Indian farmers’ agitation enters second month

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Hundreds of thousands of farmers have been camped on the outskirts of Delhi, India’s capital and largest urban agglomeration, for more than a month as part of a protest against the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s pro-agribusiness “reform” laws.

The farmers launched their Delhi Chalo (Let’s go to Delhi) agitation on November 26. It was timed to coincide with a one-day general strike, joined by tens of millions of workers, to protest the Narendra Modi-led BJP government’s “pro-investor” policies, and demand aid for the hundreds of millions of impoverished workers and toilers whose incomes have been slashed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Indian farmers listen to a fellow farmer speak as they block a highway in protest against new farm laws at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh state border, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Modi and the BJP-led state governments of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, which surround the National Capital Territory, deployed thousands of police and paramilitary forces, water cannon and tear gas to prevent the Delhi Chalo protesters from reaching the national capital as planned on Nov. 27. But to the government’s dismay, the farmers responded by setting up camp along half-a-dozen major highways at Delhi’s border.

In September, the Modi government rammed three farm “reform” laws through the national parliament. Long demanded by big business, these laws will boost domestic and international agribusiness at the expense of India’s farmers, the vast majority of whom have only small land holdings of two hectares (5 acres) or less.

The BJP’s agrarian reform is part of a much wider assault on India’s workers and toilers. The same Monsoon session of parliament that passed the three farm laws, amended the labour code to promote contract labour, outlaw virtually all strikes, and empower large employers to lay off workers at will.

The Modi government has sought to quell the farmers’ agitation, with threats of further repression and offers of small, largely cosmetic changes to the farm bills. Buoyed by widespread popular support, the farmers have braved winter weather, the threat of COVID-19 and numerous health and other challenges to press their demand for the repeal of all three laws.

The government has smeared the protesting farmers, in an attempt to undermine their public support and with a view to laying the political groundwork for mobilizing state security forces to violently evict them. BJP ministers and spokespersons have claimed the farmers’ agitation is backed by China and Pakistan, and that it has been infiltrated by Naxalites (Maoist insurgents) and Khalistanis, (supporters of a separate Sikh state).

After the government failed to persuade the farmers to withdraw, it ordered water supplies cut to the protest sites, creating a sanitary disaster. At least 30 farmers have died during the month-long agitation, as a result of the trying physical conditions and traffic accidents.

The farmers’ agitation has thrown the Modi government and the entire Indian ruling elite into crisis. Their greatest fear is that the farmers’ struggle could become the catalyst for a broader working-class-led movement—a movement that would challenge not just Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP, but the right-wing, pro-investor agenda that every Indian government has pursued for the past three decades.

The corporate media has strongly backed Modi’s repeated vows that his government will not repeal the farm laws. Big business fears that if the government is seen to retreat before the farmers’ agitation it will galvanize mass opposition among working people, and jeopardize their plans to establish India as an alternate cheap-labour production-chain hub to China.

At present, the corporate elite favours the government seeking to wear down the protesters through dragged out talks and by undercutting their support with smears and other subterfuges, rather than risking a violent confrontation that could ignite protests across India.

This is the significance of the ruling India’s Supreme Court issued on the farmers’ protest on December18. Multiple petitions had been brought before the court requesting it declare the farmers’ agitation illegal, on the grounds that the protest has impeded, and much of the time blocked, traffic on the major highways in and out of Delhi.

India’s highest court has repeatedly provided a legal imprimatur for some of the Modi government’s most aggressive and anti-democratic measures, from the last year’s constitutional coup against Kashmir to the building of a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Ram on the site of the razed Babri Masjid.

Yet in its December 18 ruling, the Court asserted that the farmers have “a fundamental right to protest against” the agrarian reform laws. “There is no question,” declared Chief Justice S.A. Bobde, “of balancing or curtailing” that right.

The court urged the government and farmers’ organizations to find a negotiated solution, and even offered to help mediate the dispute. But it also left the door wide open to declaring the farmer protest illegal in the future, and green-lighting its state suppression. “We are of the view at this stage,” said the Supreme Court, “that the farmers’ protest should be allowed to continue without impediment and without any breach of peace either by the protesters or the police.”

The Modi government is continuing to press the farmers’ organizations to call off their protest. Yesterday, at the conclusion of a sixth round of talks between government representatives and 41 farmer organisations, the government claimed agreement had been reached on two issues: the farmers’ complaints about proposed electricity price hikes and recently enacted penalties for the burning of stubble. However, there was no movement on the farmers’ key demands, which are the repeal of the three farm laws and a legal guarantee that the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system will be maintained. The two sides agreed that they will meet again on January 4.

In recent weeks, Modi has been trying to promote himself as a “pro-farmer” leader. At a December 25 event, Modi released the next installment of the government’s Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme, under which all farmers are entitled to 6,000 rupees (about US $82) a year in minimum income support. Such posturing has gone alongside incessant attacks on the opposition parties, whom Modi accuses of inciting and “misleading” the farmers.

