Think twice: Can we deliver on #HealthForAll without saving lives from viral hepatitis?

Shobha Shukla & Bobby Ramakant

Despite over 350 million people living with hepatitis B and C virus globally, and 3 persons dying every minute, much-needed efforts are yet to be on-track to end viral hepatitis in next 108 months (by 2030) as promised by heads of all countries in UN General Assembly (by adopting the Sustainable Development Goals). More importantly, during the Covid pandemic, efforts to prevent and save lives from viral hepatitis had taken a backseat – which is risking losing the gains made earlier in addressing viral hepatitis across the world.

“Elimination of viral hepatitis should be part of any sound public health agenda. With a strong political will and collective leadership we can achieve the regional goal of eliminating viral hepatitis by 2030” said Wangsheng Li, cofounder and founding President of The Hepatitis Fund (endHep2030.org).

He was speaking at the 6th Asia Pacific Summit of Mayors (APCAT Summit) which brought together subnational leaders of almost 80 cities across the region. Addressing viral hepatitis was an important part of the integrated health and development agenda of this summit. The Mayors and other subnational leaders and delegates of APCAT Summit adopted an APCAT Declaration 2021 which includes the promise for “addressing the challenge of viral hepatitis as a major public health threat in the Asia Pacific region through elimination of mother to child transmission by raising public awareness and strengthening health systems through public and private partnerships.”

The Declaration endorsed by 6th APCAT Summit further underlines: “We commit to doing everything to harness the power of our city governments to ensure that tobacco control, prevention of non-communicable diseases, TB control, elimination of viral hepatitis, routine immunization and scaling up Covid vaccination are effectively implemented and measured, along with other health and development initiatives, and the recovery from Covid is healthy, equitable and sustainable.”

“We are very excited on the recently formed partnership between EndHep2030 and APCAT” said Wangsheng Li. Rightly so, given how critical is political leadership to advancing ending hepatitis agenda.

“Health is a political choice that should ensure leadership, accountability and sustainability for the effective implementation of public health policies and programmes and prevent current and future pandemics. Viral hepatitis is an essential part of the #HealthForAll agenda”, said Dr Tara Singh Bam, Asia Pacific Director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), and Board Director of Asia Pacific Cities Alliance for Health and Development (APCAT) in Singapore.

How will we end hepatitis by 2030?

Dr Po-Lin Chan from Manila-based World Health Organization (WHO)’s Western Pacific regional office said that “Elimination of viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030 is a combination of existing interventions at scale. These include ensuring universal free childhood vaccinations of 3 doses of hepatitis B vaccines, prevention of mother to child transmission of hepatitis during antenatal care, ensuring safe blood and blood products (so that transfusions are safe), making sure universal precautions is the norm in healthcare settings, ensuring safer sex programmes are in place, ensuring harm reduction interventions and efforts to prevent new infections among people who inject drugs are in place and accessible, and making sure that tests and affordable drugs are available in healthcare facilities nearer to where people live.”

Along with Singapore, other countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Thailand, Malaysia, and Nepal have also successfully met the WHO target for 2020 of achieving 90% prevention of hepatitis B through vaccination (by providing birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine to newborn children).

“Vaccination is the foundation of prevention of hepatitis B virus (HBV)” said Dr Po-Lin Chan.

Asia Pacific is home to more than half of world’s people with hepatitis B and C

Asia and the Pacific has more than half of world’s total number of people with hepatitis B and C virus. About 200 million people are chronically infected with hepatitis (180 million with hepatitis B and 20 million with hepatitis C) and most people are not even aware that they are infected, said Dr Po-Lin Chan of WHO. These are the people who are also at high risk of developing liver cancer. Chronic infection of hepatitis B and C affects the liver overtime and causes cirrhosis and eventually liver cancer. All these premature deaths are untimely and so preventable, because we have prevention tools, as well as good tests and drugs that can treat hepatitis B and C, and hepatitis C can be cured.

Globally, 296 million people are estimated to be infected with Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), and 58 million with Hepatitis C Virus (HCV).

African region has 82 million people with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and 9 million with hepatitis C virus (HCV). Pan-American region has 5 million people each with HBV and HCV. Southeast Asian region has 60 million people with HBV and 10 million with HCV, and accounts for around 15% of global HBV and HCV cases, as well as 30% deaths due to HBV and HCV. European region has 14 million people with HBV and 12 million with HCV. Eastern Mediterranean region has 18 million people with HBV and 12 million people with HCV. Western Pacific region has 116 million people with HBV and 10 million with HCV.

Dr Po-Lin Chan shared that latest scientific evidence shows that there is a group of pregnant women who are more at risk of passing the hepatitis B virus to their babies. These are pregnant women who are themselves hepatitis B infected. WHO guidelines provide recommendations that we can further prevent hepatitis B transmission from an infected pregnant woman to her baby. Universal testing during antenatal care for HIV, HBV and syphilis, is the entry point to get infected woman timely into the care she needs. WHO’s framework for triple elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV, syphilis and HBV brings together integrated mother to child care so that next new generation of babies can be free of infectious diseases such as HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B.

Act today to prevent liver cancer tomorrow

“If we take action today, we can prevent liver cancer tomorrow. To reduce liver cancer and to reduce advanced liver disease such as cirrhosis, an effective way is to provide testing services so that people can know their own hepatitis status, can get linked to health services and get drugs to treat hepatitis. Even during the pandemic we must intensify our efforts to prevent our babies from getting infected with viral hepatitis B. This means investing in childhood vaccination (against HBV), and prevention of mother to child transmission to get to elimination” said Dr Po-Lin Chan.

