Study finds that COVID was the leading cause of death globally in 2021

Benjamin Mateus

The scale of human devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is emerging more clearly as scientists and epidemiologists pore over the available data and draw inferences where data are lacking. A major study released last week found that COVID-19 was one of the leading causes of death in 2020 and the leading cause of death in 2021 globally, ahead of even ischemic heart disease which killed 8.9 million in 2019 and cancer which killed 9.5 million in 2018. 

The study was a follow-up on the World Health Organization (WHO) Technical Advisory Group’s May 2022 report on excess deaths associated with COVID-19. They estimate that global excess deaths had reached 14.83 million by the end of 2021, a figure 2.74 times higher that the 5.42 million reported deaths due to COVID-19 for the period. 

Global excess and reported COVID-19 deaths and death rates per 100,000 population. [Photo by Nature / CC BY 4.0]

Excess death is defined as the difference in the total number of deaths in a crisis compared to those expected under normal conditions. As the authors note:

Excess mortality accounts for both the total number of deaths directly attributed to the virus and those resulting from the indirect impact, such as disruption to essential health services or travel disruptions. Excess mortality is a well-established concept dating back centuries and has been used extensively to estimate the toll of past health crises and pandemics such as the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’.

When the two years—2020 and 2021—are compared to each other, what is striking is that deaths sustained in the first year paled in comparison to the second year, despite the initiation of mass vaccination campaigns in many countries. The profit-driven promotion of vaccine nationalism led to a vastly unequal distribution of vaccines globally, causing millions of needless deaths in predominantly lower income countries. While in 2020 approximately 4.47 million excess deaths were estimated, in 2021 the figure surged to 10.36 million.

One of the study’s authors, Ariel Karlinsky, the creator and maintainer of the World Mortality Dataset, told the World Socialist Web Site that the current study attempts to develop and improve on the models to estimate excess deaths for countries which did not provide all-cause-mortality data. He added that the current study includes more data from more countries from more time periods during the pandemic. It also includes sub-national data to aide in estimating national level mortality from countries where reporting is lagging or unavailable for an assortment of reasons.

Mapping the ratio of total excess deaths to total reported COVID-19 deaths. [Photo by Nature / CC BY 4.0]

To appreciate the scale of death wrought by the policies that allowed SARS-CoV-2 to spread unchecked globally, one would have to reach back to World Wars I and II. Indeed, the massive death toll that is being witnessed first-hand isn’t just a byproduct of the coronavirus’ particular virulent characteristics, but the international policy of finance capital that decided the cost of eliminating the virus was too onerous on their financial calculations and therefore not worth the saving of millions of lives. 

More than at any other point in human history, the technical capacity and scientific comprehension of how to rapidly eliminate the coronavirus and quickly end the pandemic was within the grasp of world leaders. The principle guiding their decisions has aptly been defined by the WSWS as “malign neglect,” which continues into the third winter of the pandemic.

As the authors note, lack of accurate standardized definitions of COVID-19 deaths and access to requisite all-cause mortality data through civil registration and vital statistics systems posed tremendous challenges to quantifying these estimates across every country and WHO world regions. Only 100 countries (52 percent) could provide monthly national data on excess deaths. The study notes:

In the two years within which the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted humanity, important lessons remain to be fully documented and harnessed as part of the global public health surveillance capacity. First, the urgent need to improve data and health information systems and the way data are collected, analyzed, shared and reported. Second, the required alignments of communicable disease surveillance with the continuous strengthening of health information systems and their integration with other existing routine surveillance systems, and with demographic and geographic monitoring systems to facilitate timely and targeted interventions. COVID-19 surveillance must also be combined with Universal Health Coverage and the International Health Regulations monitoring and related indicators for health-system preparedness, including vaccine coverage and water, sanitation, and hygiene services.

Without a doubt, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are fully aware of every country’s complete financial health, having extensive and meticulous historical data on nearly every transaction and payment ever made. But to ask how many have died and the cause of these deaths remains in the realm of speculation throughout much of the world.

A rational response to the current pandemic and the outbreaks and epidemics of the future will require internationally-coordinated databases and infrastructure that can meet these challenges in real-time, allocating resources and manpower efficiently and effectively.

The report provides important analysis on the countries worst impacted by the pandemic, both in absolute terms of excess deaths and relative to their population size and age structure. It notes:

The 20 countries with the highest excess estimates represent approximately half the global population and account for over 80 percent of the estimated global excess deaths … Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, the Russian Federation, South Africa, The United Kingdom, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States of America. 

Twenty-five countries with the highest total estimated excess deaths between January 2020 and December 2021. [Photo by Nature / CC BY 4.0]

When excess deaths were analyzed in the context of each country’s population size and age structure, it became clear that impoverished countries took the brunt of the pandemic, with more than 50 percent of all deaths occurring in lower-middle economies.

Although India, the Russian Federation, Indonesia, the United States, and Brazil were the countries that suffered the highest total estimated excess deaths in descending order of magnitude, when these were adjusted for expected deaths considering a country’s population size and age structure, an appreciable shift to the pandemic’s deadly toll on low-income countries was seen. In particular, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico, and Armenia were the five top countries with the highest excess deaths relative to expected deaths.

Twenty-five countries with the highest excess death relative to expected deaths. [Photo by Nature / CC BY 4.0]

Though the report doesn’t directly take account for the first six months of the pandemic, in previous discussion with Karlinsky, he noted that the efforts to contain the virus and protect the population, especially in the South-East Asian Region, excess deaths relative to expected deaths (see below) went negative. In other words, there were many excess lives saved. This also raises the important question as to why expected deaths are the figure they are. What interventions or social changes can be made that protect lives over and beyond what is considered the pre-pandemic “normal”? 