The claims of the Congress Party and the other regional and caste-ist opposition parties to “oppose” the BJP’s farm laws and “support” the farmers’ agitation are utterly cynical and hypocritical. These parties are no less committed to enforcing pro-investor reforms than Modi and his BJP. Congress, till recently the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of government, initiated in 1991 and for much of the next quarter-century spearheaded the process of transforming India into a cheap labour platform for global capital, and a close ally of Washington.

When Modi claims that Congress-led governments tried to impose similar pro-agribusiness reforms but retreated due to fears of popular opposition, the BJP leader is for once telling the truth.

As for the main Stalinist parliamentary parties—the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, and the Communist Party of India (CPI)—they have been working tirelessly to prevent the working class from emerging as the political leadership of a mass movement against Modi’s “pro-investor” reforms and the Indian capitalist class as a whole.

That the objective conditions exist for such a movement has been shown by the mass participation in the November 26 and January 8 general strikes and a mounting wave of strikes and worker protests against job cuts, poverty wages, speed-up and, among health care workers, the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). In the state of Karnataka, for example, over 3,000 Toyota Kirloskar Motors (TKM) workers have been defying a government back-to-work order for more than a month, after striking in opposition to management’s demand they boost production by 25 percent.

Rather than fighting for the working class to intervene as an independent political force, the Stalinists’ main goal is to boost the political authority of the Congress Party and the other right-wing opposition parties. Throughout the farmers’ agitation, the CPM and CPI have been working in tandem with the Congress, issuing joint statements of “support” and even organizing a joint delegation of opposition leaders to visit Indian President Ram Nath Kovind, a notorious BJP hack, to urge him to press Modi to address the farmers’ grievances.

Last week, the Congress Party high command officially announced that it will contest the coming state elections in West Bengal, India’s fourth most populous state, in an alliance with the CPM, CPI and their Left Front.

While keeping the working class on the sidelines, the Stalinists are also doing nothing to broaden the movement among the rural toilers, by advancing demands to meet the needs of the agricultural workers and landless who make up the majority of rural households.

The Stalinists are using what influence they have among farmers and the rural poor through the CPM-led All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and other farmer organizations to push for the farmers to reach a compromise with the Modi government. Earlier this week, CPM Politburo member and AIKS General Secretary Hannan Mollah insisted, “that there cannot be a resolution without a dialogue with the government.”

He then proceeded to dismiss Modi’s claim that the Stalinists are playing a leading role in the farmer’s agitation with the aim of destabilizing BJP government. In the process, Mollah made clear that the CPM is determined to keep the farmers’ agitation apart from the growing groundswell of opposition to the government and its pro-investor policies, and within the strict confines of establishment politics. The BJP, said Mollah, “are busy pushing an agenda on the movement that was never ours to start with. Out of the 500 organizations which are part of the farmer struggle, around 10-11 would be left-leaning.”

Political crisis deepens after Nepali parliament dissolved

Rohantha De Silva

Political turmoil has intensified in Nepal following dissolution of the parliamentary lower house by President Bidya Devi Bandari on December 20, two years ahead of its scheduled term.

Bandari declared the dissolution at the request of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, with fresh elections to be held on April 30 and May 10 next year.

Oli, with the approval of his cabinet, initiated the anti-democratic operation even though his ruling Stalinist Nepal Communist Party (NCP) had an overwhelming majority of 174 in the 275 members in the lower house. It followed his attempts to prorogue parliament in July to avert a planned no-confidence vote. The no-confidence proposal was initiated by a faction of the NCP headed by its co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal.

Nepalese demonstrators participate in a torch rally to protest against the dissolution of parliament in Kathmandu, Nepal. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

In 2017, the two Stalinist parties—the Oli-led Nepal United Marxist-Leninist and Dahal’s Communist Party of Nepal Maoist Centre—united during the national election. In 2018, they merged in the NCP in the hope of diverting growing social opposition across the country.

The conflict erupted after Dahal requested he be made prime minister in line with a unity agreement struck by the two parties. Under that deal, Dahal would assume the prime ministership two and half years after the 2017 election victory.

The split within the ruling party is not simply over ministerial positions but is driven by the escalating economic and social crisis within the landlocked Himalayan country, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and growing geo-political tensions across the region. As of yesterday and according to understated official data, over 260,000 people have been infected and 1,847 have died.

A total of 12 petitions have been filed in Nepal’s supreme courts by supporters of the Dahal faction within the NCP and several activists challenging the dissolution of parliament. They claim the dissolution was anti-democratic, undermines the constitution and branded it a “constitutional coup.”

The NCP is on the verge of open split, with Oli, on one side, and Dahal and former prime minister and Stalinist leader Madhav Kumar Nepal, who control the parliamentary majority, on the other. Both factions have begun counter moves to control the party apparatus.

