As Mexico records 1 million coronavirus cases, 53 percent of tests are coming out positive

Andrea Lobo

Mexico reached 1 million recorded coronavirus cases on Saturday and is expected to top 100,000 deaths sometime this week, the fourth highest death toll in the world after the United States, Brazil and India.

The seven-day moving average of daily new cases has risen 30 percent since September 23 and is approaching the level of around 7,000, reached during the height of the first wave in July. About three weeks after infections rebounded, daily deaths began to surge as well. The seven-day moving average for daily deaths has risen from 295 to 502 since October 13.

What is most striking is that more than half of the COVID-19 tests are coming out positive. According to the latest records available to World in Data up to November 9, Mexico has the highest COVID-19 positivity rate in the world, 53.4 percent. This is slightly higher than its previous peak in July.

This striking figure has been reached after a low of 18 percent on October 20. By comparison, in the United States, the seven-day moving average of daily cases has almost quadrupled since September 23, while the positivity rate has increased from about 4.3 percent to 12.3 percent.

The unavoidable conclusions are that the virus is spreading out of control and that the official data offers a very incomplete picture of the current increase in cases and even deaths. Through September 26, the Mexican government reported 193,170 “excess” deaths, while officially recognizing just 78,000 of them as caused by COVID-19.

Mexico’s chief COVID-19 coordinator, Hugo López-Gatell, has acknowledged that the coronavirus death toll will not be known for at least two years, and that the task will be left to statisticians.

The government has responded by seeking to minimize the danger of the increase in cases and present it as an inevitable phenomenon.

On Monday, Mexican Director-General of Health Promotion Ricardo Cortés Alcalá brought up the positivity rate during the entire pandemic, which is 42 percent, and mentioned that 311,000 suspected cases they have documented were never tested, only to argue clumsily that the government is not “covering up” the extent of the pandemic.

Despite this, he and the Mexican corporate media have highlighted the claim that “only” 47,099 recorded cases are active.

On the question of why so many suspected patients were logged but never tested, Cortés said “some were never tested or their tests never arrived at the laboratory or were poorly taken or spilled en route” while “some were not taken because it didn’t correspond or didn’t have a chance of giving a result.”

Meanwhile, workers who have gotten infected in the factories have reported to the WSWS and other news media that the public hospitals have simply refused to test them despite clear symptoms, instead sending them back to work.

Cortés then insinuated that daily deaths have fallen since they remain well below their highest point in July. He also acknowledged hospital occupancy is increasing nationally and has reached 33 percent, but said this increase was not affecting beds with ventilators. Not until a journalist asked him specifically did he refer to hospital occupancy in the state of Chihuahua, indicating that it is “really high” at about 75 percent, but that “surely” some hospitals there have an occupancy as low as 50 percent.

A few days earlier, Chihuahua governor Javier Corral had declared that the are “no beds available” in the state and that the real occupancy rate is above 90 percent.

In fact, the states of Durango, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo León—all in the central region next to the US border that has the highest concentration of manufacturing plants— have occupancy rates of over 65 percent.

Meanwhile, in Mexico City, the epicenter of the pandemic, the authorities said last Thursday that new daily hospitalizations had increased from 20 to 100 in five days, but still refused to raise the risk level, instead implementing the barest minimum of precautions, requiring bars, movie theaters and casinos to close at 7 p.m. instead of 10 p.m.

On Monday, López-Gatell said the 1 million case milestone was “somewhat insignificant” since what matters is the vast understatement that “the epidemic remains active.” He added that cases “are increasing concurrently with the flu season, just as we’ve been predicting since March.” Yet, nothing was done to prevent it.

In response to the patently dishonest and indifferent COVID-19 policies of the ruling class, workers need to take matters into their own hands. In April, following a wave of wildcat strikes forcing shutdowns in Europe, the United States and Canada, thousands of workers at maquiladora sweatshops across the cities on the US-Mexico border struck, and forced most nonessential production to stop.

Bowing to pressure from Wall Street and the White House, the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ordered nonessential production to begin reopening at the end of May, a murderous policy applied with the help of the trade unions.

In late October, the Chihuahua authorities were the first in the country to return to a “red” alert level, which officially means manufacturing plants have to work at 60 percent capacity. Having already experienced that corporations refuse to abide by such restrictions, workers in Chihuahua, the second main auto-parts producer in the country, have again taken independent action.

The same day the change was announced, on October 23, workers walked out at three maquiladoras to demand that the measures be enforced, citing numerous infections and deaths of co-workers. The plants included refrigerator-maker Electrolux and two auto-parts plants owned by APTIV—one in Ciudad Juárez and the other in Hidalgo del Parral. Workers at other maquiladoras in the state took to social media, threatening to join the strike.

Workers on strike in Matamoros, Mexico in early 2019. Sign reads: "Unions and bosses kill the working class."

The strikes had an immediate effect. Employer groups have since lobbied the health authorities unsuccessfully to raise the 60 percent limit. The right-wing government in Chihuahua was compelled to impose a mask-wearing mandate to attempt to reduce hospital occupancy rates and bring down the risk level.

In the United States, General Motors announced that its Bowling Green Assembly Plant in Kentucky was forced to close down November 12-13 because of a shortage of parts arriving from Mexico due to “COVID-19 restrictions.” The only explanation for this is the strikes, enforcing a cut in production in Chihuahua.

The brave initiative of workers in Chihuahua points the way forward for workers everywhere to use their immense economic power and take control of the response to the pandemic. The limited restrictions in Chihuahua, aimed at quelling opposition and maximizing the extraction of profits, are not enough. In order to control the pandemic and be able to even trace the virus, experts insist that nonessential production needs to shut down with full compensation for lost wages and income for the unemployed, while essential and frontline workers are given the necessary protective gear.