People living with hepatitis B and C are at high risk of developing liver cancer. Most are not aware. But liver cancer can be prevented by ensuring testing and treatment for those who need it. Because cancer once developed will cost all of us even more.

“Hepatitis C can be cured. Hepatitis B can be effectively treated. We need to work towards strengthening health systems, towards universal health coverage which includes hepatitis, optimising primary care service delivery nearer to places where people live, including public private partnership, equitable access including hard to reach groups and engaging communities, and data based decision making” said Dr Po-Lin Chan.

Almost all countries in southeast Asia have now developed and are implementing national strategic plans that provide key guidance on hepatitis testing and treatment and blood and injection safety. All southeast Asian countries have at least 3 doses of hepatitis B vaccine in their national immunization schedule with the region achieving more than 90% coverage rate in 8 countries.

We have to scale up genuine and effective hepatitis-interventions for supporting key populations through community outreach and by implementing opioid substitution therapy and safe injection programmes.

For eliminating mother to child transmission of hepatitis B, it is essential to ensure that all pregnant women are tested for the virus and where necessary treated and for every newborn to receive the hepatitis B birth dose.

Minimal restrictions introduced in Scotland as Omicron wave takes hold

Steve James

Last Friday, Scotland’s national clinical director, Jason Leitch, warned of an oncoming “public health crisis”. “We have a fourth new variant, it is accelerating, it is doubling faster than any of its predecessors and it is now more than half of the positive cases in Scotland.”

On Monday, Leitch told the BBC that Omicron infections were likely to double or treble in the period ahead and that Scotland was “nowhere near” the peak of the infection wave. The modelling suggested the peak would be in late January or early February.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, Pool)

Mike McKirdy, president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, underscored Leitch’s concerns, warning the health system risked being overwhelmed in a manner comparable to events in northern Italy in 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic. Dr David Shackles, joint chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners in Scotland, said Omicron posed a threat to health services which “cannot be overstated”.

Many other medical leaders made similar warnings. Yet on Tuesday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s latest update on the coronavirus pandemic to the Scottish parliament included the announcement of the most minimal public health measures. These were to be introduced only after this weekend, thereby guaranteeing rapid ongoing infection in the run-up to Christmas.

Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Sturgeon reported that the Omicron variant accounted for 62.9 percent of infections, up from 27.5 percent the previous week. The variant’s “R” number was around three, meaning that, on average, every person infected with Omicron is infecting three others. Correspondingly, the number of infections was starting to soar, as across the UK and internationally. Daily case numbers had increased from around 3,500 to 5,500 in one week. Among 16-24-year-olds, the increase was 161 percent.

Figures published by the Scottish government reported a further 5,242 cases on Tuesday and a positive test ratio of 14.9 percent, meaning there are many more cases not being identified. Another 9 deaths were recorded, bring the total in Scotland to 9,790 who died shortly after a positive COVID-19 test and 12,303 with COVID-19 on the death certificate.

Most significant is the vaccination rate. Currently, of a population of around 5.47 million, only some 2.63 million, around half, have received a necessary booster vaccine, while 4.37 million and 3.93 million have had one or two doses respectively. Given Omicron’s capacity to evade one or two vaccinations, this means that half of the population are at serious risk of contracting the disease in the period immediately ahead, while even three doses does not guarantee immunity.

Sturgeon acknowledged that “additional pressure on our already stretched National Health Service will be extremely difficult to manage”, she warned of the “crippling” impact of sickness and isolation absences on the economy, rail cancellations and “staffing shortages felt across the supply chain”.

Having outlined the alarming and dangerous situation, Sturgeon claimed, “this is not a choice between protecting health and protecting the economy”. She then set out measures proving the opposite. Besides accelerated vaccination, these were belated, minimal and directed towards lifting pressure on the police and emergency services, rather than public health, while ensuring the bulk of economic life continued, as normal.

The “bedrock” of Sturgeon’s advice was that people should stay at home as much as possible and maintain social distancing. In addition, indoor standing events will be limited to 100 people, 200 for seated events. Outdoor events, primarily sports events, will be restricted to 500 people. Large Hogmanay celebrations will be cancelled. Table service only requirements were reintroduced for restaurants and pubs.

The measures are due to last for three weeks but will only commence on December 26. By this time tens of thousands of people will have unnecessarily contracted coronavirus, including Christmas shoppers, people attending Christmas parties and dinners, church-goers attending Christmas Eve services, public transport users and workers in countless establishments unable to follow Sturgeon’s meaningless and unenforced call to “work from home whenever possible”. Three Scottish Premier League football games are scheduled to go ahead this week, with thousands of away fans jammed into coaches, trains and cars for hours on end.

Sturgeon offered no rationale for the delay, instead she apologised for acting now to stem “staff absences”.

An indication of the unseriousness of the measures was the call to “Keep windows open if you are meeting indoors – even at this time of year.” Outdoor temperatures are currently around 2 degrees centigrade. Energy prices are soaring.

Crucially, schools will neither close early for Christmas nor re-open late in January. Updated Scottish government guidance, including improved ventilation and CO2 monitors, states they should be implemented by local authorities and schools “as soon as they can”, an official shrug of the shoulders. Schools are recognised globally as crucial vectors for coronavirus transmission, but they are kept open to free parents to work.

Even the Scottish teaching unions, who have closely followed the Scottish government’s drive to keep schools open, felt forced to concede there was a need for remote learning. Facing intense anger and concern from teachers and parents, Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association admitted, “The idea that we need to keep schools open at all costs just doesn’t add up. The NHS is a vital life and death service. The education system is crucial, but it’s not life and death, and if we can keep people safe, that’s surely a good thing.”

Last week, the Educational Institute for Scotland leader Larry Flanagan also called for “firebreak” school closures.

