Delta variant behind sharp spike in Pacific COVID-19 cases

John Braddock

The World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a statement on August 26 stressing the importance of “continued vigilance,” as the Delta COVID-19 variant continues to have “dramatic impacts” in parts of the Pacific and Asia.

WHO regional director for the Western Pacific, Takeshi Kasai, said it was up to everyone to “stay the course.” By continuing to make the best decisions “based on our experience, shared learning and reliable data,” he emphasised, it is “within our power to reduce the threat of the virus.”

The WHO noted that 10 Pacific states have not had any cases of COVID-19 to date. They are some of the most remote: American Samoa, Niue, the Cook Islands, Pitcairn Island, Kiribati, Tokelau, the Federated States of Micronesia, Tonga, Nauru and Tuvalu. Another five have had no cases in the past 100 days: Wallis and Futuna; Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa, and the Marshall Islands.

A nurse stands outside Tamara Twomey hospital in Suva, Fiji. (AP Photo/Aileen Torres-Bennett)

However, three Pacific countries where the Delta variant has gained a foothold–Fiji, French Polynesia and Papua New Guinea—have all experienced a sharp spike in cases and deaths as the virus spreads out of control.

In Fiji, infections recently spread beyond the capital Suva and the main island Viti Levu, to more remote villages and towns, including the west-coast holiday island of Malolo, which has 29 active cases. There has also been one death reported on Naviti Island in the Yasawa group. Health Secretary James Fong said new cases, revealed last week, showed the virus had reached “all the major divisions of the country.”

There were 184 new cases reported on August 30, including 10 deaths from August 26-30, taking the toll to 489. Of the latest cases, 133 were reported from the Western Division, 40 from the Central Division and 11 from Kadavu in the East. The Northern town of Labasa also has three cases.

Fiji now has 19,463 active cases, with 46,141 recorded since the outbreak began in April. Recent deaths include 10 young people, with the latest victims a six-month-old boy and an 11-year-old girl, reported last weekend. Official numbers however fail to show the true extent of cases, as the Health Ministry has admitted its reporting systems are overloaded. In many areas, no testing is taking place.

Former health minister Neil Sharma told Radio NZ the virus has been “moving faster” than the provision of vaccines. The outer-islands of Rotuma, Yasawa and Lakeba only received their first vaccines on July 27. Fiji’s second island, Vanua Levu, now has restricted movement in place for 14 days. Sharma said the island’s population of 200,000 will be badly impacted, as it had “very limited” health facilities, with only two small hospitals and a predominantly ageing population.

Responsibility for the disastrous spread of the virus rests directly with the government of Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama. Since the beginning of the outbreak in April, Bainimarama has bluntly resisted calls for a national lockdown, saying it would “destroy” the economy.

New Zealand epidemiologist Michael Baker told Radio NZ, as early as June 16, that the situation in Fiji was “extremely worrying” and an urgent national lockdown had to be “seriously considered.” It would be “devastating,” he predicted, if the virus were to spread from Viti Levu, due to the paucity of healthcare in the outer areas. Baker urged the Fiji government to act “very decisively” to return to an “elimination position.” Such warnings have been ignored.

In line with the drive by governments internationally to begin “living with” the virus, the country’s chief medical advisor Jemesa Tudravu said on the weekend the virus would become an endemic disease “similar to the flu virus.” “We are not going back to a COVID-contained or COVID-free country,” he declared.

Bainimarama has announced an easing of restrictions beginning this week. In his first national address on the pandemic in several weeks, Bainimarama claimed: “As more of Fiji becomes fully vaccinated, we will forge a powerful shield of protection against severe disease and death from COVID-19, and much of what we miss most about our lives can be restored.”

Bainimarama said curfew would start an hour later, at 8pm, once the fully vaccinated target population is 50 percent, at 9pm when it reaches 60 percent, 10pm at the 70 percent threshold, and back to 11pm once 80 percent is reached. Containment area borders on Viti Levu will be lifted, once a 60 percent target is reached.

So far, 95 percent of the target population of 587,651 has received the first dose of vaccine, while 45 percent are fully vaccinated. The “target” population, which prioritises front line workers, police, health care workers, hospitality workers and the elderly, is well short of the country’s total population of 890,000.

The dire consequences of “opening up” have been exposed in French Polynesia, which opened its borders in July 2020 for quarantine-free travel, to boost tourism. President Edouard Fritch acknowledged at the time the “probability” that there would be more COVID-19 cases, but declared that if French Polynesia didn’t reopen, the economic consequences would be “catastrophic.”

The Delta variant has now quickly spread to 45 islands, including Tahiti. Daily new case numbers have hit more than 1,000, reaching a total of over 40,000. The pandemic has claimed 385 lives, with 412 COVID-19 patients in hospital, and 55 in intensive care. With hospitals at capacity, there are calls for field hospitals to be set up. The main hospital in Papeete has appealed for additional medical personnel to be brought in from France.

Meanwhile less than half of the population of about 280,000 has had their first vaccination. The government recently published a detailed list of which people must be inoculated within two months. They include medical staff, people in contact with the public, such as teachers, and those deemed to be vulnerable. Anyone refusing to comply faces a fine of $US1.700 and possible suspension from work.

Most of the territory has now entered a two-week lockdown. The French government in Paris said it would get the National Assembly to extend the state of health emergency in French Polynesia, until the middle of November.

In Papua New Guinea (PNG), the Pacific’s largest country, with a population of nearly nine million, already meagre testing for COVID-19 has recently been scaled back, as the confirmed case numbers and deaths approach 18,000 and 200 respectively. Six staff at PNG’s national pandemic control centre, all of whom were unvaccinated, last week tested positive for the virus.

Some authorities are downplaying the threat from the virus. Chief of Medical Emergency Services Sam Yockapua, claimed the rate of transmission and hospital admission had gone down significantly in recent months, and there was a risk of “focussing too much” on COVID-19. He said PNG had not been able to enforce lockdowns like New Zealand or Australia, and had to “live with” the disease.

