The Other America

Liz Theoharis

The New Politics of the Poor in Joe Biden’s (and Mitch McConnell’s) USA

In the two weeks since Election 2020, the country has oscillated between joy and anger, hope and dread in an era of polarization sharpened by the forces of racism, nativism, and hate. Still, truth be told, though the divisive tone of this moment may only be sharpening, division in the United States of America is not a new phenomenon.

Over the past days, I’ve found myself returning to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who, in 1967, just a year before his own assassination, gave a speech prophetically entitled “The Other America” in which he vividly described a reality that feels all too of this moment rather than that one:

“There are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful… and overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies; and culture and education for their minds; and freedom and human dignity for their spirits…

“But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”

In Dr. King’s day, that other America was, for a time, laid bare to the nation through mass social unrest and political change, through the bold actions of the freedom fighters who won the Voting Rights Act and then just kept on fighting, as well as governmental programs like the “War on Poverty.” And yet, despite the significant gains then, for many decades since, inequality in this country has been on the rise to previously unimaginable levels, while poverty remained locked in and largely ignored.

Today, in the early winter of an uncurbed pandemic and the economic crisis that accompanies it, there are 140 million poor or low-income Americans, disproportionately people of color, but reaching into every community in this country: 24 million Blacks, 38 million Latinos, eight million Asians, two million Native peoples, and 66 million whites. More than a third of the potential electorate, in other words, has been relegated to poverty and precariousness and yet how little of the political discourse in recent elections was directed at those who were poor or one storm, fire, job loss, eviction, or healthcare crisis away from poverty and economic chaos. In the distorted mirror of public policy, those 140 million people have remained essentially invisible. As in the 1960s and other times in our history, however, the poor are no longer waiting for recognition from Washington. Instead, every indication is that they’re beginning to organize themselves, taking decisive action to alter the scales of political power.

For years, I’ve traveled this country, working to build a movement to end poverty. In a nation that has so often boasted about being the wealthiest and freest in history, I’ve regularly witnessed painful divisions caused by hunger, homelessness, sickness, degradation, and so much more. In Lowndes County, Alabama, for instance, I organized with people who lived day in, day out with raw sewage in their yards and dangerous mold in their homes. On Apache land in Oak Flats, Arizona, I stood with native leaders struggling to cope with generations of loss and plunder, most recently at the hands of a multinational copper mining company. In Gray’s Harbor, Washington, I visited millennials living in homeless encampments under constant siege by militia groups and the police. And the list, sadly, only goes on.

As the future administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris heads for the White House (no matter the recalcitrant loser still ensconced there), the rest of us must equip ourselves with both courage and caution, living as we do in a divided nation, in — to be exact — two very different Americas. Keep in mind that these are not the insulated, readymade Americas of MSNBC and Fox News, of Republicans and Democrats, of conservatives and liberals. All of us live in a land where there are two Americas, one of unimaginable wealth, the other of miserable poverty; an America of the promised good life and one of almost guaranteed premature death.

Unleashing the Power of Poor and Low-Income Voters

One enduring narrative from the 2016 election is that poor and low-income voters won Donald Trump the White House, even if the numbers don’t bear it out. Hillary Clinton won by 12 points among voters who made less than $30,000 a year and by 9 points among voters who made less than $49,999; the median household income of Trump voters then was $72,000.

Four years later, initial estimates suggest that this trend has only intensified: Joe Biden attracted more poor and low-income voters than President Trump both in the aggregate and in key states like Michigan. Trump, on the other hand, gained among voters with annual family incomes of more than $100,000. Last week, the director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab noted that this “appears to be the biggest demographic shift I’m seeing. And you can tie that to [Trump’s] tax cuts [for the wealthy] and lower regulations.”

In 2016, there were 64 million eligible poor and low-income voters, 32 million of whom did not vote. In 2020, it’s becoming clear that poor and low-income voters helped decide the election’s outcome by opting for a candidate who signaled support for key antipoverty issues like raising the minimum wage, expanding health care, and protecting the environment. In down-ballot races, every congressional member who endorsed Medicare for All won reelection, even in swing states. Imagine then how many dispossessed and disenfranchised voters might have turned out if more candidates had actually been speaking to the most pressing issues of their lives?

Seventy-two percent of Americans said that they would prefer a government-run healthcare plan and more than 70% supported raising the minimum wage, including 62% of Republicans. Even in districts that went for Trump, voters passed ballot measures that, only a few years ago, would have been unheard of. In Mississippi, people voted to decriminalize medical marijuana, while in Florida a referendum for a $15 minimum wage got more votes than either of the two presidential candidates.

If nothing else, Election 2020 revealed a deeply divided nation — two Americas, not one — though that dividing line marked anything but an even or obvious split. A startling number of Americans are trapped in wretched conditions and hungry for a clean break with the status quo. On the other hand, the rampant voter suppression and racialized gerrymandering of the last decade of American politics suggests that extremists from the wealthier America will go to remarkable lengths to undercut the power of those at the bottom of this society. They have proven ready to use every tool and scare tactic of racist division and subterfuge imaginable to stop poor Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous, and white potential voters from building new and transformative alliances, including a new electorate.

It’s time to move beyond the defeatist myth of the Solid South or even the dulling comfort of a Midwestern “blue wall.” Across the South and the Midwest, there are voter-suppression states still to win, not for a party, but for a fusion movement of the many. The same could be true for the coasts and the Southwest, where there remains a sleeping giant of poor and low-income people yet to be pulled into political action. If this country is ever going to be built back better, to borrow Joe Biden’s campaign pledge, it’s time to turn to its abandoned corners; to, that is, the other America of Martin Luther King that still haunts us, whether we know it or not.

Fusion Politics in the Other America

When Dr. King gave his “Other America” speech, he was preparing for what would become the last political project of his life: the Poor People’s Campaign. At a time when the nation appeared to be fraying at the seams, he grasped that a giant social leap forward was still possible. In fact, he envisioned a protracted struggle that might catapult this country into a new era of human rights and revolution not through sanguine calls for unity, but via a rousing fusion of poor and dispossessed people from all walks of life. And that, as he imagined it, would also involve a recognition that systemic racism and other forms of hate and prejudice were crucial to the maintenence of the two Americas and had to be challenged head-on.