There are no fundamental political differences between these factions. Both have worked together to implement pro-market reforms and are responsible for the social crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each of the factions, which have previously ruled the country, defend big business profits.

Oli’s dissolution of parliament has seen protests and demonstrations erupt across the country, including in the capital Kathmandu. On Monday, tens of thousands participated in a demonstration in Kathmandu organised by the Dahal-led NCP faction.

“The prime minister has no authority to dissolve the parliament under the constitution. Therefore, he should reverse his decision immediately,” Rajesh Thapa, a 19-year-old student, told the Aljazeera news agency.

Police have been mobilised to crack down on protesters. Sixteen human rights activists and leaders of various civil rights groups were arrested at a demonstration in the capital on December 21.

In 2017, the united Stalinist parties promised democracy and “prosperity” to workers and youth while attempting to divert growing social opposition into a nationalist anti-Indian campaign.

The election of the NCP government in 2017, however, resolved none of the social problems confronting the masses. The Dahal faction and its allies, in an attempt to deny their own role, claim that the country’s mounting economic problems are simply the result of Oli’s corruption and autocratic measures.

The widely discredited, conservative pro-Indian Nepali Congress Party is seeking to exploit the political crisis. Having quietly supported the Oli regime in recent months, on December 14 it shifted course and held rallies over 70 districts, including in Kathmandu.

While the country’s economy is in tatters, Nepal’s wage workers have increased by four million between 2008 and 2018. Every faction of the ruling elite is nervous about a social explosion.

According to a World Bank report issued in October, Nepal’s economic growth will only be 0.2 percent this year and 0.6 percent in 2021. Last year Nepal recorded 5.7 percent economic growth. An assessment in May by the International Labor Organisation found that “between 1.6 million and 2 million jobs are likely to be disrupted in Nepal in the current crisis, either with complete job loss or reduced working hours and wages.”

Tourism, which employed over half a million people and earned $US2 billion as foreign exchange annually, has collapsed, while the pandemic has seen a drastic cut in income from the country’s 3.5 million migrant workers.

Media reports are scanty but in recent months there have many protests and strikes by health workers in Nepal demanding payment of outstanding wages and allowances, proper health facilities and protective clothing to combat the pandemic.

In September, thousands of young people demonstrated in Kathmandu opposing the government’s move to use low cost and less effective rapid antigen COVID-19 tests and demanding the use of the more accurate PCR tests. The protests forced the government to resume PCR testing.

In mid-December, 100,000 sugarcane farmers resumed protests over outstanding payments. The demonstrations were halted in March because of the national coronavirus lockdown. These poor farmers are owed a total of 800 million rupees (around $US7 million) from mill owners and a 1 billion-rupee subsidy from the government.

India and China both are intensifying the efforts to maintain influence in Kathmandu.

China, which has boosted its role in Nepal during Oli’s administration, recently sent a high-level delegation led by Guo Yezhou, vice-minister of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party, to Kathmandu.

During his four-day visit Guo met with leaders of rival factions, including Oli, Dahal and President Bandari, to try and patch up the rift, and also held talks with Congress party leaders. Late last month, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe also visited Nepal to try and heal the divisions between the two factions. Facing increasing US aggression, Beijing is keen to enhance its relations with Nepal.

India regards Nepal as part of its traditional backyard and is hostile to Beijing’s growing influence in Kathmandu. The US, which is promoting India as its strategic partner, is also anxious about Chinese influence in Nepal.

Indian media commentators have praised the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government for not making “public comments” on the NCP’s factional conflict. Delhi, however, has been busy mending its relations with Nepal’s ruling NCP and other factions of the ruling elite.

In mid-October, three top Indian officials visited Nepal. They included Indian intelligence chief Samant Goel, Army Commander General Manoj Mukund Naravane and Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla.

India is determined to bring the strategically-located Nepal under its sway. This is not just for its own strategic aims but as a frontline state for US imperialism and its confrontation with China.

Vaccine distribution fiasco continues in the United States

Bryan Dyne

The first three weeks of coronavirus vaccination in the US have proven to be a debacle. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), less than one-fifth of the 11.4 million vaccine doses distributed have been administered.

At the current rate of about one million doses administered per week, it will take another 329 weeks, or more than six years, to administer the vaccine to everyone in the country. In addition, since the vaccines currently approved for use require two doses to be most effective, the time to properly vaccinate everyone in the country may be closer to double the above estimate.

A Health Department worker fills a syringe with Moderna COVID-19 vaccine before administering it to emergency medical workers and healthcare personnel. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

President-elect Biden claims that he will distribute 100 million vaccinations during his first 100 days in office, 14 times the current rate. However, little has been forthcoming from his transition team on exactly how this will be accomplished.

The slow rollout has been proceeding during the worst month of the pandemic to date. The US recorded more than six million cases of COVID-19 in December alone, along with more than 70,000 deaths. While dips in reporting caused by the holiday season are showing a decrease in the daily case and death rates, these are expected to spike back up after the new year, as reports from December are filed and an expected new wave of infections occurs as a result of travel during the last week of 2020.