Global and WHO region P-scores (excess deaths relative to expected deaths), showing a marked decline in excess deaths amid lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic, particularly in the South-East Asian region. [Photo by Nature / CC BY 4.0]

Estimates by The Economist have correlated closely with those presented by the WHO’s COVID-19 mortality assessment technical group, with their central estimate at the end of December 2021 standing at around 15.9 million, a difference of around one million with that of the WHO’s 14.83 million excess deaths.

As 2022 draws to a close, The Economist’s central estimate has climbed to 20.9 million, meaning that the Omicron phase of the pandemic may well have contributed to approximately five million deaths, upending all the lies of the capitalist elites and their media that Omicron is “mild.” In fact, the death toll associated with COVID-19 in 2022 will likely be similar to that of 2020, meaning the virus will likely once again be among the top three killers in the world.

With the pandemic entering its fourth year, the reckless opening of China to mass infection is exposing one-sixth of the world’s population to COVID-19 for the first time. As a result, viral evolution may very well spawn a new variant of concern in the coming months, potentially more infectious, vaccine resistant, pathogenic, or any combination of the three.

Congress, Biden boost war spending at the expense of social programs

Patrick Martin

The massive omnibus budget bill passed by Congress and endorsed by President Joe Biden will cut social spending in real terms while increasing military spending and providing a further gusher of funds for the US proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) talks with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) talks with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) (Erin Schaff/Pool via AP) [AP Photo]

The omnibus legislation passed the Senate Thursday afternoon by a 68–29 vote, with all 50 Democrats and 18 Republicans supporting it, and 29 Republicans opposed. The bill raises domestic spending by $42 billion, or 6 percent, and raises military spending by $76 billion, roughly 10 percent.

The legislation accounts only for discretionary federal spending, which is subject to congressional action each year. An even larger sum goes to automatic outlays, so-called entitlements, which include Social Security and Medicare payments, other small retirement and benefit plans, and interest on the federal debt, which will rise sharply next year as the Federal Reserve raises rates.

Besides the top-line numbers of $858 billion for the military and $772 billion for domestic programs, there is another $80 billion in emergency spending, more than half for Ukraine, and the remainder to fund responses to US natural disasters like hurricanes, floods and wildfires. The White House proposal of $9 billion to fund future responses to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic was dropped.

Since the US inflation rate is 7 percent, the 6 percent rise in domestic spending is a real-terms cut, meaning fewer real resources for health care, education, housing, mass transportation and what remains of social benefit programs like food stamps and home heating assistance.

By contrast, the budget raises military spending by 10 percent, to a record $858 billion. There is an additional $45 billion in aid to Ukraine, which combines financial support to the bankrupt regime in Kiev and direct military support. Total war spending is thus well over $900 billion. An increase next year of similar proportions would put the military budget above $1 trillion for the first time, a truly staggering sum.

The bipartisan budget deal between Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer and Republican leader Mitch McConnell established for the first time that domestic spending would increase at a significantly lower rate than military spending.

McConnell gloated after the terms were made public early Tuesday morning, citing the much larger rise in military spending in comparison to domestic spending. “This an impressive outcome for the Republican negotiators,” he noted, pointing to the “substantial, real-dollar increase” for the military, and the “substantial real-dollar cut” in non-military spending.

The top Republican on the Armed Service Committee, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, said, “While this is not the package Republicans would have written on our own,” the allocation to the Pentagon “gives our military the resources needed to take on China, Russia and other looming threats.”

Senator Bernie Sanders lamented, “The defense spending is outrageous—much too high. But at the end of the day, I don’t want to see the government shut down, and there are some very important provisions in it.”

It was not a matter, however, of the Democrats caving in to Republican threats to block the passage of the omnibus and force a partial government shutdown. In reality, the Democrats enthusiastically embraced the huge military increase, and no longer advocate even nominal parity between domestic and military spending.

With the war in Ukraine, the Democratic Party has openly emerged as a party of rabid militarism. So fervent is the Democratic embrace of the proxy war against Russia—demonstrated in the rapturous reception for President Volodymyr Zelensky in his address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night—that the fascistic right wing of the Republican Party has been able to posture as the only antiwar faction in official politics.

The Pentagon funding includes a 4.6 percent pay raise for uniformed military personnel, and increases in virtually every area of procurement of new weapons systems, for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, including 19 new warships and 69 new F-35 fighter jets (average cost $80 million). The Department of Defense will also spend the largest-ever amount on research and development, $140 billion, to devise and produce new weapons systems.

Much of what is classified as domestic spending is not for social needs like health, education and transportation, but for surveillance and repression, or operations in support of the military and US foreign policy. This includes $61 billion for the Department of Homeland Security (up 5 percent), $152 billion for “Military Construction and Veteran’s Affairs,” up a whopping 20 percent, $60 billion for the State Department (up 6 percent), and $39 billion for the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI and other federal police operations.

There are also sizeable sums that go directly into the coffers of major corporations and banks, including funds for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Treasury.

The proportion of the budget devoted to activities which could conceivably benefit working people is well under 20 percent.

Even this spending is largely offset by provisions that will lead to further reductions in social benefits. The omnibus legislation allows states to begin kicking people off Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance for the poor, as early as next April, when states can begin reviewing eligibility of recipients.

Eligibility has been frozen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Republican-run state governments have been demanding the restoration of their power to exclude recipients from benefits, based on more draconian eligibility requirements or direct funding cuts.

Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, from Sanders and others, the Democratic negotiators dropped a proposal to restore the child tax credit to the levels which prevailed in 2020–2021 as part of pandemic relief. This expired in January 2022, and will not be revived because of opposition by Republicans and some right-wing Democrats, such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

The bill would expand contributions to 401(k) plans (private retirement funds), by requiring most employers to enroll employees automatically and providing a 50 percent federal match for the first $2,000 in contributions. This will have the effect of directing even more of workers’ earnings into the Wall Street casino, providing a new source of funding for the financial markets.

