FDA advisory panel deals a blow to Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine booster plans

Benjamin Mateus

On Friday, September 17, the scientific advisory committee of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted 16-2 against Pfizer’s application to offer a third dose of their COVID-19 vaccine to all eligible recipients, 16 years old or over. The decision came only three days before the scheduled launch of Biden’s announced plan to begin offering COVID-19 vaccine boosters to all those previously vaccinated.

The advisory panel reconvened in the afternoon to vote on a revised booster question. It unanimously supported offering a third jab to those 65 years or older or at higher risk of developing severe COVID-19. Though not taking a formal vote, the panel was polled on which groups might be considered for a booster. All agreed that health care workers or those at high risk of occupational exposure should be given such considerations. The panel’s decision does not bind the FDA, but it usually follows the recommendations.

The advisory panel did not discuss how high-risk occupational exposures would be defined, given the high rates of community transmission. Many workers in factories, teachers at schools, and those working gig jobs have told the WSWS that there have been widespread COVID-19 infections in their workplaces.

Figure 1A, 1B, and 1C Case hospitalization, Case fatality, and Death hospitalization ratio between unvaccinated and vaccinated.

The scientists and public health experts on the advisory panel appear to have been following the data they were presented, which demonstrated a substantial benefit from booster shots, particularly for the elderly and those at higher health risk. They clearly were not simply following orders from the White House, since their recommendation disrupted the administration’s planned September 20 booster shot launch.

That said, neither the panel nor the FDA considered the only real strategy for ending the pandemic, which is to implement a society-wide program of elimination and eradication. Booster shots are actually an indication of the failure of the Biden administration’s claims that vaccination in and of itself would be enough to halt the pandemic. Instead, they buy a bit more time for those most vulnerable, while the coronavirus continues its rampage and is given more leeway to mutate and potentially evolve into even more dangerous variants.

Evidence has been mounting that the immunity generated from the vaccines, both Pfizer and Moderna, begins to wane over time, leading to a higher risk among the vaccinated to developing breakthrough infections and severe disease. Most of this data comes out of Israel, where after a high rate of vaccination in the first months of 2021, the complete abandonment of public health measures has led to a resurgence of infections with the highly transmissible Delta variant, for which the booster campaign has become a stop-gap measure. There has been an appreciable decline in infection rates and disease severity among elderly people in Israel who have received the third shot.

The observation study coming out of Israel demonstrated a significant decline in infections among those receiving a booster, compared to vaccinated groups within several days, reaching a 10-fold factor in the reduction. The third dose also reduced the chance of severe COVID-19 illness by 95 percent compared to those only fully vaccinated.

Table 2 from NEJM Primary outcomes of confirmed infection and severe illness

The Biden administration’s pledge to begin offering coronavirus booster shots to the eligible population by the week of September 20 was first announced in mid-August. On August 25, Pfizer submitted a supplement to their Biologics License Application (BLA) seeking approval to offer a booster dose six months after completing the primary two-shot series. It can only be assumed that these events were coordinated.

Soon after, two senior scientists, Dr. Philip Krause and Dr. Marion Gruber, announced their resignation from the FDA in opposition to a policy of giving boosters to all those previously vaccinated against COVID-19, rather than restricting them to the elderly and vulnerable.

In a critique published in The Lancet, they objected to the claim that enhancing immunity in all vaccinated people will reduce the number of COVID-19 cases, writing, “Most of the observational studies on which this conclusion is based are, however, preliminary and difficult to interpret precisely due to potential confounding and selective reporting. … Current evidence does not appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high … the limited supply of these vaccines will save the most lives if made available to people who are at appreciable risk of serious disease and have not yet received any vaccine.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently published a series of studies evaluating the impact of vaccination on the population. Vaccine effectiveness in preventing COVID-19 hospitalization was 86 percent but much lower among those 75 years old or higher (at 76 percent). The estimates were similar between Pfizer and Moderna.

Another study found that though vaccination appeared to confer a more than 10 times decreased risk of COVID-19-related deaths during the period from April 4 to July 17, when the study period was split in halves, COVID-19 deaths among the small fraction of vaccinated individuals who suffered breakthrough symptomatic infections rose from eight percent in the earlier half to 16 percent in the latter half, essentially doubling. The implication here is that not only Delta’s greater ferocity but also declining immunity led to these differences.

In a Tweet released by Dr. Ahmed Elbanna, which epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding highlighted, noted that once vaccinated individuals suffered breakthrough symptomatic infections, the case hospitalization ratio or case fatality ratio were not hugely different to the unvaccinated group.

Factor reduction in confirmed infection rates after booster vaccine - NEJM

This suggests that, contrary to much published commentary, the main advantage conferred by vaccination, as the efficacy begins to wane after six months or more, is that it still greatly reduces the likelihood of contracting infection at all, or of that infection becoming symptomatic. If, however, vaccinated individuals become infected and begin to show symptoms, they suffer morbidities and mortalities similar to those of the unvaccinated.

Dr. Feigl-Ding also showed that several months after being fully vaccinated, antibody titers (a type of blood test that determines the presence and level [titer] of antibodies in the blood) fall from a peak geometric mean of 762 to only 136. Once the booster shots were administered, the titers climbed to 1,419 by day seven and nearly 2,400 after a month. Given that a significant number of the population are now reaching the six-month window from completing their vaccinations, these findings have considerable implications in the Biden’s vaccine-only response to the pandemic.

As Dr. Malgorzata Gasperowicz, a developmental biologist and activist for Zero COVID in Canada, recently said in an interview with the WSWS, “There is this dangerous idea being perpetuated by those relying on vaccines when they say they want to decouple infections from disease severity. These decision-makers suggest that it is acceptable to let the virus spread because it won’t harm us if we are vaccinated.”

