Amid health care collapse, Brazil cannot bury its COVID-19 dead

Tomas Castanheira

The staggering growth of COVID-19 infections and deaths over the last month has turned Brazil into the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Some day next week, South America’s largest country is expected to reach the grim milestone of 300,000 deaths from the disease, 100,000 of which will have occurred in the first months of 2021.

COVID-19 patients lie on beds at a field hospital built inside a sports coliseum in Santo Andre, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, March 4, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Andre Penner]

The average number of daily infections in Brazil jumped from about 45,000 on February 18 to nearly 72,000 on March 18. On Friday, a record 90,570 new cases were registered. In the last four weeks, the number of Brazilians losing their lives every day to COVID-19 has doubled, and reached a record high on Tuesday with 2,841 new deaths.

While the Brazilian working masses wonder when this nightmare will end, recent developments in the pandemic indicate that the catastrophe in the country is far from having reached its peak.

This week, the public health research institution Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) warned that the “greatest health and hospital collapse in the history of Brazil” has already taken place. Updated data from Wednesday indicate that 26 of the 27 states in the country have reached 80 percent capacity of COVID ICU beds. In 19 capitals, it is over 90 percent.

Unable to receive adequate treatment, critically ill patients are dying waiting on lines that include thousands of people across the country. In Santa Catarina, a state at 97 percent occupancy of ICU beds and with more than 450 people on the waiting list, 130 patients have already died without receiving intensive care. The state’s hospitals have adopted a “Protocol for allocation of scarce resources during the COVID-19 pandemic” with criteria to choose who will be given treatment and a chance to survive, and who will be left to die.

The crowding of health care facilities raises the imminent danger of widespread shortages of basic medical supplies. Stocks of drugs needed for intubation, including anesthetics and muscle relaxants, are already in short supply in hospitals across the country. A report in the daily Folha de São Paulo pointed out that 22 ICU medications are already at their limit.

The Brazilian Ministry of Health recognizes that there is an “expectation of a dangerous shortage [of oxygen] in small hospitals within a few days,” as stated by General Ridauto Lúcio Fernandes, adviser to its Logistics Department in a public hearing in the Senate on Thursday. He added, “This is happening all over Brazil.”

Evolution of ICU bed occupancy in Brazil from December 7, in the beginning of the second wave, to Monday, March 15 (FIOCRUZ)

Brazil is moving at a rapid pace toward the next stage of the COVID-19 catastrophe, which includes the widespread collapse of the mortuary system. Brazilian physician and neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis—who warned months ago that if a national lockdown were not undertaken immediately, “We will not be able to bury our dead”—pointed this week to indications that this sinister prognosis is already coming true.

On Wednesday, residents of Vitória de Santo Antão, a town in the interior state of Pernambuco, reported, with photographic evidence, that piles of decomposing bodies that have been dumped in the open air in the local cemetery. Nicolelis commented about it on Twitter, “Funeral collapse usually starts like this. In small towns.” In an interview with UOL, the scientist described such a situation as a “risk of greater magnitudes, because we start talking about secondary bacterial infections, contamination of soil, water table, food.”

One of the main factors cited by researchers for the rise of cases in Brazil is the dispersion of the most transmissive variant of the coronavirus originating in Manaus. Studies indicate that the P.1 variant can cause reinfection and be resistant to vaccines, threatening the national vaccination campaign, which has reached only 5 percent of the population with the first dose.

The generation of the Manaus variant, known as P.1, which is now spreading across the planet endangering the world’s population, was the direct product of a ruling class experiment with the policy of “herd immunity.”

After a terrible first wave of the pandemic, which provoked a health care and mortuary collapse in Manaus, the right-wing governor, Wilson Lima of the Christian Social Party (PSC), made a bet with the lives of the state’s population by promoting the unrestricted reopening of economic activity, including schools. This experiment has been repeated throughout the entire country, which has been correctly defined as an open-air laboratory for the creation of more virulent variants of the coronavirus.

Even in the face of this catastrophic situation, Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro continues to pursue a “herd immunity” policy and the normalization of mass death. In a statement to the far-right press, he implied that reports of maximum capacity of COVID ICU beds being reached throughout country were false. He questioned: “How many are from COVID and how many are from other illnesses?”

However, the alternative to Bolsonaro’s openly sociopathic policy presented by his so-called opponents within the Brazilian political establishment is, at best, a policy of criminal negligence.

A year ago, when not even 50 people had died from COVID-19 in Brazil, the governor of São Paulo, João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, made a cynical criticism of Bolsonaro’s indifference: “These are not fake deaths, Mr. President, and this is not a ‘small flu’ [as Bolsonaro described COVID-19].”

Since then, more than 66,000 deaths have occurred in the state of São Paulo, 659 of them on Thursday alone. Doria’s so-called São Paulo Plan to combat the pandemic, based on an arbitrary system of color-coded restrictions, without any scientific basis, has proven a fiasco. Doria was the protagonist of a campaign for the unsafe reopening of the country’s largest school system, which has killed dozens of educators and caused hundreds of outbreaks in schools since February.

One year ago, as Doria postured as a champion of science, the governors of the northeastern states ruled by the Workers Party (PT) and its allies in the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) and the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), created the scientific committee of the Northeast Consortium, inviting scientist Miguel Nicolelis to chair it.

Not only has Nicolelis resigned his presidency of the committee, revealing the chasm between the politics of these governments and science, but this week he openly criticized the attitude of the Governors’ Forum, presided over by Wellington Dias of the PT, in his interview with the UOL. He declared: “I am waiting. For two weeks now I have been hearing the governors say that they are going to organize themselves in that national committee [to implement a coordinated lockdown] that I have proposed since December. The scientific committee of the Northeast supported it. The ‘small talk’ continues.”

