Reopening of German economy provokes deadly fourth wave of pandemic

Johannes Stern

The daily number of coronavirus infections is rising rapidly in Germany. On Friday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 3,142 new infections in one day, about 1,500 more than a week earlier. Even over the weekend, when there are usually far fewer reports, there were more than 2,000 new infections each day, about 500 more than in the previous week, according to the RKI.  

The seven-day incidence rate has more than tripled in the last three weeks—from 4.9 on 6 July to 17.5 on 1 August. The 7-day mean has risen from 579 to over 3,000 in the same period. 

Central train station in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Daily deaths and hospital admissions are also on the rise. The RKI reported 30 deaths on Friday and 21 on Saturday. According to Johns Hopkins University data, the seven-day mean for deaths was 34 on July 30, having doubled in the previous ten days. The seven-day hospitalisation rate—that is, how many Covid 19 hospitalisations there are per 100,000 residents in a week—rose to 0.41, up from 0.29 in mid-July. 

The rapid development of the pandemic is exacerbated by the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. According to the RKI, it is now responsible for 91 percent of cases in Germany. 

As a result of the ruthless policies of the federal and state governments in reopening the economy, it will only be a matter of a few weeks before the daily infection figures reach new records. In the UK, Spain and France, tens of thousands are already infected with the virus every day. On Friday, 29,622 new infections were reported in the UK, 24,753 in Spain and 24,309 in France. There was a seven-day incidence rate of 299.9 in the UK, 367.4 in Spain and 217.3 in France.

Earlier this week, Chancellery chief Helge Braun (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) even warned of 100,000 new daily infections in Germany in September. Incidence rates of over 800 are “unfortunately not unrealistic”, he told Bild am Sonntag. Currently, there is “an increase in numbers of 60 percent per week. If the delta variant spreads at this rate and we didn’t counter it with an enormously high vaccination rate or a behaviour change, we would have an incidence rate of 850 in just nine weeks. That would correspond to 100,000 new infections every day!”

Such rates of infection would signify the complete overloading of the health system and another wave of mass deaths. In a model at the beginning of July, the RKI calculated how intensive care utilization could develop in autumn and winter. According to this model, intensive care units would already be heavily utilised, with 6,000 COVID-19 patients at an incidence rate of 400.

Already in previous pandemic waves the health system was overstretched and tens of thousands of people died of the virus in Germany alone. Speaking to broadcaster ZDF, former President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI) Uwe Janssens warned against a repeat of this scenario. “We saw last year what the consequences are if you wait too long and do nothing. This seems to be repeating itself.”

The assessments of serious virologists and the dramatic development of infection rates in Europe and internationally refute the lies of politicians and the media that the danger from the virus has been averted. 

An internal RKI paper leaked to the press last week clearly states: “The more cases occur, the more cases of the severe progression of the illness (hospitalisations/ICU) and deaths are registered—with some delay—the higher the burden on the health system. If the incidence rate is very high, the number of these adverse effects also increases, as does the number of severe cases requiring hospital or ICU treatment.”

The paper also notes that “more than 40 million people in our population [...] currently do NOT have full vaccination protection,” warning that “high vaccination rates alone are not sufficient to keep the fourth wave flat.” Therefore, “additional basic protection measures are necessary” to “lower the fourth wave.”

Despite warnings from its own biomedical lead research body, the federal and state governments are sticking to their aggressive reopening policies, ruling out necessary lockdown measures. 

“As long as our vaccines against the delta variant work so well, a classic lockdown is no longer necessary,” Braun claimed. Earlier, Economics Minister Peter Altmeier had told Bild am Sonntag: “We must and will prevent a new lockdown.”

This is the position of all the capitalist parties who, throughout the pandemic, have put the profits of big business and the interests of German imperialism above the lives of the population. In essence, they follow the line of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has long called for the lifting of all coronavirus protection measures and a return to “normality.”

At state level, the Left Party and the Greens are now aggressively pushing for the opening of schools. On 6 August, Berlin, which is governed by a coalition of the Social Democrats, Left Party and Green Party, will become the third federal state, after Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Hamburg, to return to full in-person teaching after the summer holidays. All other federal states are then to follow by the beginning of September, including Thuringia, led by the Left Party, and Green-governed Baden-Württemberg. 

The same plans exist for the universities. On Thursday, the Berlin Senate (state executive) announced the resumption of face-to-face teaching in the upcoming 2021-2022 winter semester. “In the winter semester, around 200,000 students are expected again at the state, confessional and private universities in Berlin,” declared a joint statement by the Senate Department for Science and Research and the state conference of rectors and presidents of Berlin’s universities. 

The return to schools and universities, which the trade unions also support, will massively accelerate the spread of the virus throughout the population. The health and lives of the approximately 14 million pupils and students in Germany are also at stake. The vast majority of young people are unprotected. Only just under 40 percent of all 18-59-year-olds in Germany are fully vaccinated. Among those under 18, the vaccination rate is as low as 1.5 percent.

Current experience leaves no doubt that Covid-19 is also a deadly threat to young people.  

The situation in Indonesia is particularly dramatic. According to the Indonesian Society of Paediatrics, there are currently more than 360,000 confirmed cases in children, which corresponds to one in eight infections. In recent weeks, over 700 children have died from COVID-19, including over 150 in the week of 12 July alone. What is particularly shocking is that half of them were less than five years old.