Workers in Mexico must form rank-and-file factory and workplace committees to fight for these necessary steps to prevent the unnecessary death of hundreds of thousands more. Being so closely connected through the production process, these committees must coordinate their struggle with their class brothers and sisters in the United States and internationally.

COVID-19 drastically impacts Bangladesh students and youth

Wimal Perera

A recent webinar in Bangladesh points to the escalating social crisis facing students and youth throughout the country. The online event, held in late October by the Citizen's Platform for included the results of a survey entitled “COVID-19 and Bangladesh: A Youth Agenda for Recovery.”

More than two-thirds of survey respondents were from rural areas with the remainder from Dhaka and other cities. Over 89 percent of young people employed in Bangladesh work in the informal sector.

The survey, which was conducted between October 18 and 27, involved just over 1,160 people between the ages of 18 and 30 years. It revealed that 28 percent of those participating had abandoned their studies to support their families amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Students, like other poor sections of the society, have been ignored by the Awami League government.

The Citizen’s Platform for consists of 104 organisations from across the country involved in the 2015 United Nations’ “call to action to end poverty and protect the planet.” The platform’s supposed objective is to assist in the development and implementation of sustainable development goals.

A volunteer of Mission Save Bangladesh distributes food packages at a Cancer hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020. (AP Photo/Al-emrun Garjon)

The survey found that almost 80 percent of respondents had experienced income reductions during the pandemic. Although many youth had abandoned their studies in order to find work, a substantial number had not found jobs. Some 33 percent said they were still “looking for jobs” with 9 percent of graduate students reporting that they “faced difficulties” securing employment.

According to the International Labour Organisation, a total of 94.4 percent of Bangladesh’s workforce is aged between 18 and 35 years, with over 4 million employed in the country’s 4,500 officially registered garment plants.

Another study by the South Asian Network on Economic Modelling (SANEM)—a Bangladesh research organisation—found that about 8 percent of garment workers were unemployed in September, up from 5 percent in August. It reported that employers had responded to the pandemic by cutting jobs and intensifying the exploitation of its low-paid workforce.

In April, when plants were running at lower capacity, the median monthly working hours for women and men was around 43 and 42 hours respectively. In June, July, and September, however, work hours began to return to 2019 rates of 246 hours per month. Most garment workers rely on overtime, which often accounts for 20 percent of their monthly income, to meet basic living expenses.

One garment factory owner, who supplies European and North American retailers, told bdnews24.com: “Now the second wave has started. We don’t know what the future holds for us.” He added that he had cut one in five jobs at his plant.

The World Bank reported last month that the average wage of salaried and daily workers dropped by 37 percent compared to usual earnings immediately prior to COVID-19.

Another aspect of the pandemic’s social impact has been rising rates of depression and mental stress, particularly amongst the young. According to the platform’s survey almost two-thirds of respondents said they were depressed about future income prospects and 96 percent reported mental stress.

Indifferent to these disastrous figures, the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina continues to implement the social spending cuts dictated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

According to “The Protection We Want: Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific,” which is jointly produced by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and the ILO, Bangladesh currently spends only a tiny fraction of its gross domestic product (GDP) on welfare programs.

Published on October 15, the report noted that Bangladesh allocates only 0.7 percent of its GDP for “social protection,” lagging behind Sri Lanka’s 5.2 percent, India’s 3.2 percent, and Pakistan’s 1.9 percent. The European Union’s statistical office defines social protection as welfare benefits, or transfers in cash or in kind, to households and individuals.

Addressing the 14th international conference of the Finance Ministers of Asia-Europe on November 6, Prime Minister Hasina boasted that her government had so far announced “21 stimulus packages equivalent to $US14.14 billion for various sectors, as well as support to different segments of the society.”

The hypocrisy of Hasina’s claims is exposed by last month’s Citizen’s Platform for survey, which reported that almost 80 percent respondents stated that they “did not get any support from the government.”

Justice Department attorney tells appeals court the government can kill US citizens without judicial review

Harvey Simpkins

On Monday, an attorney with the Justice Department asserted in federal appeals court in Washington D.C. that the government can kill US citizens without judicial review on the basis of the “state secrets” privilege.

Attorney Bradley Hinshelwood was arguing before the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a case brought by Bilal Abdul Kareem, a US citizen, and Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, a Pakistani-Syrian. The two journalists are challenging their placement on the US “kill list,” compiled by the government at least since the early years of the Obama administration, to carry out extrajudicial political assassinations.

Kareem claims he was targeted for death by the US government while he was in Syria reporting on the civil war there. He says that his interviews with Al Qaeda-linked militants resulted in his being placed on the “kill list.” In June and August of 2016, he maintains, the US targeted him five times, including a drone strike involving a US-made Hellfire missile.

Bilal Abdul Kareem (Image credit: Screen capture)

The government has refused to release any information regarding the two journalists on grounds of national security and the “state secrets” privilege in relation to alleged national security questions.

In 2019, the FBI denied a Freedom of Information Act from WSWS International Editorial Board chairman David North on similar state secrets grounds. The FBI declared that acknowledging whether it had records on North would threaten national security and foreign intelligence. The FBI also refused to admit or deny whether it placed North on any lists.

During the hearing, Attorney Bradley Hinshelwood declared that the government had the power to target and kill alleged national security threats, including US citizens, and that planning or committing such acts was not reviewable by the courts.

The bald assertion of the government’s unlimited “right” to murder its own citizens evidently stunned Circuit Judge Patricia Millett, part of a three-judge panel hearing the case. She asked Hinshelwood, “Do you appreciate how extraordinary that proposition is?” She went on to paraphrase his claim as giving the government the power to “unilaterally decide to kill US citizens.”

Kareem says that soon after the assassination attempts, a Turkish source told him he had been placed on a US target list at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, where American drones are launched.

In August, Kareem and a British citizen, Tauqir Sharif, were seized by the radical Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria’s Idlib Province. He remains in HTS custody.