She went on to add that though the current vaccines are helping avert severe disease, if the virus continues to evolve, the new variants can develop sufficient immune-escape capabilities that the next time a vaccinated person becomes infected with these new strains, the derived immunity from vaccines may not protect them.

Dr. Malgorzata concluded, “The Delta variant has been the most dangerous strain of the coronavirus. … I was afraid it would be more difficult to bend the Delta curve because it was more transmissible than the Alpha or the original variant. Now, however, we have seen exponential declines [as noted in New Zealand] are possible, and they would be possible everywhere. But taking that decision to eradicate is the most important. And once we take it, in only several weeks, we would stop all community transmission. And if in every region community transmission is contained, then we won’t have a big problem anymore.”

Ford to shut down manufacturing operations in India, slash over 4,000 jobs

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Ford India announced on September 9 that it will end its car manufacturing operations in India, shutting down two plants in Maraimalainagar, a suburb of Chennai in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and Sanand, in the western state of Gujarat. As a result, over 4,000 full-time Ford workers will lose their jobs. In addition, several thousand more trainees, contract workers, canteen and groundskeeping workers will lose their jobs, along with tens of thousands of employees at supplier plants and car dealerships.

In a statement, Ford spokesperson Sinead Phipps said the company will stop making vehicles for sale in India, which include the Figo, Aspire, Freestyle, EcoSport and Endeavour, right away. Once supplies of those vehicles are sold, there will be no more sold in India. Manufacturing of some of those vehicles will continue for export at the Sanand plant until it closes at the end of 2021, and from Chennai, where the vehicle and engine plants are set to close by the middle of 2022.

The impact of Ford’s exit will extend to hundreds of car dealerships, which employ 40,000 people across the country, ancillary industries, MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) that have supported the plants up until now. Chennai, known as the “Detroit of India,” will be hit particularly hard.

Workers at Ford's Chennai plant (Source: Ford Authority)

As a result of the Ford closures, KE Raghunathan, Convener of Consortium of Indian Associations (CIA), said, “over 4,000 SMEs (small and medium size enterprises) will be closing.” He added, “Tamil Nadu is the worst hit with this decision as it is known as a base for many auto giants. The whole infrastructure created for vehicle exports and the logistics sector will be hit too.” Raghunathan warned that around 10,000-15,000 other workers could be left jobless by the impact on SMEs.

While slashing thousands of hourly jobs, Ford plans to “significantly expand” the number of software engineers, IT specialists, research, analytics, engineering and finance employees in India. The country is already home to the Ford’s second largest salaried workforce after North America and it hopes to expand the use of lower-paid skilled workers to support its global business operations.

Ford is the latest US vehicle maker after General Motors (GM) and the American motorcycle company Harley-Davidson to stop manufacturing in the world’s fourth largest automobile market over the last five years. In other words, tens of thousands of jobs were destroyed in India even before this latest round of bloodletting.

Ford was one of the first global carmakers to enter the Indian market after the initiation of pro-investor economic reforms in 1991. Announcing their decision to pull out, corporate executives said, “despite investing significantly in India, Ford has accumulated more than $2 billion of operating losses over the past 10 years and demand for new vehicles has been much weaker than forecast.”

Ford is a distant ninth, with less than two percent of the market share in India. Japan-based Maruti Suzuki is first, with 47.8 percent, followed by Hyundai and Tata with 17.4 percent and 8.2 percent respectively.

As a result of the company’s “Ford Plus” business plan, CEO Jim Farley said, “We are taking difficult but necessary actions to deliver a sustainably profitable business longer-term and allocate our capital to grow and create value in the right areas.”

This statement makes clear that shutting down operations in India is a part of massive restructuring by Ford and other global automakers driven by the ruthless struggle to cut costs, attract investors and dominate emerging electric vehicle markets. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this dog-eat-dog battle with analysts predicting a new wave of mergers and acquisitions and further monopolization of the industry. In response, auto executives have escalated attacks on wages, jobs and working conditions.

In January, Ford announced plans to close operations in Brazil, closing three plants and wiping more than 5,000 auto jobs in the Latin American country. In March 2019, the company announced plans to cut 25,000 jobs worldwide, including 12,000 in Europe and more than 5,000 in Germany alone.

Workers losing their long-term jobs amid the COVID-19 pandemic where shocked and angered over Ford’s surprise announcement. “We never had a clue about the plant shutting down,” Padmanabhan, 46, a worker who worked half his life at Ford’s Tamil Nadu plant, told The News Minute.com on September 10. “It was one-way communication. On Thursday (September 9) afternoon, we were called in for a meeting where Ford India MD [Managing Director] Anurag Mehrotra informed us that the plant is closing. This really was shocking and it’s a matter of our livelihoods.”

Workers are uncertain where they will find other jobs since the pandemic has shrunk the auto market and there is already a high demand for jobs. “Most automakers such as Hyundai and Nissan do not employ permanent staff,” 43-year-old Murugan, who has worked in the factory for 21 years, told local news stations.

While the unions at Ford reportedly blamed Prime Minister Modi’s “Make in India” campaign for the company’s decision to leave India, the fact is the unions have supported every measure to offer up Indian workers as a source of cheap labor for the multinational corporations. This includes the isolation of the courageous Maruti Suzuki workers, whose leaders were framed up in 2017 and thrown in jail for organizing opposition to sweatshop conditions and the company union at the Maruti Suzuki auto manufacturing plant in Manesar, just outside Delhi.

If the Ford unions are now criticizing Modi’s reactionary policies, it is only from the standpoint that he has not done enough to attract foreign capital. The nationalist unions want the government to hand over even more tax incentives and guarantees of super-profits, even though the federal and state governments have already allowed to those companies to do whatever they want.

On September 11, Chennai Ford Employees’ Union (CFEU) went to meet Rural Industries Minister TM Anbarasan and begged the state government to intervene in the crisis. Union officials appealed to the minister to assure the workers that their jobs would be protected. This is worse than useless. The Tamil-nationalist Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led state government, like its predecessor and rival Tamil-nationalist All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), is fully committed to defend profit interests of companies against workers.

