COVID-19 cases increasing rapidly in China

Jerry Zhang

Since the end of 2020, as part of the worsening global epidemic, coronavirus crises have broken out in many parts of China. As the coldest winter conditions approach, a new wave of outbreaks is still developing.

In recent days, the authorities in regions threatened by the epidemic—large cities such as Shenyang, Dalian, and Shijiazhuang—have successively announced that they have entered a “wartime state.” Their measures include opening nucleic acid testing for millions of people, cancelling all gatherings, and restricting public transportation.

People wearing masks in China [Credit: AP Photo/Kin Cheung]

These pandemic prevention operations face serious challenges. The Spring Festival is approaching—the annual lunar new year, seven-day holiday, and its customary mass movement of people, is due to start on February 12. Usually, hundreds of millions of people, mainly migrant workers, return home during this time of the year. Concerned about the impact of the pandemic, the governments of many cities have issued notices asking people not to return home unless necessary.

According to the National Health Commission, as of midnight on January 10, there were 673 confirmed cases (symptomatic infections) and 506 asymptomatic infections recorded in China. Currently, the outbreaks are mainly concentrated in Beijing, as well as Shijiazhuang, Shenyang and Dalian. After a new wave of infections broke out in the three major cities of Beijing, Shenyang and Dalian in the second half of December, the number of cases in Shijiazhuang also increased rapidly—by 212 cases in nine days—making it the most severely-hit pandemic area in China.

Shijiazhuang City, the capital of Hebei Province, a city of 11 million people, was declared a “wartime state” last Tuesday. Since Thursday, its railways, highways, and flights have been blocked, to prohibit people from entering or leaving.

Gaocheng District, which is under the jurisdiction of Shijiazhuang City, is the epicentre of the outbreak. Three officials in the district have been accused by authorities of “terrible prevention and control.”

According to reports, the first case of this outbreak came from Xiaoguozhuang Village, where a 61-year-old female resident was diagnosed with the infection. Subsequently, confirmed cases appeared in the village, one after another, and gradually spread to surrounding villages.

At a press conference on January 8, Li Qi, director of the Hebei Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said the outbreak in Hebei, like the outbreaks in other regions, was caused by viruses from abroad. Xiaoguozhuang Village is only a dozen kilometres away from Zhengding International Airport, thus facilitating the import and spread of the virus. Most of the local villagers work in the service industry or cold chain logistics, and are therefore more likely to be exposed to the virus.

In addition, social gatherings may be a factor in this outbreak. According to official information, from December 28 to January 2, several weddings were held in Xiaoguozhuang Village and surrounding villages, and more than 19 confirmed cases participated. From a wedding on December 28, seven guests were diagnosed with infection. According to comments cited in the media from local villagers, almost no one wore masks or took other protective measures at the wedding.

Feng Zijian, deputy director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said on January 5 that the large increase in cases, in a short period of time, meant that the virus had spread “extremely secretly” for some time. Parallel patterns have appeared in other regions. Previously, there were people in Dalian who tested positive after multiple tests. The outbreaks in Beijing showed similar characteristics.

As of January 10, there were a total of 63 officially-designated “medium-risk” areas in China—28 in Hebei Province (mainly in Shijiazhuang City and Xingtai City), 8 in Beijing, 30 in Liaoning Province (mainly in Shenyang City and Dalian City), and 7 in Heilongjiang Province (all in Heihe City).

These outbreaks once again show that the working class has been placed on the front line of the pandemic in China, as internationally. Several cases have been found to have been infected due to exposure to viruses on the surface of frozen goods, imported from abroad, but even after the pandemic resurfaced in multiple cities, cold chain logistics companies were still responsible for inadequate disinfection and lack of sanitation protection. According to the statistics, most of the cases in these outbreaks are factory workers, bus drivers, waiters, courier employees and similarly exposed workers.

Generally speaking, rural areas are considered to have little population mobility, but the outbreak in Hebei was initially concentrated in rural areas. To a certain extent, that was because some migrant workers were affected by mounting unemployment, wage cuts and unpaid wages, and forced to return home, ahead of the festival season “returning tide.” Workers have received virtually no support or assistance to alleviate their deteriorating living conditions.

At the same time, this development exposed the weak health and medical system in rural and other “grassroots” areas. According to the China News website, the source of the Hebei outbreak has not been determined, but it is an indisputable fact that the rural epidemic prevention system is inadequate, and many cases have not been tested in time.

Due to the intensifying pandemic around the world, people are being encouraged to turn their hopes to vaccines, and the Chinese government has accelerated its vaccination plan. China formally started its vaccination for “key populations” in December, and various regions are gradually developing it. Those who were listed in the first batch of “key populations for vaccination” include people in nine industries, including logistics, customs, medical care and transportation. These industries are considered to be more likely to be exposed to the virus via workplaces.

According to the previously announced Beijing COVID-19 vaccination plan, vaccinations of “key populations” in the capital will be completed before the Spring Festival. Then, depending on the supply of vaccines, vaccinations for other groups will be organised. On January 9, Zeng Yixin, deputy director of China’s National Health Commission, said China’s vaccine program would vaccinate at least 60 percent of the population and would not charge fees.

The vaccine currently provided by the government to Chinese citizens is from the state-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm. According to previous official data, the vaccine’s effective rate is 79.34 percent.

Despite this, before the vaccine is provided to the people on a large scale, the global epidemic, which is surging due to the profit-driven policies of governments everywhere, still poses a dire threat to China’s masses. This highlights the fact that the pandemic is a global issue that cannot be resolved on a parochial national basis, such as by locking down borders.

Compounding the risk is the state-owned media’s repeated downplaying of the pandemic, to justify the lifting of prevention and control methods in order to ensure a return to work. Even though China has kept the number of cases relatively low, mainly by carrying out large-scale testing and contact tracing, the highly contagious virus has still continued to spread.