In total, the US has now suffered more than 20,000,000 cases of COVID-19, and will have a death toll of more than 350,000 by the end of the month. Worldwide, there are more than 83 million confirmed cases and at least 1.8 million reported deaths.

An independent report from Bloomberg tells a similar catastrophic story about the state of vaccine distribution in the United States. According to the news outlet, nearly 20 million first doses of the vaccine have been allotted to states, but only 2.3 million have been administered, about 11.5 percent.

President Donald Trump has seen fit to blame the states for the ongoing chaos. He tweeted on December 30, “The Federal Government has distributed the vaccines to the states. Now it is up to the states to administer. Get moving!”

Trump, of course, made no mention of the fact that the states have no resources with which to swiftly distribute and administer the vaccines, something of which the US government was warned months ago. The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the Association of Immunization Managers wrote to Congress in October that $8.4 billion in emergency funds were needed to ensure a successful vaccination campaign against the coronavirus. Measures needed include more workers in health departments to administer the vaccines, more infrastructure to provide shots, and upgrades to the communications infrastructure to report and track vaccinations.

During that same period, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar claimed, “We project having enough for every American who wants a vaccine by March to April 2021.” The Trump administration also asserted that it would have 100 million doses of the vaccine by the end of 2020. A month later, in November, this number was more than halved to 40 million.

The October letter was a follow-up to a similar letter in the summer, when the Phase II trials indicated that various vaccines were likely to be successful. Nothing was done by the Trump administration or pushed for by the Democrats in Congress to prepare for the current situation.

At best, 20 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed to states. Now, state and local health officials are being asked to give vaccines on top of the other public health measures—including testing and contact tracing—they are being asked to carry out with little or no national coordination or support.

In Florida, for example, the Lee County Department of Health told residents that anyone older than 65 or any frontline health care worker could come to one of seven “first come, first serve” vaccine sites. Each site only had 300 vaccines to administer, causing wait times up of to nine hours. In Palm Beach, the county has set up a hotline to make appointments by phone, but the system has been regularly crashing from the overwhelming number of calls. The scenes are reminiscent of attempts by workers to get unemployment benefits in March and April.

A retired Pittsburgh nurse, commenting on the state of vaccine distribution, said: “There is no plan. It’s a total clusterfuck. I’ve asked my colleagues who are still working whether or not anything is being implemented to get a smooth vaccine distribution, and the answer is nothing.” She added, “One thing I do know is that the rich are going to get it first, before the rest of us.”

There are already numerous reports of those with concierge medical service offering to pay or “donate” tens of thousands of dollars to their clinics in order to get the vaccine as soon as possible. Services for the rich, such as Sollis Health in the Hamptons, were among the first to buy up the specialized refrigerators needed to store the Pfizer vaccine, which must be kept at -94 degrees Fahrenheit to remain effective. This has made it increasingly difficult for hospitals and government services where workers are more likely to get their doses to procure the necessary equipment to receive the vaccines in the first place.

The problems facing the US vaccination program highlight the importance of maintaining other public health measures, including testing, contact tracing and isolation. A vaccine is another tool to end a pandemic, not a solution by itself. If vaccinations do end up taking months or years, they will be essentially worthless for preventing further death.

Such a state of affairs argues for a national lockdown and closure of non-essential workplaces, with full compensation to workers and small businesses, in order to stop the spread of the pandemic. It is the height of cruelty to have an effective vaccine against the coronavirus while forcing people to expose themselves and possibly die before they can get the cure.

The class divide and chaotic nature of vaccination in the US are being mirrored around the world. Even before the vaccines were approved for distribution, the United States and other major capitalist powers had already reserved 51 percent of the existing and planned doses. This has caused vicious competition between countries to get even a nominal amount of the vaccine for their respective health care workforces.

Such unequal distribution of the vaccine will also provide further opportunities for the pandemic to spread. As World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted in his New Year press release, “to protect the world, we must ensure that all people at risk everywhere—not just in countries who can afford vaccines—are immunized.”

“To do this,” he continued, WHO “needs just over 4 billion US dollars urgently to buy vaccines for low- and lower-middle-income countries.” This is a tiny fraction of the money spent on various bailouts and stimulus packages for Wall Street, and about 0.5 percent of the most recent US military budget, approved by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

That such relatively small sums are not available for mass inoculation of the world against a deadly pandemic speaks to the true orientation of the American ruling elite and the need for the international working class to take matters into its own hands.

COVID-19 Mauled 2020—A Nuclear Disaster Would End Time

Manpreet Sethi

2020 started on a grim note, with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists deciding in January to move the minute hand on its clock to 100 seconds to midnight. This was a reminder of the high level of risk that humanity faced from nuclear issues and climate change. It was meant to shake nations out of their complacency and seriously address the dangerous state of affairs.