Neither union indicated the slightest intention of taking any steps in defence of their members or school students, however, even as 31,303 pupils stayed away from school due to self-isolation measures, up from 19,402 the previous week. Parents are taking their own steps, with some 3,755 keeping their children out of school for safety, up from 976 the week before.

Underlying Sturgeon’s statements are the interests of the largest banks and corporations, institutions dependent on maintaining the flow of surplus value from the working class to bolster vastly inflated global stock prices and debt mountains.

For this reason, there will be no lockdown, no travel restrictions, no designation of key workers—none of the measures that, even belatedly and partially controlled previous waves. The Scottish government’s refusal, along with that of its counterparts in London, Cardiff and Belfast, to implement serious measures to prevent the spread of Omicron points to criminal and culpable indifference based on naked class interests.

While the Scottish National Party government aim to maintain business as usual regardless of the cost in lives, the social crisis is intensifying, driven by pandemic related inflation and cuts in welfare payments. A recent poll commissioned by the Citizens Advice Bureau Scotland (CAS) found that 36 percent of respondents were finding their bills unaffordable and 54 percent of those said that spending on groceries was the first to suffer. Extrapolated across Scotland, this would mean 483,255 people cutting food spending.

New rules on local government spending introduced by the Scottish government are set to drastically increase council tax, levied by cash-starved local authorities for the services they provide. Changes introduced by Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, mooted as a candidate to replace Sturgeon, removed a long-standing cap on council tax rates in last month’s budget. Predictions for increases varied between 5 and 30 percent.

German banks and big business profit from death in the pandemic

Ludwig Weller & Peter Schwarz

Caption: Bull and bear in front of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (Credit: Eva Kröcher/Wikimedia)

For the large corporations and investment bankers, the coronavirus pandemic means a massive orgy of enrichment. This applies internationally, but especially to Germany.

In the third quarter of 2021, the 40 companies listed on the Dax stock index achieved a total profit of 35.7 billion euros. That is 152 percent more than in the same period last year and 21 percent more than in the third quarter of 2019, the last comparable period before the coronavirus crisis.

Investment bankers are looking forward to receiving the highest bonuses in six years. “Bonus booster for dealmakers,” cynically headlines finance daily Handelsblatt. Deutsche Bank is considering a 20 percent increase in the bonus pool for employees in its investment banking divisions, it reports, citing “people familiar with the matter.” At US banks Goldman Sachs Group and JPMorgan Chase, bonus pools for bankers in the capital markets and advisory businesses could rise as much as 50 percent.

“Banks from the US to Europe have seen investment banking profits jump this year and transaction activity is at record levels,” Handelsblatt reports. Deutsche Bank’s pre-tax profits rose 32 percent in the first nine months of the year, according to the paper.

Deutsche Bank had already paid out 2.14 billion euros in bonuses to its top people last year. Six hundred eighty-four (684) of the bank’s employees pocketed more than one million euros each in 2020, the highest number of income millionaires among European banks. At Barclays, there were “only” 448 income millionaires and just 324 at HSBC. If Deutsche Bank increases the sum of its bonuses by a further 20 percent, almost 2.5 billion euros will flow into the pockets of its investment bankers this year.

By comparison, the “traffic light” coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberal Democrats (FDP) has budgeted 1 billion euros to pay one-time coronavirus bonuses to nurses for the special burdens they faced during the pandemic. The bonus amounts to a maximum of 3,000 euros each and will be paid out next spring at the earliest—although it is not yet known who is even entitled to it and how much each would receive. Hundreds of thousands of nurses who work to their physical and mental limits to save lives will not receive even half as much as a few hundred professional speculators and pandemic profiteers at Deutsche Bank.

There is a direct correlation between the burden on some and the enrichment of others. Like vultures feasting on the victims of a disaster, the profiteers on the banking floors are enriching themselves from the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. The German government and the European Central Bank have pumped hundreds of billions of euros in government “Coronavirus Aid” and cheap money into the economy, which, directly or indirectly, flows into the pockets of the super-rich.

“Worldwide, investment banks raked in high profits in 2021—also thanks to the spirited intervention of many states, which borrowed many billions because of coronavirus, and also thanks to central banks, which supplied the financial markets with cheap money,” is how the Süddeutsche Zeitung describes this process. “The banks profited above all from the fact that significantly more companies issued bonds, went public or planned takeovers, but at the same time, also from the fact that few companies went bankrupt. ... The fact that they also owe their good business dealings to state aid is probably of secondary importance for many bankers.”

Major industrial corporations have also benefited from the government opening the cash spigots and a coronavirus policy that has kept factories and schools open at the cost of 7 million infections and over 100,000 deaths in Germany.

“Despite global shortages in the supply of semiconductors, expensive raw materials and disrupted supply chains, Germany’s top corporations again set records for sales and profits in the third quarter,” reports Manager Magazin. It lists the crisis winners and finds it hard to contain its delight: “Deutsche Telekom leads the profit rankings—ahead of Allianz and the auto makers. BASF and Bayer are making a comeback.”

Overall, it says, the total sales of the Dax 40 companies rose by 9 percent compared with the same period last year and by 4 percent compared with the pre-crisis year. “Germany’s top corporations are therefore generating more sales than ever before.” Only three companies, VW, Airbus and Conti had a decline in sales in the third quarter.

As sales rose, profits exploded—from 14.2 billion euros in the same period last year to 35.7 billion euros in the third quarter of 2021.

Workers of the following corporations should take a close look at the profit bonanza and draw conclusions as to what share their labour played in creating it.

