China contains infections but virus outbreaks continue from global pandemic

Jerry Zhang

In recent months, multiple outbreaks of the epidemic have occurred in various southern provinces of China, caused by the worldwide spread of the Delta variant.

According to a report from the National Health Commission of China, on October 3 there were 27 new confirmed cases in China, including 26 imported cases and one local case in Harbin. At the same time, there were 15 new asymptomatic infections, of which 13 were imported from abroad and two were local residents in Yili, Xinjiang.

A subway station during morning rush hour in Beijing, August 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Although the scale of the repeated outbreaks is small, the continuous eruption of cases has highighted the danger of the Delta mutation. At present, there are still three high-risk areas and 28 medium-risk areas in China, located in Heilongjiang and Fujian provinces.

At the end of July, an epidemic erupted, centred on Nanjing. The Delta variant entered from Moscow by Air China flight CA910, which quickly infected the crew members. The epidemic was discovered on July 20. At the outbreak’s peak, there were cases in more than 10 provinces, and over 140 people were infected each day, before finally being suppressed.

Then, on September 10, an outbreak was discovered in Fujian in an elementary school at Putian, after it had already spread for more than 10 days. The source was believed to be a parent of a student who returned from Singapore.

By September 14, the outbreak had affected eight schools, with 52 students and children infected—the youngest being only three years old. Subsequently, infections spread to factories.

At the same time, Delta spread to Xiamen, the capital of Fujian province, on September 12. According to reports, the Xiamen infections also occurred in factories and workshops that lacked protection. At the peak of the outbreak, more than 200 confirmed cases occurred within six days. The Fujian event has caused more than 400 people to be infected and has not yet fully subsided.

Then a worrying mass transmission event broke out in Heilongjiang. The epicentre was Bayan County under the jurisdiction of Harbin City. The epidemic first appeared in an entertainment venue, but its earliest source remains unclear. On September 25, the epidemic began to appear in other areas of Heilongjiang province, spreading at multiple points. According to reports, there are more than 70 infected people in Heilongjiang province.

The increasing frequency of international and domestic flights has made the spread of the virus more common and rapid. At noon on October 1, a close contact of a confirmed case was found on a flight from Harbin to Guangdong. As a result, 184 people on the flight were quarantined. On October 3, the third day of the National Day holiday, two cases of asymptomatic infections occurred in Yili, Xinjiang. Local tourists in Yili were asked not to leave Yili temporarily.

These developments underscore the dangerous transmission capacity and speed of the Delta variant. Because of the global pandemic, China remains exposed to the risk of a severe epidemic. According to incomplete statistics from the official Health Times newspaper, foreign epidemics triggered more than ten outbreaks in China in 2021 alone.

The main victims of the epidemic have been working-class people, with most of the few large-scale mass transmissions occurring in factories, airports and docks where protection measures were not in place.

Zhang Boli, an academician of the Faculty of Medicine and Hygiene of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has warned that the risks will rise this fall and winter. While outbreaks would be “strictly prevented and controlled ... the risk of multiple outbreaks and local outbreaks cannot be completely avoided. We need to be more vigilant.”

Although the outbreaks in China are worrying, the government has not given up on strict prevention policies. The government’s response demonstrates the potential for scientific policies to eradicate the virus, but only if it is implemented at a global, not just a national level.

The government’s measures include large-scale testing of affected areas, intensive contact-tracing, timely lockdowns and continuous mobilisations for vaccination. This week, the health authorities have reported double vaccinating almost 75 percent of the population. China’s public health system has become increasingly proficient in applying these methods, enabling the effective control and calming down of dangerous infection events.

Although the epidemic in Fujian province is continuing, according to the report at a Xiamen epidemic prevention and control press conference on September 27, Xiamen has basically blocked the path of community transmission.

Before last week’s Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, Xiamen’s lockdown policy and travel ban prevented the further spread of the virus and effectively controlled the local outbreak. Heilongjiang province also implemented effective isolation and lockdown measures before the National Day holiday.

This response is in contrast to those of the imperialist countries and most of the rest of the world, where governments have rejected lockdown measures and other scientific responses, sacrificing working class health and lives for the sake of corporate profit.

However, China’s ruling capitalist class, with its own nationalist outlook and calculations, is incapable of solving the broader problems arising globally from the pandemic. It can only continuously strengthen its domestic mobilisation, leaving the working class still facing the grave risks of a serious epidemic.

Over 173,000 children infected and 22 killed by COVID-19 in the US last week

Evan Blake

On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released its weekly report on COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths among children across the US. The results are once again horrific, with 173,469 children testing positive for COVID-19 and 22 dying from the virus last week. In total, some 5.9 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 and 520 have died in the US since the start of the pandemic.

Since schools began reopening throughout the US in late July, more than 1,772,578 children have officially tested positive and 171 have died from COVID-19, as the highly transmissible Delta variant has spread rapidly in poorly-ventilated, overcrowded classrooms across the country.

Students and parents walk to class at Tussahaw Elementary school on Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

After more than 200,000 children officially tested positive over the previous five weeks, this figure decreased slightly last week. However, this is known to be a vast undercount of infections due to inadequate testing and various efforts by state governments to cover up cases.

Underscoring the ongoing severity of the crisis, the number of child deaths last week increased from the weekly figure throughout the previous month and nearly set a record for the entire pandemic.

Across the US and internationally, opposition is building among parents, educators and students to the homicidal school reopening policies that have infected millions of children and killed thousands worldwide. This was sharply expressed in the October 1 global school strike, with the central hashtag #SchoolStrike2021 trending for hours that day and used over 26,000 times in the week leading up to and including the strike.