On September 13, a CFEU delegation led by General Secretary P. Senthil Kumar met with the Ford management to plea with management to “reconsider its decision” or “to ensure job security in case of sale of the factory to a third party,” BusinessLine reported. A union leader acknowledged that Ford would not absorb workers in its remaining Indian facilities, saying, “It would be impossible for Ford to redeploy all people in other operations such as engineering and IT services.”

After two rounds of talks with the senior management at Ford, the company made it clear it would not back down on its decision to end car manufacturing operation in India. “The talks have failed,” Kumar told The Hindu on September 15. “Management officials said they had explored and evaluated all options before arriving at this decision.”

The unions are opposed to any mobilization of autoworkers throughout the country and internationally because they do not want to do anything that might frighten off the multinational corporations. Instead, the CFEU is now appealing to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin .

Stalin was elected in April due to mass revulsion with the AIADMK and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose criminal “herd immunity” policies has led to at least 445,000 COVID-19 deaths, with many more not counted.

Stalin’s DMK, which was in an electoral coalition with the Stalinist Communist Party (CPI), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) and various caste-based parties, defends the property and wealth of the country’s billionaires just as loyally as the BJP and AIADMK. After feigning support for the victims of the pandemic, Stalin kept the manufacturing operations of the multinationals open even as the deadly virus swept through Tamil Nadu.

There is growing frustration and anger among Ford workers. On September 14, workers staged a protest in front of the factory at the Ford India headquarters in Maraimalai Nagar, which the union sought to channel into an impotent appeal to the Tamil Nadu government.

Chief Minister Stalin, Industrial Minister Thangam Thennarasu and senior government officials have reportedly held meetings to decide on a “further course of action.” Whatever comes out of such a meeting will only be to the detriment of the workers, including seeking to attract another buyer who will insist on even greater tax abatements and concessions from workers.

N. Muruganandam, the principal secretary for industries in Tamil Nadu, whose job description is to “promote investments and industrialization” in the state, told Business Standard, “Talks are on between Ford and another automobile maker and some other companies too. The state government will facilitate the smooth handover of the land if they reach a deal.”

As fall begins in Northern Hemisphere, school reopenings fuel global spread of COVID-19

Evan Blake

As fall begins in the Northern Hemisphere and schools have fully reopened throughout the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has reached a critical turning point.

At present, the global average of daily new cases stands at roughly 515,000, while an average of 8,336 people are dying from COVID-19 each day worldwide. These figures have decreased slightly in recent weeks, but given the inadequate testing in almost every country, the real figures are much higher. A survey of excess deaths from The Economist notes that while the official global death toll now stands at 4.7 million, the real figure is likely more than three times as high at 15.6 million deaths.

Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people (source: Our World In Data)

With only 31.4 percent of the world population fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the vast majority in the wealthiest countries, billions of people remain at risk of infection globally. Furthermore, the uninhibited spread of the virus creates the conditions for the evolution of more infectious and vaccine-resistant variants. On Monday, there were reports of 19 cases in the UK of the more transmissible Delta variant with an E484K mutation associated with greater resistance to vaccines. There have been 99 cases of Delta + E484K sequenced worldwide, including 25 in the United States, 22 in Denmark, 21 in Turkey, six in Italy, and three in Germany.

Most of the roughly 1.5 billion children who switched to remote learning at the start of the pandemic have now returned for fully in-person learning, as capitalist governments worldwide have pursued this policy. The vast majority of these children have not been vaccinated and constitute a growing percentage of new COVID-19 cases worldwide. They have become the primary vector for transmitting the virus to their families and communities, and experts have warned that the full reopening of schools will cause a major surge of the pandemic in the coming months.

The fundamental aim of reopening schools has always been to compel parents to return to unsafe workplaces in order to boost corporate profits and sustain the perpetual rise of the stock market. This only furthers the spread of COVID-19, with large factories often the second leading source of outbreaks after schools and colleges.

The dominant pandemic strategy worldwide remains “herd immunity,” based on letting the virus rip through the population regardless of the levels of infections and deaths. This strategy is sharply expressed in the policy of school reopenings, which exposes millions of children to the virus, with unknown long-term consequences.

While various politicians and trade union officials claim that limited mitigation measures such as mask wearing can make schools safe, the real conditions in overcrowded and poorly ventilated schools expose this as a fraud.

The only viable strategy towards the pandemic is one which aims at the global eradication of COVID-19, to be achieved through mass vaccinations and the universal deployment of all public health measures available, until new cases are brought to zero and the virus eliminated in ever-wider geographic regions. In opposition to this strategy, the ruling elites everywhere are pursuing “herd immunity,” either openly or under the cover of “mitigations.”

In Latin America, which accounts for roughly 8 percent of the world population but one-third of global deaths from COVID-19, schools have reopened throughout the continent. The direst situation is in Brazil, where cases among children have soared as schools fully reopened nationwide. Brazil has the highest number of child deaths from COVID-19 of any country, with 1,581 young people aged 10 to 19 succumbing to the virus in the first half of 2021, and another 1,187 children under the age of 10 dying from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

Across Europe, school reopenings are expected to produce a catastrophic surge of the pandemic in the coming weeks. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently warned at the end of August that another 236,000 people could die from COVID-19 in Europe by December 1. In France, in the last week of August there were 20,200 cases recorded among children aged 0-19, more than five times the same figure a year ago. In the UK, all mitigation measures have been scrapped and COVID-19 is ripping through schools, with massive surges taking place in Scotland and forecast to hit England in the coming weeks. Cases are also steadily rising in Germany, where schools have reopened, causing outbreaks across the country.

