France ends Covid-19 restrictions on businesses as Delta variant spreads

Alex Lantier

On June 30, President Emmanuel Macron ended social distancing measures that restricted business operations in France. Rules that limited the spread of coronavirus are being scrapped even as the more contagious Delta variant, first found in India, becomes dominant across Europe.

Workplace cafeterias, shops, museums, cinemas, theaters, restaurants and other closed public spaces will operate at pre-pandemic capacity. Restaurants will no longer limit the number of people at a table to six. The official protocol suggests that workplaces “set up, as much as possible, carry-out lunches that can be eaten at workstations” to limit crowding in canteens, but this is up to employers’ discretion and, therefore, largely meaningless.

Among the few venues still facing restrictions are music and sports events, which are limited to 2,500 people, though attendees at events with over 1,000 people will have to prove they are vaccinated or recently tested negative for Covid-19. The reopening of night clubs has been delayed to July 9, while the government negotiates with business owners who rejected its reopening plan as overly restrictive.

The policy of Macron, backed by the entire European Union (EU) and tacitly accepted by virtually the entire political establishment, is to allow the Delta variant to spread unchecked. Workers are supposed to accept the inevitability of infection and hope vaccines will protect them.

As for the unvaccinated, including children and many workers, they are to be left to their fate. Macron has declined to push for universal adult vaccination or organize a media campaign calling for vaccination. This means a policy of “herd immunity,” letting the virus spread unhindered, will provoke new mass infections and, potentially, the emergence of new, deadlier variants.

Moreover, it is widely reported that Macron plans to end free Covid-19 testing. Non-residents are to pay for Covid-19 tests starting on July 7, and French citizens and residents in September.

Amid mounting concern over the Delta variant and its impact on vaccine effectiveness, Macron kept restrictions on businesses until July 6 in the Landes, the southwestern area of France most affected by the Delta variant. This only underscores that he has no serious intention of stopping the Delta variant’s spread. There is no reason to believe the variant will disappear by July 6. Moreover, its presence is already confirmed in the Riviera, the Alps and the Paris area, where no measures are being taken.

Macron is again defying warnings from scientific authorities, who expect the Delta variant will trigger mass outbreaks of Covid-19 in Europe by September. Over the last month, its spread has seen the number of cases rise from 3,000 to 26,000 in Britain, double to 21,000 in Russia, and quadruple to 1,700 in Portugal. Portuguese authorities imposed a brief lockdown on the capital, Lisbon, trying to halt its spread. However, it is now present across Europe.

Super-spreader events are now taking place, particularly during the Euro football cup. UK officials reported that 1,290 infected Scottish fans traveled to Wembley Stadium in London on June 18, while Finland is seeing hundreds of infections among fans returning from the cup. Over 1,000 people nationwide in Spain have tested positive following a super-spreader event at end-of-year student holidays in Majorca.

French Health Minister has Olivier Véran confirmed that 20 percent of Covid-19 infections in France are now caused by the Delta variant. On Wednesday, the Robert Koch Institute reported that the Delta variant accounts “for at least half of all new infections” in Germany.

Yesterday, Pasteur Institute epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet told BFM-TV that infections will rise significantly “by September-October,” due to the variants: “The Delta variant, in two months, will most likely replace the viruses that are currently present on French territory, with the possible exception of the South African Beta variant. It will become predominant, in any case … on the order of 80 to 90 percent of infections.”

Jean-François Delfraissy, the president of France’s National Scientific Council, told France Inter that current, “extremely low” daily infection levels in France, between 1,500 and 3,000, are “from a certain standpoint, falsely reassuring.” He said: “We must remember what happened the summer of last year. We were at essentially comparable figures as the end of June 2020, and we saw the second wave arrive in September.”

Delfraissy said vaccines are effective against the Delta variant “for someone who has received two doses,” but not just one dose. “So the message is: get vaccinated, and have your two injections before school starts.” He said anyone over age 60 should probably get a third, booster dose.

It is critical to politically alert and mobilize the working class against Macron’s policy, which leads to disaster. Already, 1.1 million Europeans have died of Covid-19 due to the EU’s opposition to scientific social-distancing measures. Yet a new wave of infections is being prepared. As when Macron told France to “live with the virus”—or, more bluntly, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded “no more f--ing lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands!”—European governments plan to save the billions of the super-rich, even if millions die.

This week, the EU Commission approved France’s €39.4 billion part of the first slice of the €750 billion “Next Generation EU” pandemic bailout. While European billionaires saw their collective net worth rise by €1 trillion during the pandemic—thanks to a €1.25 trillion European Central Bank bailout—the EU bailout for its part funds private companies’ plans for a “digital and ecological transition.” To repay this bailout, Macron is discussing a pension cut and raising the retirement age two years to 64 with business and trade union federations.

At the same time, European governments’ policy is set to provoke millions of new Covid-19 infections. Even if the figures cited in the French media are correct, and two vaccines doses offer 90-95 percent protection against falling ill even with the Delta variant, this would not avert mass illness.

Firstly, even in the wealthiest countries, large unvaccinated populations remain vulnerable. Britain is seeing a resurgence of Covid-19, though 67 percent of its population has had one vaccine dose and 49 percent are fully vaccinated.