Even if these forces do not offer even remotely consistent policies to address the calamitous pandemic, Bolsonaro has made it clear that no measures to stop the circulation of the virus will be tolerated. On Thursday, the president filed a lawsuit before the Supreme Court (STF) to overturn decrees by governors imposing “curfews” in the states of Bahia, the Federal District, and Rio Grande do Sul, declaring the measures unconstitutional.

Defending his court action, Bolsonaro underscored his fascistic dictatorial threats, which go hand-in-hand with his genocidal policy in the face of the pandemic. If the court does not rule in his favor, he declared that the government will take the matter into its own hands. “Is the population prepared for a harsh social action by the federal government regarding this? What is harsh? It is to give freedom to the people. It is to give the people the right to work. No, this does not mean dictatorship.” Yes, indeed it means exactly that.

Opposing UK Police Bill must be based on class, not gender or race

Thomas Scripps

Boris Johnson’s Conservative UK government is rushing the Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill through Parliament. The legislation prepares a massive crackdown on the right to protest.

Under the new anti-democratic laws, which update the Public Order Act of 1986, the police are empowered to place the same restrictions on static “public assemblies” as they currently can on moving “public processions”. These include restrictions on the location and start and finish times of protests, and the noise being made by protestors.

Home Secretary Priti Patel (left) and Prime Minster Boris Johnson [Credit: Hannah McKay Pool via AP]

The laws governing the restriction of noise are expanded to include “where police reasonably believe the noise generated by persons taking part may have a significant detrimental impact on persons in the vicinity or cause a serious disruption to the running of an organisation,” according to the bill’s explanatory notes.

In case these definitions are not broad enough for the police’s purposes, the home secretary is empowered to decide what constitutes “serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried on in the vicinity of a public procession” or “serious disruption to the life of the community” and restrict protests accordingly.

An entire section of the Bill is dedicated to “allow[ing] the police to impose conditions on one-person protests”. In Kafkaesque fashion, the bill states that, in the case of a one-person demonstration, a senior police officer may lay down “conditions as to the route of the protest”.

Where protestors are found guilty of violating these laws, they face a fine of up to £2,500. Anyone who organises a protest deemed illegal or who “incites” others to participate in it can receive a fine of £2,500, or a year in prison.

The Bill makes obtaining convictions significantly easier. The police no longer need to prove that a protestor “knowingly failed to comply with a condition”. A person is guilty if, “at the time the person fails to comply with the condition the person knows or ought to know that the condition has been imposed [emphasis added].”

Even more serious punishments are set out for those found guilty of “Intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance”, which can include an act which “obstructs the public or a section of the public in the exercise or enjoyment of a right that may be exercised or enjoyed by the public at large”. The punishment for such a broadly defined act is up to 10 years in prison.

Damaging memorials, including everything from statues to trees, also carries a potential 10-year sentence.

The Bill adds to the “Spy Cops” legislation, the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act, enacted on March 1. The Act authorises “conduct by officials and agents of the security and intelligence services, law enforcement, and certain other public authorities, which would otherwise constitute criminality,” including serious crimes. Signaling the judiciary’s willingness to enforce these anti-democratic laws, the Court of Appeal ruled on March 9 that MI5 is legally allowed to authorise its agents to commit serious crimes.

The Covert Human Intelligence Sources Act was passed with only 34 Labour MPs voting against. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also intended to whip the party to abstain on the Police Bill, only switching to oppose it in the wake of the police attack on a vigil for Sarah Everard—murdered two weeks ago, with a Metropolitan police officer due to stand trial for her killing—sure in the knowledge that the legislation will pass anyway.

These draconian measures are aimed squarely at the working class and the political left. The sections of the Bill dealing with protests are based heavily on a review commissioned by Home Secretary Priti Patel last September. Patel asked the Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services to find ways of making permanent the severe restrictions on protests implemented under emergency coronavirus legislation.

The review, “Getting the balance right?”, concludes that the balance tips “too readily in favour of protestors” because police “do not accurately assess the level of disruption caused, or likely to be caused, by a protest.” A long section is titled “Businesses and the private sector”. It states that the police “do not consistently assess the impact protests have on businesses” and suggests they “consider both the direct and indirect impact on businesses when deciding how to balance protesters’ rights with the rights of others.” The word business is mentioned 16 times throughout the report and the word businesses 42 times.

The review calls for an improvement in “the quality of police intelligence on protests, particularly intelligence about those who seek to bring about political or social change,” in an allegedly “unlawful” way. “This may sometimes involve covert sensitive intelligence-gathering methods, which include surveillance and the use of CHISs [covert human intelligence sources]”—undercover officers and spies.

Patel’s review and the Police Bill are a response to mounting social tensions, escalated by the pandemic crisis. The legislation was first conceived in response to the Extinction Rebellion protests of 2019 but was pursued with increased urgency after the international George Floyd protests last summer—which the ruling class recognised as anticipating a far broader eruption of the class struggle.

Now that this process is beginning to unfold in a wave of strikes across the UK, the government is stepping up its agenda. Its police-state response is indicated by the break-up of a small protest of NHS workers in Manchester on March 7, and the £10,000 fine of its organiser. On Wednesday, a picket of SAICA Packaging workers in Edinburgh was dispersed by police.

The license being given to police was summed up by the violent attack on the Everard vigil. Government ministers were forced to show “concern” for the scenes, but a Telegraph editorial cut to the chase. Noting that police have been “empowered to clamp down on peaceful gatherings”, the editorial insisted that “the means to enforce them must be provided. That includes supporting the police when they are criticised for breaking up the meetings.”

Every government in the world is pursuing the same strategy, strengthening the police in preparation for confrontations with the working class during a crisis which has led to millions of deaths, job cuts and trillions in lost wages, while the billionaires have seen their fortunes rocket. In just the last week, police forces in Greece and South Africa have cracked down brutally on student protests, using batons and rubber bullets. An explosion of police violence was unleashed across the America last year in response to peaceful George Floyd protests.