In Africa, official cases and deaths are on the decline, but testing is limited throughout the continent. The Economist estimates that excess deaths are at the highest multiple of official deaths in Africa, with roughly 1.86 million excess deaths, or over nine times the official death toll. At present, only 50 million Africans, or 3.6 percent of the total population, have been fully vaccinated, with the continent facing a 500 million-dose shortage this year. As schools and workplaces fully reopen throughout Africa, COVID-19 will silently spread throughout the population in the coming weeks.

Share of the population fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (source: Our World In Data)

In Asia, official cases and deaths are also declining, but daily excess deaths stand at 20,300, nearly seven times the official figure and by far the highest of any continent in absolute terms. Significantly, major surges are underway in Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, all of which had previously eliminated COVID-19 but after lifting travel restrictions and public health measures became centers for transmission. China, which has maintained the elimination strategy, has had to severely restrict international travel and mobilize vast resources to contain repeated outbreaks of the Delta variant brought into the country.

In Australia, which had also previously eliminated COVID-19, cases are once again surging as schools fully reopen. In New Zealand, the Delta variant is feared to be spreading through schools outside Auckland, the largest city which remains at a “Level 4” lockdown. Noted public health experts, including University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker, warned in a September 10 blog post that “children are returning to in-person learning with little or no protection against the potential spread of Covid-19 infection in schools.”

The center of the global pandemic is now in North America, with the United States, Canada and Mexico experiencing major surges in new cases driven primarily by school reopenings. In Alberta, Canada, the surge is approaching peaks reached last winter, with a daily average of 1,646 new cases in the province.

Students arrive at PS811 in New York City on September 13, 2021 (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In the US, there are now an average of 134,972 new COVID-19 cases and 1,582 deaths each day. In the past week, a staggering 844,718 people were officially infected and 10,568 people died from COVID-19. The official cumulative death toll stands at 691,880, while the real figure is estimated to be between 800,000-890,000, greater than the total number of Americans killed during the Civil War and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

The situation is catastrophic throughout the country. Roughly a quarter of all hospitals report that their intensive care units are at or near capacity. As a result of school reopenings, roughly one million children were officially infected with COVID-19 in the five weeks from August 5 to September 9. Child hospitalizations and deaths are at record levels across the US, with an average of 354 children hospitalized every day.

After the Biden administration prematurely declared “independence” from the pandemic on July 4, the scale of the present surge and the dangers posed by the full reopening of schools continue to be minimized. All talk of mitigation measures has disappeared in the corporate media.

A major photo essay published Friday in the New York Times is a case in point. Titled “Glimpses of How Pandemic America Went Back to School,” the piece glorifies school reopenings in the US and exposes the fraud of so-called mitigations in schools. Almost every photograph shows students, staff or both not wearing masks.

Journalist Dana Goldstein writes that school reopenings “have been exciting, anxiety-provoking and sometimes even amusing.” She falsely claims that “schools have generally been able to operate safely during the pandemic with only limited on-site transmission of the virus.”

In reality, just in the past week there have been reports of hundreds or thousands of infections of students and staff in schools across West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, and other states. According to one informal tracker, roughly 250 school employees have died from COVID-19 since the last week of July, amounting to roughly 35 per week or five per day throughout August and September.

The global state of the pandemic and the role that schools play as centers of viral transmission make clear that all schools must be closed in order to eliminate and ultimately eradicate COVID-19. This must be combined with the closure of all nonessential workplaces, universal masking, the rapid vaccination of the world population, mass testing, contact tracing, the safe isolation of infected patients, and all other public health measures needed to cut off the chain of transmission. All workers and small business owners affected by these measures must be given the necessary resources during lockdowns, which scientists stress need last no longer than two months.

Pacific governments plan border reopenings amid Delta surge

John Braddock

As the highly contagious and deadly Delta COVID-19 variant surges around the globe, governments across the Pacific are re-opening their borders to international travel, regardless of the risks to public health.

The move is in line with the clamour from big business and political elites internationally for life to return to “normal” as the population is compelled to “live with the virus,” a homicidal policy that threatens tens of thousands more deaths. In the Pacific this agenda is being propelled by demands to restore the devastated tourism industry, deemed essential to the economies of many island businesses.

Fiji, which is experiencing one of the worst COVID-19 surges in the region, is set to reopen its borders on November 1 for fully-vaccinated travelers. Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama declared he wants commercial and international flights to begin as soon as possible.

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

The Fijian government initially set a target of 60 percent of the adult population being fully vaccinated by the end of October, well below even the inadequate 80 percent used by other countries. According to Fiji health authorities, 96.5 percent of the eligible population has now received at least one dose, with 66 percent fully vaccinated. The country’s target of 587,651 people is well short of the total population of 890,000 because children are excluded.

Fiji currently has 12,981 active cases in isolation. Since April, when the Delta variant entered via a quarantine breach, there have been 49,174 infections and 566 deaths. The national seven-day average daily test positivity is 16.2 percent, which is on a downward trend, but still indicates a high level of community transmission. Official numbers fail to show the true extent of cases, as reporting systems are overloaded and in many areas no testing is taking place.

Fiji’s remote islands are recording escalating case numbers: Kadavu in the east, Macuata and Vanua Levu in the north, and Malolo and Naviti in the west have together reported more than 800 cases in the past several weeks.

The move to open the border follows persistent refusals by Bainimarama to impose a full national lockdown, on the grounds that it would “destroy” the economy. As with capitalist governments elsewhere, his strategy is to reach an arbitrary level of vaccination coverage and, based on the fraudulent proposition that vaccines alone can halt the spread of COVID-19, remove all restrictions.

Some internal border closures were lifted last Friday and Bainimarama announced that once Fiji achieves 70 percent full vaccination, all workplaces, tertiary institutions, churches, hotels, restaurants, cafés, cinemas, gyms, pools and tattoo parlours can operate at 70-percent capacity.

