time, there was a rumor that Fidel Castro had lung cancer and had a particular interest in the research about it. Castro showed his interest, in part, when he came to visit us and discussed the findings. At the time, interferon didn’t seem to have a significant effect, but Cuban doctors have now developed a new treatment for lung cancer that offers promising results.

In September of 2011, the Chinese press agency Xinhua reported that Cuban doctors had produced the first therapeutic vaccine for lung cancer called CIMAvax-EGF. It was the result of a 25-year research project at Havana’s Center for Molecular Immunology. Although the vaccine doesn’t prevent lung cancer from developing in new patients, it turns later-stage lung cancer, specifically non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) into a controllable chronic disease.

The vaccine contains a protein called epidermal growth factor (EGF). This substance stimulates the growth of cells and causes the tumors to multiply and grow uncontrollably. The vaccine contains EGF and a protein from the meningitis bacteria which enter into the bloodstream of patients and encourage their immune system to produce antibodies that suppress the effects of EGF.

As a result, the vaccine doesn’t eliminate the tumors but prevents them from growing and spreading to other parts of the body. The vaccine is given to people who already have lung cancer and where the traditional treatments have proven to be ineffective. For these types of patients, the vaccine could be a life saver.

The vaccine, which is now available in Cuba, Colombia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Peru and Paraguay, is relatively cheap to produce and store, and produces only very mild side effects such as nausea, chills, fever, and lack of energy. There are now agreements to test it in the United States, Japan, and some European countries.

Initial trials have shown a trend towards longer survival among vaccinated test subjects. Also, a direct correlation has been found between the level of antibodies that a vaccinated patient has produced against EGF and survival. Other trials have shown that those under 60 benefit the most in terms of survival. However, researchers caution that some early positive results to date have been found in relatively few cancer patients who were carefully selected and given special oncology care. They may not represent all the patients who could benefit from this vaccine.

Trials are currently being planned in the United States, Japan, the European Union and Serbia. In late October 2016, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, to conduct a Phase I/II clinical trial of CIMAvax in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. “The chance to evaluate a vaccine like this is a very exciting prospect,” declared Candace Johnson, President and CEO of Roswell Park.

The same epidermal growth factor (EGF) acting on the lungs could play a role also on prostate, breast, colon and pancreatic cancer, thus opening a vast array of practical applications. Kelvin Lee, an immunologist at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center indicated that all these organs could be potential targets for this vaccine.

During several trips to Cuba on UN public health-related missions, I have had the opportunity to work with several Cuban physicians and have become aware of their high commitment to public health. As Dr. Kelvin Lee has said, “The wonderful thing about working with our Cuban colleagues is that they really believe, in their heart of hearts, that medical care is a human right.”

The collaboration between the Cuban doctors and those at the Roswell Cancer Center is a promising one. But there are still several hurdles to overcome in large part because of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Clearing the path to an effective collaboration may result in one of the most important advances to combat cancer in our time.

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism

Richard Wolff

The desperate policies of panic-driven governments involve throwing huge amounts of money at the economies collapsed in response to the coronavirus threat. Monetary authorities create money and lend it at extremely low interest rates to the major corporations and especially big banks “to get them through the crisis.” Government treasuries borrow vast sums to get the collapsed economy back into what they imagine is “the normal, pre-virus economy.” Capitalism’s leaders are rushing into policy failures because of their ideological blinders.

​The problem of policies aimed to return the economy to what it was before the virus hit is this: Global capitalism, by 2019, was itself a major cause of the collapse in 2020. Capitalism’s scars from the crashes of 2000 and 2008-2009 had not healed. Years of low interest rates had enabled corporations and governments to “solve” all their problems by borrowing limitlessly at almost zero interest rate cost. All the new money pumped into economies by central banks had indeed caused the feared inflation, but chiefly in stock markets whose prices consequently spiraled dangerously far away from underlying economic values and realities. Inequalities of income and wealth reached historic highs.

​In short, capitalism had built up vulnerabilities to another crash that any number of possible triggers could unleash. The trigger this time was not the dot.com meltdown of 2000 or the sub-prime meltdown of 2008/9; it was a virus. And of course, mainstream ideology requires focusing on the trigger, not the vulnerability. Thus mainstream policies aim to reestablish pre-virus capitalism. Even if they succeed, that will return us to a capitalist system whose accumulated vulnerabilities will soon again collapse from yet another trigger.

​In the light of the coronavirus pandemic, I focus criticism on capitalism and the vulnerabilities it has accumulated for several reasons. Viruses are part of nature. They have attacked human beings—sometimes dangerously—in both distant and recent history. In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed nearly 700,000 in the United States and millions elsewhere. Recent viruses include SARS, MERS and Ebola. What matters to public health is each society’s preparedness: stockpiled tests, masks, ventilators, hospital beds, trained personnel, etc., to manage dangerous viruses. In the U.S., such objects are produced by private capitalist enterprises whose goal is profit. It was not profitable to produce and stockpile such products, that was not and still is not being done.

Nor did the U.S. government produce or stockpile those medical products. Top U.S. government personnel privilege private capitalism; it is their primary objective to protect and strengthen. The result is that neither private capitalism nor the U.S. government performed the most basic duty of any economic system: to protect and maintain public health and safety. U.S. capitalism’s response to the coronavirus pandemic continues to be what it has been since December 2019: too little, too late. It failed. It is the problem.

The second reason I focus on capitalism is that the responses to today’s economic collapse by Trump, the GOP and most Democrats carefully avoid any criticism of capitalism. They all debate the virus, China, foreigners, other politicians, but never the system they all serve. When Trump and others press people to return to churches and jobs—despite risking their and others’ lives—they place reviving a collapsed capitalism ahead of public health.

The third reason capitalism gets blame here is that alternative systems—those not driven by a profit-first logic—could manage viruses better. While not profitable to produce and stockpile everything needed for a viral pandemic, it is efficient. The wealth already lost in this pandemic far exceeds the cost to have produced and stockpiled the tests and ventilators, the lack of which is contributing so much to today’s disaster. Capitalism often pursues profit at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. In this, capitalism is grossly inefficient. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to people.

A worker-coop based economy—where workers democratically run enterprises, deciding what, how and where to produce, and what to do with any profits—could, and likely would, put social needs and goals (like proper preparation for pandemics) ahead of profits. Workers are the majority in all capitalist societies; their interests are those of the majority. Employers are always a small minority; theirs are the “special interests” of that minority. Capitalism gives that minority the position, profits and power to determine how the society as a whole lives or dies. That’s why all employees now wonder and worry about how long our jobs, incomes, homes and bank accounts will last—if we still have them. A minority (employers) decides all those questions and excludes the majority (employees) from making those decisions, even though that majority must live with their results.

Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today’s social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism’s failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today’s social agenda.