Countering the turn to dictatorial forms of rule demands the rejection of the reactionary politics of identity which portrays the violence of the state as the product of endemic racism and/or misogyny. The claim was made by Black Lives Matter during the George Floyd protests that police violence is the result of “white privilege”. With the murder of Everard, feminist groups have identified “the patriarchy” as the cause.

That large sections of the police are racist and misogynist is hardly a revelation. But this is an aspect of their essential class function, which is to violently suppress opposition to the capitalist state and the major corporations, and to terrorise working class neighbourhoods. The police must recruit from among the most backward and prejudiced layers of the population to fulfil these roles.

By holding “toxic masculinity”, “institutionalised misogyny” or “male privilege” responsible, identity politics—propounded by an affluent middle-class layer deeply hostile to the working class and entirely comfortable with its suppression—obscures the irreformable class function of the police and divides workers against themselves, in this case along gender lines.

It also lays the ground for an increase in the powers of the state in the name of protecting women. On Wednesday, Green Party member Baroness Jones of Moulescoomb suggested to the House of Lords “an amendment to create a curfew for men on the streets after 6pm. I feel this would make women a lot safer, and discrimination of all kinds would be lessened.”

The Financial Times wrote that “Curbing violence against women” could be aided by the Police Bill which “provides an opportunity for reform, though it needs amendment.”

Johnson has grabbed the opportunity with both hands, promising “greater use of CCTV” and to expand Project Vigilant, a strategy pioneered by Thames Valley Police which places undercover police officers in pubs, clubs and bars.

The bankruptcy of this politics was summed up by the comments of Anna Birley, representing feminist group Reclaim These Streets, to ITV’s Good Morning Britain in the aftermath of the police attack on the Sarah Everard vigil in Clapham. Birley opposed calls for Metropolitan Police chief Dame Cressida Dick to resign, explaining, “We are a movement of women seeking to support and empower other women, and as one of the most senior women in British policing history, we do not want to add to the pile-on.”

Cressida Dick (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Dick first came to national prominence when she led the operation which resulted in the cold-blooded police murder of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005. She organised a wave of over 1,000 arrests of climate change protestors last April. By Birley’s logic, not only Dick but Patel, the architect of the Police Bill, is also off-limits.

Not a single step can be taken in opposition to the government’s authoritarian agenda along these lines. The struggle against police repression and violence is not a sectional issue to be fought out by separate identities, or even a coalition of separate identities, seeking reforms of “police culture”. It is a class conflict between the capitalist state, which is clear on its objectives, and the entire working class.

Demonstrations against draconian Police Bill and police brutality held in UK cities

Robert Stevens

Protests spread against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill this week as the anti-democratic legislation passed its second reading in parliament. The Bill will massively increase the powers of the home secretary and police to restrict and even ban protests using the flimsiest pretexts.

On Monday, several thousand attended an evening rally against the Bill in London’s Parliament Square. Protesters carried placards with statements including, “The police do not protect us”, “No Justice, No Peace”. Chanting “Kill the Bill” they marched through Westminster and Lambeth, including blockading Westminster Bridge twice. Demonstrators marched to the Metropolitan Police’s New Scotland Yard headquarters.

Demonstrators march in Manchester against the Police Bill (credit: WSWS media)

Police arrested four people and issued fixed penalty notices to two.

On Monday and Tuesday, hundreds gathered in other cities for anti-police protests, including Manchester, Cardiff and Swansea. The protests mainly consisted of young people.

The new police legislation is being rushed through Parliament based on a review of policing protests demanded by Home Secretary Priti Patel, following last year’s demonstrations by the environmental group, Extinction Rebellion, and those in opposition to police killings provoked by the murder of George Floyd.

The Bill allows the home secretary to create laws that define “serious disruption” to communities and organisations, which police can then rely on to impose draconian conditions.

The legislation will make it illegal to inflict “serious annoyance” on a person without reasonable excuse, with a judge being able to jail a person for up to 10 years. Clause 55 allows police to impose start and finish times and maximum noise levels on a wider range of protests in England and Wales. Under the legislation, a police officer will be given powers to take “such conditions as appear necessary” to that officer “to prevent disorder, damage, disruption, impact or intimidation.”

The Bill was introduced in Parliament on Monday and a second reading vote passed by 359-263 on Wednesday. The ruling Conservative Party has an 80-seat majority and the Bill is being passed with the backing of the Democratic Unionist Party whose eight MPs either abstained or did not vote. The main opposition Labour Party reluctantly voted against the Bill, despite supporting key parts of it such as the stiffening of sentences and after initially saying they would abstain. The Bill is now in Committee Stage for scrutiny and will be voted on in the House of Lords in the next weeks before becoming law.

This week’s protests followed those at the weekend in London and other cities to protest the death of 33-year-old Sarah Everard. Metropolitan Police officers violently attacked a peaceful vigil held in the capital’s Clapham Common, making four arrests and brutally assaulting women who attended. A Metropolitan Police officer, Wayne Couzens, has been charged with kidnapping and murdering Everard.

Numerous political forces are involved in the protests, including a feminist group Reclaim these Streets. Attempts are being made to channel protests against the killing of Everard—and police brutality in general—into support for increased police powers to supposedly safeguard women from men.

This week, the government outlined Project Vigilant which it is seeking to roll out under the guise of protecting women from sexual assault. It could see plainclothes police officers roaming around clubs and bars, along with increased police patrols as people leave these venues at closing time.

However, the protests around the country have been marked by their hostility to police brutality and opposition to them being given further powers. In Manchester, hundreds of young people marched down two of the city centre’s main thoroughfares, Market Street and Deansgate, chanting “Kill the Bill” and other slogans, before congregating in St Peter’s Square at around 5pm for a rally. Placards included, referring to the home secretary, “Priti’s Police State”, 'Hands off our Rights” and “Defend Your Rights, People Died for Them”.