As the only legislative vehicle assured of escaping a Republican filibuster, the omnibus bill included not only the appropriations for every federal department and agency through September 30, 2023, but many other bills on issues entirely unrelated to the financing of the federal government.

The most important was a revision of the 1887 Electoral Act, the law regulating the certification of electoral votes cast in a presidential election, which was distorted by lawyers for Donald Trump to provide a legal cover for overturning his 2020 defeat.

The bill states explicitly that the vice president has only a ceremonial role in the congressional certification of electoral votes, and may not interfere by rejecting the electoral votes of any state. It also raises the number of legislators required to force a vote on certifying a state’s electors from one senator and one member of the House of Representatives to one-fifth of the members of each chamber. It also specifies that only one slate of electors, certified by the governor, shall be submitted from each state.

In an expression of the anti-China frenzy in Washington, another provision bans the Chinese-made TikTok application from all government cellphones, laptops and other electronic devices.

There are countless other special provisions inserted by senators and congressmen in response to appeals from corporate lobbyists, lubricated by lavish campaign contributions. These are small only in comparison to the $1.7 trillion total, but highly valuable to the corporate interests that promoted them.

Boeing, for example, was reprieved from meeting a December 27 deadline to meet enhanced safety requirements on new models of its 737 MAX jets. The original model was grounded because of two disastrous crashes that killed 346 people.

Many more such provisions will be uncovered and made public as journalists and others investigate the 4,155 pages of the omnibus bill.

Plant closures and mass layoffs in Germany continue at Christmas

Marianne Arens

In the days leading up to Christmas, announcements of plant closures and mass layoffs continue in Germany. Amid the ongoing war in the East, rampant inflation, bankruptcies and job cuts are piling up. Thousands of workers are facing the loss of their jobs and the livelihood of their families.

In the auto industry, multi-billion-dollar corporations are using the restructuring to electric vehicles and the explosion in energy prices to launch a frontal assault on wages and jobs. This is having a particularly strong impact on supplier companies.

At the Arcelor Mittal plant in Eisenhüttenstadt, 900 employees fear for their jobs. [Photo by Oberlausitzerin64 / wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Workers at the Druckguss Dohna foundry in Saxony are currently experiencing this. Some 120 die-casting workers will lose their jobs in just ten days; another 90 will be laid off six months later, and the rest of the 287 employees will have to leave at the end of 2023. Druckguss Dohna belongs to the automotive supplier DGH-Group and mainly produces engine and transmission parts made of light metal. Production will continue for the time being at a second site in Hof, Bavaria.

In Eisenhüttenstadt, Brandenburg, steelworkers at Arcelor Mittal fear for their jobs. Short-time working, which has been in place since September, will continue in the first quarter of 2023. Workers in the rolling mill are particularly affected by the loss of wages. In the former East Germany, the steel mill employed up to 16,000 workers; today there are only 900.

Several hundred employees of the electrical engineering group TE Connectivity are under acute threat of redundancy. The global group for electrical and electronic components is planning to cut a total of 300 jobs at all its German sites. The works council at the Bensheim site (southern Hesse) let the employees know this news in a simple notice on the bulletin board. The group, which is in the process of destroying 300 jobs, is at the same time reporting an annual profit of $2.26 billion.

The major auto companies Volkswagen, Opel/Stellantis, Daimler Benz and BMW are also passing on the crisis to their workforces. At Opel, a further 1,000 job cuts have been enforced at all three sites since October. In the entire car division, production is being shifted increasingly to temporary workers.

Volkswagen is also employing more temporary workers, who are paid less than permanent employees and can be dismissed more easily. This has been tacitly decided by the works council and IG Metall union for years. But even the better-paid engineers are no longer safe at VW. In October, Volkswagen and Ford abandoned their Argos AI joint venture to develop an autonomous passenger car. As a result, several hundred software engineers face an uncertain future.

On December 15, VW’s new CEO Oliver Blume announced his plans for a change in strategy. In the process, Audi is to hand over the role of technology lead to Porsche, putting the jobs of many development and software engineers in Ingolstadt at risk. It emerged shortly afterwards that annual factory costs at Audi’s Neckarsulm plant are to be halved by 2033.

The crisis is not only felt in auto, steel and metal production, but in all sectors. Many medium-sized companies in production, services and logistics are passing on increased energy costs and of the economic crisis as a whole to the working class.

This year, for example, employees of Intigena, a manufacturer of hygiene products, will also experience a bitter Christmas. In three months, at the end of March 2023, the plant near Fulda is to be closed and production cease, affecting 150 employees, some of whom have been with the company for many years. They were informed at a works meeting last Monday and will receive their compulsory redundancy notice just before Christmas.

In the retail sector, sales assistants at Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof are particularly affected. Billionaire René Benko wants to close up to 90 more stores with around 10,000 employees in the near future, and this is after 40 stores were already shut down in the last two years. Massive staff cuts are also expected at the remaining locations. The Galeria General Works Council communicated the figures to staff in an email on December 20, while the workers are currently bracing themselves for the last days of the Christmas shopping season,

The layoffs, plant closures and attacks on wages and hours are part of a class war waged by the ruling class and its lackeys in the trade union headquarters. The working class is being made to pay for the escalating costs of war, just as it has had to pay before for the costs of the government’s failed pandemic policies.

Last weekend, Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, predicted a recession for the entire coming year as well as continued high inflation. The causes lie primarily in the stoppage of Russian oil and gas and supply chains that have been disrupted in the course of the pandemic. Nevertheless, bankers and economists claim that it is the allegedly overly high wages of workers that are fueling inflation and are to blame. That is why they are demanding low wage settlements, the replacement of jobs covered by collective bargaining agreements with temporary positions, and are pushing through job cuts, plant closures, and wage and benefit deals far below the rate of inflation.