However, as it turned out, the world found itself in the throes of an unexpected pandemic even before March was over. The situation only got worse over the rest of the year. As 2020 slips into history, the year will be remembered with sadness for the loss of nearly 2 million lives across the world.

2020 will also be recalled for the geopolitical fractures that became more pronounced as countries withdrew inwards. Gasping to cope with glaring gaps in domestic health infrastructure, governments were also left with battered economies. As reality sunk in, one would have thought that spending priorities would change. But they have not. The focus on military capability to project power, and within that, on nuclear weapons for national security, has remained unwavering.

Consequently, the year was witness to several political and technological factors that heightened the threat of nuclear risks, especially of inadvertent escalation resulting from misperceptions and misunderstanding. Low trust levels among major nuclear-armed states, manifest capability build-up to meet the elusive concept of ‘perfect’ deterrence, prospects of resumed nuclear testing, disavowal of arms control arrangements, refusal to participate in nuclear dialogue, and the unregulated development of emerging, disruptive technologies, are but some of the developments that contributed to the sense of increased nuclear risks. And, there were no moves towards reducing them.

Of course, one could argue that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), or the ban treaty, received its 50th ratification in 2020, and this should be a move towards reducing nuclear risk since it bans nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, however, while the treaty will enter into force in January 2021, this will not usher in a nuclear weapons free world (NWFW). The nine nuclear weapon possessors and NATO states have rejected the treaty for its inability to define disarmament, verification, and compliance processes. Nothing, therefore, will change for their nuclear holdings or plans for the future.

For that to happen, a deeper change in the value attributed to nuclear weapons is required. Till such time as countries believe that these weapons add to their security from a range of threats, they cannot be expected to eliminate them from their arsenals. Belief systems or doctrines that contend that the limited use of such weapons is possible for a limited nuclear war add further value to the weapon. The reality, however, is that nuclear use, irrespective of how limited a manner it starts in, would more likely than not end high on the escalation ladder. This fear has kept nuclear use in check until now. But as the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fades, as trust deficits between multiple players grow, as nuclear doctrines favour ambiguities and risk-taking postures, as new capabilities promise prospects of winning a nuclear war, the chances of inadvertent deterrence breakdown significantly multiply.

Any untoward incident involving nuclear weapons would be a disaster several times more unbearable than what COVID-19 has been. For those who doubt this, the BBC documentary, Threads, is highly recommended. It was released in 1984, but has been only sporadically available for public viewing owing to its grim content, which gives a glimpse of how horrific life would be after the use of nuclear weapons. The documentary film, set in the UK, envisages a nuclear exchange between the East and West in which 210 megatons fall on the UK. Expectedly, it causes damage and destruction of a kind that are well-known—of men and material; of health services; of electricity or running water; of communications; of agriculture; of food; of the environment—leading first to extreme cold and then to high UV exposure.

The documentary, however, also brings out dimensions of destruction that we usually do not think about—the loss of unseen and yet essential social threads that hold us together—such as law and order; civility; language; art and culture; the ability to dignify the dead with a burial or cremation. In the fictional setting, the UK loses 30 million people to the nuclear attack. Its population further dwindles as survivors succumb to effects of radioactive fallout, and stillborn babies are delivered. In comparison, the pandemic that has raged on for the better part of this year has led to approximately 50,000 deaths in the UK and about 2 million across the globe. The scale of instant destruction with nuclear weapons is unmatchable.

It is therefore necessary that there be no year that is ever remembered by its sorry survivors for the kind of unthinkable damage that even a ‘modest’ nuclear exchange would cause. Hopefully, 2021 will not only bring good tidings in our fight against COVID-19, but also wisdom and good sense to address urgent nuclear risks. The vaccine is on the horizon. Can something be expected in the new year on the nuclear front, too, to enable a change to the Bulletin’s symbolic clockface?

French testing system missed 9 of 10 COVID-19 cases after first lock-down

Samuel Tissot

On December 21, Nature published a peer-reviewed accelerated article titled, “Under-detection of cases of COVID-19 in France threatens epidemic control.” In the paper, epidemiologists and data scientists led by Giulia Pullano use mathematical modelling to chart the estimated spread of the virus in France over seven weeks—from the end of lock-down measures, on May 11, to June 28. They compare this estimated spread of the virus to the recorded cases to measure the effectiveness of France’s test and trace system in this period.

During this period, Santé publique France (the public health system) recorded a few hundred cases a day. However, the authors estimate that France’s testing system missed around 90,000 symptomatic COVID-19 infections. This amounts to 86 percent of symptomatic cases. As many cases are asymptomatic, however, the true rate of detection in this period was likely well under 10 percent.

A nurse holds a phone while a COVID-19 patient speaks with his family from the intensive care unit at the Joseph Imbert Hospital Center in Arles, southern France, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

This massive under-detection of the virus, due to a lack of testing, removed the real possibility of stamping out the virus in France after the first wave and of preventing the devastating second wave currently engulfing the country and claiming hundreds of lives every day. Since the end of the first lock-down on May 11, 36,621 people have died from the virus—taking the total number of COVID-19 deaths in France to nearly 63,000.