Kareem’s case was dismissed last year by US District Court Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, who sided with the Trump administration’s invocation of the “state secrets” privilege to withhold information from Kareem on national security grounds.

Trump administration lawyers argued that disclosing whether Abdul Kareem was on the “kill list” could allow him to evade capture, and risked revealing “the existence and operational details of alleged military and intelligence activities directed at combating the terrorist threat to the United States.”

In response to that ruling, Kareem’s counsel, Tara J. Plochocki, explained that, “For the first time ever, a United States federal court ruled that the government may kill one of its citizens without providing him the information necessary to prove that he is being wrongly targeted and does not deserve to die. The US government could have provided this information but chose not to, and the court found that the government’s assertion of national security trumps his right not to be killed.”

In Monday’s hearing before the appeals court, Plochocki said, “Whether it’s in a parking lot in the United States or abroad in Syria, the government has claimed—for the first time ever in this case—that it has the unfettered and unreviewable discretion to kill US citizens at will.”

Hinshelwood dismissed Plochocki’s statement as speculation, citing the intense fighting that was taking place in Syria in 2016. He said, “In all of these circumstances, he [Kareem] is not even the only person present, much less is there anything to suggest that he’s actually the target of any of those specific attacks.”

A second judge on the panel, Karen Henderson, a George W. Bush appointee, appeared to side with the government, calling Kareem’s claims of being targeted for assassination “a spectacular delusion of grandeur.”

The Trump administration’s despotic assertion of the right to kill people, including US citizens, without any judicial review is a continuation and extension of powers asserted and acted upon by the Obama administration. In 2011, the US assassinated Anwar al-Awlaki and another US citizen, Samir Khan, in a drone strike in Yemen. Two others were also killed in that strike. Two weeks later, al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, also a US citizen, was assassinated in another drone strike while eating dinner at an outdoor restaurant in Yemen.

In 2017, the Trump administration killed al-Awlaki’s eight-year-old daughter as part of a murderous military raid in Yemen that left at least eight women and seven children between the ages of 3 and 13 dead.

Two lawsuits filed by al-Awlaki’s father, one challenging his son’s placement on the Obama administration’s “kill list” before he was assassinated and another challenging the government’s right to kill US citizens without due process, were dismissed by federal courts on the basis that the courts cannot interfere with the executive branch in the exercise of “wartime” powers, or where “national security” concerns are raised.

In rubberstamping the “right” of the president to kill US citizens, the courts have abandoned the basic constitutional framework of the “separation of powers,” under which the courts are supposed to act as a check on the executive branch.

In March of 2013, Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, defended the assassination of Awlaki in testimony before Congress and refused to rule out targeted assassinations of American citizens on US soil.

A year earlier, Holder made a mockery of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which declares that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” when he stated, “‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

Holder’s arguments, as the World Socialist Web Site explained at the time, had fascistic implications:

Holder’s pseudo-legal arguments in favor of military tribunals and assassinations bear more than a passing similarity to Nazi jurisprudence. Under legal doctrines developed by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, whose ideas enjoy growing interest and influence in America’s legal academia, national security and military urgency can justify a “state of exception,” under which basic democratic rights can be abrogated, the rule of law suspended, and the executive branch granted exceptional powers.

The Trump administration, in keeping with its fascistic politics, is asserting in more categorical terms the authoritarian logic of the policies adopted by previous administrations and supported by both parties of American imperialism.

Amid electoral coup plot, Trump threatens catastrophic war on Iran

Bill Van Auken

On November 14, the World Socialist Web Site asked the question, Is Trump plotting a war against Iran? The answer has not been long in coming.

The New York Times has revealed in a November 16 article that the US president last Thursday convened an Oval Office meeting of his national security cabinet to discuss “options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site in the coming weeks.”

Present at the meeting, convened as Trump waged his campaign to nullify the results of the presidential election, were Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, newly appointed acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.

The pretext for this ominous discussion was a report issued last week by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium had reached 5,386 pounds, 12 times the limit set by the nuclear agreement reached in 2015 between Tehran and the world’s major powers. The accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, traded the lifting of United Nations sanctions for Iran’s agreement to sharply curtail its civilian nuclear program and submit to a rigorous inspection regime.

Trump pulled out of the agreement in 2018, imposing an endless series of steadily escalating unilateral sanctions aimed at strangling Iran’s economy and starving its people into submission, while engaging in relentless military provocations. This culminated in the drone assassination last January of top Iranian leader Qassim Suleimani at Baghdad international airport, a criminal act that brought the two countries to the brink of all-out war.

The size of Iran’s uranium stockpile—still far smaller than before the 2015 accord—is of no strategic significance and represents no violation of international law. Tehran has increased the stockpile and exceeded other limits of the treaty in response to Europe’s failure to resist Washington’s unilateral sanctions. Iran has taken no steps to enrich uranium to the over 90 percent level necessary to produce fissionable material, nor is there evidence that it has the capacity to do so. Iran has repeatedly insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, and has accepted international inspections that would reveal anything to the contrary.

The Times article repeats the propaganda lie peddled by the US and Israeli governments that Iran could be “close to a bomb” as early as next spring. It bears pointing out that the article’s authors include Eric Schmitt and David Sanger, both of whom contributed pieces to the Times campaign in service of the Bush administration’s fabrication of a “weapons of mass destruction” pretext for a US war of aggression against Iraq in 2002-2003.

According to the Times, “Any strike — whether by missile or cyber — would almost certainly be focused on Natanz”, Iran's largest uranium enrichment facility located south of the capital Tehran.

The Times report cited unnamed administration officials as stating that “After Mr. Pompeo and General Milley described the potential risks of military escalation, officials left the meeting believing a missile attack inside Iran was off the table ... ”

There is absolutely no reason to accept such assurances as good coin. Planning for a US strike is continuing apace, and definite measures are being taken for its execution.