US brands Yemen’s Houthi rebels “terrorists,” paving way for mass starvation

Bill Van Auken

Waving aside warnings by humanitarian organizations that his action threatens mass starvation in Yemen, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that Washington will designate the Houthi rebels, who govern territory containing 70 percent of the Yemeni population, as a “foreign terrorist organization.”

This cynical and potentially catastrophic measure is being taken by the ostensibly “lame-duck” secretary of state as part of an unrelenting “maximum pressure” campaign of punishing economic sanctions and continuous military provocations against Iran.

Destroyed house in South Sanaa, Yemen. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Washington has sought to portray the Houthi movement, which has existed and ruled over parts of Yemen for generations, as a puppet of Tehran, something the Houthis have continuously denied. Claims of substantial amounts of Iranian aid for the Houthis in the nearly five-year-old war launched against them by Saudi Arabia have never been proven.

As for “terrorism,” the statement refers vaguely to Houthi “cross-border attacks threatening civilian populations, infrastructure and commercial shipping.” Pompeo also insisted that one “need not look further” than a December 30 attack launched against the airport in the southern port city of Aden that killed 27 people. The attack, which took place as a Saudi puppet “unity government” landed at the airport, was blamed by Riyadh and Washington on the Houthis, who denied they were responsible. Afterwards, Saudi forces ordered the arrest in connection with the attack of a senior leader of the secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC), which, with backing from the United Arab Emirates, repeatedly clashed with Saudi puppet forces over the past two years.

Washington’s branding of the Houthis as terrorists for “cross border attack” and inflicting civilian casualties is the height of hypocrisy given the billions of dollars’ worth of weapons along with logistical aid the US has provided Saudi Arabia as it has waged an unrelenting campaign of bombings that has killed an estimated 100,000 people, most of them civilians.

With basic infrastructure, hospitals and food production deliberately targeted, the war has unleashed the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet. More have starved to death—including 75,000 children under the age of five—than have died from military violence, while at least half the population is facing famine, and the worst cholera epidemic in modern history has infected 1.2 million. On top of this, COVID-19 has begun to spread uncontrollably across Yemen.

For Washington, all of these civilian victims are mere collateral damage in US imperialism’s drive to exert uncontested hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East.

While the State Department’s terrorism charges are entirely fabricated, the impact of the US designation will be all too real.

“Yemen’s faltering economy will be dealt a further devastating blow,” Mohamed Abdi, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Sanaa, said, warning that the sanctions imposed together with the “terrorist” designation would “hamstring the ability of aid agencies to respond” to the catastrophic conditions in the country.

Oxfam warned: “The consequences will be felt acutely across a country also hit hard by extreme hunger, cholera and COVID-19, as banks, businesses and humanitarian donors become unwilling or unable to take on the risk of operating in Yemen.”

The terrorist designation constitutes an act of “pure diplomatic vandalism,” said International Rescue Committee CEO David Miliband. “After four years of a failed war strategy that has created the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe, the last thing the Yemeni people need is further interruption of aid and economic flows.”

While Pompeo claimed that Washington would issue licenses to allow “certain humanitarian activities” to continue in Houthi-governed territory, the Washington Post reported that the US Treasury Department had opposed the designation on the grounds that the conditions of war in Yemen would make it impossible to effectively issue waivers.

Mark Lowcock, head of United Nations emergency relief operations, reported last month that mere reports that Washington was considering a terrorist designation produced a “chilling effect” resulting in a 25 percent reduction in food supplies in November. Banks and other commercial entities refuse to participate in humanitarian transactions out of fear they will run afoul of unilateral US sanctions.

The State Department’s terrorist designation against the Houthis in Yemen is part of a raft of anti-Iranian measures imposed by the Trump administration in the run-up to the scheduled transfer of power to an incoming government led by Democrat Joe Biden on January 20.

These measures have been accompanied by a menacing military buildup in the Persian Gulf, where the USS Nimitz carrier strike group has been deployed, together with a US nuclear submarine, the USS Georgia. Meanwhile, pairs of B-52 heavy bombers have been flown over the Persian Gulf four times in little more than a month.

At the same time, top Trump administration officials and advisers, including Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner have made trips to the region.

The latest official dispatched to the Middle East is Anthony Tata, the retired general and Fox News commentator, who was installed as undersecretary of defense for policy, the number three position at the Pentagon, in a post-election purge ordered by Trump. Tata, a notorious fascist and Islamophobe who denounced Obama as a “terrorist leader,” a “Manchurian candidate” and a Muslim, met with Khalid bin Salman, Saudi deputy minister of defense and royal family member along with other Saudi officials on January 7.

According to the Pentagon readout of the discussion, Tata discussed “the U.S.-Saudi defense partnership, particularly in light of the threats by Iran” and praised the “Kingdom’s commitment to share the responsibility for supporting U.S. forces.”

In concluding its report on Tata’s mission to Riyadh, the Pentagon stated: “The U.S. Department of Defense will continue to execute its mission, including by reassuring allies and partners of our nation’s steadfast resolve, as we uphold our oath of office and the Constitution.”

In the context of the fascist insurrection instigated by Trump and his supporters on January 6, this seemingly innocuous statement has ominous implications. Those who stormed the Capitol claimed that they too were upholding the Constitution by resisting a “fraudulent” election.

Most foreign policy analysts have cast the frenetic anti-Iranian campaign in the waning days of Trump’s term as an attempt to establish “facts on the ground” that would thwart an attempt by an incoming Biden administration to reset relations with Tehran.

There are growing concerns, however, that Trump and the cabal of fascistic loyalists he has installed at the Pentagon will provoke a war with Iran with the aim of creating a crisis that could be used as the pretext for the imposition of martial law and the upending of the transition of power.

Last Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reported to the Democratic caucus that she had spoken to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley “to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes” for nuclear war. Milley provided a non-committal assurance that safeguards are in place.

Neither Biden, Pelosi nor any section of the Democratic Party leadership are issuing any warning of this danger to the American or world public. On the contrary, the Democrats are seeking to replace Trump with an administration even more committed to the pursuit of US global interests by means of militarist aggression.