In Brazil, COVID-19 is the leading cause of death among children aged 10 to 19. In the first half of 2021 alone, at least 1,581 young people died from the virus. 

And even in developed countries, where the delta variant is spreading rapidly, the number of hospitalisations and deaths among children is rising. In the UK, more than 40 children are now hospitalised with COVID-19 every day. And the number of infected children and adolescents is also increasing in Germany. According to the RKI’s weekly report, there is currently “an increase in incidence rates especially in the age groups 10-34 years.”

The mass death and suffering, previously known only in times of war, must be stopped. More than 91,600 people have already died from Covid-19 in Germany alone. Across Europe, there have been over 1.1 million coronavirus deaths, and worldwide, more than 4.2 million have officially succumbed to the virus. Recent studies suggest that the actual death toll is much higher.

US officials reject further lockdowns despite 100,000 daily new infections

Bryan Dyne

The Biden administration’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, rejected “lockdowns” as a measure to contain the virus on Sunday, the same day reported cases in the US spiked above 100,000 for the first time since February, and as cases globally neared 200 million.

In other words, 1 in every 39 people on the planet have contracted the disease, with 1 in 10 having gotten COVID-19 in the United States. Moreover, the massive surge in cases has new record highs in hospitalizations in places such as Austin, Texas, where there are now only seven open ICU beds in a metropolitan region of 2.3 million. In Florida, a record 10,207 people are hospitalized with confirmed cases of the coronavirus.

A member of the medical staff measures the temperature of a traveller at a autobahn park place near Gries am Brenner, Austrian province of Tyrol, at border crossing with Italy on Tuesday, March 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson )

There is every possibility that Chicago will follow after its Democratic Party-run city government allowed the super spreader Lollapalooza music festival, with its 400,000 attendees, to go forward. In other words, across the US, local, state and federal governments are doing the exact opposite of what is needed to contain the deadly contagion, and promoting policies and events which all but guarantee the continued spread and evolution to more deadlier forms of the ongoing pandemic.

And while deaths, which stand at 320 a day, have not risen as sharply in the United States as cases have, the rise in hospitalizations raises the danger that patients again begin dying from an inability to receive adequate treatment, dangers which were made clear in the first weeks and months of the pandemic in 2020.

Worldwide, deaths caused by the pandemic stand at more than 4.2 million, a figure which currently climbs at more than 9,000 a day. These figures, moreover, are known underestimations. In May, the Economist noted that the actual number of lives lost to the deadly contagion, using excess death counts, is likely to be two to four times higher than official figures, suggesting a real global tally of between 8–16 million dead.

Such staggering death counts are all the more horrific under conditions where the pandemic is accelerating. In a press conference Friday, World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned, “On average, in five of WHO’s six regions, infections have increased by 80 percent or nearly doubled over the past four weeks. In Africa, deaths have increased by 80 percent over the same period. Much of this increase is being driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant, which has now been detected in at least 132 countries.”

In absolute numbers, the most recent low point of daily cases was on June 21, when there was an average of 360,000 cases a day. Since then, as the Delta variant has spread around the world, daily case counts have climbed to more than 581,000. And while daily deaths have not had as dramatic an increase, it is worth understanding the worldwide, deaths caused by the pandemic have not been below 7,600 a day since last November.

Not incidentally, it was last November that cases had reached a “mere” 50 million and officially counted deaths had reached 1.2 million, 10 months after the pandemic began. Now, only nine months later, cases and deaths have increased four-fold.

Unlike last November, however, when even limited lockdowns and other social distancing measures were considered by the world’s capitalist governments, such critical and life-saving policies are being discarded out of hand. Similar to the US, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson ended the country’s lockdown in July, and the government of Narendra Modi in India refused to implement a national lockdown even as the Delta variant emerged and surged, while at the same time attacking state and local officials for implementing just modest measures.

That no lockdowns are being planned is criminally irresponsible at best. Fauci himself noted that, “things are going to get worse.” Indeed they are. The spread of the Delta variant in the US, which has become the dominant variant of the virus in every region of the world except South America, where the Gamma variant remains most prolific, has caused case counts in the US to rise by more than six-fold in less than two months. Some 13,000 people have died from the virus over that same period. The country as a whole has suffered 35.7 million cases and just under 630,000 deaths.

The measures that have been put forward to contain the spread of the disease are inadequate at best. The current drive by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is to note in which counties the spread of the pandemic is “substantial” and to recommend masking indoors. At the same time, leaked internal documents make clear the agency is well aware of the dangers of the Delta variant and the need for more stringent measures to contain the virus, and has been blocked by the Biden administration.

At the same time, figures such as Fauci have turned toward blaming individuals for not getting vaccinated as the underlying cause for the continued spread of the disease, stating, “We have 100 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not getting vaccinated.”

Nowhere does Fauci mention the fact that hundreds of millions of people in the US and billions around the world wouldn’t have had to get vaccinated if governments around the world had responded in a rational and scientific manner to the coronavirus pandemic when it first emerged. While it is true that many are reluctant about getting the vaccine, the fault for the pandemic itself lies at the feet of capitalist governments in the US, Europe, Australia and elsewhere that placed corporate profits above human lives.

It is also worth noting that one of the chief purveyors of misinformation about the pandemic—that it is safe to have school and work amid the pandemic, that mask mandates can be dropped and that testing, contact tracing and lockdowns are unnecessary to contain the pandemic—has been the government which Fauci works for. These anti-scientific conceptions have been pushed for months by both Biden and his predecessor Trump and have played a significant role in the anti-scientific attitude of millions toward vaccines.