The Pentagon reported Monday the redeployment of an F-16 fighter squadron from Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany to Al-Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi in what an Air Force commander told the media was a demonstration of “CENTCOM's commitment to allies and partners to bolster security and stability in the region.” The aircraft are equipped to deliver both conventional and nuclear bombs against targets. Meanwhile, the US Navy’s Nimitz Carrier Strike Group continues operations in the Persian Gulf, while the US has some 35,000 troops deployed in the region.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives in Israel today for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, not unlike Trump, is threatened with being ousted from power to face multiple criminal charges. The principal issue to be discussed in Pompeo’s visit—as it will be in his subsequent stops in the Persian Gulf oil monarchies that are part of Washington’s anti-Tehran axis—will be war against Iran. The Israeli press is filled with speculation over whether the US will strike Iran before Trump is forced from office, or whether Washington will assist Netanyahu in doing so.

One thing is certain. The bombing of Natanz or any other Iranian nuclear facility would be a war crime of world historic proportions, threatening to kill thousands—if not tens of thousands—outright, and subjecting many more to death and disease from the release of uranium hexafluoride gases and subsequent radioactive fallout.

Behind the pretext of Iranian uranium stockpiles, the immediate driving force for such a war crime against Iran lies in the unprecedented political crisis gripping Washington in the face of Trump’s attempt to stage a post-election coup to remain in power.

Trump has carried out a purge of the top Pentagon leadership, installing a cabal of fascistic loyalists in top positions, all of them fanatically anti-Iranian. Sacked acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, a former lobbyist for the arms industry, was removed both because of his reluctance to support an Iran strike and his public opposition to Trump’s proposal to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy regular Army troops in the streets to attack anti-police-violence demonstrations.

An attack on Iran, and the inevitable Iranian retaliation with the potential deaths of large numbers of US troops, would provide Trump with the pretext for imposing martial law and refusing to surrender the White House. With 62 days before the scheduled presidential inauguration, the danger of such a provocation is ever present.

Biden and the Democrats have ignored the threat of a catastrophic war against Iran. Instead, they warn of the supposed dangers of a “precipitous” withdrawal of US troops from the nearly two-decade US war in Afghanistan and from Iraq, while proclaiming that Trump’s stonewalling of the transition process is a threat to “national security,” leaving US imperialism vulnerable to its “enemies.”

The war threat against Iran and the danger of a new world war are fundamentally rooted not in the crisis of the Trump regime, but rather in its source, the historic crisis of US imperialism. In its merciless aggression against Iran, Washington is pursuing geo-strategic interests. It seeks to exert unfettered hegemony over the Persian Gulf and its vast energy resources, while denying them to its chief global rival, China.

Should Biden succeed in being inaugurated on January 20, this threat of war will only continue to escalate. The Democratic Party has made this abundantly clear through a campaign attacking Trump from the right for being too “soft” on Russia and China.

The overriding concern of the Democratic Party is not to defeat Trump’s conspiracies, but rather to prevent popular opposition to them from threatening the interests of Wall Street and US imperialism.

The fight against war and in defense of democratic rights—along with workers’ lives being sacrificed to the ruling class’s “herd immunity” response to the COVID-19 pandemic—can be waged only by the working class in opposition to Trump and the Democrats and the capitalist system that they both defend.

The whole world is watching the extraordinary events that have followed the US elections, and if American workers initiate an independent political struggle, it will be backed by workers across the globe. The common interests of workers in the United States and every country lie in breaking the grip of the financial-corporate oligarchy and taking power into their own hands in order to restructure economic life internationally on the basis of equality and socialism.

Second wave of coronavirus pandemic hits New York and New Jersey

Josh Varlin

The coronavirus pandemic is resurging in New York and New Jersey, which were the global epicenter of the pandemic for much of the spring, prompting totally inadequate responses from their state governments. Cases, test positivity rates, hospitalizations and deaths have begun rising in both states after months of relatively low numbers, even while the rest of the country experienced worsening conditions.

The most recent testing data for New York show that more than 3 percent of COVID-19 tests came back positive on Nov. 16—the first time since May that such a benchmark had been met. The seven-day rolling average was 2.9 percent, indicating that community transmission is steadily growing out of control. The Mid-Hudson region and Central New York have more than 4 percent test positivity; Western New York was at 6.5 percent on Monday.

In this Nov. 10, 2020, file photo, a resident uses a swab to take a coronavirus test at the Central Family Life Center in the Stapleton neighborhood of the Staten Island borough of New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

Raw case numbers are likewise growing to levels not seen since the spring, recently reaching over 4,000 per day (and over 5,000 on Tuesday) compared to 600–700 daily during the summer.

Nearly 2,000 New Yorkers are hospitalized, a level also not seen since May. In the past month alone hospitalizations have doubled. Deaths are also beginning to climb; on Nov. 16 COVID-19 killed 36 people, bringing the state’s total deaths over 34,000, an underestimate given dismal testing in the early stages of the pandemic.

The situation is similar in New Jersey, which was even worse hit on a per capita basis than New York earlier in the year.

New cases have risen to over 4,000, with 4,026 cases Nov. 16. The test positivity rate has also risen substantially, hitting 12.1 percent on Nov. 17, a level not seen since May. COVID-19 killed 20 people in New Jersey on Nov. 16.

Both states are experiencing a rate of reproduction of greater than 1, meaning that each sick person will pass along COVID-19 to more than just a single person on average. Rt.live, which estimates the reproduction rate based on data from the COVID Tracking Project, estimates New Jersey’s rate at 1.24 and New York’s at 1.23, both toward the high end of the spectrum of US states despite the large case numbers in other states.