Glen Mola, head of obstetrics and gynaecology at Port Moresby General Hospital, however, told Radio NZ that authorities had little handle on how many people have COVID-19. The town of Goroka had done around 2,800 COVID tests since January. “Only 2,800 tests in the whole of the five million people in the Highlands, and 468 of them were positive; that’s about 18 percent. But we have no idea who that 18 percent are,” he said.

According to WHO figures, PNG has administered 143,192 doses of vaccines so far. Assuming every person needs 2 doses, that is enough to have vaccinated only about 0.6 percent of the country’s population.

COVID-19 hospitalizations top 100,000 daily average in US

Patrick Martin

Average daily hospitalizations in the United States due to COVID-19 have topped the 100,000 mark for the first time since last winter, the federal Department of Health and Human Services has reported. Hospitalizations are up 500 percent over the past two months.

Medical staff tend to a patient with coronavirus, on a COVID-19 ward inside the Willis-Knighton Medical Center in Shreveport, La., Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The statistic is an ominous milestone of an impending surge in deaths, which have already passed the mark of 1,000 per day for the first time since March. In portions of Florida and Oregon, as well as other states, portable morgues have been ordered to handle the current or anticipated demand.

The rise in hospitalizations is concentrated in the Southern states. Florida leads in this dismal category, with an average of 16,467 COVID-19 cases so serious they require hospitalization, with Texas following with 14,352. The 11 states across the South, from Oklahoma to North Carolina and south to the Gulf Coast, account for 57,311 hospitalizations, more than half the US total.

But no region is spared. California ranks third with a daily average of 8,700 hospitalizations, and New York, Ohio and Illinois are in the top 15 states. Infections have risen sharply all across the country, although the more heavily vaccinated areas have seen a somewhat lesser increase in the number of hospitalizations.

Contrary to the official claims, from Biden on down, that children rarely become seriously ill from COVID-19, the total number of children currently hospitalized for coronavirus reached 1,500 Friday, according to federal figures, with the largest number in Texas, 317, followed by Florida with 215. Dozens have died.

According to figures reported by the New York Times Monday, one in five intensive care units in the United States has at least 95 percent of beds occupied. States like Alabama and Mississippi, with decrepit health care infrastructures in the best of times, have virtually no beds available. Parts of Texas and Florida are approaching those conditions.

The Department of Health and Human Services has issued a disaster declaration for Louisiana and Mississippi because of the combined impact of the pandemic and Hurricane Ida.

The University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville asked last week for assistance from the National Guard to handle the crush of COVID-19 patients. Hospitals in many Southern states are running out of oxygen, which is indispensable to treating coronavirus. The cutoff of oxygen supplies would be an immediate death sentence to COVID-19 patients on ventilators.

More broadly, sometime this week the United States will become the first country in the world to have had 40 million cases of coronavirus. The US infection rate, nearly one in every eight people, is the highest for any major country. This comes despite the US having administered 370 million vaccine shots and fully vaccinated 174 million people, 52 percent of the population.

The soaring rate of infections and hospitalizations, together with deaths, mean that August 2021 has been a worse month for the pandemic in America than August 2020. This is a remarkable fact given that a year ago, vaccines had not yet been developed.

The emergence of the far more contagious Delta variant of coronavirus is a primary cause of the current upsurge in the pandemic. This variant, which first emerged in India, is a byproduct of the failure of capitalist governments all over the world to impose the necessary lockdowns and shutdowns required to save lives, halt the spread of the virus in its earliest stages, and thus deny it the time and the number of human hosts required for dangerous mutations to develop.

Another major difference between 2020 and 2021 is the reopening of most schools for in-person classes, and, in many states, the abandonment of masking either in schools or any other indoor setting. Social distancing has likewise been abandoned, in outdoor settings everywhere and in indoor settings in most areas.

Both factors, the emergence of Delta and the relaxation of public health measures, are the outcome of the deliberate refusal of the capitalist ruling elites all over the world to make saving lives and stopping the pandemic the number one priority. Instead, they have subordinated public health and human life to the preservation of “the economy,” by which they mean the preservation of capitalist profit-making and the greater enrichment of the financial aristocracy.

COVID-19 infections rising as children return to school in Germany

Tamino Dreisam

A fresh wave of infections and hospitalisations of children and adolescents is looming in Germany following the start of attendance classes at schools. Forty percent of the German population has not yet been fully vaccinated, and the trend in infection figures is soaring once again.

The seven-day average of infections has doubled in the last ten days alone. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), this increase is taking place “much earlier and faster than last year, when comparable incidence rates were first reached in October.” The institute reported last Wednesday of around 16,700 new infections and a rate of infection indicating exponential growth at 1.19.

The explosion in the incidence of infection is mostly affecting younger age groups. Incidence rates were highest last week among school children (113), followed by the next highest age group of 15- to 34-year-olds (88). While the seven-day incidence is rising rapidly in all age groups, it has almost doubled in one week among the almost completely unvaccinated group of 5- to 14-year-olds.

Despite the triple-digit incidence among children, all state governments are set to move to full face-to-face learning after the summer holidays and systematically reintroduce compulsory attendance—a political crime backed by all of the political parties represented in the German parliament from the Left Party to the conservative Union parties.

A school in Germany (credit: www.instagram.com schuelerstreik_nrw)

Currently, only the city state of Hamburg has felt compelled to temporarily suspend compulsory attendance after the incidence rate among school children rose to 222.

There can be no doubt that the infection of children is deliberately accepted and intended. The situation is particularly acute in Schleswig-Holstein, where the incidence rate among schoolchildren rose to 166 last week and is also driving up infection figures in other age groups.