Contrary to the lies advanced by the Democratic Party and the teachers unions that children are only at risk of infection and death from COVID-19 in Republican-led states that have no mitigation measures whatsoever, pediatric infections, hospitalizations and deaths have approached or exceeded all-time highs throughout the US in recent weeks. Child deaths took place last week in Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

The South remains the geographic region with the most COVID-19 infections and deaths among children and the broader population due to lower vaccination rates and the complete lifting of all mitigation measures, with the brutal “herd immunity” strategy in full effect.

Over the past week, five children died from COVID-19 in Texas, the most of any state in the country. Sha’Niyah McGee, a 16-year-old junior at Berkner High School in Richardson, died last week from COVID-19. Known as “Nienie,” she was a peer mediator at the campus. Another student in the same district is currently in an intensive care unit, and on Monday it was announced that a fully-vaccinated teacher in the district, 71-year-old Eroletta Piasczyk, also succumbed to the virus.

Texas accounts for roughly one-tenth of all deaths among educators in the US, with an unofficial tracker logging 54 since late July. In total, at least 405 educators have died from COVID-19 across the US since July 1, 2021, and more than 1,430 since August 2020.

Three children died from COVID-19 in Florida last week, the second highest figure for any state. None of the children’s names have been made public. In Mississippi and Virginia, four children died from COVID-19 last week. These included 10-year-old Teresa Sperry of eastern Virginia and 16-year-old Landon Woodson of North Mississippi.

In Louisiana, the state Department of Health reported Monday that a child between the ages of 12-17 died of COVID-19, becoming the ninth pediatric death in the state during the current surge of the Delta variant. The latest pediatric death took place only three days after another child under 4 years old died from COVID-19 in the state.

In total, 18 children have died from COVID-19 in Louisiana, with half taking place this school year alone. Across the state, 19,683 K-12 students and 2,339 staff have officially been infected with COVID-19, while some of the larger school systems have reported thousands of cases each week.

As with many other Democrat-led states across the US, Louisiana is increasingly lifting all mitigation measures. State Superintendent Cade Brumley recently announced a change in quarantine policies, allowing local school districts to decide whether or not to quarantine close contacts or to allow parents the “choice” to quarantine their children. Only a handful of districts have said they will not adopt the new policy.

In Georgia, 44-year-old teacher Heidi Hammond died from COVID-19 on September 24, less than one month after her husband, 51-year-old middle school football coach Sean Hammond, succumbed to the virus on August 30. The two left behind an orphaned 12-year-old son, Marshall.

Throughout the rest of the US outside the South, the pandemic continues to rip through schools wherever they have reopened, including in Democrat-led states where limited mitigation measures have only minimally slowed the spread of the virus.

In California, which is run by the Democratic Party and has a statewide mask mandate in all K-12 schools, a child under age 17 died from COVID-19 last week in Tulare County, the second pediatric death in the county since the start of the pandemic. Another child under 5 years old died in Orange County in early September, also the second COVID-19 death of a minor in that county.

In New York, also run wholly by the Democrats, there have been numerous outbreaks in K-12 schools across the state. In New York City, the largest school district in the US with roughly 1.1 million students, 2,672 students and 1,026 staff have officially been infected with COVID-19 since the start of this school year, despite the fact that 95 percent of all staff are fully vaccinated. Last school year, more than 25,000 students and staff tested positive for COVID-19 in the district.

In Michigan, the number of COVID-19 infections among students and staff tied to outbreaks in K-12 schools is already eight times the same figure last year, despite the fact that the state recently narrowed its definition of what constitutes an outbreak. The latest data released by the state found that as of September 30, there are 2,491 confirmed COVID-19 cases tied to new and ongoing outbreaks in K-12 schools, compared to 296 such cases at the same time last year.

The crisis in Michigan schools, as with schools across the US, is also being covered up. Renaissance High School in Detroit officially had only one infection last week. However, a student from the school told the World Socialist Web Site they estimate that roughly 400 out of 2,000 students are presently out with COVID-19 or in quarantine, saying, “They're keeping us in the dark about the cases, but we see who is out in our classes. They try to hide it from us, but we see it. I think the school will be shutting down soon.”

Significantly, Michigan is one of eight states that does not report pediatric deaths from COVID-19. However, multiple children in the state have died from the virus, including 14-year-old Honestie Hodges, and many have suffered traumatic damages from multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), believed to be triggered by COVID-19 infection.

The deepening catastrophe of school reopenings across the US, which has fueled the surge in child infections, hospitalizations and deaths, must be brought to an end. Children’s lives and long-term health must not be sacrificed to meet the needs of Wall Street and the major corporations, which have pushed for schools to reopen in order to send parents back to work producing profits.

The closure of schools and nonessential workplaces, while providing high-quality remote learning and social supports to all workers affected, is central to stopping the spread of COVID-19. This must be combined with the full deployment of all public health measures, including mass testing, contact tracing, masking, the safe isolation of infected patients and a globally-coordinated vaccination program, in order to eliminate COVID-19 in ever-broader geographic regions and ultimately eradicate the virus worldwide.

New Zealand government abandons elimination policy for COVID-19

Tom Peters

Since New Zealand first went into a nationwide lockdown in March 2020, it has been one of a very small handful of countries with a stated policy of eliminating COVID-19 from the community.

On Monday, the Labour Party Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that this strategy is now being abandoned—in the middle of an outbreak in the largest city, Auckland. She told a press conference that the highly-infectious Delta variant was a “game changer” and the government would be “transitioning from our current strategy into a new way of doing things.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addresses a post-Cabinet press conference at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand on October 4, 2021. (Mark Mitchell/Pool Photo via AP)

Ardern justified the about-face by saying that “long periods of heavy restrictions has not got us to zero cases... Elimination was important because we didn’t have vaccines; now we do, so we can begin to change the way we do things.” New Zealand would shift towards using “everyday public health measures” and relying on vaccination.