St Peter’s Square is only yards from the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre where 18 people were killed and up to 700 injured by a cavalry of Yeomanry and a regular army regiment as they appealed for adult suffrage and the reform of parliamentary representation.

Speakers said they were opposed to the police being given any additional powers. One speaker noted that less than two weeks ago, in the same square where the rally was taking place, Greater Manchester Police—utilising draconian COVID-19 legislation—broke up a small protest by National Health Service workers and their supporters. The organiser, Karen Reissmann, a mental health worker and a member of the Unison trade union’s National Executive Committee, was handed a £10,000 fine by the police. The speaker noted to cheers from the audience that opposition to the fine was such “that we raised that money in under three hours.”

A young woman pointed out, “This law gives police more powers to crack down on protests that have an impact. The whole point of a protest is to have an impact! And we’ve seen the way the police respond without this law. The response to the protest at Clapham Common this weekend where women came together to mourn the death of Sarah Everard, at the hands of a police officer, the way they disproportionately stop and search black people, who are more than nine time more likely to be stopped… the countless victims of police brutality for whom there has been no justice… They want to prohibit protests… they want it to be harder to resist… But the right to protest is fundamental.”

The speaker noted that it was a Metropolitan Police operation, led by the Met’s Chief Commissioner Cressida Dick, that resulted in the shooting to death of the young Brazilian worker Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005.

The hostility to the two architects of the present clampdown, Patel and Dick, stands as a devastating rebuke to the attempt to channel opposition to the Bill into the dead end of identity politics and “female-centred reform.”

A young man told the rally, “Our basic rights to oppose the system are being taken away from us. When we are protesting for basic pay rises and basic necessities, we are at the stage of rebellion. When does everything they do start being a grounds of self-defence? When they are killing us and slowly taking our money away, if not directing killing us, by killing us economically.”

Another speaker said, “Our opposition, the Labour Party, are doing f*** all”, to which a member of the audience responded in reference to the Labour leader, “F*** Keir Starmer.” This sparked repeated chants of “F*** Keir Starmer, “F*** Priti Patel, F*** Boris Johnson” and “F*** the Tories.”

Another young speaker said, “It’s not just the London Met [police]. We cannot forget that this problem is systemic… It was Greater Manchester Police who fined a health worker £10,000. It was Greater Manchester Police who targeted Black Lives Matter protesters last summer. It was Greater Manchester Police who invaded Fallowfield [student halls of residence] in September and turned Owens Park [part of the same complex] into a police state. It was Greater Manchester Police that have consistently abused their powers.”

The rally ended with a minute’s silence “for all victims of police brutality.”

In Cardiff, up to 400 people protested Monday outside Cardiff Bay police station from 6pm and remained for around an hour. Among the placards were ones reading, “There is no end to protest until there is an end to repression,” and “The power of the people is stronger than the people in power”.

Many of those who attended have been protesting regularly since the January 9 death of 24-year-old Mohamud Hassan. Hassan died just hours after he was released from police custody. Wales Online reported, “Legal representatives for his family have said that he was severely injured when he was released. They have said witnesses described him as covered in blood with severe injuries to his mouth and severe bruising all over his body.”

Another anti-Police Bill protest took place Monday in Swansea outside the Magistrate’s Court and Police Station.

With rising levels of infection in Germany, resistance to school openings grows

Gregor Link

The coronavirus plan introduced by the German federal and state governments two weeks ago envisaged a step-by-step further opening up of the country’s economy and social life. Within the space of a fortnight this policy has led to an exponential rise in the number of infections and deaths, along with broad and fierce opposition from teachers, students, parents and school staff who fear a further round of mass deaths. Despite dozens of outbreaks at day-care centres and primary schools linked to the B.1.1.7 coronavirus mutant, the decision was taken to systematically open up shops and send secondary school students back to in-person classes.

The complete opening of primary schools and day-care centres has already led to a 42 percent increase in the number of active cases of illness among underage school and kindergarten children—3,190 cases last week. Since March 8, at least 16 children had to be hospitalised after contracting the coronavirus at school. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has been notified of 10 validated COVID-19 deaths “between 0 and 17 years of age,” eight of whom were children with previous illnesses.

Pupils in a 5th grade class in Frankfurt (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

The institute also notes that the number of cases of infection with the B.1.1.7 mutation demonstrates a “very steady growth rate” and “doubles approximately every 12 days.” According to recent British studies, the virus strain—which the RKI states now accounts for three-quarters of all cases in Germany—is significantly more contagious and deadly. For the period following Easter Monday, the institute predicts “case numbers above the level of Christmas” and unprecedented nationwide infection rates of around 300–350 infections per 100,000 inhabitants (incidence rate).

Virus specialist Christian Drosten of the Charité hospital in Berlin also affirmed on Tuesday that he anticipates a “drastic” situation “shortly after Easter …. similar to that prevailing at Christmas,” which could become particularly “risky” for the large numbers of unvaccinated persons aged 50 and over. With a 7-day average of over 25,000 new infections and up to 1,000 deaths per day, the pandemic reached a tragic peak at the end of December. Now, in the few days since the last “corona summit,” the infection (incidence) rate has already risen from 64 to 90. Yesterday the RKI reported 17,504 new infections and 227 deaths.

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday, intensive care physician Gernot Marx called for a “new lockdown” and said that “in the second half of April” there could already be “just as many patients in intensive care units as there were in the second wave. … There would then also be many more sick people in the 30 to 60 age group, because the infection figures will be higher in this age group, following the vaccination of older people. In addition, the British mutant [virus] is presumed to be more dangerous for younger people.”

