Modi indicates no lockdown even as COVID-19 tsunami rips through India

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Though a massive surge of COVID-19 is ripping through the Indian population, threatening a devastating humanitarian crisis, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made clear there will be no nationwide lockdown to check the coronavirus pandemic.

On January 9, the second day that India witnessed over100,000 daily cases since last June, Modi chaired a “high-level” meeting to “assess the COVID-19 pandemic situation in the country,” the Prime Minister's official website reported. The purpose of the meeting was to ensure the financial oligarchy that there will not be a lockdown, which would affect their profits. Modi’s remarks at the meeting did not aim to devise a strategy to curb the pandemic, but to lull the population to sleep even as hundreds of thousands are infected each day.

People gather to listen to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he lays the foundation stone of Major Dhyan Chand Sports University in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh state on January 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

Modi attended the meeting along with Home Minister Amid Shah, Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of Health and Family Welfare and Dr. V.K. Paul of the NITI Aayog think-tank. Modi “stressed the need to ensure adequate health infrastructure at the district level”; “usage of masks and physical distancing measures”; “implementation of home isolation for mild/asymptomatic cases and to disseminate factual information to the community at large”; “intensive containment and active surveillance should continue in clusters reporting higher cases,” and so on.

All these officials are well aware, however, that such measures cannot currently be effectively implemented against a highly contagious airborne virus like the Omicron variant of COVID-19. If non-essential businesses and industries continue to function—forcing workers to travel to workplaces, send children to school, and use overcrowded public transport facilities—the virus will spread massively. However, they refuse to order a lockdown, the suspension of non-essential production, and investment to allow for distance learning for youth.

The Modi government’s policies in relation the pandemic are nakedly based on prioritizing the profit interests of big business over human lives.

A few weeks ago, on December 23, Modi and the same officials held another “high-level meeting,” supposedly to “review the status of COVID-19 and Omicron” and discuss public health measures. That day, daily COVID-19 cases stood at 7495 and seven-day average was 6768. When Modi held the second meeting on January 9, daily cases stood 159,632 (over 21 times higher) and seven-day average of cases were 91,268. Such was the effectiveness of Modi's “high-level” meetings on the pandemic!

By allowing COVID-19 to rip through an unprotected population, a politically criminal Indian ruling elite as a whole have already sacrificed masses of lives. Statisticians estimate that the death toll is between 3-5 million lives in India, though the official toll shows only 483,000. This was the tragic outcome of Modi government's murderous herd immunity policy. While costing millions of lives and causing untold suffering due to Long Covid, this policy also threw hundreds of millions into poverty, hunger, unemployment, and social misery.

Allowing corporate elites to intensify the super-exploitation of millions of Indian workers in unprotected factories and offices, the Indian government has increasingly abandoned even the limited restrictions adopted after the pandemic wave of May 2021. At that time, India witnessed a shocking toll, recording 400,000 COVID-19 cases and over 4,000 deaths each day.

Like other capitalist governments in the world, it now promotes the “vaccine only” mantra to justify its vicious herd immunity policy, though vaccines are clearly failing to halt a catastrophic rise in infections and deaths. The Modi government has also jumped on the bandwagon of claims by the US, UK and European governments that the Omicron variant is “milder,” a claimed rejected by the World Health Organization. This false narrative was shattered this month, when India reported its first two Omicron-related deaths, one of whom was doubly-vaccinated.

Despite unmistakable warnings issued by a number of medical experts and epidemiologists, Modi and BJP ministers held massive election rallies for assembly elections in five states including Uttar Pradesh (UP), India's most populous state with over 200 million people.

Modi and the Election Commission of India (ECI) criminally ignored a ruling of the Allahabad High Court in UP on December 23, postponing the UP assembly elections (now scheduled to be held from February 10) and citing the threat of the Omicron wave. The court also requested the ECI to ban super-spreader election rallies involving masses of people. But the ECI wasted almost two weeks until January 8, when it finally banned physical election rallies till January 15.

As a result of these reckless policies, India on January 10 reported 179,339 new infections. The total number of confirmed active patients in India is now over 700,000. Indian media showed the steep rise in the past week was primarily due to the case surge in urban centers: Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chennai. In January 4-8, these five cities recorded between 150 and 450 percent increases in infections over the previous week. India’s test positivity rate now crossed the 10 percent mark, suggesting that large numbers of cases are not being detected.

Predictably, the surge in cases is leading to increased hospitalizations. On January 10, the Health Ministry admitted that India is seeing a hospitalization rate of 5-10 percent of cases, adding that the situation is “dynamic and evolving and need of hospitalisation may change rapidly.” It also warned that for every 100 Delta cases, there could be 400-500 Omicron cases, finally admitting that this surge is “being driven by Variant of Concern (VOC) ‘Omicron.’” It also recognized “the continued presence of another VOC 'Delta' in large geographies across the country.”

In Kerala, “ICU occupancy of COVID patients in both public and private hospitals showed a nominal increase and stands at 435 cases, while the number of patients requiring ventilator support showed a slight increase to 157 on Sunday,” The Hindu reported on January 10.

In Bengaluru, COVID-19 hospitalizations account for an average of 80 percent of all new admissions, the Deccan Herald reported. It cited medical professionals who said “panic admissions” are taking place leading to rising occupancy of ICU and ICU-ventilator beds. “Of 168 hospital admissions to government hospitals in the last seven days, for example, 22 were for ICU and 9 were for ICU-Ventilator beds,” the newspaper wrote.

In poll-bound Punjab, as of January 8, 226 patients were put on oxygen support—up from just 62 on the previous day, a 264 percent jump in 24 hours. The state’s test positivity rate reached 14.64 percent on Saturday, up from just 2.02 percent a week ago.

The explosion of COVID-19 is placing immense pressure on medical workers and doctors, forced to work to save lives under extremely dangerous conditions, without adequate protective equipment, for two years. In Tamil Nadu, 200 doctors and staff members tested positive for the infection at Vellore CMC Hospital on January 9.

In Maharashtra on the same day, over 300 resident doctors tested positive for COVID-19, leading to fears of a shortage of medical staff that will prevent hospitals from properly treating cardiac patients and other urgent cases, who are increasingly left to their fate.

Though the surge in cases has forced a number of states to impose limited restriction measures like closing schools and declaring night curfews, not a single state is ready to impose a strict lockdown to curb the pandemic. Not only that, some states’ heads, like Modi, have openly declared their opposition to such strict mitigation measures against the pandemic.

On January 9, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, also the head of Delhi state’s ruling Aam Aadmi party leader, said, “We don’t want to impose lockdown, we won't if you wear masks. No intent for lockdown as of now.”

FDA director tells Senate “Most people in the US are going to get COVID”

Benjamin Mateus

Testifying before a Senate hearing Tuesday, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Janet Woodcock, blurted out the grim reality facing the American people if there is not a drastic change in policy toward the COVID-19 pandemic.

Woodcock said point blank that given the enormous infectivity of the Omicron variant, “most people are going to get COVID.” More than a statement of fact, it is a declaration that the US government’s policy is to allow everyone to get infected with Omicron, regardless of the deadly consequences that arise from allowing hundreds of millions of people to catch a virulent pathogen.

This remark was not disputed by the senators, Democratic and Republican, who attended the hearing, nor by the two principal witnesses for the Biden administration, Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. Instead, Fauci and Walensky defended both Biden administration and their record of handling the pandemic debacle.

Dr. Alan Jones speaks at a news briefing at the University of Mississippi Medical Center School of Medicine in Jackson, Mississippi on January 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Not once did either senators or government officials even consider the possibility of implementing broad-based restrictions to provide the health infrastructure breathing space, save the lives and livelihood of the population, and begin a serious effort to contain and eliminate the COVID-19 virus.

Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina said, “I’m not questioning the science … but I’m questioning your communication strategies.” This remark highlights that there are no real disagreements between the two parties over the priorities that have been firmly established to save the “economy,” i.e., the interests of the corporations and super-rich. It is the rapidly developing social crisis that has the senator on edge.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as of yesterday, there were close to 146,000 people in hospitals for COVID-related admissions, a pandemic high for the United States. COVID now accounts for 26 percent of all entries into hospitals. Intensive care utilization has also climbed, with approximately 24,000 COVID patients in these highly specialized treatment units, making up nearly 37 percent of all current admissions.

The present admission rates for adults across all age categories have essentially matched the previous winter’s peaks despite 73 percent of all people 18 and up having been fully vaccinated and nearly 23 percent with a third dose of the COVID vaccines.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics weekly reports, 1,636 children were hospitalized the week ending January 6, 2022. There are now close to 4,500 children in hospitals for COVID treatment, and these figures are up 60 percent from last winter’s peak. For those under the age of five, ineligible for vaccines, that figure is up 130 percent, a rate of admission of 5.4 per 100,000 children.

According to NBC News analysis of HHS data, in two weeks from December 27 to January 10, average COVID hospitalizations jumped by more than 60,000. The West Coast, eastern seaboard, and South are presently facing the brunt of the health system crisis. The increases for five major states include:

• Florida – from 2,426 to 9,169 (277 percent)
• California – from 4,232 to 10,315 (143 percent)
• Texas – from 4,311 to 10,424 (141 percent)
• New Jersey – from 2,635 to 6,067 (130 percent)
• New York – from 5,821 to 12,285 (111 percent)

This overloading of the health care sector intersects with the continued sharp rise in infections across the country. Yesterday, the United States reported a one-day high of 1.4 million COVID-19 cases. The seven-day daily average of new cases has reached an astronomical 737,000, three-fold higher than even last winter’s peaks. With the meteoric rise in Omicron infections, the daily average in deaths has begun to climb, reaching 1,653, up 68 percent from a month ago.

Noticeable, however, has been the sudden sharp drop across the US in the utilization of inpatient beds even while admissions for COVID-19 continue their dramatic upsurge. This is a byproduct of measures being taken by hospitals due to a significant number of their health care workers who have fallen sick with COVID or quarantine after high-risk exposure to COVID.

Beds are left empty simply because health systems do not have enough specially trained staff to care for patients safely. A quarter of US hospitals are currently facing a critical staffing shortage, the highest ever reported during the pandemic, leading to the cancellation of elective procedures.

On Tuesday, New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy declared a new public health emergency but asserted that “this step does not mean any new restrictions.” In some instances, as in Colorado, the health department is reactivating crisis standards of care due to hospitals' inability to safely treat patients and their emergency medical service’s inability to meet the high demands for patient transportation.

Furthermore, the current acute shortage is compounded by an already anemic health care workforce that has seen its numbers dwindle during the pandemic. A whopping 18 percent have quit, and 12 percent have been laid off, based on a special report published by Morning Consult on October 4, 2021.

In short, one in three health care workers is no longer working in their field, while another one in five is contemplating leaving the field. More specifically, the American Association of Critical Care Nurses found that two thirds of critical care nurses are thinking about quitting the field.

As the report noted, the mass exodus “driven largely by the pandemic, insufficient pay or opportunities and burnout … has implications for the entire healthcare system, both in the short term as the country struggles to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond as the country continues to age.”

The survey also noted that four out of five had been significantly impacted by the national shortages of medical professionals. Workloads being shifted are increasing, which has implications for the standard of treatment that can be delivered to patients. Without a doubt, people will die due to medical errors.

The present situation is untenable, especially as the surge begins to spread into more rural regions where health networks have been under decades of economic assault. The pressures workers face will further fuel frustrations and resentment that are growing day by day. It is no hyperbole to assert that the health infrastructure is in a rapid state of collapse.

The psychological scars of an unending trail of ill patients working under impossible conditions reach a breaking point where health care workers find themselves in conflict with the noble virtues of their profession and the realities of medicine and disease as a profitable market. Salary cuts, reduced benefits, canceled raises, long hours, and worsening working conditions have inflicted a deep burning wound into their consciousness.

In light of these developments, piling the real insult on the even more real injury, the California Department of Public Health has temporarily revised its guidelines, which will allow nurses, medical assistants, and physicians to immediately return to their work even if they test positive for COVID and are asymptomatic without needing to isolate or test. The state health department said that “the critical staffing shortages currently being experienced across the health care continuum because of the rise in the Omicron variant” is placing health systems in extremis.

Under significant pressure from their rank-and-file, even the nurses’ unions have had to concede these measures are perilous for patients and will make health systems into centers for perpetuating community infections.

On January 8, 2022, the president of the California Nurses Association, RN Cathy Kennedy, wrote in a news release, “Governor Newsom and our state’s public health leaders are putting the needs of healthcare corporations before the safety of patients and workers. We want to care for our patients and see them get better – not potentially infect them. Sending nurses and other healthcare workers back to work while infected is dangerous. If we get sick, who will be left to care for our patients and community?”

Looking at the period of infectivity with the Omicron variant, a recent study from Japan, using real-time PCR, found that peak viral loads in people infected with the Omicron strain occur between three and six days after they develop symptoms. Levels continued to remain high up to nine days in nearly all patients. These findings pour cold water over the attempts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assert five days of isolation after a positive COVID test is sufficient to ensure a safe return to work.

The maneuver by Governor Newsom and the health department to abandon all infectious control policies only underscores the real motivations behind these shifts in guidelines that place the economic interests of the financial markets over those of their population. These measures will rapidly be adopted by other states who face similar hardships by all indications.

WHO warns: Government policies will make half of Europeans catch COVID-19

Alex Lantier & Johannes Stern

Yesterday, the World Health Organization-Europe bluntly warned of the catastrophic consequences of European governments’ policy of loosening health protocols and self-isolation guidelines, amid a massive surge of COVID-19 driven by the Omicron variant.

WHO-Europe Director Dr. Hans Kluge said the Omicron variant “represents a new west-to-east tidal wave” spreading across Europe. The first week of 2022, he noted, saw 7 million cases in the 53 countries in the WHO’s European region: the British Isles, Scandinavia, the European Union (EU) and the countries of the former Soviet Union. He added, “As of 10 January, 26 countries report that over 1 percent of their population is catching COVID-19 each week. … [Omicron is] quickly becoming the dominant virus in western Europe and is now spreading in the Balkans.

“At this rate, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) forecasts that more than 50 percent of the population in the region will be infected in the next 6 to 8 weeks,” Kluge warned. With the WHO-Europe region having well over 800 million people, this means a staggering 400 million cases of COVID-19 in Europe alone.

Shoppers walk down Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, in London, Dec. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

The working class faces a cataclysmic health emergency, driven by an irresponsible ruling class that opposes any attempt to control the pandemic as an intolerable restriction on profits. Already, over 1.6 million people have died of COVID-19, and millions are suffering from Long COVID in the WHO-Europe region. Yet European governments are preparing a catastrophe, with a new wave of mass death and debilitating disease flowing from an unprecedented surge in infection.

To date, Europe has seen approximately 100 million confirmed cases of COVID-19. Now, the WHO is warning that in just the next two months, there will be four times more cases than in the entire pandemic until now.

These figures are so vast that they almost defy understanding. With between 10 and 50 percent of COVID-19 patients suffering from Long COVID, depending on the definition used for it, this means tens or hundreds of millions of people in Europe will be suffering debilitating long-term illness requiring labor intensive care. This would stagger society, as vast numbers of people could not work due to illness, and lead to widespread severe illness and death.

European governments falsely claim that vaccinations have “broken the correlation,” in the words of French Health Minister Olivier Véran, between infections and serious illness and death.

In fact, such a massive Omicron wave would swamp hospitals that already are stretched to the breaking point. Now, even before the most recently infected cases arrive in hospitals, 23,371 of 3.4 million active cases are hospitalized, and 3,969 are on life support in France, a country with a relatively high vaccination rate of 74.9 percent. If similar proportions applied to the WHO’s projections, this would mean nearly 3 million patients requiring hospitalization and 500,000 on life support in the next two months in Europe.

This alone would likely be beyond the capacity of European hospitals, leading to a surge in deaths as COVID-19 or other patients could not obtain care in overburdened facilities. However, everything indicates that the crisis would in fact be even more serious.

Polish medical adviser Andrzej Horban warned in the Rzeczpospolita newspaper of a “tsunami of infected people.” The 12 million unvaccinated Poles will “all be infected with the new variant,” he said, and with 5 to 10 percent of them needing hospital care, Poland would have “to treat around 1 million people.” Even if they did not all come in at once but “over the course of a few months,” he added, this would hopelessly overburden hospitals. “We probably would need 50-60,000 COVID beds. And I’m not even talking about where we would find doctors and other medical personnel.”

Similarly, the WHO’s Kluge warned: “I am also deeply concerned that as the variant moves east, we have yet to see its full impact in countries where levels of vaccination uptake are lower, and where we will see more severe disease in the unvaccinated.” He also expressed his concern for the impact on the health care staff, calling “for more support for their mental health and well-being.”

WHO-Europe Senior Emergency Officer Dr. Catherine Smallwood warned against the relaxing of health measures now underway. She said, “We’re yet to see how Omicron will pan out in a situation where there are more people [unvaccinated against] SARS-CoV-2. And that’s where we need to hold our guns, be very cautious and not jump to any conclusions about changing the strategy and letting COVID spread.”

The WHO’s horrific projections do not have to come to pass. A strict lockdown to halt transmission, followed by vaccinations and contact tracing to isolate the sick and prevent the virus from spreading, can eliminate transmission of the virus. However, imposing such a policy requires the independent political mobilization of the working class against the utterly reckless policies of Europe’s capitalist governments.

The ruling class is responding to the explosive spread of Omicron by doubling down on its contagion policy that openly puts capitalist profit interests ahead of the health and lives of millions.

Governments across Europe are shortening quarantine periods for people infected with or exposed to the virus. A week ago Sunday, the French government announced that COVID-19 patients would be isolated for at most seven days and could return to work after five days if their viral load escapes detection in unreliable antigen tests. The UK and Spain previously launched similar regulations.

Denmark no longer has even a minimum number of quarantine days after infection. After 48 symptom-free hours, people can return to work. This anti-scientific policy results in vast numbers of sick, infectious people returning to infect their colleagues.

On Friday, the German government announced that it was reducing the quarantine period in Germany to just 5-7 days (previously 14). Acting Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) said: “We have committed to keeping schools open. … People need good child care so they can go about their business, and that’s why it’s important that we keep schools open.”

European governments are responding to Omicron by dropping even the last pretense that they want to prevent the spread of the virus. On Monday, French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced a simplification of school health protocols: If a positive case is reported in a class, parents will no longer have to pick children up at the middle of the day, but only at the end. Castex baldly stated that his government will keep schools and nonessential production open, whatever the cost in lives. He said, “We are not closing the schools or the country.”

The Spanish government has called for a change reporting and self-isolating protocols so as to treat COVID-19 like the flu. “It’s a necessary debate. Science has given us the answer to protect ourselves,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told radio station Cadena Ser on Tuesday. “We have to evaluate the evolution of COVID-19 from pandemic to an endemic illness.”

Such statements testify to a toxic political atmosphere that prevails in a ruling class that is callously indifferent to the deaths of millions.

Türkiye Burslari Government of Turkey Undergraduate Masters & PhD Scholarships 2022/2023

Application Deadline: 20th February 2022

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: See List below.

To be taken at (Universities): Turkish Universities

Fields of Study: Courses offered at the universities

About Türkiye Burslari Government of Turkey Undergraduate & Postgraduate Scholarships: Türkiye Scholarships include both scholarship and university placement at the same time. Applicants will be placed in a university and programme among their preferences specified in the online application form. Candidates can apply only one scholarship programme in accordance with their educational background and academic goals.

Type: Undergraduate, Masters, PhD

Eligibility: To be eligible for Turkiye scholarship, applicants must;

• be a citizen of a country other than Turkey (Anyone holding or ever held Turkish citizenship before cannot apply)
• not be a registered student in Turkish universities at the level of study they are applying.
• There is also age condition candidates are required to meet:• For applicants applying to Undergraduate Degree: Those who were born no earlier than 01.01.2000,
  • For applicants applying to Master’s Degree: Those who were born no earlier than 01.01.1991,
  • For applicants applying to Ph.D Degree: Those who were born no earlier than 01.01.1986,
• Applicants shouldn’t have any health problems barrier to education.
• have at least 75 % cumulative grade point average or diploma grade over their maximum graduation grade or have at least 75 % success in any accepted national or international graduate admissions test.

Required Documents

• Online application
• A copy of a bachelor or master’s diploma or document indicating that the candidate is bachelor or master’s senior student
• A certified bachelor and/or master’s transcript (indicating courses taken and relevant grades of the candidate)
• A copy of a valid ID card (passport, national ID, birth certificate etc.)
• Passport photo

Number of Scholarships: several

Value of Türkiye Burslari Government of Turkey Undergraduate & Postgraduate Scholarships: The Scholarship Covers:

• Monthly stipend (600 TL for undergraduate, 850 TL for master and 1.200 TL for PhD )
• Full tuition fee
• 1-year Turkish language course
• Free accommodation
• Round-trip air ticket
• Health insurance

Duration of Türkiye Burslari Government of Turkey Undergraduate & Postgraduate Scholarships: for the period of study

How To Apply

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People 2022/2023

Application Deadline: 31st January 2022 (until 23:59 Central European Time).

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: The scholarship is announced for the citizens of following countries: Egypt, Lebanese Republic, Republic of Iraq, State of Israel, Palestine, Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Syrian Arab Republic, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Republic of Kenya, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia & Nigeria.

To be taken at (country): Hungary

About the Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People: The Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People (SCYP) was founded in 2017 by the Government of Hungary.

The Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People is managed by the State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians and for the Hungary Helps Program. The Hungary Helps Agency is in charge of coordinating the Scholarship Programme since August 2020.

The core mission of the Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People is to provide the possibility of studying in Hungary for young Christian students living in the crisis regions of the world and/or being threatened in their country because of their faith.

After completing their studies, the scholarship holders will return to help their home community with their gained knowledge, and thy will participate in the reconstruction of war-destroyed countries and contribute to improvement of social situation and preservation of culture of Christian communities.

Type: Bachelor, Masters

Eligibility: The Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People is based on the cooperation between the Ministry of Human Capacities of Hungary and churches, pursuing humanitarian activities in crisis regions.

• The applicants may not have Hungarian citizenship.
• Local Churches are to verify and prove that the applicant belongs to their religious community. Only those applications can be awarded with scholarship, which also possess the recommendation from the local Church along with the approval of the Deputy State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians.
• Scholarship holders must possess the relevant language and education certificates, degrees requested by the host university of the selected degree programme.
• The scholarship holders commit themselves in the scholarship agreement that after the scholarship agreement ends they return to their home countries, if the local security and political conditions allow it so.
• Scholarships are for young applicants who are older than 18 years of age by the time their education starts
• An individual may win the scholarship only one time at a study level.

Selection Criteria: Applications are considered formally eligible if all criteria are met:

• the applicant is eligible for participation in the Scholarship Programme;
• the applicant has applied for a scholarship type and study programme available within the framework of the Scholarship Programme;
• the applicant has submitted the application and all documents as required no later than the application deadline (except for cases listed in section 3.3.);
• the applicant has proved his/her language proficiency and the language skills meet the requirements of the Host Institution.

Applicants with an eligible, formally correct application can proceed to the institutional entrance examinations. Each applicant can participate in up to two institutional entrance examinations – based on the submitted application form.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People: 

• Tuition-free education – exemption from the payment of tuition fee
• Monthly stipend – bachelor, master and one-tier master level: monthly amount of HUF 119 000 (cca. EUR 380) contribution to the living expenses in Hungary, for 12 months a year, until the completion of studies
• Accommodation – dormitory place or a contribution of HUF 40 000 to accommodation costs for the whole duration of the scholarship period
• Reimbursement of travel costs – HUF 200 000 /year (cca. EUR 645)
• Medical insurance – health care services according to the relevant Hungarian legislation (Act No. 80 of 1997, national health insurance card) and supplementary medical insurance for up to HUF 65 000 (cca. EUR 205) a year/person

How to Apply for Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People: The applicants must fill out and save all requested information on the online application form in English language and also present all relevant documents.

PLEASE APPLY HERE! 

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Top 10 Things People Pretend They Don’t Know

David Swanson

There are plenty of good occasions to pretend not to know something: an embarrassing secret of a friend, a plan for a surprise party, the punchline of a child’s joke.

There are plenty of good excuses to actually not know something: it would take decades of study, it’s of no interest or value, it would cost so much money to research it that you could have saved millions of lives instead.

There are, I think, fewer good justifications for pretending to yourself (not just to others) not to know something that you actually already know or would know with a moment’s consideration, something overwhelmingly established by widely acknowledged and clear evidence, regardless of what your television might tell you.

Here are 10 of those things.

10. It costs vastly less money and is far more effective (and with fewer costs of every sort) to prevent crime by providing things like housing, nutrition, education, healthcare, retirement, and guaranteed income, than to attempt to deter crime through mass incarceration, capital punishment, and the use of armed forces to address addiction or tell people they are driving too fast.

9. There is no shortage of money or needed resources, not in the United States, and not on Earth. By choosing to do without billionaires or bigger militaries, we could also do without poverty or hunger. By choosing to do without health insurance companies and current government healthcare programs, the U.S. could spend less and get more, like other countries do.

8. The Earth’s climate and ecosystems are rapidly collapsing, and are in no way being seriously addressed by the world’s governments, least of all by the government of the United States, which has done more damage than any other.

7. Maintaining — never mind building and proliferating — nuclear weapons is and always was absolutely insane, in no way justifiable, and generative of a serious risk of ending all life on Earth before other destructive behaviors can do so.

6. Violent efforts to improve the world are usually far less effective, successful, or lasting than nonviolent efforts, and the idea that violence can be justified is a delusion sustained by entertainment and unthinking anger.

5. Industrial societies are not superior to indigenous and sustainable societies, and among industrial societies the most superior is not that of the United States, which trails most others in life expectancy, health, education, happiness, and liberties.

4. It is not true that we can (and must) continue enlarging economies on a finite planet. An economic system that requires that impossible and immoral feat is in need of major changes.

3. Every single person is of value, and prejudice against anyone is equally stupid. We don’t have time for overcoming sexism but not racism, or overcoming racism but not xenophobia, or to go on “humanizing” away every little prejudice one at a time. We’re going to have to speed up the rejection of all prejudice.

2. Corrupt political systems do not represent or speak for you or care about you even when one part (or Party) of them is even worse than some other part.

1. Death is actually death, and there’s no God, or gods, or spirits, or mystical forces, or something heartwarmingly powerful about the extent of our ignorance, that absolves us of complete responsibility for what we do and fail to do.

Not only does it do great damage to pretend that each of these things is false, but the habit of so pretending does great damage, facilitating further pretenses. And the standard created by accepting some of these pretenses makes it harder to reject others. Of course it’s your “right” to believe that people don’t die, but then why isn’t it your uncle’s right to believe that the Earth’s climate is doing just fine or would be if something were done about homosexuals? I wish there were a way to challenge dearly held myths without offending anyone, but the thing seems by definition impossible. We ought, therefore, to recognize that, not only are myths that we ourselves cherish dearly held, but others that seem like simple stupidity to us may be dearly held by some people — and for exactly as good a reason, since there is no good reason for any of this. Perhaps knowing that we all struggle with facing even fairly obvious truths (even the ones that didn’t make this list because I’ve failed to face them) can help us collectively do better.

UK schools kept open as child infections soar above 3 million

Margot Miller

Despite soaring COVID cases among children, teaching staff shortages and case numbers swamping the National Health Service since Omicron became dominant, the Johnson government is intent on keeping schools, nurseries and early years settings open.

The sole consideration is keeping parents free to go to work and continue churning out profits for the corporations.

On January 5, the horrific milestone of 3 million children (aged 0-19) being infected with COVID in England was reached. This is a substantial section of the 14.6 million total cases of COVID among all age groups recorded throughout the UK, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, since the start of the pandemic. By January 8, the Long Covid Kids campaign group reported a record 30,220 daily cases of COVID child infections in England. On January 10, this had shot up to 40,343.

Graph showing total child COVID cases in England reached 3 million in January 2022. The data is taken from the UK Health Security Agency dashboard (Credit: @jneill/Twitter)

The murderous policy of herd immunity has led officially to over 150,000 deaths in Britain, including 128 child COVID fatalities.

Plans to reduce quarantining to five days, end free lateral flow testing, and confine vaccination to the most vulnerable will worsen the catastrophe.

The highest infection increases are now among the youngest and least protected—primary school children (4-11), who remain unvaccinated, and young adults. According to Long Covid Kids, there were 1,969 UK child hospital admissions in December. For six months in a row, child hospital admissions exceeded 1,000.

In England, 84 children were hospitalised with COVID on Christmas Day. Over the 12 days of Christmas, a horrifying 1,294 children were admitted to hospital with COVID. Official data for January 1-6 shows child COVID admissions represent over 6 percent of all COVID new admissions, or 747 out of a total 12,202 total hospitalisations in England.

Omicron affects the 0-5 age group more than previous variants. This appears to be the case because Omicron replicates in the upper respiratory airways rather than the lungs, unlike the Delta variant, and infants are particularly susceptible to infections in the upper respiratory tract. Long Covid Kids reported that hospital admissions in London for the under-fives leapt five times higher in a month.

During the pandemic, case rates for 0-5 and 6-17 age ranges were even. According to official data compiled by SafeEdforAll (Safe Education for All) member @TigressEllie, from December 1-12 there were 20 COVID hospital admissions among those 0-5. This shot up to 94 when Omicron took hold. Omicron was first detected in Britain on November 27.

While secondary school children aged 12-15 are being offered the vaccine, though roll out is pitifully slow, the government decided against vaccinating 5-11-year-olds unless clinically vulnerable. Since Omicron, secondary school children are required to wear masks in classrooms but not are not being supplied with masks such as FFP3s that afford protection against airborne transmission—and not in communal areas. Secondary teachers are required to wear masks in classrooms, but government guidance advises that teachers not wear them when they are teaching in front of class.

The situation is more dire in primary schools—no masks for anyone, no vaccines, no mitigation measures at all.

Between December 13 and December 21 last year, parent Daniella Modos-Cutter on Twitter group #SafeEdForAll found that 172 primary schools had positive cases and there were positive cases in 86 secondary schools. These figures she compiled are an underestimate as the research is dependent on local information being obtained and passed to her. Before Omicron and the beginning of vaccination for children aged 12 plus, there were more cases in secondary schools.

Schools Week noted that Arbor Statistics, taking information from a school management information system covering over 1,600 schools and 200 trusts, found that pupil absences due to COVID in the first week of this term had already reached 3.3 percent. 82 percent of schools reported at least one positive case. This compares to 69 percent on the last day before the break.

Since schools reopened around January 4, staff absences due to COVID are causing mayhem. Some schools were forced to close partially or send entire year groups home.

In a survey of 2,000 heads by the National Association of Headteachers, 36 percent reported more than one in 10 staff absences on the first day of term, while 9 percent reported one in five, a figure Conservative government Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said was likely to rise.

A further 37 percent said they were unable to access supply cover for absent teachers. Supply firms reported little response from the government’s insane appeal to retired teachers to risk their lives and return to the classroom to plug the gap.

The biggest Academy trust, United Learning, reported last week “at least a couple of hundred staff off.” Due to lack of staff, the Outwood Academy in Middlesbrough closed years 10 and 11 classes on January 5. Outwood Academy Byedales, in Redcar and Cleveland closed its year 10 class. The Oasis Community Learning school in Birmingham shut completely. St Stephens C of E Primary in Bradford reported six staff absences.

The Co-op Academy in Swinton sent its Year 8 pupils home to learn remotely for three days from January 7. Also in Greater Manchester, Moston Fields Primary school shut its reception class, while Haveley Hey Community school sent its year 6 pupils home. Parklands High school in Lancashire decided to teach pupils remotely one day a week on a staggered basis.

A spokesperson for the National Association of Primary Education, Peter Cansell told the TES that due to widespread staff shortages, the education of children has been “largely abandoned in favour of childcare.”

Some heads are ignoring government guidance and are reintroducing bubbles or staggered starts to the school day.

Stuart Guest, head of a primary school in the West Midlands, told the TES that contrary to the current advice on quarantining for seven days, his school was sticking to the previous 10-days after infection to try and curb viral spread. Another head tweeted that when he tried to do the same, his local authority blocked it.

Guest said he ordered air purifiers for each class out of the school’s budget, as government promises to improve ventilation with CO2 monitors and air filters is not forthcoming.

According to pollster Teacher Tapp, 47 percent of teachers in primary and 73 percent of teachers in secondary schools did not have a CO2 monitor in their classroom. While the Health and Safety Executive recommends well ventilated rooms are kept below 800 CO2 particles per million, schools can only apply for a HEPA filter for a classroom if the CO2 monitor in class registers above 1,500 for a week, and remedial work cannot be done by the end of February.

The government is providing 8,000 HEPA filters, just one for every three schools, as Zahawi said providing more would “waste taxpayers’ money.” There are 300,000 classrooms in schools in England alone!

So long as schools and educational settings remain open, and the virus is not suppressed, children are in danger not just of infection but Long COVID. Around 20,000 children are suffering from its debilitating effects a year after initial infection. Office for National Statistics data revealed the education sector has more adult Long COVID sufferers than any other workplace.

The government is embracing this catastrophe as the new norm, no matter how many lives are lost. Speaking to Sky News, Zahawi said chillingly, “I hope we will be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how you transition from pandemic to endemic, and then deal with this however long it remains with us, whether that’s five, six, seven, 10 years.”

As heads warn that schools are “teetering on the edge,” Zahawi’s advice to deal with a dire lack of staff is to merge classes which could result in a doubling or even trebling of class sizes to 60 or 90. He also advised that support staff, who are not qualified teachers, should teach. This alone exposes the lie that schools are being kept open in the interests of children’s education.

Paradigm shift in Austria: Government openly advocates deliberate mass infection

Markus Salzmann

The rapid spread of the Omicron virus across Europe, enabled by the complete inaction of governments, will lead to increasingly catastrophic conditions in the coming days and weeks, experts say.

In Austria, which has repeatedly been a pioneer in terms of relaxing any measures meant to combat the virus since the beginning of the pandemic, the devastating effects of the government’s “profits before lives” policy are already becoming apparent. The coalition of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Greens has now made a “paradigm shift” and is openly promoting the deliberate mass infection of the population.

Après-ski bar in Ischgl (Image: Anna Moritz/CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons)

Within a few days, the daily number of infections has increased fivefold. On January 9, more than 10,000 new infections were recorded in one day for the first time since December 1, the highest figure on a Sunday. The 7-day incidence rate is 606 per 100,000 inhabitants. In total, 13,844 people have died of COVID-19 in a country of nearly 9 million people.

Now that the government has lifted almost all protective measures and there are no significant restrictions on tourism, the Omicron variant is spreading with tremendous speed, especially in tourist areas.

In the Tyrol, the 7-day incidence rate is twice as high as the national average. In the ski resort of Flachau in the province of Salzburg, the incidence rate on Friday was no less than 7,500, not including the number of unreported cases. At the beginning of the year, almost 1,000 people in the Netherlands tested positive when they returned from their holidays in Austria.

In the meantime, many hotels and restaurants can no longer operate because a large part of their staff is infected and in quarantine. Christian Harisch, head of the Kitzbühel Tourism Association, told the APA news agency that the quarantine period should be “cancelled altogether.” This would mean sick and infectious employees being forced to work to secure the profits of the tourism industry.

In the ski resort of Ischgl, which was the starting point for the spread of the virus in Europe in 2020, hotels and ski slopes are full again. In the après-ski bar Kitzloch, where hundreds were infected at that time, there was recently another outbreak after an employee became infected.

All investigations into the 2020 incidents have since been dropped by the public prosecutor’s office. Although around 6,000 people had been infected, of whom 32 had died, the authorities concluded that no one was “culpable of doing or omitting to do anything that would have led to an increase in the risk of infection.”

Victims and their survivors accuse the responsible authorities of making serious mistakes in dealing with the outbreak. In a report in October 2020, an independent expert commission found that at the beginning of the pandemic, staff had continued to work in the Kitzloch despite flu-like symptoms. The responsible authorities played down the situation for weeks.

The virus is now also spreading outside the tourist areas. For Upper Austria, according to a current forecast, provincial crisis staff predict a 7-day incidence rate of up to 5,000 in the next few days. Above all, the end of the school holidays, and thus the return to in-person teaching, will fuel the spread of the virus.

At the end of last week, Education Minister Martin Polaschek (ÖVP) stated that it was out of the question that schools would not reopen for in-person teaching throughout the country. The current coronavirus figures played “no real role” in the start of school, Polaschek said, revealing his absolute indifference to the lives and health of pupils and teachers.

At the same time, more children had to be treated in hospital last year than the previous year. In Salzburg, 40 children were hospitalised because of coronavirus in 2020; in 2021 this figure rose to 121. Five percent of them needed intensive medical treatment. The risk for unvaccinated children is significantly higher than for vaccinated children. Currently, not even 50 percent of school children are vaccinated.

Numerous experts have long warned of the consequences of the ÖVP-Green government’s policies. Austrian molecular biologist Ulrich Elling criticised the government’s complete inaction: “With the momentum Omicron is unleashing, we need to put the brakes on more than ever before it’s too late.”

The scientist stressed that it is entirely possible to act against the virus, but this was simply not being done. “If we let Omicron break through because we are fed up with the pandemic, then we are no longer taking care of the vulnerable.”

Elling regards the opening of schools as particularly ominous. “When children meet in school, Omicron takes off.” If the Omicron variant was given free rein, as is currently happening, camp beds would have to be set up in exhibition halls to cater for everyone who was ill at the same time, he said.

Austrian epidemiologist Gerald Gartlehner also expects Omicron to place a heavy burden on hospitals. He fears the “acute danger of overloading intensive care units.”

The People’s Party and the Greens, as well as the other establishment parties, are deliberately ignoring all the warnings. Although Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) was recently infected with coronavirus, he categorically rules out taking any measures against it. To slow down the number of infections, a radical lockdown would be necessary. But “that must be prevented,” as Nehammer says.

Last Thursday, the government changed the quarantine rules so that triple-vaccinated people are no longer considered contacts and thus do not have to be quarantined. On Friday, Katharina Reich, the head of the Covid Crisis Coordination (Gecko), which operates at federal level, confirmed in an interview with broadcaster Ö1 that this would lead to the wider population becoming infected.

With unbelievable callousness, Reich stated that herd immunity was “negative wording” that caused fear. Omicron, however, was “so contagious that we cannot get around it.”

On news programme ZIB2, Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein (Greens) spoke of a “paradigm shift.” The physician claimed an infection with Omicron was basically “mild,” a demonstrable lie. He said even the introduction of compulsory vaccination, originally decided for February, which alone would still not be enough to stop the spread, might be postponed.

Reich went on to say that in future, the government would also move away from using the number of occupied intensive care beds as a criterion for initiating protective measures. This means that there will be no restrictions even if hospitals collapse under the weight of patient numbers.

Since this criminal policy is bound to provoke resistance, the government has put the army in charge of Gecko. General Rudolf Striedinger was appointed as one of the two heads of the crisis team. The decision makes clear that the government does not regard the pandemic as a medical problem but as a security issue.

At the same time, it is well known that the army is riddled with right-wing anti-vaxxers and coronavirus deniers. High-ranking officers regularly appear at anti-vaccination demonstrations. These include Colonel Hermann H. Mitterer, who belongs to the group “Beamte für Aufklärung” (Officials for Enlightenment) and aggressively speaks out against COVID vaccinations. The group’s Telegram messaging channel is followed by around 1,800 people, most of them members of the armed forces.

Mitterer spreads slogans about a “fake pandemic” and similar reactionary nonsense. In 2018, he published a book titled Bevölkerungsaustausch in Europa: Wie eine globale Elite die Massenmigration nutzt, um die einheimische Bevölkerung zu ersetzen (The Great Replacement in Europe: How a Global Elite Uses Mass Migration to Replace the Native Population). He is closely networked with openly fascist circles, which at no point has harmed his career in the Austrian Armed Forces.

The Bundesheergewerkschaft, the army staff union close to the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), also openly appears at demonstrations in Vienna against coronavirus measures. At all levels, the most backward and right-wing elements are being promoted to bolster official government policy.

A lecture series is currently taking place at Viennese universities under the title “Coronavirus—A transdisciplinary challenge,” featuring well-known right-wing extremists, coronavirus deniers and anti-vaxxers.

Andreas Sönnichsen, who is close to the Querdenkern (the German equivalent of Q Anon), the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the FPÖ, lectured that COVID-19 was nonexistent for people under 45. Christian Schubert, a medical doctor from Innsbruck, spoke against wearing masks and against any vaccination. In addition, other “scientists” with connections to the far-right milieu also appear at such gatherings. According to a report by radio FM4, people who had already denied the existence of AIDS or compared mRNA vaccination with anti-personnel mines in the past are promoted in material accompanying the lectures.