These reproduction rates mean that if the pandemic is not curbed immediately, both states will see cases in the tens of thousands daily again, overwhelming the health care system and heralding a return of the scenes of the spring: mass graves, bodies stacked in portable morgues and health care workers pushed past the brink.

Given the scale of the disaster approaching—with the disastrous first wave fresh in millions of minds and the present scenes from across the country playing out in the news—the response of the state governments has been nothing short of criminal. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, both Democrats, have implemented the most meager restrictions at a time period when decisive measures now could save thousands or tens of thousands of lives, just as the delays in the spring killed tens of thousands.

With much economic activity resumed across the region, Cuomo announced that as of Nov. 13, bars and restaurants with liquor licenses as well as gyms would have to close at 10 p.m. and private gatherings would be capped at 10 people.

New Jersey is likewise limiting indoor gatherings to 10 people as well as reducing percentage capacity for religious services and weddings.

To call such measures “inadequate” is being generous. There are no substantial restrictions on factories and other workplaces, educational facilities and most dining, the 10 p.m. curfew notwithstanding. These are the three areas identified in detailed data compiled by the Illinois Department of Public Health as the largest centers of COVID-19 outbreaks in that state.

New York City schools have been kept open for in-person classes, with parents and educators alike waiting to hear each day if the schools will be closed due to rising test positivity rates. Besides causing unnecessary stress and creating the need for back-up plans, each extra day of instruction during rising cases provides opportunities for cases to spread in the schools. The Democratic Party-aligned New York Times has been among the main voices demanding schools be kept open so that workers remain on the job, even at the cost of indoor dining, which was also dangerous to resume.

Workers in New York and New Jersey have sacrificed much in the fight against COVID-19. Cases have been kept fairly low over the summer months in large part due to adherence to physical distancing measures and mask wearing. Parents have kept hundreds of thousands of New York City schoolchildren in online classes rather than engage in the dangerous “hybrid” teaching. Similarly, economic activity has dramatically declined in large part due to the lack of support provided to workers and small businesses during the lockdowns in the spring.

With vaccines in an advanced stage of development, workers cannot allow for cases to rise and unnecessary deaths to happen on a mass scale again. They must fight for the closure of all nonessential workplaces and full compensation for workers and small businesses.

Austria to tighten lockdown, but factories remain open

Markus Salzmann

Given the dramatic infection figures and a catastrophic situation in hospitals, the Austrian government was forced on Saturday to announce new measures to contain the coronavirus. They come far too late and are completely inadequate.

In terms of population, Austria currently has the highest rate of reported new COVID-19 infections worldwide, according to the data platform “Our World in Data.” On a 7-day average, Austria is ahead of Georgia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, with 831 new infections per million inhabitants per day. Also, in terms of deaths in Europe, only Slovenia, Belgium and France are currently ahead of Austria. On Friday, almost 9,600 new infections and 53 deaths were reported, in a country with 8.9 million inhabitants.

The responsibility for this disastrous development lies with the government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose right-wing conservative Austrian Peoples Party (ÖVP) is ruling together with the Greens. After the first lockdown in the spring, infection rates and deaths fell in April. From May 1, the government then lifted all relevant protective measures again, although scientists warned strongly against this and experience from other countries confirmed their warnings. Kurz took a pioneering role in Europe in lifting the protective measures when it came to the interests of industry.

Even when the infection figures rose exponentially again in September and October, Kurz and his Green coalition partner insisted on the course they had taken. Politicians from all parties declared that the country could not afford another lockdown. Businesses and schools had to remain open without restriction, and tourism not be allowed to suffer.

Chancellor Kurz with his green coalition partner Werner Kogler (Photo: Federal Ministry of Finance CC-BY-SA 2.0)

It was only when the infection figures reached five times the peak of the spring—as more and more experts sounded the alarm and the outrage in the population became unmistakable—that the government enacted some disjointed and half-hearted measures starting on November 3. Gastronomy, recreational, cultural and sports facilities would close by the end of November. But factories remained open and schools continued to provide face-to-face instruction. Only in high schools and universities would there be a switch to online teaching. Hospitals were not prepared for the new situation, nor were testing facilities significantly expanded.

Finally, on November 9, four renowned scientists sounded the alarm in an open letter, expressing the widespread mood in the population.

The government measures were partially wrong and much too lax, wrote mathematician Peter Markowich, computer scientist Georg Gottlob and the two physicists, Christoph Nägerl and Erich Gornik, all four winners of the Wittgenstein Prize, Austria’s highest award for the promotion of science. According to all the scientific evidence, the country “has, for weeks, been heading unchecked into the catastrophe of overstretched hospitals, where doctors are having to follow triage procedures,” i.e., treating some patients and allowing others to die.

The scientists demanded the immediate closure of all schools and the “obligation to work from home wherever possible.” The assertion that schools were particularly safe could not be sustained. They were “one of the drivers of respiratory viruses, that is a proven fact. Austrian studies that try to prove the opposite are methodologically false or outdated,” they wrote. Schools may not be the sole cause of the explosion in case numbers, but were “certainly a significant contribution,” and their closure “one of the most effective individual measures ever.”

“Even if all the major disadvantages of school closures are taken into account,” the scientists said, “the catastrophe of overloading hospitals weighs more heavily. All those who now speak against closing schools must say that they are in favour of a triage approach, at the latest starting from November 18.”

The Austrian Institute for Economic Research (Wifo), which is supported by both the employers’ associations and the trade unions, objected. From an economic point of view, school closures would entail “high individual and social costs,” Wifo declared in a “Research Letter.”

After shedding some crocodile tears about the psychological strain and the lack of progress of students, Wifo came to the point: Schools must remain open and the spread of the virus and thousands of deaths must be accepted to secure the profits of the corporations!