Sections of the ruling establishment are clearly worried that the rush to reopen international borders could trigger social opposition and political instability. According to Radio NZ, Bill Gavoka, leader of the main opposition Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), said Fiji was not ready for the border to open and the government should focus on “health first over the economy, which will fall into line.”

Former chair of the Pacific tourism board David Vaeafe warned that in 1918 New Zealand allowed influenza to enter Samoa, where it “wiped out 20 percent of the population.” Noting how “rampant” COVID is in the Pacific, he said: “It’s important to vaccinate local communities to protect them but also to protect the border.”

Fiji’s tourism industry, however, enthusiastically welcomed the plan. Andre Viljoen, Fiji Airways CEO, boasted that the vaccination rate “puts us on track to be the most COVID-safe holiday destination in the world.” Ahura Resorts said they would target the US market—the centre of the global COVID surge—until New Zealand and Australia lift their border restrictions.

American Samoa last week recorded its first COVID-19 case, a returning resident who arrived on a September 13 flight from Hawaii. Hawaiian Airlines has recently resumed flights from Honolulu, offering two per month through to December 20. Flights were previously stopped for 17 months at the request of the American Samoa government, except for repatriation flights for residents who had been stranded in Hawaii and the US mainland.

Travelers to the capital Pago Pago are required to follow health and safety protocols, including proof of vaccination and negative pre-travel test results. While American Samoa had until now remained COVID- free, Hawaii is in the midst of a serious Delta surge. It registered 550 new cases on September 18, with a daily average of 539. The US state has had over 72,000 cases and 699 deaths.

Guam, a US territory, has fought two major COVID-19 outbreaks which caused 180 deaths and infected over 14,000 people. Earlier this year the island offered COVID-19 vaccinations to American expatriates in Asia with a so-called “Air V&V” vaccination and vacation program for people to visit and get their shots. Borders were reopened for tourism, with fully vaccinated visitors able to skip post-arrival quarantine. The US Center for Disease Controls subsequently raised its travel advisory, warning Americans not to go to Guam.

In French Polynesia the government re-imposed border controls in February, ending more than six months of quarantine-free travel to Tahiti and other islands, which had allowed thousands of tourists into what had been the only accessible tourist destination in the South Pacific. Within weeks, COVID-19 had re-emerged in the community. Two weeks ago, daily case numbers stopped being reported after total infections passed the 40,000-mark. Unofficial reports indicate that infections reached 3,000 cases a day. Officially, 593 people have died as a result of the pandemic.

The Tourism Authority of Kiribati has also welcomed a government decision to reopen the island, which has so far had no COVID cases, from January 2022. President Taneti Maamau urged people who qualify for the COVID-19 vaccines to complete both doses before the end of the year.

The Pacific region’s main powers, Australia and New Zealand, which were forced to suspend their short-lived trans-Tasman “travel bubble” at the outset of the current outbreak in July, are preparing fresh “roadmaps to freedom,” even as COVID-19 devastates their major cities.

As of September 18, Australia had 21,108 active cases and 1,162 deaths. Victoria and New South Wales are recording large numbers of daily infections. Despite claims that New Zealand has “bent the curve” due to the Ardern government’s elimination strategy, Auckland remains in the grip of a long tail of infections, with over 1,000 cases detected since a person who arrived from Sydney tested positive on August 17.

A four-phase plan for reopening Australia unveiled at the end of July suggested those with vaccination certificates would be able to travel overseas when at least 80 percent of the over-16 population is fully vaccinated. Anticipating that the federal government will relax border restrictions before Christmas, Qantas has announced the resumption of its international schedule on December 18, including flights to the UK, Canada, US, Japan, Singapore and Fiji.

New Zealand’s Labour-Green government has declared that “restoring travel connectivity within the region will boost economic activity and long-term recovery.” A plan to begin testing self-isolation for vaccinated people this year, with a new border system based on low, medium and high-risk entry paths in place from early 2022, remains on track, with vaccine passports promised by December. The government announced on Friday that it will “re-assess” the travel bubble with Australia in eight weeks.

In order to prop up New Zealand’s horticulture industry, low-paid seasonal workers from the Pacific islands who have had at least one dose of vaccine will be allowed in without having to quarantine from October. Workers from Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu will isolate for a week in employer-arranged accommodation before starting work. University of Canterbury professor Michael Plank said that the danger will be workers returning home, taking COVID-19 with them.

Another wave of COVID-19 infections looms in Nepal

Rohantha De Silva

According to the most recent figures, 28 people died from COVID-19 and 1,581 were infected over the weekend in Nepal, taking its cumulative death toll from the pandemic to 11,040 people and 784,566 infections.

The unreliable official numbers have declined in Nepal since infections and deaths peaked in April and May this year. However, a third wave of the pandemic has hit India and is threatening to cross into the small Himalayan country of 28 million people where millions live in poverty.

The Nepali ruling elite, like their counterparts internationally, have put profits before human lives. Former Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s administration and the current government led by Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba have failed to implement serious health and safety measures to deal with COVID-19 and the highly infectious Delta variant.

Nepalese demonstrators participate in a torch rally to protest against the dissolution of parliament in Kathmandu, Nepal. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

The Deuba government was installed in June, after the country’s Supreme Court reinstated parliament, which had been prematurely dissolved in May for the second time by President Bidya Devi Bhandari.

On September 13, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) issued a damning 50-page briefing paper on Nepal entitled “Unprepared and Unlawful.”

The paper declared that Nepal’s response to COVID-19 was inadequate and had not implemented advice on the coronavirus from international authorities or orders from the country’s Supreme Court. The ICJ document follows a report issued last November on Katmandu’s response to the pandemic in 2020. Both reports are an indictment, not just of the Oli and Deuba regimes but the entire Nepali elite.

