Governments refuse to take action as Omicron variant surges throughout the world

Andre Damon

The Omicron variant is spreading with extreme rapidity throughout the world and is likely to become the dominant variant in many countries by the end of the year. The variant has generated an enormous spike in cases in southern Africa, where it appears to have originated, as well as in the UK, Denmark, Norway and other European countries. It is already the dominant strain in London.

In the United States, where the official death toll from the pandemic has exceeded a staggering 800,000 over the past two years, new cases are up sharply in New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut and other states. In New York, Omicron already accounts for 13 percent of all cases, including a massive outbreak among fully vaccinated students at Cornell University in Ithaca, which has been forced to shut down in-person instruction.

The response of the major capitalist countries to the developing “tsunami”—essentially, nothing—displays a level of criminal irresponsibility that is staggering. What is known about the variant so far makes clear that urgent action is necessary.

Medics wearing special suits to protect against coronavirus treat patients with coronavirus at an ICU of a hospital in Volgograd, Russia, Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexandr Kulikov)

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday that “Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant,” he added. He condemned claims in the US and international media that the new variant is “mild” and therefore not dangerous, “We are concerned that people are dismissing Omicron as mild,” he said. “We underestimate this virus at our peril. Even if Omicron does cause less severe disease, the sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems.”

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on COVID-19 at the WHO, echoed the Director-General’s comments and condemned the “vaccine-only” approach to the pandemic taken by the US and other countries in the Americas and Europe. “I think we are facing a tsunami of infections in the world, both Delta and Omicron. … Vaccination alone is not enough. Vaccination prevents serious illness and death but does not completely prevent infection.”

As scientists have persistently warned, even if the Omicron variant turns out to be somewhat less lethal—which is yet to be confirmed—the sheer scale of the cases means that hospitalizations and deaths will rise sharply and catastrophically.

In addition to being extremely infectious, the Omicron variant appears to have a more severe impact on children than previous strains.

South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla reported that 5 percent of children infected with the Omicron variant have been hospitalized, compared to just .05 percent of COVID-19 cases among children currently hospitalized in the United Kingdom.

Hospital admissions in Gauteng, South Africa, have surged 45 percent above the levels seen in the previous peak. In Tshwane, South Africa, the initial epicenter of the Omicron outbreak, more than 100 infants under two years old have been admitted to hospitals, the largest number of any age group.

The Omicron variant, moreover, is resistant to vaccines, with a new study released on Tuesday showing that all three vaccines authorized in the US (Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson) offer significantly less protection. The most recent data from South Africa found that two shots of the Pfizer vaccine provided only 33 efficacy against symptomatic infections and only 70 percent protection against hospitalization, substantial drops from all previous variants.

Given that only 5 percent of the world population has received a booster and roughly 46 percent has received two doses, the vast majority of the world’s population is now at risk of symptomatic infections and potential hospitalization from Omicron.

In the face of this disaster, governments continue to reject vital measures to stop the spread of COVID-19. There are “no plans” for further lockdowns, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday, echoing Biden’s insistence that there will be “no lockdowns” in response to Omicron.

No restrictions are being placed on domestic travel for holiday gatherings, despite the known dangers of air travel. According to AAA, roughly 6.4 million people are expected to fly for the upcoming holidays, triple the number from last year. In the US, there are no requirements for passengers to be vaccinated and most will wear insufficiently effective surgical or cloth masks, creating the conditions for superspreader events and facilitating the exponential growth of Omicron cases.

The indifference to mass death on the part of the ruling classes was spelled out in an editorial by the New York Times published Friday, “Covid Isn’t Going Anywhere. It’s Time We Started Acting Like It.”

The Times, in line with the policies of the Biden administration, called for an end to the quarantining of children exposed to COVID-19. “It makes sense to allow workers and students to avoid confinement or test their way out of it much more quickly.” The Times condemned universal masking in schools, declaring, “No one wants to force young children to wear masks for several hours a day indefinitely.”

Instead of acting to prevent the Omicron surge, the Biden administration declared its opposition to the closure of schools and nonessential businesses, declaring its plan “doesn’t include shutdowns or lockdowns but widespread vaccinations and boosters.”

The emergence of the Omicron variant has itself exposed the failure of the “vaccine-only” strategy to stop the pandemic, and the massive surge of cases throughout the world has totally discredited the claims that the Omicron variant requires no change in policy.

And Omicron is not the end. The rapid evolution and high transmissibility of the latest “variant of concern” means that the next will likely evolve even more quickly. So long as the virus continues to propagate, there will be a continuous threat of the emergence of new, more virulent, vaccine-resistant and potentially deadly strains.

Jittery markets await central bank decisions

Nick Beams

The next two days will see significant decisions on monetary policy by three of the world’s major central banks amid growing uncertainty over how long the stock market bubble can continue as inflation rises.

Today, the US Federal Reserve is expected to announce an accelerated taper of its asset purchasing program in order to clear the way for a rise in its base interest rate early next year as it seeks to counter rising inflation now running at 6.8 percent—the highest level in almost 40 years.