Anxiety in South Asia over US president’s attempted coup

K. Ratnayake

Concerns have been voiced in South Asia about the fascist mob incited by US President Trump that stormed the Capitol in Washington last week. Comments have also been made expressing hopes for an “orderly transition of power” to President-elect Joe Biden and the “ultimate prevalence of democracy” in the US.

This nervousness has nothing to do with any allegiance to democracy. Biden does not represent “democracy” any more than Trump, and defends US imperialism and the same ruthless class interests.

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the "Howdy Modi: Shared Dreams, Bright Futures" event at NRG Stadium, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2019, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

Throughout the region, the ruling classes are moving towards autocratic forms of rule amid the political and economic crisis intensified by the global coronavirus pandemic. They fear that the coup attempt in the US exposes to the working class the collapse of bourgeois democracy, not just at the centre of global capitalism but in their own countries.

The South Asian ruling elites are heavily dependent economically and strategically on US imperialism and the political instability in Washington directly impacts on them all.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued a tweet on January 7, declaring: “Distressed to see news about rioting and violence in Washington DC. Orderly and peaceful transfer of power must continue. The democratic process cannot be allowed to be subverted through unlawful protests.” Significantly, he did not condemn the fascist coup nor even did use the word “coup.”

Modi’s statement reflects specific concerns about the implications of events in Washington for India’s relations with the US.

Indian governments over the past two decades have developed ever closer military, economic and political relations with Washington. The Indian bourgeoisie hopes that its strategic alignment with the US will boost its regional and global ambitions against arch rival China.

These relations are being pushed by the US because of India’s central importance in Washington’s strategic and military offensive against Beijing. In a war against China, the US needs to block Indian Ocean sea routes, vital for Chinese imports of energy and raw materials.

Close geo-strategic relations with the US began under the Congress government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which was backed by India’s two Stalinist parties. Under Modi, India has been transformed into a frontline state fully integrated into Washington’s war plans. Trump visited India last February to further cement these ties.

New Delhi has signed basing agreements with the US allowing its forces to use India’s military ports and airports. On October 27, less than ten days before the US presidential election, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited India to sign the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement. This will allow sharing of high-end military technology and classified satellite and other data between the two countries.

India has also emerged as a key member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad—a quasi-military alliance involving the US, Japan, Australia and India against China. New Delhi’s relations with Washington provoked border tensions with China last year, posing the danger of a war between the two nuclear-armed countries and involve the US and other major powers with global catastrophic consequences.

The mainstream media and the ruling elites in the US and India promote themselves as great democracies—America the world’s oldest democracy and India the world’s largest. These claims are false to the core.

Trump’s attempted coup d’état has revealed the long-developing collapse of American democracy and moves by key sections of the ruling elite for a fascist regime to crush the eruption of revolutionary struggles by the working class. Similarly in India, Modi’s Hindu-supremacist government is entrenching authoritarian rule.

The Indian media has published several comments on the January 6 events. Many note Trump’s role in inciting the attack on the Capitol and describe it as a “coup.” They conclude, however, that the situation will somehow return to normal.

An Indian Express editorial on January 8, for example, declares that the storming of Capitol Hill “is deeply unsettling” and a “dangerous moment.” America, however, it continues, “will overcome this moment, as it has its other big crises… It still has institutions that can stand up to excesses by the country’s political leadership, even its highest office.”

The Economic Times was more explicit. Denouncing the actions of Trump’s supporters as deplorable, it states that, “yet, on its worst day the US showed its commitment to the republic and democracy.” Biden becoming president, the newspaper hoped, would “not just to deal with the pandemic and its economic consequences, restore US to its traditional global leadership role, but also to heal the rift that divides America and renew the politics of compromise and consensus.”

These are sheer illusions.

As the World Socialist Web Site has consistently explained, Trump is not some “evil personality” but the representative of the criminal financial oligarchy in the US. Biden and his Democratic party represent the same ruthless ruling class interests.

In Sri Lanka, neither President Gotabhaya Rajapakse nor his brother Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse has uttered a word about the attempted fascist coup in Washington.

The cash-strapped Sri Lanka government, which faces an economic crisis worsened by the coronavirus pandemic and dependent on Chinese investments and loans, however, is nervously studying political developments in the US.

In late October, Pompeo visited Colombo where he met with Rajapakse and other political leaders and thuggishly declared that the government should end its relations with Beijing and fully align itself with the US interests.

While the Rajapakses are maintaining an official silence about Trump’s attempted coup, the Sri Lankan media has commented.

An opinion piece by Daily Mirror international affairs editor Ameen Izzadeen declared: “What happened on January 6 was a coup d’état of sorts to subvert democracy… Just as the 9/11 terrorists brought down the Twin Towers, Trump’s terrorists—some of them armed—tried to bring down the edifice of democracy so that the demagogue could continue as president for four more years.”

The Daily Mirror columnist went on to pompously declare that, “By defeating Trump, Biden saved the soul of America”—comments designed to maintain the myth that the Democrats are some sort of progressive alternative.

What is happening in the US, the centre of world capitalism, is the key to understanding the political situation everywhere.

The attempted fascist coup d’état in the US is the counter-revolutionary reaction of a capitalist class in deep crisis and fearful of emerging working class struggles that pose the prospect of revolution.

Like the authoritarian turn by its counterparts in India, Sri Lankan President Rajapakse is rallying fascistic forces as he seeks to establish a dictatorship based on the military. The developments pose the urgency of fighting for an international socialist movement of the working class based on the program of world socialist revolution.

Biden taps William Burns to head Central Intelligence Agency

Jacob Crosse

President-elect Joe Biden announced Monday that he had selected longtime US State Department official William Burns to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Burns was a 33-year veteran of the US diplomatic corps, rising to Deputy Secretary of State from 2011 to 2014 in the Obama administration. He retired in 2014 to head the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a major foreign policy think tank in Washington.