Citing ICJ legal advisor Karuna Parajuli, this week’s “Unprepared and Unlawful” report said that the government had “failed to prepare for the 2021 resurgence properly.” The vaccination rollout plan, the report said, had not been transparent and timely with the government missing its own targets; patients were over-charged at private hospitals; non-COVID patients were not provided with adequate health care; health workers had been attacked; and the country’s prisons were unsafe and overcrowded.

The ICJ called for the right to health to be guaranteed for all including: uninterrupted supply of oxygen, increased beds, ICU capacity and medicine and equipment to all hospitals treating pandemic patients; no overcrowding of prisons and the introduction of proper safety measures; private hospitals to follow legal requirements; and public disclosure of vaccine contracts with pharmaceutical companies.

The ICJ also condemned repeated statements by previous Prime Minister Oli “downplaying” the seriousness of the pandemic and claiming that the coronavirus was like the flu and could be blocked by hot water and sneezing. He also insisted that because Nepal had fresh air, and garlic, ginger and turmeric were an integral part of the daily diet, the country’s inhabitants had better immunity against COVID-19.

The vaccination rate in Nepal remains dangerously low. Around 5.12 million or 17 percent of the population have been fully vaccinated and only 5.74 million or 19 percent have received just one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

According to some medical experts, the September-November religious festival season in India could produce another coronavirus outbreak in that country and rapidly spread to Nepal. The countries share a 1,770 km open border with hundreds of thousands of migrant workers regularly crossing.

India’s second wave of the pandemic in 2020 was mirrored in Nepal and saw hospitals turning away patients because there were not enough ICU beds, ventilators and oxygen. The fast-spreading Delta variant first found in India is now being seen in most Nepali cases. Shortages of testing equipment have worsened the situation as only symptomatic cases are being screened, even at the official border crossings.

Dr Sher Bahadur Pun, Clinical Research Unit chief at the Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital, told the Kathmandu Post that the Delta variant was circulating through Nepal “with little to no restrictions.” He said that “monitoring of violations of health protocols has not been effective.”

The pandemic has had a drastic impact on the Nepali economy which depends heavily on the tourist industry and remittances from the migrant workers. Travel and tourism, which constitutes about 8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, has virtually collapsed. The sector used to generate up to $500 million annually and provide jobs for an estimated 1.5 million workers in the hotel, airline, transportation, accommodation, restaurant and leisure industries.

Tourist arrivals have dropped precipitously with income expected to fall by $330 million this year, wiping out even more jobs, the Himalayan Times reported in July. Government authorities have made no attempt to resolve the serious economic hardships facing workers in this industry.

Temple Tiger Group executive chairman Basant Raj Mishra told the Kathmandu Post on September 12: “Undoubtedly, hotels and restaurants are the big losers. Some survived the pandemic because of the movement of domestic tourists. But in the last few years, development of hotels has been at such a rapid pace that domestic tourism cannot sustain them all.”

The number of Nepali children in poverty has increased four times to around six million in the past year. Nationwide COVID-19 lockdowns have impacted on students with two-thirds of the country’s eight million students unable to attend any kind of online learning programs. The school closures also meant that they could not receive the limited free meals provided by the Nepal School Meals Program.

At the same time, child labour has climbed to new levels. According to Human Rights Watch, a third of the Nepali children the agency interviewed worked at least 12 hours per day for as little as 517 rupees ($US4.44), with many suffering serious work injuries.

Professor Pasang Sherpa from the Nepal Institute of Health Sciences told the Borgen Magazine that the pandemic “has made poverty far worse than I have seen in my life so far.”

According to last month’s “Nepal: Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021” report, 36 percent of the multidimensionally poor people in Nepal live in crowded households, a major factor in the spread of coronavirus infections. Similarly, 38.2 percent of people in Nepal do not have access to hand-washing facilities with soap in their homes.

Indifferent to these unsafe conditions and another even more deadly wave of coronavirus infections, the Nepali government, like others around the world, are planning to reopen schools, insisting that the population must learn to “live with the virus.”

Britain commits to anti-China axis led by US in AUKUS military pact

Robert Stevens

The decision by the United States, the UK and Australian to establish the military alliance AUKUS pact is a historic turning point in Britain’s foreign policy with major consequences.

The AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) pact focuses on the Indo-Pacific region targeting China, one of the world’s major nuclear powers. Australia will be allowed to share nuclear technology and will be provided with eight nuclear-powered submarines. The UK will share contracts to supply the main component for the new submarines with BAE Systems and engine maker Rolls-Royce set to play a major role.

The UK Carrier Strike Group 2021, led by HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, departing the UK (credit: Royal Navy/Flickr)

Expressing the rot of bourgeois democracy, all three governments involved are escalating a dangerous militarist agenda without even the pretence of democratic accountability.

There was no public discussion in the US Congress or the parliaments in Britain and Australia. The first that the world heard about AUKUS was on Wednesday, when it was announced in a joint press conference by US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

In a conspiracy against the populations of the three countries involved and the working class of the entire world, the plans were hatched behind closed doors over months.

Johnson’s Conservative government allocated less than 45 minutes for a “debate” in parliament Thursday to discuss the formation of AUKUS. He opened the discussion with an opening statement of less than seven minutes.

Johnson stated, “If there were ever any question about what global Britain’s tilt towards the Indo-Pacific would mean in reality, or what capabilities we might offer, this partnership with Australia and the US provides the answer. It amounts to a new pillar of our strategy, demonstrating Britain’s generational commitment to the security of the Indo-Pacific and showing exactly how we can help one of our oldest friends to preserve regional stability.”

Johnson didn’t conceal what was at stake in winning control of what he called the new “geopolitical centre of the world,” intervening in the debate to declare, “The whole Indo-Pacific tilt, of which this is a part, is a recognition of the fact that the CPTPP [Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific] area … is a £9 trillion trade area in which the UK has an increasing diplomatic and commercial presence.”