In the face of these unmistakable indications of a “third wave” and clear warnings from medical and scientific experts, numerous schools at the beginning of the week resisted the attempts by state governments to reverse remote learning and compel hundreds of thousands of pupils to return to schools just two weeks before the Easter holidays.

The headmaster of the Georg Christoph Lichtenberg School in Ober-Ramstadt, Hesse, addressed parents in an open letter on Tuesday. With regard to the demand by the state’s conservative CDU-Green coalition government to send “every school child to school for at least one or two days before the Easter holidays,” he wrote:

“For us, however, it is out of the question to increase the risk of infection and possibly exacerbate the course of the pandemic….At our school, everything remains as it was up until the Easter holidays. It was above all you, dear parents, who encouraged us to take this alternative course of action.”

Both students and parents have overwhelmingly expressed “clear and unequivocal support for the continuation of online teaching,” the letter states, referring to surveys conducted by the school parents’ council. Individual pupils from the school years 7 and 8 would be supervised in the school buildings, but only then with the parents’ consent.

In North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), where secondary schools were supposed to commence in-person teaching on Monday, although teachers remain unvaccinated and mass testing facilities are completely lacking, schools and individual municipalities have also refused to comply with this policy. According to a report in the Rheinische Post, several school administrators in Wermelskirchen and Wipperfürth decided on their own initiative on Monday to continue remote learning.

The initiative of the schools in Hesse and NRW was enthusiastically welcomed on social media by parents and other teachers. “I think civil servants should not be the victims of irrational decisions made by the executive,” wrote teacher Karin B., who teaches in NRW, on Facebook. “Protecting lives and health against a public danger is more important than following an irrational policy. We only have one life, and if you want to participate after the pandemic, you need not only your life, but also your health.”

Teacher Sebastian S. reminded the World Socialist Web Site that outbreaks are also taking place in day-care centres—infections which are being covered up by the authorities: “We had a day-care centre closure last week. A kindergarten teacher tested positive. The children in the group would have been category 1 contacts, but there was no notification, no quarantine, no tests for the children. I therefore have no confidence that the figures issued by our health department are correct. They are probably much higher.” It would be no different in schools, the teacher said.

The Bergische College also defied an order from school minister Yvonne Gebauer (Free Democratic Party), who publicly announced last week “there can be no testing for the pupils in the coming week.” Referring to the rising numbers of infections and affected classes and colleagues, the college’s headmaster Thilo Mücher said: “We remain firm: only final-year classes can prepare for exams in groups for in-person classes.” For all others, the online alternative continues to apply in order to protect teachers and students and prevent further cases.

“Pressure on the state government is growing,” the conservative paper Die Welt noted in a concerned report on Tuesday. “Despite clear state guidelines some schools are apparently boycotting a further return to in-person teaching.”

In fact, the widespread resistance by teachers, parents and school administrators quickly threatened to get out of hand, compelling some cities and districts to publicly criticise the return to in-person teaching. Several municipalities—including the district of Düren with an incidence value of 240—had unsuccessfully applied to the state government not to open schools any further. Düren’s district administrator Wolfgang Spelthahn (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) admitted that the request had “met with great approval and broad acceptance among the population,” but that the ministry’s rejection now had “to be accepted.”

In Dortmund, NRW’s third-largest city, opposition among teachers and parents was so pronounced that Mayor Thomas Westphal (Social Democratic Party, SPD) addressed the press on Tuesday, saying: “We firmly believe that it makes absolutely no sense to open schools at the moment.” At the same time, Westphal described school and day-care children as “the greatest risk of infection,” a fact that has been repeatedly denied by all state governments since the beginning of the pandemic.

The next day, however, Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU), NRW’s Minister of Health, backed Education Minister Gebauer and declared at a press conference attended by state premier Armin Laschet (CDU) that school closures were out of the question if the seven-day incidence rate was below 100.

The city of Dortmund then announced that in future, “by order of the state,” in-person classes would take place. Other municipalities in North Rhine-Westphalia that had criticised the school openings—including Hagen, Bochum and Duisburg—accepted the position taken by the state government. In Bochum, infections have been detected at 29 schools.

The events in Germany’s most populous state demonstrate that the policy of herd immunity is to be systematically imposed on the population by the authorities. In the German capital Berlin, surveys of at least two district committees of educational staff earlier this week indicated that more than 80 percent of teachers and educators oppose in-person teaching until all those concerned can be offered a vaccination.

Precisely because this policy backed by intense media propaganda has been met with alarm and resistance among broad layers of workers, the reaction of the ruling class is assuming an increasingly authoritarian character.

This is evident not only in the breath-taking indifference towards human life but also in the immense criminal energy with which databases are being manipulated, outbreaks covered up and supposedly binding “limit values” raised in an arbitrary manner.

The district of Calw, for example, calculated a “revised incidence” by simply deducting “traceable” coronavirus outbreaks from the total number, thus halving the result.

Several state governments—including North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg—have flouted the decision set in a summit decision by the federal and state governments to use the already devastatingly high incidence rates of 50 and 100 to open up schools and shops, respectively. Then, on Tuesday, federal Health Minister Jens Spahn poured fuel onto the fire by promptly stopping vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine, without linking this step to the reintroduction of other effective protective measures.

The resistance on the part of workers and youth must find an independent political expression to prevent a level of deaths far exceeding the first two waves. Independent action committees must be established, composed of—and democratically controlled by—students, teachers, parents and school staff. The pandemic can only be defeated through a European-wide school and general strike, the closure of schools and day-care centres, and the reduction of all production and services to essential levels.

The European Medicines Agency calls the AstraZeneca vaccine a “safe and effective vaccine”

Benjamin Mateus

Yesterday, in a much anticipated but not surprising announcement, European Medicines Agency (EMA) Executive Director Emer Cooke told reporters, “This [the Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine] is a safe and effective vaccine.” Over the last two weeks, in succession, 13 European countries, including Germany, France, Spain and Italy, had suspended their COVID-19 vaccination campaign over fears raised in the press of reported blood clots in people after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The Medicines Health Regulatory Authority, which had been conducting its investigation reviewing the data on a small number of blood clot events in over 11 million people who were vaccinated in the UK, reported that it had reached the same conclusions regarding AstraZeneca’s vaccine.