Vaccination rates are even lower on the European continent. In France, 30 percent of the population is fully vaccinated and 50 percent have had one dose. In June, moreover, daily vaccinations in France fell from 350,000 to less than 180,000. This means, Le Point notes, that “the government’s objective, 35 million people fully vaccinated and 45 million with at least one dose by August, is harder to reach than it appears.” Even this target, however, would only see 52 percent of Frenchmen fully vaccinated and 67 percent with one dose.

Secondly, even if the entire vaccinated population is protected with 95 percent effectiveness, many will still fall ill if repeatedly exposed to infected, non-vaccinated individuals. The US Centers for Disease Control have reported that 4,100 Americans have been hospitalized or died of Covid-19 though fully vaccinated. Such figures will rise if infections spike due to “herd immunity” policies.

Hong Kong police close largest opposition newspaper

Ben McGrath

Facing anti-democratic pressure from the government, Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper announced that it would cease publication as of June 24. The paper cited staff safety for the closure, following the arrest of the chief editor and other executives. The paper’s assets were also frozen, making continued operations largely impossible.

Around 500 police officers raided Apple Daily’s offices on June 17, while arresting Ryan Law, the chief editor, and four others. These included Cheung Kim-hung, the CEO of Next Digital, the parent company that owned the paper. The police also froze $HK18 million ($US2.3 million) in assets owned by companies with links to the paper. These were Apple Daily Limited, Apple Daily Printing Limited, and AD Internet Limited.

Apple Daily (Hong Kong) headquarters

Arrests are ongoing. Fung Wai-kong, an editor and columnist with the paper, was detained Sunday night at the Hong Kong airport, reportedly attempting to board a flight to the United Kingdom. He is the seventh person affiliated with the paper to be arrested. In addition, on June 30, Reuters reported that Next Digital would end operations the following day, after its assets were frozen.

Hong Kong police have accused Apple Daily of violating the draconian national security law, which went into effect in June 2020, by publishing more than 30 articles since 2019 calling for other countries, namely the United States and the UK, to impose sanctions on the city and on China, in relation to the pro-democracy protests that erupted in 2019. The government accused the paper of “collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security.”

In Washington, the Biden administration issued a statement on the paper’s closure filled with hypocritical moralizing. It stated, “Through arrests, threats, and forcing through a National Security Law that penalizes free speech, Beijing has insisted on wielding its power to suppress independent media and silence dissenting views.” It continued, “Journalists are truth-tellers who hold leaders accountable and keep information flowing freely—and that is needed now more than ever in Hong Kong, and in places around the world where democracy is under threat.”

This is coming from the same government that continues to press charges against journalist Julian Assange, who remains locked in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison for exposing US war crimes. The Democrats and Republicans have also waged attacks on free speech on platforms like Facebook and Google, seeking to silence left-wing and anti-war voices online.

The Hong Kong office of China’s Foreign Ministry released a statement criticizing Washington. “The national security law… enshrines principles of rule of law including safeguarding human rights, addresses the most pressing and prominent risks facing national security in Hong Kong,” it stated. “Press freedom should not be exploited as an excuse for criminal activities, still less a fig leaf for acts to destabilize Hong Kong and China at large.”

Apple Daily was the largest newspaper associated with the pan-democrat bloc in Hong Kong. The paper first began publishing in 1995 and was owned by its founder, billionaire Jimmy Lai. Lai is hailed by the pan-democrat bloc and the Western bourgeois media as a defender of democratic rights in Hong Kong. He is currently incarcerated on a string of charges, and faces 20 months in prison following his latest sentencing in May.

Rather than being a voice for democracy, Jimmy Lai enjoys close connections with the US government. His long-time assistant, Mark Simon, a former US Navy intelligence officer with close links to the CIA, helped Lai secure meetings with leading officials in the previous Trump administration, like Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence. Lai also met with Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, in October 2019.

The Washington Post, one of the chief mouthpieces for the Democratic Party, published an opinion piece by Simon on June 25, lambasting Beijing. While paying lip service to freedom of the press, Simon revealed the real interests of this section of the Hong Kong ruling elite that he and Lai represent. He wrote, “Jimmy Lai often told us, ‘No free press, no free market.’ Those in the international business community who believe the closure of Apple Daily will have no impact on them are about to learn this lesson the hard way.”

He continued: “Businesses (on the mainland) are assumed to do what China wants, whether that means turning over technology or personal data. This makes the scrutiny and exposure provided by a free press all the more important to keeping Hong Kong a free and open financial market.” In other words, the concern driving Lai and his ilk is not democratic rights for the Hong Kong population, but the impact Beijing’s actions will have on their profit margins.

In this sense, US attacks on Beijing over Apple Daily have nothing to do with press freedom or democratic rights in Hong Kong. They are part of a coordinated campaign that includes false claims of genocide in Xinjiang, promotion of the lie that COVID-19 was leaked from a lab in Wuhan, and the ratcheting up of pressure over Taiwan. It is aimed at poisoning public opinion towards China at home, in order to justify war.

At the same time, Beijing is not concerned primarily with the likes of Jimmy Lai and others within the pan-democrat bloc. The government’s attack on freedom of the press is ultimately aimed at the working class. Beijing fears that any expressions of discontent will resonate with workers throughout China, where they face poverty, low wages, and lack of access to safe and affordable housing. One-fifth of people in Hong Kong live below the official poverty line. Approximately 200,000 people in the city are forced to live in tiny, subdivided apartments, known as “coffin homes.”