Dr Anne Marcic, infection control officer at the state health ministry, told Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) that in the state it is “no longer a problem when young children become infected,” rather, it is “their only opportunity to immunise themselves.” Preventing children from becoming infected is an “illusion,” the government adviser said: “They will come into contact with the pathogen.”

The weekly Die Zeit noted that “more than nine million children under twelve” who have not been vaccinated are now being deliberately “left to be contaminated by the virus.” Although they had “no choice” and “had to forego children’s birthdays, day-care festivities, many months of attendance classes and organised sports over the past year and a half,” these children are now being put at risk of contracting COVID-19 in the coming months.

The German Health Minister Jens Spahn, Bavaria’s Premier Markus Söder and other government politicians had earlier declared that “everyone who is not vaccinated” would be infected with the coronavirus in winter. These politicians neglected to outline the considerable suffering such infection of children and others means for working families.

In reality, this murderous contagion policy is endangering the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of children and their families. This is shown by figures from the US, where infections are massively increasing after schools reopened. In the third week of August alone, 180,000 children became infected. In the same period, 24 children died of COVID-19. In the total population, the daily number of infections has risen above 170,000. Last Wednesday, almost 1,300 people died as a result of the pandemic.

The deadly dangers of acute coronavirus infection are compounded by the risk of late and long-term symptoms, including multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and Long Covid. An infection can lead to a loss of up to 7 IQ points, inflicting more cognitive damage than a stroke. A survey from the UK found that 9 to 13 percent of children and young people infected with COVID-19 still had at least one symptom five weeks after infection.

The RKI, which relies on reports from local health authorities, concludes that the number of COVID-19 outbreaks in schools “may have recently begun to show a renewed increase (despite school holidays in most German states).” The original incidence rate benchmark of 35 for alternate education and 50 for remote learning have long been jettisoned by the country’s federal and state governments.

The danger in classrooms is further increased because one and a half years after the start of the pandemic, only a small minority of classrooms are equipped with protective measures such as air filters. The government’s announced funding programme of 200 million euros amounts to just one-fifth of the minimum sum that experts say would be needed to install air filters in all schools. It corresponds to less than 0.4 percent of the Bundeswehr’s (Germany army) annual budget.

Moreover, several federal states have adopted rules to keep schools open as long as possible. Berlin, governed by a coalition of the Social Democratic Party, the Left Party and the Greens, has an incidence rate of nearly 75 and has introduced a three-tier plan, which envisages that attendance will continue to take place for selective grades even in the highest tier, i.e., highest level of infection. Assignment of the three levels is not dependent on incidence values, but rather on the decision of respective authorities.

In the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (current incidence 125.9), face-to-face teaching will take place regardless of incidence levels. In Saxony, primary and special schools are to restrict their operations only at an incidence of 100. Schools in Thuringia are also subject to a tier system for which incidence figures are irrelevant. In the case of an infection at the school, only the infected person and all immediate contacts are to be sent into quarantine, but the school is to remain open.

For all other federal states, there are currently no rules as to when schools are to be closed, putting no limits on possible rates of infection.

In addition to keeping schools open, some federal states are abolishing basic protective measures, such as mandatory masks in class. In Bremen, Hesse, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, masks are currently not compulsory in class. In Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony, the wearing of masks only applies when the incidence exceeds 35, in Bavaria at primary schools when the incidence exceeds 50 and at secondary schools when the incidence exceeds 25. In Berlin, masks are only compulsory for the first four weeks and then depend on incidence levels. In Hamburg, masks need not be worn for sports, music and theatre classes.

In Baden-Württemberg, where the Greens fill the posts of state premier and Minister of Education, the mask requirement is to be lifted two weeks after the start of the school year. The magazine familie.de reports that parents in Baden-Württemberg face a fine of up to 1,000 euros if they refuse to send their child to school.

France: Macron’s “health pass” conceals policy of “herd immunity”

Jacques Valentin

When the French daily Le Monde reported on the national defence council meeting held on July 21, it noted that President Emmanuel Macron had made “a clear and categorical refusal,” a “sort of presidential veto” to the possibility of imposing local lockdowns or curfews in areas with high coronavirus infections, in addition to the “health pass” which mandates vaccinations.

The “health pass” restricts access to public places to people who have been vaccinated, recently recovered from COVID-19 or who have recently been tested. While it has been presented as a complementary measure to encourage vaccination, it is a set of disparate and inconsistent measures. It aims above all to justify the widest possible reopening of economic activity for the accumulation of profits, while allowing the virus to circulate widely.

The day before the defence council of July 21, Health Minister Olivier Véran reported a tripling of the number of positive cases in one week—a record growth since the beginning of the pandemic in France. This followed the lifting of the last partial lockdown measures. The much more contagious Delta variant has increased from 20 percent at the end of June to over 98 percent today.

French President Emmanuel Macron (Eric Gaillard/Pool photo via AP)

Macron’s “health pass” involves a fundamental deception, to make people believe that measures are being taken to fight the virus, whereas there is no policy to reduce its circulation. The pass has nothing to do with a scientifically based policy to eradicate the virus.

The virus is spreading rapidly in France, with daily new cases at over 18,000 on average. The incidence is higher in different regions. In particular, it is significantly higher in the holiday areas of the South West and South East, as well as in the entire area near the Pyrenees. Six departments in the south of France have rates above 300 per 100,000 people. The end of August holidays will likely lead to a mixing of populations and an increased spread throughout the country.

The reopening of schools this week will inevitably create a health catastrophe. Youth vaccination rates remain low and are zero for children under 12. The reopening of schools under such conditions would be disastrous and poses the necessity of mobilisation of the working class, independently of the trade union apparatuses that support the school reopenings, against it.

In Martinique and Guadeloupe, where vaccination rates are three times lower than in metropolitan France, including among the elderly, Macron’s in-principle rejection of lockdown measures has produced an explosion of cases. Only after several weeks of rapid case growth were social distancing measures belatedly announced this month. Hospitals are already overwhelmed, and the number of health workers is insufficient. A large number of deaths is expected in September and October, as many patients will not be able to access resuscitation units due to a lack of beds and available staff.