The idea of such fusion politics echoed earlier chapters of political reckoning and transformation in this country. From the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction into the 1890s, newly emancipated Blacks built unprecedented, if fragile, alliances with poor whites to seize governing power. Across a new South, fusion parties expanded voting rights, access to public education, labor protections, fair taxation, and more. In North Carolina in 1868, for instance, legislators went so far as to rewrite the state constitution to codify for the first time the right of all citizens to “life, liberty, and the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor.”

For nearly 30 years, I’ve been part of a modern version of fusion organizing, even as I studied earlier examples of it — and this country’s history is rich with them. Indeed, the modern Poor People’s Campaign that I co-chair is itself inspired by such past fusion movements, including the version of politics I was first introduced to by multiracial welfare rights and homeless organizing in the 1980s and 1990s.

Organizations like the National Welfare Rights Union and the National Union of the Homeless first grew in response to the neoliberal politics of President Ronald Reagan and his attacks on the poor, especially the Black poor, or, as he put it, “welfare queens.” In response to such myths and deep, divisive cuts, out of shelters and from the streets, poor people began to organize projects of mutual aid and solidarity, including “unions” of the homeless.

By the 1980s, the National Union of the Homeless had been created and had upwards of 30,000 members in 25 cities. Meanwhile, organizers across the country soon escalated their efforts with waves of coordinated and nonviolent takeovers of vacant federally owned buildings at a time when the government had abdicated its responsibility to protect and provide for its poorest citizens. Those poor and homeless leaders also helped the Homeless Union secure guarantees from the federal government both for more subsidized housing and for protections of the right of the homeless to vote.

Today, in the middle of an economic crisis that could, in the end, rival the Great Depression, I’m reminded not just of those moments that first involved me but of the fusion movements of the early 1930s. After all, in those years, shanty towns called “Hoovervilles” — given that Herbert Hoover was still president — cropped up in cities across the country.

Not unlike the tent cities of the Homeless Union and the Welfare Rights Movement in the 1980s and the ones appearing today, those Hoovervilles were where masses of the unemployed and homeless gathered to survive the worst of that depression and strategize on how to resist its misery. Multiracial Unemployed Councils organized and fought for relief for workers without jobs then, preventing thousands of evictions and utility shutoffs.

Meanwhile, in the abandoned fields of the Southern Delta from Arkansas to Mississippi, groups like the Southern Tenant Farmers Union pioneered the dangerous work of organizing Black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers. When the New Deal coalition bet its future on compromise with white Southern extremists, members of that union were among the last guardians of the rights of poor agrarian workers. Their lonely clarity on the significance of fusion politics in the South stood in stark contrast to the rise of an unmitigated politics of white reaction there.

Today, as top Democrats like Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claim the legacy of Great Depression-era President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, remember the fusion organizing that helped bring him to power and pushed him to enact change. I’m thinking in particular of the more than 40,000 unemployed veterans of World War I who arrived in Washington D.C. in 1932 to demand the early payment of promised bonuses, previously only considered redeemable after 1945. That Bonus Army, as the veterans called it, collected many of the fraying threads of the American tapestry, making camp, sometimes with wives and children, on seized public land just across the Potomac River from the capital’s federal office buildings, while holding regular nonviolent marches and rallies.

Eventually, President Herbert Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to tear down the camp in a violent fashion. The mistreatment of those poor and war-weary veterans in the process proved to be a lightning rod for the public and so Hoover lost to FDR in the presidential election later that year, setting the stage for a decade defined by militant organizing and major shifts in national policy.

The Mandate of the Poor Today

There are already those in the media and politics who are counseling restraint and a return to the pre-Trump days, as if he were the cause, not the consequence, of a nation desperately divided. This would be nothing less than a disaster, given that the fissures in our democracy so desperately need mending not with nice words but with a new governing contract with the American people.

The battleground states that won Joe Biden the presidency have also been battlegrounds in the most recent war against the poor. In Michigan, hit first and worst by deindustrialization, millions have struggled with a failing water system and a jobs crisis. In Wisconsin, where unions have been under attack for years and austerity has become the norm, both budgets and social welfare policies have been slashed by legislatures. In Pennsylvania, rural hospitals have been closing at an alarming rate and, even before the pandemic hit, the poorest large city in the country, Philadelphia, had already become a checkerboard of disinvestment and gentrification. In Georgia, 1.3 million renters — 45% of the households in that state — were at risk of eviction this year. And in Arizona, the climate crisis and Covid-19 have ravaged entire communities, including the members of Indigenous nations who recently turned out to vote in record numbers.

The people of these states and 15 more helped elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and count on one thing: with their votes, they were calling for more than just an end to Trumpism. They were demanding that a new era of change begin for the poor and marginalized. The first priority in such an era should, of course, be to pass a comprehensive relief bill to control the pandemic and buoy the millions of Americans now facing a cold, dark winter of deprivation. The House and the Senate have a moral responsibility to get this done as soon as the new administration takes office, if not before (though tell that to Mitch McConnell). The first 100 days of the Biden administration should then be focused, at least in part, on launching a historic investment in securing permanent protections for the poor, including expanded voting rights, universal healthcare, affordable housing, a living wage, and a guaranteed adequate annual income, not to speak of divestment from the war economy and a swift transition to a green economy.

That should be the mandate of our next government. And that’s why we, the overflowing millions, must harness the fusion politics that was so crucial to the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and organize in the best tradition of our predecessors. Real social progress rarely comes slowly and steadily, but in leaps and bounds. The predictable stalemate of the next administration and its Republican opposition can’t be broken by grand speeches in the House or Senate. It can only be broken by a vast social movement capable of awakening the moral imagination of the nation.

It’s time to get to work.