As a top-level State Department official through the administrations of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama, Burns is implicated in virtually every crime of US imperialism over the past three decades, including the war in Iraq, the US-NATO attack on Libya, the military coup that drowned the Egyptian Revolution in blood, and the US intervention in Syria.

William Burns (US–Japan Council)

Burns specialized in the Middle East and Russia, moving up the ladder from US Ambassador to Jordan (1998-2001) to Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs (2001-2005), where he was responsible for State Department operations in conquered Iraq, ruled as a virtual US colony, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 2005, George W. Bush named him Ambassador to Russia, one of the top US diplomatic postings. He returned to Washington in 2008 to be undersecretary of state for political affairs, and was maintained in that position when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state under Obama. In 2011, Obama promoted him to deputy secretary of state, the number two position, where he was the day-to-day leader of the State Department, first under Clinton, then John Kerry.

After such a career, as the saying goes, Burns knows where all the bodies are buried. Now he is assigned to head an agency that is probably responsible for more killing, torture and mass suffering than any other on the planet: the CIA.

He will be replacing current CIA Director Gina Haspel, herself a former spy, notorious for running a “black site” torture prison in Thailand. Largely because of this and her subsequent role in destroying evidence of the criminality she and fellow agents engaged in, Trump elevated Haspel to head the agency in 2018, after he promoted his first CIA director, Mike Pompeo, to secretary of state.

Burns’s trajectory is in the opposite direction, but the close connection of the CIA and State Department signaled first by Pompeo and now by Burns demonstrates the overlapping role of both these institutions as agencies of American imperialist violence and political subversion.

On Monday, Biden released a statement and short video announcing the selection of Burns. In his statement Biden assured, “the American people” that they, “will sleep soundly with him as our next CIA director.” In his video Biden praised Burns for his, “honesty, integrity, and skill,” noting that is “exactly how he’ll head the CIA.”

The selection of Burns has drawn similar praise from former veterans of the military-intelligence apparatus responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Former CIA director and Iraq Commander General David Petraeus told Politico in a statement that Burns was, “a truly inspired choice.”

A subsequent successor to Petraeus at the CIA, John Brennan, infamous for his role in drone missile assassinations and illegal spying, called it an “enlightened selection.” Brennan approvingly noted that Burns had, “deep substantive expertise [and] extensive experience working with the Intelligence Community. The CIA will be most fortunate to have him at the helm.”

While Burns has never formally worked for the CIA, his decades of work at the State Department required that he coordinate closely with the military-intelligence apparatus in carrying out the predatory aims of US imperialism.

One of his less-publicized activities was helping suppress the revolutionary movement of the working class in Egypt which erupted in 2011, and was drowned in blood after the 2013 military coup. As Deputy Secretary of State, Burns traveled to Egypt before and after the July 3, 2013 military coup by dictator general-General Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, who has remained in power ever since with Washington’s blessing and favor.

Also in 2013, Burns headed a special high-level State Department detail that was sent to Russia to try to convince President Vladimir Putin to turn over National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. He later chastised China for permitting Snowden to escape Hong Kong after his devastating revelations about systematic spying by the NSA against the world’s population, including Americans. The Chinese reluctance to detain—i.e., kidnap—Snowden on behalf of the US government “was not consistent with the spirit... the type of relationship—the new model—that we both seek to build.”

A preview of what to expect from a Burns-led CIA was given during an interview with National Public Radio’s Mary Louise Kelly on “US Global Leadership” held June 19, 2019 at the Truman Center for National Policy in Washington, DC. In the extended conversation, Burns defended the US and NATO-led coup in Libya which ended with the grisly murder of Muammar Gaddafi, followed by an ongoing civil war, the torture and killing of refugees and the return of slave-markets.

“It was right to act in Libya in the way that we did,” Burns said. While the US government might have “got some assumptions wrong,” he expressed no regrets, saying that he still thought Obama’s “decision to act was unavoidable.”

One of the few regrets Burns expressed in the interview was the “failure to enforce the red line,” in regards to the attempted overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In other words, Burns though that Obama should have ordered a US military strike on Syria: a preview of the type of policy recommendations that he will provide to a President Biden.

There is no doubt that as Deputy Secretary of State, Burns was well aware of the CIA effort known as Operation Timber Sycamore which flooded millions of dollars worth in military weapons to so-called “moderate rebels” composed of remnants of al-Qaeda as well as al-Nusra in Syria to be used against the Assad government, beginning in 2012.

On August 21, 2013, these forces staged a poison gas attack on Ghouta, which was used as a pretext for the US to begin bombing Syria. However, broad popular opposition to another imperialist war, as well as internal conflicts within the US government and its European allies, led Obama to back off from further military action and eventually negotiate a face-saving peace agreement with Putin.

A Cost of Wars report from last year estimated that the ongoing conflict in Syria has led to the displacement of over 7 million people. This estimate, however, is on the low end, with some arguing it could be as high as 12 million people. Overall, some 380,000 Syrian civilians have reportedly died in the nine-year conflict.

Unsurprisingly, during his interview, Burns expressed his support for the Democratic and CIA-led “election interference” conspiracy theory against Russia, telling Kelly that Putin “saw dysfunction in our system and took advantage…and put the thumb on the scale [against] Hillary Clinton.”

Biden’s appointment of Burns, far from allowing “every American to sleep at night’’ is a warning to the working class that imperialist war, illegal spying, and the persecution of whistleblowers such as Snowden and Assange, who remains imprisoned at Belmarsh in London, will continue under a Democratic administration.

New COVID-19 variant fuels surge in UK and Ireland

Robert Stevens

The UK’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty issued a chilling statement Monday, “The next few weeks are going to be the worst weeks of this pandemic in terms of the numbers into the NHS [National Health Service].”

Whitty spoke two days after the UK passed the grim milestone of 80,000 COVID-19 deaths, as lab-confirmed cases hit more than three million. Saturday’s 1,035 deaths took the total to 80,868, according to the governments measure of people who have died within 28 days of a positive Covid test.

In the past three weeks, the UK and Ireland have exceeded the per capita daily new case count in the United States, fueled by the new variant of COVID-19 known as B.1.1.7.