A vial of AstraZeneca vaccine is pictured in a pharmacy in Boulogne Billancourt, outside Paris, Monday, March 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Yet, despite repeated caution against suspending vaccinations and reassurances by several national and global health agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), that the number of blood clot cases was far below the general background levels, countries like Italy and France chose to wait until the EMA verdict was out.

More than 20 million vaccinations have been administered over the intervening three months since the vaccine received emergency use authorization. Out of this, 37 blood clots developed in people within days of receiving their inoculation, of which four have died: two in Norway, one in Denmark and one in Italy. These deaths are currently being investigated.

However, the annual incidence of blood clots in the population is approximately one in 1,000. In other words, about 15,000 to 20,000 blood clots could be expected in the vaccinated population. Providing some scale to this medical condition, in the United States, unrelated to the vaccine issue, about 300,000 to 600,000 people each year develop such clotting complications, called deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism.

Dr. Stephan Moll, a hematologist at the University of North Carolina, told the New York Times, “Only if epidemiological data show that the rate is higher, would one start to wonder about a causative relationship.” In contrast, in Europe, approximately 3,500 people are dying each day from COVID-19.

Emer Cooke added, “Its benefits in protecting people from COVID-19 with the associated risks of death and hospitalization outweigh the possible risks.” She continued to explain that the expert committee on medicine safety found that “the vaccine is not associated with an increase in the overall risk of blood clots.” The committee chair, Dr. Sabine Straus, noted that as blood clotting complications are associated with COVID-19 infections, the vaccine “likely reduces the risks of thrombotic incidents overall.”

However, they stipulated one caveat regarding a “small number of rare and unusual cases, but very serious clotting disorder … [the EMA] still cannot rule out definitively a link” between these rare blood clots and the vaccine.

This is in reference to 18 cases of cerebral venous thrombosis, blood clots that develop in a cerebral vein in the brain responsible for draining blood from the brain. Such complications can lead to bleeding into the brain or severe swelling. It has also been described in patients with complications of their COVID-19 infections. Additionally, there were seven cases of having multiple blood clots.

The incidence of adult cerebral venous thrombosis is around 13 per million per year, twice that rate in women between 31 and 50. Most of the cases coincidental with the vaccine administration occurred in people under 55, the majority being women. The investigations into these will be ongoing.

The EMA has advised that public health awareness of these possible risks be raised and included in the product information. She concluded her brief, “If it were me, I would be vaccinated tomorrow. But I would want to know that if anything happened to me after vaccination, what I should do about it, and that’s what we’re saying here today.”

Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi, responding to the EMA announcement, said that he would resume the vaccination campaign effective Friday. French Prime Minister Jean Castex publicized that he would get the AstraZeneca vaccine as a show of confidence, while also proclaiming that new restrictions would be imposed in Paris and surrounding regions to stem the rising tide of COVID infections.

Germany has joined in calling for a resumption of vaccinations, according to Health Minister Jens Spahn. Sweden told the BBC it would take a few more days to decide. Of note, the WHO said it was releasing the results of its independent investigation Friday.

Yet, as countries resume their vaccination campaigns, it is very probable that public confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine may be irreparable. The initial slow vaccine rollout followed by the bitter infighting between the European Union and the UK over supply and distribution issues leading to inappropriately characterizing the vaccine as inducing blood clots have only compounded the lack of confidence. By all expert accounts and recent studies, Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines appear to perform similarly in preventing hospitalizations in the population. These effectiveness trials assessing the prevention of severe disease and death are most critical as are continued safety studies.

Yet the political brinksmanship of governments and the underlying contradictions exposed by the pandemic in the organization of nation-states under a capitalist economic base cannot muster the necessary cooperation to fight against the ravages of the contagion and protect the lives and livelihood of their populations.

In 11 months since first identifying the SARS-CoV-2 virus, several efficacious vaccines were rapidly developed to be able to protect people from the COVID-19 illness, a feat not many thought possible. Now that such a life-saving treatment is available, it has been the profit motive, national interests and pernicious rivalry that have served as an obstruction to the rapid delivery of these vaccines under an international principle of equity and necessity.

In this sense, science has become a severe casualty of politics. Vaccine hesitancy is deeply and concretely rooted in the degeneration of capitalist social relations that have disconnected science from its inherent philosophical principles.

In Denmark, signs of COVID fatigue have provoked anti-lockdown protests. Concerns over virus variants and the slow vaccine rollout are creating heightened social tensions. In France, where the AstraZeneca vaccine has overtaken Pfizer, a survey conducted by Elabe found French confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine at 20 percent. Germany must rely on the AstraZeneca vaccine in the midst of a third wave if it expects to speed its vaccination program. Many of Germany’s health care workers are openly rejecting the AstraZeneca vaccine.

There are currently 15 million unused vaccines, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), predominantly in France and Germany. Out of the 62.2 million vaccine doses that have been delivered, 46.8 million have been administered. Overall, nine percent of the EU have received their first dose. The EMA is presently in the process of reviewing Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

As these current events have unfolded, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has warned that she was ready to introduce emergency controls on COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution to “ensure that Europeans are vaccinated as soon as possible.” She has even warned of invoking Article 122 of the EU’s treaty, allowing it to use emergency measures to secure the necessary vaccine supplies.

According to the Financial Times, “[T]he EU’s 27 heads of state and government are due to hold talks on vaccines at a summit next week.” Such measures will further aggravate vaccine nationalism, prolonging the pandemic and misery around the globe and geopolitical rivalries.