As brief as the discussion was in parliament, it underscored why Biden, Morrison and Johnson can procced with their predatory imperialist agenda—they can all count on “opposition” parties that share their aims.

Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer said, “New challenges can emerge and issues in faraway corners of the globe can quickly turn into threats at home, so Labour welcomes increased co-operation with our allies.”

“China’s assertiveness does pose risks to UK interests in a secure Pacific region, in stable trading environments and in democracy and human rights,” he added.

The Labour leader was more overtly hawkish than Johnson, insisting that the turn to the Asia-pacific must not jeopardise the ongoing the military encirclement of Russia and Britain’s strategic interests in Europe and Asia. “In order to protect our security and interests, we also need to look after our broader alliances,” he said. “NATO remains our most important strategic alliance. It is also the most successful, having delivered peace and security in Europe for three quarters of a century. Whatever the merits of an Indo-Pacific tilt, maintaining security in Europe must remain our primary objective.”

He then asked Johnson to “guarantee that the arrangement will not see resources redirected from Europe and the high north to the Pacific.”

Other MPs were anxious not to be seen as any way unpatriotic or out of step. It was left to Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May, ruthlessly dispatched from office by Johnson’s Brexit wing of the party in 2019, to point to the potentially catastrophic implications of a military confrontation with China

May asked, “What are the implications of this pact for the stance and response the United Kingdom would take should China attempt to invade Taiwan?”

Johnson refused to answer directly, replying that “The United Kingdom remains determined to defend international law…” and this would be the “strong advice we would give to the Government in Beijing.”

The dangers of the UK’s new course were confirmed the same day by Taiwan, citing a 'severe threat' from China and clearly timed to coincide with the AUKUS announcement, announcing additional defence spending of £6.28 billion over the next five years, including on new missiles and warships.

May’s intervention made clear that shifting away from a decade old policy which has seen the UK massively extend its economic relations with China means entering unchartered territory. The David Cameron-led Tory government (2010-2015) established a “golden era” with China, leading to Beijing investing billions in the UK economy, including in the development of UK nuclear power stations and mobile phone infrastructure. This led to anti-China hawks in the Tory Party, military and security apparatus insisting that Huawei’s role must be curtailed.

In 2015, China set up the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to expand operations into less developed countries and to serve as China’s equivalent to the World Bank. Britain was the first Western country to pledge its participation.

Speaking for substantial sections of the capitalist class concerned at the implications of upending economic ties with Beijing, Starmer insisted, “We need to deal with those risks, defend our values and defend our interests, but the same [integrated review of foreign and defence policy] also rightly stated that the UK must maintain a commercial relationship with China, and we must work with them on the defining global issues of the day.”

How this circle was to be squared, Starmer did not say. But the factional warfare in ruling circles that erupted over leaving the European Union has not disappeared.

Johnson’s policy on coming to power was based on alliance with the US and the Trump administration, which had declared the EU a “cartel” and an economic rival. He claimed that this offered the possibility of developing a “global Britain”, with access to the US market and investments in China and other expanding markets in the Commonwealth compensating for lost trade with Europe.

This bubble was burst after Trump’s election defeat by Biden, with the Democratic Party leader making clear that the price for Britain maintaining a relationship with Washington is to enlist in the US-led trade and military war drive against China.

This has poisoned the UK’s already soured relations with Europe.

Britain played a major role in ensuring that Australia scrapped its A$90bn (£48 billion) submarine deal with France. British Defence Minister Ben Wallace said Thursday that Australia had come to the UK seeking a deal in March and wanted to abandon the French upgrade, and that Johnson, Morrison and Biden had discussed this on the sidelines of the UK-hosted G7 summit in June.

The secret talks put the unprecedented hardening of the UK’s position on China in recent months into context. This week Parliament’s Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, citing Beijing’s ongoing sanctions against seven UK MPs, banned China's ambassador to the UK from entering the parliamentary estate to speak at a scheduled meeting of the influential all-party parliamentary group on China.

This follows the unprecedented launching in May of the UK’s Carrier Strike Group (CSG), led by the HMS Elizabeth aircraft carrier, on a six-month round trip to the Indo Pacific. That HMS Elizabeth would be sent to the Indo-Pacific, including sailing provocatively into the South China Sea, was decided on last year. But as tensions were ramped up by Washington with China, the CSG was scaled up with substantial US participation. HMS Elizabeth and the CSG also participated in military operations in the Black Sea and Middle East.

Shortly before the CSG left the UK, Tory hardliner Ian Duncan Smith told the Telegraph, “I'm pleased the Aircraft Carrier is deploying in the South China Sea, but they need to complete this process by letting the Chinese know that they disapprove of their very aggressive actions against their neighbours by sailing through the Taiwan Strait.” He was backed by Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Defence Select Committee.

Johnson refused to give the go-ahead to sail the Taiwan Strait, but it is now clear, through the formation of AUKUS, he was preparing “aggressive actions” against China on a vastly greater scale with incalculable consequences.

Even as Johnson boasted in the AUKUS debate that military spending had rocketed by £24 billion under his premiership, Ellwood said he hoped the prime minister “now recognises that our peacetime defence budget is no longer adequate, and we will soon need to increase it to 3 percent of GDP if we are to contain the threats that now we face.”

Paris recalls ambassadors to US, Australia over anti-Chinese AUKUS alliance

Alex Lantier

Last night, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian recalled France’s ambassadors to the United States and Australia after the announcement Wednesday of the AUKUS (Australia-UK-US) alliance. Australia had repudiated a massive €56 billion arms deal with France for attack submarines, to instead obtain them from Washington and London.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Le Drian’s communiqué stated: “At the request of the President of the Republic, I have decided upon the immediate recall to Paris for consultations of our ambassadors to the United States and Australia. This exceptional decision is justified by the exceptionally serious announcements made on September 15 by Australia and the United States.”