In response to the catastrophic situation in the French islands, Macron impudently declared that “if it had to be demonstrated that vaccination is the most efficient way to respond to the Delta variant, unfortunately our Antilles are providing a cruel demonstration.” What a fraud! While vaccination is essential to combat the virus, the real “cruelty” is that of Macron’s policy, which consists of lifting lockdown measures, encouraging tourist travel and relying almost exclusively on vaccination alone, whether in the overseas French territories or in mainland France.

Macron justifies his refusal to take additional measures by referring to the “social acceptability” of restrictions on personal liberties of movement, as though public health measures were arbitrary, and not based on the necessity to contain the pandemic and save lives. In fact, Macron uses the same anti-scientific language as his adversaries, who openly oppose vaccination, the health pass and social distancing measures, and have held demonstrations dominated by the far right.

While the rate of vaccination required to prevent the spread of the virus is estimated to be somewhere in the region of 90 percent, and only 57.5 percent of the French population is completely vaccinated, it is impossible to speak of vaccination replacing social distancing measures. In addition, according to the latest studies on the Delta variant, while the vaccine severely cuts the severity of the virus among infected patients, as demonstrated by the proportionately small number of vaccinated patients in ICU, a non-negligible number contract less severe forms of the disease and are also contagious.

This makes clear that it is all the more necessary to combine vaccination with energetic social distancing measures, isolation and contact tracing, including for those who are vaccinated, and including partial and complete lockdowns when necessary. This is why the “health pass” that fully opens public places and permits the mixing of vaccinated and non-vaccinated people who have had a recent test (whose validity has been extended to 72 hours) is inefficient and dangerous.

Disastrous consequences have already resulted from this policy. After reaching a low point in mid-July, the total number of people hospitalized has since risen to 11,092 as of yesterday, up from 9,000 only two weeks ago. The number of people in critical care has reached 2,276, up from 1,831 two weeks ago. Mortality has risen sharply and now exceeds over 100 per day. Yesterday, the official total number of deaths by COVID-19 is 114,210 in France, 1,170,200 in Europe and 4,513,868 worldwide, though the real numbers are far higher.

Despite these alarming figures, Macron has refused to take any actions to contain the pandemic in France. No measures have been taken in departments where the contamination is very high, such as in Occitania. Behind the facade of vaccination and the “health pass,” it is the policy of “herd immunity” that is once again being pursued, as in the UK. On July 19, Prime Minister Boris Johnson lifted all lockdown measures on the occasion of what he cynically called “Freedom Day.”

In Spain, youth have been deliberately sacrificed, with incidence rates among this age group several times higher than the national average.

The irresponsible policy in Europe has resulted in many countries, such as Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and France, exceeding 200 cases per 100,000 people. For the whole of Europe, it is over 160.

In India, the fight against the coronavirus has been sabotaged from the outset by the Modi government. A study by the US-based Center for Global Development estimates that there were between 1.5 and 3.4 million excess deaths during the first wave of the pandemic, between April 2020 and March 2021. With the spread of the Delta variant between April and June of this year, between 1.4 and 2.4 million people died in three months, a death rate three times higher than normal. According to the report, “The actual deaths are probably in the millions, not the hundreds of thousands” reported by Indian authorities.

These results confirm that COVID-19-related deaths are grossly underestimated internationally, and that they are well over 10 million deaths, instead of the 4.51 million reported by official figures. Those responsible for this mass death are not to be found in India alone, but first and foremost in the heart of world capitalism, in the USA and in Europe. It is there that the priority of profits over human life has been decreed and that the refusal to conduct any international policy to fight the pandemic has been endorsed.

COVID-19 has killed 633,000 people in the USA and more than 1.1 million in Europe. The epidemic is in full recovery in the USA and in Europe. The indicators in many countries point to a strong resurgence of the virus, depending also on the progress of vaccinations. National governments are practicing a deliberate policy of herd immunity, leaving millions of young Europeans and Americans to be contaminated, including with severe illness and Long COVID, producing an inevitable rebound in the infection of older age groups, and the risk of creating even more dangerous variants.

Although the Delta variant is highly contagious, an aggressive policy of isolation and tracing would stop transmission as part of an internationally driven policy. The Chinese successfully blocked a Delta variant outbreak in May 2021 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, which stopped after infecting a total of 167 people over a 26-day period. Since then, China has faced a new and more serious series of cases. It has deployed millions of tests, contact tracing and isolation to block the spread of the virus.

At a recent international online meeting organised by the WSWS involving leading scientists from around the world, for example, Dr. Malgorzata Gasperowicz, a developmental biologist and researcher at the University of Calgary, gave a detailed presentation demonstrating that aggressive coordinated measures could have eliminated the pandemic within two months, had they been taken from the outset, and that even with the Delta variant, elimination of the virus could be achieved within months.

In France, Macron is responsible for tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, but he has received constant political support from the trade union apparatuses and the parties of the pseudo-left. This has allowed him to protect the interests of the financial elite over the lives of the population. This is part of a policy pursued by the ruling class throughout the European Union to impose a return to work and school and to let the virus spread in defiance of scientific recommendations. Yet explosive anger is building against the ruling class across Europe and internationally.

The repeated partial lockdowns and now “health pass,” including grossly ineffective measures, and the absence of a campaign of education for vaccination, has opened a space for the extreme right to cultivate support for its campaign against vaccination. But the far-right’s denunciations of the “health pass” are aimed at abandoning all health measures and assuming openly the policy of “herd immunity.”

The pseudo-left and a part of the trade union apparatus are now calling for support for this campaign by the extreme right. This must be rejected with contempt. It results in strengthening Macron, as he pursues his agenda of strengthening his police state regime and prepares new attacks on the social rights of the working class.