Scientists in the US and globally have warned that this surge is a bellwether for the rest of the world. "I've never seen an epi curve like this," said former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Tom Frieden. "The B.1.1.7 variant is spreading like wildfire in the UK and Ireland. If it spreads here, it will make an already-bad situation even worse."

The true figures of COVID deaths is almost 100,000. Figures published Saturday by the statistics agencies in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate—including data on deaths over recent days—showed there have been 95,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in Britain.

Monday’s 529 fatalities brought the new official death toll to 81,960 and the real figure above 96,000. Sometime this week the UK will pass 100,000 deaths. There have been another 46,169 positive cases reported, even with the weekend lull, bringing the total cases to 3,118,518.

London and the south east of England are the epicentre of the pandemic but it is raging throughout the country. On Monday, NHS England leader Sir Simon Stevens said that a quarter of coronavirus admissions to hospital are for people under the age of 55. Testifying before Parliament’s public accounts committee he stated, “In London perhaps one in 30 people has the coronavirus, in parts of London it may be twice that number. If you look across other regions of England the issue is that coronavirus is once again on the rise. In Merseyside in just the last week there has been a further 50% increase in the number of Covid hospitalisations.”

People queuing to receive a Covid-19 vaccine at the NHS Nightingale facility at the Excel Centre, London, Monday Jan. 11, 2021. (Jeremy Selwyn/Pool via AP)

Speaking to BBC Radio’s Today programme, Whitty pointed out that the new strain of coronavirus, first detected in Kent, south-east England is now the dominant strain. The “current new variant is transmitted exactly the same way but the probability of transmission with any interaction has now gone up with this new variant, which is now for much of the country the dominant variant.

“This new variant is really pushing things in a way that the old variant, which was already very bad, was not able to. So, we have a very significant problem ... this is a serious problem and it is rising in every part of England.”

The national lockdown that came into place last week is far more limited than that in operation in the few months from March 23 last year and is leading to a surge in infections.

Around 10 million people are classed as “key workers” and are working as usual. But the government is also insisting that millions of other workers, who are the parents of nursery pupils, also go out to work. Primary and secondary schools have moved to remote learning for most pupils, but companies nationally are insisting that parents still turn up for work. Last Friday, the Guardian reported a survey by the Teacher Tapp app finding that “one in six primary schools in England reported that 30% or more of their normal roll was attending in person this week, far more than in the first week of the March lockdown.” Citing comments from headteachers that schools are “rammed” with pupils it noted, “Nationally the figures would equate to more than 2,500 primary schools in England with a third or more of their pupils in their classrooms. More than 300 of those schools said at least half of all their pupils attended in person.”

The government and media have pumped out a stream of propaganda blaming the population for breaking lockdown regulations and causing the spread of the virus.

Even as he warned of how rapidly the mutation is spreading a deadly disease, including noting that over 30,000 people are now in hospital with COVID-19, compared to the peak of 18,000 in April, Whitty said “it's individual choices that matter more than rules at this stage of the game."

This is a libel against the population aimed at whitewashing a homicidal herd immunity policy that has been followed by Boris Johnson’s government since the beginning of the pandemic. His claims are belied by images of transport hubs including London’s main railway stations that are empty for most of the day, with workers only using transport services to go to and return to work.

The only measures ever put in place by the government to restrict transmission, including its lockdown last March, was because it was forced to do so by millions of workers. The latest closures of schools were only carried out because educators and staff would have walked out en masse otherwise.

Nurseries and Special Educational Needs schools remain fully open during the current lockdown to ensure that the parents of children in these settings can continue churning out profits for the corporations. Children, mainly from poorer families unable to learn remotely due to not having electronic devices, a wifi connection or space to study, are forced to attend lessons face-to-face.

Whitty even admitted that having parents in work, not at home looking after children, was the main rationale. “I think that the reason that nursery schools are open is to allow people who need to go to work or need to do particular activities to do so, and we all do know that children are at very, very low risk of this virus relative to other ages… The fact that nurseries are open, it’s not a risk to the children.” Whitty’s comments that nurseries are safe is a lie, with Johnson admitting last week that schools are vectors of transmission of the virus.

Hospitals nationally are being over-run by a massive influx of Covid patients, with the Financial Times noting on Monday that “UK hospitals are some of the fullest in Europe with Covid-19 patients...” This is made worse by the growing army of health care workers struck down by the virus or having to self-isolate when family members test positive. The chair of the British Medical Association, Chaand Nagpaul wrote last week, “There are over 46,000 hospital staff off sick with Covid-19,” and that this was “heaping additional pressure on an already overstretched workforce struggling to manage even current critical care demand.”

The Guardian reported Saturday, “Across the country hospitals, GP surgeries and care homes are reporting abnormally high staff absence levels. In Kent, one of the hardest hit areas of south-east England, about 25% of clinical and administrative staff are believed to be absent. John Allingham, medical director of the local medical committee, which represents GPs in the county, said in some practices as many as half of staff were absent, which was having an impact on vaccinations.”

The government is trumpeting the opening of seven mass vaccination centres this week, even as it admits that all adults will not have been offered a vaccine until the autumn—a claim no one should believe. One of the seven is located at Epsom Downs Racecourse in Surrey. Yet just over five miles away in Leatherhead, 170 bodies are being kept in the temporary mortuary at Headley Court. The Surrey Local Resilience Forum, reported the Guardian, said that half of those kept at the facility died from Covid-19. The bodies are being stored in the temporary facility as “The county’s hospital mortuaries have the capacity to store 600 bodies but are currently full, while the temporary facility has room for 800.”

The government still refuses to implement any serious measures of containment. Yesterday Hancock fronted a press conference in which he urged people to “follow the rules”, called for supermarkets to insist on mask wearing by customers, and made a vague statement that the government was “not afraid” to tighten the rules. Stephen Powis, national medical director of NHS England, admitted that said the “significant and sustained pressure" on hospitals, was taking place when we are "yet to see" the impact of the loosening of restrictions at Christmas.