Indicative of the housing crisis throughout China, in mid-June, police in Shanghai discovered that 39 workers were crammed into a three-bedroom apartment, with an original rental price of 13,000 yuan ($US2,000) per month. The workers, mostly employed by nearby restaurants, were paying 700 yuan ($US108) per bed.

The minimum wage in Shanghai, rising to 2,590 yuan ($US400) a month on July 1, does not come close to the cost of renting an average 90 square-meter apartment. In the first quarter of this year, the average rental price per square meter of an apartment in the city cost 90 yuan (US$14), a 14 percent increase over the previous quarter.

Record-breaking heatwave results in over 486 deaths in British Columbia

Alexandra Greene

The prolonged and deadly heatwave that is scorching Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest in the US has at the time of this writing resulted in more than 486 deaths in British Columbia (BC) alone. The “sudden and unexpected” deaths, reported over the five-day period between Friday and 1 p.m. on Wednesday, account for a staggering 195 percent increase in the usual number of deaths reported in such a time frame.

While the death toll is the direct product of unprecedented temperatures due to climate change, the devastating loss of life is also the result of the savage attacks on social infrastructure and public services implemented by governments of all political stripes at the federal and provincial level going back decades.

The village of Lytton, British Columbia—where on three successive days this week all-time Canadian record high temperatures were set—has now largely been destroyed by a forest wildfire. (Photo Credit: Facebook/2 Rivers Remix Society)

British Columbia Emergency Health Services (BCEHS) ambulances responded to 187 heat exhaustion and 52 heatstroke calls between June 25 and 28. A staggering 15,300 911 calls were taken in the province between June 26 and 27.

The emergency services were overwhelmed. There is a major backlog in calls and delayed response times, with some emergency services forced to leave behind the bodies of victims as police and ambulances continued to respond to other calls. Due to the horrifyingly high death count, even the response times of coroners is being severely delayed.

“We’ve never experienced anything like this before in Vancouver,” Vancouver Police Department Sergeant Steve Addison told reporters in a Tuesday press conference.

Addison said that a surge in calls occurred on Tuesday morning as “people are showing up in their parents’ house or relatives’ house and finding them deceased.”

The abnormally intense weather is the result of a “heat dome,” which is a large area of high pressure that extends well up into the atmosphere. The high-pressure system traps sinking air that becomes hotter as it lowers and approaches the ground. This is compounded by heat becoming trapped within the dome, resulting in a “bubble” that prevents rain and cold fronts from entering and cooling down the temperature.

East of BC, Alberta Health Services have also reported an increase in heat-related emergency calls, with about six calls per day in Edmonton and 10 in Calgary.

BC’s Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe stated in a press release that the number of deaths will increase as the data continues to be updated. “It is important we do not lose sight of the fact that each reported death is a person with a family and people who cared about them,” Lapointe said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Across BC, Alberta, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, over 103 heat records were shattered on Monday alone.

The village of Lytton, located at the north end of the Fraser Canyon, broke the all-time record for the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada for three straight days in a row. At 5 p.m. on Tuesday, the Lytton Climate Station reported an astounding temperature of 49.6 degrees Celsius (121 degrees Fahrenheit). This surpasses any temperature ever recorded in Las Vegas, Nevada, located in the Mojave Desert some 1,300 miles to the south in the United States.

At 6 p.m. on Wednesday evening, the village’s population was forced to evacuate without warning as a fast-moving wildfire was driven towards residences by winds of up to 71 kilometres per hour. People were forced to immediately flee the small town in all directions. Around 90 percent of the village’s buildings have been destroyed in the fire.

“It's dire. The whole town is on fire,” Lytton mayor Jan Polderman told CBC News. “It took, like, a whole 15 minutes from the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere.”

Lytton’s fire joins 9 other newly reported wildfires that have been sparked in recent days, bringing the total number of active provincial wildfires to 26. An abnormally dry spring and low humidity levels have primed the forests for such an occurrence, and the never-before-seen temperatures have set alight portions of the tinder-dry land.

In southern Alberta, the heat has set fire to the wheat fields in some places and is compounding a severe drought in the province. The result is a jeopardized harvest and major agricultural losses.

As well as wildfires, the heat is causing rapid glacier melting and massive snowmelt from the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Flood warnings are now in effect for the upper Fraser Valley area, and homes in the Pemberton Valley have already been evacuated due to the fast-rising river waters.

Across British Columbia’s mainland and gulf islands alike, cooling centres and spray parks offering shade, water, misting fans and cooling supplies have been established to keep community residents cool. Schools across the province were forced to close due to insufficient ventilation and cooling infrastructure. Many COVID-19 vaccination sites have also closed.

The World Socialist Web Site has reported on the heatwave’s devastating effects in the states of Washington and Oregon, where some 20 million people have been affected. As in BC, these regions are usually temperate and rainy, meaning that many residents do not have air conditioning in their homes.

The British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority reported that the rate of air-conditioned households is even lower in British Columbia than in Seattle and Portland, which have, respectively, the first and third-lowest percentage of air-conditioned households among major metro areas in the United States.