The announcement was gleefully reported in the media internationally, which insists that there is no alternative to allowing the virus to spread and infect the population, killing large numbers of people. The ruling elites in every country view shutdowns and school closures as an intolerable burden on profits. Their perspective was summed up by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s infamous statement: “No more f...ing lockdowns—let the bodies pile high in their thousands.”

New Zealand and China, and to some extent Australia, have demonstrated that it is possible to stamp out the virus and protect lives using strict lockdowns and other public health measures. Since the start of the pandemic, just 28 people have died from COVID-19 in New Zealand. The country’s record has been cited by workers internationally, including teachers and parents, who are seeking to fight back against the homicidal reopening of schools and workplaces which has led to countless preventable deaths.

Contrary to Ardern’s claims, even the Delta variant can be eliminated. New Zealand was on track to eliminate its current outbreak with a strict “level 4” nationwide lockdown imposed on August 18. The total number of active cases in the community peaked at 725 on September 2, then dropped to a low point of just 202 on September 28, as most people had recovered from the infection.

In response to pressure from big business, however, the government lifted the lockdown outside Auckland on September 8, and on September 22 lowered restrictions in the city to “level 3.” Against the advice of public health experts, it allowed more than 200,000 people to return to workplaces. Auckland schools and early childhood centres reopened for small groups. Following these changes, the size of the outbreak has again expanded, reaching a total of 350 active cases today.

The government is responding, not by reimposing restrictions, but by further easing the lockdown. Ardern announced that as of this week, people in Auckland can resume outdoor recreational activities, friends can meet outside in small groups, and more children can return to early childcare centres. In coming weeks, more retail outlets will open, and on October 18 the city’s schools are scheduled to reopen.

Echoing politicians in the US and other countries, Ardern said the reopening “roadmap” was safe because more people are now vaccinated. She told the media yesterday “the vaccine is a ticket to freedom, it is the most effective tool we have to lower restrictions.”

In fact, vaccination alone cannot stop significant numbers of deaths from COVID-19. Even countries where more than 80 percent of the population is vaccinated, such as Singapore and Israel, are experiencing a surge in cases and deaths.

In New Zealand, the risk is much greater because only 39 percent of the total population has been fully vaccinated (48 percent of the eligible population aged over 12). This is lower than in the UK, where up to 1,000 COVID-19 deaths are being reported each week and hospitals are in a state of crisis.

Modelling by Professor Shaun Hendy, one of the Ardern government’s key advisors, shows that even with 80 percent of eligible people fully vaccinated, New Zealand could experience 7,000 deaths from the virus, and more than 58,000 hospitalisations over the course of one year.

The hospital system is grossly understaffed and underfunded, and will be quickly swamped in a significant outbreak. Tania Mitchell, chairperson of the College of Critical Care Nurses, told Newshub on Monday: “I’m afraid for the public. I’m afraid for the hospitals, the health service. I’m afraid for my colleagues, our team… that this will be overwhelming for us.” New Zealand has 4.6 intensive care beds for every 100,000 people, fewer than the UK (6.4) and Australia (8.9).

Microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles pointed out that any outbreak will hit the poor and working class hardest, telling TVNZ: “What’s so distressing about the approach that we’re taking is the burden’s not going to be felt equally.” She pointed out that those calling for lifting restrictions were “the wealthy and the privileged, and that’s because they have access to private healthcare and they’re not going to be as affected.” Wiles was particularly concerned about reopening schools, which have been a major source of infections and deaths internationally.

These comments are especially significant because Wiles had previously broadly supported the government’s pandemic policies. In March, she was awarded New Zealander of the Year by Ardern.

The government’s decision has undoubtedly come as a shock to many workers, who overwhelmingly support lockdowns. A New Zealand Herald poll of 1,000 people in August found that only 13 percent believed the country should “learn to live” with the coronavirus, while 85 percent supported an elimination policy.

An anti-lockdown protest over the weekend by the far-right Destiny Church, which received a huge amount of coverage in the media after police allowed it to go ahead, prompted significant anger among ordinary people. An online petition for the church leader Brian Tamaki to be prosecuted quickly gained almost 150,000 signatures. Yesterday, police laid charges against Tamaki for breaking the lockdown.

There is clearly concern within the political establishment about a resurgence of opposition in the working class. A statement from the Green Party, which is part of the Labour-led coalition government, opposed Ardern’s announcement, saying: “Elimination has protected thousands of lives in Aotearoa [NZ]. We have to stay the course to keep everyone safe.”

The Greens and the Maori Party highlighted the vulnerability of Maori and Pacific Island people, who have lower vaccination rates and more health problems that increase the danger of severe illness if they get COVID-19. By encouraging the illusion that Labour can be pressured to change course, these parties are trying to ensure that opposition does not get out of hand.

Meanwhile, the “left” Daily Blog editor Martyn Bradbury, despite denouncing the opposition National Party as “death cult capitalists” for seeking a rapid end to restrictions, has leapt to the defence of Ardern’s reopening policy. Basically accepting that it is now impossible to eliminate the virus, he falsely declared: “Delta will become endemic and nothing short of perpetual lockdown will end that. You can’t tell double vaccinated people they must curtail their freedom forever.”

Working people must reject the abandonment of the elimination strategy, which threatens to unleash mass deaths and severe illnesses. This requires a conscious political break from Labour, the unions, and their apologists.

State governors mobilize National Guard amidst growing health care crisis in the US

Brian Gene

New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hotchu said last week she is prepared to deploy the National Guard to hospitals facing critical staffing shortages. On top of existing labor shortfalls, an estimated 8 percent of hospital staff are facing dismissal for refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine by the state deadline.

The deployment comes as over 2,000 nurses and other health care workers in Buffalo, New York, are on strike. In addition to protests and strike action by health care workers across the country to demand safe staffing ratios, many are leaving the profession due to stress and overwork caused by the massive surge in the pandemic. National Guard members are paid by the state and cannot refuse deployment without risking arrest, fines or even prison.