Netanyahu government denies vaccine to Palestinians as it lauds mass rollout to Israelis

Jean Shaoul

To great fanfare, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s immunisation drive has given a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to 1.7 million Israelis, around 15 percent of Israel’s nearly 10 million population.

A second dose will be administered within 21 days of the first, meaning all those most at risk—healthcare workers and those over 60 years of age—will be protected from the virus now raging across the country.

Nevertheless, the lifting of an early lockdown in May in the interests of the financial elite has seen an alarming rise in cases since September that will continue to escalate. A total of 471,000 infections and 3,600 deaths, largely in the latest wave, has forced the government to impose a third limited lockdown.

COVID Vaccine (Stock image credit: Envato)

While Netanyahu has trumpeted the vaccination rollout, dubbed “Returning to Life”, as the fastest in the world, its distribution has been rife with inequities and mismanagement. Teachers were excluded from the initial rollout, despite at least some schools remaining open, while tens of thousands of young people were able to get the vaccine and thousands of doses went to waste, according to the Health Ministry. The government has now agreed to vaccinate them after the Teachers’ Union threatened strike action.

With the vaccines widely reported as running out, Netanyahu negotiated with Pfizer to increase the number of the vaccines and the speed of arrival.

Fewer of Israel’s Palestinian citizens, including those living in East Jerusalem, have been vaccinated than Jewish Israelis, due to the far lower level of healthcare provision in the Palestinian communities and their distrust of official government programmes. But crucially the rollout does not include the five million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel has illegally occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

This is yet another example of the gross inequities in the distribution of the vaccine within and between countries across the globe as the rich get the jab while the poor wait in line. It is a gross violation of Israel’s responsibilities under the 1949 Geneva Convention for the health of the Palestinians living in the areas it controls, including the obligation to ensure medical supplies and preventative measures “to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.”

Under the Oslo Accords, Israel agreed to bilateral co-operation on issues involving healthcare and epidemics but has in practice reneged on its obligations to the extent that the Palestinians have long endured problems importing medical equipment and an opaque security permit regime that makes it difficult for those in need of life-saving medical care to seek treatment in Israel or abroad.

Amnesty report Denying COVID-19 vaccines to Palestinians exposes Israel’s institutionalized discrimination

Israel turned down a modest request from United Nations officials to provide the Palestinians with vaccines for their medical workers, saying that there was a shortage of shots for its own citizens. Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said that while it was in Israel’s interest to contain the virus among the Palestinians, its first obligation was to its own citizens.

Israel has refused to acknowledge the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) informal approach to procure and distribute a vaccine on its behalf. Rejecting accusations of “medical apartheid” as tantamount to anti-Semitism, it argued that since the PA had not officially requested help obtaining the vaccine, Israel was not responsible for providing medical support to Palestinians.

The prejudicial treatment of the Palestinians will have its impact on all Israelis. Tens of thousands of Palestinians travelling from the West Bank to work in Israel and the settlements will be a major factor in transmitting the virus.

Israel’s actions are rendered still more obscene by the astronomical price Netanyahu has paid for the vaccines, demonstrating yet again the distorting effect of the profit gouging and ferocious national competition for the vaccines. According to a health ministry official, the government has bought the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that requires storage at ultra-low temperatures at the extortionate price of $62 a dose, more than four times the $14.59 the European Union (EU) is paying for the same vaccine. It is also far higher than the EU is paying for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine at $2.16 a shot or the Modena vaccine at $18.

For Netanyahu, price is no object if it secures a successful vaccine rollout, not due to genuine concerns for the health of the population. His motivation is an ability to pose as the man who banished the virus in the campaign for the March 23 general election. His political position has become increasingly precarious with the pending exit of his patron US President Donald Trump from the White House, a new Democratic Party administration under Joe Biden, and his scheduled appearance in court—now delayed due to the pandemic—to defend himself against charges of bribery, corruption and breach of trust in return for favourable news coverage.

The pandemic is surging throughout the Palestinian territories, with the West Bank reporting 119,000 infections and 1,257 deaths, and Gaza 44,000 infections, with 32 percent of daily tests positive, and 409 deaths, prompting a new round of restrictions and curfews.

Without any functioning air or seaports or mass-storage facilities for vaccines requiring refrigeration, and with all borders except for the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt controlled by Israel, the Palestinians are totally dependent upon Israel for imports, including food, medical supplies and other basic commodities. Healthcare systems have withered under the pressure of a brutal occupation, constant military assaults and the deliberate destruction of largely agricultural economies.

Palestinian demonstrators run from tear gas fired by Israeli troops during a protest against Israeli settlements, in the West Bank village of Deir Jarir, north of Ramallah, Friday, Jan. 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

The situation in Gaza is worse. The densely populated enclave has suffered an 11-year land, sea and air blockade, and only has electricity a few hours a day affecting water and sewerage facilities and making the use of vaccines requiring refrigeration impossible.

The combined effect has rendered 2.5 million Palestinians, about 47 percent of the occupied territories, dependent on aid, according to the UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), leaving them particularly vulnerable to the pandemic.

The PA has been unable to get Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, on which it had depended and which Israel is not expected to approve in the near future. Moscow has reportedly refused to export the vaccine, saying it has insufficient supplies for its own population.

According PA Health Ministry official Dr Ali Abed Rabbo, two million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are expected in February, although it is unclear where the money to pay for this will come from. The PA is waiting for a shipment of 60,000 doses from the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Covax initiative, which is unlikely to arrive before the end of February, as vaccines offered by Covax have yet to gain “emergency use” approval by the WHO, the prerequisite for distribution. Even this and a shipment of up to two million doses later in the year will be insufficient for the five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

These conditions are an indictment of the imperialist powers and the Arab bourgeoisie that have backed Israel’s suppression of the Palestinians, paving the way for a catastrophe of vast dimensions, and of a capitalist order that is incapable of organising a rational, equitable and comprehensive vaccine programme that could end the pandemic.