Crisis, What Crisis? Hypocrisy and Public Health in the UK

Colin Todhunter

On 12 March 2020, British PM Boris Johnson, referring to COVID-19, informed the public:

“We’ve all got to be clear; this is the worst public health crisis for a generation.”

Since that time, we have seen lockdowns, on ongoing government-backed fear campaign, fundamental rights being stripped away, dissent censored, inflated COVID-19 death numbers and the use of a flawed PCR test to label perfectly healthy individuals as COVID-19 ‘cases’ in order to fit the narrative of a ‘second wave’.

But, just for a moment, consider an alternative scenario.

The government is extremely worried about a substance that could be contributing to a spiraling public health crisis that has been decades in the making. It has been detected in food and in urine. The government has therefore decided to carry out mass urine testing. It has found millions of ‘cases’. The more it tests, the more ‘cases’ it finds. The government and the media promote the message we are all at risk and should get tested. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent to allow for the testing of the entire population.

All cafes, pubs, restaurants and food stores are locked down, aside from those designated to sell only food that is regarded as ‘safe’ by the government. All weddings, parties and get-togethers are banned because contaminated food might be passed around.

Severe restrictions are put in place because this ‘stuff’ is in the air, water, plants, animals, grains, vegetables and meats. And it is in beer and wine, children’s breakfast cereal and snack bars and even in our vaccines. Everyone is under virtual house arrest until this public health crisis is addressed.

Daily government briefings are held on TV with the PM and health officials in attendance. The PM tells everyone that this thing is linked to various conditions, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.

Imagine that scenario. But the substance being referred to is very real. It is heavily associated with all the conditions mentioned and is present in our urine and food. But the government does nothing. It does not just do nothing but actively facilitates the marketing of this substance and collude with its manufacturers.

And the name of this ‘stuff’? Glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. The main culprit – Monsanto’s Roundup. But it is not just glyphosate. It is the cocktail of agricultural chemicals that have been in use for decades.

The real public health crisis

Earlier this year, in a 29-page open letter to Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason spent 11 pages documenting the spiraling rates of disease that she says (supported by numerous research studies cited) are largely the result of exposure to health-damaging agrochemicals, including glyphosate-based herbicides.

The amount of glyphosate-based herbicide sprayed by UK farmers on crops has gone from 226,762 kg in 1990 to 2,240,408 kg in 2016, a 10-fold increase. In her letter, Mason discussed links between multiple pesticide residues (including glyphosate) in food and steady increases in the number of cancers both in the UK as well as allergic diseases, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, obesity and many other conditions.

Agrochemicals are a major contributory factor for the spikes in these diseases and conditions. This is the real public health crisis affecting the UK. Each year, there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers in the UK and increases in deaths from the same cancers, with treatments not making any difference to the numbers.

While there is much talk of the coronavirus placing immense strain on an underfunded NHS, the health service is already creaking. And people’s immune systems are already strongly compromised due to what Mason outlines. But do we see a ‘lockdown’ on the activities of the global agrochemical conglomerates? Not at all.

We see governments and public health bodies working hand in glove with the agrochemicals manufacturers to ensure ‘business as usual’.

It might seem strange to many that the UK government is seemingly going out of its way (by stripping people of their freedoms) under the guise of a public health crisis but is all too willing to oversee a massive, ongoing one caused by the chemical pollution of our bodies.

Unlike COVID-19, this is a ‘silent’ crisis that actually does affect all sections of the population and causes immense widespread suffering. It is silent because the mainstream media and various official reports in the UK have consistently ignored or downplayed the role of pesticides in fueling this situation.

Hundreds of lawsuits are pending against Bayer in the US, filed by people alleging that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto covered up the risks (Roundup is linked to cancers of the bone, colon, kidney, liver, melanoma, pancreas and thyroid).

The WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has declared glyphosate as a 2A carcinogen. In 2017, in a public hearing in Brussels, Dr Christopher Portier and Dr Kate Guyton defended IARC’s position. Portier drew attention to the significance of statistically significant tumour findings that had not been discussed in any of the existing reviews on glyphosate.

Portier concluded that as the regulatory bodies, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency’s analyses were scientifically flawed. These organisations had also used industry studies that were not in the public domain for ‘reasons of commercial confidentiality’ to support their case that glyphosate was not carcinogenic.

Mason has written numerous open letters to officials citing reams of statistical data to support the contention that agrochemicals, especially Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup, have devastated the natural environment and have also led to spiraling rates of illness and disease, not least among children.

Regulators around the world have falsely assumed that it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes and the effects of dosing whole regions with chemicals have been largely ignored.

A report delivered to the UN Human Rights Council, says that pesticides have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole.

Authored by Hilal Elver, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, and Baskut Tuncak, UN special rapporteur on toxics, the report states:

“Chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.”

The authors argue:

“While scientific research confirms the adverse effects of pesticides, proving a definitive link between exposure and human diseases or conditions or harm to the ecosystem presents a considerable challenge. This challenge has been exacerbated by a systematic denial, fueled by the pesticide and agro-industry, of the magnitude of the damage inflicted by these chemicals and aggressive, unethical marketing tactics.”

Elver says: “The power of the corporations over governments and over the scientific community is extremely important. If you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies.”

Tuncak states:

“Paediatricians have referred to childhood exposure to pesticides as creating a “silent pandemic” of disease and disability. Exposure in pregnancy and childhood is linked to birth defects, diabetes and cancer. Because a child’s developing body is more sensitive to exposure than adults and takes in more of everything – relative to their size, children eat, breathe and drink much more than adults – they are particularly vulnerable to these toxic chemicals.”

According to Tuncak, increasing evidence shows that even at “low” doses of childhood exposure, irreversible health impacts can result. But most victims cannot prove the cause of their disability or disease, limiting our ability to hold those responsible to account.

He concludes:

“The overwhelming reliance of regulators on industry-funded studies, the exclusion of independent science from assessments and the confidentiality of studies relied upon by authorities must change.”

The authors were severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions”.