This decision is without precedent in history. The recall of an ambassador is traditionally the last diplomatic measure taken before the outbreak of war. France, an ally of the United States in every war involving both countries since the 1775–1783 Revolutionary War for independence from Britain, has never before recalled its ambassador to the United States.

While the AUKUS alliance targets China, it has revealed explosive conflicts among the imperialist powers. Washington, London and Canberra prepared AUKUS over several months in total secrecy from what are ostensibly their closest allies among the European Union (EU) powers. This points to deep distrust among the United States, Britain and the EU countries, beset by insoluble military and economic rivalries in Asia.

On Thursday, Le Drian had given a TV interview to France Info to emphasize that the Australian and US decisions were fundamentally unacceptable to France. He said, “I am outraged; allies do not do this to each other. … To speak plainly, this is a stab in the back.

“We had established relations of trust with Australia; this trust has been betrayed,” Le Drian said, stressing his “great bitterness” and pledging to sue for damages. France’s Naval Group corporation in Cherbourg was working with Australian manufacturers to deliver the first subs by 2023, he said, “with teams of Australian engineers working in Cherbourg and Naval Group staff working in Adelaide [in Australia]. Then, suddenly, poof!”

Le Drian then denounced “America’s behavior,” blaming President Joe Biden for not resolving but compounding the crisis of US-European relations under his predecessor, Donald Trump.

He said, “This unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decision is very much like what Mr. Trump used to do. We learned brutally, by a declaration from President Biden, that the contract between the Australians and the French is broken, and that the United States will propose to the Australians a nuclear deal whose content is unknown. … This is not how one treats allies or other powers who want to develop a coherent, structured Indo-Pacific strategy.”

Arguments that Australia’s violation of the deal was a technical move—to get longer range, nuclear-propelled submarines from Washington and London, as opposed to diesel-electric boats sold by France—do not hold water. The submarines sold by France were in fact a nuclear design, the Barracuda, with its reactor replaced by a diesel-electric engine to respect Australia’s nuclear non-proliferation obligations. Yet Australian officials did not contact their French counterparts to change the design, instead scrapping the contract overnight and replacing it with US nuclear submarines.

To defuse tensions, an anonymous US official told AFP: “Senior administration officials have been in touch with their French counterparts to discuss AUKUS, including before the announcement.”

However, the French embassy in Washington immediately responded with a formal denial. Embassy spokesman Pascal Confavreux said, “We were not informed of this project before the publication of the first reports in the US and Australian press, which came only a few hours before Joe Biden’s official announcement.”

This eruption of bitter conflicts between supposed NATO “allies” is a historic warning to the working class. The Soviet bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 did not resolve the deeply rooted, ultimately fatal contradictions of world capitalism. Depriving NATO of a common enemy, it exacerbated interimperialist conflicts that twice in the first half of the 20th century erupted into world war. Now, Asia’s economic rise and the US war drive against China are inflaming bitter US-European competition over profits and strategic influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

In Paris, Le Monde called AUKUS “a slashing blow in the web laboriously woven by French diplomacy in recent years in the Indo-Pacific. Precisely to avoid the trap of Sino-American rivalries, Paris made a military-industrial turn to Canberra a leading focus of its new strategy in the region.”

French attempts to pursue an independent policy in the Indo-Pacific region proved unacceptable to Washington, however. Le Monde compared the resulting breakdown in US-French relations to that of 2002, when Paris, Berlin and Moscow opposed US plans to invade Iraq: “Is the Iraq war (2003), launched by the Bush administration, the last crisis of such magnitude? After the chaotic, unilateral US withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is a new warning for Europeans to build their strategic sovereignty, especially in the Indo-Pacific…”

In an editorial titled “A Smart Submarine Deal with the Aussies” hailing the AUKUS alliance, the Wall Street Journal asserted that AUKUS was US retaliation for Europe’s failure to fully support US policies against China, Russia and Iran. It wrote, “French President Emmanuel Macron has made a point of emphasizing ‘strategic autonomy’ from the US, including on China, Russia and Iran. … Europe can’t play China’s game of divide-and-conquer on economic and strategic issues without consequences for its US relationship.”

Biden manifestly intended the announcement of AUKUS as a rebuke to the EU. He timed it the day before EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Foreign Policy Representative Josep Borrell unveiled a long expected Indo-Pacific policy statement, in the runup to France holding the rotating EU presidency in the first half of 2022. In America, Politico wrote that the AUKUS alliance aimed to show the EU that it is “not in the geostrategic big league” and mock Europe’s “woolly Indo-Pacific strategy.”

In this interimperialist conflict, there is no progressive faction; the fundamental question is uniting workers internationally in a socialist, antiwar movement. After the bloody failure of decades of neo-colonial wars in the Middle East since the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq, and the millions of deaths and economic dislocations caused by their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NATO powers face catastrophic conflicts for which they have no peaceful solutions.

Last week, it emerged that during Trump’s January 6 coup attempt in Washington, US military officers worked desperately to prevent Trump from launching nuclear bombs at China.

European imperialism is not, however, fundamentally kinder or gentler than its American cousin. EU attempts to develop an independent Indo-Pacific policy are predicated on massive increases in military spending. This means new attacks on workers’ living standards and a continuing refusal to fund necessary social distancing policies to end the COVID-19 pandemic, after 1.2 million people are already confirmed dead of the disease in Europe.

Indeed, speaking Wednesday on the EU’s Indo-Pacific strategy, von der Leyen called for greater new military programs, “from fighter jets to drones and cyber.” She concluded her remarks by stating, “This is why, under the French Presidency [of the EU], President Macron and I will convene a Summit on European defense. It is time for Europe to step up to the next level.”

These announcements must be taken as a warning of the mounting danger of aggression against China, of explosive tensions inside NATO and of the necessity of mobilizing workers around the world against the war danger.