Biden offers platitudes while Omicron coronavirus variant spreads in US

Bryan Dyne

In reports reminiscent of February 2020, several new cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus have been detected in the United States, including one in Minnesota, one in Colorado and five in New York. The emergence of these cases indicates, as noted by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, that “there is community spread of the variant” in the city and across the country.

President Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 variant named omicron during a visit to the National Institutes of Health, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The case in Colorado was traced to a traveler who had returned from South Africa, similar to the first detected case in California. The case in Minnesota, however, is the first known case of community transmission in the United States. The patient is suspected to have been infected in New York City, where he attended the Anime NYC 2021 convention at the Javits Center from November 19–21. The sources of the five cases in New York are currently unknown.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also reported that the Minnesota patient had received his booster dose in early November, an indication that this latest variant is at least partially resistant to even a triple-dose of the existing vaccines.

The dangers posed by a vaccine-resistant variant were ignored in Biden’s so-called COVID-19 winter plan, announced December 2 in remarks given at the National Institutes of Health. He began with a flat rejection of the type of measures that could eliminate the virus in a matter of months, including lockdowns and school shutdowns. “It doesn’t involve shutdowns or lockdowns, but widespread vaccinations, and boosters, and testing and a lot more,” Biden said.

The plan outlines an approach to the winter months, expected to see a massive increase in infections, by continuing the same policies that have already proven ineffective: expanded vaccine access for children, booster access for adults, further testing and extended mask requirements on public transportation. When asked after his remarks about a potential shutdown to stem the spread of the variant, and the virus in general, Biden responded, “I don’t think that will happen.”

Biden’s remarks are a continuation of his administration’s overall policy toward the pandemic, above all nothing that impinges on the financial interests of Wall Street and the major corporations. This was made explicit in the White House statement preceding Biden’s remarks, which asserted that, “We have the public health tools we need to continue to fight this virus without shutting down our schools and businesses.”

Perhaps his most significant statement was this: “Experts say that COVID-19 cases will continue to rise in the weeks ahead and this winter … So we need to be ready.” Given the lethality of the currently dominant Delta variant, a rise in cases means a rise in hospitalizations and deaths, crippling the health care system, which is already overwhelmed in states like Michigan, and leading inexorably to daily death tolls in the thousands.

Rather than lift a finger to prevent this outcome, Biden bemoaned the intervention of federal judges to block his proposed vaccine mandate for employees of large corporations, and the right-wing political opposition to mask mandates and other public health measures, calling it a “sad, sad commentary.”

In other words, beyond a further push for vaccinations and expanded testing, it will be business as usual in the United States. The policies that have caused nearly 50 million infections and at least 806,000 deaths in just the US will continue unabated. Markets responded favorably to Biden’s plan; the Dow Jones jumped 617 points today, making up for much of this week’s losses.

The Omicron variant also continues to spread internationally. The World Health Organization reports that the variant has been detected in 26 countries, ranging from Botswana to South Korea, Ireland and the United States. The epicenter continues to be in South Africa, where 11,535 new cases were reported today, an eight-fold increase over the past eight days. Deaths are also on the rise, doubling over the past two weeks to an average of 30 each day.

Hospitalizations are also on the rise. South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) reports that there are currently 2,904 patients admitted, an increase of 274 over the past day. In addition, ten percent of those admitted in Tshwane, where most of the current Omicron cases are located in South Africa, are of children aged 2 and under.

Waasila Jassat, public health specialist at the NICD, told Bloomberg that because “very young children have an immature immune system and they are also not vaccinated … they are more at risk.”

A further danger of the Omicron variant is the threat of multiple reinfections of the coronavirus. A preprint study in medRxiv, “Increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection associated with emergence of the Omicron variant in South Africa,” found that the chance for reinfection from the Omicron variant is 2.4 times higher than for previous variants. They documented 35,000 cases of patients with at least one reinfection in South Africa, along with 332 cases of a second reinfection—that is those people were infected with coronavirus three separate times.

The dangers of reinfection cannot be understated. To date, there have been more than 264 million cases worldwide and at least 5.2 million dead. Each day, more than 560,000 new cases are confirmed and more than 8,000 people die. A variant which can freely cause reinfections and evades immunity will essentially restart the pandemic, accelerating the current wave of death to new and more tragic heights.

Such dangers are already emerging in South Africa. Data collated by the Financial Times shows that two weeks since the Omicron wave began in South Africa, the seven-day average of new cases is increasing at a rate about triple that of the previous wave. Similarly, genome sequencing of the coronavirus indicates that more than 90 percent of cases in the country are of the Omicron variant. It took the Delta variant nearly 100 days to reach such dominance.

Put another way, early estimates show that the Omicron variant is three to six times as infectious as the Delta variant. If these figures are borne out, Omicron will prove to be more infectious than measles.

And while no deaths have been so far attributed to the Omicron variant, in South Africa or elsewhere, no confidence can be given to the empty platitudes of those such as Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association, that “I think it will be a mild disease, hopefully.” The variants of SARS-CoV-2 that spread across the world, particularly the Alpha, Gamma and Delta variants, have all proven to be more infectious and deadly than their predecessors.

5G Cell Towers: How the Game is Played

David Rosen

Do you have a “5G” (Fifth Generation) phone?  It’s being ceaselessly promoted by the telecom companies as the next new standard.

5G is replacing the “macrocells” used in 4G networks because it is relatively smaller in size and cheaper to deploy.  5G wireless cellular signals are transmitted through small cell towers or base station, miniature access points that transmit low radio frequencies.

Look up and you are likely to see small cells perched on top of buildings as well as atop street lights and stop signals.  In 2020, 1,945 5G small cells had been deployed, mostly in dense, urban settings. But by 2027, 1.56 million private 5G small cells are projected to be deployed.

More than 25 state legislatures have enacted legislating the deployment of small cells, including Michigan, Missouri, New York, South Carolina and West Virginia; 16 states introduced mobile 5G and small cell-related legislation in the 2020.

However, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 556 on October 4^th, a bill to promote the deployment of small cells.  Newsom wrote:

This bill would restrict the ability of local governments and publicly-owned electric utilities to regulate the placement of small cell wireless facilities on public infrastructure and limit the compensation that may be collected for use of these public assets.

There’s a secret story behind the small cell 5G push and that’s ALEC – American Legislative Exchange Council.  It proposed the model legislation that was not only promoted in California and other states, but legislation put forward by Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in 2018 — “Carr’s 5G Order” – that launched the new-generation of wireless communications.

At the time, then FCC commissioner — and now chair — Jessica Rosenworcel warned: “So it comes down to this: three unelected officials on this dais are telling state and local leaders all across the country what they can and cannot do in their own backyards. This is extraordinary federal overreach.”

***

Over the last two decade, the mobile phone market was transformed, moving steadily from the earliest “1^st generation” to today’s “5^th generation.”  A short review of the process illuminates this transformation:

1G – Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) launched 1G in 1979 but it was not until March 1983 that Ameritech introduced the Motorola DynaTAC mobile phone – popularly known as “The Brick” – to the U.S.

2G – introduced in Finland in 1991, it included SMS text messages, digitally encrypted calls, improved sound quality, reducing static and crackling noises, and significantly increased download speeds.

3G – launched by NTT in May 2001, it enhanced location-based services, watch mobile TV, participate in video conferencing and watch videos on demand; in addition, users could access data from anywhere, which allowed international roaming services to begin; with speeds up to 2 Mbps, it enabled improved internet surfing and music streaming on mobile phones. It saw the introduction of Blackberry and Apple i-Phone.

4G – introduced in Norway in 2009, it provided high-quality video streaming/chat, fast mobile web access, HD videos, and online gaming; it offered speeds up to 12Mbps, five times faster than the previous generation. The best-selling cellphones included the iPhone 6 at 22.4 million units and the Samsung Galaxy S4 at 80 million units worldwide.

5G – developed in South Korea in 2008, Samsung announced that it had created a 5G network in 2013; in 2019, Verizon introduced 5G in the U.S.; it cut latency — the delay between the sending and receiving information — from 4G’s 200 milliseconds to1 millisecond (1ms); and it expanded bandwidth from 30 GHz and 300 GHz.

Today, 5G is slowly superseding 4G.

Serious concerns have been raised about the health impacts of smart phone technology.  Joel Moskowitz, a PhD researcher at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and director of Berkeley’s Center for Family and Community Health, observes,

“People are addicted to their smartphones. We use them for everything now, and, in many ways, we need them to function in our daily lives.” He warns, “I think the idea that they’re potentially harming our health is too much for some people.”

The FCC rejects these concerns, insisting “currently no scientific evidence establishes a causal link between wireless device use and cancer or other illnesses.”  However, two lawsuits were recently brought against the FCC over wireless safety rules.

Now, with Democratic control of the agencies, this concern will likely get a more careful assessment.  On October 26^th, Jessica Rosenworcel, who had served as the FCC’s acting chair, was appointed the agency’s permanent chair; she was also nominated for a new term, which would be her third. In addition, Pres. Biden nominated Gigi Sohn, a former FCC staffer and prominent advocate for an open and affordable internet, to fill the agency’s remaining open spot.

***

In a January 2020 piece, Richard Gale and Gary Null noted, “… it is no surprise to find ALEC’s fingerprints all over the aggressive push to roll out 5G technology across the nation.”

ALEC is an influential conservative organization whose lobbyists draft model rightwing and free-market legislation that is promoted by sympathetic state legislators across the country.  Founded in 1973 by arch-reactionary Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, it promotes itself as a “nonpartisan individual membership organization of state legislators that favors federalism and conservative public policy solutions.”  It claims to “advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty ….”

 

Whether its claims are making Jefferson spin in his grave is an open question; nevertheless, ALEC’s campaign is clear.  It seeks to destroy unions, defeat climate regulation and further shift wealth to the 1 percent.

ALEC is, formally, a non-profit group that drafts model legislation.  It has an estimated membership exceeding 2,000 state legislators from both political parties, but most are conservative Republicans.  It regularly invites members to all-expense paid private gatherings with corporate executives and lobbyists where they devise model legislation to fulfill their political agenda.  These legislators, in turn, return to their home states and promote the legislation at state houses throughout the country.  Many of their initiatives have been enacted.

At its December 2016 Communications and Information Technology Task Force at the States and Nation Policy Summit, ALEC made the following proposal to advance 5G technology and small cell towers:

BE IT RESOLVED, that extending current pole attachment rules to poles owned by governments, electrical cooperatives and railroads would ensure that broadband providers may gain access to public rights of way at just and reasonable rates; and

BE IT RESOLVED, that ALEC urges lawmakers to utilize public-private partnerships and government-owned networks only to the extent that citizens’ demand for broadband is not met by the private market; and

BE IT RESOLVED, that, in assessing whether citizens’ broadband demand is being effectively met by the private market, lawmakers may consider, in addition to service characteristics and availability, pricing and the extent of competition, but should bear the burden of defining a market failure through rigorous economic analysis of robust data, and not rely solely on concentration metrics to assert a lack of competition; …

Gale and Null identify a number of ALEC 5G “model” policy recommendations, including:

+ Permit the telecommunications industry with free access to “public rights-of-ways” to assure full small cell antennae rollout.

+ Foster fast-tracking of 5G deployment to reduce time to conduct thorough reviews of the benefits and risks to local communities.

+ Create barriers for local governments to foster public broadband access.

Telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick drew special attention to FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, arguing that his promotion of 5G “model legislation” that was “most likely created by ALEC.”   Speaking before Indiana’s Statehouse in 2018, Carr promised that “5G will create jobs, improve education and promote safety. But to upgrade our networks, we must upgrade our regulations.”  He added:

Policymakers can’t claim success if 5G is only deployed in big cities like New York and San Francisco. Those ‘must serve’ cities will get next- gen mobile broadband almost regardless of what we do. Success means every community getting a fair shot at 5G.

He argued, “To achieve that success, we need to update our rules to match this revolutionary new technology.”

In an interview with The American Spectator, Carr fleshed out his vision for 5G:

I want to see 5G deployed as ubiquitously as possible and that’s part of why it was so important we took that effort to streamline regulatory red tape. Thirty percent of the total cost of deploying these small cells had been eaten up by this federal regulatory review, so by cutting that cost, which we did last month, that flips the business case for thousands of communities.

Fully articulating the ALEC legislative agenda, Carr conclude, “So communities that wouldn’t have been profitable for a carrier to deploy 5G to now becomes economical.

Carr argued that his 5G plan would cut roughly $2 billion in administrative fees and stimulate additional investments. However, the National Association of Counties (NACo) warned in 2018 that the FCC legislation “would significantly limit their ability to properly regulate wireless telecommunications infrastructure deployment. By narrowing the window for evaluating 5G deployment applications, the FCC would effectively prevent local governments from overseeing public health, safety and welfare during the construction, modification or installation of broadcasting facilities.”  Thus anticipating Gov. Newson’s veto of SB 556.

Carr also embraced ALEC’s support to reverse the internet from a Title II to a Title I service. Under the 1934 Telecommunications Act, Title II services are designated as basic or “common carrier” services and are subject to more regulation; Title I involves what is designated as an enhanced “information services” and subject to fewer regulations.

Pres. Trump’s FCC chair Ajit Pai’s issued a directive in 2017 to reverse Pres. Obama’s reinstatement of Title II of the Communications Act to internet services.  ALEC denounced Obama actions as “a heavy-handed regulatory mistake … and would have allowed the FCC as well as state and local governments to impose onerous taxes and fees on Internet bills.”

In the Spectator interview, Carr uses words that have the same shrill ring of the ALEC announcement:

When the commission adopted the unprecedented decision in 2015 during the Obama-era FCC to impose this heavy-handed Title II regime those decisions have consequences and we saw that investment by broadband providers was declining during the period in which that Title II regime was imposed.

So, when you look at the small cells towers, remember the politics of technology is played out in your smartphone.

7.5 magnitude earthquake leaves Peru’s impoverished Amazonas in ruins

Cesar Uco

A 7.5 magnitude earthquake has left a large part of the department of Amazonas, one of the poorest in Peru, in ruins.

According to the Peruvian Geophysical Institute, the earthquake occurred at 5:52 a.m. on November 28, and its waves extended throughout northern and central Peru, reaching the capital Lima, 1,125 km away by road, as well as the southern regions of Ecuador and Colombia.

Hours after the quake, the Lima daily La República said that in the department of Amazonas alone, “The tremor left 636 victims, 2,202 affected, 12 injured; as well as 117 houses destroyed, 110 uninhabitable and 408 houses affected.” One woman died apparently of a heart attack.

The updated Damage Assessment and Needs Analysis (EDAN) said that in the region 764 houses were affected, 375 left uninhabitable and 117 fully destroyed. “Three percent of the people do not have electricity.”

Peruvian rescue workers evacuating residents of the El Aserradero sector of Utcubamba earthquake. (Credit: Andina)

In addition, 32 health care facilities, eight public offices and 19 churches were damaged. Five other religious centers were destroyed. This is not counting the damage to the road infrastructure, which is enormous.

At the epicenter of the earthquake, “Six schools [were] affected, a health center and two temples destroyed,” the National Institute of Civil Defense (INDECI) reported.

Two days after the event, another newspaper, El Comercio, reported: “As of yesterday, the mortal victim of the earthquake was a three-year-old boy, who was crushed to death by some boards that fell due to the tremor.” It added that “more than 6,000 people were affected.”

“Other departments heavily affected were San Martin, Cajamarca and Loreto,” reported El Comercio. The figures for the neighboring departments were “Cajamarca with 170 victims, five houses destroyed, 30 uninhabitable houses; and San Martin with 143 victims, 33 uninhabitable houses, among others.”

Geophysics studies indicated that the threat was located behind Peru’s mountain range. Specialists warned that not only is the coast threatened by seismic risk. According to the executive president of the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP), Hernando Tavera, earthquakes in the highlands and jungles of the country can have the same or even greater intensity than those occurring in the coastal area, despite the fact that the collision of the Nazca and Continental plates occurs on the coast.

The tragedy could have been reduced to a minimum if it were not for the criminal policy of the central government, which abandons the regions furthest from the capital.

The lack of development of infrastructure in remote areas had a strong negative impact. Rock falls abounded on the highways. The main ones blocked roads linking Chachapoyas to Pedro Ruiz Gallo and Chachapoyas to Rodriguez de Mendoza.

Meanwhile, hundreds of inhabitants of the districts of Nieva, Chachapoyas and Chirinos have been cut off from communication after their roads were severely affected. According to COEN (Centro de Operaciones de Emergencia Nacional), as a result of the earthquake, 1.5 kilometers of road were totally destroyed, while 5.3 kilometers were damaged by falling rocks. “There are still landslides despite the fact that there are no more aftershocks,” an official of the institution told La República two days after the earthquake.

The statistics on the destruction caused by the earthquake appear less severe because it took place in a department with a very low population density, mainly dedicated to agricultural activities. With a little less than half a million inhabitants in a country of 33 million, it accounts for approximately 1.6 percent of the Peruvian population.

However, a comparison with what the same level of destruction would have meant for Lima is revealing. Assuming a similar infrastructure as the one in the department of Amazonas, for the 10 million inhabitants of metropolitan Lima, the figures would have been approximately 24 times higher, i.e., more than 52,000 affected and 13,000 homes destroyed, uninhabitable or affected.

President Pedro Castillo quickly flew by helicopter to the area and declared a state of emergency in five regions.

In the first 100 days of Castillo’s government, he has given in to everything the national bourgeoisie has asked of him. He has restructured his cabinet by getting rid of anyone the bourgeoisie denounced as a “communist” or falsely accused of having had decades-old connections with the extinct Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path).

Following his hollow policy of “no more poor people in a rich country” in his visit to the Amazonas, the president committed himself to the reconstruction of homes and assured that he will not rest “until the population has the security of being in their homes in peace.” This will likely prove to be more empty promises.

The total lack of fulfillment of his electoral promises has caused Castillo’s approval ratings to plummet. In the southern Andean departments, where in many places he won by a margin of up to 80 percent, the latest statistics from the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP) on October 31 showed that his approval ratings in the impoverished region, his main base of support, had fallen from 58 percent to 42 percent over the course of the previous month.

During his inspection of the affected areas, Castillo showed that political attacks, including over corruption and demands for his removal from office, are beginning to rattle him. When a reporter questioned him, “Are you considering resigning?” he rudely replied, “Are you crazy, sir?”

Humberto Campodonico, an engineering economist specializing in hydrocarbons, made a study on the economic situation of Amazonas in which he found that “In 2001, the Gross Added Value (not considering taxes) of Peru was 109 billion Peruvian soles in 1994, while Amazonas was only 713 million soles. This means that Amazonas accounts for 0.65 percent of Peru’s GVA. This same relationship was maintained until 2007, the last year with INEI statistics.”

He went on to explain, “In Amazonas, the predominant sector is agriculture, with 40 percent of GVA, but this figure for the average Peruvian is 10 percent of GVA. The difference is abysmal and revealing of economic backwardness. If we look at other services, manufacturing, commerce and construction, the distances from the rest of Peru are also notable.”

Campodonico added, “Poverty in Amazonas, according to the latest INEI Poverty Report, reaches 59.7 percent of the population, up from 55 percent in 2007. Thus, Amazonas became part of Group 2 of the poor regions of Peru along with Apurimac (69 percent), Ayacucho (64.8 percent), Pasco (64.3 percent), Puno (62.8 percent), Huanuco (61.5 percent), and Cusco (58.4 percent). Group 1 has only one member, Apurimac, with 82.1 percent poverty.”

Although it is recognized that mining and oil are not significant activities in the Amazonas department, the business daily Gestión warned, “Mining undermines the wealth of indigenous territories in the Amazon basin.”

Gestión continued, “According to a legal analysis carried out in Peru and five other countries that control more than 90 percent of the Amazon basin, “national laws and regulations tend to favor companies over Indigenous Peoples.”

Moreover, “The data also reveals that between 2000 and 2015, the indigenous lands where these activities are developed suffered a higher rate of deforestation.”

They also point out that in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru the loss of forest cover was at least three times higher in indigenous territories with mining operations, both legal and illegal, than in the rest; and one to two times higher in Colombia and Venezuela.

The situation among the 333 native communities is most alarming. Communication between the indigenous communities was cut due to lack of roads and electricity. New dangers are also feared due to the beginning of the heavy rainy season in November in the Amazon, intensifying the problem of landslides and more communication interruptions.

The Amazon region was also hard hit by COVID-19, which has claimed over 200,000 lives across Peru, the country with the highest recorded mortality rate on the planet. The region also has the lowest vaccination rate in Peru. The threat of a new and even more devastating wave of the pandemic was underscored by the report Tuesday that Japanese authorities had detected the new and highly contagious Omicron variant in a traveler arriving from Peru.

The earthquake’s destruction of the indigenous people’s property, land and means of subsistence in the poor department of Amazonas can only increase the growing discontent of the Peruvian people with a government that has broken all its promises.

In June 2009 then President Alan Garcia—who a decade later would commit suicide, when police appeared at his house with a preventive arrest order for alleged crimes of corruption in his dealings with the Brazilian mega-construction company Odebrecht—mockingly told the indigenous communities that it was he who decided how the jungle would be divided up for exploration and exploitation by transnational oil companies. This was in violation of the international rights of indigenous peoples to decide on the sovereignty of their lands.

A failure by Castillo’s government to make reparations to the indigenous people affected by the earthquake may help ignite social conflicts between the indigenous people and transnational petroleum companies.

Reuters recently reported on PetroTal Corp. complaining that “indigenous people from an Amazon region in Peru were blocking its crude oil transport operations and could halt production in the coming days, in another conflict affecting the country’s natural resources industry.”

The news agency added that the Canadian-based oil company is sending its crude down the Amazon River by barge to Brazil for export “because the pipeline it normally uses—owned by state-owned Petroperú—has been paralyzed since the beginning of October due to another protest in the area.”

African National Congress rejects new measures to counter South Africa’s Omicron variant surge

Jean Shaoul

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has refused to introduce any new measures to protect lives in the face of a new wave of the pandemic fueled by the Omicron variant. This is despite widespread concerns over the sudden increase in the country’s test positivity rate to nearly 10 percent from 1 percent, according to data released by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

Like his international counterparts, this billionaire former trade union leader and head of the African National Congress (ANC) that has ruled the country since the end of apartheid in 1994, made it clear that his sole concern is maintaining the profits of the financial elite.

Ramaphosa railed against the imposition of international travel bans on South Africa and other Southern African countries following the identification of the new Omicron variant by scientists in South Africa—which has the most sophisticated genomic sequencing facilities on the continent—after four foreign diplomats tested positive as they left Botswana on November 11 and genomic sequencing confirmed the variant on November 24. The significant and sudden evolutionary leap of the coronavirus, as reflected by the unprecedented number of mutations in the genome, threatens to overwhelm the country’s woefully inadequate health care system and cause untold suffering.

People line up to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in Lawley, south of Johannesburg, South Africa, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. (AP Photo/ Shiraaz Mohamed)

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the new strain of COVID-19, detected in at least 20 countries, a “variant of concern,” indicating it belongs to the highest risk category whose mutations allow it to spread faster, cause more severe illness or hamper the protection from vaccines. The earliest case identified to date was in Nigeria in October.

Ramaphosa called for the immediate reversal of the bans before they caused any further economic damage, particularly to the tourism sector. South Africa’s tourism sector employs 4.5 percent of the population and accounts for 3 percent of GDP. It lost $10 billion in bookings in 2020 and is estimated to be losing about $10 million every week flights from key markets are suspended.

Contradicting the experience of China that has contained its death toll from the virus to less than 6,000 as a result of a raft of measures that have included travel bans, he added, “There is no scientific justification for keeping these restrictions in place. We know that this virus, like all viruses, does mutate and form new variants.”

South Africa would remain on the Coronavirus Alert Level 1, the lowest level. Rather than imposing additional lockdown restrictions, Ramaphosa called on everyone to get vaccinated. He was considering making vaccinations compulsory for specific locations and activities, having earlier floated the idea of vaccine passports, without which people would not be allowed entry to public events. Masks remain mandatory in public, along with a midnight to 4 a.m. curfew.

The country’s third wave was the result of inadequate safety measures implemented by the governments around the world in the interest of reopening the economy. Ramaphosa is now declaring that even those limited mitigation measures are unacceptable. His insistence on vaccines as the sole public measure to protect the public is contradicted by the criminal failure to provide vaccinations for much of the world’s population as the major powers bought up and hoarded vaccines, stopped the World Trade Organisation from relaxing the rules on patents, and failed to fund and supply the United Nation’s COVAX scheme. As a result, just 7 percent of Africa’s population is fully vaccinated.

In South Africa, only 36 percent of the population, just over 16 million people, has been vaccinated, despite its stated goal of fully immunising 70 percent of adults by the end of this year. Although supplies are now more secure, the level of vaccinations is half the weekly target.

While a recent survey shows that 72 percent of people say they are willing to receive a vaccination, or have done so already, the rate of vaccination is largely dependent on class and race, with white citizens more likely to have been jabbed because their greater wealth, medical insurance and car ownership gives them to greater access to vaccination sites. Poorer workers, including the four million registered immigrants and an estimated two to five million undocumented workers who live in constant fear of harassment and deportation, are dependent upon erratic public transport, are likely to lose half-a-day's pay and must wait in line at public clinics.

According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, the seven-day moving average of new cases in South Africa has quadrupled in the past week, from 4,717, to 19,292. A further 8,561 cases were recorded on Wednesday.

Fully 75 percent of all currently sequenced coronavirus cases are attributed to the latest variant, soon expected to reach 100 percent. There are fears that it is the most infectious strain of the virus yet and could possibly evade vaccine protection because of its high number of mutations. Also of concern is that some of the cases were among vaccinated people.

While the new variant has been detected in almost every province, infections are exploding in Gauteng, home to Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa’s commercial and administrative capitals, and a quarter of its population. Gauteng has seen 580 COVID-related hospitalisations this week, a more than 300 percent increase. Less than 40 percent of the province’s 12 million residents have received at least one shot of the vaccine, the third lowest of 12 provinces.

South Africa has recorded nearly three million infections and around 90,000 deaths, although excess mortality figures suggest that up to three times this number have died directly or indirectly due to the pandemic. The emergence of new strains is of particular concern given the growing evidence indicating that the country's high HIV-prevalence rate is amplifying the risk of coronavirus mutations. Professor Tulio de Oliveira, a geneticist from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and member of the team of scientists that identified Omicron, said that COVID-infected, immuno-compromised patients can struggle to clear the virus from their bodies and over time can become “factories for variants.”

Salim Abdool Karim, the government's chief adviser during the initial response to the pandemic and a professor at South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal and Columbia University in the United States, said that infections could triple to more than 10,000 by the end of this week as the new Omicron variant spreads rapidly. He warned that while existing vaccines should be effective at preventing severe disease and the symptoms at this point appear mild—although the cases were among young people whose symptoms tend to be mild—South African hospitals would be under pressure because of the rapidity of transmission likely to result in a flood of admissions within two to three weeks.

While the ANC government has allowed South Africa’s small, well-endowed private sector that serves the elite to cream off most of the country’s doctors, specialists and healthcare workers, it has starved the public system of resources.

Ramaphosa was forced to admit last June that the public health system was collapsing as the country’s faced its third wave of the infection. One large hospital was forced to close earlier this year after a fire, while other large hospitals turned away patients due to a lack of oxygen. Some had to close due to a shortage of trained staff, with doctors making dozens of telephone calls to secure a bed for their critically ill patients and the army’s medical personnel deployed to Gauteng province to help healthcare workers and carry out community testing and contact tracing.

The terrible state of South Africa’s public services testifies to the ANC’s three-decades long suppression of the revolutionary strivings of the black working class. Its main achievement has been to establish a black capitalist class alongside the white capitalists through programmes of “Black Economic Empowerment”. This was sanctified politically through the South African Communist Party’s Stalinist two-stage theory, which proclaimed the formal end of apartheid as a necessary democratic stage before any struggle for socialism.

Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz and Germany’s federal states reject necessary pandemic restrictions

Johannes Stern

Olaf Scholz (John MacDougall/Pool via AP)

Despite the fact that infections are running out of control in Germany and the highly contagious Omicron variant is spreading, governments at the federal and state level refuse to take the necessary measures to contain COVID-19. They are aggressively pursuing the “profits before lives” policies that have already resulted in more than 100,000 deaths in Germany alone and are creating an ever-expanding catastrophe. Currently, about 60,000 people in Germany become infected every day with close to 500 dying on Monday.

Apparently, this is not yet going far enough for the ruling class. After the federal and state governments deliberated on the pandemic on Tuesday, not a single concrete measure against the mass deaths was announced. There was not even a press conference. Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) and the federal states led by the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) merely proposed a general vaccination requirement, which the next Chancellor wants to implement by the end of February.

Speaking to Bild-TV, Scholz spoke out firmly against lockdowns and school closures, stressing, “It’s currently mainly about this measure with vaccination and boosters.”

The focus of the outgoing and incoming governments on vaccination as virtually the only response is criminal for several reasons. The vaccines are a powerful weapon against COVID-19, but only in conjunction with all other protective measures. As a result of Germany’s low vaccination rate of 68 percent, about 25 million people, including all children under 12, are virtually without any protection. Only just under 11 percent of the population have received the necessary booster inoculation.

Internationally, the situation is even more dramatic. With a vaccination rate of 42.7 percent, the vast majority of the world’s population—around 4.5 billion people—are not fully vaccinated. What is more, a strategy that relies solely on vaccination is producing new, even more contagious viral mutations, potentially undermining any progress made through vaccination.

On Tuesday, head of US biotechnology company Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, warned of a “significant decline” in the protective efficacy of currently available vaccines against Omicron. “I don’t think the efficacy is in any case at the same level as against the Delta variant,” he told the Financial Times. The large number of mutations on the spike protein that the virus uses to infect human cells, and the rapid spread of Omicron in South Africa, indicated that current vaccines would need to be modified. This could “take several months.

There is no doubt that the Omicron variant is already rampant in Europe, spreading rapidly like the Delta variant before it. Dutch researchers on Tuesday discovered the variant in samples older than any previously known cases. After Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and the Czech Republic, France also confirmed the first cases yesterday. In Germany, additional cases were reported in Baden-Württemberg (4), Bavaria (15) and Saxony (1).

Despite this dramatic development and demands by scientists and the vast majority of the population to finally act, the ruling class refuses to take the necessary measures. Even the decisions that may be taken at a conference of state premiers scheduled for Thursday are not remotely adequate. According to media reports, they merely involve some additional contact restrictions for the unvaccinated, expansion of the “2G” rule (vaccinated or recovered) in retail outlets, and restrictions on major events and food service.

Comprehensive lock-downs—especially for schools and non-essential businesses—that would be necessary to significantly contain and ultimately even eliminate the virus are vehemently opposed by all parties in the Bundestag (federal parliament) and the trade unions. “The fact that mass events are taking place while schools are being closed, that’s not on. Everything must be done to ensure that educational institutions remain open,” wrote the Education and Science Union (GEW) on Twitter on Tuesday.

At the same time, representatives of the incoming “traffic light” coalition (SPD, Greens and FDP) reacted angrily to the Supreme Court’s ruling that curfews and school closures are perfectly compatible with the constitution. “We would have liked a different result,” said Marco Buschmann, director of the FDP parliamentary group, who is slated to be the future justice minister. FDP vice chairman Wolfgang Kubicki called the ruling “disappointing.”

Only a few days ago, the traffic light parties ended the “epidemic situation of national scope” and thus eliminated the legal basis for uniform nationwide protective measures. To justify this, they had repeatedly invoked the narrative of the extreme right, denouncing protective measures as an attack on democratic rights allegedly incompatible with the constitution.

In reality, it has long been clear which reactionary interests are driving the homicidal pandemic policies. In their coalition agreement, the traffic light coalition partners pledge, among other things, to “increase Germany’s competitiveness as a business location [and] to reactivate the debt brake.” In other words, the SPD, Greens and FDP want to squeeze the hundreds of billions that have flowed to the big corporations and banks as part of the coronavirus bailout packages back out of the population as part of a general attack on workers.

A second factor is the geostrategic and economic interests of German imperialism. In this respect, too, the coalition agreement does not mince its words. It includes an entire chapter entitled “Germany’s Responsibility for Europe and the World,” which advocates a greater role as a world power and the massive rearmament of the Bundeswehr (armed forces).

Germany was aware of “the global responsibility it bears as the world’s fourth-largest economy” and would “form a government that defines German interests in the light of European interests,” it states. The aim is to “establish its own ability to act in the global context and to be less dependent and vulnerable in important strategic areas, such as energy supply, health, raw material imports and digital technology.”

This is primarily a military issue for the ruling class. The coalition agreement envisions, among other things, the procurement of combat drones, massive increases in defence spending, and new war missions. At one point it says, “The Bundeswehr must be reliably equipped in the best possible way in terms of personnel, materiel and finance in accordance with its mission and tasks. The structures of the Bundeswehr must be made more effective and efficient with the aim of increasing operational readiness.”

This also applies to the deployment of the Bundeswehr within Germany. Major General Carsten Breuer, the commander of the Bundeswehr’s Territorial Tasks Command, reportedly also attended the meeting of the federal and state governments. The two-star general, who has been involved with numerous foreign deployments and was the lead author of the current white paper, will head the future federal government’s Coronavirus Crisis Staff directly from the Chancellor’s Office. WSWS warned after Breuer’s appointment:

The decision to put an active Bundeswehr general in charge of the COVID-19 crisis team permits only one conclusion: the traffic light coalition does not regard the pandemic as a medical problem, but rather as a security issue.

The purpose of the crisis team is not to protect the population from the virus, but to protect the government from the population. The incoming German government is preparing to declare a state of emergency in order to suppress resistance to its policy based on sacrificing countless lives to ensure increased profits and share prices. It is a policy that plays Russian roulette with the health of an entire generation of children and adolescents.

Washington hails victory of Honduran opposition candidate

Bill Van Auken

Honduran president-elect Xiomara Castro (Credit: hablaguate)

The landslide victory of Xiomara Castro in the presidential election held Sunday in Honduras has brought to an end a dozen years of rule by the right-wing National Party, which consolidated its grip over the Central American country through a US-backed coup in 2009. That coup overthrew Castro’s husband, then-president Manuel Zelaya, who was bundled onto a military aircraft in his pajamas and flown out of the country.

While the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Honduras has yet to officially declare Castro the winner, the vote count as of Tuesday showed Castro leading her National Party rival Nasry Asfura by nearly 20 percent, with 53.3 percent of the vote, or 987,670 ballots, compared to 34.2 percent, or 633,885 ballots.

Again, while final results have yet to be confirmed, according a vote analysis by the Honduran daily El Heraldo, Castro’s Freedom and Refoundation (Libre) Party will have the largest caucus in the new National Congress, with 51 seats, and, together with the Salvador Party of television personality and right-wing populist Salvador Nasralla, Castro’s vice president-elect, will hold a majority.

Libre and its allies also won control of city halls in the capital Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and other major cities.

Sunday saw a record turnout at the polls, with over 68 percent of eligible voters casting ballots. As the results confirmed, this turnout was driven by popular hostility to the National Party government, headed for the last eight years by Juan Orlando Hernández (known as JOH).

Characterized by rampant corruption, police state repression and death squad killings, and the descent of ever growing layers of the population into abject poverty, the National Party held onto power thanks only to unrelenting violence and unstinting US support.

Washington’s backing of this criminal regime represented only the latest episode in over a century of US imperialist oppression. Washington invaded Honduras seven times between 1903 and 1925 to uphold the interests of the United Fruit Company and the US banks and to suppress strikes and popular revolts.