Nor does anyone in the US media or political establishment raise the necessity of vaccinating the planet to actually eradicate the pandemic; vaccines are treated as a solely national question. The evolution of the Delta variant, however, makes clear that stopping the pandemic in just one country is impossible when the coronavirus is allowed to spread essentially uncontrolled elsewhere. Variants inevitably emerge that are “fitter” and “faster,” in the words of WHO’s Dr. Mike Ryan, and that may totally escape immunity granted by vaccination.

The dangers of unevenly vaccinating the world are spelled out in the spread of cases both in the US, where cases are spiking most sharply among the unvaccinated, and around the world, most of which still does not have easy access to vaccines. In India, where excess death estimates place the number of fatalities at about four million, more than 40,000 people come down with COVID-19 each day, citing official figures, and the full vaccination rate is just 7.4 percent. In Brazil, where more than 550,000 have died, less than 1 in 5 is fully vaccinated.

Other countries are in equally or worse dire straights. In Iran, where the Delta variant has caused daily cases to more than triple and daily deaths to more than double in the past six weeks, the fully vaccinated rate is less the 3 percent. In Thailand, which had been relatively untouched by the pandemic until the Delta variant hit it in April, only about 5 percent of its population are vaccinated amid daily case counts that were less than 100 at the beginning of April and have skyrocketed to more than 16,000 now.

Even countries with higher vaccination rates such as Mexico and Turkey, 20 percent and 33 percent full vaccination rates, respectively, have had sharp increases in their case counts as a result of the Delta variant. Such countries are both examples of the virulence of this new variant, the dangers it and more evolved mutations pose. They and virtually every other country also highlight the need for a globally coordinated and scientifically planned response to end the pandemic.

New Zealand nurses reject third union-backed pay deal

John Braddock & Tom Peters

About 30,000 nurses and health care assistants voted last week to reject the latest pay offer from the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs), which was backed by the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO).

The rejection of the sellout deal by what the NZNO described as a “clear majority,” is a setback for both the union and the Labour-led government, which is attempting to impose a three-year pay freeze across the public sector. The NZNO confirmed that two strikes previously approved by members, on August 19 and September 9-10, will go ahead “unless an acceptable offer is made.”

Nurses held a nationwide strike on June 9 after rejecting two previous offers that would have increased wages by just 1.38 percent, less than half the 3.3 percent inflation rate. The NZNO provoked widespread anger when it cancelled a strike scheduled for July 29 before presenting the revised agreement for a vote.

New Zealand nurses on strike in 2018 (WSWS Media)

The latest offer did not address low wages or the increasingly desperate staffing crisis in public hospitals caused by decades of underfunding. The NZNO initially claimed it was pushing for a pay increase of 17 percent over two years but the proposed salary increase is just $1,800 and a back-payment of $1,200.

The union attempted to disguise the rotten deal by including money from an entirely separate “pay equity” deal, still under negotiation, which will purportedly bring nurses’ salaries to match similar male-dominated professions.

By conflating the “pay equity adjustment” with the salary offer, the NZNO claimed that base rates will go up by $5,800 (7.5 percent for a nurse at the top of the pay scale). A lump sum payment of $6,000, funded through the pay equity settlement, is an “advance” to be recouped when the deal is finalised.

Nurses have rejected the entire charade. But that did not prevent NZNO advocate David Wait falsely claiming, after the vote, that the DHBs had made “promising moves” on pay.

According to Wait, the nurses primarily rejected the deal because it was not clear how DHBs will be held “accountable” if they do not provide safe staffing. “Nurses don’t want more vague promises that the problem will be fixed in the future,” he declared.

In fact, the contract provisions governing hospital staffing allocations were written with the collaboration of the NZNO. Pledges of “transparency” and “accountability,” which do not commit the government to anything, were part of the sellout deal pushed through by the NZNO in 2018, despite widespread opposition from nurses.

The intransigence of nurses and healthcare assistants has rattled the Labour-Green Party government. Health Minister Andrew Little took the unusual step of holding a press conference to denounce the outcome. Attempting to browbeat the nurses, Little declared that the forthcoming strikes will be “hugely disruptive to public health services, and to the people who need them.”

Little made the revealing comment that “the proposal was one [the union] put to the government. The Nurses Organisation members have rejected their own union’s proposal.” In a Radio NZ interview, Wait tried to deny this, claiming that “we don’t recommend deals to our members, our members make the decisions all by themselves.”

However, the NZNO took the offer to its members for a vote, cancelled a planned strike without asking members, and claimed in a press statement on July 16 that “significant progress has been made in negotiations with the district health boards.”

The union told members at the start of negotiations that it was seeking a pay increase of 17 percent over two years. The reality is the union leadership worked with the government to come up with a proposal to effectively freeze wages and staffing levels, setting a benchmark for attacks across the public sector.

The NZNO is in fact following the same playbook it employed in the 2018 sell-out, when it presented multiple inadequate deals designed to wear workers down, isolate them and convince them that no better deal was possible.

Little was forced to admit under questioning that only half the 20 DHBs have met the requirements to manage safe staffing levels agreed to in 2018. But he still insisted that there are “already enforceable” measures in place with “accountability mechanisms.” In fact, hospitals are in crisis, frequently operating at up to 120 percent capacity, with emergency departments regularly overwhelmed.