Way back in 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring raised the red flag about the use of harmful synthetic pesticides; yet, despite the warnings, the agrochemical giants have ever since been poisoning humans and the planet, raking in enormous profits.

Michael McCarthy, writer and naturalist, says that three generations of industrialised farming with a vast tide of poisons pouring over the land year after year after year since the end of the Second World War is the true price of pesticide-based agriculture, which society has for so long blithely accepted.

Power is now increasingly concentrated in the hands of a handful of transnational agribusiness corporations which put profit and market control ahead of food security, health and nutrition and biodiversity. Due to their political influence and financial clout, these companies are waging a chemical warfare on nature and people, while seeking to convince us that their model of agriculture – based on proprietary seeds and chemicals – is essential for feeding a burgeoning global population.

Consider that none of the more than 400 pesticides that have been authorised in the UK have been tested for long-term actions on the brain: in the foetus, in children or in adults.

Theo Colborn’s crucial research in the early 1990s showed that endocrine disrupters (EDCs) were changing humans and the environment, but this research was ignored by officials. Glyphosate is an EDC and a nervous system disrupting chemical.

In the book published in 1996 ‘Our Stolen Future: How Man-made Chemicals are Threatening our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival’ Colborn and colleagues revealed the full horror of what was happening to the world as a result of contamination with EDCs. There was emerging scientific research about how a wide range of these chemicals can disrupt delicate hormone systems in humans. These systems play a critical role in processes ranging from human sexual development to behaviour, intelligence and the functioning of the immune system.

In addition to glyphosate, EDCs include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). DDT, chlordane, lindane, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, toxaphene, heptachlor, dioxin, atrazine and dacthal.

In 2007, 25 experts in environmental health from 11 countries (including from the UK) met on the Faroes and contributed to this statement:

“The periods of embryonic, foetal and infant development are remarkably susceptible to environmental hazards. Toxic exposures to chemical pollutants during these windows of increased susceptibility can cause disease and disability in infants, children and across the entire span of human life.”

The Department of Health’s School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS) has residues of 123 different pesticides that impact the gut microbiome. Obesity is associated with low diversity of bacteria in the microbiome and glyphosate adversely affects or destroys much of the beneficial bacteria. Roundup (and other biocides) is linked to gross obesity, neuropsychiatric disorders and other chronic diseases, which are all on the rise and adversely impact brain development in children and adolescents.

Moreover, type 2 diabetes is associated with being very overweight. According to NHS data, almost four in five of 715 children suffering from it were also obese.

Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular health at Queen Mary University of London who is also the chair of the campaign group Action on Sugar, says:

“Type 2 diabetes is a disaster for the child and their family and for the NHS. If a child gets type 2 diabetes, it’s condemning them to a lot of complications of that condition, such as blindness, amputations and kidney disease.”

He went on to explain that we are in a crisis and that the government does not seem to be taking action. UK obesity levels now exceed those of the US.

The human microbiome is of vital importance to human health yet it is under chemical attack. Glyphosate disrupts the shikimate pathway within these gut bacteria and is a strong chelator of essential minerals.

Many key neurotransmitters are located in the gut. Aside from affecting the functioning of major organs, these transmitters affect our moods and thinking. There is strong evidence that gut bacteria can have a direct physical impact on the brain.

Dr Michael Antoniou of King’s College London has found that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate cause a dramatic increase in the levels of two substances, shikimic acid and 3-dehydroshikimic acid, in the gut, which are a direct indication that the EPSPS enzyme of the shikimic acid pathway has been severely inhibited. Roundup and glyphosate affected the microbiome at all dose levels tested, causing shifts in bacterial populations.

A quarter of all food and over a third of fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK contain pesticide cocktails, with some items containing traces of up to 14 different pesticides. The industry (for it is the industry that does the testing, on behalf of regulators) only tests one pesticide at a time, whereas farmers spray a cocktail of pesticides.

Ian Boyd, the former Chief Scientific Adviser to Defra, says pesticides, once they have been authorised, are never reviewed.

Glyphosate is distributed to every organ of the body and has multiple actions: it is an herbicide, an antibiotic, a fungicide, an antiprotozoal, an organic phosphonate, a growth regulator, a toxicant, a virulence enhancer and is persistent in the soil. It chelates (captures) and washes out the following minerals: boron, calcium, cobalt, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, nickel and zinc.

In a paper published in King’s Law Journal –  ‘The Chemical Anthropocene: Glyphosate as a Case Study of Pesticide Exposures’ – the authors Alessandra Arcuri and Yogi Hale Hendlin state:

“As the science against glyphosate safety mounts and lawsuits threaten its chemical manufacture’s profits, the next generation of GMO crops are being keyed to the pesticide dicamba, sold commercially as XtendiMax® – and poised to be the next glyphosate. Regulatory agencies have historically been quick to approve products but slow to reconsider regulations after the decades of accumulated harms become apparent.”

They add that the entrenched asymmetries between public and ecological health and fast-to-market new chemicals is exacerbated by the seeming lack of institutionalised precautionary policies.

Britain and the US are in the midst of a barely reported public health crisis. These countries are experiencing not merely a slowdown in life expectancy, which in many other rich countries is continuing to lengthen, but the start of an alarming increase in death rates across all our populations, men and women alike. People are needlessly dying early.

Research by US-based EWG found glyphosate residues on popular oat cereals, oatmeal, granola and snack bars. Almost 75% of the 45 samples tested had glyphosate levels higher than what EWG scientists consider protective of children’s health with an adequate margin of safety. Disturbing levels of such residues have been detected in the UK too.

There are shockingly high levels of weed killer in UK breakfast cereals. After testing these cereals at the Health Research Institute in Iowa, Dr Fagan, director of the centre, said:

“These results are consistently concerning. The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).”

Glyphosate also causes epigenetic changes in humans and animals: diseases skip a generation. Washington State University researchers have found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring of rats exposed to glyphosate. In the first study of its kind, the researchers saw descendants of exposed rats developing prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, obesity and birth abnormalities.

Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers say they saw “dramatic increases” in several pathologies affecting the second and third generations. The second generation had “significant increases” in testis, ovary and mammary gland diseases as well as obesity. In third-generation males, the researchers saw a 30% incidence of prostate disease — three times the rate of a control population. The third generation of females had a 40% incidence of kidney disease, or four times the rate of the controls.

More than one-third of the second-generation mothers had unsuccessful pregnancies, with most of those affected dying. Two out of five males and females in the third generation were obese.

Researchers call this phenomenon “generational toxicology” and they have seen it over the years in fungicides, pesticides, jet fuel, the plastics compound bisphenol A, the insect repellent DEET and the herbicide atrazine. At work are epigenetic changes that turn genes on and off, often because of environmental influences.

A study published in February 2019 found glyphosate increased the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma by as much as 41%. A Washington State University study published in December 2019 found state residents living close to areas subject to treatments with the herbicide are one-third more likely to die an early death from Parkinson’s disease.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, one of the attorney’s fighting Bayer (which has bought Monsanto) in the US courts, has explained that for four decades Monsanto manoeuvred to conceal Roundup’s carcinogenicity by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud to delay its day of reckoning. He says that Monsanto also faces cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.

Moreover, strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10.

And yet, as Mason has described in her work, the UK government had colluded with Monsanto for many years.

Boris Johnson, in his first speech to parliament as PM, said:

“Let’s start now to liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules…”

This could mean the irresponsible introduction of genetically modified Roundup Ready food crops to the UK, which would see the amount of glyphosate in British food reaching new levels (levels which are already disturbing).

So much for protecting public health.

Government collusion

David Cameron appointed Michael Pragnell, founder of Syngenta and former Chairman of CropLife International, to the board of Cancer Research UK (CRUK) in 2010. He became Chairman in 2011. At one time or another, CropLife International´s member list has included BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC Corp, Monsanto, Sumitomo and Syngenta. Many of these make their own formulated glyphosate.

Syngenta is a member of the European Glyphosate Task Force, which sought to renew (and succeeded in renewing) European glyphosate registration. Not surprisingly, the CRUK website denies that there is any link between pesticides and cancer.

In February 2019, at a Brexit meeting on the UK chemicals sector, UK regulators and senior officials from government departments listened to the priorities of the Bayer Crop Science Division. During the meeting (Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum Keynote Seminar: Priorities for UK chemicals sector – challenges, opportunities and the future for regulation post-Brexit), Janet Williams, head of regulatory science at Bayer Crop Science Division, made her priorities for agricultural chemical manufacturers known.

Dave Bench was also a speaker. Bench is a senior scientist at the UK Chemicals, Health and Safety Executive and director of the agency’s EU exit plan and has previously stated that the regulatory system for pesticides is robust and balances the risks of pesticides against the benefits to society.

That statement was merely for public consumption and the benefit of the agrochemical industry. The industry (for it is the industry that does the testing, on behalf of regulators) only tests one pesticide at a time, whereas farmers spray a cocktail of pesticides.

But such is the British government’s willingness to protect pesticide companies that it is handing agrochemical giants BASF and Bayer enormous pay-outs of Covid-19 support cash. The announcement came just weeks after Bayer shareholders voted to pay £2.75 billion in dividends. The fact that Bayer then went on to receive £600 million from the government speaks volumes of where the government’s priorities lie.

In Mason’s report, ‘Why Does Bayer Crop Science Control Chemicals in Brexit Britain’, she states that Bayer is having secret meetings with the British government to determine which agrochemicals are to be used after Brexit once Britain is ‘free’ of EU restrictions and becomes as deregulated as the US.

Such collusion comes as little surprise as the government’s ‘strategy for UK life sciences’ is already dependent on funding from pharmaceutical corporations and the pesticides industry.

Syngenta’s parent company was in 2010 AstraZeneca. At that time, Syngenta and AstraZeneca were represented on the UK Advisory Committee on Pesticides and the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Foods, Consumer Products and the Environment. The founder of Syngenta, Michael Pragnell, was the Chairman of Cancer Research UK (CRUK) from 2011-2017. CRUK started by giving money (£450 million a year) to the Government’s Strategy for UK Life Sciences and AstraZeneca provided 22 compounds to academic research to develop medicines. AstraZeneca manufactured six different anti-cancer drugs mainly aimed at breast and prostate cancer.

It seems like a highly profitable and cosy relationship between the agrochemical and pharmaceuticals sectors and the government at the expense of public health.

In finishing, let us take a brief look at the Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). Its members have occupied key positions on EU and UN regulatory panels. It is, however, an industry lobby group that masquerades as a scientific health charity.

The ILSI describes its mission as “pursuing objectivity, clarity and reproducibility” to “benefit the public good”. But researchers from the University of Cambridge, Bocconi University in Milan and the US Right to Know campaign assessed over 17,000 pages of documents under US freedom of information laws to present evidence of influence peddling.

ILSI Vice-President, Prof Alan Boobis, is currently the Chairman of the UK Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (CoT).

He was directly responsible for authorising chemicals such as glyphosate, chlorothalonil, clothianidin and chlorpyrifos that are impacting human health and creating a crisis in biodiversity. His group and others have authorised glyphosate repeatedly. He and David Coggon, the previous Chairman of CoT (2008-2015), were appointed as experts on Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA), a group allied with the agrochemical industry and is fighting for higher pesticide exposure.

The reality of the agrochemical industry is masked by well-funded public relations machinery. The industry subverts official agencies and regulatory bodies and supports prolific lobby organisations and (‘public scientists’) which masquerade as neutral institutions.

And for the record, it is possible to farm productively and profitably without the use of synthetic agrochemicals – and to achieve food security. For instance, see the article ‘A Skeptical Farmer’s Monster Message on Profitability’ based on one US farmers journey from chemical-dependent farming to organic on his 8,000-acre farm (discussed on the AgWeb site) or ‘The Untold Success Story of Agroecology in Africa’ in the journal Development (2015). From the Tigray region of Ethiopia to various high-level (UN) reports that have recommended agroecology there are many examples, too many to discuss here.