In addition to being deployed to shore up vacant medical staff positions, the National Guard has been activated to drive school buses and function as nursing home caretakers, construction workers, school cafeteria workers and meat processors. The widespread mobilization of the National Guard to fill positions underscores the state policy of maintaining production and reopening schools despite the catastrophic spread of the pandemic throughout the country.

Deployments have become more common in the health care industry. In the past month alone, thousands of National Guard have been called up to fill in vacant staffing at hospitals in Vermont, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Oregon, California and Georgia. They are also fulfilling roles in logistics, triage, administration and in some cases working as medics performing vaccinations. As Megan Wade-Taxter of the Indiana Health Department put it, the National Guard are being utilized to “support hospitals that have exhausted all other staffing options.”

Tristar Regional, the recipient of National Guard deployment in Kentucky, is a subsidiary of the largest health care organization in the United States. The company, which reported $1.45 billion in second quarter profits in 2021, is relying on state-funded labor to maintain operations. In fact, the three largest hospital companies in the United States, recipients of over $1.1 billion in federal stimulus as well as National Guard deployments, have posted over $2 billion in profits last quarter alone.

Guard deployments are not only a financial windfall for for-profit medical but also help spin a narrative that a shortage of doctors and nurses is due to vaccine hesitancy and not exhaustion and poor working conditions.A study by the American Nursing Association and a coalition of universities independently found that while peripheral health care workers may show higher rates of vaccine hesitancy that correlate to a number of factors, vaccination rates of doctors and nurses trend well above 90 percent.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta told CNN a week ago, “If you dig into the data in New York, 95 percent of nurses [are] vaccinated and 98 to 99 percent of doctors are vaccinated, but there are a lot of people who make up health care workers.”

The Republican Party is seeking to blame short staffing on vaccine mandates, while the Democrats are blaming it on the very small percent of nurses who remain unvaccinated. In fact, the crisis in health care is the product of the decades-long attack on the health care infrastructure, the subordination of the entire industry to private profit and the catastrophic impact of the reopening of schools and the economy, supported by both big business parties.

Many nurses have expressed concerns about the capability of field medics working in unfamiliar hospital situations. One pediatric nurse observed in a Reddit post that the deployments meant “the state is going to subsidize hospitals at the expense of nurses.” Another asked, “Isn’t this kind of a six of one, half dozen of the other solution? Most National Guard people I know who have medical Military Occupational Specialty also work in health care as their full-time jobs. Activating them helps out whoever they get sent to help, but it short-hands wherever it is that they usually work.”

These Guard personnel may also not have sufficient expertise to support civilian hospitals. One Guard member stated in a Reddit discussion on the deployments, “I was a medic with EMT-B certification. In a military hospital or clinic, I could do IVs, catheters, suture removals or placements, etc. But in a civilian hospital, our training would not be good enough.”

Staffing shortages have led to the relaxation of standards all over the country. In New York, executive orders have loosened medical practice requirements to allow the employment of retired professionals and former medics whose certifications have lapsed. One Florida nurse shared, “They have podiatry residents now working in the ER here.”

Short staffing will only continue to increase as COVID-19 hospitalization rates peak and medical professionals continue to quit. Surveys of doctors and nurses leaving their jobs cite overwork, disorganization, lack of agency in the workplace and, most tellingly, the trauma of witnessing so much death as their main reasons for leaving the profession, not vaccine mandates.

California and Maine also enacted vaccination mandates for health care workers on September 30 and October 1. The vaccination of health care workers is medically necessary to protect staff and patients from COVID-19, and mandates are proven to work to raise vaccination levels significantly where in place. In the week leading up to the mandate in New York, vaccination rates jumped from between 82-84 percent of all 650,000 hospital and nursing home workers to a total 92 percent by the deadline.

Mass vaccination must be accompanied by a scientifically driven comprehensive response to the pandemic, utilizing all public health measures to bring cases down to zero. What is needed is a clear, science-based plan for the eradication of COVID-19 combined with expansion of medical resources to treat those affected by illness.

Leading global scientists and epidemiologists insist that eradication is possible even now. Through vaccination, masking, robust contact tracing and social distancing measures, such as school closures and restrictions on public gatherings, experts predict that COVID-19 could be eradicated in as little as 60 days.

Instead of pursuing an end to the pandemic, the ruling classes have implemented the “herd immunity” policy which has morphed into insistence that workers must “learn to live with the virus.” They have called for the lifting of essentially all COVID-19 mitigations, relying solely on the vaccines. Meanwhile they are attempting to supplement the skeleton staffing at for-profit hospitals with military labor.

Inside the Pandora Papers

Chuck Collins

The Pandora Papers, a massive expose about the secret shell games and tax avoidance schemes of the world’s ultra-wealthy, has just hit headlines around the globe. See initial coverage here in The Washington Post and The Guardian.

This colossal undertaking involved 600 journalists from 117 countries and was coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in what they describe as the “largest-ever journalistic collaborative.”

Five and a half years ago, the ICIJ released the Panama Papers, which focused on a leak from a single law firm, Mossack Fonseca. According to ICIJ Director Gerald Ryle, the Pandora Papers are the “Panama Papers on steroids.” See a summary prepared by the ICIJ here.

The Pandora Papers draws on leaks from confidential records at 14 different offshore wealth service firms in Switzerland, Singapore, Cyprus, Samoa, Vietnam, Hong Kong, as well as firms in well-known tax havens such as Belize, Seychelles, Bahamas, and the British Virgin Islands. These firms help wealthy individuals and corporations form trusts, foundations, incorporate companies, and establish other entities in low- or no-tax jurisdictions.