In a comment published by Nature alongside the paper, Columbia University virologist Jeffrey Shaman stated: “The findings suggest that the overall testing and control system in place was inadequate to contain the virus successfully in this country of around 65 million people.” He added that “many countries, as a result of leadership failures, cultural or institutional barriers, or simple fatigue, have failed in their efforts to achieve or maintain control of the virus.”

The paper found that in this seven-week period, only 31 percent of those with COVID-19-like symptoms consulted a doctor. For the majority of the French population, during this period it was necessary to contact a doctor for a prescription before receiving a test. Shaman concluded that this byzantine process “might have disadvantaged communities that have more limited access to health care, and reduced testing rates.”

This suggests that having only 1 percent of tests turn out positive by itself does not guarantee that the pandemic is controlled. Throughout the seven-week period, the proportion of positive tests never exceeded 1 percent. That the virus kept spreading anyway shows that a massive increase in testing—along with a shutdown of non-essential production, services and educational facilities—is critical to control and eradicate the virus. Even with the production of a vaccine, such measures are needed to save hundreds of thousands of lives in the coming year.

The paper’s findings constitute an indictment of the French government’s criminal policy of malign neglect in response to the pandemic—i.e., to protect profits while the virus spreads throughout the population. The premature end of initial lock-down measures, the reopening of schools and workplaces, and an underfunded and underdeveloped testing system, made a deadly resurgence of the virus inevitable.

President Macron announced a lock-down only on March 16, after a wave of wildcat strikes and sick-outs spread across Europe. Directed by the profit demands of big business, the French government prematurely ended the lock-down on May 11 and forced workers back onto the job. This reckless policy was criticized by scientists at the time.

Numerous media groundlessly speculated, however, that “herd immunity” might have been reached in France. The Pasteur Institute refuted these claims, issuing an estimate that only 4.4 percent of the population had been infected and warning: “our results show that, without a vaccine, herd immunity alone will not be enough to avoid a second wave at the end of the lock-down. Efficient control measures must thus be upheld after May 11.”

To falsely reassure workers that the virus was no longer a threat, the government announced a rapid expansion of testing and tracing. The success of test-and-trace campaigns combined with strict lock-downs in countries with sharp initial outbreaks, like China and South Korea, showed such measures effectively control the virus.

Macron said, “Starting on May 11 we will have a new system to make this step [the end of lock-down] a success.” Then-Prime Minister Édouard Philippe described his government’s strategy as “Protect, test, isolate.” This system was detecting less than 10 percent of new cases, however.

The obstacles the government placed to workers’ access to testing suggest that Macron and his ministers were aware testing capacity was limited. From May 11, most Frenchmen had to obtain a prescription from their doctor before receiving a test. The government claimed this was necessary to prevent abuse of the system; in reality, this deliberately imposed a barrier that cut the number of tests conducted.

It was not until August 23 that the target of 700,000 weekly tests was reached. By then, the virus was out of control and the second wave well under way. On September 11, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that medical staff were now being prioritized as testing capacity was stretched to its limit. On September 16, staff at 20 testing clinics in the south of France went on strike over poor pay and exhausting working conditions.

By September 17, France’s positive test percentage exceeded 5 percent: according to WHO guidelines, based on the 1 percent positive test rule, the virus was out of control. In September, Macron reportedly rebuked Health Minister Olivier Véran for the 12-day delay to obtain test results. At that time, many people claimed that they were not receiving test results at all.

By October 12, the positive test rate exceeded 10 percent: tens of thousands of positive tests were being returned daily. This preceded a sharp rise in hospital admissions, which was followed by the hundreds of daily deaths ever since. With new cases and deaths at this scale, contact tracing was impossible.

In late September, amid the ongoing resurgence of COVID-19, the government passed its 2021 budget. In this only €9.8 billion went for emergency health spending, while a further €42 billion and a tax cut were handed to the banks and corporations.

The partial lock-down measures adopted in November, which left both schools and factories open, did not stem the spread of the virus. Their further relaxation over the Christmas and New Year period is setting the scene for a further surge of deaths in the new year.

The Nature paper shows that the Macron government’s policy undercut the gains of the first lock-down. In May, a sufficient expansion of testing on a Europe-wide basis could have eradicated the virus in France and across Europe. Instead, billions of euros were given to the banks and corporations, schools and workplaces were reopened, and insufficient testing and tracing failed to contain the virus.

Like its counterparts across Europe and in the United States, the Macron government placed profit before lives at every step of its response to the pandemic. The winter surge in COVID-19 deaths is only getting underway, but this policy of malign neglect has already led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.

Against the anti-scientific response of the ruling class, there must be an international struggle of the working class armed with a program that uses the best available scientific research in response to the pandemic, unobstructed by the profit concerns of the capitalist elite.