Further rises in the headline rate are in the pipeline. The producer price index released yesterday showed a jump of 0.8 percent for November, an annual increase of 9.6 percent—the fastest year-on-year rate since data were first collected in 2010. In its press release the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the rise in producer prices was “broad-based.”

Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file]

The policy-making bodies of the Bank of England and the European Central Bank will meet on Thursday.

The BoE had been expected to lift its rate, with inflation running at over 4 percent and set to go to at least 5.5 percent next year. But a move in that direction has been called into question with the spread of COVID-19 infections in the UK, above all the Omicron variant.

However, in its latest update on the UK economy, the International Monetary Fund said the central bank should “withdraw the exceptional support provided during 2020.”

Underscoring a major concern of all the financial institutions of global capitalism, that inflation will lead to rising struggles for wage increases, the IMF said it was important to “avoid inaction bias” in view of the costs associated with containing “second-round” impacts of inflation.

Inflation is also on the rise in the eurozone, running at 4.9 percent. But the ECB is expected to maintain its asset purchasing and to again insist, in line with statements by its president Christine Lagarde, that an increase in interest rates is not on the immediate horizon. This is in large measure due to fears of the consequences for indebted economies in the eurozone.

As Commerzbank chief economist Joerg Kraemer told the Wall Street Journal: “In contrast to the ECB, the Fed is really getting out of the bond-buying business. The Fed simply doesn’t have Italy to support.”

When inflation was at low levels, the world’s central banks felt they could continue to pump money into the financial system to the tune of trillions of dollars, sending stock prices to new records and expanding the wealth of the financial oligarchy and the pandemic billionaires who have gorged on illness and death.

But with prices on the rise globally and the claim that inflation was a “transitory” phenomenon having been blown out of the water, the situation has become much more complex.

Under what were once considered “normal” circumstances, a rise in inflation would have brought a rise in interest rates, not least to put a clamp on wage demands by workers. But the fear is that monetary tightening could precipitate a sharp fall on debt-fueled stock market, bringing major problems for the financial system as whole under conditions where the experience of the meltdown of March 2020 is ever present.

The market volatility has already been seen on Wall Street so far this week. On Monday, the S&P 500 index dropped by 0.9 percent after closing last week at a record high, its 67th for the year so far. The Dow dropped by 0.9 percent and the tech-heavy NASDAQ was down by 1.4 percent.

The falls continued yesterday, as the S&P 500 dropped 0.7 percent and NASDAQ fell 1.1 percent.

The gyrations of Ark Invest, the fund run by Cathie Wood, who has been dubbed the “Queen of the bull market,” are emblematic, as an article in the Financial Times noted over the weekend. Her fund, which focuses on tech stocks, gained almost 150 percent last year but is down by 21 percent this year.

“However,” the article continued, “Ark is merely the tip of a vast iceberg of speculation that has grown to monstrous proportions over the past year.”

It cited remarks by Doug Ramsey, chief investment officer as The Leuthold Group, who said: “We think 2021 has earned its place in the book as the wildest and most speculative year in US stock market history, eclipsing even 1929 and 1999.”

He added that this did not mean 2022 would bring a “panic or a crash, maybe just a degree of sobriety.”

That may be the earnest hope of the investment houses and the financial oligarchy, fearful of a collapse, but the reality is, as Ramsey and others have noted, that the speculation, fueled by the central banks, is historically unprecedented.

And it may continue as the Fed begins to gradually tighten its monetary policy.

Gregory Perdon, co-chief investment officer at Arbuthnot Latham told the Wall Street Journal he thought stocks could keep rising even in the event of tightening monetary conditions.

“The classic textbook would be rates up, stock down. The reality is there’s so much liquidity out there, there’s so much demand to get a return on assets that ultimately we’re going to have to have a much ... more aggressive tightening to knock stocks.”

The same point has been made in a different way by Jason Forman, who chaired Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. He commented that with inflation rising the real interest rate had fallen and so the Fed’s monetary policy had actually loosened.

“It indicates policy is overshooting the mark by more than the Fed intended, and that maybe more of a correction is needed,” he said.

Share buybacks are a major factor in driving up the S&P 500 index by 25 percent this year until its recent falls. According to data released last week, companies in the index bought back $234.5 billion worth of shares in the third quarter of this year, exceeding the previous record of $223 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018. The level of buybacks is expected to rise even further in the last quarter of this year.

The effect of share buybacks can be seen in the case of Apple, one of the most aggressive practitioners of this form of financial manipulation. It was illegal until 1982, when laws preventing it were rolled back under the Reagan administration as the US economy became increasingly based on financial parasitism.

One of the main talking points in financial news commentary this week is how long it will take Apple to reach a market capitalisation of $3 trillion following the rise in its share price by 30 percent so far this year, recording an increase of 11 percent last week.

The increase from $1 trillion to $2 trillion took two years but now Apple is within touching distance of $3 trillion in just 16 months.

Another marker of speculation is the flow of money into exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which follow share market indexes. Shares in ETFs can be bought and sold on the markets like the stock in an individual company.