The Pandora Papers draw from almost 12 million files from these firms including leaked emails, memos, tax declarations, bank statements, passport scans, diagrams of corporate structures, secret spreadsheets, and clandestine real estate contracts. Some reveal the real owners of opaque shell companies for the first time.

Over the last three months, I’ve spoken confidentially with ICIJ journalists from Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Sweden, Germany, and the United Kingdom, providing background about how wealth hiding systems work in the United States. Drawing from my new book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions, I explained the role of the United States and the global wealth defense industry in sequestering wealth. (See this June interview about the book at the ICIJ website).

The Pandora Papers are truly a global story, with major implications in many countries. Some of the largest revelations involve Russian nationals with connections to Vladimir Putin and elites from Latin America.

For example, journalists from the Spanish daily El Pais exposed the “Secret Vault of Mexican Billionaires.” In Mexico they found over 3,000 wealthy and powerful Mexicans in the 11.9 million leaked files, with connections to current and previous presidents. They discovered a common pattern of wealthy Mexican elites using a single Panamanian law firm, Alcogal (Aleman, Cordero, Galindo & Lee), along with trusts in the British Virgin Islands and real estate purchases in Miami and around the United States.

The Pandora Papers will hopefully turn up the heat on the politicians that maintain the wealth-hiding status quo. The files list over 330 current and former politicians and world leaders from 91 countries that are implicated in transactions. This is twice the number implicated in the 2016 Panama Papers.

Political leaders include King Abdullah II from Jordan and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (according to The Guardian, Jordan blocked the ICIJ web site hours before the Pandora papers release). This explains why existing political bodies seem incapable of closing down systems that enable wealth hiding and tax dodging.

“It demonstrates that the people that could end the secrecy of offshore systems… are themselves benefiting from it,” said Ryle of the ICIJ. “So there’s no incentive for them to end it.”

In the coming week, we will learn more from the Pandora Papers. For example, there are 130 global billionaires with ownership entities in secrecy jurisdictions. In 2021, 100 of them had total assets worth more than $600 billion.

U.S. citizens are under-represented in these leaks, largely due to where the service providers were located. No U.S. wealth-advisory firms were part of the leaks. Nonetheless, over 700 companies revealed in the Pandora papers have ties to beneficial owners connected to the United States.

We will also learn more about how the United States has become a global destination for global wealth, some of it ill-gotten. The Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers (Bermuda and Singapore), and Luanda Leaks (Angola) all reinforced the misperception that most of these financial shell games take place “off shore,” in secrecy jurisdictions and tax havens in small countries with weak banking laws.

But the Pandora Papers show that the United States and states like South Dakota now rival notoriously opaque jurisdictions in Europe and the Caribbean in financial secrecy. The states with the most active trusts were South Dakota (81), Florida (37), Delaware (35), Texas (24), and Nevada (14).

Findings suggest that South Dakota has sheltered billions in wealth linked to wealthy individuals previously accused of serious financial crimes and labor violations. Two examples: Brazilian orange juice baron, Horst Happel, was fined $88 million in 2016 for underpaying his workers. In 2017, he moved substantial wealth to a trust in South Dakota. Carlos Morales Troncoso was the former vice-president of the Dominican Republic. He ran a sugar company called Central Romana sugar company that was accused of human rights violations. He set up trusts for his daughters in the Bahamas that were moved, after his death, to South Dakota. The reason global money is flowing to the “Mount Rushmore State” is because of their low taxes and advantageous dynasty trusts.

The Pandora Papers will hopefully boost momentum in the U.S. Congress behind a progressive tax plan to fund the Build Back Better program — including money for IRS enforcement to ensure the wealthy pay their fair share.

As The Guardian notes, “in a development likely to prove embarrassing for U.S. President, Joe Biden, who has pledged to lead efforts internationally to bring transparency to the global finance system, the United States emerges from the leak as a leading tax haven. The files suggest the state of South Dakota, in particular, is sheltering billions of dollars in wealth linked to individuals previously accused of serious financial crimes.”

Pandora Papers – Pandora’s Box and people

Farooque Chowdhury

Pandora Papers is not the entire Pandora’s Box; but a part of it only. The full picture is yet to emerge, in one sense, and in another sense, the whole is already perceptible.

The way the rich have their wealth, the way they accumulate, the way they hide, the way they deceive, the way they deprive, the way they lie are in the Pandora Papers. It’s not a tale of only a king, of a few powerful and a few politicians – a section of seemingly magicians. The Papers, as like their earlier friend, Panama Papers, convey a single fact: Exploitation, an exploitative system, the system’s power.

If that wealth of the rich is compared with the “wealth” the poor of the world own, if that power is compared with the “power” the poor of the world “wield”, the inequality’s brutality stands under sun – open, stark, it’s barbaric. The lie, the deception are two of the sharpest, most effective and functional weapons the rich employ against the people, the working people – the social force that produces the wealth at societal level but stolen by the rich.

Whose hands are behind the exposure – is not the only question related to the exposure. The exposure explains itself – the exposure is a part of factional fight among the wealthy at world level. But, the question that should also be in agenda is the system itself – what and how is the system that gives birth to such rich, such theft, such deception, such lie? The question that should also be in agenda is the “wealth” and “power”, if any, and even, if non-existent, of people, the poor, especially the working persons producing wealth and being deceived by the wealthy. The question that should also be in agenda is the relations between such wealth and power, essentially political power, used to do misdoings – theft, lie, deception. This is the question of inequality of political power – the question missed most of the time by most of the mainstream economists discussing inequality. An amazing business it’s!

There’s law, a gamut of law; and the purpose pronounced powerfully and forcefully behind enacting the gamut of law is execution of justice, execution of equity, kick out theft and deception. All the business the Pandora Papers show is an execution of law – the way it’s executed. No enactment could prohibit the deception. Whatever was done by the rich – floating of companies, transfer of money or capital, etc. – was by faithfully following all laws. The system of law, so, can’t escape the very question – what were you doing Sir when such a great business with such a great amount of money was transacted? Are you ineffective or a party to it? A sleeping partner, are you? Has this been enacted only to hoodwink the ordinary tax payers, the person begging on a street in Karachi, the mother with her hungry children in Lebanon, the person searching for medical treatment in a dysfunctional health care system in a capitalist economy that accumulates profit from the health care system it has elaborately set up?

There are executioners of law enacted to stop theft and “flying away” of capital. There’s supervisory authority keeping eyes open so that all laws related to theft and deception are executed properly. What were these executioners and supervisory authority doing while the theft, the deception – dodging taxes – were carried on by the rich with smile in their faces? Are they, the executioners and the supervisory authority, thus, party to this great job? They are part of the system of taxation and ensuring proper implementation of taxation, revenue, etc.; and thus, haven’t they made the system party to the lie, deception, dodging of tax, loss of revenue? Who the criminals will be, then?

Politics was obviously there behind these thefts, deceptions. Without political clout this system couldn’t have operated, couldn’t have operated for months and years, and thefts, the dodging of taxes, weren’t done in a day, weren’t done once, weren’t done by a single person.

These are difficult questions – difficult to the powerful, the owners of the system that creates and sustains with loopholes to lie, to deceive, that sustains with unequal political power sharing between the exploiter and the exploited.

These are questions unknown to the unaware, to the disorganized, to the political-powerless millions – the masses struggling with hunger in Afghanistan, struggling with poverty in Brazil, struggling with inequality in Nigeria.

But, these questions, instead of superficial and trivial issues, should reach them. But, these questions, in most cases, don’t reach them. The facts are hidden from them – the millions whose labor is stolen by a few.

Thanks to the exposure or the factional fight, whatever that’s. It has provided some facts – facts to understand the system, not only loot, not only theft – dodge tax. The Papers has opened up the powerful’s Pandora’s Box – a system full with theft, deception, lies, and inequality.

Loot – appropriation and expropriation – the exploiters continue with, tricks they follow and lies they propagate to hide their loot, agents they employ to keep people demobilized, to make people fail perceiving the loot-facts and sources and relations of the facts get exposed everyday if the exploiters’ acts and pronouncements are closely observed.

To keep the power of loot intact, the exploiters’ first tact is to wipe out the question of appropriation and expropriation from discussion, and stuff whole agenda with whatever rubbish they produce and collect. This move distracts the exploited, the part of society falling prey to the exploiters, keeps the exploited busy with issues not related to the existence of the exploited, serve the exploiters’ interests, make the exploited get busy with the agenda helpful to the exploiters. The question of loot withers away, thus.

The question of loot is connected to the question of the exploiters’ economic interests – dominance of exploitative system. The question of loot is connected to the question of the relations the exploiters establish – exploitative relations with private property – in the sphere of economy. Private property – capital, made by reproduction of surplus value as a result of exploitation of wage labor, “not a thing, but rather a definite social production relation, belonging to a definite historical formation of society, which is manifested in a thing and lends this thing a specific social character.” (Marx, Capital, vol. III) – is part of the economy. The question doesn’t move without politics – politics of the exploiters. The entire question withers away when these aspects don’t find place in agenda.

It’s regularly, thus, observed in most lands: these questions, essential and urgent to people, regularly go without discussion while questions related to people – of economy and politics – are discussed. Non-essential questions, questions related to the exploiters interests, questions serving the exploiters are discussed in a manner and with such force that push back questions related to people’s interests.

Here’re the tricks the exploiters employ: overwhelm the exploited with problems, so that people don’t get respite – the space required to summarize the hostile situation; make non-questions questions, engage adventurers with the task of raising fiery slogans instead of proper analyses and well-thought out ideas – a task that subverts people’s initiatives for having well-composed ideas and getting organized. A tricky job it’s. The adventurers turn “friends” and “well-wishers”, theoreticians advocating measures that torpedo people’s initiatives, and at the same time, camouflage self-face.

There’re persons subverting organizations people have or whatever initiative people take to claim space while the persons pose as friends of people. Engaging such persons is one of capital’s tasks to counter people. The engaged persons hide self-identity, in the payroll of masters, and spread lies, misinterpret and create confusion.

The question is: What should people do in this perspective? History presents lessons: Get aware, get organized, have organization, have leadership, foil attempts subverting people’s initiatives.

More than 7 million people in Germany in precarious employment

Elisabeth Zimmermann

More than 7 million people in Germany work in “atypical” or precarious jobs, that is, just under 21 percent of the country’s 33.4 million workforce. These figures are the result of a special analysis by the Federal Statistical Office (Microcensus 2020) carried out at the request of the Left Party parliamentary group in the Bundestag.

The Federal Statistical Office counts temporary and contract work, marginal employment such as mini-jobs, part-time work with contracts of less than 20 hours per week, and fixed-term employment as “atypical” employment. These jobs are invariably low paid, with incomes barely sufficient for a person to live on. In addition, such workers face the constant uncertainty as to whether or not their fixed-term employment contracts will be extended. Medium- and long-term planning for their lives are impossible.

Gorillas delivery service drivers in Berlin vote on protest action

When one adds the 4.5 million part-time workers with more than 20 hours per week, whom the Federal Statistical Office does not count as “atypical” employees, a total of 11.5 million male and female workers do not work in so-called normal jobs. This means that one-third of the workforce is engaged in part-time and/or precarious work, far more than previously suspected.

The growth of the precarious labour sector in Germany to one of the largest in Europe is primarily the product of the anti-welfare Hartz laws introduced by the former Social Democratic Party/Green Party coalition (1999–2004) led by Gerhard Schröder (SPD). The legislation passed by the Schröder government has led to a massive increase in social inequality.

Other studies show a strong concentration of the low-wage sector in different regions. A recent publication by the German Trade Union Federation (DGB) in Berlin-Brandenburg illustrates the extent of the low-wage sector in the capital city and its surroundings. The DGB study is based on an evaluation by the socio-economic panel (SOEP) and covers the years from 2017 to 2019.

During this period, an average of 375,000 people in Berlin worked in the low-wage sector, 24.3 percent of the working population. In Brandenburg, the figure was around 280,000, a share of 27.7 percent. The hourly wage in this sector was below €11.13, less than two-thirds of the average gross hourly wage and little more than the statutory minimum wage of €9.60.

The study also shows that foreign-born workers are disproportionately affected by low-wage work. In Berlin, the percentage of low paid immigrant workers is 30.5 percent, in Brandenburg 65.4 percent. More than half of semi-skilled and unskilled workers are making low wages in Berlin and 73.2 percent in Brandenburg. In Berlin, 85.2 percent of so-called “mini-jobbers” are low wage, while 90.9 percent are low wage in Brandenburg. Similar conditions prevail in other regions with equivalent levels of high social inequality.

The country’s trade unions and the DGB bear a significant share of responsibility for the development of this huge low-wage sector. They have sat, and continue to sit, on all the commissions that produce this type of insecure employment and the low minimum wage. Large corporations and businesses use outsourcing to subcontractors or temporary work agencies to lower wages and worsen working conditions for thousands who used to be employed on a regular basis.

Industries with the most low-wage workers include retail, with a 16.1 percent share in 2019; food services, 9.2 percent; building services, 9.1 percent; health care, 8.5 percent; and education, 4.8 percent. The figures are based on a study by the Institute for Work and Qualification (IAQ Report 2021-06), as reported in the Tagesspiegel newspaper in early September.

Workers in the low-wage sector are also particularly at risk of contracting COVID-19 due in part to job insecurity and cramped living conditions. At the same time, these workers also suffer disproportionately from pandemic-related job and income loss. The high number of workers in atypical jobs is also a major reason for the rise in poverty among retirees.

At the same time, wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top of society. The richest 1 percent of the population owns as much as the poorest 75 percent. While wealth at the top has grown enormously via the multi-billion coronavirus programs of the European Central Bank and the federal government, there is supposedly no money for the working class and the poor. On the contrary, the money that has been poured down the throats of the rich is to be squeezed out of workers through increased exploitation.

One indicator of the obscene wealth at the top is the recent Wealth-X report, which says that the global pandemic has led to an unprecedented accumulation of wealth among the most privileged strata of society. The global number of dollar billionaires rose above 3,000 for the first time in 2020. Their average wealth is $1.9 billion, and their total wealth is $10 trillion, an increase of 5.7 percent since 2019.

“Taken as a whole, the global pandemic has delivered an unexpected windfall to billionaire wealth, amplified by the flood of financial incentives and swelling profits in key sectors of the economy that has spawned a new wave of younger, self-made billionaires,” the report says.

First place in the country chart for billionaires is the US, followed by China in second place and Germany in third. In Germany the number of billionaires increased by 13.7 percent to 174 during the 2020 pandemic year, and their total wealth grew to $515 billion.

Merck announces promising new pill to treat COVID infections

Benjamin Mateus

On Friday morning, Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, announced significant positive results for their antiviral drug Molnupiravir (EIDD-2801) to treat people infected with early COVID-19 experiencing mild to moderate symptoms. According to the press release, their “oral antiviral” drug reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by around 50 percent.

In fact, the phase three trial was stopped early on the recommendation by the independent data monitoring committee, in consultation with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), on these significant findings. The oversight committees are responsible for the conduct and integrity of such trials. If during a planned interim analysis of the data the review committee finds the drug to be efficacious, it can recommend stopping the trial, as not to further delay using these drugs that can benefit patients.

Molnupiravir, an antiviral pill (shown) made by Merck to treat COVID-19 may keep newly diagnosed people out of the hospital and prevent deaths. (Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp)

The analysis showed that the COVID-19 pill reduced hospitalizations and death down from 14 percent in the group taking a placebo to 7 percent in those that were given the active ingredient. When the interim data was broken down further, the reduction in hospitalizations was only 39 percent. But more impressive was the reduction in deaths, from eight in the placebo group to zero taking the actual medication.

The final analysis of all the data is anticipated shortly and peer-reviewed publication of the report will be important to ensure confidence in the process. But such a development is welcome news and an urgently-needed addition to the fight against the coronavirus. It is only an addition, however, and no substitute for an aggressive campaign to eradicate the virus using every possible public health measure, including lockdowns.

Merck has indicated they have already proceeded with an application to the FDA to obtain emergency use authorization (EUA). Pending this approval, the positive findings mean that there is now, for the first time in the course of the pandemic, a COVID-19 treatment that can be administered by mouth. The pharmaceutical company expects to produce 10 million treatment courses by the end of the year and many more doses in 2022.

In June 2021, the Biden administration signed an agreement with Merck for 1.7 million courses of treatment (one pill twice a day for five days) for a total price tag of $1.2 billion, or $700 for each course. The drug is expected to generate revenues up to $7 billion by year’s end. The company has said it has agreements with several governments but has not shared these details. As it stands, Molnupiravir will be catapulted into the profit stratosphere as one of the most lucrative drugs ever made.

An effective oral antiviral treatment is a game-changer. Ease of delivery and storage makes it ideal in a situation when there can be considerable delay in symptom onset and confirmatory testing of COVID-19. Both Remdesivir (a broad-spectrum antiviral drug) and Regeneron (a monoclonal antibody) must be administered intravenously, requiring skilled health care workers and additional supplies. Remdesivir’s data has also been criticized for tepid results in three trials that suggest it only modestly improves time to recovery by a few days. In brief, the phase three MOVe-OUT trial was an international randomized, blinded study that compared Molnupiravir to a placebo in non-hospitalized adults diagnosed with mild to moderate COVID-19. Patients had to have one or more risk factors associated with poor outcomes. Symptom onset could not have lasted for more than five days to participate in the trial. The primary endpoint was the percentage of participants who were hospitalized and/or died through 29 days after being randomized into the study.

The main risk factors for severe disease among subjects were obesity, age at or over 60, diabetes, and heart disease. The Delta, gamma, and Mu variants accounted for 80 percent of sequenced infections. With more than 170 sites involved, 55 percent of participants were from Latin America, 23 percent from Europe, and 15 percent from Africa. The adverse effects of the medication were comparable to the placebo arm of the trial. Fewer people discontinued their treatment in the Molnupiravir arm than in the placebo group.

In the early stages of the pandemic, in the effort to find anything that could work to treat infected patients, many older drugs sitting on laboratory shelves and benches were resurrected and tested for their response against SARS-CoV-2. In this regard, Molnupiravir, a broad-based antiviral drug, was as likely a candidate as any. It proved to provide impressive results against the coronavirus in human lung cell cultures.

Molnupiravir (EIDD-2081) has, like many chemical compounds, a convoluted history. Several years before the pandemic, Emory University was awarded a $10 million contract through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to develop new drugs to treat infections caused by emerging and fabricated viral threats—in other words, it originates as a byproduct of the Pentagon’s germ warfare program.

According to an article published in Chemical & Engineering News on May 5, 2020, Dr. George Painter, director of the Emory Institute for Drug Development, and his team screened molecules that were analogues to those used in antiviral drugs, seeking a compound that had a high barrier to resistance, which means that despite a virus’s ability to mutate, the drug would remain effective. Also, the molecule had to penetrate the blood-brain barrier because these viral threats attacked the brain.

Their efforts zeroed in on an obscure molecule called N4-Hydroxyctidine (NHC), which they dubbed EIDD-1931, which had broad and intriguing antiviral properties that seemed to fulfill each of their requirements. It had first been looked at in the 1970s by Russian and Polish scientists working on treatment against smallpox infection. Subsequently, many laboratories had used the compound in their experiments on elucidating viral replication mechanisms.

Once the molecule is incorporated into the RNA by the virus’s replicating enzyme, NHC is recognized as either Cytidine or Uracil (two of four nucleotides in the building blocks of RNA). In other words, NHC can exist, through a chemical reaction called tautomerization, as two forms rapidly flipping back and forth from one to the other. When the virus attempts to replicate again, multiple errors are incorporated as a result of the change in forms in NHC during RNA strand replication, leading to a lethal mutation that leaves the virus unable to infect or reproduce.

The researchers also found the drug had tremendous activity against coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS in mice and dog animal models. However, testing in monkeys revealed it was getting trapped in the cells that line their guts and unable to fight the infection, making its potential use in humans problematic. This then led to the current prodrug formulation, EIDD-2081, that allows the drug to reach the bloodstream before metabolizing to its active form.

It was in early 2020, when the team from Emory University was considering a new drug application with the FDA for EIDD-2081 as a treatment for influenza, that the outbreak in Wuhan, China, began making the front pages of every news channel across the globe.

In early March 2020, EIDD-2081was tested in human cell cultures infected with SARS-CoV-2 and proved exceptionally adept at stopping viral replication. It was also effective at killing the viruses that became resistant to Remdesivir. Virologist Juliet Morrison of the University of California, Riverside, commented at the time that the cell culture studies had been very promising. Still, if these drugs are to work in people, they would need to be administered early in the course of an infection. The team moved quickly to get EIDD-2081 into clinical studies.

On March 19, 2020, Miami-based Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, founded in 2016 as a company focused on developing therapies against emerging infectious diseases, licensed EIDD-2081 from Emory for an undisclosed amount, according to the Washington Post.

The Post wrote on June 25, 2020, “But what the tiny Miami company did have was a growing team with experience in pharmaceutical development and research and a willingness from its wealthy owners—chief executive Wendy Holman and her husband, hedge fund manager Wayne Holman—to place a bet on the treatment in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. That wager paid off with extraordinary speed in May when, just two months after acquiring the antiviral therapy called EIDD-2081 from Emory, Ridgeback sold exclusive worldwide rights to drug giant Merck.”

As Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and specialist in drug development, noted at the time, “I would think that universities … would not normally transfer products to basically a house flipper. I wouldn’t think they would have to engage with speculators, like it appears that Ridgeback Biotherapeutic is.”

As significant as the positive data released on Merck’s COVID pill is, it begs the question why it has taken so long to initiate and conduct these trials? Clearly there had been little hope placed in pharmaceuticals for the treatment of COVID. Additionally, the vaccines were at the front and center of the response to the pandemic. It is certain more information will be forthcoming in the weeks and months ahead, but it would be safe to assume that financial deliberations were behind these maneuverings.

In this competition, much is currently in advanced development. Pfizer has recently commenced a large phase 2/3 trial testing their investigational oral antiviral agent, a novel protease inhibitor (PF-07321332). Meanwhile, Roche reported in mid-August that they were making amendments to their phase two trial with their experimental drug AT-527, which has been shown to reduce viral replication in hospitalized patients.

However, caution needs to be raised that the antiviral pill and the next generation of therapeutics are not a panacea and do not obviate the need for a global eradication strategy. The ruling elites will now further mobilize their efforts to push to make the virus endemic. Meanwhile, all federal and state public health measures are being abandoned and privatized. The COVID pandemic has provided the impetus for the complete abrogation of all responsibility by the government for the safety and well-being of its population.