California hospitals overwhelmed as COVID-19 cases hit 2 million

Kevin Martinez

California became the first state last week to reach 2 million recorded COVID-19 cases and is now the epicenter of the virus in the US. In Los Angeles County, the state’s most populous region, there are an estimated 6,500 people hospitalized, four times the number from last month. The number of people in intensive care units (ICUs) is approaching 1,300, double the number from a month ago.

Every 10 minutes another patient in California dies from the pandemic, according to a New York Times database. Nearly every hospital in the state is operating beyond its capacity, putting in makeshift beds and rationing treatment for the most urgent cases. Many nurses and staff are complaining of fatigue and taking much needed leave, while hospitals scramble to make up for the losses in workers.

A man checks in to take a COVID-19 test at a testing site in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has predicted that hospitalizations could reach up to 100,000 in January under current scenarios. While California was the first state to impose a lockdown in spring, the government’s reopening policies have led to a horrific and preventable surge in cases. Last Thursday alone saw 351 new deaths in the state.

Health officials have been begging the public to stay at home during the holiday season, but Governor Newsom has still not issued a statewide order for people to do so. The lack of clear directives from the state, combined with lack of government aid for struggling workers and small businesses, have led to a perfect storm of viral infections and needless death and suffering.

As people travel for the holidays and spread the disease they will be blamed for the rise in infections. Meanwhile, workplaces, schools and other major congregate settings have been allowed to proceed with no systematic effort for contact tracing.

Mendy Hickey, quality director at St. Mary’s hospital, told the New York Times, “In the beginning, especially, you saw all these pictures and videos from New York and you think, ‘Oh my God, it can never get that bad here,’” adding, “And while we have all the supplies we need, it is that bad here, and we have no staff to take care of patients.” Ms. Hickey told the Times she sometimes works 23 hours a day and, while she was able to spend Christmas morning with her three daughters, she had to return later that day to the hospital.

Since the start of the pandemic, California has seen more than 2.1 million positive cases and more than 24,220 people die from COVID-19, according to the California Department of Public Health.

In the past two weeks alone, there have been an additional 570,000 cases and 3,250 deaths, averaging to record highs of 41,000 new cases and 231 deaths every day. Last week, California reported the highest number of new cases per capita in the past week of any state, according to Johns Hopkins University.

This week will see more than 19,750 patients hospitalized for the virus in California, including 4,228 in ICUs. Both totals are now double the peak recorded during the summer when there were around 7,200 hospitalized with 2,050 in intensive care.

According to state officials, the statewide aggregate of ICU availability has been at zero percent since Christmas Eve. While not every region is operating at no capacity, two regions with zero ICU beds, Southern California and San Joaquin Valley, are now operating under emergency protocols in order to continue treating severe patients, whether or not they have COVID-19.

Only these two regions have been placed under the governor’s stay-at-home order from three weeks ago. The order restricts indoor and outdoor dining at restaurants and closes businesses like salons and barbershops, on top of restrictions already in place for so-called purple tier counties.

The makeshift and arbitrary character of the governor’s color-coded scheme is useless in stopping a virus that does not respect county lines. As mentioned before, countless nonessential businesses and public venues remain open, ensuring that the pandemic will spread unabated.

At a Monday news conference, Newsom said that state Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly will soon provide ICU projections that will guide the timeline by which each region ends its stay-at-home orders. Extensions in Southern California and San Joaquin Valley are guaranteed.

Hospitals throughout the state are so overwhelmed it was revealed over the weekend that Kaiser Permanente would postpone “elective and non-urgent surgeries” at its Northern California hospitals for one week, from now until January 4, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Health officials are worried of the potential impact that holiday gatherings for Christmas and New Year’s will have to deepen the crisis. A surge was reported in early November and grew worse after Thanksgiving, and now officials fear the Christmas holiday will exponentially increase the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths in the coming weeks.

Newsom declared in a recent video message that the state projects its numbers will double next month to more than 36,000 hospitalized patients.

Meanwhile, vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna began arriving this week at California skilled nursing facilities. These facilities are in “Phase 1a” of the state’s massive inoculation campaign. The other group in Phase 1a consists of front-line health care workers who deal directly with COVID-19 patients, who already began receiving shots in mid-December.

It is estimated that it will take a month to inoculate all of the state’s 1,200 licensed nursing facilities, which house some of the most vulnerable populations and have been hotspots for the pandemic.

Catastrophe worsens as UK records nearly 100,000 new COVID-19 cases in 48 hours

Robert Stevens

The number of COVID-19 cases continues to surge, with a record 53,135 positive tests announced Tuesday. This was on top of the previous record of 41,385 new cases announced Monday, meaning there have been almost 100,000 cases in the first two days of this week.

Another 414 people were reported dead. In the week to December 29, the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 in England alone rose from 18,063 to 21,787. The main area of increase was in London which saw a 44 percent increase from 1,552 COVID patients to 2,237.

