Ambulances called nearly 1,000 times to Amazon’s UK warehouses

Laura Tiernan

Ambulances have responded 971 times to emergency calls at Amazon’s UK “fulfilment centres” since 2018, according to data obtained by the Mirror under Freedom of Information (FOI).

Ambulance callouts happened at 24 Amazon warehouses, the Mirror reported this week. This included 178 visits to the company’s Tilbury warehouse in Essex, the largest in Europe, where an employee died earlier this month.

The newspaper obtained information from nine NHS ambulance trusts. It reported, “Paramedics treated people who had lost consciousness, or were suffering from traumatic injuries, breathing problems and chest or cardiac pain.”

The Amazon distribution centre in Tilbury (credit: Google Maps)

Among the medical emergencies were two Amazon employees who were suicidal.

Ahead of this weekend’s annual Black Friday discount sales, the newspaper’s exposé underscores the brutal exploitation underpinning the company’s global dominance and the obscene wealth of its founder Jeff Bezos who is worth £154 billion ($USD 205.5 billion) according to Forbes .

Amazon is expected to take £2 billion in UK sales this weekend and more than $USD 10 billion in the United States. Its total sales reached £20.63 billion in the UK during 2020, up by more than 50 percent in one year. The company employs 55,000 people in the UK and took on 22,000 extra staff last year as consumers shifted to online retail during the pandemic.

Global Amazon profits hit $USD 386.6 billion (£289.68 billion) this year, up 38 percent on the previous year. Amazon earned so much that even if all 1.3 million employees were paid a COVID bonus of $690,000, the company would still be as rich as it was in 2019. The company has a market value of $1.8 trillion.

The pandemic has vastly accelerated the grotesque inequalities and exploitation inherent in the capitalist profit system. Workers at Amazon’s UK warehouses report they are treated like “slaves and animals”, forced to meet impossible pick rates and bullied if they fall behind. A whistleblower from Tilbury told the Mirror, “Amazon sees people just like numbers, just like rats.”

Testimony from employees to an Amazon Workers’ Hotline set up by Unite and reported on Twitter includes:

• “When my second child was born, I requested the time off and was ‘ticketed’ for being off work.”
• “They are checking on you all the time. Once one of managers came to the toilet after me and my friend to check what we were doing there. It was horrible.”
• “We have targets of 300 items an hour. The bosses are bullies. The last hour of the shift is ‘Power Hour’ where if your targets drop it messes up your rate for the whole shift.”
• “I had a panic attack at my work station and nearly passed out l, got told that I could only take rest of day off and was to come back to work the next day, there is no mental health support with the Amazon.”
• “They have cut the staff by half and the volume has increased during the pandemic. The staff got smaller and smaller, and now we are having to work way more and they have the audacity to say it is for our safety's sake they reduced the number of workers!”

In 2018, the GMB union published results from its own FOI investigation which showed 600 serious medical incidents at 14 Amazon warehouses in just three years. At Rugeley warehouse near Birmingham, there were 115 ambulance callouts, including two for electric shocks and eight for people who had fallen unconscious. Since then, conditions have worsened, with paramedics attending 30 percent more often in the past three years, or 120 additional ambulance visits per year.

Amazon's one million square-foot fulfilment centre in Fife. Credit: Chris Watt

Trade unions, charities, lobbyists, NGOs and other representatives of the upper middle class are staging their annual Black Friday protests today. The #MakeAmazonPay coalition is a top-down operation aimed at suppressing a worldwide rebellion by workers against social inequality and capitalist exploitation. Members of the coalition present themselves as champions of Amazon employees, tapping into workers’ desire for globally unified action. But as with the Black Friday sales, it is necessary to look at the fine print.

#MakeAmazonPay reports it is holding “Black Friday actions” in Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Austria, Luxembourg, Spain, Ireland, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh, India, and Cambodia.

But despite the horrific conditions facing warehouse and delivery workers worldwide, and despite (or rather because of) the awesome potential power of the company’s 1.3 million strong workforce, no globally coordinated industrial action has been called. Amazon’s Black Friday profits will not be jeopardised. The protests are being widely promoted in the media precisely for this reason, in stark contrast to the media blackout of the explosive strikes by Spanish metal workers in Cadiz.

Token protests being held today in Britain confirm the stage-managed character of the Black Friday campaign. The GMB union announced it will protest alongside the Trades Union Congress, International Transport Federation, War on Want and Labour Behind the Label in the #MakeAmazonPay coalition. Four protests are taking place outside Amazon facilities in Peterborough, Coventry and Ellistown in the East Midlands, with the largest a gathering of 50-100 coalition supporters outside Amazon’s HQ in London. No doubt Jeremy Corbyn, that walking talisman against the class struggle, will be on hand to deliver Fabian homilies about the need to protect Amazon workers from rampant profiteering and the importance of Amazon paying taxes.

The #MakeAmazonPay coalition is led by the Progressive International whose founder, political charlatan Yanis Varoufakis, betrayed the Greek working class as Finance Minister in the Syriza government, imposing mass austerity diktats on behalf of the European Union, European Central Bank and NATO. These are people who have nothing to offer the working class except defeat.

The coalition has published a list of “common demands”, addressed to Amazon and capitalist governments, calling for “fair pay”, for Amazon to pay tax and to compensate for its impact on the planet. It calls on Amazon to begin “sharing power with workers, for instance by welcoming worker representatives elected by their colleagues in different management levels, and by increasing options for workers to receive not only shares in the corporation, but also voting rights, so that the company moves towards a model of democratic governance.”

Politically, its demands promote “unions’ rights to promote workers’ interests” and “giving unions access to Amazon worksites to inform workers on the benefits of unionization”. Its advocacy of the pro-company trade unions is in line with efforts led by United States President Joe Biden, whose Democratic Party administration has publicly encouraged efforts to unionise Amazon warehouses in Alabama, New York and elsewhere.

Union control of Amazon and logistics workers is viewed as a strategic imperative in ruling circles. The financial oligarchy is reliant on the unions’ vast apparatus to suppress strikes, discipline the workforce, weed out militants, promote economic nationalism and prevent the emergence of a global mass movement by the working class against capitalism.

Health and Social Care Bill’s naked onslaught on UK working class

Paul Bond

The passing of an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill on Monday marks a devastating attack on the working class across England. It ensures that poorer pensioners will bear a greater financial share of their social care costs than the better off.

The Bill sets a cap of £86,000 on the amount anyone will have to pay personally towards the cost of their social care. However, the amendment excludes from this figure any means-tested support that is received to help pay for these costs, meaning that poorer pensioners will pay personally the same as the richer.

The cap was originally proposed by Sir Andrew Dilnot’s 2011 report on overhauling social care funding, commissioned by David Cameron’s Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government. The report was welcomed by then Labour leader Ed Miliband as “an important step forward,” and he offered Labour’s support in finding “a way to make this work.”

Sir Andrew Dilnot (Credit: Creative Commons)

Cameron’s government introduced the cap in the 2014 Care Act, but it was never implemented. The government is using the current amendment to effect its implementation, protect private assets and cut £900 million per annum from government expenditure by 2027.

The cap means that up to a quarter of those facing residential care in England could end up taking more from their assets than was envisaged in the 2014 Act. At least 125,000 people at any one time could face higher costs even than originally proposed by Dilnot.

Those with assets of less than £20,000 will not have to use these to pay towards care fees, although they might have to pay from their income. Those with more than £100,000 in assets will not be eligible for any council financial help.

Those with assets between £20,000 and £100,000 will qualify for means-tested support to help pay for care. However, this contribution will not be included in the £86,000 personal liability cap.

Dilnot’s proposal was that any means-tested support should be included in the total cap. Excluding it, wrote Dilnot, would be “unfair for those on low incomes,” as the result would be that the poorer would only “contribute more slowly, rather than contributing less overall” than the richer.

That was exactly the class calculation Boris Johnson’s government introduced in the amendment. Dilnot himself noted that anyone with assets of less than £186,000 will be penalised under the amended scheme.

Torsten Bell, head of low income research thinktank the Resolution Foundation, tweeted: “Here’s a simple way to think about the problem the government has created: if you own a £1m house in the home counties, over 90% of your assets are protected. If you’ve got a terraced house in Hartlepool (worth £70k) you can lose almost everything.”

Sally Warren, of healthcare charity the King’s Fund, said the amendment “no longer protects those with lower assets from catastrophic costs.”

When asked by the press, business minister Paul Scully refused to guarantee no one would need to sell their home to pay for care. He told Sky News: “I can’t tell you what individuals are going to do… It will depend on different circumstances.”

Dilnot’s review marked the emergence of an official consensus that even the most essential publicly funded social provision had to be dismantled and privatised. It accepted that those living in care homes had to pay their annual living costs, including food and accommodation.

The Department of Health and Social Care guidance on the Bill makes clear that “daily living costs” are excluded from the cap, so even the notion that £86,000 is the most an individual will have to pay personally is false. Set at a nationwide flat rate of £200 a week, these costs come on top of the cap.

Much of the press coverage has focused on a regional divide, as house prices vary wildly across the country. Analysis by the Guardian suggests that those requiring long-term elderly care in northern areas will spend at least 60 percent of their eligible property value, compared to around 20 percent in the wealthier south.

The amendment caused unease among Conservative MPs in the northern so-called “Red Wall” constituencies won from Labour in 2019’s landslide election, capitalising on Brexit. Sitting in socially deprived seats, they are aware of the simmering class hostility that can be unleashed by yet more austerity and cuts and wanted to distance themselves from the reality of their party’s policies and hide behind its promises to “level up” the north with the south of England.

Despite an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons, therefore, the vote only passed by 272-246, a majority of 26. Eighteen Tories voted against the government and there were 68 abstentions.

The rest of the Bill was equally vile. Since the planned changes were first floated in a White Paper in February, the press have been trying to spin them as a bold reversal of Lansley’s 2012 Act, which extended sweeping privatisation across the National Health Service (NHS). The Bill will replace Lansley’s Clinical Commissioning Groups—the vehicle for privatisation through their buying of services “on behalf of” patients and putting those services out to competitive tender—with Integrated Care Systems (ICSs).

The claim is that the ICSs are intended to “eliminate the need for competitive tendering where it adds limited or no value.” But this is far from hostility to private provision. The removal of fixed price tariffs, rather, offers the possibility of more private provision if companies come up with better prices.

Thinktanks have rejected claims that the Bill offered private firms a power grab, but it did not need to. It is a more thorough-going integration of private firms within the structures of the NHS. Each of the 42 regional ICSs in England will be made up of Integrated Care Partnerships, Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), councils, charities and others. Alongside NHS clinicians and local public health officials, private health companies can have representatives on ICBs. Health Secretary Sajid Javid has said that such appointments will only be blocked if they “could reasonably be regarded as undermining the independence of the health service.”

The end to public tendering is likely to see existing outsourced work being rolled over, cementing the place of private companies. The NHS will only be required to tender services where this might lead to better outcomes. But competitive tendering and privatisation will continue, especially in the most lucrative sectors.

The British Medical Association (BMA) has expressed concern that the Bill “allows contracts to be awarded to private providers without proper scrutiny or transparency.” Given the naked cronyism of exorbitant private contracts handed out to government allies during the pandemic, this is well founded. Javid is keen to use the confused conditions of the pandemic as a smokescreen, arguing, “This is exactly the right time for these reforms.” The Bill also gives the health secretary a free hand to intervene in any local plans at any time.

Labour’s “opposition” to the Bill was for the record. Justin Madders summarised Labour’s ringing defence: “we on the opposition benches believe that the NHS should be the default provider. If it is not the only provider, it should be predominant provider… Where a service cannot be provided by a public body there is still the option to go beyond the NHS itself, but that should be a last resort and never a permanent solution.”

Unite the union’s national officer for health, Jacalyn Williams, described the Bill as “a licence for politicians to run down and sell off our NHS,” even as the health unions work might and main to prevent a struggle by their members to oppose the government and defend the NHS.

Hundreds more lives threatened on “disintegrating” boat in Mediterranean as London and Paris cross swords over Channel migrant deaths

Robert Stevens

Amid mutual recriminations between London and Paris over the deaths Wednesday of 27 migrants and asylum seekers in the English Channel, it was reported Thursday morning that 430 people are at imminent risk of death in a boat in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of north Africa.

The news was reported, with hardly any media coverage, by Alarm Phone, who provide a hotline for people on boats in distress. It said, “A boat with approximately 430 people on board, including dozens of children and minors, is in severe distress in the central Mediterranean Sea.”

Screenshot of Thursday's Alarm Phone article warning of the perilous situation facing over 400 migrants in the central Mediterranean Sea

Alarm Phone said it was alerted to the disastrous situation the previous day by people on board: “According to them, the boat is disintegrating, and they cannot hold out much longer. Moreover, they report that several people have already died. There are over one hundred people below deck—in case of a shipwreck, they would be trapped inside the vessel.” It provided the co-ordinates for the vessel.

The European Union (EU) was unmoved, with Alarm Phone reporting that it “has repeatedly informed European authorities in Italy and Malta. MRCC [Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centres] Rome has informed us that they were not the ‘competent authority’ in this case, while… Malta simply hangs up the phone when we try to relay information on the case.”

After Wednesday’s preventable deaths, the attitude to the Mediterranean Sea boat underscores the criminality of the anti-immigration policies pursued by all the European governments. As this crisis unfolded, Britain and France stepped up their bitter recriminations following the deaths resulting from a flimsy inflatable dingy capsizing off the French port city Calais. Those on board were trying to reach the UK.

On Thursday morning the French government, who initially reported that 31 people had died, revised the figure down to 27—still the largest number of dead in the Channel since the International Organisation for Migration began systematically monitoring crossings and fatalities in 2014.

Among them were 17 men, seven women—including one who was pregnant—two boys and a girl. According to reports, most of the dead were Kurds from Iraq or Iran. Two of those rescued were from Iraq and Somalia. They are recovering from severe hypothermia. The deaths follow those of around 10 other migrants who also perished while attempting the crossing in recent weeks.

France, Britain and the entire European ruling class bear responsibility for the deaths. It is no coincidence that the origin countries of the victims—Iraq, Iran and Somalia—are those which have suffered from decades of imperialist oppression, including the 2003 invasions of Iraq and imperialist intrigues in Iran and Somalia. Millions have been left homeless and internally displaced by these crimes.

On hearing of the deaths, France and Britain swung into damage limitation mode, with government figures from each country declaring that all responsibility fell on “people smugglers” and “gangs”. France launched a criminal investigation, with four men arrested on Wednesday and a fifth on Thursday. French President Emmanuel Macron declared, “Everything will be put in place to find and convict those responsible.”

No end of crocodile tears were shed. The European Parliament held a minute’s silence Thursday. These are representatives of the EU powers responsible for turning the continent into” Fortress Europe”, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers by drowning in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.

Recent tombs of migrants who died in their attempt to cross the English Channel are pictured in the Nord Cemetery of Calais, northern France, Thursday, Nov. 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Rafael Yaghobzadeh)

On Thursday, Macron called for “an emergency meeting of EU ministers concerned by the migratory challenge”. The EU border agency Frontex should provide “immediate reinforcement” to monitor the Channel, he said.

Johnson and Macron pledged Wednesday night to “step up” cooperation to stop deaths in the Channel, with Macron cynically requesting that Britain not exploit the deaths “for political purposes”.

Their bromides were only the signal for a tirade of accusations and nationalist outbursts on both sides of the Channel, from right-wing forces and the media.

Even before their phone call, Johnson had already accused France of being slack in monitoring its coast. “We’ve had difficulties persuading some of our partners—particularly the French—to do things in a way in which we think the situation deserves.”

The right-wing gutter press in Britain, who for years have scapegoated and hounded “illegal” immigrants and asylum seekers, were awash with recriminations. Alongside a photo of the remains of the flimsy dinghy in which the 27 tried to cross, the Daily Mail ran the online headline, “This is on you, Macron”.

The Metro’s front page wailed, “Why didn't France stop them?” The Sun and Daily Mail ’s print edition led with a photo of migrants taking a dingy to the shoreline with a French police car parked nearby on the beach, with the headlines, “Shameful: French police idly look on as rafts head to UK”, and “You’re letting gangs get away”. A Daily Express article complained, “UK has paid ‘duplicitous’ France £160m since 2015 to stop migrant boats”.

Macron was mainly concerned with parading his government’s law and order policies aimed against migrants and asylum seekers. He declared, “our security forces are mobilised day and night… Our mobilisation is total as far as our coasts are concerned.” The response to the deaths would be a “maximum mobilisation” of French forces, including deploying reservists and drones to watch the shoreline.

French interior Minister Gérald Darmanin spewed out a filthy nationalist, anti-immigrant diatribe in an interview yesterday morning with French radio station RTL, expressing more than a hint of envy at what he described as the UK’s economic advantage: “Everyone knows there are more than 1.2 million illegal immigrants in Great Britain, and that British employers use this labour force to make things that the British manufacture and consume.”

Just days before Wednesdays’ Channel deaths, he declared, “Why do people go to Calais? It’s to go to Great Britain… And why do they want to go to Great Britain? It’s because the labour market largely works in Great Britain thanks to a large army or reserves—as Karl Marx said—of people in an irregular situation but who can work at a low cost, obviously.”

He flung back accusations from Britain that France was lax in its treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers by boasting, “It is often said that France doesn’t deport enough, but we deport about 20,000 people a year.” By contrast, he said, the U.K. “expels 6,000, four times less than France, even though there are more people and twice as many illegal immigrants.”

Calais’ right-wing mayor, Natacha Bouchart, a member of the Gaullist The Republicans party, denounced the “migratory policies” of successive French governments, and attacked the “The failure of Boris Johnson who obliges our country to endure this situation because he doesn’t have the courage to assume his own responsibilities … in his country”.

In his comments, Macron claimed that in order to prevent death, “[A]bove all, we need to seriously strengthen cooperation ... with Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain and the European Commission.”

Such cooperation will be based on the most ruthless suppression of the democratic rights of migrants and asylum seekers. Speaking in Parliament, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel stated that Channel crossings were “illegal”, adding, “I’ve offered to work with France to put [UK] officers on the ground [on the French coasts] to “to prevent these dangerous journeys from taking place.”

Patel’s Home Office is pushing through the draconian Nationality and Borders Bill, which is a declaration of war against established international law regarding the treatment of asylum seekers. As part of this onslaught, Patel is moving to impose a “pushback” policy, authorising the UK’s Border Force to turn back migrant boats and said in Parliament that she will “do whatever is necessary to secure the area” to stop sailings reaching Britain. “I have not ruled anything out” she warned, noting that “Greece”, whose anti-immigration policies she has repeatedly hailed as exemplary, “are using pushback”.

According to the Times, Johnson met a group of Tory MPs on Wednesday to assure them that the UK would tighten its immigration policies even further. The newspaper reported, “The prime minister left those present under the impression he was considering legal reforms to make crossings harder, something they have long demanded.” It cited one of the MPs who said, “We have to smash the merry-go-round of the asylum process.” Another of the MPs told the Times, “He [Johnson] agreed that we can’t just wait for the borders bill, but that we have to do something now. He told us to ‘watch this space’.”

Solomon Islands coup attempt triggered by US-backed, anti-China forces

Patrick O’Connor

Anti-Chinese political forces supported by the US in the Solomon Islands violently mobilised against the elected national government in an apparent coup plot on Wednesday and yesterday.

Arsonists set alight at least 14 buildings in the capital, Honiara, including a hut adjacent to the national parliament, as well as a senior high school, police station, and multiple businesses owned by ethnic Chinese residents. Riot police reportedly blocked the rioters from entering the parliament by deploying tear gas.

Burning buildings in Honiara’s Chinatown, November 25. (Photo: Twitter / @Nrg8000)

The Solomons’ government on Wednesday afternoon declared a 36-hour state of emergency, though further arson attacks were reported yesterday.

The Australian government has immediately seized on the unrest, dispatching 23 members of the heavily armed and riot-trained “Specialist Response Group” of the Australian Federal Police, as well as 93 members of the military. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that the force would be in the Solomons only for “weeks.” This deployment may however only be the initial response, with the situation recalling the lead up to the launch of the neo-colonial Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) that dominated the country between 2003 and 2017.

The apparent effort to forcibly overthrow Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare is the direct outcome of two years of US-fueled provocations against the elected government after the country switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in September 2019.

Approximately 1,000 rioters mobilised in Honiara, largely comprising a group that travelled from the island province of Malaita as members of the separatist “Malaita 4 Democracy” outfit. Solomons’ police reportedly blocked the berthing of another ship from Malaita, preventing additional coup plotters from mobilising.

Just over a year ago, the same anti-government forces issued a pogromist threat to all ethnic Chinese residents of Malaita to flee within 24 hours. The provincial Malaitan government also then threatened to block any activity of Chinese-owned corporations within the province.

The anti-Chinese forces arrived in the capital on Wednesday waving Malaitan flags as well as one prominent national flag of Israel. The odd sight of the Zionist state’s banner being waved within an anti-government riot in an impoverished South Pacific state is explicable only within the context of the US-Australian drive to destabilise the Sogavare government as a means of countering Beijing’s influence in the South Pacific.

Ever since the Solomons’ diplomatic turn away from Taiwan, Washington has promoted fundamentalist evangelical and pro-Zionist Christian and anti-communist layers in the country.

In September 2019, Republican senator Marco Rubio threatened to crash the Solomons’ economy by cutting off access to global financial markets. This came just after a team of American foreign policy, trade, and military officials had visited Malaita and the province’s premier, Daniel Suidani. The provincial leader subsequently declared that he did not accept the country’s recognition of Beijing and would instead maintain an independent foreign policy with Taiwan. He added that he had asked both the US and Australia to contribute to “Malaita security.”

In October 2020, Washington pledged $US25 million in so-called aid to Malaita. This donation—500 times more aid than the province receives from all other countries put together—amounted to a cash reward for the provincial administration’s attempted sabotage of the national government’s foreign policy.

Suidani’s stance on Taiwan was accompanied by a provocative declaration that he would accelerate moves to declare Malaita an independent state, separate from Solomon Islands. This raised the spectre of a return of the civil war conditions that wracked the country from 1998–2003.

There has been a seamless transition from the Trump to the Biden administrations with regard to Washington’s anti-China drive in the South Pacific.

In response to the violence and destruction in Honiara in the last two days, regional and Australian media outlets have expressed surprise and shock over what has happened.

Yet nothing in what has developed was unanticipated—the World Socialist Web Site warned in September last year: “The Malaitan administration’s reckless actions threaten a civil war within the impoverished South Pacific country. Between 1999 and 2003, a low-intensity civil war that involved the separatist Malaita Eagle Force militia cost around 200 lives and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes. The threat of renewed conflict has been deliberately stoked by the United States, as part of its aggressive drive to undermine China’s influence in the Pacific.”

Sogavare told ABC News today that the latest unrest was “influenced and encouraged by other powers… countries that don’t want ties with the People’s Republic of China.” He added: “I don’t want to name names, we’ll leave it there, we know who they are.”

Malaitan premier Daniel Suidani has prominently refused to condemn the violent riots over the last two days, instead insisting that Sogavare has to resign. National opposition leader Matthew Wale has issued similar statements.

Members of the national government from Malaita province issued a public statement denouncing the opposition for being “instigators of strife, violence, anarchy.”

Tensions have been escalating since Suidani spent five months last year in Taiwan undergoing brain surgery and receiving subsequent treatment. The Malaitan premier promoted this medical treatment as evidence of Taiwan’s political support for the Solomons. While recuperating, Suidani made time to speak with Australia’s “Sky News” Sharri Markson, who has prominently fuelled the Wuhan lab conspiracy theory over the origins of COVID-19. In between appearances on former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s podcast, Markson falsely presented Suidani as a heroic anti-corruption fighter for “democracy” in the South Pacific.

When Suidani returned to the Solomon Islands last July, there were rumours that he alternatively would be arrested or removed in a no confidence motion through the regional parliament in Malaita. Unconfirmed rumours published at the time in the Solomon Star newspaper also hinted that pro-Suidani militia forces were preparing to forcibly overthrow the national government.

The Thanksgiving holiday weekend threatens surge of COVID-19 infections across the US

Benjamin Mateus

On November 24, 2021, Thanksgiving Eve in the US, the World Health Organization’s Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during the COVID-19 press conference, warned that the rising number of COVID-19 deaths and cases in Europe and other countries are translating into unsustainable pressures on the health care systems that are exhausting health care workers.

He also raised concerns that many countries’ governments have grown complacent with employing and maintaining public health measures due largely to their sole reliance on COVID-19 vaccines against the coronavirus.

He said, “In many countries and communities, we are concerned about the false sense of security that vaccines have ended the pandemic and that people who are vaccinated do not need to take any other precautions. Vaccines save lives, but they do not fully prevent transmission. Data suggests that before the arrival of the Delta variant, vaccines reduced transmissions by about 60 percent. With Delta, that has dropped to about 40 percent. If you are vaccinated, you have a much lower risk of severe disease and death. But you are still at risk of being infected and of infecting others.”

Travellers queue up to enter a shuttle bus to a rental car facility as the Thanksgiving Day holiday approaches Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021, at Denver International Airport in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

He then called on people and governments to redouble their efforts to stem the tides of infection and prevent further loss of life regardless of their population’s vaccine status. These include the most basic measures, such as wearing masks even for the vaccinated, which Dr. Anthony Fauci has deemed unnecessary for those who are vaccinated.

Two years into the pandemic, these calls have been repeatedly made but have done little to sway leaders of capitalist nations that have placed profits over any crisis that besets the working class around the world. It bears repeating that the insatiable drive for profits has created these disastrous conditions in the current COVID-19 pandemic that is entering its third year.

Weekly COVID-19 cases across the globe have been steadily climbing for more than five straight weeks, with almost 3.8 million infections the week beginning November 15, 2021. In just the last 24 hours, there were more than 662,000 reported infections. Deaths have made their continual ascent, having climbed to 52,500 deaths in the same week. Currently, the global cumulative coronavirus cases have surpassed 260 million, and nearly 5.2 million have died.

The rise in COVID-19 cases in Europe is unprecedented throughout the pandemic despite high population vaccinations. And the US, when comparing the dynamics of community transmission, is lagging Europe by six weeks. Europe reached its last trough on September 25, 2021. The US saw its previous trough in the first week of November. However, Europe had only half the per capita community transmission when their surge began. The present growth across the US is on track with that in Europe.

In line with concerns raised by the WHO director-general for Europe, coronavirus cases in the US are exploding. On November 22, 2021, more than 162,000 COVID-19 infections were reported. The seven-day average has reached 95,000 cases per day, 25 percent above the averages two weeks ago. Deaths, a lagging indicator, have now turned upwards. Hospitalizations have once more exceeded 50,000 admissions. There are currently 38 states and the District of Columbia that are seeing growth in COVID-19.

Despite such ominous statistics, there is little mention of the pandemic other than various voices within the media shifting the blame on these developments onto the backs of the unvaccinated and demanding that the pandemic be proclaimed ended and for life to move on once more. Once death is normalized, they hope, it will fade into the recesses of forgotten memories.

Michigan hospitals and Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer have asked the federal government for immediate emergency staff to be sent in to support the catastrophe laying waste to the health care systems there.

An excerpt from the letter to President Joe Biden, written by Representatives Democrat Debbie Dingell and Republican Fred Upton, reads, “The situation in Michigan is rapidly getting worse, and we need all hands on deck and any and all resources you are willing to provide. We are concerned about the impact of the spread of COVID-19 on the state’s ability to effectively address the current public health emergency if current trends continue.”

The Henry Ford Health System, a health care organization in Metro Detroit, has seen COVID-19 cases skyrocket by 50 percent in just three weeks. Statewide hospitalizations have now surpassed over 4,000, bringing many health care systems to their knees. Adnan Munkarah, Henry Ford’s chief clinical officer, noted, “Our emergency departments and our hospitals are functioning beyond full capacity. That means our beds are full, and we have patients waiting in the emergency department for hours for beds to open.”

Speaking with Crain’s Detroit Business, Eric Toner, a senior scholar who specializes in hospital preparedness, said, “We have burnt through a whole generation of health care workers. More often than not the reason that the intensive care units are overwhelmed is they don’t have staff.”

As the WSWS noted previously, Michigan has become the canary in the coal mine. Commercial airlines and airports across the US are recording one of their busiest travel days. The TSA is estimating approximately 20 million air travelers will be screened during the Thanksgiving weekend. On Tuesday, the agency reported that it had seen more than 2 million people pass through security for six consecutive days. Meanwhile, the travel group AAA (American Automobile Association) reported it expects 53.4 million people will be on the roads visiting friends and families.

One year ago, during the beginning of the holiday season, the US saw a catastrophic surge in cases that lasted three months, infected over 16 million people and claimed 230,000 lives. As WHO Director-General Ghebreyesus noted, COVID-19 vaccines will save lives and prevent severe diseases. Still, the Delta strain will find every venue and infect millions this holiday season without any other mitigation measures in place. The death toll, even for the vaccinated, will climb without a doubt.

Even as the current COVID-19 fallout in Michigan was fully underway, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters at the Monday briefing that the administration would not be implementing any future nationwide lockdowns to stem the pandemic. Despite the catastrophe erupting in Europe, he doubled down, stating emphatically, “We can curb the spread of the virus without having to in any way shut down our economy.”

Perhaps the only sober voice among them was Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President. He said that time was running short to prevent a “dangerous” surge of coronavirus infections over the holidays. “We have a lot of viruses circulating around. You can’t walk from the data, and the data show that the cases are starting to go up, which is not unexpected when you get into a winter season. People start to go indoors more, and we know that immunity does wane over time.”

However, instead of calling for mask mandates, closure of nonessential businesses and schools, and warning against holiday travels, all he said was “... get vaccinated!”

French health minister rejects lockdown measures as COVID-19 cases skyrocket

Will Morrow

French Health Minister Olivier Véran delivered a press conference yesterday at noon to announce the Macron government’s response to the skyrocketing of COVID-19 cases in the country, with over 33,000 cases reported in the past 24 hours. While admitting that France and Europe were in the midst of a fifth wave, Véran maintained that there would be no lockdowns to restrict virus transmission via the closure of schools or nonessential workplaces.

The seven-day average for cases in France surpassed 20,000 for the first time since last August on Tuesday, reaching almost 22,000 yesterday. Another 265 people died in the past week. Véran spoke under conditions where the World Health Organisation has predicted that, given current government policies, more than 700,000 people will die across Europe (including Russia) from the virus over the next four months.

Yet his speech was a blunt rejection of the appeals by scientists for the implementation of non-pharmaceutical measures, including social distancing policies, to stop the spread of the pandemic.

“Yes, France is experiencing a fifth wave, and it will be without question longer and harder than the fourth wave that we knew in the summer,” Véran said. “But there is no fatalism before the coronavirus and its waves.” In fact, the Macron government’s policy is premised on a fatalistic approval of mass deaths.

In this March 23, 2020 file photo, a victim of the COVID-19 virus is evacuated from the Mulhouse civil hospital, eastern France. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias, File)

Véran’s announcements were restricted to measures to increase vaccine uptake in the population. Approximately 75 percent of the population has currently received two doses (89 percent of the adult population). The “health passport,” which restricts access to public places to those who are vaccinated, will be extended to require a third vaccine dose within seven months after the second dose. Eligibility for a third dose begins five months after the second.

While the third vaccine dose is being extended to the entire adult population, from those aged over 65 at present, the “health passport” provided by a negative test will be valid for only 24 hours, instead of 72 at present.

While mass vaccination is a necessity for combating the virus, the World Health Organisation and countless scientists have insisted that it is insufficient on its own. Véran’s announcements were a direct repudiation of the appeal by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control for the implementation of social distancing measures against a new wave of the pandemic.

In the latest update of the rapid risk assessment for COVID-19 this week, ECDC Director Andrea Ammon warned that “the burden of disease in the EU/[European Economic Area] from the Delta variant will be very high in December and January, unless public health measures are applied now in combination with continued efforts to increase vaccine update in the total population.”

Ammon called on governments to “focus on closing this immunity gap, offer booster doses to all adults, and reintroduce non-pharmaceutical measures,” i.e., social distancing policies.

Her comments were in line with those of World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who stated on Tuesday, “We’re concerned about the false sense of security that vaccines have ended the pandemic and people who are vaccinated do not need to take any other precautions. Vaccines save lives, but they do not fully prevent transmission. Data suggests that before the arrival of the Delta variant, vaccines reduced transmission by about 60 percent. With Delta, that has dropped to about 40 percent.”

In fact, far from introducing measures to restrict virus transmission, the Macron government’s announcement included measures that will significantly increase it. Most significantly, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer announced that primary school classrooms (where children are unvaccinated) will no longer be closed upon the detection of a new case. Instead, children will be tested, and only those who are positive will be confined at home.

Moreover, the vaccination of children under 11 will not begin until next year, meaning that most are to be exposed to infection for six weeks or more.

This measure will clearly result in additional mass infections in schools, given the delay between when a student can catch the virus and when it will show in test results. Yet the announcement is in direct response to the increase of classroom closures due to mass infection of children. Total school closures were more than 8,500 on Wednesday, more than double the 4,100 one week earlier.

As with the government’s policy as a whole, this measure is dictated by the naked economic interests of the French corporate elite. While schools are acting as transmission vectors for the propagation of the virus, it is essential that they remain open in order that parents be able to continue to work, and that profits continue for French corporations.

The Macron government’s policy is in line with the declaration by outgoing German Health Minister Jens Spahn on Thursday last week. “At the end of the winter, pretty much everyone in Germany will, as it’s sometimes been put a bit cynically, be vaccinated, recovered or dead,” Spahn said. “With the highly infectious Delta variant, it’s very likely that anyone who is not vaccinated will get infected in the next few months unless they’re very, very careful …”

The European ruling class has collectively overseen a policy that has led to more than 1.5 million deaths, according to a count realised by AFP based on official statistics yesterday morning. From the beginning of the pandemic, its policy has been dictated by the need to protect the financial interests of the ruling class, not the saving of lives. It is continuing this policy, indifferent to the hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths that will result from it.

Véran’s statements underscore the necessity for a mass political movement of the working class to enforce a scientific policy against the pandemic. This must be based on a coordinated strategy to eliminate SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, through a combination of lockdowns and social distancing, and mass vaccination, including a campaign of education of the population on the necessity of vaccines.

Significant move by New Zealand central bank to lift interest rate

Nick Beams

In what could be an indication of moves by major central banks, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) lifted its interest rate on Wednesday to 0.75 percent from 0.5 percent with indications that further rises may be coming.

The RBNZ decision was the second such increase in two months and was taken in response to a sharp rise in the rate of inflation.

Reserve Bank of New Zealand

Reflecting the global inflation surge, NZ prices rose by 4.9 percent on an annualised basis in the third quarter, well above the central bank’s forecast of 4.1 percent. House prices, which are included in the calculation of inflation, were up by 30 percent in the year to October.

Announcing its latest decision, the RBNZ forecast that inflation would run above 5 percent for the next three quarters, citing higher oil prices, rising transport costs and supply problems. It said these “immediate price shocks risk generating more generalised price rises given the current domestic capacity constraints.”

Market forecasts are that further interest rate increases are in the pipeline.

Ben Udy, an economist at Capital Economics, told the Australian Financial Review: “Given the heat in the economy, we think the RBNZ is far from done. We expect the bank to continue to hike rates next year to around 2 percent by the middle of next year.”

Normally moves by the RBNZ attract little international attention because of the relatively small size of the NZ economy and its financial system. But over the past months its actions have been closely followed because of what they may indicate about the future actions of much larger central banks—the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and, in particular, the US Federal Reserve.

With headline inflation in the US now running at more than 6 percent and showing no signs of abating, the key question is when and by how much the Fed may start to move. At its last meeting the Fed decided to taper its asset purchases, running at $120 billion a month, by $15 billion meaning they would cease by next June.

But there is pressure to accelerate tapering to $30 billion a month and bring the asset purchasing program to a conclusion sooner, possibly by March. This would clear the way for an interest rate rise because Fed chair Jerome Powell has insisted that any move will only come once the bond-buying program is ended.

The minutes of the Fed’s November 2-3 meeting, released on Wednesday, indicated that “some officials” felt inflationary pressures were broadening and there may be a need to end the asset purchasing program sooner in case there was a need to lift interest rates.

Fed officials judged that while price increases reflected factors that were likely to be transitory, “inflation pressures would take longer to subside than they had previously assessed.”

At his press conference on November 3 Powell did not indicate the conditions under which the Fed might speed up the tapering process.

Since then, some Fed officials have indicated they are in favour of it being accelerated at the next scheduled meeting to be held December 14–15.

Last week, Fed vice chair Richard Clarida said he would be looking closely at the data and it “may well be appropriate at that meeting to have a discussion about increasing the pace at which we are reducing” asset purchases.

San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly, generally regarded as a “dove” among Fed officials, has now indicated she may support reducing bond purchases after saying two weeks ago she considered any increase in the pace of tapering to be premature.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance on Wednesday, she said that with obviously “eye-popping and too high inflation” adding support to an “already robustly growing economy just isn’t what we want to do.”

The focus by Biden on inflation in remarks on his decision to renominate Powell as Fed chair earlier this week and Powell’s response, in which he indicated the Fed would act “to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched,” have been interpreted as signs the Fed is moving to a tighter monetary policy.

This sentiment was reflected in this week’s two-day fall in the tech-heavy NASDAQ index where stock valuations are considered to be more sensitive to interest rate rises.

While it is not often mentioned, as the Fed and government officials couch their remarks in terms of what is good for the “economy,” the central concern over inflation is to what extent it will fuel the growing surge by the working class for wage increases and the impact this will have on the vastly inflated stock market bubble.

In the past, under what were once regarded as “normal” conditions, the Fed and other central banks, faced with a global surge of inflation and the prospect of a wages push, would have moved to tighten monetary policy. But conditions have vastly changed.

In a comment published in the Financial Times (FT) on Monday, Ruchir Sharma, Morgan Stanley’s chief global strategist, said the world was now in a “debt trap” which explained why, despite rising inflation, interest rates remained low.

He noted that over the past four decades total debt had more than tripled and now stood at 350 percent of global gross domestic product. With cheap money flowing into stocks, bonds and other financial assets, the scale of global financial markets has gone from being the same size as global GDP to four times larger.

These increases mean that financial markets become increasingly fragile and whereas in the past major central banks could increase rates by significant amounts, today “much milder tightening could tip many countries into economic trouble.”

Sharma clearly included the US in that category, noting that it was among a growing list of countries where total debt had risen to more than 300 percent of GDP over the past two decades.

The $22 trillion US Treasury market is where, so to speak, the rubber hits the road.

FT commentator Gillian Tett noted in a recent column that a “frightening question” was “haunting” the Fed as it sought to engineer a smooth exit from quantitative easing and change its monetary policy.

This was whether the Treasury market was “robust enough to handle the shocks” that might arise. It had been assumed that US Treasuries traded in the world’s most liquid and deepest market.

But in March 2020, when the market froze, “that cosy assumption was smashed apart” with New York Fed president John Williams reporting at a recent conference that “staggering” amounts of liquidity support had to be provided, reaching at one stage almost $1 trillion a day.

The assumption now prevailing in bond markets is that interest rates will remain indefinitely low. This was “bizarre,” Tett wrote, given the outlook for prices and that a bond repricing was therefore overdue. But the key problem for the Fed was whether this adjustment could occur “without another 2020-style freeze.”

The Fed, she claimed, understood that a source of the problem was that the Treasury market was characterised by the rise of high frequency trading funds that account for 50-60 percent of activity. When market conditions are calm, they create liquid circumstances for trading. However, in a crisis they flee, with the problems becoming exacerbated because some hedge funds are involved in huge derivatives trades.

But while the problems were understood, Tett concluded, there was “no easy way or swift fix” for them.