There is immense anger among nurses towards the government, as shown during the June 9 strike when Little was booed off the stage outside parliament. He has now launched a social media campaign to portray nurses as greedy and unreasonable, prompting hundreds of angry comments.

Phil wrote on Little’s Facebook page: “Andrew, stop acting like Donald Trump. Firstly, the nurses are worth much more than this, and secondly, safe staffing levels is the major impasse… the government doesn’t hold the moral high ground in this discussion.”

Kaewyn commented that she previously supported the Minister, but “what you have said today and how you have twisted and manipulated the facts is just disgusting. You are trying to turn public opinions against nurses with your nasty rhetoric. I work within the health system and I know the facts of how unsafe it actually is… it’s terrifying.”

Deborah wrote: “We should not have to fight this hard for safe working conditions. Safe staffing has been talked about for the entire span of my nursing career, and it’s worse now than it ever was. Stop promising and start doing!”

Little, a former leader of the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), has been tasked with leading Labour’s assault on a key section of the working class. He is also the minister in charge of re-sealing the Pike River mine in order to bury critical evidence of the causes of the explosion that killed 29 miners in 2010. As head of the EPMU at the time, Little played a key role in covering up the culpability of the company.

The Labour Party-led government, like others around the world, is now imposing austerity measures to pay for its pro-business response to the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Ardern government has handed over tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for businesses, while the Reserve Bank printed billions more to purchase bonds from the commercial banks.

The trade unions are determined to suppress the growing confrontation and prevent nurses from linking up with other sections of the working class who are seeking to fight back against the endless attacks on living standards.

Other sections of the health workforce, including doctors, midwives and technicians, are now entering into fresh struggles. Along with nurses, they are part of an international upsurge of the working class triggered by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In every country, workers confront not only managements and governments, but the trade unions, which act as the industrial police force.

Belarusian opposition leader Tikhanovskaya appeals to Washington for support

Jason Melanovski

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has spent the last two weeks in the United States to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and later President Joe Biden as part of her ongoing appeal to Western imperialism for support against the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko.

Tikhanovskaya, a former teacher, rose to prominence in August of 2020 after claiming victory in the Belarusian presidential elections against Lukashenko. According to the Belarusian government, President Alexander Lukashenko won by a landslide, garnering 80.10 percent of the vote, while Tikhanovskaya, came in second, with 10.12 percent of the ballot. Tikhanovskaya claimed to have won the presidency with between 60 to 70 percent of the vote.

Amid widespread claims of government ballot rigging, mass protests and strikes erupted. The mass anger was also driven by the government’s criminal mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lukashenko regime harshly cracked down on strikes and protests. Several protesters were killed, thousands were imprisoned and there were numerous reports of cruel torture in prisons.

While the Western media focused its attention on so-called “pro-democracy” figures, such as Tikhanovskaya (who quickly went into exile), the crackdown was primarily motivated by a fear of working-class protests and strikes spreading throughout the country.

The pro-Western opposition and the Lukashenko regime have, in fact, been united in their opposition to the upsurge in working-class struggles. While the regime responded with harsh violence, the opposition sought to politically derail the strike movement.

As the protests have died down in recent months, divisions have emerged within the opposition, with Tikhanovskaya speaking for a wing that most openly appeals to the imperialist powers.

On the eve of her visit to Washington, she declared in the National Interest that she no longer sought to claim the presidency in Belarus. Instead, she wanted to serve as a “moral authority.” Underscoring her complete orientation to US imperialism, she said, “With Biden’s help we will prevail.”

Throughout her time in Washington, Tikhanovskaya had meetings with the State Department, the White House and the Senate. She also attended the launch of the Friends of Belarus Caucus in the House of Representatives.

While meeting State Department officials, including Secretary Antony Blinken last Monday, she begged the US to implement tough sanctions against the Belarusian economy, including the country’s potash, oil, wood and steel sectors. She reportedly also gave the US government a list of officials who should be sanctioned.

Last Tuesday during a webinar coordinated by the rabidly anti-Russian think tank the Atlantic Council, Tikhanovskaya openly called for a more aggressive imperialist intervention into Belarusian politics, stating, “I think it’s high time for democratic countries to unite and show their teeth.”

Despite weeks-long pleading for a face-to-face meeting with President Joe Biden and several op-eds in the Washington Post, Tikhanovskaya was forced to wait over a week before a snap meeting occurred on Tuesday. Her White House visit conspicuously took place just as US and Russian officials were meeting in Geneva to follow up on Biden’s June summit with Putin. At the summit, the Biden administration sought to ease tensions with Russia in the context of its war drive against China.

Following the meeting, Tikhanovskaya called her visit with Biden “an inspiration for our people” and “a message to the whole world that the greatest country in the world is with us.” Biden tweeted, “The United States stands with the people of Belarus in their quest for democracy and universal human rights.” However, no information about any tangible results of the meeting were revealed.

In a stark display of her utter alienation of social reality in Belarus, Tikhanovskaya at no point during her comments in Washington even mentioned the ongoing pandemic that has had a devastating effect on the Belarusian health care system.

In addition to meeting with top US officials and President Biden, Tikhanovskaya has previously met with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France while attempting to drum up support for Western-sponsored regime change in Belarus.

Among her list of demands intended to cripple the Lukashenko presidency, she is also pleading with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cancel a planned $1 billion disbursement to Belarus, so far with little success.