Despite marked increases over recent years, it is estimated that only 34 percent of households in BC had cooling appliances. The most recent data available for Vancouver indicates that just 19 percent of households are equipped with air conditioning. Hotels in the city are currently booked to capacity with people paying for rooms to escape the heat of their own homes.

Working class people and the poor are placed at especially high risk, as lower-income households are far less likely to have air conditioning. Workers are often forced to work in conditions that make it impossible to escape the heat, especially in labouring jobs that may require them to endure hours of blistering heat outdoors.

The contempt felt by the political establishment towards the most vulnerable sections of the population hit hard by the heat wave was summed up Tuesday by BC Premier John Horgan of the New Democratic Party (NDP). The social democrat Horgan callously stated during a press conference that “fatalities are a part of life.”

Horgan added that the public was “acutely aware” of the imminent period of extreme heat, and remarked that “it was apparent to anyone who walked outdoors that we were in an unprecedented heatwave and again, there’s a level of personal responsibility.”

A backlash followed, with many residents of the province taking to social media to express their shock and disgust that an elected official would make such brazenly insensitive remarks during the overlapping crises of both the pandemic and the deadly heatwave.

Horgan’s outrageous words are of a piece with his government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was to keep workplaces and schools open while blaming working people for spreading the virus. His total indifference to the significant loss of human life is reminiscent of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who infamously declared in face of a surging pandemic, “No more f***ing lockdowns, let the bodies pile high!”

The devastating developments in BC this week are only a foretaste of what is to come over the years ahead if serious action to combat climate change is not undertaken. Canada’s Changing Climate Report, published in 2019, warned that the effects of climate change were set to intensify over the coming years. “These effects include more extreme heat, less extreme cold, longer growing seasons, shorter snow and ice cover seasons, earlier spring peak streamflow, thinning glaciers, thawing permafrost, and rising sea level,” the report noted.

Despite innumerable climate pledges made by governments at the provincial and federal levels in Canada and their counterparts across the world, the capitalist system is wholly incapable of resolving the imminent threats faced by the planet and its population. Whether it is Horgan’s NDP in BC, Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal government, or the Democratic Biden administration in Washington, they all place the accumulation of corporate profits ahead of any genuine attempt to protect working people from the social and environmental ravages of climate change.

Young Americans are dying at rates not seen since 1953

Trévon Austin

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that approximately 19 percent more Americans died in 2020 than in 2019. Researchers also discovered that mortality rates for young adults aged 25 to 34 have skyrocketed in the last decade, reaching levels not seen since 1953.

The year-on-year increase in the mortality rate among young Americans is the largest since 1918, when deaths rose by 30 percent amid the Spanish Flu pandemic. Mortality rates for children and those 65 and older had been in steady decline for the last century until the COVID-19 pandemic, which halted this progress. The mortality rates for those aged 55-64 rose slightly before the coronavirus pandemic, but the 45 to 64 age group still saw a general decline in mortality rates until 2020.

A man walks past a mural in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020 (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Due to improvements in medical science, the mortality rates for infants have declined spectacularly in recent decades, with infant deaths moving from the group with the highest mortality rate toward the middle of the pack. However, infant mortality in the US has not fallen as quickly as rates in other developed countries. Children aged 5 to 14 have always regularly held the lowest mortality rate, but the decline has stalled in the last decade.

According to the report, those aged 25 through 34 have seen the least improvement of all age groups in recent decades, dying at about the same rate in 2020 as they did in 1953. From 2010 through 2019, death rates among this age group rose by 25.2 percent. This increase, already far worse than that of any other age group in that period, was followed up in 2020 by a staggering 24.5 percent one-year increase, which made for a 55.8 percent rise since 2010.

Based on data going back to 1990, the report documents a public health crisis sweeping the American workforce. The downward trend was prevalent before the pandemic arrived, but working-age Americans have been deeply affected by the pandemic, the report noted.

“We’re losing more and more Americans in the prime of their lives, in their most productive years, and in their parenting years,” wrote Kathleen Mullan Harris, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina and chair of the committee that wrote the report.

“Our committee was stunned by this mounting crisis, which will only get worse. The most troubling themes in our report—higher mortality than our peer countries; major racial and ethnic, socio-economic, and geographic disparities; lack of access to health insurance and care—have all been exacerbated by the pandemic” Harris said.

Researchers determined the rising death rate for adult workers was driven by a sharp increase in deaths from drug overdoses, alcohol, suicide, and cardiometabolic conditions. Drug overdoses have been the primary driving factor, with researchers attributing most of the increase in overdose deaths since 2013 to the ongoing opioid pandemic that claims the lives of thousands each year. However, suicide rates also rose from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s at a concerning rate.

These “deaths of despair” are inextricably linked to the malignant growth of social inequality in American society in the last few decades. Americans under 40 saw their share of US household wealth fall to a record low of 4.3 percent in 2009. Although the current rate increased to 5.9 percent, young adults’ share of wealth is still lower than any time before 2008.

Previous studies reported rising death rates among those with a high school degree or less, and those living in rural areas. The March report indicated the increase in premature death is more widespread, striking working-age adults in all racial and ethnic groups, and in both rural and metropolitan areas.

The report noted that death rates among black working-age adults have been disproportionately high for years because of inequalities in socioeconomic status, health care, housing, education and other factors. Although progress occurred at the turn of the century in reducing the mortality gap between black and white Americans, death rates in working-age black people are now increasing, effectively erasing that progress.