The UK government says it cares so much about the nation’s health (the infection mortality rate for COVID-19 appears to be similar to those of a bad seasonal flu) but has presided over and facilitated a genuine public health crisis for years. And it is now pumping billions of pounds of public money into a track, trace and test regime when it could have used it to boost overall NHS capacity; remember when the government stated that the initial lockdown was implemented to protect the NHS?

In fact, the government is spending the equivalent of 77% of the NHS annual revenue budget on an “unevaluated, under-designed national programme leading to an insufficiently supported intervention – in many cases for the wrong people” says a recent editorial in the BMJ.

In the meantime, it is investing heavily in a (possibly mandatory) vaccine that based on the design of the trials – according to a recent article in the same journal – may have no discernible impact on saving lives or preventing serious outcomes or the transmission spread of infection.

Binge-watching: Impacting mental and physical health

Swati Sapna & Upasna Gaba

The concept of watching television has transitioned significantly since the last decade. Traditional television scheduling made viewers stick to the timings of television programming, subjected them to commercials, and made them wait for their favourite shows or films for days or weeks. In this digital era, the methods and speed of watching television series have undergone significant changes. On-demand television and online streaming services (e.g., Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Fox, Hulu, when only limited to legal downloading platforms) have gained immense success in recent years by eliminating the restrictions of time and place.

Binge-watching (defined as watching between two and six episodes of a TV show in one sitting) has quickly become a common practice among the audience population in this context, most of whom report this as their preferred means of consuming TV entertainment. More precisely, this is an option to spend an evening or a weekend glued to the television, indulged in the consumption of several episodes or even in a single sitting of a whole season of TV shows. Between 2011 and 2015, the prevalence of binge-watching grew to gradually become a standard form of consuming TV series among the general public. As of the third quarter of 2020, Netflix had 190 million paying subscribers worldwide. This number grew exponentially, from 5 million in 2012 to more than 190 million in 2020.

People with binge-watching habits sometimes watch several episodes in one go. Also, when an online streaming service simultaneously released all episodes of a season, it prompted widespread “marathon-viewing” sessions among the 18-34 age group who initially binge-watched and then took to social media to share their (apparently positive reviews of such shows. Given this reality, the Tele-industry spends on web series that force people to binge-watch and sometimes all episodes of a particular web series season are released simultaneously to encourage this activity.

Impact of binge-watching on Mental health

Binge-watching has undeniably become the norm and engaging way for the contemporary audience to consume media content, such as television shows. This phenomenon has been observed since 2013, but research is still sparse on its psychological conditions, such as personality characteristics and motivational and emotional mechanisms. The likelihood of developing signs of behavioral addiction is the main risk behind repetitive binge-watching behavior. Recent literature points out that excessive forms of binge-watching could be equivalent to behavioral addictions such as video games/internet addiction or problematic use of social media. This highly immersive behavior offers instant pleasure and can therefore contribute to the loss of self-control and spending far more time watching television shows than the individual intended initially.

Research also shows the association between sedentary behavior of this sort and neglect of work or social relationships, lack of sleep, procrastination at bedtime, overweight as well as an increase in unhealthy consumption of food. The correlation of binge-watching with mood disturbances, sleep disturbances, fatigue, and self-regulation deficiency is confirmed by existing evidence. As a sedentary pattern of behavior, binge-watching is also linked to unhealthy food intake and decreased physical activity, especially among young people.

Other hazardous health consequences due to binge-watching impacting physical health

Instead of going out and becoming physically active, more and more people choose to stay indoors and watch television. Reduced sleep quality, daytime fatigue and insomnia are correlated with binge-watching frequency, with cognitive pre-sleep arousal mediating these relationships, whereas a balanced diet is negatively associated with overall binge-watching. Also, research has shown that watching a lot of television raises the risk of obesity by 23%. Another reason for the increased risk of weight gain is that watching series for a long time is often linked to the consumption of unhealthy food, implying that people are more likely to consume food that is high in fat and carbohydrates. The increased risk of type 2 diabetes, fatal or non-fatal cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality has also been shown to be consistently related to a longer span of TV viewing time. As binge-watching rates increased, questions about physical inactivity resulting in health risks is emerging at an exponential rate.

Binge-watching during the era of COVID-19

People all around the globe, of all age groups, are experiencing anxiety and mental breakdown during the COVID-19 lockdown phase. Such a situation provides a perfect scenario for engaging in online games and watching television as people experience days of loneliness at home. In-home environments, as leisure outlets, are restricted, and internet/TV is easily accessible, readily available, and of course, affordable; it can lead to binge-watching. There seems to be an uptick in binge-watching in the new COVID-19 pandemic situation with a global lockdown state, as individuals have nothing to do. During this pandemic, as the sources of entertainment and social interaction has reduced, people all around the globe began to concentrate on the readily accessible modes of entertainment in their home settings. The psychological motivation found for binge-watching is to pass the time and avoid boredom, reduce stress, and overcome loneliness.

An online survey conducted in the general population of four Southeast Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia & Nepal) indicates that during the lockdown period, there is a substantial increase in binge-watching with an increase in an average time of 3-5 hours and 5+ hours of binge-watching. This study also revealed that often binge-watching causes significant sleep disturbance, disrupt work completion, and causes conflicts with others.

Therefore, it can be concluded that following back-to-back episodes of a particular show may stimulate the brain, and consequently, interferes with one`s ability to sleep. Other adverse effects on health include depression and anxiety, spinal issues, lack of oxygen, lack of physical activity, and a bigger waistline. These effects are the leading risk factors for heart disease and stroke. Limiting binge activity may be beneficial for individuals, as per current evidence, and may also prevent the development of lifestyle-related disorders.

Sweden initiates massive military buildup in preparation for war with Russia

Gabriel Black

Sweden’s Social Democratic government announced last month a massive, multi-year plan to increase military spending and activities—the largest such expansion in 70 years.

Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist announced that the country’s defense budget would be increased by 27 billion Swedish kronor (US$3.13 billion) between 2021 and 2025, a 40 percent increase.

The military budget hike comes on top of significant increases enacted since 2014. Forbes estimates that the total increase in the defense budget between 2014 and 2025, including the new bill, could be as much as 85 percent.

In addition to increased spending, the massive 181-page defense spending bill calls for the enlisted forces to grow from 60,000 troops to 90,000. It proposes the completion of a new submarine to join Sweden’s world-class submarine stealth submarine fleet as well as a new mechanized brigade for its army. Likewise, it proposes the development of a new, more advanced submarine program to replace its famous Gotland-class submarines by 2025.

Swedish forces in Afghanistan (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The bill will also involve a boost to Sweden’s “Civil Defense” force. At a press conference on October 15, Hultqvist told reporters, “Sweden’s capabilities to handle a state of heightened alert and, ultimately, war need to be strengthened on a broad front.” Investment will also be made in a variety of other features of the armed forces—new fighter jets, artillery platforms and cyber warfare programs.

The planned massive build-up of military force in this small but significant country testifies to the immense danger of war as the global economic and political situation deteriorates under conditions of the greatest capitalist crisis since the 1930s.

Throughout Eurasia, the threat of war has never been as great since World War II. In 2019, global military spending reached $1.9 trillion, the highest level since the end of the Cold War.

The global cockpit of militarism and war is the United States. Since 2008, first under Obama and now Trump, a massive build-up of military spending has taken place aimed at preparing for “great-power conflicts,” above all with Russia and China.

The claim of the American, and, for that matter, Scandinavian, ruling classes that they are engaged in “defense” preparations against the great ‘Russian threat’ is a lie to justify rearmament and aggression. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US and NATO have engaged in a systematic military build-up against Russia, as they, one-by-one, brought former member states of the Eastern bloc and Soviet Union into NATO as part of a larger plan to break up Russia into smaller states that could be easier for US imperialism and its allies to dominate.

It is impossible to see Sweden’s massive plans for rearmament, and, as defense minister Hulqvist says, “war,” outside of the broader efforts of the United States and its allies to prepare for war against Russia and the drive of global capitalism toward war and militarism. The Democratic Party’s main criticism of the fascistic-minded Donald Trump over the past four years has been that he has been insufficiently aggressive towards Russia.

A Swedish government statement from October 14 clearly placed the increase in defense spending in the context of the drive to war with Russia. Hulqvist told reporters that previous cuts to defense had gone “too far” and that “Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine” suggests that “an armed attack on Sweden cannot be ruled out.”

However, an armed attack by Russia on Sweden would be suicide. Sweden, while not a formal member of NATO, is, and has been, a very close ally of the US military and intelligence agency for over 50 years. Notwithstanding its official posture of neutrality during the Cold War, Stockholm served as a key partner of US intelligence operations against the Soviet Union.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, Sweden has established many mutual-defense treaties with NATO and the US. An attack by Russia on Sweden would therefore lead, almost immediately, to a response of every major European, NATO- and US-aligned power against Russia. The real threat the Baltic region faces is not Russian aggression, but the general descent of global capitalism towards inter-imperialist rivalry and the advanced preparations of US imperialism for war against both Russia and China.

Conflicts in Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Israel, Libya, or the Azerbaijan-Armenian war, could very easily and quickly spiral into a conflict involving major armed powers. In that context, in which one of these flashpoints triggers a major war between the US and Russia, Sweden, allied with the US, would be on the doorstep of Russia, including St. Petersburg. In such a scenario, control over the Baltic would be essential for the US.

It is notable that the historic surge in military spending in Sweden is not being carried out by the traditional “right” parties but rather the Social Democrats and the Greens. The Social Democrats have a long record of militarism. It was under the Social Democrat-led government of Göran Persson in 2002 that Sweden gave up its much-vaunted position of formal neutrality, which had existed for almost 200 years, in order to support the Bush administration’s “war on terror” and participate more fully in joint military exercises with NATO.

This is not merely a Swedish phenomenon. As the World Socialist Web Site has documented, Europe’s “left” parties have been at the forefront of calls for rearmament. This can be seen clearly in Germany, where a massive rearmament of German imperialism is underway spearheaded by the Social Democratic Party and met with great support and enthusiasm from both the Left Party and Green Party.

Sweden’s huge rearmament program is all the more significant politically given that outside of the country, Sweden and its “social democratic” political parties are upheld by pseudo-left organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as “socialist” models to be aspired to. These nationalist, pro-capitalist organizations combine this with the promotion of politicians and parties that defend militarism in the name of “national defense,” like Bernie Sanders in regards to China.

There is nothing “socialist” about Sweden. In striking contrast to the billions lavished on the military to train troops in killing and to purchase weapons of death, the ruling elite has starved the country’s health care and social services amid a raging pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 6,000 people in a country of just 10 million.

During the pandemic’s first wave, elderly care homes were ravaged by COVID-19 infections and deaths as low-paid, precariously employed care workers were overwhelmed and lacked even the necessary employment protections to shelter safely at home if they showed symptoms. Hospitals were so overstretched after decades of privatization and cost-cutting that they adopted a policy in the Stockholm region of refusing to treat care home residents over the age of 80.

British Medical Journal accuses UK government of the “suppression of science”

Thomas Scripps

The British Medical Journal has published an extraordinary editorial accusing the Boris Johnson’s Conservative government of the “politicisation, “corruption,” and “suppression of science”.

Last Friday’s article concluded, “Politicisation of science was enthusiastically deployed by some of history’s worst autocrats and dictators, and it is now regrettably commonplace in democracies. The medical-political complex tends towards suppression of science to aggrandise and enrich those in power. And, as the powerful become more successful, richer, and further intoxicated with power, the inconvenient truths of science are suppressed. When good science is suppressed, people die.”

The editorial by the journal of the British Medical Association is an indictment of the British ruling class’ “herd immunity” response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has created a humanitarian disaster. At every stage, the government ignored scientists’ calls for a national lockdown and warnings about the dire implications of keeping open workplaces, schools, colleges and universities.

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [Credit: Neil Hall Pool via AP]

On November 11, the UK passed the terrible milestone of 50,000 deaths. This is the official number, now standing at 52,745, including only those who died within 28 days of receiving a positive COVID test. But according to the government’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) and statistics agencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, there have been more than 64,000 fatalities in which COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. Since the pandemic began, the UK has suffered more than 70,000 “excess deaths”.

On average over the last week, more than 410 people were being killed by the disease every day, roughly four times the average death rate a month ago. As of last Thursday, almost 15,000 people were in hospital with COVID-19, more than triple the number a month ago, and more than 1,300 on ventilators, more than double the number a month ago.

These are the consequences of a surge of infections encouraged by the reckless reopening of the economy, schools and universities in the summer and autumn months. Officially, the seven-day average for the number of new daily cases is 25,331. But this figure is kept artificially low by the effective collapse of the government’s testing system. The ONS estimates there are around 50,000 new cases each day.

Commentators in the corporate media have seized on the ONS data to proclaim that the pandemic is “stabilising” and Johnson’s one-month “lockdown”— begun on November 4 and leaving schools, universities and many workplaces open—is working. This is cynical propaganda for the government and its murderous policies. The ONS data only shows that the rate of increase in infections is slowing, meaning the epidemic is still expanding, and from an extremely high level.

More than 710,000 people across the UK were infected with COVID-19 in the week to November 6. The R0 (reproduction rate) is estimated to be between 1 and 1.2 nationally, signifying a growing number of cases, and infection rates are increasing nationally among the more at-risk older age groups and regionally in the south east, south west, and north east of the country. Hull’s infection rate recently soared to 783 per 100,000 people—triple the average for England.

Professor Neil Fergusson, a respected epidemiologist at Imperial College London, believes the current lockdown restrictions will reduce the R0 to just 0.8 or 0.9 and even the most optimistic modelling suggests 0.6 is the lowest it will go. By December 2, when the lockdown ends, rates of infection will still be dangerously high and free to explode once again. The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has warned that the government’s “Tier system”, which will be reimposed once the current restrictions end, will not prevent another surge of the virus in the winter.

The government only implemented the current lockdown to stave off a feared social backlash over mounting deaths and a widely predicted collapse of the National Health Service this winter. Their intention was to buy enough time to throw open the whole economy again in the lead up to Christmas and in January, when a vast percentage of retail and hospitality trade is done.

Indicative of the profits before lives agenda is the government’s decision yesterday—after big business demanded it—to exempt seasonal poultry workers arriving in the UK from abroad from lockdown rules so that they can start work straight away during what should be a 14-day quarantine. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said it meant that food producers can “keep up with the Christmas demand” for turkey.

The corporations’ Christmas profits will be bought at the cost of tens of thousands more lives. Government officials have raised the prospect of a third lockdown or a series of so-called “circuit breakers” to come, acknowledging that new waves are on the way.

Johnson is under orders from up to 100 of his MPs not to introduce any additional national restrictions that would hinder profit-making. A backbench Tory rebellion over the current lockdown was only averted with the promise that Johnson committed that it would not be extended beyond December 2. According to the Financial Times, Johnson told Tory donors over the weekend “that further coronavirus lockdowns could be avoided.”

Another healthcare catastrophe is building up. In the summer, the NHS Confederation was warning that the waiting list for NHS treatment could reach 10 million by Christmas. The NHS reported in September that 2 million people had been waiting for more than 18 weeks. As of last week, nearly 140,000 of people had been waiting more than a year—the highest level since 2008. The number was just 1,600 this February.

There have been 19 million fewer dental treatments since March compared to the same period last year and as of September-October dental practices were still operating at just one third of the normal level.

Roughly 300,000 fewer people have seen a cancer specialist for an urgent check-up this year compared to last—a drop of a quarter. And the number of people starting cancer treatment is down by a fifth. In July, the Health Care Research Hub for Cancer predicted that the UK could suffer between 7,000 and 35,000 additional cancer deaths within a year due to this disruption. The British Heart Foundation reports that Britain has already seen an additional nearly 5,000 deaths caused by heart problems since the pandemic began—a 7 percent increase.

The death merchants in ruling circles trying to sell these figures as an argument against lockdown restrictions are advocating a crime against humanity. All experience shows that, left unchecked, the COVID-19 virus spreads rapidly through the population and overwhelms healthcare systems.

A concerning phenomenon is “long COVID”—a battery of long-term symptoms following a COVID-19 infection, which most commonly include fatigue, brain fog, breathlessness, and body pains. Little is known about this condition, but it points to the disease’s potential to do lasting damage to an even greater number of people than it kills.

Preliminary data from a University of Oxford study of 58 hospitalised COVID patients found that 60 percent had abnormalities in their lungs, 29 percent in their kidneys, 26 percent in their hearts and 10 percent in their livers two to three months after their infections. The study also found tissue changes in parts of the brain.

A separate study issued preliminary findings into the impact of “long COVID” on low-risk individuals—the young and those with no major underlying health conditions. The Coverscan study reported that of 200 low-risk individuals, 70 percent had impairments in one or more organs four months after infection, and 25 percent had impairments in two or more organs.

MPs have been told that up to 500,000 people in Britain are living with such long-term effects. Yet only a paltry £10 million has been allocated to the NHS to set up specialist treatment centres and provide care.

The healthcare crisis is being exacerbated by widespread socio-economic distress. The Resolution Foundation reported Sunday that “three-in-ten adults who have seen their income fall throughout the crisis are now experiencing material deprivation.” Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned the government in response, “If they don’t announce a new anti-poverty programme they will face a rebellion across the country.”

Nothing short of a massive redistribution of social wealth from the coffers of the financial and corporate oligarchy can address this catastrophe. The pandemic must be brought under control through the necessary public health measures until a vaccine can be deployed, with full support for children required to miss school and workers kept off work. Billions must be poured into health care, public health, and social care infrastructure.