Meanwhile, shareholders, managers and the super-rich are lining their pockets. Lufthansa’s supervisory board has just decided to resume paying millions in bonuses to its top managers.

During the pandemic, when 30,000 Lufthansa employees were laid off, the German government bailed out the airline with billions in taxpayers’ money. The condition for the government’s Coronavirus aid was that the executive board members should forego their bonuses; but they were not prepared to do so. At the beginning of December, the Supervisory Board decided to let the additional income for top management continue to flow in the form of a so-called “long-term bonus.” According to finance daily Handelsblatt, Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr, for example, has so far received “only” €1.676 million for 2021. The figure is made up of basic remuneration and fringe benefits. As recently as 2019, it had been almost five million euros, including bonuses.

Also, the shareholders of all major corporations are looking forward to the new dividend payouts, which they expect in the spring. They rely on the functionaries of the trade unions, who co-determine their “entrepreneurial decisions” and then enforce them against the workers even in the event of mass layoffs. These bureaucrats are rewarded for their services with lucrative supervisory board positions and other additional income.

One such example is Peter Mosch, chairman of the Audi general works council and mouthpiece of the new VW boss Oliver Blume. In an interview, Mosch praises Blume in the highest terms: “We had an implementation problem under [former CEO] Diess. That is fundamentally changing under Oliver Blume,” Mosch enthused in the Augsburger Allgemeine. And he continued: “Mr. Blume also takes the initiative to call me. If a topic is on my mind, we get together by phone within 24 hours. That is a good sign ... Mr. Blume involves the people.”

Later, Mosch boasts, “We’ve agreed that about 9,000 jobs will be eliminated in a socially responsible way, but in exchange, about 2,000 will be created in new areas like electrification and digitization.” In other words, this bureaucrat boasts that he has ensured that 7,000 jobs will be destroyed in a “socially acceptable” manner. Mosch is also deputy chairman of Audi’s supervisory board and sits on VW’s global works council, as well as leading committees at VW and Porsche. Presumably, he is now a millionaire.

Ford workers demonstrate after the announcement of the closure of the Saarlouis plant, June 22, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

But the working class is less and less willing to be bound and gagged by such bureaucrats. Just as in Britain, France, the U.S. or Sri Lanka, the growing protests and strikes show that anger is mounting, not only against “capital and cabinet,” but also against Verdi, IG Metall and all unions, which isolate every labour struggle and let it die in ineffective, “symbolic” actions and noisy protests, while they help enforce the attacks.

Just in the last few days, there have been numerous strikes, for example at Amazon in fulfilment centres in Bad Hersfeld, Dortmund, Graben, Koblenz, Leipzig, Rheinberg and Werne. They were directed against the poor pay, lack of vacation pay and only very small Christmas bonuses and other anti-social practices of the online giant, which has taken exploitation to a new level. In the summer, Amazon did not even stop operations when a worker collapsed dead.

Ikea sales staff also organized a one-day strike in the middle of the Christmas shopping season, because this retail giant also pays poorly and is threatening to cut jobs. In Europe, at least 3,500 jobs are to be cut at Ikea.

On Tuesday, about 200 employees of Vestas wind turbines in Aarhus, Denmark, demonstrated in front of the company headquarters for better pay. In parallel, there will be a five-day strike from Monday to Friday before Christmas. At the company’s German facilities, 88 percent of IG Metall members had already voted for an indefinite strike for better pay at the end of October, but the union has not yet called it. Vestas Germany employs 1,700 people, including 700 assemblers.

The unions are constantly trying to divert workers’ willingness to fight into harmless channels, but this does not succeed in every case. When the employees of Riesa Nudeln in Saxony were able to push through their wage demands in full in November after a seven-week strike, Der Spiegel noted in a commentary (“Proletarians of all countries: moaning was in the past!”), that times had changed because “a new generation is getting involved. Younger employees who did not consciously experience the GDR [former East Germany] and the post-reunification period and who do not understand why they should earn hundreds of euros less than their colleagues from Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg ... people born after 1990.” With the strike, many had “experienced something like self-empowerment for the first time.”

In Saarland, where it has already been decided to close the Saarlouis Ford plant by 2025, the local and national media are shedding crocodile tears over the fact that workers are having “a piece of their identity pulled out from under them” (Die Zeit). Including the industrial park, over 6,000 jobs are to be destroyed in Saarlouis. IG Metall is trying hard to distract attention from its own foul sell-out with ridiculous actions. But fewer and fewer workers are still willing to merely put protest stickers with the inscription: “Without Saarlouis my last Ford,” on the Ford logo of the cars, they must still continue producing until the bitter end.

Thousands of UK ambulance workers strike, Tory government deploys army as scabs

Tony Robson

Thousands of ambulance workers including paramedics, technicians, emergency care assistants and call handlers struck today at 10 of the 11 regional ambulance services in England and Wales.

Ambulance workers' picket line in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, December 21, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

The strike by members of the GMB, Unison and Unite unions is against a 4 percent pay award imposed by the Conservative government. But it is bound up with a fight to end the crippling impact of underfunding and privatisation, leaving overworked staff unable to provide emergency care to patients.

Ambulance workers agreed to provide cover for all Category 1 calls posing a direct risk to life.

The Tory government has utilised the action to deploy 750 soldiers in a strikebreaking role for the first time since Thatcher brought in the army during the 1989-90 ambulance dispute. The BBC reported that 170 military personnel had received crash-course training at Wellington Barracks in Westminster on how to drive ambulances.