Drugs and alcohol are major contributors to the rise in working-age mortality. From 1990 to 2017, fatal drug overdoses in working-age Americans increased in every state, but increases were particularly sharp in Appalachia, New England, and the industrial Midwest. The report described the opioid epidemic as a “perfect storm” created by pharmaceutical companies flooding the market with highly addictive and deadly prescriptions, combined with a growing demand for substances to bring relief from physical, mental and psychological pain.

American capitalism has devastated the American working class. Even before the pandemic, young adults in the US experienced much higher mortality rates than their peers in most other wealthy countries.

The increase in deaths, which began in the 1990s, coincides with the ferocious social counterrevolution waged against the American working class over decades. Since the 1980s, workers have seen their real wages steadily decline, and rapid changes in the US economy have devastated families and communities, especially in areas like the Rust Belt and Appalachia where working-age death rates increased the most.

Now, the arrival of the pandemic has exacerbated the social crisis facing American workers. The homicidal pandemic policies of the ruling elite have had severe consequences for workers. Meanwhile, the upper echelons of society have seen their wealth skyrocket during the pandemic, gorging themselves from the deaths of workers like vultures.

World Health Organization warns of new pandemic wave as cases surge in Europe and US

Benjamin Mateus

The number of daily new cases of COVID-19 has surged over the past week in the United States, as the government eliminates all remaining restrictions on the spread of the disease even as the dangerous Delta variant becomes prevalent.

In the United States, where the Delta variant has been detected in all 50 states, daily cases have turned upwards, having risen 14.8 percent compared to the previous week.

In this June 11, 2021, file photo, healthcare workers administrate a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to students during a vaccination clinic hosted by Jewel Osco in Wheeling, Ill. The latest alarming coronavirus variant, the delta variant, is exploiting low global vaccination rates and a rush to ease pandemic restrictions. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

In Europe, COVID-19 cases have surged 29 percent higher than the previous week.

“There will be a new wave in the WHO European region unless we remain disciplined,” warned WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge.

The Delta variant of the coronavirus (B.1.617.2), which ravaged India in May, has now rapidly swept across more than 85 countries, frustrating many countries that had planned to lift restrictions and reopen their economies before the summer tourist season. Only in South America has the Gamma variant, also known as P.1, remained dominant and is ravaging the continent.

Presently, according to Worldometer, there have been over 183 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide. The death count is fast approaching 4 million. However, this is known to be a gross underestimation, with modeling studies suggesting the death toll could be a magnitude of three times higher.

Despite the weeks of declines beginning in the early part of April, the global incidence of cases is again rising. Yesterday, the seven-day average stood at 378,000 COVID-19 cases. The seven-day moving average for deaths continues to remain high at over 8,000 per day. Though deaths continue to decline, they lag the trends in COVID cases and are expected to follow in step in the next week or two.

In the United States, increases have been most prominent in Southern and Western states, where vaccination rates are below the national averages, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said this week: “I’m very concerned about the stark disparity between places with low and high vaccination rates. When you have such a low level of vaccination superimposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you are going to see among under-vaccinated regions—be those states, cities or counties—you’re going to see these individual types of blips. It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas.”

The highest case rates were in Nevada and Arkansas, with a 55 percent increase over the past seven days. Missouri and Wyoming saw almost a 20 percent rise over a week. In all, the United States reported more than 14,000 new cases and 249 deaths yesterday. There have been more than 34.5 million COVID-19 cases and over 620,000 deaths during the pandemic.

Indeed, the Independence Day weekend will add fuel to the fire. The holiday is expected to be the busiest travel period since the pandemic. Approximately 48 million people are planning to travel, primarily by car. AAA (American Automobile Association) forecasted that 3.5 million people would be flying, “bringing airlines back to 90 percent of pre-pandemic traffic.”

Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at the Scripps Research Institute, said of the Delta variant: “It is the most hyper-transmissible, contagious version of the virus we’ve seen to date, for sure—it’s a superspreader strain if there ever was one.” Also, recent studies indicate that the Delta variant may produce more severe disease. A recent study published in The Lancet on June 14, noted that hospitalization rates of patients with the Delta strain were about 85 percent higher than those that were infected with the Alpha variant.

Despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommendation that vaccinated individuals need not wear masks, health officials in Los Angeles strongly encouraged everyone, regardless of their vaccine status, to wear them indoors due to the threat posed by the highly transmissible strain of the coronavirus. During their last press briefing on COVID-19, the World Health Organization also recommended that all people wear masks indoors, including fully vaccinated people.

The United States’ vaccination campaign has stalled, remaining precariously at around 1 million vaccinations per day. Only 46.7 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, with 54.4 percent having received at least a single dose. The current projections place August 2 as the estimated date when at least 70 percent of all adults in the US will have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccines, far behind the White House’s estimations.

The situation in Russia is growing direr by the day as deaths have surpassed the winter highs. Yesterday, 672 had succumbed to the infection, with 124 deaths in Moscow and 110 in St. Petersburg. Still, thousands of supporters were permitted to view the games as the quarter-final matches between Spain and Switzerland were given the go-ahead as planned. Meanwhile, Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin confirmed that nearly 2,000 people are being hospitalized daily.