School closures would also have consequences on the labour supply of parents, the “Research Letter” said. About 31 percent of employees had children under the age of 15 in their household and about 25 percent had no potential caregiver, i.e., no adult without employment, in the same household. A total of 12.5 percent of employees had caring responsibilities for children in the event of school or kindergarten closures, with 9 percent of all working hours in Austria being performed by these people.

“Even if those affected find creative ways of combining employment outside the home, or with working from home and [conducting] home schooling, the direct effects on the labour supply are negative,” the economic institute found.

Until two days ago, the Health Ministry, which is run by the Greens, also spoke out against the closure of the schools.

Given the looming catastrophe, the pressure on the government, and its fear of a rebellion should scenes occur like the ones in northern Italy in the spring, became too great. On November 14, Chancellor Kurz announced a tightened lockdown that would apply from November 17 to December 6.

All schools will be closed and shifted to distance learning. Day-care centres will also remain closed, except for emergency care. In addition to catering and leisure facilities, retail outlets will also be largely closed. Excluded from this are grocery stores, post offices, banks, pharmacies and similar businesses. Service providers, such as hairdressers and beauty salons, are also no longer allowed to open. The curfew, which currently applies from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., will be extended to cover the entire day. Leaving the house is only possible for those travelling for work reasons, to meet basic needs as well as to provide support and care for others. Walking and sports are also permitted.

In contrast, production can continue in factories, even if this is not for essential needs. This means that one of the main sources of infection remains. As in schools, numerous infections occur in workplaces due to a lack of protective measures. In the summer, when the infection figures were significantly lower, dozens of infections occurred in several meat processing factories in the country. But the government continues to put the profits of big business above the lives of the people.

Before the announcement of the lockdown, the situation had worsened dramatically. On Friday, 3,922 COVID-19 patients were in hospitals, 567 in intensive care. In the most severely affected provinces of Vorarlberg and Upper Austria, intensive care units are already operating at full capacity. Hospitals in Vorarlberg announced on Friday that they were concentrating only on acute emergencies and COVID-19 patients. Applying a triage approach—the selection of patients who are left to die without treatment—is imminent in the coming days.

Hospitals in other parts of Austria are also reaching their limits, postponing non-essential operations and preparing to admit more coronavirus patients. Most recently, there was a 70 percent increase in patients requiring intensive care.

On Saturday, Susanne Rabady, vice president of the Austrian Society of General Medicine (ÖGAM), sounded the alarm that the health care system in Austria was “now at full capacity.”

Klaus Markstaller, president of the Austrian Society for Anaesthesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care Medicine (ÖGARI), warned of the impending need to implement triage. “When more than a third of all available intensive care beds are no longer available,” then triage will begin, he said. If the number of hospital admissions increased in the next few days—which can be assumed based on the current figures—triage was inevitable.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to get patients into intensive care beds who need them,” Markstaller said. “We are right at the limit. We will have to start deciding over the next few days to what extent we can treat which patients with intensive care.” As soon as there was a need for “hard triage,” prognostic factors, the patient’s will, surrounding conditions and comparison with other patients would decide who would be treated and who would not, the Kurier quoted him as saying.

In this dramatic situation, the government’s measures are completely inadequate. Both the extreme right and the Social Democrats, trade unions and the Chamber of Labour continue to openly advocate a policy of herd immunity, allowing the virus free rein among the population.

The extreme right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), the ÖVP’s former coalition partner in government, has attacked the measures as “completely excessive.” FPÖ parliamentary faction leader and former Interior Minister Herbert Kickl warned that they were driving Austria to ruin. Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner, herself a doctor, called the closure of the schools “highly irresponsible.” Like other SPÖ politicians, she is concerned about maintaining uninterrupted production in the factories, which she sees as being endangered by the school closures.

The head of the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions, Wolfgang Katzian, and the president of the Chamber of Labour, Renate Anderl, have been up in arms against lockdown measures for weeks. Despite all the warnings from experts, they are demanding that schools and kindergartens remain open.

Both question the necessity of a lockdown, the Kurier reports. Katzian would “be careful not to comment on the measures advocated by virologists and experts.” In the style of a coronavirus denier, Anderl said, “I don’t know if it really makes sense to shut everything down now.” She was not aware that there had been many infections in restaurants, for example.

The facts refute this reactionary twaddle. Only recently, a study in Austria showed that the prevalence, i.e., the proportion of illnesses in the total population, is effectively the same among pupils and teachers. The fact that symptoms occur less frequently in children and adolescents does not affect the risk of transmission. The only differences are in the social structure at schools. According to the scientists, the risk of infection is 3.6 times higher at schools with many children from socially disadvantaged families than at schools with fewer socially disadvantaged children.

Fighting erupts between Morocco and Polisario in Western Sahara

Alejandro López

Fighting between Moroccan military forces and the Polisario Front (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro) has broken out after Rabat sent troops to reopen a highway linking Morocco, the Western Sahara and Mauritania that was occupied by protesters. The fighting puts an end to a 1991 ceasefire, risking war between Morocco and Algeria in a region that is a powder keg after US and European imperialism started wars in Libya and Mali.

For the past three weeks, dozens of Sahrawi protesters had blocked the Guerguerat border crossing, cutting trade and traffic between Morocco and Mauritania to the south. They were demanding Morocco close a road in the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone and calling for the release of political prisoners. Rabat reacted instead by deploying a brigade of 1,000 men accompanied by 200 vehicles to the region, violating the terms of the ceasefire.

This deployment took place hours after US Major General Andrew Rohling met in Agadir with Lieutenant General Belkhir El Farouk, Commander of the Southern Zone of Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces, which includes occupied Western Sahara. They were to discuss preparations for next year’s African Lion military exercise, the largest training exercise involving US troops in Africa.