First place in Manager Magazin ’s profit ranking goes to Deutsche Telekom with 3.5 billion euros. The insurance group Allianz follows in second place with 3.2 billion euros. The third to fifth places—despite the silicon chip crisis and falling sales—are occupied by auto manufacturers. Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW alone generated a combined operating profit of 8.4 billion euros, 800 million euros more than the previous year.

BMW posted a profit increase of 50 percent, Daimler of just under 16 percent. Despite an 18 percent drop in profits, Volkswagen reported the fifth-highest profit of all Dax companies at 2.5 billion euros. “This means that the auto makers’ coffers are bulging despite falling sales figures,” comments Manager Magazin .

This is also the case internationally. “The world’s 16 largest auto makers generated more profit than ever before in the third quarter, despite silicon chip shortages and idle factories,” says another article in the same magazine. The operating profits of these corporations rose 11 percent year-on-year to 23.1 billion euros, despite sales falling by 1.6 percent to 371 billion euros and unit sales slumping by 16 percent.

According to an EY study cited by Manager Magazin, the average profit margin of the world’s 16 largest auto makers rose from 6.2 to 7 percent. At 14.6 percent, electric carmaker Tesla achieved the highest margin, followed by BMW (10.5 percent), Toyota (9.9 percent) and Daimler (9.2 percent).

Tesla also leads the way in terms of stock market valuation: the market capitalization of the 16 companies surveyed has risen by 41 percent since the beginning of the year to two trillion US dollars—one trillion dollars of which is accounted for by Tesla alone. The stock market value of Ford, Mitsubishi and General Motors rose the most. In contrast, the stock market value of Suzuki and Renault fell.

The record profits of the largest auto manufacturers were also partly generated at the expense of their suppliers. According to management consultancy PwC, only 24 percent of suppliers are still financially sound. Around 42 percent of the companies, on the other hand, were “in a financially strained position.”

The profit records of the automotive industry were surpassed by chemical and pharmaceutical groups BASF and Bayer, which are now generating profits in the billions, after losses the previous year, as well as by the housing group Vonovia and utility giant RWE, which have each more than tripled their profits.

The orgy of enrichment on the stock exchanges and by the banks explains why, with the exception of China, no government is prepared to take the necessary measures that would be required, according to scientific findings, to put a stop to the pandemic. Above all, schools and businesses must remain open at all costs so that parents remain available to generate profit.

If this is no longer the case, not only does the rate of profit threaten to collapse, but the entire financial system collapses like a house of cards. International finance increasingly resembles a Ponzi scheme, which only generates profits as long as new money keeps flowing in. A huge speculative bubble has been created, which threatens to burst if the exploitation of workers is not constantly intensified.

In the Eurozone, the size of the financial sector—measured by the total stock of financial assets—has doubled in the last 20 years in relation to annual economic output. In 2020, Deutsche Bank extended loans of 431 billion euros worldwide, 100 billion of which went to commercial enterprises. This compares with risk positions from derivatives trading, i.e., speculative transactions, amounting to 32 trillion euros.

The explosion of profits, while millions of people are dying and falling ill from COVID-19, reveals the bankruptcy of the capitalist profit system. No government that defends capitalism is willing to oppose the claims of the banks and corporations. The same is true of the trade unions, which work in “social partnership” with big capital and governments, organizing attacks on jobs and wages in the name of maintaining competitiveness.

As Omicron spreads, German intensive care workers warn of already intolerable working conditions

Marianne Arens

An intubated COVID-19 patient gets treatment at the intensive care unit at the Westerstede Clinical Center, a military-civilian hospital in Westerstede, northwest Germany, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

“We can’t wait any longer, we need relief in intensive care units now!” These are the opening words of the latest, angry letter from “Intensive Care Clinic Nurses” working in the city of Hamburg, Germany. In the letter, the intensive care nurses stated that by the end of the year they will work strictly to the parameters of their work contracts. Their central demand is that the care ratio of one nurse for every two patients should finally be enforced. “Instead of constant overload, we need guaranteed relief time.”

In their letter of December 14, the intensive care nurses point out that this is not the first time they have drafted such an urgent appeal. They had already drawn attention to their precarious working situation in August and October of this year.

The persistent overworking of staff leads to “many colleagues leaving intensive care clinic and situations arising again and again in which patients no longer receive adequate nursing care and are therefore at immense risk.” So far, the nurses have always stepped in in the event of absences, but it cannot go on like this. “If the board does not act, we have to protect ourselves: Why should we volunteer to take on more duties that are not planned for us in advance? Why should we continue to add to our own overworking?”

The incendiary letter from the intensive care nurses at a university clinic in Hamburg gives voice to the frustration and dissatisfaction widespread among nursing staff throughout the country. They are reacting to an intolerable situation affecting thousands of doctors and nurses which haunts them even in their sleep. They are in the front line fighting to save the lives of the sick in hospitals and intensive care units and experiencing death on a daily basis. After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, they are exhausted, drained and at the end of their tether.

The current situation, which surpasses the mass deaths of last winter, is expected to worsen with the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant. For weeks, tens of thousands have been infected and several hundred coronavirus patients have died every day. In the last seven days, 2,600 COVID-19 deaths have been recorded in Germany. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 108,000 coronavirus patients have died an agonising death, many of them far too early and unnecessarily.

Bowing to the drive for profits on the part of big business and the banks, successive governments have refused to take the measures necessary. Along with a vaccination campaign, the closure of factories and schools and systematic contact tracing and isolation are crucial to bringing the pandemic under control. Olaf Scholz’s “traffic light” government (Social Democrats, Free Democrats and the Greens) is following in the footsteps of Angela Merkel’s grand coalition (Social Democrats and conservative parties) and refuses to introduce such measures.