While she has received no official answer to her demand for sanctions, Russia’s TASS news agency reported that the US will announce new sanctions against Belarus in the coming weeks. “There were no promises given to her, no deadlines, because the US is working on sanctions regardless of her visit,” a source told TASS.

Tikhanovskaya currently resides in Lithuania, a NATO member country, where she has received the support and backing of the government. The Lithuanian government granter her official diplomatic status in her attempt to drum up US and EU support against the Lukashenko regime.

Despite the ongoing campaign in the Western press over Tikhanovskaya, within Belarus she is far from the most popular opposition figure with polls showing that she would now fall into third or fourth place in hypothetical elections.

According to a poll of Belarusians by the London-based think tank Chatham House, Victor Babariko is, in fact, the most popular opposition figure with 34 respondents supporting him compared to 25 for Lukashenko and just 10 percent for Tikhanovskaya. Forty-two percent of respondents stated that they did not trust Tikhanovskaya.

Babariko previously worked as a prominent banker with Belgazprombank, a lender that is a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned Gazprom. He was widely seen as the biggest threat to Lukashenko and was arrested just prior to last year’s presidential elections.

Unlike Tikhanovskaya, who has developed open ties with Western imperialism, Babariko has long-standing connections with Moscow due to his business dealings with Russian companies. He favors Belarus taking a neutral status in the conflict between Russia and the West.

Babariko was recently sentenced to a 14-year prison sentence after Belarusian officials accused him of money laundering, bribery and tax evasion, suggesting that Lukashenko is moving further away from accepting a succession agreement negotiated by Moscow.

While the Kremlin initially backed Lukashenko following the eruption of mass strikes and protests with the open backing of the imperialist powers for the opposition, Moscow is very wary of Lukashenko and has been pressuring him to step down for many months now.

Over the past year, Lukashenko has resorted to arresting over 35,000 people and imprisoning up to 400 political prisoners in a desperate bid to hang onto power which he has held for the past 27 years. Throughout the crisis Lukashenko has refused to undertake measures to stem the COVID-19 pandemic, dismissing it as a “mass psychosis.”

Despite the availability of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, the government has effectively refused to undertake a vaccination campaign. Only 4 percent of its population of 9 million people are vaccinated, one of the lowest rates in Europe.

In addition to jailing journalists and opposition politicians, closing down NGOs and threatening to interrupt EU trade routes, the Lukashenko regime has turned to increasingly desperate attacks on the country’s working class to maintain power. The Belarusian government has recently curtailed the already extremely limited right to strike. Any worker who participates in protests can now be immediately fired, and the rising of political demands during strikes has been banned altogether.

Last week, Lukashenko, who often blames nefarious “bandits” for undermining his authority, publicly railed against Belarusian workers, who are supposedly stealing diesel, fuel, milk and other products from state companies and are being blamed for threatening Belarus along with the mass media and NGOs.

UK public debt: Pandemic profiteering costs workers’ lives and incomes

Julie Hyland

The costs associated with the Johnson government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic have exposed UK taxpayers to “significant financial risks for decades to come”, according to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), with the UK deficit set to reach a peacetime record of £372 billion in 2020-21.

The Public Accounts Committee report: Covid-19: Cost Tracker Update

This represents approximately 18 percent of national income. With the contraction in economic output in 2020 estimated to be the worst in more than 300 years, the total level of UK debt is likely to rise to 105 percent of GDP—almost double the level of government borrowing following the 2008/09 global financial crisis, which was followed by more than a decade of austerity.

The PAC report aims at even more savage levels of austerity, with its call on the Treasury to provide a “comprehensive framework for managing the risks to public finances… in its upcoming Spending Review.”

To this end the PAC’s report is predicated on a lie: that government borrowing was aimed at supporting “public services, workers and businesses” following the World Health Organisation’s categorisation of COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

In truth, Britain’s ruling elite—as the world over—responded with criminal indifference to public services and workers’ lives and livelihoods. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government was the first to publicly admit to a policy of “herd immunity”—allowing the virus to spread through the population with virtually no protections.

This fascistic policy of state-sanctioned social euthanasia was the culmination of the class warfare begun under Margaret Thatcher and pursued for more than four decades by Labour and Conservative governments alike. As the Socialist Equality Party (UK) explained, “The government’s sole concern was to use the pandemic to engineer a further transfer of social wealth to the banks and major corporations .”

On March 17, 2020, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced billions in “unlimited lending capacity” to big business and the rich. Having taken measures to protect the financial oligarchy, the government, with the support of the Labour Party and the trade unions, immediately moved to end lockdown and re-open schools and workplaces.

The PAC’s own report is forced to briefly acknowledge that out of 32 billion items of personal protective equipment (PPE) eventually ordered last year by the Department of Health in response to public outcry, nearly two-thirds remained unused in May.

The waste of PPE funds, often on useless stock, while “key workers” were left without epitomises the policy of malign neglect. Upwards of 900 health and social care workers have died since the pandemic began, many of whom were forced into workplaces where COVID-19 was rampant without basic protection. They are among the 150,000 people who have died from COVID-19 in the UK alone to date. Nonetheless, the government has removed all remaining social distancing measures, even as new and more deadly variants of the virus spread.

At the other end of the social spectrum, the rich have never had it so good. The total wealth of billionaires worldwide rose by 60 percent, from £3.6 trillion to £9.5 trillion, in the 12 months to March, the largest increase on record.