Data released last week showed that inflows into ETFs world-wide in the year to November went above $1 trillion, beating the total of $735.7 billion for the whole of last year.

ETFs bring a new level of instability. This is because there are based on similar models that track market indexes. When the market is rising, they can bring big returns, as the case of Ark reveals, but equally they can all suffer major losses when the market begins to fall, exacerbating the downward movement.

It is impossible to predict exactly what the reaction will be to the Fed’s announcement today and those of the central banks to follow.

But one thing can be said with certainty: the historically unprecedented stock market bubble, which the ruling elite’s policies have fostered, means that the entire financial system rests on increasingly shaky foundations.

World Health Organization warns of Omicron “tsunami”

Benjamin Mateus

As cases of the dangerous new Omicron variant of COVID-19 surge around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Tuesday of a “tsunami” of COVID-19 cases.

“Seventy-seven countries have now reported cases of Omicron, and the reality is that Omicron is probably in most countries even if it hasn’t been detected yet,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant.”

He added, “We are concerned that people are dismissing Omicron as mild. Surely, we have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril. Even if Omicron does cause less severe disease, the sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems. I need to be very clear. Vaccines alone will not get any country out of this crisis. Countries can and must prevent the spread of Omicron with measures that work today.” [Emphasis added]

A COVID-19 technician and a patient outside Asthenis Pharmacy in Providence, Rhode Island, December 7, 2021. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on COVID-19 at the WHO, echoing the Director-General’s comments, also warned, “I think we are facing a tsunami of infections in the world, both Delta and Omicron…Vaccination alone is not enough. Vaccination prevents serious illness and death but does not completely prevent infection.”

These assessments are based on Omicron’s ability to escape, to some extent, from the immune response established by the current COVID-19 vaccines. Recent data out of South Africa suggests fully vaccinated individuals with two doses will have a 33 percent protection against symptomatic infection and a 70 percent protection from admission for severe disease. However, the exponential surge of cases will overcome these statistical margins and inundate health systems.

The previous week, December 8, 2021, in an interview published in New Scientist, Dr. Van Kerkhove said, “We have seen the full spectrum of severity with the variant, and people will die from it. Saying ‘it’s only mild’ is very dangerous. If it is more transmissible than Delta [which has been determined to be the case], there will be more cases, more hospitalization, and more deaths.”

Yesterday, South Africa reported nearly 24,000 cases with a positivity rate of 35 percent. Admissions jumped by 697 in 24 hours, bringing the total to close to 6,900. Forty-nine more people were added to the ICUs and 24 more died. Yet, when daily excess deaths are analyzed, these statistics have jumped more than six-fold since the second half of November. Having reached 520 on December 13, 2021 from a low of 85 on November 22, 2021, this suggests a far more dire situation than is being admitted in the US media. The rise in excess deaths is the most accurate predictor of the state of affairs.

Outside of South Africa, Denmark and the UK face a rapid surge of infections with Omicron. On Monday, Sajid Javid, the Secretary for Health and Social Care of the United Kingdom, estimated that approximately 200,000 people per day were becoming infected with Omicron. These estimates were based on projections by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) that on December 7, 2021, there were around 78,000 Delta infections.

On that day, approximately 20 percent of all sequenced infections were Omicron, implying an additional 23,000 daily Omicron infections. And under their assumption that Omicron is doubling every two days, the UK Health Security Agency placed the estimate of Omicron infections on December 13, 2021, at 207,000. Furthermore, they warned that if Omicron remains on its present trajectory, the UK could expect to see more than one million daily Omicron infections.

Even Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has derided any serious measure that deals with the pandemic, has had to acknowledge his concerns over the spread of Omicron and told the BBC that these infections were leading to a rise in hospital admissions. “Sadly, yes, Omicron is producing hospitalizations, and sadly at least one patient has been confirmed to have died with Omicron,” he said on Monday at the Stowe Health Vaccination Centre. Yesterday, 65 children were hospitalized in England over 24 hours, the worst figure during the pandemic.

In a televised announcement to the nation on Monday evening, Johnson said, “I need to speak to you this evening because I’m afraid we’re now facing an emergency in our battle with the new variant, Omicron … We know from bitter experience how these exponential curves develop. No one should be in any doubt there is a tidal wave of Omicron coming.” He even said, “Do not make the mistake of thinking Omicron can’t hurt you, can’t make you and your loved ones seriously ill.”

Johnson, however, refused to close schools or non-essential businesses, instead doubling down on the “vaccine-only” approach condemned as inadequate by the WHO.

Javid warned, “The lag between infections and hospitalizations is around two weeks. With infections rising so quickly, we’re likely to see a substantial rise in hospitalizations before any measures start to have an impact. So, there really is no time to lose.”

Denmark and Norway have acknowledged they expect daily infections to surpass all previous records as Omicron will combine with Delta to fuel the ongoing surge. In response to the threat posed by the new variant, Denmark has at least called for early school closures but has done little else than limit hours for nightlife and promote remote work, which will do little to stem the tide of infections.