This has nothing to do with saving a single life but is aimed at justifying authoritarian measures to clamp down on the strike wave engulfing the Sunak government. Among them are plans to outlaw strikes in key sectors through Minimum Service Level legislation. A law allowing agency staff to cover for strikers was introduced in July.

The real threats posed to patient lives are the delays in ambulance response times produced by the Tory government’s cuts to the National Health Service (NHS), a crisis brought to breaking point by its criminal handling of the pandemic.

Around 10,000 of the strikers are represented by the GMB. According to a poll conducted by the union of ambulance workers in July, a third had been involved with cases where a patient’s death was linked to a delay. Eighty-five percent reported delays had impacted patient recovery.

Ambulance crews were unable to respond to one in four 999 emergency calls in October, the highest proportion ever recorded, due to delays in handovers at A&E departments because of bed shortages.

Martin Flaherty, Managing Director of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (ACCE) representing the heads of ten regional ambulance services in England, commented, “The life-saving safety net that NHS ambulance services provide is being severely compromised by these unnecessary delays and patients are dying and coming to harm on a daily basis.”

Ambulance staff have been struck down in large numbers by COVID-19 due to a callous official indifference towards their safety that has claimed the lives of 1,500 health and social care workers and condemned many more to illness, including extended ill-health with Long COVID.

While ambulance workers are denied a cost-of-living increase, made ill and overworked, and the NHS is starved of funds, the private sector continues to leech millions of pounds. A GMB report showed that the 10 trusts in England handed over £235 million in three years to the private sector for emergency and non-emergency transport.

The poverty pay levels presided over by the health unions are such that the NHS had to introduce a top-up this year for its lowest paid staff, including call handlers, cleaning, catering and transport staff, to avoid prosecution for breaching the statutory minimum wage—just £9.50 an hour, set to rise to £10.42 next year.

The trade unions have been forced to call strike action by the mounting anger of their members, but they are waging a covert campaign of sabotage to prevent a unified offensive against the government from developing.

Unison and Unite called off strike action by ambulance workers in Scotland to push through a pay offer from the Scottish National Party devolved government averaging just 7.5 percent. Even the 11.24 percent for the lowest paid does not keep up with inflation.

The GMB also withdrew strike action last month at the Scottish ambulance service to ballot on the offer. However, the deal was rejected by a two thirds majority of the union’s NHS workers last week, showing the depth of opposition among the 8,000 nurses, porters and radiographers including 1,700 ambulance staff it represents.

The double-speak of union leaders about standing up for ambulance workers and the NHS is epitomised by Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham, whose union represents 1,600 ambulance workers striking today. She praised the pay award in Scotland, covering 1,500 ambulance workers in Unite, as proof that it fights “for better jobs, pay and conditions in the health service”.

Unite leader Sharon Graham speaking at the Trades Union Congress rally in London on June 18, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

By packaging revised offers amounting to pay cuts as “victories,” Graham has played a key role in preventing unified action by workers in the UK’s largest private sector union—on the rail and buses, council refuse, docks and oil refineries. This goal is what lies behind Graham’s desperate appeals for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to meet with union leaders. Speaking on Sky News yesterday she begged, “It does not have to be a long negotiation, we’ve done this already in Scotland.”

The Scottish deal touted by Graham was rejected by a third of Unite members. Wilma Brown, chair of Unison’s Scottish health committee, was forced to acknowledge widespread discontent over the deal, which passed with only 57 percent in favour. “It was far from a unanimous decision and many of the NHS professional grades feel badly let down,” she said. “Almost half of Unison NHS staff voted to reject this latest pay offer, and many who did vote to accept, did so reluctantly.”

Foisting a below inflation agreement on an angry membership wanting a real fight sums up the role the health unions are playing, with Unison the largest union in the UK and representing nearly half a million workers in the NHS.

The ambulance workers’ strike immediately follows the second day of national action by up to 100,000 nurses in the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) opposing the same derisory pay award and demanding an increase 5 percent above inflation. 30,000 RCN members in Scotland threw out the proposed deal with the SNP by a massive 82 percent majority. Members of the Royal College of Midwives also rejected the deal by 65 percent.

Today’s action also exposes the divisions the unions sow. Services affected include nine with workers represented by the GMB, five with workers represented by Unison, and three by Unite. Even where strikes coincide in the same service, the unions ensured different start and finishing times for the stoppages to prevent combined action.

Fiji election produces unstable coalition government

John Braddock

Last week’s general election in the strategic South Pacific island country of Fiji has produced an acute political crisis. The result marks the possible end of 16 years of political dominance by coup leader and prime minister Frank Bainimarama, who lost his parliamentary majority. But it remains unclear whether the fragile opposition coalition, led by another coup leader and ex-prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka, will take office.

Frank Bainimarama and Sitiveni Rabuka [Photo by James Dowson / CC BY-NC-SA 2.5, US Embassy Suva / Public Domain]

Because neither Bainimarama’s Fiji First Party (FFP) or the Rabuka-led coalition won a majority of seats in the 55-member parliament, the “king-maker” became the unpopular Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), which secured just three seats. After three days of backroom horse-trading, it announced on Tuesday that it will partner with Rabuka’s Peoples Alliance Party (PAP) and the National Federation Party (NFP) to form a new coalition government.

In an extraordinarily close vote to decide which side to join in government, SODELPA’s 30-member management board reportedly voted 16 for the Rabuka-led PAP-NFP alliance and 14 for Bainimarama’s FFP. However, less than 24 hours later SODELPA’s general secretary Lenaitasi Duru tendered his resignation citing “anomalies” in the voting process. He declared that the result was “null and void.” Claims of bribery are being aired.

Wednesday’s parliament sitting, due to formally elect the prime minister, was then deferred because President Wiliame Katonivere had not yet issued a proclamation.