This is behind the phenomenon of pandemic profiteers, grotesquely highlighted by the competition between Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos to monopolise space as the private playground of the super-rich. These two billionaires are (notionally at least) based in the UK and US respectively, the countries with among the highest death tolls from COVID-19 in the world.

The PAC gives some indication of how this plundering has been facilitated. It estimates that £92 billion was delivered to corporations in government-backed loans under the direction of the British Business Bank. Some £26 billion is expected to be written-off at tax-payers’ expense as the government used the pandemic to waive fraud and transparency checks, with then Health Secretary Matt Hancock secretly establishing a “VIP” high-priority lane for businesses endorsed by politicians or officials.

According to a New York Times estimate, of the approximately 1,200 government contracts made public, worth nearly $22 billion (£15 billion), about $11 billion (£8 billion) “went to companies either run by friends and associates of politicians in the Conservative Party, or with no prior experience or a history of controversy.”

Lord Paul Deighton, former investment banker and Tory Party grandee, acted as the government’s PPE czar, helping “award billions of dollars in contracts––including hundreds of millions to several companies where he has financial interests or personal connections.”

This is the tip of the iceberg. Even the £59 billion provided through the furlough scheme was a subvention to major corporations, including Branson’s Virgin Active group, British Airways and other FTSE 100 firms, who took the money while cutting workers’ wages or making them redundant.

The lobbying scandal around former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron and the now collapsed Greensill Capital partially lifted the lid on the levels of financial parasitism. According to the National Audit Office, Cameron and government ministers applied “unusual” pressure for Greensill to access COVID loan schemes, with a total of £400 million channeled to multiple companies linked to GFG Alliance, owned by the billionaire Sanjeev Gupta, before the finance company collapsed.

Other examples include the grossly misnamed Track and Trace system. At least £37 billion was allocated to NHST&T (NHS Test and Trace), principally run by 22 private companies and overseen by Tory peer Baroness Dido Harding. Described as the “biggest gravy train in history”, its consultants received as much as £6,624 a day to preside over a system demonstrably unfit for purpose.

The one area that the PAC can point to where government spending has benefited public health, the vaccination programme, is also an arena for the appropriation of public funds and pooled scientific expertise by the financial oligarchy.

At least 97 percent of funding for the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine came from public or charitable funds, with millions more provided by the government to fast-track its roll-out. In May, shareholders (of which Lord Deighton is one) agreed a hike in CEO Pascal Soriot’s pay package from £1.3 million to £15.45 million. Small wonder Johnson boasted privately to Tory MPs, “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends… It was giant corporations that wanted to give good returns to shareholders”.

There has been much talk of “cronyism” in response to such revelations. The more appropriate term is kleptocracy—the form of government associated with dictatorships and military juntas whose political leaders steal public funds to enrich themselves and their corporate backers.

The PAC report has been greeted with demands for cuts in public spending, wage freezes and the slashing of welfare benefits and pensions to “get public finances back onto a sustainable path.”

Millions face public sector wage freezes and the gutting of pay and conditions through “fire and rehire.” In October, the furlough scheme, currently supporting approximately two million people, ends. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, many of those earning an average of £20,000 per annum pre-furlough will see their incomes plunge to £3,885 pa.

In the same month, the government intends to withdraw the miserly £20 “COVID” increase in Universal Credit, paid to unemployed and low-earning families, in what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation describes as the “biggest overnight cut to the basic rate of social security since the Second World War.”

State pensions, already the lowest in western Europe at 28 percent of the average wage, are to be slashed as the government moves to end the “triple lock” guarantee, which lifts pensions each year by 2.5 percent, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.

The Labour Party’s silence on these attacks is a continuation of the support it has provided to the government throughout the pandemic. Likewise, the trade unions, which have utilised the pandemic to deepen their corporatist relations with government and big business, at the expense of workers’ health, pay and conditions.

Japan records highest COVID-19 daily case number, a foreseeable disaster

Emily Ochiai

As the Tokyo Summer Olympics games proceed into their second week, COVID-19 cases are increasing at a much faster rate than predicted in this huge and densely populated city of over 38 million. On July 29, there were 3,854 new cases in Tokyo, the highest daily infection case count recorded there so far. Daily cases are expected to exceed 5,000 in less than two weeks.

Despite widespread opposition, the Japanese government refused to cancel the Olympics in the face of a global pandemic and the emerging highly-contagious Delta variant. At least $15.4 billion was spent on the Olympics by Japan, $4 billion in broadcast revenue is expected and billions more in advertising. The media and entertainment bosses, and the governments which back them, fully aware of the potential consequences, calculated these revenues to be worth the cost in human life and lifelong complications as hospitals overflow.

Norio Ohmagari, Director of Disease Control and Prevention Center of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine, told the Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo is “heading into an explosive spread of infection that we have never encountered before.” Tokyo’s hospitals are unable to keep up with the rapid increase in patient numbers, forcing them to postpone admissions. As a result, an increasing number of patients are forced to quarantine at home, and a growing number are dying at home without any access to healthcare.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike’s response to the exploding cases exemplified the ruling class’s irrationality and anti-science tendencies. When questioned about the potential effect of the Olympics on the rising number of cases, she stated “It is the opposite. The Olympics has effectively increased the number of people staying at home.”

Prime Minister Suga also denied the impact of the Olympics on cases, stating, “The Tokyo Olympics did not have any effect on the increasing case numbers.” When asked the reason for this, he claimed, “We are taking measures to prevent infection from foreigners and increased traffic.”