France announces inadequate lockdown measures as coronavirus spreads

Will Morrow

Yesterday evening, in a nationally televised addressed, French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced a set of limited and inadequate lockdown measures in the face of a rapid spread of the virus that is developing out of control.

The new rules apply to 16 departments, half of which are in the Ile-de-France region that encompasses the capital of Paris, as well as the Hauts-de-France region to the north, where total case numbers and the saturation of hospital units are particularly high. Stores and small businesses selling non-essential goods are to be closed. The population is to remain indoors, but can go outdoors with no time restriction within a radius of 10 kilometres from their homes.

A nurse holds a phone while a COVID-19 patient speaks with his family from the intensive care unit at the Joseph Imbert Hospital Center in Arles, southern France, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Daniel Cole]

The nationwide curfew that has been in place since December is to continue, with the time shifting from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. to account for daylight savings.

Most significantly, there will be no restrictions on schools or non-essential workplaces, as during the first lockdown in March, 2020. Castex announced that primary schools and middle schools will continue to operate at normal capacity, while high schools will remain open with classes at half size, as previously in January.

Schools are being kept open so that parents can remain at work, and that profits can continue to pour into the banks and major French corporations. The Macron government, like its counterparts in Europe, is continuing a policy of sacrificing thousands of lives to protect the interests of the financial elite.

Castex was speaking as the number of cases and hospital admissions has reached, and in some regions surpassed, the high point of the wave in November last year. There were more than 35,000 cases of the virus reported on Thursday, and 30,000 the day before. The seven-day average of total cases is above 26,000, the highest point since November 17, 2020, but is rapidly rising. In a country the size of the United States, this would be approximately 125,000 cases per day. France recorded the third-highest total cases in the world yesterday, after the US and Brazil.

In the Ile-de-France region, the case rate is now 446 per 100,000 people in the population, up by 23 percent in one week.

More than 25,000 people are in hospital with coronavirus, and 4,246 of these are in intensive care units. Approximately 300 people are sent into ICU each day. In certain regions, hospitalization rates are approaching the already stretched maximum capacities of hospitals. In Ile-de-France, for example, the number of new daily hospitalizations was at 60 in the middle of February, reaching 86 by mid-March, and 105 on March 14.

The number of people in ICU in Ile-de-France is over 1,200, more than the peak of last November. Even with the cancellation of elective surgery and other medical appointments, the maximum capacity is reportedly no more than 1,500-1,600. Already last Thursday, Health Minister Olivier Véran had announced that patients from the Paris region would be transferred to hospitals elsewhere in France. In the Hauts-de-France region, patients are being transferred to hospitals in Belgium.

The particularly rapid spread of the virus is no doubt attributable in part to the dominance of the more contagious, and more deadly, variant of the virus first identified in Britain last September. Castex reported that the British variant now makes up more than 75 percent of all cases nationally. At the beginning of January, it was estimated at between 3 and 8 percent of total cases. While in January, the proportion of hospitalisations that required admittance to intensive care was approximately 20 percent, it has since increased to 27 percent.

The dominance of the new variant also appears to be responsible for a reduction in the average age of those who are being hospitalised. “Over the past 15 days, the average age of patients in intensive care has dropped from 64 to 57 years,” Yves Cohen, the head of the intensive care unit at the Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny, told Le Monde. “We have patients who are a lot younger than during the first wave.”

Cohen added that “we are directly hit by the government decisions and we juggle the available beds. As soon as one is freed, it is immediately taken. … We opened eight new beds 15 days ago, and we can push the walls back further, but we don’t have enough staff anymore.”

An average of 259 people are now dying in France every day from the virus. But this figure, which always lags behind the rise in cases, will rise even further in the coming weeks. The total dead since the beginning of the pandemic stands at 91,679.

In the course of his speech, Castex presented this catastrophic situation as something completely beyond the government’s control, akin to a natural disaster that had nothing to do with the policies pursued by the EU and Macron since the beginning of 2020. He did not attempt to explain the contradiction between the rapid growth of the virus and what he declared were correct policies that the government has implemented.

“The lockdown measures will not be the same as those put in place in March last year,” Castex said. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, a year ago exactly, time has passed, the crisis has continued, but we have learned.” From “January we have opted for a strategy that distinguishes us from other European countries,” he added. “Contrary to many of our neighbours, we did not impose a nationwide lockdown. … We even refused this option at the end of January. And it was the correct decision.”

In fact, the initial lockdown in March last year, which closed schools and non-essential workplaces, was used to carry out massive corporate bailouts by the EU and protect the wealth of the financial elite. Governments initiated a reopening campaign to insist that the population must return to work and children to school. In every successive lockdown, the government has rejected any measure that would threaten corporate profits.

Macron has depended completely on the close collaboration of the trade unions throughout the pandemic, which have opposed any strike action to demand lockdown measures and supported keeping schools open. In his speech last night, Castex said he would be working closely with the “social partners”—i.e., trade unions—to develop a series of social distancing conditions that could be used to justify keeping workers on the job.

Opioid-related deaths skyrocket in Canada as pandemic worsens already dire health care and social crisis

Omar Ali

With the coronavirus pandemic and the ruling elite’s “profits before lives” strategy exacerbating the already terrible social and health care crisis across Canada, the number of Canadians dying of opioid overdoses has risen dramatically over the past year. While some provincial data is still being compiled, 2020 will likely emerge as the deadliest year on record to date.

Estimates put total opioid-related deaths at approximately 16,000 since 2016 nationwide. The steady stream of tragedies was underlined this week by reports of two overdose deaths within two days in the small southern Ontario town of Owen Sound.

Fentanyl patch packages from several german generic drug manufacturers (from left to right: 1A Pharma, Winthrop, TAD Pharma, ratiopharm, Hexal).