Norwegian health officials warned Omicron could infect between 90,000 to 300,000 people each day by the beginning of the New Year if measures proved ineffective. The number of infections is already three times higher than at any time in the pandemic. As hospital admissions climb, Jonas Gahr, Norway’s Prime Minister, warned the situation quickly grows serious.

In the United States, which has officially recognized more than 50 million reported infections and 800,000 deaths and where Delta continues to pummel the Northeast and upper Midwest, 35 states have reported Omicron infections in the three weeks since WHO declared it a variant of concern. The highest reported number of such cases have been sequenced in Texas and New York, each with 38 confirmations. And in each state, infections are climbing.

New York, in particular, is facing a catastrophe. The state has seen a massive surge in cases, with the seven-day average of new infections now exceeding 10,000 per day. According to CNN, at Cornell University, there have been 903 cases of COVID-19 reported among students between December 6 and 13. Joel Malina, Vice President for University Relations, noted in his statement that a “very high percentage” of these were due to the Omicron variant. “Virtually every case of the Omicron variant to date has been found in fully vaccinated students, a portion of whom had also received a booster shot.”

Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who had predicted Delta’s dominance as early as April 2021, told Intelligencer last week, “I think Omicron is going to be remarkable in how fast it takes. If you look at what it took for Alpha and Delta to prevail, it took really two months before they became the dominant variants around the world, some countries sooner than others. I think we are going to see this one become dominant variant in just a matter of weeks.”

Omicron identified throughout the Southern US amid continuing child, educator deaths

Shelley Connor

As the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 spreads through the United States, public health officials in the South warn that the region’s teetering health care systems are poised for disaster. The variant has been detected in Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida and Texas. Omicron’s higher transmissibility, as well as the alarming rate of child hospitalizations in South Africa, make the immediate closure of schools for in-person learning more urgent than ever.

On top of the premature, irresponsible claims that Omicron is “mild” is the ongoing cover-up of the spread of COVID-19, particularly among children.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), between November 11 and December 9, at least thirteen children in the southern US have died of COVID-19: four in Texas, three in South Carolina, and two each in Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida.

Elementary school students on the first day of classes in Richardson, Texas, August 17, 2021. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Though these deaths should sound the alarm across the region and country, only two local news reports have mentioned any of the deaths.

Following the late August peak of the Delta surge, many state and local governments in the South used a temporary decline in cases to justify removing even the most limited mitigation measures. For example, counties across Alabama switched to “recommending” masks throughout October.

In late September, the Louisiana Superintendent of Education dropped the recommendation that students exposed to the virus quarantine, instead advising districts to let parents decide whether to quarantine their child or not. Texas and Florida ban school mask mandates altogether.

Already, the region leads the nation in the per capita rate of COVID-19 deaths. Mississippi and Alabama rank first and second, respectively. Louisiana ranks fourth, and Arkansas, Georgia and Florida are in the top ten. Most southern states have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country. In Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, not even 50 percent of the population is double vaccinated.

As is true across the country and world, schools in the South have been the center of outbreaks.

Alabama

Although Omicron has not yet been detected in the state, Dr. Suzanne Judd, an epidemiologist and public health educator at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, said in an interview with NBC that the variant is likely already present. Judd acknowledged, “We don’t do as much genotyping... as other states.”

A total of 589 COVID-19 cases were reported in Alabama’s K-12 school system this week, a dramatic increase over last week’s 414. However, reporting is voluntary, and many school districts either do not report infections at all or fail to report consistently from week to week, meaning these numbers likely undercount the true spread.

Only one in three Alabama school districts mandated masking when schools reopened in August. The immediate surge caused most districts to reinstate masking guidelines as a compromise to avoid closing. Officials quickly moved on, however, and according to a statewide tracker, the majority of Alabama school districts had dropped masking requirements by October 25.

Alabama teacher Debra, whose name has been changed for privacy, tells the WSWS that her district refuses to quarantine students or report COVID-19 cases. “There was a positive case in my class, but students are not being told,” she tells us. “Sometimes, the school will tell an entire class to quarantine and won’t tell the teachers anything.”

She continued, “They will never get rid of it [COVID] the way they are doing it. They continue to cram three or four students to a seat on the school bus.”

Referring to the dangers and irresponsibility of the “vaccine-only” approach, she said: “People with vaccinations have gotten COVID. The virus is like special ed; it’s got an IEP [Individual Education Plan] for every individual. You don’t know if the vaccine will save you. Look at Colin Powell, he was vaccinated and died. Of course, he had an underlying condition, but if you’re an American, you’ve got something else. We’ve got bad air, bad water, bad diet, you name it.”

Speaking to the betrayals of the Alabama Education Association, which has colluded with districts to herd teachers into unsafe classrooms throughout the pandemic, she said, “The unions changed 25 years ago. They’ve been living off what they did in the 1970s, but they’ve sold out to the political parties. They are taking the money to fill their own pockets. I’ve dropped my membership. They got my money for years.”

Texas

In Texas, over a third of all children have been infected with COVID-19, the highest level of any age group. Infection-driven seropositivity stands at 36.51 percent for children under 10, and 38.50 percent of children from ages 10 to 19, according to researchers at the University of Texas in Austin. The reports betray Texas’s habitual underreporting of pediatric infection rates.