Contrary to these statements, Shigeru Omi, President of the Japan Community Health Care Organization, admitted that the Olympics is one of the major causes, saying, “It is the responsibility of the government and the Olympics Committee to do whatever they can to stop the spread.” Nevertheless, Prime Minister Suga continues to reject any possibility of cancelling the Games.

The government and corporate media are attempting to divert public outrage by blaming young people. The corporate media is developing a false narrative of irresponsible youth spreading the virus by emphasizing the high rate of COVID-19 infection among those in their 20s and 30s. Headlines such as “Young people head to bars at night in Shinjuku, showing little concern over 3,000 COVID-19 cases” are flooding news media, citing cherry-picked and often twisted interview quotes from young people.

However, the reality is that the Japanese government has consistently downplayed the dangers of COVID-19 since the outbreak began, never taking meaningful measures to contain the infection or enforcing a mandated lockdown of non-essential businesses. Additionally, infection was most prevalent among restaurant employees, according to data from the Okinawa prefecture, which experienced one of the worst outbreaks.

Infections are rapidly increasing not only in Tokyo but also in three prefectures surrounding Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, and Kanagawa. On July 28, all three prefectures saw a record-breaking increase in case numbers. They are considering declaring a state of emergency.

Japan has experienced a number of health care crises throughout the pandemic. The surge in cases is straining hospitals in the Tokyo metropolitan area and the surrounding region, rapidly approaching their capacity. Yokohama Rosai Hospital, a public hospital in the Kanagawa prefecture officially designated to accept Olympics athletes, is located right next to the Olympics arena. The workers at the hospital told Asahi Shimbun about their devastating situation.

Dr. Hayakawa explained how the ER hotline rang continuously throughout the day. In addition to COVID-19 patients, the high temperature in the metropolitan area is causing an increase in cases of heat stroke and dehydration and therefore putting additional pressure on the hospitals. Dr. Nakamura, the head of the emergency department, reported to the same press that he had to decline to take in an elderly patient who had a stroke because there were no more beds available.

Meanwhile, cases among Olympics athletes and staff continue to increase. There are now 193 confirmed infection cases among Olympics-related personnel. Contrary to Olympics organizers and the Tokyo governments’ repeated promise for a “safe and secure” Games, it was revealed that the International Olympic Committee is not following the proposed Covid-19 protocols.

The committee’s guideline states that they will conduct PCR tests on every volunteer worker. However, a number of volunteer workers told TBS news that they have never received the test nor any information regarding COVID testing. A volunteer worker who drives the athletes expressed his concerns to TBS: “I haven’t got tested, not even once. They have not contacted me yet and no explanation was given to me.” A translation volunteer stated, “I still have not received a test. I feel uncomfortable volunteering.”

The opposition to the Games is continuing. Yesterday, demonstrators gathered in front of the Prime Minister’s office. Many held up signs, criticizing the lack of effective COVID-19 measures or any relief fund for those who fell into poverty and homelessness. One sign reads “The Olympics torch relay was started by the Nazis! Money to the people! Use for aiding COVID-19 hardships! The Olympics for the big corporations and the aristocrats is unnecessary!”

The ruling class is responding to the popular opposition by intimidation. On the night of the opening ceremony, a protester was arrested. Law enforcement officers were recorded on video, harassing the protesters on their way home from a demonstration at the Road Cycling course. The ruling class deployed 1,900 Self-Defence Force soldiers at the Road Cycling course and mobilized more than 8,500 for the duration of the Games.

The explosive increase in case numbers will inevitably trigger a destructive health care crisis in Tokyo. In view of this, there are mounting calls for protest in the coming days and many are voicing their anger towards the Olympics, which has brought together anger against the Japanese ruling class, its deadly handling of the pandemic, and social inequality in Japan.

Brazil’s schools set to reopen amid record COVID-19 child deaths

Eduardo Parati

Last week, a news report by UOL revealed that COVID-19 became the number one cause of death among 10-to-19-year-olds in Brazil. Just in the first six months of 2021, 1,581 young people in this age group died from COVID-19. In contrast 1,406 died from cancer in the entire year of 2019.

The death toll of younger children is also alarming, with Health Ministry data showing that 1,187 children younger than 10 died from COVID-19 in 2020. However, data from Vital Strategies, which takes into account the surge in deaths from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), points to 3,129 lives lost.

Epidemiologist and professor at the Sergipe Federal University Paulo Martins-Filho said that “this increase in the number of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, observed particularly since February and March, is a reflex of the high community transmission rate and the circulation of variants of concern in the national territory.” He added that “For children, the pandemic was also associated with profound educational, social and psychological changes, food insecurity … which can result in death in poorer regions.” He concluded that “the disease emerged as a new cause of death among children in poor communities, as observed in the North and Northeast regions in Brazil.”

In an interview with CNN Brasil, Ana Escobar, a pediatrician from the University of São Paulo said that the Gamma variant, which originated and became the dominant variant in Brazil in the first months of the year, was a direct cause for the deadly disease spreading among young people. She explained that it is able to more easily enter cells in the body, while warning of the potential of a new surge in deaths that won’t spare children and teenagers: “the Delta variant, which is already in the country, is even better at it.”

In Brazil, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause more than a thousand deaths every single day, while the moving average is again on the rise, registering 45,094 daily cases. Sunday, vaccinations with first shots were suspended in eight state capitals, pending the delivery of new vaccine batches by the federal government.