Sixty-five percent of the population have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccines in the UK. Still, there has been a 67 percent increase in cases of COVID-19 from a week before. The Delta variant now accounts for 97 percent of all COVID cases. Yesterday, they reported close to 28,000 new infections in contrast to just 3,165 on June 1. The epidemiological curves are rising exponentially.

Hans Kluge, Europe’s regional director for the WHO, has blamed these reversals in trends in relaxing restrictions and increased travel as the tourist season gets underway. Additionally, the Euro 2020 soccer tournament has drawn huge crowds of spectators from numerous countries mixing in crowded surroundings. Restaurants, pubs and bars are filled with patrons. Public transportation is brimming with fans and spectators. Reuters reported that this week almost 2,000 people from Scotland traveled to London for their game against England while infected with COVID-19.

“I am not here to pour cold water on any EURO 2020 fan of anyone’s holidays,” Kluge said. “But before we watch our players, and before we all pack and go for some well-deserved rest near home or far away, it is my imperative to give [some]messages. If you decide to travel and gather, assess the risks and do it safely, keeping all life-saving reflexes of masks and self-protection, especially indoors and in crowds.” He warned that Europe would be Delta dominant by August. He also noted that vaccination rates remain too slow.

Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer had more choice words for the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), calling them “absolutely irresponsible” for allowing 40,000 fans to watch the match between Germany and England at Wembley Stadium on Tuesday. “I have the suspicion that this is about commerce again,” he said. “And commerce must not outshine the protection of the population against infection.”

Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, who has been prominent in educating the public on the pandemic and the science behind the SARS-CoV-2 virus, tweeted: “Anyone who doubts the delta variant wave is coming only needs to look at Israel and the UK—two of the most heavily vaccinated countries in the world.”

From Neoliberalism’s Old Normal to the 21st Century New Normal

Colin Todhunter

Sold under the pretence of a quest for optimising well-being and ‘happiness’, capitalism thrives on the exploitation of peoples and the environment. What really matters is the strive to maintain viable profit margins. The prevailing economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption and needs a certain level of annual GDP growth for large firms to make sufficient profit.

But at some point, markets become saturated, demand rates fall and overproduction and overaccumulation of capital becomes a problem. In response, we have seen credit markets expand and personal debt increase to maintain consumer demand as workers’ wages have been squeezed, financial and real estate speculation rise (new investment markets), stock buy backs and massive bail outs and subsidies (public money to maintain the viability of private capital) and an expansion of militarism (a major driving force for many sectors of the economy).

We have also witnessed systems of production abroad being displaced for global corporations to then capture and expand markets in foreign countries.

The old normal

Much of what is outlined above is inherent to capitalism. But the 1980s was a crucial period that helped set the framework for where we find ourselves today.

Remember when the cult of the individual was centre stage? It formed part of the Reagan-Thatcher rhetoric of the ‘new normal’ of 1980s neoliberalism.

In the UK, the running down of welfare provision was justified by government-media rhetoric about ‘individual responsibility’, reducing the role of the state and the need to ‘stand on your own two feet’. The selling off of public assets to profiteering corporations was sold to the masses on the basis of market efficiency and ‘freedom of choice’.

The state provision of welfare, education, health services and the role of the public sector was relentlessly undermined by neoliberal dogma and the creed that the market (global corporations) constituted the best method for supplying human needs.

Thatcher’s stated mission was to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit by rolling back the ‘nanny state’. She wasted little time in crushing the power of the trade unions and privatising key state assets.

Despite her rhetoric, she did not actually reduce the role of the state. She used its machinery differently, on behalf of business. Neither did she unleash the ‘spirit of entrepreneurialism’. Economic growth rates under her were similar as in the 1970s, but a concentration of ownership occurred and levels of inequality rocketed.

Margaret Thatcher was well trained in perception management, manipulating certain strands of latent populist sentiment and prejudice. Her free market, anti-big-government platitudes were passed off to a section of the public that was all too eager to embrace them as a proxy for remedying all that was wrong with Britain. For many, what were once regarded as the extreme social and economic policies of the right became entrenched as the common sense of the age.

Thatcher’s policies destroyed a fifth of Britain’s industrial base in just two years alone. The service sector, finance and banking were heralded as the new drivers of the economy, as much of Britain’s manufacturing sector was out-sourced to cheap labour economies.

Under Thatcher, employees’ share of national income was slashed from 65% to 53%. Long gone are many of the relatively well-paid manufacturing jobs that helped build and sustain the economy. In their place, the country has witnessed the imposition of a low taxation regime and low-paid and insecure ‘service sector’ jobs (no-contract work, mac-jobs, call centre jobs – many of which soon went abroad) as well as a real estate bubble, credit card debt and student debt, which helped to keep the economy afloat.

However, ultimately, what Thatcher did was – despite her rhetoric of helping small-scale businesses and wrapping herself in the national flag – facilitate the globalisation process by opening the British economy to international capital flows and allowing free rein for global finance and transnational corporations.

Referring back to the beginning of this article, it is clear whose happiness and well-being counts most and whose does not matter at all as detailed by David Rothkopf in his 2008 book Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making. Members of the superclass belong to the megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world and come from the highest echelons of finance, industry, the military, government and other shadow elites. These are the people whose interests Margaret Thatcher was serving.

They set the agendas at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg, G-7, G-20, NATO, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.