US health insurers begin charging co-pays and deductibles for COVID-19 patients

Esther Galen

Patients who have been hospitalized for COVID-19 but survive return home glad to be alive. But they are anguished by scenes of mass suffering, overworked hospital staff and a desperate struggle to survive. They will now have something else to deal with: even higher bills to pay.

Throughout 2020, co-pays and deductibles—the cost-sharing amounts usually charged for medical treatment and hospitalization—were waived by health insurance companies and some self-insuring employers for coronavirus patients. Those waivers for the most part have now been ended.

The Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly three-fourths of the largest private health plans are phasing out cost-sharing waivers, with most ending them at the end of August. Another 22 percent of plans are ending the waivers by the end of the year. Medicare waivers will continue until the end of the federally declared Public Health Emergency in October. Employers who fund their own insurance and did not charge enrollees for COVID treatment are also ending waivers.

Dr. Rafik Abdou and respiratory therapist Babu Paramban check on a COVID-19 patient at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, LA, Nov. 19, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File]

In the private health insurance system in the US, costs for medical services are “shared,” with policyholders paying a deductible, co-payment and coinsurance. For example, in 2021, the lowest-premium private insurance sold on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace had deductibles that could be as high as $8,550 for an individual and $17,100 for a family. That means a family with one of these high-deductible plans has to pay $17,100 before its insurance starts paying anything.

It is well known these high costs often lead to ill people delaying or forgoing treatment. With COVID, any delay could mean increasing the spread of the disease while infected people get sicker.

In addition to out-of-pocket expenses required by insurance companies, hospital charges are a nightmare. As debt.com explained: “There is no standard system that determines what a hospital charges for a particular service or procedure. Many factors figure into hospital pricing, including an individual’s health circumstances, the cost of lab tests, X-rays, surgical procedures, operating room and post-surgical costs, medications, and doctors’ and specialists’ fees.”

For most people, medical costs are more than they can afford. In 2018, 40 percent of Americans lacked sufficient savings to pay for a $400 emergency, according to federal data. A Blue Cross Blue Shield Association study found that total costs for treating patients hospitalized with COVID-19 are $22,500 to $45,000 on average. Patients could see bills, after insurance, as high as $13,500. If patients need treatment in the ICU, total costs average $56,250 to $112,500, with patients seeing bills after insurance as high $33,750.

While huge medical bills bankrupt many—60 to 65 percent of all bankruptcies are related to medical expenses—private health insurance companies have seen profits soar during COVID.

Health insurance companies waived cost-sharing payments because it was in their financial interests to do so. Federal regulations imposed as part of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) require that they spend at least 80 percent of premiums they collect on medical treatment, and no more than 20 percent on administrative costs.

When COVID began, many people postponed elective medical procedures and doctor visits. Insurance companies were still collecting premiums, but no longer paying for these postponed services. Their profits soared, but their 80-20 ratios were thrown off since the administrative costs (including executive salaries) were not reduced, even as medical payments declined.

Many insurers decided to meet the spending requirement by covering the deductibles and co-payments for coronavirus patients. It was also good public relations. As Health Alliance Plan CEO Dr. Michael Genord claimed in a March 2020 PR video about the insurer’s efforts during COVID: “Our top priority at HAP is the health, safety and well-being of our employees and members.”

The very sharp decline in the use of medical services meant billions more in profits for insurance companies in 2020, which continues in 2021:

• UnitedHealth Group reported $4.9 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2021, compared to $3.4 billion in the same period in 2020—a 44 percent increase.

• Anthem reported $1.67 billion in profits in the first three months of 2021, a 9.5 percent increase from the same period last year.

• Humana’s net income was $828 million in the first quarter of 2021, a 75 percent increase from the same period in 2020.

• CVS Health, the drugstore chain that owns the Aetna health insurance provider, reported $2.2 billion in profits, up from $2 billion in the same quarter in 2020.

Now, however, with false but widely publicized claims that the pandemic is winding down, elective procedures have resumed, and the insurance companies no longer need to continue the cost-sharing waivers for COVID-19 patients to sustain their 80-20 ratios. Co-pays and deductibles are back with a vengeance.

In an email to Modern Healthcare, a publication for health care leaders, Kaiser Permanente stated: “With the economy continuing to improve and vaccinations readily available, treatment is currently covered subject to the standard cost-share provisions of the member’s health plan.”

As Modern Healthcare put it: “Most private insurers are no longer waiving cost sharing for COVID-19 treatment due to the widespread availability of vaccines rendering the illness largely preventable.”

How are health insurance companies justifying placing this tremendous financial burden on people during a mass health catastrophe? If you get coronavirus now, they claim, it’s your own fault, because you could have been vaccinated.

Singing a different tune than in 2020, Dr. Genord, the Health Alliance Plan CEO, recently told Bridge magazine, “There’s been a lot of effort for people to take personal responsibility for prevention of COVID that we didn’t have before.” COVID will produce a surge in hospitalizations in the future, just as flu does each season, he stated. But he noted that “personal responsibility” plays a role in blunting the peaks.

Melissa Riba, director of research and evaluation at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Health and Research Transformation, told Bridge that resuming patient costs associated with COVID treatment is another step in “moving away from the incentives to more of the penalties associated with making a choice to be nonvaccinated.”

The 35 million students in elementary school don’t have the option to get vaccinated. Even though there is no vaccine for children younger than 12, families are being given no choice about sending their children into crowded schools where COVID is spreading. A similar situation confronts people who live in areas where there are government bans on mask-wearing. Nor have people with breakthrough infections after having been vaccinated made a “choice” to get ill.