Virtually every province recorded increases in 2020. In British Columbia (BC), the number of deaths almost doubled to 1,716 from 984 in 2019. Saskatchewan experienced a per capita rate comparable to BC, with its death rate doubling in 2020. In Ontario, 50–80 people are dying each week, according to the chief coroner’s office. The year 2021 is following on the same path, with the City of Toronto breaking its monthly record for deaths this January. The previous record had been set in December 2020, which in turn had eclipsed record figures in October and November. Alberta and Nova Scotia have also seen significant spikes in opioid deaths.

Several factors have been cited as contributing to the sky-rocketing death-rate. The pandemic has disrupted the drug supply due to the effects of border controls, leading to more-unpredictable products and homemade concoctions being more widely used. Increasingly more-powerful opioids are found to be responsible for overdose deaths including fentanyl. In 2017, 50 percent of samples tested by Health Canada contained fentanyl. Now, samples are being found to contain the synthetic opioid carfentanil, which is 100 times more powerful than fentanyl and 10,000 times more powerful than morphine.

Social distancing measures have left users isolated and without access to help in the event of an overdose. A study last year by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research found that in three-quarters of the cases they reviewed, victims were alone at the time they overdosed. The pandemic has also resulted in reductions of treatment beds and safe-injection sites. The latter, already few in number, have seen large increases in wait times as a result. The study also recorded significant increases in deaths among males, recent immigrants and visible minorities.

Another report by the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network noted that younger age cohorts are being hit harder than before the pandemic. The opioid epidemic, it adds, is increasing in both large cities and small towns. A southeastern Ontario nurse and harm reduction coordinator told CTV News, “I’ve been doing this for 11 years, and I’ve never seen numbers like this.”

The temporary lockdowns imposed by provincial governments, which together with the federal Liberal government have refused to provide adequate financial and social support for working families while doling out hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks and big business, have also coincided with the deteriorating mental health situation across the country. There have been significant drops in self-reported mental health since the pandemic began. Use of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis—which may serve as barometers for stress and other mental-health related issues—have shot up since March of last year. The combined use of opioids with other narcotics, especially alcohol, methamphetamines and cocaine can increase the risk of death.

The rise in deaths has come on the heels of an already devastating epidemic of opioid deaths. One report found that in 2018, each day saw 13 Canadians die from opioid overdoses. While there was some improvement in 2019, the situation drastically reversed in 2020. In the trough between the pandemic’s first and second waves, many regions were seeing more deaths from opioids than from COVID-19.

Calls are growing for the decriminalization of possession of opioids and other narcotics, particularly in small quantities. This measure has received support from the country’s chief medical officer and the head of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. Proponents argue that this would encourage users to seek treatment without fear of legal consequences.

Researchers point out that the United States and Canada are alone among industrialized nations in suffering a pronounced epidemic of opioid use. The commercialization of health care in both countries is one of the leading culprits. The two nations are the largest consumers of prescription opioids. Japan, by contrast, has an opioid usage rate 5 percent that of Canada’s. Disingenuous marketing has contributed to a dramatic rise in over-prescription of opioids for pain since the late 1990s. Once restrictions on the dispensation of these drugs were strengthened, users were forced to seek black market alternatives. This has in part contributed to a more than five-fold increase in opioid deaths compared to 30 years ago.

Like their counterparts in the United States, Canada’s governments have made much fanfare of their belated efforts to rein in the large pharmaceutical corporations that profited off the death of thousands. Purdue Pharma, controlled by the venal Sackler family who have thus far escaped criminal prosecution, is the subject of provincial lawsuits totaling tens of billions of dollars. But it remains to be seen what will be recovered, as the company has sought bankruptcy protection.

While much has been made of the impact of social distancing and other pandemic-related measures on the opioid epidemic, less media coverage has been devoted to the ongoing social crisis that has only been exacerbated by COVID-19.

Before the pandemic, one study of hospitalizations due to opioid poisoning found levels of education and income were negatively associated with risk. In the midst of a nationwide housing crisis that has witnessed dramatic increases in homelessness, the study found that the percentage of income spent on housing was positively predictive of hospitalization as well. The occupations most associated with hospitalization were working class jobs that are physically demanding, often resulting in injury, and poorly compensated, including manufacturing and manual labour jobs. The prison population and the indigenous population are also disproportionately affected by the epidemic.

Funding at all levels of the health care system has been stripped bare, and paramedics and firefighters who are on the frontline of the epidemic are heavily overstretched. The offender-in-chief in this regard is the Trudeau Liberal government, which has reduced health transfers to the provinces during its more than five years in power. The official 3 percent annual “increase” of these transfers does not even keep pace with inflation, never mind the increased costs placed on health care by both a growing and ageing population, the demands of the opioid epidemic, and now, above all, the COVID-19 catastrophe. No such restrictions have been placed on the lavish budget increases for the military and its weapons of war, which is set to increase by more than 70 percent by 2026 compared to 2017 levels.

Before the pandemic, a group of researchers wrote in the Lancet what it would take to tackle the problem, explicitly comparing it to an outbreak of an infectious disease. They explained that “the current opioid crisis in Canada would require systematic identification and protection of an estimated population of as many as 1 million users at risk from toxic opioid products, through provision of a safer opioid supply.”

A poll released late last month by the Angus Reid polling agency further demonstrates the deep scars left by the epidemic. Five percent of Canadians know someone who has died from opioid use, including 10 percent of British Columbians. As a result, a clear majority in the country support broad decriminalization of narcotics and the increase in availability and funding for safe-injection sites. Residents of nearly every province felt their governments were not doing enough to address the crisis. The lowest satisfaction rating went to British Columbia’s New Democrat Premier John Horgan. Horgan had to apologize last year for remarks he made comparing COVID-19 to the opioid crisis, in which he stated that the pandemic had claimed innocents while those who died of an opioid overdose had made a “choice” to take the substance.