UK government figures hide £800 billion hoarded by super-rich

Margot Miller

The wealthiest in society are much richer than Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government would have everyone believe.

New research highlighted by the Resolution Foundation estimates that official government figures massively underestimate the growing wealth of the richest in the UK. A huge £800 billion, or five percent of aggregate wealth in the UK held by the wealthiest families, was missed by the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures.

The findings reveal that the level of inequality between rich and poor, which rose sharply after the 2008 banking crisis, is much wider than previously thought. The wealthiest one percent owns 23 percent or almost one quarter of the country’s aggregate wealth, rather than 18 percent (less than one fifth) reported by the ONS. During the last year of the pandemic, when so many were plunged into a health and economic catastrophe—with at least 95,000 lives lost already—the richest continued to pile up their wealth hoard.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (centre) with Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (left) and (right) Dame Carolyn Julie Fairbairn, Director General of the CBI, London, September 24, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Resolution Foundation economist Jack Leslie said, “The UK has undergone a wealth boom in recent decades, which has continued even while earnings and incomes have stagnated. But official data has struggled to capture these gains, and misses £800bn of assets held by the very wealthiest households in Britain.”

Danny Dorling, an expert on inequality, and Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford, commented, “The more closely researchers look into the wealth of the best-off 1%, the greater the slice of the cake we find they have taken.”

The Resolution Foundation is a London-based thinktank that declares as its’ aim the improvement of the living standards of those on low to middle incomes. The research it analysed was conducted by the UK Wealth Tax Commission, which compiles data to “assess the practical and conceptual arguments for net wealth taxes.” The Wealth Commission was formed in the Spring of 2020 by a team of academics from the London School of Economics and Warwick University, with close links to the Resolution Foundation.

There is a huge discrepancy between official government figures and statistics produced by the Sunday Times Rich List, which provides an estimate of the value of the wealth of the richest 1,000 families in the UK. Last year it listed 147 billionaires. The newspaper only records known assets of its listed 1,000, and last year their wealth was recorded at £742.6 billion. The problem with the ONS figure, explains Resolution Foundation, is that “capturing the very wealthiest families in a survey… is hugely challenging: families are under no legal obligation to respond and there is little incentive for them to do so.” The ONS therefore fails to include the wealth of the rich resulting from the burgeoning value of assets in property, shares and land.

The Resolution Foundation rectifies this discrepancy. Its data analysis reveals the changing composition of the increasing wealth of the rich. It notes that “aggregate wealth in the UK has risen fast over the past few decades—from around three times national income in the 1970s to over seven times national income [total economic output] today.” The rising wealth has occurred as a “result of passive accumulation [not associated economic activity].”

An increasing percentage of wealth gains, it continues, is due to the rise in asset prices, fuelled by historically low interest rates and government quantitative easing policies: “[T]the vast majority of gains in financial wealth since 2006-08 have resulted from the average change in asset prices over this period—a major driver of this trend has been the secular fall in interest rates.” This trend it says is unlikely to reverse.

The share of wealth gains accrued from increased asset prices was 93 percent in 2008-10, 93 percent in 2011-12, 82 percent in 2013-14, 76 percent in 2015-16 and 79 percent 2016-18.

To enable a more accurate measure of the total wealth of the richest few, as well as the level of wealth inequality in society, the Resolution Foundation employs “a technique which has emerged in recent years to combine survey evidence with other data sources which better capture the wealthiest families” —merging the ONS figures with those of the Sunday Times Rich List.

The Resolution Foundation can offer no answer to this increasing inequality. Like the Wealth Tax Commission, it holds out the prospect that it is possible with a few reforms to mitigate obscene wealth at one pole of society and immiseration at the other. It is “calling on the Chancellor [Rishi Sunak] to embark on the biggest reforms to wealth taxation in a generation—including via the restriction of capital gains and inheritance tax reliefs (together raising several billion), and adding a council tax supplement of 1% on properties worth over £2m (raising over £1bn).”

Its previous appeals for tax reforms in favour of the poorer sections of society have always fallen on deaf ears, whichever political party was in office.

The Wealth Tax Commission calls on the Conservative government, a government of, by and for the rich, to implement a one-off wealth tax they claim could raise £260 billion over five years, to close the fiscal gap created by the pandemic. Who are they kidding?

The latest data proves that the only way to combat social inequality is not with pathetic tinkering but by overthrowing the capitalist order, the source of inequality.

The Resolution Foundation appeals to the very Conservative Chancellor who has overseen a massive handout to business during the £350 billion pandemic bailout, while hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs without financial relief. The Times reported in May that 63 of the UK’s richest business heads, including 20 billionaires, benefitted from the government’s furlough scheme, which paid 80 percent of their employees’ wages. Among these were include Gopi and Sri Hinduja, who topped the 2019 list with £22 billion in wealth. The Resolution Foundation admits that the social reforms won by the working class in the post-war period are being clawed back. It writes that since 1980 “the share of wealth held by the richest families has drifted up slowly but the scale of the change has been small in an historical context. This level of inequality means the average adult in the wealthiest 1 per cent of families has around £5 million in net wealth—more than 60 times the average adult.”

The last four decades have seen relentless redistribution of wealth from the working class to the rich, initiated by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher and her US counterpart, Ronald Reagan. This process was continued by all parties in government, including the Labour Party (1997-2010).

The wealth of the richest one percent globally is of stratospheric proportions. On January 7, Tesla boss Elon Musk overtook Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world. Musk has a net worth of $185 billion—up seven-fold from $27 billion in 2020.

At the other end of the scale, in Britain there were 14.3 million people living in poverty in 2019. This year it is predicted that almost 40 percent of children in the UK will be in poverty.

When Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979 corporation tax stood at 52 percent and when she left office in 1990 it was 34 percent. In the decades since it has been reduced to 19 percent. In 1949, the top rate income tax was 75 percent. Today those earning over £150,000 pay a tax rate of 45 percent.