US evacuation from Afghanistan nears its end

Patrick Martin

In the last two days of their occupation of the Kabul Airport, US military forces have been reduced largely to evacuating themselves, Pentagon officials have acknowledged. Some 2,000 of the nearly 6,000 US troops deployed there have now left, and no more Afghan civilians are being allowed into the airport to board flights.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told Fox News Sunday that there were about 300 more American civilians still awaiting evacuation, and he said there would be no problem bringing them out in the huge C-17 transport jets that are conducting the lion’s share of the evacuations.

A single C-17 could easily accommodate all the remaining Americans, and still have room for military equipment that is now being taken out. One well-publicized flight last week crammed in 640 Afghan adults and 183 children, for a total of 823 people.

At Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, President Joe Biden watches as a Navy carry team moves a transfer case containing the remains of a Navy Corpsman who was killed during an attack on the Kabul Airport. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

The evacuation is in its final stages, with France and Britain announcing that all their citizens and soldiers have left Afghanistan. The US military command told both American and Afghan citizens to stay away from the gates to the airport because of the likelihood of a terrorist attack in the next 24 to 36 hours.

Thursday’s attack, which killed 13 American soldiers and at least 160 Afghan civilians, has had at least one effect. Despite the bluster by the White House and Pentagon about continuing their mission “undeterred,” evacuations have dwindled to a crawl since the bombing. While 13,400 flew out on Thursday, before and after the bombing, that number fell to 6,800 on Friday and only 2,900 on Saturday. About 1,400 civilians of all nationalities remain at the airport for screening and evacuation.

There were unconfirmed reports Sunday, appearing on the social media site Kabul Lovers, that many of the Afghans killed in Thursday’s terror attack were actually shot when American troops fired into the crowded square outside the gate in order to clear it after the bombing.

The television networks and daily newspapers in the imperialist countries have attributed all the Afghan deaths in the atrocity to the bomber and to confederates who opened fire on the crowd. All were acting at the behest of ISIS-K (Islamic State-Khorasan), according to a statement issued by someone claiming to speak for group, whose origins and very existence are quite murky.

Taliban officials have not suggested that US troops were responsible for any of the deaths Thursday, confining themselves to a pledge to investigate the circumstance of the attack thoroughly.

The likelihood that American troops fired on the crowd of Afghans they were supposedly in Kabul to rescue is reinforced by the events of Sunday. US forces carried out a drone missile strike on an alleged ISIS-K vehicle in Kabul “eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International airport,” according a spokesman for the US Central Command.

Reporters on the ground in Kabul said that an entire family of nine people, including six children, was wiped out in this drone attack, only the latest example of indiscriminate warfare by American imperialism against the people of Afghanistan.

The drone missile strike in Kabul was the second attack inside Afghanistan acknowledged by US commanders since the Thursday bombing at the airport. On Friday, a drone missile struck a vehicle in Jalalabad, the eastern city that is the gateway between Afghanistan and Pakistan. US officials said two ISIS-K leaders were killed, described as a “planner” and a “facilitator,” although they conceded that neither had anything directly to do with the Kabul bombing.

Meanwhile intensive diplomatic activity continues between the US government, its major allies, and the Taliban. A statement issued Sunday by 98 countries, including the US, Britain and France, announced an agreement with the Taliban to continue permitting Afghan citizens to leave the country without hindrance after August 31, when last US troops are set to leave and the Kabul airport is to revert to Afghan control.

“We have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorization from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country,” the statement said.

“We will continue issuing travel documentation to designated Afghans, and we have the clear expectation of and commitment from the Taliban that they can travel to our respective countries. We note the public statements of the Taliban confirming this understanding.”

The statement only underscores the extent of the defeat suffered by the major imperialist powers in Afghanistan. The Islamist militia which they ousted from power 20 years ago, and which reputedly held only the periphery of the country six months ago, has now consolidated its grip on every major city, including Kabul, with its population of five million.

Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, a Taliban leader and deputy to Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, issued a video message Saturday urging Afghans to let the US complete its withdrawal and promising that the new regime will not prevent Afghan citizens from leaving the country after August 31 if they wish to do so, including by using the Kabul airport.

The United Nations Security Council is to meet on Monday, and will reportedly take up a joint French-British resolution seeking the establishment of UN-supervised zone in Kabul where Afghan citizens opposed to the new regime can find shelter and make arrangements to leave the country. It is nearly certain that the Taliban would oppose such an effort as a violation of the national sovereignty of Afghanistan.

While the Taliban has offered to allow the United States to maintain a diplomatic mission in the Afghan capital, the Biden administration appears to have rejected that, although a State Department spokesman said Friday that the administration was “actively discussing” the request. All US diplomats in Kabul are at the airport and are expected to leave by Tuesday along with the remaining US troops.

US school reopenings set to infect tens of millions of children with COVID-19

Evan Blake

The COVID-19 pandemic has once again spiraled out of control across the United States, with 190,536 new cases and 1,304 new deaths officially tracked on Friday, the highest figures since January and March, respectively. As the highly transmissible Delta variant has ripped through workplaces, schools, and homes across the country, there are now more than 100,000 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the US, with nearly 25,000 in an intensive care unit (ICU).

Under these conditions, the drive to fully reopen all of the country’s schools and send over 40 million unvaccinated children into tightly-packed and poorly-ventilated classrooms takes on a sociopathic character. It is already clear that this policy, pushed by the entire political establishment, the corporate media, and the teachers’ unions, is disastrous and will lead to the infection and potential long-term suffering of millions of innocent children.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), more than 180,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 from August 12 to August 19, accounting for more than 20 percent of all new COVID-19 cases that week and a more than 20-fold increase over the same figure in early June. It is widely understood in the scientific community that this figure will skyrocket in the coming weeks, even in areas where mitigations such as mask-wearing and testing are more prevalent.

Students in class (Credit: pixy.org)

Data on infections in schools is not compiled nationally, with local and state agencies doing so in a haphazard manner or not at all. According to a compilation of local news reports from 19 states conducted by The Hill, over 90,000 children have already had to quarantine or isolate at home due to infection or possible exposure to the virus since the start of the fall semester. In addition, over 60,000 educators and school staff are similarly in isolation or quarantine.