Meanwhile, state governors, including those of the Workers Party (PT) and Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), are signaling their support for the profit interests of the ruling class by touting the vaccination of small percentages of the population while reopening schools and the entire economy.

Maranhão Governor Flávio Dino of the PCdoB announced last week the beginning of in-person classes on August 2, along with the full reopening of theaters, churches, commerce and mass events. He justified his measures stating that “We have the mask mandate and social distancing. This is as critical as the vaccine. From this premise ... we are flexibilizing economic activities.” Meanwhile, Governor Rui Costa of the PT followed the same line, while threatening Bahia’s state teachers that they will have their wages cut if they refuse to enter schools.

The reopenings being carried out by the PT and PCdoB show that these organizations defend capitalist interests just as aggressively as their openly right-wing counterparts, promoting the return of children to unsafe schools and their parents to unsafe factories and workplaces. They are acting in tandem with Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro’s open campaign against lockdowns and for the spreading of COVID-19 among the population.

So far, 12 states have already reopened public schools, while most are expected to be reopened in August. Some capitals, such as Rio de Janeiro, plan on reopening their municipal schools in September, while private schools are already open in 22 states.

In São Paulo, where there are 3.6 million students enrolled in the state school system, Governor João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) announced plans on June 16 for increasing maximum capacity in schools from 35 percent to 100 percent. On Wednesday, the governor stated that “Things are going back to normal” and announced the end of all restrictions on opening hours and in-door capacity for all economic activities on August 17, two days after the rollout of first shots for 18-year-olds.

With this announcement, Doria aims to promote the inoculation with the first jab of 56 percent of the population of one state as successful “immunization,” using as a pretext the drop in hospitalization rates and deaths. The drive to reopen the economy at all costs ignores the need to complete second jabs for the entire population, with just 19 percent fully immunized nationally, not to mention the need to immunize all young people under the age of 18.

However, after months of refusal of both parents and teachers to allow their children inside crowded schools and amid ongoing mass protests against Bolsonaro’s criminal response to the pandemic, Doria fears that his year-long campaign of bringing students back to schools will provoke an upsurge of opposition not only to the school reopenings but to the entire political establishment and its pandemic policy. The governor announced that each school will be allowed to decide its maximum capacity and declared that in-person activities will remain optional for parents.

If the governors are able to press for the reopening of schools, it’s because they can count on the trade unions, which have isolated and suppressed teachers’ struggles at every turn.

During March, just as the second COVID-19 wave was beginning, the São Paulo’s APEOESP state teachers union and the state capital’s SINPEEM municipal teachers union refused to carry out a joint strike against the school reopenings, much less call for a national strike amid protests by teachers and other sectors of the working class throughout the country.

Both unions are affiliated to the PT-controlled National Confederation of Education Workers (CNTE), which published an article on Thursday reporting a study showing that “badly-worn masks could elevate COVID-19 cases by 1,000 percent.” Rather than fight against the reopening of schools, the unions are already shifting the blame for a future surge in COVID-19 cases onto the students themselves.

On Monday, covering for Governor Doria’s efforts, APEOESP published a supposed defense against in-person activities that actually follows the governor’s line. It states that “For the return to schools to happen, it’s necessary that all education workers have received their second jab of the vaccine.” The union leaves unmentioned the dangers of allowing millions of children inside crowded schools, which could become super-spreader venues.

In an article in Folha de São Paulo, state legislator and APEOESP president, Maria Izabel Azevedo Noronha, held as exemplary the fact that “in Germany, students are tested once a week and classrooms are limited to 15 students, with a 2-meter minimum distance.” She goes on to mention the UK, the US and France as examples of in-person teaching during the pandemic.

APEOESP is covering up the fact that the UK government’s “let it rip” pandemic policy, including in-person classes, resulted in the Delta variant spreading through the country, and that children currently account for eight percent of all hospitalizations.

By allowing in-person classes in August while less than a quarter of Brazil’s population is vaccinated, the teachers union gives credit to the lie that children do not transmit the disease, something that was promoted not only by the mainstream media, the governors and the corporate-funded Escolas Abertas movement in Brazil, but also repeated by president Biden in the US.

The deadly results of such a policy are already being seen in the states that reopened schools. In Rio Grande do Sul, where schools were reopened in May, data gathered until July 12 shows that just in the state school system there were 3,696 cases among students, teachers and staff, out of which half were students. Only 186,000 students are participating in in-person activities, or 20 percent, which shows that a full reopening would be a major factor in producing a catastrophic third wave.

Workers must oppose the “new normal” being promoted by the ruling class, in which they and their children continue to put their lives at risk inside crowded workplaces and schools. Just as the virus developed new variants when governments lifted lockdowns and restrictions, it will continue developing new and even more deadly variants, most of all in regions with low vaccination rates.

The struggle of teachers against the school reopenings was only defeated because the unions were able to suppress a unified struggle throughout Brazil and internationally.

The approved continuation of the strike by state teachers in the state of Sergipe and the current meetings between PT Governor Rui Costa and the trade union in Bahia are both based on the same rotten proposal to accept a full reopening in return for a second jab for teachers. Just as in São Paulo, the SINTESE and the APLB trade unions are maneuvering to give up the teachers’ struggle, keeping their fight isolated.

Also, as much as the media and the government tries to promote the nationally based campaign to immunize the Brazilian population as the ultimate solution to the pandemic, the spread of the Gamma variant in the entire region has showed that only an international response to the pandemic will be able to stop it.