On Sunday, December 19, the new government’s Council of Experts published a statement that takes into account the dangerous potential of the Omicron variant. It outlines the apocalyptic scenario that will result from the spread of Omicron in Germany. Because of the “comparatively large gap in vaccination,” a “very high level of sickness from Omicron” is to be expected, leading to a “new quality of pandemic.”

“Rapidly rising incidence rates pose high risks for critical infrastructure in Germany. This includes hospitals, police, fire brigade, rescue services, telecommunications, electricity and water supply and corresponding logistic systems.”

Despite this, the government is determined to prevent the shutdown of the economy at all costs. “No, we will not have a lockdown here such as that in the Netherlands before Christmas,” the new Health Minister, Karl Lauterbach (SPD), declared Sunday.

While acknowledging the impending crisis, Lauterbach claimed that nothing could be done about it: “We have now passed a critical number of people infected with Omicron. Thus, this wave can no longer be completely stopped,” he said, once again placing all emphasis on the official vaccination campaign: “A very central message is that with a booster campaign we can actually protect those who would otherwise be particularly at risk.”

This claim by the minister is a deliberate lie. The argument that the booster campaign alone can provide sufficient protection is refuted by his own expert advisors, whose recommendations the Minister of Health is supposed to follow. The aforementioned statement it reads: “A massive expansion of the booster campaign can slow down the dynamics and thus reduce the spread (of the virus), but not prevent it. According to mathematical models, an overloading of the health system and critical infrastructure can only be contained by enforcing drastic contact reductions.” (emphasis added)

“Drastic contact reductions”—this is another term for the necessary lockdown of all non-essential businesses. Otherwise, Omicron will completely overwhelm the health system “due to the simultaneous, extreme volume of patients,” according to the experts.

Once again, the burden of the government’s callous disregard of its own experts will be borne by nurses and doctors and, by extension, the entire working class. Even more health care workers will reach their limits and be worked to the point of complete exhaustion.

There is no point, however, in appealing to government politicians, civil servants and managers who refuse to jeopardise the profits of corporations and banks. The trade union bureaucrats, who are closely linked to the government parties, are also sabotaging the necessary struggle. This is confirmed by the fact that in the midst of the pandemic, German public service unions, with Verdi to the fore, have concluded a collective agreement, which, taking inflation into account, involves a real wage cut of five percent for nurses and other public employees.

Australia’s housing crisis and the new anti-democratic electoral laws

John Harris

State-owned housing in Victoria (Wikimedia)

People in Australia are confronting an intensifying housing crisis. Home ownership is being pushed out of reach for many young people, and millions of working-class families are facing poverty, substandard accommodation and potential homelessness.

This is contributing to deepening discontent that is feeding into the social unrest and fueling a mounting political crisis. With both the Liberal-National government and the opposition Labor Party experiencing plunging support, they joined hands in August to rush through parliament new anti-democratic electoral laws that seek to deregister a host of political parties, including the Socialist Equality Party (SEP).

Across the country, housing costs are at record-breaking highs. The median house price is now $994,579, just short of a million dollars, making it one of the highest in the world. The result is a critical shortage of affordable housing.

The crisis is particularly sharp in Sydney, Australia’s most populous city. It is the third most expensive location in the world, with a median house price just short of $1.5 million, third behind Vancouver and Hong Kong.

Rents are skyrocketing too. According to a report by data firm CoreLogic, national rental rates increased by 8.9 percent over the past year, the highest year-on-year rise since July 2008.

Working-class families are being pushed into the outer suburbs in all the major cities, seeking cheaper accommodation or, in growing numbers, into homelessness.

The rise in housing costs has produced a social catastrophe. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Australia has the second highest rate of homelessness in the OECD, second only to New Zealand (0.48 percent and 0.86 percent respectively).

The outdated Australian Bureau of Statistics homelessness figure sits at 116,000 a day, based on the 2016 census data. An August parliamentary report inquiry into homelessness estimated that official “data may omit around 60 percent of homeless people.” Potentially 250,000 people could be homeless on any given night, or nearly 1 percent of the Australian population.

The 2020 Homeless Monitor Report stated that in 2018-19, 290,000 people sought help from Specialist Homelessness Service agencies, an increase from 255,700 in 2014-15. In 2018-19, these agencies provided approximately 7 million nights of accommodation, with a median of 29 nights per client.

Public housing is in shambles. The latest figures from Compass Housing Services state that 196,000 households are on social housing waiting lists across the country. The report identified that the real demand for social housing is possibly around 300 percent higher, as many households do not bother applying because of long waiting lists—applicants are waiting up to 10 years to secure a house.

Fueling the rise in homelessness have been the below-poverty level unemployment payments. A housing survey by the Anglicare charity conducted this year found that only three rental properties across the entire country were affordable for a single person living on the government’s JobSeeker payment, and they were all shared accommodation.

Aware of the increasing outrage from broad sections of the population, the Labor Party recently pledged $10 billion for affordable housing, saying it would build 20,000 social housing properties over five years. That pledge is a drop in the ocean compared to what is required. Moreover, no faith can be placed in such promises because Labor is directly responsible for the housing crisis.

The Hawke and Keating Labor governments from 1983 to 1996 were the key architects in the dismantling of public and social housing. In 1983, a market-driven model was implemented which provided those on welfare payments with cash subsidies if they were unable to find public housing. This was to direct low-income people away from public and into private housing.

In 1990-1991, funding for public housing construction was gutted. Real capital funding fell by 25 percent in that decade to 2000-01. Joint venture “partnerships” with private developers were established, permitting them to tear down housing estates to build replacements with far less public housing.

The result has been the relentless destruction of public housing. In 1980, social and public housing made up almost 20 percent of all homes that had been built since World War II. By 2008, public housing properties constituted only 4.9 percent nationally of all properties. By 2018, it was just 4.6 percent.

These policies were combined with tax incentives and corporate deregulation for property developers and financial speculators. State and federal governments implemented capital gains tax concessions and policies such as negative gearing tax deductions for non-owner occupied home loans, aimed at propping up speculative activity in the housing market.

Like its counterparts internationally, the ruling class has resorted to ever-more parasitic means of profit accumulation. Particularly since the 2008-09 global financial crisis and the implosion of the two-decade mining boom in 2014, Australian capitalism has sought to offset the economic fallout by jacking up property prices.

An effective response to the housing disaster and the growth in homelessness requires a massive reallocation of resources to meet social needs, including the provision of adequate social and public housing. It necessitates a rational economic plan, coordinated on a global level, to provide a high standard of living for all.

Life expectancy in the US dropped by an astounding 1.8 years during the first year of the pandemic

Benjamin Mateus

During his live televised speech regarding Omicron’s dominance in the United States on Tuesday, President Joe Biden claimed that the country was in a far better position now than in March of 2020. This blatantly false assertion was exposed the next day when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that Americans’ life expectancy fell 1.8 years (from 78.8 to 77.0) in the course of 2020, 0.3 years more than their interim estimate of July 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic has been the cause of the most significant drop in life expectancy in the US since World War II, 75 years ago.

Figure 1—Life expectancy at birth in years, 1980 to 2020

Last year more than 3.3 million people died in the United States, the highest such number at any point in the country’s history. By comparison, in 2019 and 2018, 2.85 and 2.84 million died, respectively. COVID-19 deaths were attributable for three-quarters of the overall life expectancy decline in 2020 and 11 percent of annual deaths.

By comparison, China’s life expectancy has climbed from 76.91 years in 2019 to 76.96 in 2020 and 77.13 in 2021. Their pursuit and strict adherence to a dynamic Zero COVID policy limited the death toll to 5,000 during the initial outbreak. Only three people have reportedly died of COVID-19 since April 2020, and as a consequence, it is likely that this year China, still a relatively poor country, will surpass the United States in life expectancy for its citizens.

As a trigger event in world history, the pandemic magnifies every social contradiction of capitalism in its advanced state of decay. For instance, during the pandemic, the two-decades-long opioid crisis saw deaths jump 30 percent from 2019 to 2021 with deaths attributed to accidental overdoses exceeding 100,000.

Still, as staggering as these statistics for 2020 are, 2021 has proven even more deadly. The US COVID-19 death toll by the last week of December 2020, according to the Economist, stood at 340,878 and excess deaths at 528,185. One year later, the magazine’s dashboard placed the COVID-19 reported deaths at 810,000 and excess deaths between 1.0–1.1 million. This suggests there will be an even more significant drop in life expectancy in the first year of Biden’s presidency than during the last year of Trump’s.

According to a report published yesterday by USA Today, “Nationwide, nearly one million more Americans have died in 2020 and 2021 than in normal, pre-pandemic years, but about 800,000 deaths have been officially attributed to COVID-19, according to the CDC data. A majority of those additional 195,000 deaths are unidentified COVID-19 cases. Public health experts have long suggested [this], pointing to the unusual increase in deaths from natural causes.”

Coronavirus has become the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer. More than 203,000 people between 18 and 65 have died during the pandemic, and it was the leading cause of death for people aged 45 to 54. One in 400 people of all ages have died from COVID-19, and among those 65 and older, one in 100.

Figure 2 - Average daily deaths in the United States from COVID-19 (November 2021) and other leading causes (2021)

Each week since August 12, 2021, more than 100,000 children have been infected with COVID-19. They have consistently accounted for nearly one-quarter of all infections. Since the onset of the pandemic, almost 7.4 million children have tested positive for COVID-19. According to the CDC, at least 1,017 children under 18 have died from COVID-19, a level nearly twice the average flu mortality and in the top 10 leading causes of death for this age category. Severe multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) continues to climb. Almost 6,000 have developed this menacing illness, and 52 have died in the US.

Hospitalization rates among children, who are, for the most part, the largest constituent of the unvaccinated, have climbed higher than at any other time in the pandemic. Though children fare much better than adults, they remain at risk for chronic complications posed by Long COVID that can affect a small subset of children. These, by the sheer scale of infections due to Omicron, will pose significant challenges with uncertain long-term consequences.

Biden, and the press corps surrounding him, did not once touch on the impact the pandemic has had on children who have been orphaned and won’t be sharing holiday celebrations with their loved ones and caregivers. A daunting 120,000-plus children have lost a parent or grandparent who was a primary provider or financial support, and another 22,000 have lost a secondary caregiver.

“Are these children better off, Mr. President? Wouldn’t we have all been better off if in March 2020 we had eliminated COVID once and for all and prevented such a colossal loss of life?” These would have been appropriate follow-up questions. But no one asked them.

A girl arrives carrying a book to sustain her through the wait as she and her family join a line snaking several blocks for COVID-19 testing, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, at a Curative testing kiosk outside an elementary school in northwest Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Indeed, in just three weeks, when the incidence of Omicron was far less than one percent of all sequenced strains, it now accounts for more than 73 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the country. By all accounts, the US trails the UK by around two weeks, which means events there have significant relevance to what the population can soon expect in the US.

In London, the epicenter of the Omicron wave in the UK, hospitalizations have tripled since a month ago. This means that state after state in the US can expect a potentially sudden and alarming rise in emergency room visits. Two years into the pandemic, with repeated assaults on their capacity to care for patients, health systems have been left destitute.

In a recent email by the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio to their medical and ancillary staff, where the state’s health care is facing calamity brought on by the surge of infections, they offer this sobering assessment:

This past month has been sobering for many of us in healthcare. Nearly two years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, we’re seeing some of the highest volumes of patients with the disease in hospitals throughout the Midwest. Here at Cleveland Clinic, we’re caring for more than 800 patients with COVID-19 at our Ohio hospitals. Of these, more than 200 are in the intensive care unit. The majority of these patients are unvaccinated. Our Ohio emergency departments are filled. We have people waiting to get into our hospitals. Neighboring hospitals in our communities are facing the same issues. We’ve had to postpone many non-urgent surgeries in Ohio as we try to leave enough space for patients with COVID-19. Our physicians, nurses, and caregivers are working around-the-clock to care for these sick patients. They are exhausted.

Despite the grim news on the decline in life expectancy, stocks traded higher on the President’s announcement that there would be little done in the way of impeding the surge of infections. Having recouped all their losses from Monday when Omicron’s dominance was announced, yesterday the Dow closed 261 points up at 35,753.

As comparisons between China and the US show, the drop in life expectancy is a purely political phenomenon attributable to the policies the ruling elites have employed that continue to place profits over lives, as evidenced by the financial aristocracy’s trillions amassed.

Google executives dismiss employee demands for pay increases to meet inflation

Kevin Reed

In a recent companywide meeting, Google employees demanded across-the-board pay increases to keep pace with inflation. However, the tech workers were told by the management of the nearly $2 trillion corporate giant that any raises granted would be awarded individually and be based on performance.

In a report based an audio recording of a special year-end conference on December 7, CNBC reported that the demand for all employees to receive raises was posed by a Google worker on a pre-meeting internal forum and subsequently received 400 upvotes.

The question was considered important enough that the CEO of Google’s parent Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, read it aloud to the all-hands meeting. “With the US inflation rates being as high has 7%, some companies are doing blanket salary adjustment to cover just the inflation. Is there any plan for Google to do the same thing?”

The Google logo displayed at their offices in Granary Square, in London. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Pichai did not answer the question himself but gave the microphone to Frank Wagner, Google’s vice president of compensation, and let him tell the workers there would be no cost-of-living increases forthcoming.

Wagner started by beating around the bush, saying, “Inflation does seem to be atop of mind for a lot of folks, and I think one of the reasons is that people are pretty eager to get their compensation awards.” He said staff would be sent letters within a week about pay increases for select individuals.

He absurdly attempted to say that Google could not afford a pay increase for everyone. “As I mentioned previously in other meetings, when we see price inflation increasing, we also see increases in the cost of labor or market pay rate. Those have been higher than in the recent past, and our compensation budgets have reflected that.”

Finally getting to his point, Wagner said Google does not want to give “smaller increments to everybody” but instead give award increases and “pay it by performance.” He added, “We don’t have any plans to do any type of across-the-board type adjustment.”

The demand by Google employees for universal cost-of-living increases is part of the growing movement of workers in every industry for improved wages during the devastating economic and health conditions of the coronavirus pandemic and the corresponding record corporate profits and accumulation of massive personal wealth by the billionaire elite.

In October, Alphabet announced its fifth straight quarter of record profits ($18.9 billion) and set a record for the second quarter in a row in revenue of $65.1 billion. Throughout the pandemic—thanks in large measure to the continuous infusion of cash into the financial markets by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank—the value of Alphabet stock has nearly tripled from a low of $1,068 on March 20, 2020, to nearly $3,000 today. The market capitalization of Alphabet now stands at $1.95 trillion.

The latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) measurement released by the U.S. Labor Department on December 10 showed a 6.8 percent year-over-year increase, the fastest inflation rate in just over 40 years. Energy prices alone have gone up 33.3 percent, and gasoline is up 58.1 percent over the past year. Food prices are up 6.1 percent, while used car and truck prices have increase by 31.4 percent since November 2020.

While the ruling establishment would like to spin the inflationary cycle as the result of demands by workers for increased wages, rising prices have far more to do with the trillions poured into the financial markets to artificially inflate share values. It is an open secret on Wall Street that corporate executives are pointing to inflationary pressures to raise prices and increase their profit margins. At the same time, corporations continue to exert downward pressure on costs associated with the labor force.

On November 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that higher wage demands and increasing costs for raw materials and freight are being taken advantage of by companies. “Executives are seizing a once in a generation opportunity to raise prices to match and in some cases outpace their own higher expenses, after decades of grinding down costs and prices,” the Journal said.

The demand by Google employees for an equitable increase in pay for all workers is a direct rebuff to the corporation’s strategy of providing a one-time cash bonus of $1,600 after the return-to-office plan was pushed back. The company also offered a $500 well-being bonus for all employees.

Of course, Alphabet management and Wall Street prefer bonus awards and incentives to increases in base salary, which compound over time. Google, which has always considered itself a bellwether in the tech industry, is attempting to set the standard and beat back any movement by employees for universal pay increases.

In a CNBC broadcast covering the Google employee meeting, one commentator said, “Google just doesn’t want to look like it’s just folding to employees’ demands.” She went on to explain the attitude of the entire ruling establishment to the widespread demands by workers for pay increase. “You have to wonder how much this kind of thing, whether it is a walkout of Buzzfeed employees because they are upset because they haven’t been able to secure their union deal, their wage increases, while they see their CEO make a lot of money from their IPO, you have to wonder if this kind of thing is contagious, and how much the transparency about this kind of frustration could drive other people, other workers, other potential Starbucks workers to unionize, and make this kind of thing spread.”

As these comments make clear, the corporate and financial elite are far more concerned about the contagion of the class struggle spreading than they are about the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. This was the theme in the recent comments of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell who complained about the danger of “briskly” rising wages continuing into 2022.

Indian army deployed to break Jammu and Kashmir power workers’ strike

Arun Kumar

Workers across India and around the world must take serious warning from the Indian government’s deployment of military and para-military forces to suppress the anti-privatization strike that 20,000 power workers in Jammu and Kashmir launched December 18.

The Narendra Modi-led government’s quick action to break the power workers’ strike arose from its fear that the strike could become a rallying point for broader sections of the working class. Recent months have seen numerous militant struggles against the sweeping attacks Indian big business and their political hirelings, beginning with Modi’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, are mounting on their social and democratic rights.

The military deployment to break the power workers’ strike sets a dangerous precedent. It has already been followed by an order from the BJP government that rules Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state, banning all strikes by state government workers and employees of UP state-owned companies for the next six months. Under the draconian UP Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) police have the power to arrest striking workers at will, and strikers are subject to both fines and imprisonment.

An Indian paramilitary force soldier stands guard in Indian controlled Kashmir. (AP Photo/ Dar Yasin)

None of the BJP’s erstwhile opponents in the political establishment, including the Stalinist CPM and CPI, have condemned or even criticized the military intervention against the power workers’ strike, thereby expressing their tacit support for it. The CPM-led Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) has likewise failed to even verbally protest the government’s actions.

On December 18, some 20,000 employees of the Jammu and Kashmir Power Development Department (PDD), including everyone from linemen to senior engineers, launched an indefinite strike against the Modi government’s plans to merge the PDD with the Power Grid Corporation of India (PGCI). Last year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that all Union Territory power distribution companies would be privatized as part of the BJP government’s “COVID relief package.” The PDD workers, who are represented by the PDD Employee’s Association (PDDEA), rightly fear that merger into the PGC is a key step toward accomplishing this. The striking workers also raised several other demands. These included “regularization” of all precariously employed daily-wage workers and power development department engineers, the delinking of their salaries from grant-in-aid and a regular budget for all PDD employees on deputation to different corporations.

The Jammu and Kashmir power workers’ strike is part of a wave of struggles against privatization and contract-jobs. Defying state government threats, court orders and their “own” unions, 70,000 Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) workers have been on strike since November 3, to press for the state-owned corporation’s merger with the state government. Last week, nearly a million public sector bank workers across India walked off the job for two days to oppose the Modi government’s plans to privatize most of the banking sector. Earlier this month, 68,000 coal miners in the southern state of Telangana waged a three-day strike against the Modi government’s plans to sell off four coal blocks to private companies. In Punjab in northern India, tens of thousands of workers at Punjab state-owned enterprises have joined strikes and protests to demand the regularisation of contract workers and better wages and working conditions.

The Modi government has responded to the pandemic—which due to its ruinous profits-before-lives policy has led to millions of “excess deaths” and plunged hundreds of millions still deeper into poverty—by intensifying its attacks on the working class and rural toilers. A key element in this is its privatization program, under which all but a handful of “strategic companies” are to be sold off to Indian and global investors. Another is a labour law “reform” that will further facilitate big business’ use of contract labour and illegalize most strikes.

Abandoned by the CITU, other unions and the “Left parties” and lacking any strategy to mobilize the working class against the Modi government and its class war agenda, the PDDEA quickly bowed to the government’s military-enforced strikebreaking campaign. On Tuesday, three days after the military intervened, the PDDEA called off the strike. This followed talks Monday evening with Jammu Divisional Commissioner Ragav Langar and the Additional Director General of Police, Mukesh Singh. The union claimed to have obtained a “written assurance” that the government will put the proposed merger of the PDD with PGCI on hold pending further talks and pledges workers will henceforth be paid on time.

Such an “assurance” will in no way impede the Modi government’s privatization drive.

The power workers’ strike plunged large parts of Jammu and Kashmir into darkness Saturday evening, as Jammu was hit by sub-zero temperatures.

Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, who is the de facto ruler of the Union Territory since the Modi government suspended the elected government and legislature in June 2018, claimed the government’s deployment of the army against the strike showed its “commitment” to the people of the disputed majority-Muslim region. He told the press: “I do not want to name them, but some people have criticized that the Army has been called to restore electricity. Personnel from REC (Rural Electrification Corporation), NHPC (National Hydroelectric Power Corporation) and NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation) and officers from the army engineering corps have also come.” “The army,” added the former BJP government minister, “acted swiftly and deployed its troops at main critical electricity stations and water supply sources to restore supply.”

The Modi government’s prompt deployment of the army to break the Jammu and Kashmir power workers’ strike demonstrates that its August 2019 constitutional coup—whereby Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, was stripped of its unique, semi-autonomous constitutional status, divided into two Union Territories, and effectively placed under permanent central government control—was directed not just against the Kashmiri people. It was directed against the Indian working class as a whole.

The Modi government has used its new powers of governance over Jammu and Kashmir to push through privatization of the power sector. No sooner had the bifurcation of the former state into two Union territories been completed in October 2019, than the administration of Jammu and Kashmir repealed the Jammu and Kashmir Electricity Act, 2010 and extended the Indian government’s Electricity Act, 2003 to the former state. This laid the basis for the “unbundling” of power generation, transmission and distribution into three separate entities in order to prepare the way for their subsequent privatisation. In early December, the J&K administration declared merger of the territory’s Power Transmission Corporation Limited (PTCL) and Power Distribution Corporation Limited (PTDL) with the PGCI.

Some two-and-a-half years after the events of August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir remains an armed camp with more than half-a-million Indian military and para-military troops deployed in a territory that is home to little more than 15 million people.