The situation is most dire in the South, which has the lowest vaccination rates in the US and where many large school districts have already reopened without mask mandates. In Atlanta, Georgia, more than 23,000 students and staff have gone into quarantine in the first few weeks of the school year. In Mississippi, at least 65,500 K-12 students have already had to quarantine due to infection or exposure, according to the Mississippi Free Press.

Tragically, the surge in child infections is leading to a corresponding surge in deaths, with the AAP reporting that a record 24 children died during the week ending August 19. On August 25, an unnamed child under 5 years old died from COVID-19 in Mississippi. This follows the death of 13-year-old M’Kayla Robinson on August 14 and an unnamed teenager in late July, meaning that three children died across the state in just one month, as many as in the previous 17 months of the pandemic.

In nearby Oklahoma, 13-year-old Clarence Johnson died from COVID-19 on August 19, days before he was set to begin eighth grade. The Oklahoma City Public Schools’ Native American Student Services department wrote on Facebook that Clarence, who was Comanche and Kiowa, was beloved by teachers and staff for his “beautiful soul and unforgettable smile.”

Over 640,000 schoolchildren in Oklahoma remain unvaccinated and at risk of contracting the virus, with the state reporting a three-day average of 64 pediatric hospitalizations for COVID-19. It is one of eight Republican-led states that have enacted bans on mask mandates or allowed parents to opt out for their children, with the others being, Arizona, Florida, Iowa, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.

Throughout the US, child hospitalizations have reached record numbers, with over 2,000 pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations. In the South in particular, pediatric ICUs are at or near capacity with record numbers of severely ill children.

In Louisiana, Children’s Hospital New Orleans has been inundated with child patients for weeks. “I have never seen our faculty look so tired or sad,” Dr. Adele K. Evans, who leads the hospital’s tracheostomy team, told the New York Times. Roughly 60 staff members at the hospital were in quarantine last week. With Category 4 Hurricane Ida making landfall Sunday, this dire situation will only become worse in the coming days.

In Democrat-led states, including New York, California, and Michigan, COVID-19 cases have also risen dramatically in recent weeks and are expected to further surge as schools reopen.

New York City, the largest school district in the US with over 1.1 million students, is set to reopen on September 13 with no remote learning option provided to parents, despite the fact that the parents of over 350,000 students opted to keep their children learning safely from home throughout the 2020-21 school year. At least 14,904 students and 12,690 staff have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past year according to the city’s inadequate testing program, figures set to surge as students are packed into the city’s classrooms and the Delta variant has already increased statewide cases more than 10-fold in the past two months.

In Michigan, daily case rates have risen more than 1,000 percent and hospitalizations are up 175 percent since Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer eliminated all remaining statewide restrictions on June 22. Hundreds of thousands of children are returning to fully in-person school in the coming days, with numerous districts across the state refusing to implement mask mandates.

Across California, thousands of students and staff have tested positive for COVID-19 and tens of thousands have gone into quarantine within days of schools reopening. In Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second-largest district in the US with over 600,000 students, baseline testing of students and staff from August 2 to August 15 found that 3,255 students and 399 staff started the school year testing positive for COVID-19.

Beyond the growing body of real-world data proving that schools cannot reopen at present without causing a massive surge in infections, new scientific studies are underscoring this basic reality.

A study published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Friday determined that one elementary school teacher in Marin County, California, infected half of her students when she briefly took off her mask during a read-aloud of a story. The outbreak of Delta variant cases occurred on May 23, before the teacher was vaccinated, and led to further infections in another classroom at the school as well as at some students’ homes.

The conditions which existed at the school in May were those supposed to keep children safe, according to proponents of school reopenings with “mitigations”: masks were required indoors, desks were spaced six feet apart, classrooms contained portable air filters, doors and windows were kept open, and all students were kept socially distant.

Tracy Lam-Hine, an epidemiologist for the county, told the Washington Post, “The mask was off only momentarily, not an entire day or hours. We want to make the point that this is not the teacher’s fault—everyone lets their guard down—but the thing is Delta takes advantage of slippage from any kind of protective measures.”

Indeed, the fact that this huge outbreak took place in Marin, one of the wealthiest counties in the US, and under such “ideal” conditions, underscores that even the most stringent mitigation measures will not protect unvaccinated children and adults from the Delta variant. The reality in the vast majority of schools that serve students from working class families—poor ventilation, overcrowding, the use of lower-quality masks—is far more conducive to the spread of the virus.

Separately, a preprint of a scientific paper published this month estimated that in elementary schools with no masking or testing mandated, roughly 91 percent of students could become infected with COVID-19 within three months of the start of the school year, with most students infected by the end of the first month due to an exponential growth in cases.

This staggering rate of infection is reduced to roughly 49 percent of all students in schools which mandate masks but not testing, and 22 percent of students in schools with masking and testing, with infections still growing steadily in a linear fashion. Figures for middle and high schools were found to be slightly lower for each category due to the vaccination of some students. In effect, this study acknowledges that even in schools with testing and masking, cases will continually rise.

For masses of parents and educators, the school reopening drive is clearly reckless and should not continue. But for the entire political establishment, corporate media, teachers unions and official scientists, all of whom are subservient to the needs of Wall Street, schools must reopen in order to send parents back to work producing corporate profits.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci stated callously, “You're going to see more children infected. And quantitatively, since more children are infected, you're going to see more children getting hospitalized, unfortunately and that’s what we’re seeing.” He went on to promote masking in schools as a means to protect children.

At a White House briefing Friday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky stated, “I want to strongly appeal to those districts that have not implemented prevention strategies, and encourage them to do the right thing to protect the children under their care. We know these multilayered mitigation strategies work.”