Bainimarama lost his parliamentary majority when the election count was declared on Sunday, producing a hung parliament. To form government, 28 seats are needed in the 55-seat house. The FFP took 26 seats and 42.5 percent of the vote. Bainimarama lost 18.42 percent of his personal vote from the 2018 poll and the FFP fell by 11.8 percent overall.

The PAP, led by the 74-year-old Rabuka, received 36 percent and 21 seats. The PAP’s electoral ally, the NFP, took 9 percent and 5 seats. The two therefore control 26 seats. SODELPA, the main opposition party in the last parliament, gained just 5.2 percent of the vote and three seats, giving it the parliamentary balance of power.

Bainimarama has not yet formally conceded defeat. He earlier told an Australian reporter he would “respect” the election outcome but has been evasive over whether he would surrender office. While army commander Major General Ro Jone Kalouniwai has declared the military will not interfere, fears of another coup are never far from the surface.

Five other parties—Unity Fiji, Fiji Labour Party, We Unite Fiji Party, All People’s Party, New Generation Party—as well as two independents each failed to reach the required 5 percent threshold to enter parliament.

From 692,000 registered voters the final turnout was just 68.28 percent, higher than initially feared but lower than the 71.92 percent at the 2018 election. This is an indication of growing popular alienation with the entire political set-up.

The election was highly contentious, with the credibility of the counting process questioned after the official election app crashed. Rabuka declared he had no confidence in the count and at one point invited the army commander to become involved, raising the spectre of yet another coup.

The hung parliament was the product of another sham election between two parties led by former military strongmen, carried out under conditions of tight media censorship, heavy political restrictions and accusations of government intimidation.

With Fiji’s ruling elite sharply divided, any coalition government will be unstable. SODELPA will shift the already autocratic regime even further to the right, using its position to advance the interests of the iTaukei indigenous Fijian chiefly elite, at the expense of ordinary ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijian members of the population.

According to the Pacific Newsroom, SODELPA entered the coalition talks with a series of “non-negotiable” demands, including the re-establishment of the Great Council of Chiefs. That body was shut down by Bainimarama in 2012 for exacerbating racial divisions which he claimed were “to the detriment of Fiji’s pursuit of a common and equal citizenry.”

SODELPA also demanded the deputy prime ministership and other ministerial posts, including the minister for iTuakei affairs and key board chairs and memberships. It called for the 2013 Constitution to be reviewed and the country to be formally declared a Christian state, with an embassy to be established in Jerusalem.

Details of the coalition deal with Rabuka have not been released. Another reported SODELPA demand was to repeal 32 laws deemed “discriminatory” to traditional Fijian landowners, including the “surfing decree.” This 2010 measure sought to boost the tourism industry by allowing public admission to world-class surfing areas previously only accessible through the patronage of private resorts.

Rabuka was prime minister from 1992 to 1999 after initiating two coups in 1987. Ideologically and politically, SODELPA and his PAP share the same orientation regarding indigenous Fijian issues. Rabuka was also chair of the Great Council of Chiefs for a period. He formed the PAP in a split from SODELPA two years ago after losing a bitter leadership spill against current leader Viliame Gavoka.

Rabuka has since distanced himself, at least publicly, from his previous communalist positions. He apologised for his 1987 coups, which were carried out to boost the position of ethnic Fijians and declared during the election campaign that Indo-Fijians would be treated fairly by the PAP.

Rabuka’s electoral ally, the NFP, represents the interests of the Indian business elite. While professing concerns about the cost of living and promising to restore the rights of trade unions, the NFP election manifesto targeted government spending and “wastage,” and promised an extensive “audit” of the economy within the first 100 days.

While SODELPA’s inner-party vote was sharply divided, its turn to the PAP has a history. The party’s founding leader and later prime minister Laiseni Qarase was deposed, arrested and jailed on corruption charges following Bainimarama’s 2006 coup. Qarase led Fiji in the wake of a 2000 coup by George Speight, implementing a program of economic liberalisation.

Radio New Zealand reported that the SODELPA Youth Council had expressed its “distaste” to the party’s board for even considering Fiji First as a partner. The youth arm declared that the decision showed the “desperation and compromised approach” the party was willing to take to form a government and called on it to put an end to “16 years of dictatorial leadership” under Bainimarama.

In fact, successive regimes, including Rabuka’s, have all rested on the military and have been authoritarian and anti-working class. Harsh austerity measures that have heightened social inequality and misery have been accompanied by repressive laws and violence by the police and military. Struggles by workers, including strikes, have been harshly suppressed.

Any new regime, like capitalist governments around the world, will embark on an authoritarian program to impose the dictates of international finance capital, with even greater austerity measures against the working class at home.

Fiji’s workers are suffering a skyrocketing cost of living, thousands of lost jobs, and fractured supply chains for food, energy and basic goods. The social catastrophe has been exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The poverty rate was nearly 30 percent in 2020, but half the population is struggling to put food on the table. The Economy Ministry has predicted a recovery with GDP growth of 11.3 percent for 2022. However, this follows three years of economic decline and in line with global trends, Fiji faces escalating inflation, currently 5.2 percent.

As far as Washington and its local imperialist allies Australia and New Zealand are concerned, Fiji will be required to maintain its pivotal role in the southwestern Pacific in the build-up to war against China that was consolidated under Bainimarama. Rabuka and SODELPA have sought to reassure these powers.

Viliame Gavoka, the pre-election SODELPA leader, has declared that foreign affairs will be aligned closely to “traditional partners,” Australia, New Zealand, and the members of the Pacific Islands Forum, not China. “Our relationship with China will be guided by the Australian, [and] the New Zealand governments,” he said.

In an interview in August with Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service, Rabuka ruled out a security pact with China if he won government, saying it was time his country returned to its “comfortable niche” with Australia, while maintaining “cordial” relations with China.