A Polisario tank division 2012 (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

“War has started, the Moroccan side has liquidated the ceasefire,” senior Polisario official Mohamed Salem Ould Salek told AFP. Sidi Omar, the Polisario Front’s representative to the U.N., said of Rabat’s action: “For us, it is an open war.” The Sahara Press Service claimed Polisario had launched attacks for five consecutive days against the Royal Moroccan Army in the Western Sahara, “causing loss of lives and equipment and disrupting its military plans.”

In an official statement, King Mohammed VI warned that Morocco “remains firmly determined to react, with the greatest severity, and in self-defence, against any threat to its security.”

Western Sahara is a former Spanish colonial territory established at the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884 to divide Africa into colonial spheres of influence. Mainly desert, it has a population of about 500,000. Eighty percent of the territory is controlled by tens of thousands of Moroccan troops behind a 2,700-km (1,700 mi) sand wall separating Moroccan-controlled areas to the west from a Polisario-controlled area to the east, the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

Additionally, for the past 40 years, an estimated 175,000 Sahrawis have lived in four camps of mud-brick and canvas across the border in the south of Algeria, Polisario’s traditional military backer.

The military wing of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), Polisario was founded in 1973 to fight colonial rule by the Spanish fascist regime of Francisco Franco. In 1975, in secret talks between Madrid, Rabat and Washington, Spain relinquished control of the sparsely-populated territory to Morocco, who annexed it. The Sahrawis were never consulted, however.

Fighting ensued for 16 years between US-backed Morocco and Polisario, backed by Libya and Algeria. In 1991, the UN mission to Western Sahara was established to resolve the dispute. What was intended as a short-term mission to organise a referendum on the territory’s future—to remain a part of Morocco, become an autonomous province or become independent—dragged on for decades. Morocco, backed by the US, France and Spain, continued to control the territory and benefit from its minerals, particularly phosphates, and from fishing rights.

Rabat expects support from US President-elect Joe Biden. Newsweek reported: “Biden will probably continue to support Morocco’s proposal for Sahrawi autonomy under Moroccan rule, as did President Barack Obama.” It has also received backing from capitalist governments in the Middle East. Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Bahrain released statements defending Rabat’s measures “to secure the commercial and individual movement on the crossing,” in the UAE’s communiqué.

The bourgeois states’ and organizations’ resort to war comes amid an upsurge of the class struggle and social protests and tensions now inflamed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are reports of intensifying repression by Morocco in Sahrawi towns under its control. From El Aaiún, Hassan Daoudi told elDiario.es: “All the streets are full of police. … These last three days there have been clashes between youth and the Moroccan police. Since Friday morning, the Moroccans have started looting many Sahrawis’ houses.”

The Moroccan monarchy and the Algerian military dictatorship both are terrified of the growing movement of workers and oppressed masses across the region. Last year, millions marched against the National Liberation Front regime in Algiers, as strikes spread to mass transit, auto, education and the critical natural gas sector, demanding the fall of the regime. None of the conditions which provoked the “hirak” protests have been resolved.

In recent months, Morocco has faced strikes from teachers, nurses, doctors, and airplane pilots, as the unemployment rate climbs towards 15 percent. The trade unions have worked to suppress the struggles, with the Minister of Labor bragging recently that he managed to prevent more than 1,200 strikes over the past nine months. In other words, not only the military situation but also class conflict has turned the region into a powder keg.

Polisario is a bourgeois nationalist movement articulating the interests of a corrupt social elite skimming money from international aid and the Algerian regime. Like bourgeois nationalist movements internationally, it reacted to the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 by rapidly shifting to the right, abandoning its earlier, socialist pretensions. It advanced a “pro-business” constitution and appealed to imperialist states like Spain, France and the United States to support its calls for independence.

Mass discontent has also arisen in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, which lack electricity, latrines and reliable food supplies. Most people live almost exclusively from humanitarian aid. Last year, mass protests erupted in support of the Algerian workers’ demonstrations.

Polisario reacted by deploying tanks against Sahrawi protestors. The North Africa Post reported: “the pressure is building up on the Polisario leaders currently facing their worst ever nightmare. They are challenged by defiant sequestered Sahrawis who can no longer stand their lamentable situation, blockade and status quo, while the Algerian generals, who used to provide them with all kinds of support, are fighting their own demons, as the unprecedented hirak in Algeria has led to the fall of long-time ruler Abdelaziz Bouteflika and several of his associates.”

Since then, the Algerian dictatorship ordered the Polisario’s “Interior Ministry” to drastically reduce permits for cars or trucks to leave the camps. As a result, prices of primary consumer goods and fuel in the camps have soared.

The online newspaper Yabaldi said earlier this year: “Demonstrations have become recurrent in front of the Polisario buildings, whose leaders are widely insulted in social networks, and their law enforcement agencies lynched by the population.”

Protests erupted this month after Algerian security forces burned two Sahrawi gold miners to death. After the men refused to emerge from a mining pit to avoid arrest, the Algerian officers doused the lining pit in petroleum and set it aflame.

The struggle for democratic rights of the Sahrawi people can succeed only if it goes over to an international struggle, transcending the national boundaries drawn by imperialism, uniting workers and oppressed masses across the region in a struggle against imperialism and war and for socialism.

The growth of the international class struggle in Algeria and Morocco as well as in Europe and the United States opens vast political horizons for workers in the region. The expropriation of the financial aristocracy by the working class on an international scale can place the economic resources needed to build a truly socialist and democratic society in the hands of the workers in Africa. But none of this can be accomplished on the basis of a nationalist programmes: rather, the struggle requires a decisive turn to socialism and the international working class.

South Australian COVID-19 outbreak highlights dangers of “reopening” campaign

Oscar Grenfell

A sudden coronavirus outbreak in South Australia (SA) underscores the reckless character of a pro-business campaign by the state and federal governments and the corporate elite for the overturning of all COVID-19 safety restrictions prior to Christmas.

