Eight billion people on the Earth: A milestone for humanity

Benjamin Mateus & Patrick Martin

On November 15, 2022, approximately 367,000 women gave birth around the world. Among these newborns, according to statistical projections by the United Nations, was the eight billionth person alive now on Earth. The UN estimate noted that it had taken 12 years, since the global population passed the seven billion mark, to add another billion human beings.

The rapid growth of the world’s population is one of the central features of modern history.

A world map with each country’s size in proportion to its population. [Photo by Our World in Data / CC BY 4.0]

It took the entirety of human existence until 1804, according to demographic estimates, for the world to reach the one billion milestone. Even at that point, despite some technical development, mainly in Europe, life expectancy remained abysmal in every region of the world. Infant mortality was so high and reaching old age so rare that life expectancy at birth is estimated to have been barely 30 years.

High childhood mortality and death from infectious diseases were major impediments to a longer life and consequently population growth was slow, despite a far higher birth rate than today. It would take another 123 years before two billion people inhabited the planet in 1927. The third billion took only 33 years and the fourth billion 14 years more, circa 1974. The population reached five billion in 1987, six billion in 1999 and seven billion in 2010.

The latest billion suggests, paradoxically, the beginning of a slowdown, as it required 12 years, more than the 11 years to reach seven billion, even though the number of women in their child-bearing years had increased. With the availability of contraception and the assurance that their children will live to maturity, women and their partners can be selective as to when to have children.

If one looks at those numbers by a different yardstick, it took 123 years (1804 to 1927) for the world’s population to double from one to two billion. The next doubling, to four billion, took 47 years. The next doubling, to eight billion, took 48 years, a year longer. Demographers agree that the period of rapid doubling is now over since the drop in the birth rate that follows the fall in infant mortality has now reached every corner of the world. Their expectation is that population growth will level off at around 10 billion.

Marxism vs. Malthusianism

Marxists view the increase in the numbers of the human race as a tremendous positive, made possible by advances in scientific knowledge, productive technique and public health, and the extension of these to virtually every country in the world. 

We categorically reject the moaning and handwringing of the neo-Malthusians, who decry population growth as the root of all evil, and particularly blame it for the climate crisis and other environmental catastrophes. In our view, these are caused by unplanned capitalist anarchy, not “overpopulation.” 

One such commentary appeared in the New York Times on November 13, in an op-ed column by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Johan Rockström, academic researchers from Canada and Germany. They identified a confluence of multiple crises—war, pandemic, runaway inflation, environmental collapse—and pessimistically declared that these crises are a result of two factors: “the magnitude of humanity’s resource consumption” and the “vastly greater connectivity” of the modern world, due to the internet and improvements in transportation and telecommunications.

The column is upside-down in its presentation. The two factors it identifies, the growth of the productive forces and globalization, are indeed the driving forces of the deepening social crisis. But they are the harbingers of global decay only within the framework of the profit system and the capitalist nation-state. Freed from that straitjacket by a socialist revolution carried out by the working class, both factors would have an entirely positive significance.

People eat street food as shoppers crowd a market in New Delhi, India, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022. [AP Photo/Altaf Qadri]

What would the authors propose? A return  to a more constricted scale of production and more isolated and parochial social intercourse would be an enormous and unprecedented historical regression, one that could only take place in the aftermath of world war and societal collapse.

The growth of the working class

There is another positive aspect of the expansion of the world’s population. It is associated, not accidentally, with another demographic shift of enormous importance: the growth of cities, and of the working class. Both are the product of the growth of agricultural productivity, as industrialized, capitalist relations displaced more primitive and backward forms of production, first in the West, then in the East.

Hundreds of millions of peasants and agricultural laborers, displaced from tiny plots of land or large estates, have flooded into the cities searching for work, swelling the ranks of the proletariat, and thereby creating new battalions in the class struggle that will finally put an end to capitalism and establish a world socialist society.

Across the planet, there are now more than 500 cities that are home to more than one million people, accounting for 23 percent of the world’s population. There are at least 31 megacities that have populations of more than 10 million people. Only recently and for the first time in human history has the majority of the world’s population lived in urban environments. By 2030, this number is expected to reach 60 percent. The implication here is that most of the world’s population is now proletarian, with all the class distinctions and antagonisms that define conflict between the working class and the bourgeoisie.

In this regard, it bears listing in brief the immense productive capacity of the laboring class. In the last century workers have paved more than 40 million miles of roads that transport goods and services from any one point to another. They have built a global automotive manufacturing industry whose revenue for 2021 stood at 2.86 trillion in US dollars. Worldwide, there were 26.3 million commercial vehicles sold last year.

Domestic and international flights numbered 22.2 million in 2021. Around 55,000 merchant ships set sail on the oceans to engage in international trade. In five decades, energy supply has risen by 2.6 times to 606 exajoules, or 105 billion barrels of oil equivalent, according to the International Energy Agency. All this is the product of the labor of the working class.

In 2020, the world produced 761 million metric tonnes of wheat. But over the last two decades, the increasing demand for food products has led to a 15 percent rise in world combined harvest area to 1,000 million hectares for feed grains, oilseed and food grains. To compensate for the large land conversion and food price inflation, research into enhancing multiple cropping and yield growth requires the immediate attention of policy makers. Technologies now exist to increase food production even further, including plant breeding and genome editing, as well as systems to monitor crop yields and develop better agricultural machinery.

These figures are but a glimpse into the productive capacity of the working class. They do not even begin to reflect the diversity and industry of people everywhere that give shape and substance to their life and culture. Indeed, the international working class may speak 7,100 different languages, but workers have in common the desires and hopes for their future and those of their families and friends.

They are also connected socially via the internet, with approximately five billion active users who rely on the technology for their news, work and social interactions, which include communication, education and entertainment. Last year, 190 million new users joined social media, equating to an annualized growth rate of 4.2 percent. Typical users visit an average of 7.2 different social platforms and spend on average two to three hours a day (or 15 percent of their waking day) on these media. All told, the world spends 10 billion hours using social platforms each day. In short, the world is highly interconnected in a more dynamic manner than ever before.

What is also clear is that the majority of those living on Earth are quite young. The median age of the world’s population stands at 30. At present, half of the world’s population is between the age of 25 and 65, that is, of working age. A quarter are younger than 14 years.

The new threats to life expectancy

Life expectancy improved remarkably throughout the 20th century, despite the world wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 in which more than 100 million died, or such harrowing events as the Great Depression. Scientific development, particularly in medicine and food production, proceeded apace, despite, and even in some cases under the impetus of, the wartime mobilizations.

The list of improvements in medicine is long: anesthetics, antiseptic techniques and surgical innovations, and blood transfusions. Ambulance services and emergency medical systems, developed during World War I, now are integral parts of daily life. Modern emergency medicine departments evolved out of experiences in triaging combat casualties during the Vietnam war. 

The discovery of sulfa drugs and penicillin antibiotics in the 1930s was critical in the rapid decline of infectious disease, which was still the leading cause of death worldwide. Vaccination drastically reduced the impact of previously deadly diseases, and even eliminated smallpox, one of the most feared infections.

Life expectancy for selected countries in 1800, 1950 and 2012. [Photo by Our World in Data / CC BY 4.0]

As the graph from Our World in Data indicates, the rise in life expectancy over the last century-and-a-half has been uneven, first favoring European countries and North America, the initial centers of capitalist development.

The Russian Revolution and the victory of the Bolsheviks had a great impact on the rise of life expectancy across the globe over the intervening decades. Many of the reforms and social programs that were implemented worldwide were largely a response of imperialist powers to the threat posed by the international working class.

Life expectancy continued to rise, to more than 70 years of age by the mid-1970s. By then, even lower-income nations were seeing gains, especially during the second half of the 20th century 

Even at its high point, however, the class divisions in capitalist society were reflected in health outcomes. A report in the British Medical Journal from 2021 bears quoting:

Socioeconomic inequity in mortality has been widely discussed. A large multicohort study with 1.7 million participants from the US, Europe, and Australia found that low socioeconomic status (SES) was associated with a 26 percent higher risk of mortality and 2.1 years of life lost between ages 40 and 85 years, and low SES might respectively contribute to 15.3 and 18.9 percent of deaths among women and men. From 2001 to 2014, longevity increased by 2.34 and 2.91 years, respectively, among the wealthiest five percent of US men and women, whereas only 0.32 and 0.04 years among the poorest five percent of US men and women. Similar trends were also observed in the UK, or when high education levels were compared with low education levels. Our analysis confirmed the socioeconomic disparity in mortality and extended the findings to coronary vascular disease morbidity and mortality.

In the US, the growing gap in life expectancy by income has been documented in multiple studies which have shown that for both men and women the gap between the highest and lowest quintile is upwards of 12 to 14 years, with the wealthiest reaching life expectancies in the high 80s or low 90s.

Graphs show inequality in life expectancy based on income [Photo by Our World in Data / CC BY 4.0]

The coronavirus pandemic hit at a point where these socioeconomic factors had already produced a significant slowdown in gains in life expectancy, which is perhaps the most fundamental measurement of the progress of a society.

The policy of deliberately allowing the pandemic to spread—a form of social murder—prevented a swift end to the COVID pandemic. Global life expectancy has declined by two full years, wiping out more than a decade of improvement. The brunt of this impact was felt by the poorest and those living in low-income countries.

This was a byproduct of the various iterations of the “cure can’t be worse than the disease” policies adopted by almost every country in the world against eliminating the coronavirus. In short, the gains made in the course of 150 years of public health endeavors, which have given the world’s population such a tremendous gain in lifespan, have been subordinated to the accumulation of profits.

Some conclusions

Commenting on the new population estimate, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres remarked that the eight billion figure represented “a testament to scientific breakthroughs and improvements in nutrition, public health and sanitation.”

In the same breath, he warned, “Billions of people are struggling; hundreds of millions are facing hunger and even famine. Record numbers are on the move seeking opportunities and relief from debt and hardships, wars and climate disasters. Unless we bridge the yawning chasm between the global haves and have-nots, we are setting ourselves up for an eight-billion-strong world filled with tensions and mistrust, crisis and conflict.”

He was referring to the immense inequalities that define life under capitalism in its terminal decay, with a handful of billionaires controlling as much wealth as the poorest half on the planet. While the top one percent have stuffed their bank accounts and investment portfolios with one-fifth of the world’s income, those living in high income countries can expect to live upwards of 30 years more than those in the poorest.

There are, of course, immense differences between conditions of life for the masses in the advanced capitalist countries and in the most oppressed countries and regions of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent. It is precisely those regions in which population growth will be concentrated in the coming decades, according to UN projections.

More than half of the projected 1.7 billion global population increase by 2050 will occur in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania. In these countries, urbanization is transforming society rapidly, while intensifying the social crisis of hunger, new (and old) diseases, declining literacy and rising child mortality and poverty, heightening social anger and tensions.

There too, however, the intervention of the working class as an independent political force will be decisive. Only the reorganization of the world economy and the development of these regions as part of an interconnected, globalized world society, in which living standards and public health facilities are raised to an equal level, offer a way forward for the great mass of humanity.

The strain on pediatric hospitals from a triple epidemic of RSV, COVID and the flu continues unabated

Benjamin Mateus

With the triple threat of RSV, influenza, and COVID having materialized much earlier than previously predicted (usually arriving in December or January after the holidays), many children instead of spending Thanksgiving weekend at home with extended families revisiting memories and enjoying a meal around a lavishly laden table will be huddled with their parents in emergency rooms across the United States seeking medical attention for their respiratory ailments.

The triple threat of infections is devastating a health care system that is already in free fall, as described by a letter sent to the White House by organizations of doctors, nurses and health care providers earlier this month, urging the president to address the crisis faced by emergency departments (EDs). Wait times for admissions or transfers are extending far beyond the four-hour limits recommended by health authorities, risking the lives of the patients both in the EDs and hospital wards.

Most of the Atlantic seaboard, Southeast, Midwest, and Southwest states are registering high levels of influenza-like illnesses (ILI). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that influenza activity in the US is higher than it has been in more than a decade, exceeding their epidemic thresholds. As of November 18, more than 4.4 million flu cases had been registered. There have been 38,000 hospitalizations and over 2,100 deaths across the country.

A critical care nurse administers an anti-viral medication to a COVID-19 positive patient at Kootenai Health regional medical center in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on Sept. 6, 2021. [AP Photo/Michael H. Lehman/DVIDS U.S. Navy/via AP]

With approximately an average of 8 people per 100,000 population being placed in hospitals, children under the age of five are only behind adults 65 and older at 13.6 per 100,000, nearly twice the national average. Many in the corporate press had claimed these were a byproduct of a so-called “immunity-debt” that left many children vulnerable because they had gone two years with essentially no exposure to these respiratory pathogens. 

Such pseudo-scientific explanations facilitate the current back-to-school policies heavily promoted by the Democratic Party. The claim is that such infections have clinical benefits to children, meaning that the limited measures against COVID that saved millions of lives were somehow harmful to children. In actuality, COVID killed more children than flu and RSV, despite mitigation measures which were far too limited.

Immunology professor at the University of Surrey Deborah Dunn-Walters told the Financial Times, “Immunity debt as an individual concept is not recognized in immunology. The immune system is not viewed as a muscle that has to be used all the time to be kept in shape and, if anything, the opposite is the case.”

Indeed! Pediatric hospitals have been strained for several weeks from an onrush of young infants infected by RSV and other respiratory illnesses. For newborns in particular, RSV is quite dangerous, due to their narrower upper respiratory tracts and fragile condition. In fact, RSV-related hospitalization rates for babies under six months reached 145 per 100,000 and those six to 12 months of age at 63 per 100,000.

Travelling nurse Dana Free, who was working in a pediatric intensive-care unit in Danville, Pennsylvania, explained to the Wall Street Journal, “If you think of it [the small airways] as a straw, and that’s your normal breathing, that’s fine. You coat it in congestion, essentially snot and mucus, you’re making that airway much smaller.” 

What Free is describing is tantamount to suffocating. A sign of serious illness is a wheezing cough that sounds like a barking seal. The squeaking noise when babies inhale is called stridor. These are accompanied by retractions in their chest walls as they gasp for air. Lack of oxygenation will turn their fingers, toes, and lips blue, critical signs of impending respiratory collapse.

Hospital occupancy rates have continued their steady climb since early August and have reached a rate of 76 percent for pediatric inpatient beds across the US. The Department of Health and Human Services reported that 80 percent of all pediatric intensive-care beds are full. In states like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Texas, the occupancy rate for pediatric ICUs is over 90 percent.

Demand for hospital beds is also being compounded by higher rates of mental health and suicidal ideations/attempts among children of all age ranges. As one emergency room physician, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the American College of Emergency Physicians, “We are a 28-bed pediatric ED, with a catchment area of 2.8 million children. I came into shift yesterday morning. We had 15 children on psych holds, many of them waiting in the lobby for 24 to 72 hours stays so we could use our beds to see medical patients. One of those patients had been in the ED for more than 150 hours.” 

He added, “We had ten admission boarding, seven on high-flow oxygen, four of which were Peds ICU level. There are no open Peds ICU beds in our four closest counties, including our own. We had 35 patients in the waiting room in addition to the 20 medical patients being managed by the ED. We had seven transfers pending from outside facilities to the ED, plus more awaiting direct admission from an outside ED to an inpatient bed whenever a bed became available. One that left another hospital’s ED against medical advice and came to our ED had been waiting three days for transfer. They had an arterio-venous malformation [a vascular condition] that needed urgent surgery.”

Two hospitals in Oregon, Doernbecher Children’s Hospital & Science University and Randall Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel, which provide the vast majority of intensive care treatment for children for their region, have been forced to implement crisis standards of care that allow hospitals to decide which patients will get treatments without facing legal repercussions.

Moreover, the implementation of crisis standards of care also allows hospital administrations to loosen patient to staff ratios, meaning nurses would be obligated to assume care for more patients despite the risks in terms of patient safety and wellbeing. The burnout of health care workers has reached epidemic proportions. The wellbeing and mental health of these professionals have been eroded by overwork in a setting where risk of exposure to infectious disease and violence remains high. 

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that the US will need more than 203,000 new registered nurses annually to 2026 to close the gap created by just the retiring workforce. However, nursing schools have turned away over 90,000 qualified applicants last year due to lack of faculty to train them nor rooms in nursing school to chair them. Meanwhile, up to 40 percent of nurses in practice are strongly considering leaving.

Michelle Collins, dean of the College of Nursing and Health at Loyola University in New Orleans, told reporter Mariel Padilla, “The pandemic exacerbated a situation that was already becoming dire. So many nurses left the profession during the pandemic because of burnout. We have a huge number heading towards retirement and a shortage of nursing faculty to teach new nurses, making for a perfect storm.” 

She also noted, “There’s a huge spike in the number of nurses who are leaving their career in the first three months of being a nurse. And not like going to another job—they’re leaving nursing, which is astounding to me. That’s horrible.”

Nurses aren’t leaving the bedside because they are disinterested in their professions. Rather, the conditions under which they are forced to work, their unmet concerns over patient safety, the monetization of health care, are deeply troubling, creating hardships and chronic distress for them and their profession. Worse, they are being scapegoated for the errors and safety violations that are inherent to the dangerous conditions created by demands by hospital systems to operate under the principle of doing more with less.

The crisis in health care will continue to grow more appalling as economic realities—labor costs, supply chain issues, and inflation—continue to erode the capacity of health systems to deliver care to their patient populations. A recent report in Fierce Healthcare noted that upwards of 60 percent of hospitals across the country will end 2022 “with their operations in the red versus the 34 percent reported in 2019.” The projections were made by Kaufman Hall on behalf of the American Hospital Associations. 

Senior Vice President at Kaufman Hall Lisa Goldstein said at last week’s press conference that financial margins in 2022 will remain depressed while expenses remain above pre-pandemic levels. “Hospitals will lose billions,” she said.

John J. Lynch, president and CEO of Main Line Health in Philadelphia’s suburbs, warned, “The numbers are all going in the wrong direction, and I’m concerned we’re going to see more healthcare providers close as a result of the current financial reality, which will impact access to care.”

He noted somberly, “In my 35 years as a healthcare leader, this is the most fragile I’ve ever seen the American healthcare system.”

Attack of the Killer Robots

Roberto J. González

Photograph Source: Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt – Public Domain

Imagine you’re living in Kyiv, a city that has been relatively calm for most of the war in Ukraine.

One chilly morning, you’re awakened by a faint buzzing noise, like the sound of swarming wasps. It gets louder and louder—until suddenly, intense flashes light up the windows of your apartment.

You peek outside, just in time to see part of a residential building—your neighbors’ homes—collapse in flames. Acrid clouds of smoke billow from a hole in the side. Down below, you see the wreckage of several small delta-winged drones.

Welcome to the world of virtual warfare.

Last month’s Russian assault on Kyiv is a stark reminder of how automated weapon systems threaten to make wars more traumatic than previous conflicts—and potentially lethal.

The attacks also foreshadow a future in which inexpensive robotic weapons can be easily deployed by virtually anyone—not just military forces, but also criminal organizations and rogue actors seeking to unleash political terror.

Even hobbyist drones, which are subject to a tangled web of regulatory regimes in our country, can be weaponized with modified grenades or other explosives.

Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, they’ve reportedly used several different drones made by the same company that developed the Kalashnikov rifle. The newest weapons in Russia’s arsenal are Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones, which cost about the same as a Toyota Corolla.

The Shahed drones used in the Kyiv raids are powered by a simple air-cooled engine. In fact, many parts used in the Shahed-136 are off-the-shelf components, readily available online. Experts think the drone’s electronic navigation system uses a civilian-grade GPS sensor that allows users to accurately program their targets using satellite technology.

These rudimentary swarming robots can wreak havoc on Ukrainian cities. Last month’s raids led to dangerous confusion on the streets of Kyiv, as police fired desperately at the invading drones. Living under constant fear of attack can have mental health consequences for target communities.

Ukraine’s troops have also used attack robots. Just days ago, Ukrainian aerial and sea drones launched a major assault on Russia’s storied Black Sea fleet, seriously damaging its flagship vessel at the Crimean port of Sevastapol.

In the first weeks of the conflict, Ukrainian forces deployed Turkish-made remote-controlled drones armed with guided missiles against Russian troop formations. Over the past few months, they’ve also acquired hundreds of US-made “suicide drones,” loitering munitions with names like Switchblade and Phoenix Ghost.

The idea of virtual warfare was once seductive. It held out hope that someday we might conduct wars without soldiers, without physical battlegrounds, and maybe even without death.

But virtual wars may turn out to be deadlier than anything in the past, especially now that lethal autonomous weapon systems—what some call “killer robots” or “slaughterbots”—are on the horizon. These technologies use AI (artificial intelligence) and sophisticated algorithms to locate targets and to determine when and where to attack.

Although we haven’t yet reached the point of armed, data-driven robotic armies, we should be aware of the perils of militarizing AI.

Fully autonomous weapon systems take human decision-makers out of the equation—a frightening prospect, given the fact that remote-controlled drones have killed thousands of civilians since the CIA and the Pentagon first used them in 2001.

The US military’s own documents reveal how drone wars in the Middle East from 2014 to the present were marked by intelligence errors, flawed targeting, and needless civilian deaths—in stark contrast to official portrayals of precision air strikes.

Autonomous weapons are likely to be even more destructive.

The physical and emotional costs of such weapons far outweigh any benefits. Ahmed Ali Jaber, whose relatives were indiscriminately killed by a US drone in Yemen, knows how automated warfare can leave deep psychological scars. “My children deserve so much better,” he writes. “I want them to watch fireworks, not drone strikes. I don’t want my family to cry every time they hear a drone.”

And its not just suspected enemies who are harmed by remote-control warfare. Many US drone pilots undergo severe psychological strain and mental health problems, including substance abuse disorder and PTSD.

The threat of war by algorithms urgently requires swift action, before it’s too late. National governments and international bodies such as the United Nations must develop unambiguously clear regulations on how automated and autonomous weapons are used. Otherwise, rival superpowers like the United States, China, Iran, and Russia will convince themselves that they’re locked into a global AI arms race. The current situation is comparable to the nuclear arms race in the earliest years of the Cold War. Proliferation of these weapons poses a grave danger to us all.

According to Automated Decision Research , more than seventy countries have called for an international treaty setting limits on the use of autonomous weapon systems and weaponized AI. The movement to stop killer robots is growing, and there’s an opportunity to find common cause with millions of others who are concerned about the hidden costs of digital warfare.

We should act now—while there’s still time.

Many UK excess deaths likely caused by COVID reinfections

Robert Stevens

The two weeks to November 11—the latest data available—saw 1,100 more lives lost to COVID in Britain, as warning are made by scientists of an impending winter “tripledemic” of COVID, flu and (RSV) respiratory syncytial virus.

The Conservative government declared the pandemic over long ago, as all mitigation measures were torn up. Since so-called “Freedom Day” on July 19, 2021, over 56,000 people have died due to COVID according to Johns Hopkins University figures available on Our World in Data. This brings the number of dead in Britain from COVID to 211,346. The government has manipulated the number of COVID cases and deaths, but even its own tally now approaches 200,000 (196,241).

The National Covid Memorial Wall in London [Photo: WSWS]

Deaths from COVID have been normalised to such an extent that cases and fatalities are barely reported. The Independent wrote that almost a million cases, “an estimated 940,700 people in private households were likely to have had coronavirus in the week to November 8.” But all is fine because this was “down from 1.3 million the previous week.”

The Daily Mirror reported Tuesday that RSV “poses a far bigger threat to young children, the elderly and the vulnerable – with nearly 7.4 percent of the general population currently infected.” Professor Francois Balloux, director at the UCL Genetics Institute, said, “RSV is a leading cause of child hospitalisation and the virus kills more than 100,000 children each year globally. That’s more than 50 times as many children than those who died from Covid throughout the pandemic. It’s a far bigger threat to young children than Covid or seasonal flu.”

COVID cases are being allowed to pile up even as real-world data confirms fears that every COVID reinfection causes cumulative damage and significantly increases the risk of hospitalisation, long-term complications and death.

Following three years of successive COVID waves, there has been a huge surge in excess deaths. But every effort is being made to minimise the role of the pandemic in this phenomenon.

The Telegraph noted earlier this month, “Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that in the week ending Oct 21, there were 1,714 excess deaths in England and Wales, of which only 469 [our emphasis] were due to Covid - just 27 per cent of the total.” It added, “Throughout October, there have been an average of 1,564 extra deaths per week, compared with a weekly average of just 315 in 2020 and 1,322 in 2021.” The number of excess deaths “is 16.8 percent higher than normal,” the newspaper reported.

The Telegraph goes on to state that “some of the unexplained deaths are being caused by collateral damage from the pandemic, when operations and treatments were cancelled or delayed as the health service concentrated on Covid.” It adds, “The NHS is also struggling from long-term staffing issues and current shortages because of coronavirus, leading to record waits for ambulances, treatment and surgery.”

There is no doubt that the perilous state of the terribly under-resourced National Health Service (NHS), whose spending has been slashed in real-terms instead of it receiving the hundreds of billions of pounds in extra funding it requires, is a factor in the number of excess deaths. But however this is cynically presented by the Telegraph, a staunch Tory advocate of cuts and other austerity measures, it was COVID infections and their impact that took the situation in the NHS to breaking point.

In addition, evidence is emerging pointing to the terrible impact of COVID on the health of those infected and re-infected. According to a British Heart Foundation study, there have been over 30,000 excess deaths linked to heart disease since the start of the pandemic, equating to an average of more than 230 extra deaths a week over and above what would be expected for heart disease. The right-wing Spectator also points to the huge numbers of people waiting for cardiac treatment amid record NHS waiting lists and the fact that the ambulance service—heavily hit by NHS spending cuts—is unable to provide a time response to many reporting heart attacks and strokes.

Nowhere in the mass media is the impact of COVID on excess deaths, and particularly cardiac related deaths, being given the necessary attention. The surge in excess deaths in many countries is real world data confirming what is being revealed by several studies.

This month the WSWS drew attention to a ground-breaking study published in scientific journal Nature Medicine by COVID-19 researcher Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly and a team at Washington University in the US. The study, “Acute and post-acute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection,” was based on comparing more than 150,000 veterans, aged around 60, who had recovered from acute COVID-19 with their uninfected peers, as well as with a pre-pandemic control group.

The study makes dire warnings of the consequences of people being infected and reinfected multiple times with COVID. The authors write, “Compared to no reinfection, reinfection contributed additional risks of death… hospitalization… and sequelae including pulmonary, cardiovascular, hematological, diabetes, gastrointestinal, kidney, mental health, musculoskeletal and neurological disorders.”

Commenting on the survey Nature wrote, “People who had been admitted to intensive care with acute infections had a drastically higher risk of cardiovascular problems during the next year… For some conditions, such as swelling of the heart and blood clots in the lungs, the risk shot up at least 20-fold compared with that in uninfected peers. But even people who had not been hospitalized had increased risks of many conditions, ranging from an 8% increase in the rate of heart attacks to a 247% increase in the rate of heart inflammation”.

Due to the abandoning of the Tories of all testing for COVID, with the backing of the Labour opposition in order to “live well with COVID”, it is not possible to know how many people in the UK have been infected and reinfected. However, a study issued in August by Long Covid Support and Long Covid Kids—based on responses from 484 adults and 112 children and young people—found that 80 percent of those who classed themselves as still suffering Long COVID symptoms said that another COVID infection exacerbated their symptoms. Of those who were in recovery or remission from Long COVID, reinfection recurred in about 60 percent of individuals. Of these, 40 percent said that the second bout of Long COVID was just as severe as the first time, 32 percent said it was less severe and 28 percent said it was more severe.

While estimates that 350,000 cats caught COVID during the pandemic merited an article in the Telegraph this week, any talk over the vast risk to the human population, particularly the most vulnerable, was ditched long ago. This has impacted on the uptake of COVID vaccinations. This autumn has seen a relatively low take up of the COVID booster, with only around 41 percent of those eligible in England receiving a jab.

Everything is in place for a devastating resurgence of COVID—including in the form of possibly more dangerous and vaccine immune mutations—amid the inevitable spread of seasonal flu and other respiratory illnesses and under conditions in which the NHS cannot provide necessary treatment for millions of people. Around 50,000 nursing vacancies have not been filled. Thousands of staff, from midwives to ambulance workers, are leaving.

Chinese government’s new COVID policy causes public concern as infections rise

Jerry Zhang

Since the Chinese government promulgated its new “Twenty Articles” policy of relaxing COVID-19 restrictions on November 11, the government’s move away from its zero-COVID policy has triggered confusion and unease throughout the population.

Although the government still claims to adhere to a zero-COVID policy, the relaxation of measures such as mass testing, contact tracing and quarantine protocols in the “Twenty Articles” clearly signals the beginning of a policy shift.

A man and a child stand in line at a coronavirus testing site in Beijing, November 22, 2022. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

At the same time, a rapid increase in the number of infections, after nearly three years in which zero-COVID policies have repeatedly suppressed transmission in the world’s most populous country, has caused uncertainty and public discussion.

The “Twenty Articles” include restrictions on the ability of localities to issue lockdowns, as well as a shortening of quarantine times for close contacts of people infected with COVID-19, a loosening of travel restrictions to and within China, and the ending of contact tracing for secondary contacts.

Although serving as a national guiding policy, the “Twenty Articles” were first thoroughly implemented in Shijiazhuang City, the capital of Hebei Province. Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million people near Beijing, became the initial testing ground for the reopening policy.

China’s ruling class and many media outlets were the first to trumpet this signal, with statements even comparing the policy shift to “the liberation of Shijiazhuang in 1947” during the civil war against the Kuomintang of General Chiang Kai-shek.

Even according to official data, the number of cases rose considerably after the easing of restrictions. On November 9, Shijiazhuang reported just 59 asymptomatic cases, but by November 13, the figure had jumped to 3 new confirmed cases and 541 asymptomatic cases, before declining for three consecutive days.

Many media outlets focused on this uncommon “achievement.” This was opposed and ridiculed on social media, however.

One comment on social media warned: “Don’t deceive yourself. Now that the testing is cancelled, this data will naturally drop. But this false data is meaningless.” Another said: “Eighty percent of my family members are infected, but you say that the data has dropped by 80 percent. For the first time, I feel that the pandemic is so close to me.”

At the same time, the Shijiazhuang Municipal Government issued a “letter to all residents” stating that “everyone” was firstly “responsible for their own health.” While the letter claimed that this “is not relaxing the epidemic prevention,” the public response indicated a lack of trust in this statement.

Contrary to media claims, Shijiazhuang does not seem to have become a scene of “consumption recovery driving economic recovery.” A restaurant owner said on social media: “Since the opening, the restaurant’s turnover has plummeted. Our people are not fools, they will not take risks of infection by going out to eat.”

At the same time, a parent of a primary school student reported: “On the first day of school resumption, only two of the 52 students in the class came to school.”

According to media reports, face masks and Lianhua Qingwen capsules in many pharmacies have been out of stock. Lianhua Qingwen capsules are a Chinese patent medicine that is believed to relieve fever symptoms.

A rapid rise in the number of infections then poured cold water on the previous media excitement. Whereas on November 16 just 182 new cases of asymptomatic infections were added, by November 20, according to the Hebei Provincial Health Commission, two new cases were confirmed in Shijiazhuang with 639 asymptomatic infections. While still comparatively low, the figures point to the danger of an explosion in the number of infections.

When Shijiazhuang authorities announced the cancellation of normal PCR testing, residents expressed uneasiness and fears that this would accelerate infections. “Even if a test site is needed, it should not be Shijiazhuang,” one wrote. “It is absurd and irresponsible to suddenly relax all measures when the number of infections is rising rapidly. This is by no means scientific.”

Due to the rapid increase in cases, the Shijiazhuang City Epidemic Prevention and Control Headquarters issued a notice on the evening of November 20 stating that nucleic acid testing would be conducted in multiple urban areas of the city for five consecutive days.

The notice said it was necessary to “concentrate efforts to control the pandemic in key areas and curb the spread of the epidemic as soon as possible.” This was needed to achieve “dynamic zero COVID” on the social level, “to protect people’s lives and health to the greatest extent, and minimise the impact of the epidemic on economic and social development.”

The notice declared that residents in high-risk areas should strictly stay at home and residents in other areas should stay at home in principle. Residents should not go out or gather unless necessary, and minimize the flow of people, except for staff involved in urban operations, market supply guarantees, public services and epidemic prevention and control.

The notice also stated that in order to meet the daily needs of residents, each family could arrange for one person to go out for two hours a day, with a 24-hour PCR test certificate, to purchase daily necessities.

The lack of clarity on the government’s position has caused further confusion. According to the information on the internet, there is reason to believe that many cities have restarted lockdown policies in high-risk areas. The Baiyun District of Guangzhou City also announced a five-day lockdown on Monday. Guangzhou, home to more than 18 million people, is one of the Chinese cities most affected by the current pandemic.

But the implementation of relevant policies is being largely communicated verbally through vague language. A blogger described the situation. “I asked friends who work in the public sector in Beijing and Shijiazhuang, and none of them knew what to do, and there was no clear policy, so they could only guess.” This post received widespread approval.

Despite widespread public perception that the new policy has failed, the current official explanation is that local governments are making policy adjustments based on the “Twenty Articles.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bureaucracy is clearly facing a dilemma. It confronts huge economic pressure from global and domestic big business for the scrapping of the zero-COVID policy on the one hand, but, on the other, growing public alarm over signs that the pandemic is rapidly expanding.

According to official data, on November 21 China had 2,225 new confirmed cases and 25,902 new asymptomatic infections—a total of 28,127—up from a near-record 27,095 the previous day.

Germany’s “Citizen’s Income” will reinforce poverty levels

Carola Kleinert

On November 14, the German government introduced a bill in the Bundestag to replace the existing Hartz IV system of social security with a so-called Citizen's Income. The bill was rejected in Germany’s second house (Bundesrat) following opposition from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The mediation committee of the Bundestag and Bundesrat is due to negotiate a compromise on November 23.

The debate in the Bundesrat was a continuation of the heated arguments which took place in the Bundestag and the media. Anyone who has followed this debate would understandably react with disgust. The governing coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) have been avidly spreading the lie that their bill is the “biggest social reform in 20 years.”

Poverty in Germany—a bottle collector in Berlin [Photo by Sascha Kohlmann / flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0]

In fact, the planned Citizen’s Income is a hypocritical relabeling of the hated Hartz laws introduced in early 2005 by the former SPD-Green coalition government led by Gerhard Schröder (SPD). In the period since, the Hartz laws have forced millions of people into poverty and precarious low-wage jobs.

The laws legalised numerous forms of precarious employment that had previously been prohibited or restricted by law—so-called mini-jobs, extended temporary work, temporary contracts and restrictive work contracts. The centrepiece was the introduction of Hartz IV basic security payments. Unemployed people lost their entitlement to unemployment benefits after one year. They then had to accept any job, no matter how poorly paid, and could only claim state support after they had exhausted their savings.

As a result of these laws, every fourth person in Germany now works in precarious type employment while 800,000 supplement their salaries with state aid to make ends meet. A total of 5.3 million are currently dependent on miserly Hartz IV payments.

The planned Citizen’s Income will do nothing to change this situation. Despite inflation, the energy crisis and exploding food prices, the standard rate for recipients will increase by only 10 percent compared to Hartz IV, i.e., an average increase of €50 per person per month. This means that recipients will be barely able to afford basic necessities.

Food prices alone in Germany have risen by 20 percent in the last 12 months. According to the Consumer Advice Centre, the increase was 55 percent for butter, 57 percent for curd cheese, 43 percent for milk and 38 percent for flour. The price of a loaf of bread hovers around €4 and pasta, popular with children, costs 33 percent more than a year ago.

The planned basic benefit for the different groups is as follows: Single persons and single parents are to receive €502 per month instead of the current €449, i.e., €53 more. Couples or joint households will receive €451 per partner, an increase of €50. Adults in care facilities as well and those under 25 who still live in their parents’ household and are not gainfully employed are to be entitled to €402 euros—an increase of €45 compared to the Hartz IV standard rate.

For young people between 14 and 17, an increase of €47 to €420 is planned, for 6- to 13-year-olds by €39 to €348 and by €35 to €318 for small children.

These rates are far below the levels demanded by social associations and will only serve to increase poverty levels. Child poverty will also be exacerbated considerably. The current completely inadequate benefit rates prevent children and young people from being properly provided for. In 2021, child poverty in Germany reached 20.8 percent, i.e., every fifth child grows up in poverty.

As the Consumer Advice Centre emphasises, even the future citizen’s income is not sufficient for “a healthy diet.” Three quarters of the more than 2 million people who depend on regular food support from food banks receive Hartz IV benefits.

In order to be able to “lead a life in dignity,” an adult living alone needs a basic allowance of €725 as well as the payment of electricity costs, according to the welfare group Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband.

The parties of the federal coalition and the opposition CDU/CSU all essentially agree, however, on the miserly benefit rates, which will lead to even more severe poverty-related malnutrition and stigmatisation for the 5.33 million adults and children affected (as of October 2022, according to the Federal Employment Agency).

Two points in particular remain controversial: The introduction of a two-year “waiting period,” during which those receiving citizen’s income do not have to move to a smaller flat and are allowed to retain “assets” of up to €60,000 (plus another €30,000 per household member). And, secondly, a six-month “trust period” during which regulations imposed on welfare recipients by the employment offices are eased somewhat, meaning the unemployed do not have to take the first job they are offered.

The CDU and CSU are shamelessly stirring up a debate based on social discrimination. Together with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the two parties rail against the allegedly planned “social cushion” for the unemployed and migrant workers.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz, who already hit the headlines in September with his anti-refugee “social tourism” agitation, is using the Citizen’s Income issue to once again spread the slogans of the AfD. According to Merz, the proposed Citizen’s Income often makes it “no longer worthwhile even for immigrants to take up a simple job.' He is whipping up xenophobia with the claim: “And that's what really attracts people from many countries.”

The government is clearly trying to defuse potentially explosive protests with its talk of a “waiting period” and “trust period.” Affordable housing is simply no longer limited to big cities such as Munich, Frankfurt or Berlin, and the savings in the government bill will mainly benefit the SPD’s wealthier clientele—the self-employed and small entrepreneurs—who are experiencing economic hardship due to the current crisis. Barely any other unemployed persons who have to apply for Hartz IV have at the same time €60,000 in their bank account.

The hostility of the coalition government towards low earners, minimum wage earners and precarious jobbers was spelled out in a speech given by Martin Rosemann, the SPD spokesperson for labour and social affairs in the Bundestag. He defended the “waiting period” on the grounds that it makes the difference “between those who have always worked and saved something and those who have not.”

The conservatives are attacking the 'trust period” in particular. They claim that the relaxation of sanctions in the first six months of unemployment undermines the very purpose of Hartz IV, which is to force as many people as possible into precarious employment. The “proven” and “balanced” principle of “promoting and demanding” would be discarded and the planned citizen's income would open the way towards an “unconditional basic income.”

On his Twitter account CDU leader Merz rants: “The so-called #Citizens Income is the path to an unconditional #basic income drawn from tax revenues. It's unfair that working people finance those who could work but don't get all the state incentives to take a job.” Soon, “There won’t be many left in society who can’t fall back on some social transfer system” and thus become unwilling to work, Merz stated.

Merz knows what he is talking about. He is an expert on “social transfer systems”— but in reverse. Before he took over the chairmanship of the CDU, he headed the supervisory board of the German branch of BlackRock, which manages assets of US$6.4 trillion worldwide. The company ensures that billions flow into the accounts of the super-rich every year without them having to lift a finger. The billions are then squeezed out of the working class through low wages.

The CSU leader and Bavarian premier, Markus Söder, also polarised his tweet: “The #Citizens Income disadvantages low income groups who work hard: Cashiers, hairdressers, bus drivers, police chiefs—who find out eventually that not working is nearly as lucrative as working.”

Shortly afterwards the same Söder posed cynically before the media at the table of a Munich food bank and thanked the food banks for their “outstanding performance” and “great voluntary commitment” in supporting the needy. Everybody knows that it is starvation wages in the low-wage sector and miserly benefit rates for the unemployed that drive people desperately to seek charity food.

The SPD, Greens and FDP, along with CDU, CSU, AfD and Left Party, know the Citizen’s Income provides too little to live on and just enough to stay alive. They all indignantly reject the claim they are paving the way for an unconditional basic income. Federal Labour Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) affirmed at the Bundesrat meeting November 14 that he rules out an unconditional basic income just like the CDU and CSU.

The notorious Hartz IV principle of “promoting while making demands”—the sanction system hated by broad sections of the population, which forces Hartz IV recipients to accept any low-wage job, no matter how bad—is praised by both the government parties and the CDU/CSU opposition as a “proven” means of “getting people into work.”

All the parties agree that nothing should change. The government argues that many who accept the first available job due to the pressure of sanctions return to Hartz IV benefits after a short time, although urgently needed job vacancies remain unfilled. Nevertheless, the CDU/CSU and the AfD reject any relaxation of sanctions.

“We have 2.4 million unemployed and a growing number of vacancies. The state must send a signal: We need you in the labour market,” Merz demanded on Twitter and ranted in Berlin at the industry day of the Dehoga restaurant association: “Do we really need to expand a transfer system even further and give even more incentives not to return to the labour market so quickly?”

On Monday, Federal Labour Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD), who touts the draft law as a “chance for a self-determined life” for jobseekers, assured the CDU/CSU parties of his willingness to compromise in the plenary session of the Bundesrat. “My hand [is] outstretched for a solution,” he declared on behalf of the ruling coalition. On Tuesday, Heil announced a “compromise” with the CDU/CSU, completely scratching the “trust period” without sanctions.