Canada passes 50,000 registered COVID-19 deaths as “tripledemic” wreaks havoc on health care systems nationwide

Malcolm Fiedler

Fatalities from the COVID-19 pandemic passed a grim milestone in Canada over the weekend as the official death toll surpassed 50,000. According to data tracked and collected by Dr. Tara Moriarty, an associate professor at the University of Toronto Medicine, at least 50,000 Canadians had died from COVID-19 as of December 18, although she estimated the real figure to be closer to 80,000. 

In this Thursday, April 29, 2021, photo, Sherry Cross Child, a Canadian resident of Stand Off, Alberta, receives a COVID-19 vaccine at the Piegan-Carway border crossing near Babb, Mont. (AP Photo/Iris Samuels)

Meanwhile, hospitals across Canada are experiencing extreme pressure over what many officials are referring to as a “tripledemic” of respiratory viral illnesses, specifically high levels of influenza, RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) and COVID-19. Pediatric hospital admissions have exploded nationally, with growing levels of infections also among seniors.

The situation has caused many hospitals to put into place operational emergency protocols to deal with the massive surge of patients. The BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, the largest pediatric care institution in the province, became one of the first to declare a “Code Orange,” activating its emergency triage procedures, on November 23. An internal memo, obtained by the Canadian Press, indicated that the hospital had implemented “double-bunking,” putting multiple children in single rooms.

In Alberta, health services were diverted from other services, including respite care, to help deal with the flood of pediatric patients. In Calgary, officials were forced to open heated trailers outside of the main children’s hospital to deal with the overflow of patients. The United Nurses of Alberta trade union issued a demand Wednesday for an indoor mask mandate to slow down viral transmission.

In Montreal, the largest city in the province of Quebec, the city’s two pediatric hospitals reported an average occupancy rate of 112 percent. Two children have recently died in the city from strep A infections. The chief of emergency medicine at St.Justine’s Children’s Hospital, Dr. Antonio D’Angelo, stated that the inflow of patients was something he had never seen before, and added that it is “scary” to think how the next few weeks will play out.

Meanwhile, medical authorities have announced an investigation into the death of a 2-year-old infant in Ajax, Ontario, which prompted widespread outrage on social media, directed at hard-right premier Doug Ford for his spending cuts to health care. A video posted by a woman claiming to be a nurse who witnessed the death, indicated that the young child may have died on the floor of an ER room because of overcrowding.

Data provided to Global News showed a 150 percent increase in pediatric hospital admissions in the province over pre-pandemic levels, a trend that has been on a steady increase since July. The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) formally requested volunteer help from the Canadian Red Cross, a step that underscores that the province’s health care system is collapsing.

A poll released by the Ontario Federation of Labour earlier this week found that 79 percent of respondents think health care is in a “state of crisis” and 55 percent blame the situation on Ford. There is no doubt that Ford’s Progressive Conservative government’s savage austerity measures since coming to power in 2018, and the imposition of brutal wage restraint through Bill 124 on public sector workers, has slashed hospital budgets and driven workers out of the industry. But the crisis in Ontario and across the country is the result of decades of ruthless budget cutting backed by all the established political parties, since the 1990s, to fund tax breaks for the corporate elite and Canadian military interventions abroad. The Trudeau government has maintained a strict 3 percent cap on health transfers to the provinces since coming to power in 2015, helping ensure that health spending has consistently fallen in real terms.

The Atlantic provinces also confront a health care crisis. In New Brunswick, where at least five patients have died in emergency rooms over the past six months while waiting for care, public health authorities revealed that cases of RSV among children were 800 percent higher in November than in previous years. Dr. Andrew Lynk, the top doctor at Halifax’s IWK Health Center, the largest children’s hospital in the Maritimes, told Global News on December 10, that the hospital was continuing to get “slammed” with patients.

As RSV and flu infections rage on, Canada appears poised to enter another deadly winter COVID wave. On December 14, Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam, told reporters that the country could experience an “uptick” in the new year. Despite desperate attempts by Tam and other public health officials to downplay the dangerousness of the virus, emerging data shows that the country may have already been seeded by BQ variants of Omicron, and is in the initial stages of a winter wave just before the winter holidays, when increased travel to visit family and friends will facilitate viral transmission.

In BC, data released by the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) on December 16, showed a marked increase in infections, hospitalizations and deaths from reporting the previous week. In Quebec, the province announced on December 20, that it was experiencing its highest levels for hospitalizations for COVID-19 since the middle of last summer.

The callous disregard for the health and safety of children by the ruling class and their indifference to mass disease and illness has been brought into sharp focus this winter. The current health care catastrophe is the direct product of the decision by all provincial governments, overseen by the federal Liberal government to adopt the program of the far-right “Freedom Convoy” last spring by abolishing all remaining restrictions on COVID’s spread.

The ruling elite’s embrace of “forever COVID,” from the Conservatives on the right to the New Democrats on the “left,” has been accompanied by pseudo-scientific nonsense about the inevitability of the current wave of infections due to “immunity debt.” The logic of this argument, much like the bogus claim that “herd immunity” would offer a way out of the pandemic, is that we must accept permanent mass infection with whatever viruses are in circulation. Serious scientists have instead pointed out that the unchecked spread of COVID has weakened our immune systems and undermined the ability of already overstretched hospitals to provide care.

One of the prime examples of the moral bankruptcy of Canada’s public health system is BC’s Chief Public Health Officer Bonnie Henry and the BCNDP government she serves. On December 3, Henry and BC Minister of Health, Adrian Dix, updated the province on the state of the pandemic. Days later, reports began surfacing in the media that six children in the province had died from influenza over the previous two weeks, critical public health information that Dix and Henry deliberately withheld. Amid the public outcry, Henry and the BCCDC promptly changed course and declared their intention to begin issuing weekly influenza updates.