On Sunday afternoon, SA health authorities announced they had identified four infections in the capital city of Adelaide, all locally-acquired. Infections caused by community transmission were last previously confirmed in the state in April.

Government officials and the media had proclaimed the virus effectively “eliminated” in SA and lifted most lockdown measures. Mass gatherings, large sporting events and substantial attendance at high-risk venues, including bars, clubs, restaurants and gyms, were resumed months ago.

A queue for coronavirus testing in Adelaide's northern suburbs [Credit: ABC News, screenshot]

Infections increased to 17 on Monday, and 22 today, with another 7 suspected cases awaiting confirmation.

While the numbers remain relatively small, the highly infectious nature of the virus and the removal of virtually all lockdown measures in the state sparked warnings from health experts of the potential for a rapid COVID-19 spread.

In just four days, the number of Adelaide residents instructed by state authorities to self-isolate and seek testing, because they may have been exposed to the coronavirus, has grown from around 100 on Sunday, to over 4,000 as of this morning. Almost 50 separate locations, including medical facilities, restaurants and schools, have been identified as potential sites of transmission because they were visited by people who have since tested positive.

SA Liberal Party Premier Steven Marshall today announced a six-day partial statewide lockdown, including school, hospitality and construction site closures and bans on people leaving their homes. He described it as a “circuit breaker,” yet it falls far short of the period required to medically assess any suppression of virus transmission. Significantly, the SA outbreak was announced two days after last Friday’s meeting of the “national cabinet,” an unconstitutional body of federal, state and territory leaders. It has largely ruled by decree throughout the pandemic and overseen the lifting of safety measures at the behest of big business.

At the Friday gathering, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and state premiers discussed reopening all state borders by Christmas. Dominant sections of the corporate elite have denounced the maintenance of travel restrictions as an unacceptable barrier to a complete reopening of the economy for the lucrative holiday season.

State premiers who retained some border restrictions, particularly in Queensland and Western Australia, have come under fire in the corporate press. To the extent that the governments in those states have not yet completely opened their borders, it has been motivated by fears of the business consequences of further COVID-19 outbreaks. Significant exemptions have been in place for months, moreover, especially for major sporting competitions and other corporate activities, on top of the continued operation of factories and reopening of schools.

The South Australian outbreak has complicated the reopening drive. Authorities in Queensland, the Northern Territory, Victoria and Tasmania have labelled Adelaide a COVID-19 hotspot, so interstate travellers from the city must quarantine for a fortnight. Western Australia has re-closed its eastern border.

Despite the dangers that have been revealed, powerful sections of the political and media establishment have doubled down on their demands for a lifting of border restrictions. Corporate chiefs told the media it is impermissible to return to the “blunt instruments” of lockdowns and border closures.

Prime Minister Morrison immediately insisted it was necessary to “press on” with the reopening agenda. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared: “We need to live with COVID and every time there is an outbreak, you can’t shut down borders and disrupt lives and businesses.”

This is in line with the criminally-negligent response of governments and the entire political establishment throughout the pandemic, which has been motivated solely by corporate profit interests.

In April, state and federal leaders, Labor and Liberal-National alike, rejected a plan by epidemiologists aimed at eliminating coronavirus transmission, saying it would be too costly. Instead they opted for a “containment” strategy—the virus would be allowed to continue circulating, but would supposedly be kept at “manageable” levels through contact-tracing and localised restrictions when “clusters” emerged.

This led to a mass outbreak in Victoria in July, with thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths. That surge was only brought under control many weeks later, after the state Labor government was compelled to institute a “stage four” lockdown, involving closures of schools and some businesses amid fears that the entire health system would collapse.

Commentators have pointed to parallels between the South Australian outbreak and the last “wave” in Victoria. Many of the infections in Victoria originated in the hotel quarantine system for international travelers returning to Melbourne. The state Labor government outsourced operations at the facilities to private security companies which employed low-paid casual workers without any medical experience.

The Adelaide outbreak too has been traced to SA’s quarantine hotels. A worker at one of the facilities unwittingly caught the virus before transmitting it to her relatives. The infection was only discovered after an elderly family member went to hospital with respiratory issues.

It has been revealed that hotel quarantine staff were not tested unless they were displaying symptoms, despite being on the virus frontline, and that 40 percent or more of infections in SA are asymptomatic.

The quarantine worker and her relatives live near Elizabeth, a working class suburb in outer northern Adelaide. The area has been devastated by decades of trade union and government-enforced job cuts culminating in the 2017 closure of the General Motors Holden car plant, around which the suburb was originally built.

Unemployment in the area today stands at an estimated 40 percent, and rates of poverty have skyrocketed. Those who do have a job are often employed on a casual basis and can be forced to travel large distances to get to work.

During the previous Victorian outbreak the most exploited sections of the working class were hardest hit because of the precarious character of their employment, the absence of adequate financial assistance to self-isolate, and a lack of medical and other social services.

Concerns have been raised about South Australia’s testing capabilities. Adelaide northern suburbs residents report having to wait up to eight hours for a test, amid hot weather.

There is also no evidence that contact-tracing abilities have improved at a national level, even though a failure to track the spread of the virus contributed to the scope of Victoria’s surge.

Significantly, Morrison, backed by the SA government, has rapidly deployed military personnel to Adelaide. Governments have used the pandemic to expand the domestic use of the armed forces, while doing little or nothing to improve chronically under-funded health capabilities.

The deployment of troops is motivated by concerns in ruling circles over growing social and political opposition. While infections in Australia have been far lower than in Europe, the United States and internationally, the same pro-business response to the pandemic has been evident. The Adelaide outbreak further refutes claims that Australia can be isolated from the worsening global health crisis amid the refusal of governments to institute necessary lockdown and health measures.

In addition, Australian governments have used the pandemic to funnel billions of dollars to the corporations, while presiding over mass unemployment and rapidly growing poverty, and accelerating attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions.