Harris visits Philippines President Marcos: Human rights hypocrisy and war mongering

John Malvar

US Vice President Kamala Harris concluded a two-day visit to the Philippines on Tuesday. She had a busy schedule: meeting with both President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte, arranging for the expanded basing of US military forces in the country, and escalating preparations for war with China. But she managed to squeeze in speaking at an event on the importance of defending human rights.

There is no country like the United States for hypocrisy. Washington accuses its geopolitical opponents—Russia, China,  Iran, the list is long—of violating human rights, carrying out war crimes, even committing “genocide.” But it pardons human rights violations, condones dictatorship, and facilitates mass repression by forces that serve its interests. Blood-soaked sanctimoniousness is the raw material of American empire.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the dead dictator, ran an election campaign dedicated to the rehabilitation of his father’s brutal military rule, which lasted from 1972 until the ouster of the Marcos family in 1986. Since taking office on June 30, Marcos Jr. has overseen a steady encroachment on basic democratic rights. It is a policy of creeping martial law.

His vice president, Sara Duterte, is the daughter of the former president Rodrigo Duterte, a fascistic thug who launched and oversaw a campaign of mass murder against the poor, which he termed a “war on drugs,” which killed over 30,000 people. Sara Duterte embraces and carries forward her father’s fascist legacy.

Harris signaled clearly that the Biden administration is prepared to embrace these figures and all the crimes that they represent, provided they will lead Manila back into the camp of Washington and its war plans against China.

Any visit by a top American official to the Philippines represents a return to the scene of a crime. The Philippines was the official colony of the United States for nearly 50 years. Washington brutally conquered the Filipino people, who had just declared their independence in an anti-colonial uprising against Spain. The bloody war waged by US imperialism killed over 200,000 Filipinos, placed entire provinces in concentration camps, tortured and executed prisoners, and burned entire villages to the ground. It was on the charred grounds of Philippine independence that Washington erected its “showcase of democracy” in Asia.

When social unrest in the post-war Philippines grew to levels that could not be peaceably contained, Washington abandoned its democratic pretensions and facilitated the martial law regime of Marcos Sr. As Ferdinand and Imelda oversaw the mass arrest, torture and murder of ordinary Filipinos, as the Marcos family pillaged the country, each successive US administration backed them to the hilt. 

The Philippines represented a critical foothold for US empire in Asia. It was from Clark airbase and Subic Bay naval base that Washington staged much of its war in Vietnam. American planes launched from the Philippines carpet-bombed Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos. 

These military bases, large and vital portions of Philippine territory ruled by the United States, were a standing affront to any semblance of national sovereignty. In 1991, the Philippine Senate voted, by a margin of one, not to the renew the lease.

When the Obama administration launched its Pivot to Asia, it sought by military means to contain and reverse the rising economic power of China. The restoration of bases in the Philippines, so vital to the projection of US military power, was a critical component of these plans. The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), concluded in 2014 between the Obama and Benigno Aquino III administrations, was drawn up to restore US military bases to the former colony.

Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016, however, and looking to pursue closer economic ties with Beijing, he rejected many of Washington’s most aggressive proposals and threatened to cancel the EDCA. Relations between the US and the Philippines soured. 

The new Marcos administration finds itself caught between the United States and China and claims to seek friendly ties with both countries. Such a balancing act is impossible, however, as Washington’s trade war measures and provocations over Taiwan have rendered the entire Asia Pacific region fundamentally unstable.

Looking to secure the loyalty of the Marcos administration, the Biden administration signaled that it would turn a blind eye to his attacks on democratic rights. Marcos Jr. faces over $350 million in charges for contempt of court in the United States in cases associated with his family’s gross violations of human rights. He should have faced subpoena and arrest for criminal contempt on traveling to the United States in September, but the Biden administration arranged for Marcos’ safe travel to New York, where he held a friendly meeting with the US president. The thousands of murdered and tortured Filipinos represented in the legal cases against Marcos Jr. stood in the way of the interests of US imperialism, and Biden coldly buried their rights.

In her visit to the Philippines, Harris carried with her both the arrogant demands of US imperialism and its human rights pretensions. The most critical of Washington’s demands was for additional locations to be granted by the Marcos government for use as US military bases. The Pentagon had selected five locations in the Philippines that it wanted to have and drew up a list of the territory that it was requesting. Harris presented the list to Marcos.

The EDCA deal, which nearly died during the six-year term of Duterte, is a document of unbridled neocolonialism. It is an executive agreement that undermines the constitutional power of the Philippine Senate to supervise any foreign troop presence in the country.

The EDCA grants portions of Philippine territory to the control of the US military, but attempts to maintain the pretense of Philippine sovereignty by authorizing a single Filipino to access the bases upon requesting permission from US officers. All US personnel have extrajudicial immunity from local jurisdiction; they are not subject to Philippine law. Washington pays no rent for the use of bases, and if the US chooses to abandon a base, the Philippine government is required to pay for any “improvements.” Filipino staff working on the base are subject to American policing. There is no limit to the number of military personnel the US may deploy.

Philippine military Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Bartolome Bacarro told the press that the areas newly requested by the US under the EDCA included two locations on the Luzon Strait, which separates the Philippines from Taiwan, while the rest bordered the South China Sea. The selections are made in preparation for war with China.

Harris left her meetings with Marcos and Duterte to address a conference on human rights and the rights of women. “Remember,” she told the assembled audience, “you are not alone in your fight for our god-given rights.” She said that she was particularly committed to fighting for the rights of women and girls to live lives free from violence.

Along with the rule of the Catholic Church and the brutal Japanese occupation during World War II, no force wreaked more violence on Filipino women than US imperialism and its military. The bases, whose return Harris is demanding, fostered entire cities at the core of whose economy was the prostitution that serviced tens of thousands of US troops.

The commingled hypocrisy and war-mongering, Washington’s peculiar specialty, reached its apogee the next morning when Harris flew to the island of Palawan. She was the first high-ranking US official to ever travel to the island, which is famed mostly for its jungles and beach resorts. The closest point to the South China Sea, the island is the site of one of the locations that Washington is claiming under the EDCA.

Harris boarded a Philippine Coast Guard vessel, the Teresa Magbanua, and, unaccompanied by any ranking Philippine civilian official, delivered a speech to this branch of the Philippine military as they stood at attention. The vessel was named after a Filipino woman who was a general in the Philippine-American war and led organized guerrilla resistance against the forces of US occupation, but Washington does not let such historical trifles interfere with its ambitions.

“You are on the frontlines,” she told them, “standing up for the international rules-based order.” She made clear whose interests she was summoning them to defend, declaring, “America’s prosperity relies on the billions of dollars that flow through these waters every day.” The United States rejected “China’s expansive South China Sea maritime claims,” she asserted. This was a fight “for national sovereignty.” 

What a farce! No other country in the world would dream of acting with the level of audacity and hypocrisy routinely displayed by the United States. Harris had just presented a list of portions of Philippine territory over which the US military proposed to exercise unquestioned rule.  As representative of a foreign power, the former colonial ruler, she boarded a vessel of the Philippine armed forces and addressed the assembled uniformed personnel on the subject of… “national sovereignty.” The single greatest threat in Philippine history to the country’s national sovereignty has always been US imperialism.

Harris’ visit to the Philippines, meeting with Marcos and demanding military bases, vividly expose the essence of Washington’s plans. No matter the tactical maneuvers the Biden administration engages in with China, no matter the changes it may temporarily adopt in its rhetoric, Washington is committed to a strategy that leads to war and is actively making material preparations for the outbreak of armed conflict.

Gaza house fire kills 22: Victims of Israel’s war on Palestinians

Jean Shaoul

A house fire killed 22 Palestinians, including seven children, at a family celebration in the northern neighbourhood of Jabaliya, Gaza, last Thursday night. It was the direct result of the atrocious living conditions created by Israel’s criminal 15 year-long blockade that has turned Gaza into an open-air prison for its 2.3 million inhabitants.

The Abu Rayya family were celebrating the return of Maher Abu Rayya, a former deputy minister in the Labour Ministry in Gaza, who had just gained a PhD from Egypt, and the birthday of another family member, when a huge fire ripped through the third floor of their three-story residential building, killing all the celebrants.

Mourners chant slogans while carrying members of the Abu Raya family who were killed in a fire, during their funeral in front of the mosque in Jebaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, November 18, 2022. A fire set off by stored gasoline in a residential building killed 21 people Thursday evening in a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, the territory's Hamas rulers said. [AP Photo/Adel Hana]

Neighbours tried for nearly an hour to break down the front door of the building and the apartment door before firefighters arrived. Bahaa Abu Rayya, a relative of the family, told Middle East Eye it took 40 minutes for the Civil Defence crews to arrive at the scene as they were dealing with another incident in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. When they did arrive it was without ladders to reach the third floor, a long enough hose or adequate water supply. They were unable to immediately control the fast-moving fire or evacuate any of the family before they were either burnt alive or succumbed to the fumes.

Shocked and outraged by the fire, thousands came from all over Gaza to attend the funeral on Friday.

Following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when Israel seized the Gaza Strip that had been controlled by Egypt, the Palestinians were subject to ever increasing suppression under an occupation deemed illegal under international law. Even after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, its de facto occupation—its control of its land, sea and order borders—has continued.

For the last 15 years, Israel has subjected Gaza to a strict sea, air and ground siege, after Hamas—the bourgeois clerical group affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood that won a majority in the Palestinian elections in January 2006—forestalled an armed coup by supporters of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) and took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Since then, Israel has placed tight restrictions on the entry of most goods and commodities into the besieged enclave, preventing the supply of much needed equipment for Gaza’s hospitals, police and Civil Defence teams as well as construction materials to repair the damage caused by Israel’s repeated murderous assaults on the essentially defenceless enclave. It limits the movement of Palestinians in and out of the Strip, frequently refusing permission to seek urgent, life-saving medical treatment outside Gaza.

Israel has been aided and abetted by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, which refuses to transfer cash to Gaza, and Egypt’s military dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose forces control Gaza’s southern border. Crucially, its illegal actions are supported by the US, Israel’s chief sponsor, and the major European powers. Despite their humanitarian pretensions, all have provided Tel Aviv with the political and diplomatic support at the United Nations that have enabled it to avoid sanctions. This is in sharp contrast to the sanctions imposed on Russia for invading Ukraine. It makes them accomplices in Israel's crimes against the Palestinians.

Israel, as an occupying power with the most advanced military machine in the Middle East, has been given carte blanche to inflict unrestricted death, violence and suffering upon refugees trapped in a huge ghetto of its own making. The people of Gaza have suffered the destruction of their livelihoods as well as repeated bombardments, and military assaults over the last 15 years.

The protracted 2008-09 assault killed 1,400 Palestinians and left much of the territory in ruin. The 2012 operation killed 177 Palestinians and destroyed or damaged numerous public and private premises, while the 50-day assault in 2014 claimed close to 2,200 Palestinian lives, overwhelmingly civilians and destroyed much of the enclave’s infrastructure. Israel’s bombardment in May 2021 destroyed 1,500 economic establishments, with the World Bank estimating Gaza needed $485 million to restore it to the penurious state it was in before the war.

Last August, Israel launched a military offensive on Gaza targeting Palestinian Islamic Jihad and its armed branch, the Al-Quds Brigades, killing 49 Palestinians, including 17 children, and wounding more than 360 during its three-day bombardment of the Strip.

Gaza’s already desperate economic crisis deepened in 2018 with the US Trump administration’s decision to withdraw its $300 million contribution to the operating budget of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—the UN agency for Palestinian refugees—that accounted for one third of UNRWA’s annual budget of $1.2 billion.

Electricity is available for just a few hours a day. At least 56 percent of the workforce is unemployed. The health and education systems are dysfunctional. Access to many essential food items is restricted. Most of the water system is contaminated with untreated sewage or salt, while untreated sewage is pumped directly into the sea, polluting the bathing beaches.

Gaza’s Civil Defence crews suffer from an acute shortage of safety equipment, making it difficult to respond to calls either speedily or effectively.

According to a preliminary report by the authorities in Gaza, a major factor in the spread of last Thursday night’s fire was the storage of gasoline on the premises. This is a widespread practice, given the acute shortage of fuel to power Gaza’s sole generator. With power available for a just a few hours a day, the Palestinians have turned to diesel and gas to power their own generators. Neighbours said the Abu Rayya family used a generator that ran on gasoline. There have been numerous similar house fires caused by candles, petrol or gas used for lighting and heating since the onset of Gaza’s power crisis.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz issued a cynical and hypocritical statement saying that “the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories has sent an offer of humanitarian assistance in evacuating the wounded to hospitals... Israel is ready to give injured Gazans medical help to save lives.” There were no wounded people to be taken to hospital. All those present died in the fire. He said nothing about supplying Gaza with ladders, firefighter suits, oxygen and other necessary equipment.

The US and NATO never tire of denouncing Russia for “war crimes” in Ukraine and China for committing “crimes against humanity and genocide against Muslim Uyghurs” based on unconfirmed or non-existent evidence. They have, however, remained silent about the fire in Gaza, while the world’s corporate press has at best reported it without comment.

Brazil faces new COVID-19 wave amid sabotage of child vaccinations

Guilherme Ferreira

As part of a new global surge driven by the spread of the more infectious and vaccine-resistant Omicron subvariant BQ.1, Brazil is facing its fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the third this year alone. On Saturday, the country recorded an average of 15,000 cases, a 302 percent increase from two weeks ago, and 37 deaths. Although the average number of deaths had a minus 4 percent variation from two weeks ago, there is a clear reversal of this trend, with three of the five Brazilian regions already showing an increase in the average number of deaths.

In total, Brazil has recorded almost 35 million cases and 689,000 deaths from COVID-19, the second highest number in the world, trailing only the US.

Girl wearing a T-shirt saying “Vaccine Yes!” receiving COVID-19 vaccine [Photo: Osasco City Hall]

These figures, however, are major underestimates. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the government of the fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, together with the entire Brazilian political establishment, has made every possible effort to hide the actual scale of the pandemic in Brazil in order to continue guaranteeing private profits.

In June 2020, at the height of the first wave and amid the Brazilian ruling elite’s efforts to reopen the economy after limited lockdowns, the Bolsonaro government tried to censorcumulative case and death figures from the health ministry’s official COVID-19 website, a measure reversed by the Supreme Court. A month later, it ended funding the most extensive epidemiological study on the pandemic in Brazil.

Few parameters express so clearly the lack of monitoring of the pandemic in Brazil as testing. According to Worldometer, the country ranks 148 in testing per million people, behind war-torn countries like Libya and Iraq. At the same time, tens of millions of expired tests have been thrown away repeatedly.

During the Omicron BA.1 wave in December 2021, the Brazilian ruling elite deepened its efforts to undermine pandemic monitoring in Brazil. After the health ministry’s pandemic monitoring system was offline for a month until mid-January due to an alleged hacker attack, the already insufficient number of tests performed dropped tremendously, from 929,000 in February to 264,000 in March of this year. In October, around 77,000 tests were executed, the lowest figure since March 2020.

Summing up the Brazilian situation, renowned neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis tweeted on November 18: “There is no doubt: we are surfing a new wave of COVID-19, with no helmsman, no course, no compass, and no short-, medium-, and long-term strategy to fight a pandemic THAT IS NOT OVER YET!” Since the beginning of the pandemic, Nicolelis has been one of the fiercest critics of the “living with the virus” policy not just of the Bolsonaro government but also of the alleged opposition represented by the Workers Party (PT) in the four northeastern states that it rules.

Contrary to Nicolelis’ warnings, handpicked experts in the corporate media have stressed that there is nothing to fear from this new wave, suggesting only that some social groups, such as the elderly and people with comorbidities, return to wearing masks and reinforcing the need to get vaccinated.

At the same time, they have placed the full responsibility for this new wave on the spread of BQ.1 and other more infectious subvariants already detected in Brazil, ignoring the complete abandonment of all mitigation measures, including in schools and on public transport. Virtually no Brazilian city has reimplemented mask mandates.

Also entirely ignored by the media was the role of the October 3 general election when many of the 123 million voters spent hours in lines at polling places without adequate ventilation and mandatory masks. In November 2020, the municipal election had already proven to be a super-spreading event, driving the further spread of the Gamma variant that in early 2021 led to the second deadly wave of the pandemic.

This new wave is taking place amid Bolsonaro’s ongoing effort to undermine vaccinations in Brazil. The sabotage of vaccinations has been an integral part of his government’s “herd immunity” policy and of his narrative that COVID dangers weren’t real, which has been aimed at mobilizing a fascistic movement in Brazil.

The Bolsonaro government’s budget proposal for next year includes brutal cuts to health care, the largest aimed at the federal immunization program, responsible for the purchase and distribution of vaccines. With a budget reduction of 37 percent for this area, these cuts threaten the only remaining control measures against the pandemic in Brazil and the return of numerous infectious diseases. Also, bivalent vaccines adapted for use against the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, from which BQ.1 emerged, are not expected to be offered anytime soon.

After successful attacks by Bolsonaro and his fascistic allies against the approval of child vaccinations, the level of immunization among Brazilian children remains critically low. Vaccination of children between ages three and five, which began to be offered in August, suffered a series of problems, with at least seven state capitals having to suspend it due to a lack of doses last week. In some of them, the suspension has already lasted three weeks.

Contrary to what had been announced by the Ministry of Health at the end of October, which claimed that 40 percent of three- and four-year-old children had received the first dose of the vaccine, a November 7 report by the daily Folha de S. Paulo showed that real figure was 13.9 percent.

Meanwhile, Pfizer’s vaccine for babies and children between six months and four years old was approved by the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) on September 16. The administration of doses began only last Thursday, and exclusively for children with comorbidities.

On November 16, the Brazilian Societies of Pediatrics and Immunization issued an alert requesting “emphatically, to the Ministry of Health, the immediate inclusion in the National Immunization Program of COVID-19 vaccines of all children from six months of age. ... The delay at the beginning of vaccination inexplicably continues, especially in times of increased viral circulation.”

Also commenting on the federal government’s decision to vaccinate only children with comorbidities, the Fiocruz infectologist Julio Croda told the G1website: “There is no logic in this because half of our deaths in this age group occurred in children who had no comorbidity.”

In fact, this policy constitutes a vicious crime against children, a vulnerable social group that should be unconditionally protected. In 2021 and 2022, 1,508 children under five died from COVID-19 in Brazil. Almost half of these deaths occurred in infants up to one year old. Up to October this year, 454 children under the age of five died from COVID-19.

Although Bolsonaro represents the cruelest face of the “herd immunity” policy, it has been embraced by the entire Brazilian political establishment, including the PT. During the presidential election campaign, the role of the PT and its candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in relation to the pandemic was fully exposed.

A study published on October 24 by the Solidarity Research Network on Public Policy and Society, formed by researchers from Brazil’s main universities, showed that the government plans of both Lula and Bolsonaro “do not inform comprehensive programs for the control of COVID-19 in the Brazilian territory”; do not show how Brazil can “prepare a structure that can be activated in moments of [future] health crises”; show “a complete absence of actions aimed at improving the structure of epidemiological surveillance”; and make no references to “vaccination against COVID-19.”

This shows that under the PT government starting next year, the novel coronavirus will continue to spread in an uncontrolled manner throughout Brazil, with the even more serious threat of new variants of concern emerging and extending the pandemic for years on end with devastating consequences for the Brazilian and world population.

Hospitals across the US experience an alarming surge of respiratory viruses

Liz Cabrera

Hospitals throughout the United States are experiencing an alarming surge of respiratory viruses in infants, children and adults, most predominantly respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). An increase in influenza and COVID-19 are also being seen. Most pediatric hospitals are operating at or above capacity due to the rapid spread of RSV.

Public service announcement from the NICD [Photo: National Institute for Communicable Diseases]

According to reports, 76 percent of the nation’s pediatric beds were occupied as of November 7 and the number of intensive care unit (ICU) beds for the sickest children are at or above capacity as greater numbers of children are being hospitalized.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), RSV is a seasonal virus that almost all children get by the time they are two years old. Most cases of RSV will cause mild, cold-like symptoms, but it can also cause severe illness such as bronchiolitis (inflammation of the small airways in the lung) or pneumonia (infection of the lungs). The CDC estimates that each year RSV has led to the hospitalizations of 58,000-80,000 children younger than five years old and 100 to 300 deaths.

Infants are especially vulnerable to RSV. The respiratory virus causes the body to produce excess mucus which can block the tiny airways of babies, who may need help to breathe. RSV poses the greatest risk to premature infants, infants less than six months old, children younger than two years old with chronic lung disease or congenital (present at birth) heart disease, immunocompromised children and children who have neuromuscular disorders.

An uptick of RSV cases in seniors is also being seen this season. According to a report by CNN Health, 6 out of every 100,000 seniors have been hospitalized with RSV. RSV infections in older adults can also be dangerous and cause issues like those seen in infants.

The CDC estimates that each year between 60,000 and 120,000 older adults in the US are hospitalized with RSV and 6,000-10,000 of them die from the infection. Adults 65 years and older are at highest risk for severe infection as are older adults with chronic heart and lung disease and those with weakened immune systems. The report also states that while the rate of RSV infection in seniors is lower than the rate for children, it is still uncharacteristically high.

Hospitals across the nation are being inundated with respiratory cases. Many have reached capacity due to pediatric RSV but are now starting to experience an increase in influenza and COVID-19 cases as well. Many hospitals have reached capacity and have had to set up overflow tents to meet patient demand.

California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly announced the state is dealing with three threats: RSV, influenza and COVID-19. He said test positivity rates for RSV rival peaks from other years and, in early November, 33 percent of children’s tests in the state were positive. Health officials from the Department of Public Health announced the first death of a child under five years of age from influenza and RSV.

A similar situation has unfolded in Michigan. According to an ABC News report, a 6-year-old boy in the Detroit area died after developing complications from RSV. There have been numerous warnings by experts of the coming surges of RSV, influenza and COVID-19, but nothing has been done to prepare.

In Colorado, pediatric hospitals are experiencing an unprecedented surge of RSV cases. There are fewer than five beds available statewide for children who need intensive care. At Children’s Hospital Colorado tents have been set up outside to care for less severely ill kids when the emergency department is full.

In San Diego County, California, Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas, Jacobs Medical Center at UCSD Health in La Jolla and Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa have begun using overflow tents outside their ED [emergency department] buildings to handle the influx of respiratory cases.

A similar situation is unfolding throughout the country, including on the East Coast. In Pennsylvania, Dr. Raymond Pitetti, director of the emergency department at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, announced through social media that it had set up a tent with eight to 10 beds outside the ED to treat children coming to the emergency room with respiratory symptoms.

Nurse Reed, a nurse on the West Coast who works in an ED, told the World Socialist Web Site that things have gotten worse in the last few months, and in the last few years since COVID. “I worry about going into this winter, with RSV, flu, colds, and COVID on the rise,” she said. “We are also struggling with staffing, and so a couple of times I have found myself getting more patients per shift than normal.

“I still work at the bedside in a small ER [emergency room] that has much better support and culture than my previous hospital, but with the increased risk to me of pathogen transmission, and with possibly increasing nurse: patient ratios, I have considered leaving.”

Julia from Ohio, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, told the WSWS, “I’m an emergency charge nurse at an urban safety net hospital. Conditions are bleak, especially with the influx of RSV. We’re burning out new nurses and seasoned veterans at an alarming rate. The entire system is teetering on collapse.”

“We need help,” she said. “We have 110 beds in our level one trauma center. Boarding has reached crisis levels with no relief in sight. There are 30-50 boarders on any given day. This is not sustainable. It’s not an option for us to defer patients. We’re drowning every day.

“Our director was one of us at one point. She really does try to fight for us. We’re hiring travelers, looking for more ancillary staff, and offering a 3x incentive for overtime. Even with the incentive, nurses have stopped picking up [shifts]. We’re a closed unit. On the rare occasion we have a float nurse, they refuse to come back.”

Julia described how understaffing is affecting all departments in the hospital. “Prevention of this crisis is a complicated task. We are understaffed in all departments, it’s a snowball effect. There’s not enough floor nurses to take the patients upstairs, enough transport to move the patients, EVS [environmental services] is imploding and rooms aren’t getting clean for hours. They built a new hospital… with fewer beds. It’s pretty, but nowhere near the capacity we call for.”

Hospitals throughout the South are also being flooded with respiratory cases. In Alabama, public schools in Marshall County were forced to go to remote learning because of an increase in flu cases among staff and students. In a Twitter post, school officials announced they were unable to operate due to staffing shortages and would transition to remote learning November 7-10 to allow time to mitigate the spread of the flu virus.

Nurses are also posting on social media about their desperate working conditions. In one post a nurse describes how her local children’s hospital and all pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) in the state are full and boarding patients. “I work adult intensive care unit (ICU) (we are also full),” she said, “but we have just been informed that due to the state of PICUs we are going to start accepting PICU patients.

“In addition to this, we received an email with one slideshow of how to care for the pediatric ICU patient and told to just ‘two RN verify any meds.’ No one on my shift today is PALS [Pediatric Advanced Life Support] certified or has worked peds. The ICU nurse today who volunteered to take our two peds is a new grad. They took them because they like kids. How is any of this acceptable? For the millionth time … health care is doomed.” 

The overlapping surge of multiple viruses circulating in the population could have been prevented. There were numerous warnings by experts of the coming surges of RSV, influenza, and COVID-19, but nothing was done to prepare.

The unfolding catastrophe is the result of the “forever COVID” policy now being pursued by the Biden administration and every state government, which over the past year have systematically dismantled all anti-COVID protection measures based on science. Unlike 2020 and 2021, nearly all school districts, workplaces and public facilities had dropped their mask mandates and followed the “let it rip” policy of the government.

Beijing reports three COVID-19 deaths as cases continue to surge across China

Evan Blake

The latest surge of COVID-19 infections in China continues to deepen in major cities throughout the country, with the National Health Commission (NHC) reporting a near-record 27,095 total new cases on Sunday, bringing the seven-day average of daily new cases to 23,056. Also over the weekend, health authorities in Beijing reported three official deaths from COVID-19, including a 91-year-old woman and an 88-year-old man, the first deaths in China since May 26.

[Photo by Our World In Data / CC BY 4.0]

So far, the deepening surge has been met with a limited response from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government, affirming the assessment of the World Socialist Web Site that the CCP has begun a shift away from the Zero-COVID elimination strategy, which had been in place since the start of the pandemic. It is entirely possible that the CCP will reinstate Zero-COVID as the crisis deepens, but at this point there has been no sign of reversal as infections are mounting.

On November 11, the NHC released 20 changes to the “dynamic zero” policy, all of which curtail the measures needed to stop viral transmission of COVID-19. These include reductions in mass testing, contact tracing, quarantine and isolation protocols, and above all the limitation of citywide lockdowns which have proven to be the most effective measure at quickly suppressing transmission.

The NHC is framing the 20 changes as intended to resolve “problems of excessive and one-size-fits-all approaches,” but it is now clear that they represent the beginning of a shift away from the Zero-COVID policy. The implications of this shift are increasingly coming into focus as the current surge progresses.

China’s capital Beijing, home to 21.5 million people, is now experiencing its worst COVID-19 outbreak since the start of the pandemic, with a record 962 cases detected on Sunday. Instead of implementing a mandatory citywide lockdown, local authorities have responded by requesting that residents voluntarily stay at home, without providing any financial assistance to workers that cannot afford to do so. While many residents are following this recommendation and some schools have voluntarily switched to remote learning, businesses throughout the city remain open.

In nearby Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million people, cases have steadily risen, with 641 reported on Sunday. In response, local authorities have refrained from issuing a lockdown and instead announced Sunday that mass testing will take place in six of the city’s eight districts over the next five days. They also encouraged residents to shop online and ordered some schools to switch to remote learning.

Roughly one-third of all new infections in China are taking place in Guangdong province, which now has a seven-day average of 8,706 daily new cases, with most taking place in the provincial capital Guangzhou, home to nearly 19 million people. Instead of implementing a robust citywide lockdown, since November 5 local authorities have implemented partial lockdowns of different districts in the city. On Monday, a five-day lockdown began in Baiyun, the most populous district in Guangzhou, while dine-in services, night clubs and movie theaters in the city’s main business district were ordered to temporarily close.

It bears reviewing the experience of last spring’s surge in Shanghai to recognize the shifts taking place across China at present.

On March 28, 2022, the seven-day average of daily new cases in Shanghai stood at 3,662. After officials in Shanghai had stated repeatedly that they would not implement a citywide lockdown, national authorities finally intervened and demanded that they do so. Almost exactly two months later, the city finally emerged from the lockdown, with over 380,000 total infections and 337 deaths.

The experience in Shanghai underscored the need to expand the Zero-COVID strategy in response to the highly infectious Omicron variant. Throughout the country, authorities should have been advised to implement citywide lockdowns more promptly, as soon as cases begin to surge, in order to quickly contain serious outbreaks. They should have ensured that every resident is provided with N95 or better masks, renovated infrastructure in all public spaces to limit airborne transmission, provided full funding to every city to maintain mass testing and other necessary public health measures.

Instead, five months later, the opposite path is being taken. The refusal to implement a citywide lockdown in Guangzhou is particularly revealing. At present, the seven-day average of daily new cases in Guangzhou is 138 percent higher than this figure was in Shanghai on March 28, when a lockdown was finally implemented.

Undoubtedly, the CCP faces immense economic pressures from global finance capital, which for over two years has demanded the lifting of Zero-COVID in order to maximize production and the exploitation of the Chinese working class. The belated lockdown in Shanghai was very costly, and in recent months many cities have accumulated substantial bills for mass testing which must be paid to testing companies.

Furthermore, many companies have signaled that they intend to shift production away from China as long as Zero-COVID remains in place, most notably Apple. Following the announcement of the 20 measures, stocks surged and foreign investors celebrated. On Monday, however, the Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.8 percent as multiple Chinese consumer stocks fell amid the growing spread of COVID-19 and fears that the remaining mitigation measures would continue to be too disruptive to production.

Speaking on the 20 measures, PineBridge Investments portfolio manager Hani Redha told the Wall Street Journal, “All eyes are on China. Any attempt to reopen is going to be tricky because we know the pattern with these things: you get a spike in cases. We haven’t even really got going and there are already a lot of cases.”

The Chinese ruling class is clearly stuck in a quandary, in which they are being compelled to fully reopen their economy while knowing full well that the ensuing public health crisis could itself cause disastrous economic ramifications.

While at this point the CCP is maintaining the most robust mitigationist program in the world, they will continue to face unrelenting pressure to lift all mitigations and embrace the mass infection “herd immunity” strategy now dominant globally.

If China ultimately abandons all measures against COVID-19, the results would be catastrophic. Current vaccination rates in China are not publicly available, but a recent article from the South China Morning Post noted, “as of mid-August, the booster shot rate among China’s elderly was just around 68 per cent” without specifying the precise age range for “elderly.”

According to the latest data available from Statista, as of March 17 only 51 percent of Chinese people 80 years or older had two doses of the vaccine, and only 20 percent had been boosted. Rates have surely increased since then, but it is widely acknowledged that this eldest section of the population remains the least vaccinated, due to more widely held beliefs in traditional Chinese medicine. Significantly, there are 36 million people in this age group living in the country who now face tremendous risks due to the lifting of Zero-COVID.

US Government TechWomen Program 2023

Application Deadline: 6th January 2023 09:00AM PDT (GMT-07:00)

Eligible Countries: Be citizens and permanent residents of Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan or Zimbabwe at the time of application and while participating in the program.

To be taken at (country): USA

Eligible Field of Study: Any STEM fields

About the US Government TechWomen Program: From the moment the Emerging Leaders arrive, they are immersed in the innovative, constantly evolving culture of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Emerging Leaders work closely with their Professional Mentors to design meaningful projects while exploring the San Francisco Bay Area with their Cultural Mentor and fellow program participants.

US Government TechWomen Emerging Leaders will:

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Type: Training, Fellowship

Eligibility: Applicants for US Government Techwomen Program must;

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US Government TechWomen encourages people with diverse backgrounds and skills to apply, including individuals with disabilities.

Selection: TechWomen participants are selected based on the eligibility requirements above. Applications are reviewed by independent selection committees composed of industry leaders and regional experts. Semifinalists may be interviewed by United States Embassy personnel in their country of permanent residence.

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Duration of US Government TechWomen Program: The 2023 TechWomen program will occur over five weeks from September 2023 – October 2023. Due to the fast-paced nature of the program, arrival and departure dates are not flexible.

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Visit Programme Webpage for details

UK autumn budget means biggest fall in living standards for 70 years

Robert Stevens

Research on last week’s Conservative government’s Autumn Statement budget shows that it will lead to a devastating fall in workers’ living standards.

The Financial Times wrote that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s “£55bn plan for fiscal tightening” represented “the biggest drop in living standards for 70 years.”

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street on his way to deliver his Autumn Statement to parliament. [Photo by HM Treasury / CC BY-ND 2.0]

The Treasury’s own analysis acknowledged that the budget resulted in the majority of households (around 55 percent) being left worse off. The working class, already largely pauperised after over a decade of austerity, are hardest hit.

According to the Resolution Foundation (RF), wages will continue to stagnate through to 2027, meaning almost 20 years of falling pay. The RF assessed, “The OBR’s [Office for Budget Responsibility] weaker forecast for pay means that real wages are now not expected to return to their 2008 level until 2027. Had wages instead continued to grow at their pre-crisis rate during this unprecedented 19-year pay downturn, they would be £292 a week – or £15,000 a year – higher.”

It notes that “the focus on ‘stealthy’ tax threshold freezes to raise revenue, rather than increases in tax rates, means that the overall effect of the government’s personal tax rises this parliament is to squeeze not just higher-income households, but those on middle-incomes too. A typical household faces a permanent 3.7 percent income hit from these measures – the same as the top fifth of households – and bigger than the 3 percent income hit that the very top twentieth of households will face.”

Surging energy costs will rise again next April by an average of £500 a year, hitting the poorest families hardest. The RF finds that government cost of living energy support will “cover less than a third of rising bills next year. The end of universal support and the scaling back of the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) means that households will be far more exposed to rising energy bills next year. For the typical household, the new support will offset just 30 percent of the rise in energy bills between 2021-22 and 2023-24, rising to 48 percent of the rise for the poorest fifth of households… Even after the new EPG and Cost of Living Payments, around one-in-eight families (3.3 million in total) will be paying over £2,000 more next year than they were in 2021-22.”

Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson said, “Surging global energy prices have made the UK a poorer country. The result is an OBR forecast that the next two years will see the biggest fall in household incomes in generations.”

Speaking about the OBR’s report, he said, “The next few years look grim in terms of living standards, the biggest reduction in household incomes, possibly on record and certainly within recent generations, a 7 percent cut over the next two years.”

The IFS commented that the “Office for Budget Responsibility forecast suggests that this is going from bad to worse. This year we are set to see the largest fall in real household disposable income per head (4.3%) since the late 1940s; next year, we are set to see the second-largest fall (2.8%). 

“Modest growth is expected to return after that, but even by 2027-28 we are not expected to have had a single year of growth higher than the pre-2008 average since 2015-16. Average household income per head is due to be the same in 2027-28 as it was in 2018-19, and 31% below where it would have been if the pre-2008 trend had continued.”

Analysing real household disposable income per person, as “the broadest measure of living standards accounting for wage growth, price changes and the impact of the tax and benefits system”, the New Statesman said “the first consecutive annual falls” since “the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis” would “essentially wipe out all of the income gains of the previous eight years in just 24 months. This is a catastrophic forecast.”

It added, “In effect, the OBR expects the recession to be very different to the one that accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. In that instance the fall in GDP was rapid and extremely deep but the bounce back was also, at least initially, swift.

“More significantly, despite the biggest fall in economic output in at least a century, household incomes were relatively well protected by the furlough scheme, grants for the self-employed and higher Universal Credit payments. This time around the recession is expected to be shallower but to last much longer with a far slower recovery.”

Even as Hunt trumpeted the Tories’ “compassion” in increasing state pensions, benefits and tax credits by 10.1 percent (September’s CPI inflation level), this will not come into effect until next April. Even the lower measure of inflation (CPI) had already hit 11.1 the day before the budget. The more accurate RPI measure shot up at an even faster rate to 14.2 percent.

The IFS commented, “[O]ne must remember the backdrop for this rather ad hoc form of additional support for benefit recipients: the actual rates of ‘ordinary’ benefits (i.e. excluding the one-off grants) will, despite the 10.1% increase confirmed for April 2023, remain lower in real terms than prior to the current spike in inflation until at least April 2024.”

Research analysed by the University of Bristol and published in July by the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, found, “One-in-six UK households (4.4 million) are now in ‘serious financial difficulties’, compared to one-in-ten (2.8 million) in October 2021 – an additional 1.6 million households. This is worse than any point during the pandemic. Of those 4.4 million in serious financial difficulties, to make ends meet 71% have reduced the quality of food they eat, 36% have sold or pawned possessions and 27% have cancelled or not renewed insurance.”

The research, based on monitoring the personal finances of households since the start of the pandemica sample of around 6,000 people—found that “31% had reduced the number of showers/baths taken; 60% had avoided turning on the heating; 33% had reduced use of the cooker/oven; 24% had heated only part of their home.”

Striking Royal Mail workers in Bournemouth, August 26, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

The trade unions bear the main responsibility for the devastating situation facing the working class. For decades, they have partnered with successive Tory and Labour governments and the corporations to hold down wages and attack working conditions.

Annual RPI inflation in the July-September period, the months prior to Hunt’s budget, stood at 12.4 percent. Annual regular “pay growth” for the same period was 5.7 percent, meaning a 6.7 percent real terms fall. In the public sector, pay growth was 2.2 percent, meaning a 10.2 percent fall. With RPI rising another almost 2 percent (14.2 percent) to October these calamitous falls in workers’ wages, overseen by the unions, are even more catastrophic.

Even as they oversee deals cutting workers’ pay in real-terms, the union leaders, backed by their local functionaries and pseudo-left apologists, spin these as “victories” that match inflation or are even inflation “busting”. The facts that workers are now two thirds through a period of wage restraint in which they will have lost £15,000 in pay comprehensively refutes all these lies. The working class cannot afford the union bureaucracy and its “victories”.