On the week of December 5, 3,781 new cases were reported among Texas school children, a 931 percent jump from the previous week’s 406 cases. Among staff, 854 new cases were reported, up from the previous week’s 298. As in Alabama, schools report voluntarily, and the COVID-19 Dashboard warns that some local education agencies may restrict reporting in the interest of “privacy.” To date, the tracker has recorded over 229,000 student infections for this school year.

Meanwhile, the state government has outlawed even the most minimal mitigation measures. Two weeks after US District Judge Lee Yeakel struck it down, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s ban on school masking mandates on November 25.

While there is no official count, at least 80 Texas educators have died since July 1 according to an informal tracker, including math teacher Rob Sanchez, age 59, on December 1. Additionally, a preprint study from the University of Kentucky released in May linked Texas school reopenings to at least 800 deaths over a two-month period in 2020.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has documented 115 child deaths in Texas from COVID-19. The latest death was a child younger than 10 from Austin, who died between December 7 and 13, according to local news. No other details are available.

Mississippi

Since the start of the school year in August, nearly 22,000 students and nearly 4,000 staff and faculty have tested positive for COVID-19 in Mississippi. There have been 1,166 outbreaks reported in Mississippi schools between August and December. Between November 29 and December 3, 351 students and 84 staff tested positive.

Last spring, a school custodian needlessly died from the virus at the age of 76. Chance Butler of Wesson had worked for 54 years at Wesson Attendance Center, a K-12 school. According to a faculty member on social media, Mr. Wesson had retired a few years prior but had returned to work part-time and was planning to retire for good in May of 2021. He fell ill and died in February.

His death, like those of Mississippi school personnel, should have served as a warning to the state government. Instead, Governor Tate Reeves, against the advice of public health experts, refused to delay school reopenings in August as the Delta variant ripped through the state.

Tate scoffed at masking recommendations, calling them “foolish” and “harmful,” and refused to mandate them in schools. In the ensuing surge, Mississippi’s hospitals were immediately overrun. Its singular children’s hospital converted part of its parking garage into a field hospital, and several children died. “Instead of seeing women bury their parents, we’re seeing them bury their children,” state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said in August.

Georgia

On Monday, health officials reported the death of a 4-month-old, the youngest child to die of COVID-19 in Georgia. Twenty-four children have officially died of the virus in the state.

At least 68 educators in Georgia have died this school year alone. Of these, fifty-eight died between August 11 and November 19, at a rate of one death per day. Their ages ranged from 24 to 75, and many were vaccinated.

Sara Anderson, a cafeteria worker at Conyers Middle School, fell ill on September 15. Her supervisor told her she had no sick days left and instructed her to come in. She passed out at work on September 18. At the hospital, she was diagnosed first with COVID-19, then COVID pneumonia. She died on October 5.

Anderson's coworker and best friend, Janice Chastain, contracted the virus the same week Anderson did; she died ten days before.

The children and educators who have been infected and died of COVID-19 across the southern US represent a human sacrifice made with shrewd calculation by the federal and state governments, who need students in the classroom so their parents can work to create profits.

The media have largely kept silent, with very little being said about the deaths of either teachers or children.

Without an immediate, comprehensive intervention to stop its spread, there is no doubt that Omicron will create a new scale of disaster for the region’s health systems, with schools serving as focal points of the virus’s transmission.

Debra, the Alabama teacher, said in response to the announcement of the Global Workers’ Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic, “We do have to take a stand. Struggles by workers are continuing. I think it’s a revolution right now. You could say it began with the Arab Spring, but it’s been ongoing. It’s all connected. When people look back, say 50 years from now, they’ll say we were rising up. We are sick of injustice, be it racial or work-related.”

Russia anticipates new COVID surge, even as deaths remain at record highs

Andrea Peters

Russia continues to experience extremely high daily COVID-19 infections, as the spread of the Omicron variant threatens the country with yet another surge. While new cases have declined over the last week by about 7.3 percent and are currently hovering around 29,000 a day, they have yet to fall below previous highs seen in February 2021.

On Tuesday, the country added another 1,176 officially recorded COVID-19 deaths, bringing the total number of those who have perished from the disease to over 289,000. According to the federal statistical agency Rosstat, whose data includes COVID-19 fatalities otherwise attributed to individuals’ co-morbidities, as of October of this year 537,000 Russians had lost their lives from the coronavirus.

Schools across the country continue to shutter their doors due to infections and exposures. In the city of Yekaterinburg, 350 classrooms in K-12 schools and kindergartens are in quarantine. In Nizhegorodsky Oblast, over 1,000 have also been closed or switched to online learning. The head of that region’s ministry of health recently told the press that he expects another COVID-19 wave to hit the area in mid-January, with infections driven by illness among children. In the Siberian city of Yakutsk, cases among those under 18 are rising. Two hundred forty tons of oxygen were just delivered to the city by riverboat with the aid of an icebreaker.

Medics wearing special suits to protect against coronavirus treat patients with coronavirus at an ICU of a hospital in Volgograd, Russia, Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexandr Kulikov)

Speaking at a meeting of cabinet ministers on Wednesday, Russia’s Vice Premier Tatyana Golikova indicated that the government anticipates further spread of COVID-19 as the Omicron variant penetrates Russia. She warned that each individual infected with the new form of the disease generally passes it along to three others, a four-fold increase over the Delta variant. This will result in increasing pressure on the country’s healthcare system, Golikova noted. It has already been buckling under the weight of the current surge.

Despite declaring that the Kremlin is preparing a plan to handle the forthcoming situation, she released no details as to what it intends to do. Instead, Golikova appealed to regional authorities to “strengthen” their efforts and prepare for the imposition of restrictions on mass gatherings and in public places, as well as the extension of the school winter holidays. For some time now, the Kremlin has largely rolled back all COVID-19 mandates coming from the central government and dumped the problem on local health ministries, resulting in a hodge-podge of measures from one place to the next.

The day before Golikova spoke, the head of the Russian parliament declared that lawmakers were abandoning efforts to pass federal legislation that would have required people to show a QR code proving either vaccination or prior infection in order to use many forms of public transportation. Simultaneously, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced that the city—where the majority of COVID-19 cases is concentrated—was unilaterally extending the length of time that QR codes given to individuals due to their having already gotten COVID-19 would be valid. It is increasing from 6 to 12 months.

All of this is happening as the danger from Omicron is rapidly becoming apparent. Sobyanin’s declaration came alongside news that among the 16 individuals in Russia so far determined to have the Omicron variant, 7 had already had the disease and 11 were fully vaccinated, including one person who fell in both categories. Similar data are emerging from other studies internationally.

Clearly alarmed by the growing evidence that those with COVID-19 antibodies do not have significant protection from Omicron, makers of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine declared this week that they are working to modify the shot to boost the immune response it provokes against the new variant. Currently less than 50 percent of the country’s population is fully vaccinated. While vaccine uptake has been rising, at the current rate it would take many months to achieve adequate population-wide protection and a recent study by the Levada Center, a Russian polling agency, found that 36 percent of respondents said they had no intention of ever getting vaccinated and 53 percent oppose obligatory inoculation.

The skepticism, even outright hostility, towards vaccination for COVID-19 within the Russian population is evident. It reflects deep distrust towards a government that has for decades presided over a massive growth in social inequality, a process that has only accelerated during the pandemic with efforts made to help ordinary people withstand COVID-19’s economic impact that can, at best, be described as pathetic. At the same time, the downplaying of the dangers of the disease by the authorities and the promotion of anti-scientific outlooks has contributed to a situation in which 53 percent of Russians, according to the Levada Center, say they are unafraid of infection.

In a deranged expression of social frustrations provoked by the pandemic and the government’s response, last week, a 45-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Russian army, shot up a government office in Moscow after a confrontation with a security guard over masking. Two people died and another three were injured, including a 10-year old girl who went to the hospital in critical condition.

A December 8 guest essay in the New York Times by Alexei Kovalev, an editor at one of Russia’s leading liberal news outlets, gleefully declared that COVID-19 is “beating Putin.” One almost gets the sense that these layers revel in the social destruction wrought. What is conspicuously left out of Kovalev’s commentary, however, is the glaring fact that disastrous policies of the Putin government are identical to those pursued by virtually every other government on the planet—above all, the United States.

Widespread boycott marks New Caledonia independence referendum

John Braddock

The third and final referendum to decide the future of the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia was held on Sunday. Voters overwhelmingly rejected independence from France with the referendum boycotted by pro-independence Kanaks because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The results saw 96.49 percent vote against and just 3.51 percent in favour, with a low 43.9 percent turnout. In predominantly Kanak areas nearly everyone refused to participate. The turnout in the Belep Islands was 0.6 percent, while on Lifou some voting stations had not a single voter. In Canala and Hiènghene on the main island of Grande Terre, less than 2 percent cast a vote.

An Independence supporter holds the Kanak flag outside a voting station in the Riviere Salee district of Noumea, New Caledonia, Sunday, October 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Mathurin Derel)

The plebiscite will be deemed illegitimate by most indigenous Kanaks, who comprise 40 percent of the territory’s 270,000 population. Before the vote, the pro-independence parties declared they would not recognise the result, and ruled out negotiations on any future status before the French presidential election next April. They also declined to meet the French overseas minister Sebastien Lecornu for post-referendum discussions.

The referendum was the culmination of a three decades-long process under the Matignon Accord (1988) and Noumea Accord (1998), which brought an end to a near civil-war during which French elite troops put down a Kanak insurrection. New Caledonia has been on the United Nations’ so-called “decolonisation” list since 1986, but full independence has always been resisted by Paris.

Under the two accords, promoted as a “compromise” between the independence movement, led by Jean-Marie Tjibaou of the FLNKS (Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste), and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur, three referenda on independence were provided for.

In 2020, just over 53 percent voted to remain as part of France, down from 56 percent in 2018, indicating growing support for independence. With a high turnout at 85 percent of the 180,000 voters enrolled, there were just 10,000 votes between the two camps in 2020.

French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed Sunday’s result, saying France is “more beautiful” because New Caledonia remains part of it. He said with the end of the Noumea Accord, the territory is free of the “binary choice” between yes and no. In reality, the formal “decolonisation” mechanism has ended with the colonised people effectively rejecting the legitimacy of the process.

The final referendum was not actually required until October 2022. In 2019, the French government and New Caledonia’s political parties agreed that the referendum should not take place in close proximity to the French presidential elections. In June 2021, however, Paris broke the agreement and unilaterally fixed the December date.

With campaigning due to start, the Delta variant of COVID-19 hit the country in early September. The virus rapidly spread; more than 10,000 people caught the virus and 270 people, mainly Kanaks, died. With the majority of Kanaks in traditional mourning for 12 months, declared by the Kanak Customary Senate, the FLNKS and its allies called for the referendum to be deferred until next year.

The FLNKS argued that with COVID-19 health restrictions, it was impossible to create the democratic conditions for a fair election campaign. The Melanesian Spearhead Group, which includes the states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, also supported a postponement.

The pro-independence movement called for a boycott. Favouring a negative vote to maintain the French status quo, however, Paris refused to budge. Lecornu bluntly asserted that “in democracies” votes are held on time and only an out-of-control pandemic could make a date change possible. The local anti-independence parties and the French establishment opposed a deferment, saying New Caledonia needed “clarity.”

The Macron government mounted an unprecedented military-police operation, despatching a 2,000-strong “security” force to the colony supported by vehicles, armoured personnel carriers, helicopters and a transport aircraft. General Christophe Marietti, overseeing the operation, declared the deployment would be “reassuring, dissuasive and reactive.”

Writing in the Guardian on December 2, New Zealand historian Adrian Muckle with Rowena Dickins Morrison and Benoît Trépied described the French government’s decision to proceed with the referendum as “a reckless political gambit with potentially dire consequences.” France was effectively undermining the promises of the “decolonisation” process of the last 30 years and risking “a return to violence.”

The authors noted that a key factor behind the push for the referendum to be run early was Macron’s “electoral calculus” in the lead up to the French presidential elections. Macron’s primary opponents are likely to be from France’s far right, which is overwhelmingly in favour of keeping hold of New Caledonia. The only French support for a postponement came from presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon who said going ahead would threaten the territory’s “equilibrium.”

Further entrenching France’s intransigence is the recently changed strategic position in the Indo-Pacific following the announcement of the AUKUS (Australia, UK and US) alliance and Australia’s withdrawal from its submarine deal with France. Paris will not countenance any diminution of its position as a Pacific power. New Caledonia is home to a major French military base and holds nearly a quarter of the world’s reserves of nickel, a strategic mineral.

The referendum, however, will do nothing to resolve the impasse. Among those who are exposed by yet another betrayal is the relatively privileged layer of Kanaks, represented by the FLNKS, seeking a larger slice of the economic pie and a greater political say. The two accords effectively defused the independence movement. Money was poured into building a Kanak infrastructure, training public servants and establishing a base for this layer in the lucrative mining industry. The FLNKS’ socialistic phrase-mongering was eschewed in return for political and business opportunities.

The increasingly moribund nationalist movement has entered into arrangements within the political elite to suppress growing anger among the working class. New Caledonia now has its first pro-independence Kanak president, Louis Mapou, who was installed in July, followed by the re-election of the pro-independence Roch Wamytan as president, or speaker, of Congress.

Meanwhile ordinary Kanaks make up 95 percent of the unemployed and many low-paid workers live in slum conditions. Police clashes with Kanak youth have erupted with increasing violence, prompting demands by local politicians for harsher “law and order” measures. Noumea remains a socially and economically polarised capital.

Class struggles have erupted. November 2020 saw riots and clashes with police over the sale of the Brazilian-owned Goro Nickel plant, which threatened the jobs of 3,000 workers. Broad sections of the working class, including miners, processing workers, truck drivers, airport workers and others have engaged in militant struggles over jobs and conditions, bringing them into conflict with both pro-and anti-independence factions of the ruling class.

Throughout the Pacific, formal independence has proven to be a sham. The island states that were granted nominal independence from the 1960s onwards remain totally dependent on the major powers economically and strategically.

Johnson government hit by massive backbench rebellion opposing minimal COVID measures

Chris Marsden

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “Plan B” measures to combat the escalating wave of Omicron variant infections were passed yesterday only in the face of a massive rebellion by hard-right Conservative MPs.

Nearly 100 Tory MPs opposed the introduction of proof of vaccination or a negative test being required to enter some large venues. The measure passed by 369 votes to 126, with 96 Tories against.

MPs also voted for mandatory vaccination for National Health Service (NHS) workers from April next year, with 100 against, while 38 Tory MPs voted against the government on face mask requirements in shops and on public transport.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, warned that a leadership challenge against Johnson is “on the cards” if he fails to “change his approach”—indicating that even the most minimal anti-COVID measures will not be tolerated by the Tory vultures ready to devour his political corpse.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid introducing "Plan B" measures in Parliament (Credit: Parliamentlive.tv)

Johnson’s days as party leader look numbered, recalling nothing more than the ebbing authority suffered by his predecessor Theresa May as the Brexiteer wing moved against her. It is now Johnson’s turn because his former backers have concluded he does not have the spine to face off popular opposition as the ruling elite deepens its austerity drive and insists that it is now time to “live with the virus,” no matter the cost in death and suffering.

Yesterday’s grotesque debate was a warning of what is coming.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid led the case for the government’s Plan B measures with a chilling admission that Omicron is more transmissible than Delta—cases are doubling every two days. Scientists, he said, estimate that 200,000 people are being infected daily with the new variant, with the NHS at risk of being overwhelmed even if Omicron turned out to be only half as severe as Delta.

Javid was still underplaying what the government has been told, with Johnson telling his Cabinet that morning that a “huge spike” in Omicron cases is coming. This was confirmed by yesterday’s 59,610 recorded COVID cases, the highest daily total since January 9, and up 12.1 percent on the previous week.

It was Dr Susan Hopkins, the government’s most senior public health adviser, who told MPs that Omicron cases had likely reached 200,000 a day. She also warned daily infections could reach 1 million by the end of December.

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, told the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, “All the evidence we have in front of us suggests that there will be a considerable impact [from Omicron] in terms of degree of hospitalisations ... starting I would think in the next week to two weeks. That is a concern because the NHS is already ‘beyond full stretch’ even before winter has arrived properly.”

Professor Stephen Reicher warned that there were in fact only two ways to slow infections down—asking people not to socialise or imposing a lockdown.

As for the severity of Omicron, other scientists and officials testified that the current best estimate is that Omicron is only 29 percent less severe than previous variants, with the reinfection rate three to eight times higher than Delta.

Dr Paul Burton, chief medical officer at Moderna, told the Commons Science and Technology Committee, “I do not think Omicron is a milder, less severe version of the current virus.” Moreover, “The idea it will push Delta out of the way and take over may occur in the future, but I think in the coming months these two viruses are going to co-exist, and Omicron, which I would maintain is actually a severe disease, will now infect people on a background of very, very strong Delta pressure. It will also lead to a situation where individuals will become co-infected … which gives the opportunity for this virus to further evolve and mutate which is a concerning and worrying situation.”

In South Africa, about 15 percent of people who are hospitalised are in the intensive care unit, about the same as during the Delta surge in August, he said.

Javid made the case for largely ineffectual measures, while stressing to his opponents how limited and temporary they are. The government was not introducing “vaccine passports” and anyone who opposes vaccination need only prove they have had a negative lateral flow test, despite these being notoriously inaccurate. “I would not support a vaccine-only option,” he promised. Mandatory vaccination for frontline NHS staff would not be extended to other professions. He also announced that the travel Red List mandating hotel quarantine for arrivals from 11 countries is ending.

This did not stop the Tory hard-right from posing as champions of freedom to denounce all anti-COVID restrictions as an affront to personal liberty and the market.

Steve Brine complained that many of his constituents had objected to the “frightening nature” of Johnson’s TV broadcast Sunday night, warning that “a tidal wave of Omicron is coming”, when what was needed was a plan to live with COVID. Andrew Bridgen declared that the most dangerous epidemic facing the world today was the epidemic of fear. Andrea Leadsom insisted that “COVID will be with us for many years to come.”

The majority of the Labour Party went further than ever in its policy of “constructive criticism”, with Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting unreservedly supporting the minimal Tory measures. He stressed that Labour’s support for COVID passes in some social venues was because it supports business, while backing Johnson for not making the system more rigorous.

Labour’s “left”, led by former party leader Jeremy Corbyn sitting as an Independent, was worse still. He led eight Labour MPs in backing the Tory hard-right opposition, along with the sole Green MP, Caroline Lucas, by proclaiming mandatory NHS vaccination and a necessity to prove vaccination status an attack on civil liberties, rather than an elementary public health measure during a raging pandemic. He wrote in typical fashion on Twitter that both measures would “create division when we need cooperation and unity.” Such moves were “totally wrong”, he told parliament, oblivious to the findings of health care professionals and the severe risk being imposed on the NHS staff he claims to care about by an escalating pandemic.

The surreal character of the debate was underscored by the slew of MPs who could not vote because they were self-isolating. They included Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, Shadow Environment Secretary Jim McMahon, and Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence Jess Phillips. Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey was also isolating.

Johnson’s measures will do little or nothing to prevent the medical and social disaster now unfolding. And Labour’s MPs, both right and nominally “left”, have once again proved they offer no alternative.

Corbyn and his ilk, along with the trade unions, is reaching out to the vaccine sceptics as an excuse for not waging a principled struggle against the entire mercenary agenda of big business pursued by Johnson and Starmer. He speaks of convincing rather than compulsion, while saying and doing nothing, even as the trade unions allow their members to be forced into unsafe workplaces and children into schools that are breeding grounds for COVID.