The country served as a staging ground for both the CIA-orchestrated 1954 coup that overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán and the CIA “Contra” war against Nicaragua in the 1980s, a terror campaign that claimed some 30,000 lives.

During the same period, the CIA helped organize death squads, such as the Honduran Army’s Battalion 3-16, which assassinated trade unionists, leftists and students.

These crimes were carried out under governments of both Hernández’s National Party and the Liberal Party, from which Xiomara Castro’s Libre is a split-off.

While routinely described in the corporate media as a “leftist,” Castro’s victory at the polls has been welcomed by Washington. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols praised the election and declared, “I am hopeful in Honduras we’re going to see the kind of change we have been asking.”

A week before the vote, Nicholas was dispatched to Tegucigalpa to read the riot act to Hernández, making it clear that Washington would not accept a repeat of 2017, in which he seized a second term by means of wholesale electoral fraud, with US backing.

Chiming in with an editorial Tuesday, the Washington Post declared its hope that “A democratic transition in Honduras, followed by moderate rule, would have stabilizing effects that could extend all the way to the Rio Grande. Those must be the United States’ objectives.”

The shift toward support for Castro signals no sudden democratic awakening in Washington. As vice president in the Obama administration, Joe Biden served as the point man in the US attempt to lend legitimacy to the right-wing regime created by the US-backed coup that overthrew Zelaya.

Zelaya, a wealthy landowner and businessman elected as the candidate of the Liberal Party, was targeted by Washington not for any sweeping attacks on profit interests, but rather because of his opportunistic alignment with the “Pink Tide” and the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez, which provided impoverished Honduras with cheap oil.

After his overthrow, Zelaya worked to subordinate resistance to the coup to continued US dominance of Honduras and to big business interests. He entered into US-sponsored talks on forming a “unity” regime with those who overthrew him and, after these negotiations went nowhere, meekly accepted the consolidation of a coup regime through a fraudulent election that installed right-wing National Party leader Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo as president.

Castro and the Libre Party have followed the same political line, immediately entering talks with the Honduran National Business Council (COHEP), the main association representing Honduran sweatshop owners and among the most enthusiastic supporters of the 2009 coup. The council congratulated Castro on her victory before it has been officially announced, making it clear they view her as no threat to profit interests. The talks reportedly centered on means of lowering taxes, paying foreign debt and creating the best conditions for an economy founded on the exploitation of cheap labor.

US establishment observers have noted with approval that Castro has given no indication that she intends to restrict, much less close down, the operations of the Pentagon at its Soto Cano Air Base south of Comayagua. It is the largest US military facility in Latin America, where between 500 and 1,500 US troops remain continuously deployed in a projection of US armed might directed at the entire hemisphere.

Washington’s shift toward Castro is bound up in large measure with the complete discrediting of the Hernández government, which even the US Justice Department described as a “narco-state” in the trial of the president’s brother Tony Hernández, who a New York federal judge sentenced to life in prison earlier this year on drug-trafficking charges. The president himself has been named as a co-conspirator in a vast operation involving the collaboration of every level of the Honduran government and its security forces with the drug cartels.

This collaboration with the cartels is by no means limited to the National Party. The former leader of the Honduran drug cartel Los Cachiros, Davis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, testified in a New York trial earlier this year that he had paid half a million dollars in bribes to Zelaya, while Zelaya’s former chief aide and third-place candidate for the Liberal Party in Sunday’s election, Yani Rosenthal, served a three-year prison sentence in the US after pleading guilty to drug money laundering charges.

Beyond the corruption, which has contributed to the staggering growth of criminal violence, the Honduran people have confronted a social catastrophe during the last dozen years of National Party rule. In July of this year, Honduras’ National Institute of Statistics issued a report showing that 73.6 percent of Honduran households are subsisting under conditions of poverty, without resources to pay for basic needs in terms of food, housing and other essential goods and services. It stated that 53.7 percent of Hondurans are living under conditions of “extreme poverty,” confronting hunger and lack of adequate housing.

Conditions of life for the Honduran masses have been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota a year ago and years of drought along the Pacific coast. The last year has seen the official unemployment rate double.

The Biden administration’s most immediate concern in relation to Honduras is stemming the flow of migrants and refugees to the US border. This was crudely expressed in the Washington Post editorial, which began by stating that the US has “many reasons … to be interested in the outcome [of the Honduran elections]—309,000 reasons, to be precise.” That is the number of Honduran migrants detained at the US-Mexico border over the course of the past year, the vast majority of them illegally denied the right to apply for asylum and summarily expelled.

Hernández had outlived his usefulness in the context of Washington’s attempts to turn back the migrant flow, while making a pretense of addressing the “root causes” of migration, including corruption. This pretense has been joined with a major increase in funding for security forces of Honduras and the other “Northern Triangle” governments to turn back the tide of refugees with clubs, guns and bullets.

In embracing the electoral victory of Castro, US imperialism hopes to provide a “democratic” facade for is counterrevolutionary and anti-immigrant policies in Central America.

However, the massive social discontent expressed in the landslide repudiation at the polls of the last dozen years of National Party rule will find no resolution in the formation of a new capitalist government under Castro and the Libre Party.