And let us not forget the various key think tanks and policy making arenas like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institute and Chatham House as well as the World Economic Forum (WEF), where sections of the global elite or their representatives forge policies and strategies and pass them to their political handmaidens.

Driven by the vision of its influential executive chairman Klaus Schwab, the WEF is a major driving force for the dystopian ‘great reset’, a tectonic shift that intends to change how we live, work and interact with each other.

The new normal

The great reset envisages a transformation of capitalism, resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance as livelihoods and entire sectors are sacrificed to boost the monopoly and hegemony of pharmaceutical corporations, high-tech/big data giants, Amazon, Google, major global chains, the digital payments sector, biotech concerns, etc.

The great reset is being rolled out under the guise of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in which smaller enterprises are to be driven to bankruptcy or bought up by monopolies. Economies are being ‘restructured’ and many jobs and roles will be carried out by AI-driven technology.

The WEF says the public will ‘rent’ everything they require: stripping the right of ownership under the guise of a ‘green economy’ underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.

At the same time new (‘green product’) markets are being created and fresh opportunities for profit extraction are opening up abroad. For instance, World Bank Group President David Malpass has stated that poorer countries will be ‘helped’ to get back on their feet after the various lockdowns that have been implemented in response to the Covid-19 crisis. This ‘help’ will be on condition that neoliberal reforms and the undermining of public services are implemented and become further embedded.

Just a month into the COVID crisis, the IMF and World Bank were already facing a deluge of aid requests from developing countries. Scores of countries were asking for bailouts and loans. Ideal cover for rebooting the global economy via a debt crisis and the subsequent privatisation of national assets and the further ‘structural adjustment’ of economies.

Many people waste no time in referring to this as  some kind of ‘Marxist’ or ‘communist’ takeover of the planet because a tiny elite will be dictating policies. This has nothing to do with Marxism. An authoritarian capitalist elite – supported by their political technocrats – aims to secure even greater control of the global economy. It will no longer be a (loosely labelled) ‘capitalism’ based on ‘free’ markets and competition (not that those concepts ever really withstood proper scrutiny). Economies will be monopolised by global players, not least e-commerce platforms run by the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Facebook and Google and their multi-billionaire owners.

Essential (for capitalism) new markets will also be created through the ‘financialisation’ and ownership of all aspects of nature, which is to be colonised, commodified and traded under the fraudulent notion of protecting the environment.

The so-called ‘green economy’ will fit in with the notion of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’. A bunch of billionaires and their platforms will control every aspect of the value chain. Of course, they themselves will not reduce their own consumption or get rid of their personal jets, expensive vehicles, numerous exclusive homes or ditch their resource gobbling lifestyles. Reduced consumption is meant only for the masses.

They will not only control and own data about consumption but also control and own data on production, logistics, who needs what, when they need it, who should produce it, who should move it and when it should be moved. Independent enterprises will disappear or become incorporated into the platforms acting as subservient cogs. Elected representatives will be mere technocratic overseers of these platforms and the artificial intelligence tools that plan and determine all of the above.

The aim here is not to discuss COVID-19 as a public health issue and the lockdowns and restrictions we have seen since March 2020. But it is clear that the lockdowns, restrictions and ‘relief packages’ doled out have helped boost the bottom line of global chains and the e-commerce giants and have cemented their dominance. Many small and medium-size independent enterprises have been pushed towards bankruptcy. At the same time, fundamental rights have been eradicated under COVID19 government measures.

Politicians in countries throughout the world have been using the rhetoric of the WEF’s great reset, talking of the need to ‘build back better’ for the ‘new normal’. They are all on point. Hardly a coincidence. Essential to this ‘new normal’ is the compulsion to remove individual liberties and personal freedoms given that, in the ‘green new normal’, unfettered consumption will no longer be an option for the bulk of the population.

It has long been the case that a significant part of the working class has been deemed ‘surplus to requirements’ – three decades ago, such people were sacrificed on the altar of neo-liberalism. They lost their jobs due to automation and offshoring. They have had to rely on meagre state welfare and run-down public services.

But what we are now seeing is the possibility of hundreds of millions around the world being robbed of their livelihoods. Forget about the benign sounding ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and its promised techno-utopia. What we are witnessing right now seems to be a major restructuring of capitalist economies.

With AI and advanced automation of production, distribution and service provision (3D printing/manufacturing, drone technology, driverless vehicles, lab grown food, farmerless farms, robotics, etc), a mass labour force – and therefore mass education, mass welfare, mass healthcare provision and entire systems that were in place to reproduce labour for capitalist economic activity – will no longer be required. As economic activity is restructured, labour’s relationship to capital is being transformed.

In a reorganised system that no longer needs to sell the virtues of excessive individualism (consumerism), the levels of political and civil rights and freedoms we have been used to will not be tolerated.

Neoliberalism might have reached its logical conclusion (for now). Making trade unions toothless, beating down wages to create unimaginable levels of inequality and (via the dismantling of Bretton Woods) affording private capital so much freedom to secure profit and political clout under the guise of ‘globalisation’ would inevitably lead to one outcome.

A concentration of wealth, power, ownership and control at the top with large sections of the population on state-controlled universal basic income and everyone subjected to the discipline of an emerging biosecurity surveillance state designed to curtail liberties ranging from freedom of movement and assembly to political protest and free speech.

Perception management is, of course, vital for pushing through all of this. Rhetoric about ‘liberty’ and ‘individual responsibility’ worked a treat in the 1980s to help bring about a massive heist of wealth. This time, a public health scare and ‘collective responsibility’ for the well-being of others is being used to help move towards near-monopolistic control over economies by a handful of global players.  

And the perception of freedom is also being managed. Once vaccinated many will begin to feel free. Freer than under lockdown. But just how free remains to be seen.

Nationalism on the Decline

Lawrence Wittner

Although, beginning in about 2015, nationalist political parties made enormous advances in countries around the world, more recently they have been on the wane.

The nationalist surge was led by a new generation of rightwing populist demagogues who, feeding on public discontent with widespread immigration and economic stagnation, achieved startling political breakthroughs. Matteo Salvini of Italy, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, and Marine Le Pen of France catapulted their fringe political movements into major party status. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) startled mainstream parties by winning a referendum calling for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. Donald Trump, championing an “America First” policy, shocked political pundits by emerging victorious in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Two years later, in Brazil, the flamboyant Jair Bolsonaro, campaigning under the slogan “Brazil Above Everything,” was easily elected president of his country. In May 2019, Narendra Modi’s BJP, a Hindu nationalist party, won a landslide election victory in India.

As the acknowledged leader of the rightwing, nationalist uprising in these and other nations, Trump forged close contacts with his overseas counterparts and pulled the U.S. government out of international treaties, as well as out of global institutions. “Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their own country first,” he admonished the UN General Assembly in September 2019. “The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots.”

But, even as he spoke, the nationalist momentum was beginning to falter. In Europe, every nationalist political success during 2019 was matched by a defeat. Although, in Spain, the small, anti-immigrant Vox Party gained seats, in Austria, the nationalist Freedom Party experienced major setbacks, while Britain’s once-powerful UKIP and Greece’s rabid Golden Dawn movement virtually disappeared. Meanwhile, in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist party suffered stinging election defeats in the nation’s three largest cities.

Things went further downhill for the nationalists in 2020. A loss by Modi’s BJP in Delhi that February added to its string of regional election defeats. In Italy, Salvini’s Northern League suffered an election rout and the center-left Democratic Party replaced it in the coalition government. Meanwhile, in France, Le Pen’s National Rally party went down to a resounding defeat in the July 2020 local elections and, in November, Brazil’s Bolsonaro was humiliated when most of the candidates he campaigned for failed to win election. Perhaps the most significant nationalist defeat occurred that November in the United States, where Trump lost his presidential re-election campaign by 7 million votes and his radicalized Republican Party failed to recapture the House of Representatives, which it had lost in 2018.

This year, the nationalist defeats have turned into a rout. In January, Trump’s Republicans lost special Senate elections, ending their party’s control of the U.S. Senate. In March, Erdogan’s political control of Turkey crumbled still further, as polls found support for his nationalist party slipping dramatically. This May, Modi’s BJP lost another regional election.

Much the same occurred this June. In Germany, where the nationalist Alternative for Germany was projected to score an upset victory in a state election, it drew a disappointing 20.8 percent of the vote—not much more than half the percentage garnered by the Christian Democratic victors and considerably less than the total secured by the leftwing parties. In Brazil, clear signs emerged that the Bolsonaro regime, with record unpopularity, was tottering toward collapse. Finally, in France, where Marine Le Pen’s party was predicted to have a good chance of triumphing in six of the country’s 13 regional elections, it ended up defeated in every one of them.

As the nationalist tide has receded, governments have turned to reviving the international institutions and agreements battered during the previous years. These include the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accords, and key nuclear disarmament agreements. In another sign of their willingness to engage in global action, major governments have proposed a global minimum tax on corporations.

How can this change in the fortunes of nationalist parties be explained?

One factor behind the political turnabout is that the style, policies, and behavior of some of the leading nationalist politicians set off alarm bells in the minds of many people and political parties about authoritarianism, and even fascism. Some of these politicians, in fact, displayed fascist tendencies and, also, encouraged violent, right-wing action by their supporters. Consequently, uneasy voters and parties, anxious to preserve democracy and political freedom, were willing to make political compromises, such as uniting behind the most electable alternative to the nationalist candidate.

A deeper reason, though, is that, in a world faced with global problems such as a disease pandemic, climate catastrophe, a nuclear arms race, and economic inequality, a nationalist approach doesn’t make much sense. Recognizing this, most of the public gravitates toward global solutions. A Pew Research Center poll in the summer of 2020 found that 81 percent of the 14,276 people interviewed in 14 nations thought that “countries around the world should act as part of a global community that works together to solve problems.” Some 76 percent approved of the role of the United Nations in promoting human rights and 74 percent in promoting peace, while 63 percent said that the WHO had done a good job handling the COVID-19 crisis.

Of course, despite the recent setbacks experienced by nationalist parties, they are far from dead. They have succeeded in establishing themselves as part of the political landscape and today govern a variety of countries, including Brazil, Hungary, India, Poland, and Turkey. In the United States, the Trump-dominated Republican Party controls numerous state governments and stands a reasonable chance of recapturing control of the federal government.

Even so, the political tide has recently turned against nationalism and, consequently, possibilities have re-emerged for addressing global problems on a global basis.