Henry, long a proponent of the far-right Great Barrington Declaration, a virulent anti-masker, and denier of the fact that COVID-19 spreads through the air in tiny particles called aerosols, is a kind of poster child for the pseudo-scientific claptrap the ruling class has used to promote its homicidal “live with the virus” strategy. Her concealment of the children’s deaths demonstrates the depths that governments have succumbed in attempting to justify their murderous policies.

Bank of Japan decision sends “shock” through global markets

Nick Beams

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has delivered what was almost universally described in the financial press as a “shock” to global markets with its decision on Tuesday to relax its so-called yield curve control (YCC) policy.

Under the policy, implemented almost a decade ago, the central bank has intervened in the market, buying up government bonds, to ensure that the yield or interest rate on 10-year government debt hovers around zero.

People stand in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei 225 index at a securities firm Monday, Oct. 31, 2022, in Tokyo. [AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko]

The loosening move was a decision to expand the band within which the yield can fluctuate from minus 0.25 percent to plus 0.25 percent to minus 0.5 percent to plus 0.5 percent.

Bond prices fell in response to the decision, sending the yield to as high as 0.47 percent before easing back to 0.41 percent, the highest level in almost two decades. Bond prices and their yields move in opposite directions.

While the numbers involved are small, the implications are large because of the trillions of dollars that surge through the global financial system every day. Thus, a small movement in interest rates can result in sizeable gains or losses on any deal depending on the calculations made when it was struck.

A number of financial trading houses had been making the bet there would be some move on the YCC policy, if not its total abandonment. This was because of the pressure on the Japanese currency and financial system resulting from the interest rate rises spearheaded by the US Federal Reserve and being followed by central banks around the world.

The interest rate disparity between Japan and the rest of the world led to a sharp drop in the yen as it fell to a low of 150 to the dollar in October. It rose subsequently and, as a result of the loosening announcement, the exchange rate was 133, an upward movement of 2.9 percent on the day.

Outlining the decision, BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda denied it was monetary tightening or the abandonment of YCC. He said it was aimed at addressing volatility in global financial markets and improving the functioning of bond markets to “enhance the sustainability of monetary easing.”

“This measure is not a rate hike,” he said. “Adjusting the YCC does not signal the end of YCC or an exit strategy.”

Despite these claims, the move was seen in markets as at least a significant “crack” in the operation of the YCC, possibly opening the way for its eventual scrapping.

Some movement had been expected but not until the retirement of Kuroda, the architect of the policy, in April next year.

“We view this decision as a major surprise, as we had expected any widening of the tolerable bands to be made under the new BoJ leadership from spring next year, similar to the market,” Naohiko Baba, chief Japan economist at Goldman Sachs told the Financial Times (FT).

In a situation of rising interest rates worldwide, the BoJ’s YCC policy has been described by some analysts as a “dysfunction.” The BoJ now holds more than half of all outstanding government bonds compared to 11.5 percent when Kuroda became governor in 2013.

For past decade, the BoJ has carried out one of the most extreme versions of the program of “quantitative easing” adopted by all major central banks in response to the global financial crisis of 2008. Under the YCC policy initiated in 2015, virtually all new debt of the government, one arm of the state, was bought up in the bond market by its financial arm, the BoJ.

As a result total Japanese public debt has risen to the equivalent of more than 260 percent of GDP.

The BoJ’s move did not produce major movements in financial markets apart from some marginal tightening of interest rates. But further steps in the same direction could have more significant consequences.

In comments reported by the FT, Mansoor Mohi-uddin, chief economist at the Bank of Singapore, said the decision was significant because it indicated the central bank was considering an exit from YCC, as he recalled a major turning point in Japanese financial history.

“The BoJ decision to raise interest rates in December 1989 led to a major sea change in Japanese markets,” he said. “Today’s officials will be keenly aware of that history. It amplifies the significance of their signal to markets today.”

The 1989 decision led to the collapse of a financial bubble during which the value of the imperial palace in Tokyo was “worth” more than all the land in California. The puncturing of the bubble led to a sustained fall in the value of stocks on the Tokyo market from levels to which it has never returned.

A series of comments from financial analysts, reported by Bloomberg, pointed to the potential global consequences of the BoJ’s move.

According to Vishnu Varathan, a leading official at the Mizuho Bank in Singapore: “The BoJ has created so much tension in the markets this year with its policy stance—the spring has been so tightly wound—the impact could be massive when they finally decide to let it go. It will rip through every aspect of markets.”

Masamichi Adachi, a former BoJ official, now chief Japan economist at UBS Securities, said the decision was a “step toward an exit, whatever the BoJ calls it” and opened the door for a rate hike next year.

In a note to clients, Jim Reid global head of macro research at Deutsche Bank wrote: “It’s important not to underestimate the impact this could have, because tighter BoJ policy would remove one of the last global anchors that’s helped to keep borrowing costs at low levels more broadly.”

Japanese financial interests have more than $3 trillion invested in stocks and bonds globally with more than half of that in the US, chiefly in US Treasury bonds.

According to financial analyst Amir Anvarzadeh, an observer of Japanese markets for more than three decades, a decision to allow rates to rise, “could see a tsunami of offshore Japan money flooding back home. That is the big ‘reset’ move.”

Naka Matsuzawa, chief strategist at the Japanese financial giant Nomura, said: “Yield curve control is approaching an effective end if a wider trading band is the BoJ’s way of normalising policy. Market volatility will only rise further.”

Such comments illustrate the fact that central banks, which have pumped out trillions of dollars over at least the past 15 years to prevent a financial crisis, have only created the conditions for even greater financial turmoil as they attempt to “normalise” policy.