Canada’s health care system overwhelmed by COVID-19 surge

Frédéric Charlebois

The health care system in Ontario and Quebec, Canada’s two most populous provinces, is on the verge of collapse following an unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases.

Ontario recorded 3,945 new infections on Sunday, a record. Over the past four days, the province has reported more than 14,700 new cases and 216 COVID-19 deaths, including 89 on Thursday, making it the deadliest day in the province since the start of the pandemic.

A nurse holds a phone while a patient affected with COVID-19 speaks with his family from the intensive care unit. (Image Credit: AP/Daniel Cole)

“This is the most serious situation we’ve ever been in, ever, since the start of this pandemic,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford told a press conference Friday. Unsurprisingly, Ford failed to add that his Conservative government’s policies have made a major contribution to this disaster.

According to the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA), the province’s hospitals are at 85 percent of capacity, while critical care beds are 78 percent occupied, and close to 100 percent in some areas. Even more worrisome, 100 percent of the province’s basic ventilator beds are now occupied.

On January 1, the Ontario government issued a directive to hospitals to increase their capacity to 115 percent. Meanwhile, there is a shortage of health care staff and the available staff is burned out.

The Windsor Hospital is transferring patients to other centers in southwestern Ontario and using a temporary morgue erected in the spring to deal with the excess number of deaths. At London Hospital, a refrigerated trailer was installed last week after the regional morgue reached full capacity.

The heavy burden of treating COVID-19 patients has resulted in a drastic reduction in other health services across the province. According to Anthony Dale, the president and CEO of the OHA, once the mark of 350 patients in ICUs (intensive care units) is reached, it will be very difficult for hospitals to provide other vital services.

Yesterday, the province reported that there were 388 COVID-19 patients in ICUs, 266 of whom were on ventilators. Dale warns that by early February, the number of COVID-19 patients requiring an ICU bed could be in the range of 500 to 800.

“Hospitals in Mississauga, Brampton, York Region, parts of Toronto, London and Windsor-Essex,” Dr. Dale explained, have already cancelled “heart and cancer treatments,” which “could have an impact on life quality and expectancy.”

The situation is no less dramatic in Quebec, which, during the first wave of the coronavirus last spring, had one of the highest per capita mortality rates in the world.

On Sunday, January 3, Quebec had a record 2,869 new cases of COVID-19. During the ensuing week the daily number of new cases averaged over 2,500, before hitting a new record high of 3,127 cases on Saturday, along with 41 deaths.

All COVID-19 indicators in the province have turned red. With 1,392 hospitalizations, including 206 in intensive care units, Quebec’s National Institute of Excellence in Health and Social Services has warned that the province’s health care system could collapse in the next three weeks.

More than two-thirds of the beds reserved for COVID-19 patients in the Greater Montreal area are now occupied. In the province overall, the rate is close to 60 percent. Emergency departments are overflowing everywhere, with an occupancy rate of 102 percent in the province and 115 percent in Montreal, according to the website indexsante.com. On Saturday, January 2, the emergency departments of more than half a dozen hospitals in the Greater Montreal area had emergency room occupancy rates of between 131 and 160 percent.

Many hospitals are also now battling COVID-19 outbreaks, compounding the crisis.

With emergency rooms overflowing and beds filling up at breakneck speed, it is becoming increasingly difficult for exhausted health care workers to provide services to the population.

“We’ve been operating at almost 200 percent capacity since the beginning of the holiday season, with staff shortages and staff stretched to the limit,” said Dr. Antoine Delage, a pulmonologist at Charles-Le Moyne Hospital in Longueuil, a southern suburb of Montreal. “We have lost control of the epidemic.”

Quebec is now having to consider resorting to “triage,” as was done in Italy last spring. That is, faced with an overflow of very ill patients, selecting those that are to be given access to a life-saving ventilator and those who will be left to die. On November 10, public health authorities quietly released an updated “National Prioritization Protocol for Access to Critical Care (Adult) in the Context of an Extreme Pandemic,” which states that triage would be implemented once the occupancy rate of critical care beds exceeds 200 percent.

Although this rate has not yet been reached, the threat is real and growing. Asked about the likelihood of triage, Dr. François Marquis, head of intensive care at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital in Montreal’s impoverished east end, replied, “Honestly, it’s definitely yes. All it takes is a major outbreak at one of Montreal’s major hospitals to derail things.”

Even with the advent of coronavirus vaccines, the situation remains perilous across the country. Into the fourth week of the vaccine’s rollout, less than 0.5 percent of Canadians have received a first dose of the two doses required for both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

In the face of this unprecedented medical emergency and social crisis, the ruling class is pushing ahead with its back-to-work and back-to-school campaign. This homicidal policy, aimed at keeping profits flowing at the expense of human lives, is being implemented by the provinces with the political blessing of Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal government.

The minimal restrictions announced by the provincial governments of Ford in Ontario and François Legault and his CAQ (Coalition Avenir Quebec) in neighbouring Quebec are utterly inadequate to halt the spread of the virus.

While most retail businesses, restaurants and recreational facilities are closed, the main vectors of community transmission—factories, construction sites and many other non-essential workplaces and schools—remain open. The reopening of schools has only been delayed by one week in Quebec. In Ontario, elementary school students will return to the classroom in northern regions today, while elementary school students in the south and secondary school students across the province are scheduled to return to the classroom in two weeks.

Legault’s “ électrochoc ” (shock therapy) in the form of a province-wide curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. for all but those working or seeking medical treatment is nothing more than a symbolic gesture. It is meant to divert attention from his government’s disastrous handling of the pandemic, and its determination to keep open many non-essential production facilities and the schools, so parents can be forced to pump out profits for big business.

The curfew will do little to nothing to halt the spread of the pandemic. It may actually increase the risk of contamination, since workers who are forced to go to work will have to buy essential goods during a reduced time period, increasing the number of people present in stores at the same time.

The current health and socioeconomic disaster is the result of the class policies implemented by the ruling elite in Canada and internationally to place the profit interests of the corporate and financial aristocracy before human lives.