In contrast to the claims of Fauci and Walensky, the reality in schools and the studies cited above demonstrates the bankruptcy of any “mitigation” strategy that accepts school reopenings. Rather, in order to stop the spread of COVID-19 and ultimately eradicate the virus, it is critical to close all schools and nonessential workplaces and cut off the chain of transmission.

Japanese and Taiwanese ruling parties hold talks aimed at Beijing

Ben McGrath

Representatives from the ruling parties of Japan and Taiwan held highly provocative bilateral talks on Friday for the first time. The purpose of the online meeting was to further integrate Taiwan into Tokyo’s, and by extension Washington’s, war plans against Beijing and will only further escalate tensions in the region.

Masahisa Sato and Taku Otsuka in charge of foreign affairs and defense issues respectively for Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) took part with Lo Chih-cheng and Tsai Shih-ying, who both hold leading positions for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on the foreign affairs and defense committees of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan.

The discussion was aimed squarely at Beijing. In highly inflammatory remarks afterward, both sides referred to Taiwan as a country, thus calling into question the “One China” policy, which recognizes Taiwan as part of China. In establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing and not Taipei, Washington and Tokyo both tacitly accepted the former as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan.

A maritime engagement in the East China Sea on Aug. 25, 2021involving the passage of a U.S. Navy warship and Coast Guard cutter through the waters between China and Taiwan.(U.S. Coast Guard via AP)

Lo bluntly stated, “Taiwan, as a sovereign and independent country, has the right to promote bilateral and multilateral ties with all countries.” Such remarks risk the outbreak of war. Beijing has repeatedly stated that it will use military force to reunite with Taiwan if the island ever declares formal independence. Beijing rightly fears that Taiwan will be turned into a military base aimed at the mainland if Taiwan is able to formally align with the United States.

Beginning under President Trump and continued by Biden, Washington has pushed for high-level contacts with officials in Taipei in order to pressure Beijing while encouraging Tokyo to do the same. Lo acknowledged this, saying, “From a certain perspective, today’s talks represent the efforts of both governments to raise relations.”

The talks were no ordinary meeting, as the Taiwanese representatives explained to the Financial Times beforehand. “Given that all four participants are members of parliament, it is a bit like a track one dialogue. Although we will be attending in our capacity as party officials, we all have direct influence on policy.”

While the exact details were not made known, Tsai confirmed that the two sides had discussed military measures, including possible cooperation between the Japanese and Taiwanese coast guards. Other key issues included plans by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to invest in Japan. Taiwan is a major exporter of semiconductors which are considered vital economically and militarily.

Lo also hinted at possible future trilateral collaboration with the United States, but only vaguely mentioned “Japan, Taiwan, and a third place” without elaborating.

China denounced the talks on Friday. During a press briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian stated, “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory. China firmly opposes all forms of official interactions between Taiwan and countries having diplomatic ties with China.” He urged Tokyo to be “prudent with its words and actions,” adding that Beijing had lodged “solemn representations” with Japan regarding the talks.

Justifying the talks, Tokyo claimed that whatever happens on Taiwan has a direct influence on Japan, which opens the door for Japanese military intervention. In February, Sato announced the creation of a “Taiwan project team” to explore deeper relations with Taipei and called for a law similar to that of Washington’s 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, under which the US does not recognize Taipei but provides military support. As such, the initiative for Friday’s talks came from Japan.

Tokyo has increasingly called into question the “One China” policy this year, both unilaterally and in diplomatic statements. Notably, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and President Biden directly referenced Taiwan in a joint statement while meeting in April, the first time leaders from the two countries had done so since 1969.

Japanese imperialism is deeply connected to Taiwan, having brutally ruled the island from 1895 to 1945. Furthermore, Taipei has covered up this history as it aligns with imperialism and the war plans against the mainland.

For more than three decades, Taiwan has pursued a policy of rejecting its shared history with the rest of China and promoting a separate Taiwanese history that includes emphasizing the supposed benefits of Japanese rule. While driving a wedge between Taiwanese workers and youth and their counterparts on the Chinese mainland, Taipei has hoped to undermine Beijing diplomatically by winning support from Tokyo.

This began under President Lee Teng-hui, who held office from 1988 to 2000, as the decades-long period of martial law, known as the White Terror, was coming to an end. This was not a coincidence, but a shift away from the use of force and terror to a different means of controlling the population and instilling anti-mainland sentiment.

Lee, who died in 2020, came from a family of Japanese collaborators, with his father serving with the Japanese police. Lee openly denied or downplayed atrocities committed by Japanese imperialism before and during World War II, such as the Nanjing massacre and the exploitation of so-called comfort women. While a member of the Kuomintang (KMT) until 2001 when he nominally became an independent, Lee’s policies were embraced and continued by the DPP.

The claim that Japanese imperialism was beneficial, or at least not as bad as conditions in mainland China today, flies in the face of reality. Japan initially ripped Taiwan away from China after more than two hundred years of Chinese rule, following the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Japan then engaged in a bloody five-month suppression campaign against those opposed to colonization, killing approximately 14,000 people, with minimal losses for the Japanese army.

To justify its rule, Tokyo promoted the pseudo-scientific claim that the Taiwanese were biologically different from the Japanese and therefore inferior. It cultivated a layer of collaborators to assist in the repression of the Taiwanese working class and peasantry while forcing people to adopt Japanese names, language and culture in order to prepare them for war. Japan forcibly conscripted Taiwanese workers en masse for slave labor and coerced approximately 2,000 women, many of them minors, into becoming comfort women, a euphuism for sex slaves.

The growing relationship between Taipei and Tokyo today is not aimed at the promotion of democracy as the two sides claim. While the Taiwanese bourgeoisie seeks to enrich itself by joining with the world’s two largest imperialist powers, Tokyo and Washington intend to subjugate China to their own predatory interests and offset their own relative economic declines, even at the risk of a catastrophic war.