The main entrance to NHS Nightingale Hospital, London, UK (credit: Wikimedia Commoms)

The figures take the number of deaths as measured by the government to 71,567. The true figure is substantially higher and is approaching 90,000. Yesterday, the statistical associations in England and Wales produced figures showing there had been 87,000 deaths where COVID was mentioned on the death certificate. The figures will rise as Scotland and Northern Ireland have not yet released fatality data for the period between December 24 and 28.

The terrible death toll is the outcome of the homicidal herd immunity policy of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government. Apart from during the national lockdown of a few months’ duration, from the end of March, the government has allowed the virus to rip through the population. The new strain circulating in Britain since September is accelerating a catastrophic resurgence of the virus. It is now present on every continent.

Sir Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the National Health Service (NHS), said yesterday, “Now again we are back in the eye of the storm with a second wave of coronavirus sweeping Europe and, indeed, this country.”

By Monday, there were more people in hospital in England (20,426) than the 18,974 patients recorded on April 12 at the height of the first wave.

Hospitals are being overwhelmed with a number having to declare emergencies. The situation in London is the most acute. The London Ambulance Service had one of its “busiest ever days” on December 26, with 7,918 calls—up by more than 2,500 on last year. On Sunday, an internal incident was declared at Queen Elizabeth Hospital due to fears of a shortage of oxygen. The hospital was forced to divert patients to other hospitals in the city.

According to a Sky News reporter at Queen's Hospital in Romford, patients were yesterday being treated inside ambulances “because they don't have enough beds left—that's how bad the situation is”. The Daily Mirror reported, “Some health boards are considering the option of setting up tents outside hospitals to triage patients, as they work in ‘major incident mode’.”

The surge in infections threatens to overwhelm a vaccine rollout taking place at a snail’s pace. At present only 600,000 people have received the vaccine. The delivery of the second required dose, only issued to people among the highest priority, began just yesterday.

A preliminary study of the “estimated transmissibility and severity of the new variant” in England, by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine warns, “In the absence of substantial vaccine roll-out, cases, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths in 2021 may exceed those in 2020.”

It states, “The most stringent intervention scenario with tier 4 England-wide and schools closed during January and 2 million individuals vaccinated per week, is the only scenario we considered which reduces peak ICU burden below the levels seen during the first wave.”

The government has placed great store on the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine, which it has ordered 100 million doses of. The virus is set to receive approval for use in Britain soon. But even if this were available, at the current rate of vaccination most people will remain unprotected. Dr Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter, said, “It will still take about 50 weeks to immunise 50 million people,” requiring a 24-hour-a-day rollout. The UK’s population is 66 million.

After decades of underfunding and “efficiency savings” cuts, the NHS does not have the staff for such an effort. According to NHS hospitals, mental health services and community providers, there is a shortage of 87,000 staff.

In the spring, the government was forced to build seven “Nightingale” field hospitals. Yesterday it was revealed that, lacking the staff to run them, they have largely been stood down. The Telegraph reported, “The hospital in London’s EXCEL centre is understood to have been stripped completely, with beds and ventilators removed.”

The crisis has escalated so rapidly that there is speculation that Johnson may have to put much of England under the highest Tier 4 restrictions in the coming days and even implement a yet to be defined “Tier 5” level of restrictions. According to reports, Tier 5 may involve the closure of schools and universities.

But Johnson is being pressured by the most rapacious sections of the ruling elite to oppose any such lockdowns, which will require parents to be at home to look after their children and not in workplaces generating profits for the corporations. The Daily Mail’s front page headline screamed yesterday, “Don’t Betray our children.” The Sun cited one Tory backbench MP as stating, “The view of most Tory MPs is that schools do need to stay open. It is the health people who are saying ‘oh gosh, the hospitals will be full’. We know that schools being open does increase the R rate. The question is, is that a price we are willing to pay and in my view it should be.”

Johnson has refused to close schools, with the new term to begin next week. He has only agreed to a slight reopening delay for secondary schools, which will still see all pupils back in classrooms for January 18.

Yet again, the government is rejecting scientific guidance from its own advisers. The Telegraph reported that the “Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told the Prime Minister that infections could spiral out of control unless secondary schools were closed until the end of January.”

Reopening is being pushed through on the basis that schools will be safe as children will be tested. This is a lie, especially given the fact that only secondary school pupils will be tested. Millions of primary school children and educators responsible for all age groups will not be tested. To reopen according to the government’s proposed schedule, all secondary schools would require 5.5 million pupils being tested just in the space of a week.

There are no qualified staff available for such an enormous, safety critical task. The government announced Tuesday that 1,500 military “personnel are on standby to support secondary schools and colleges across England to roll out COVID-19 testing to students and staff as the new term begins in January.” Soldiers in the classrooms brings the increasing militarisation of society to a new and dangerous stage.

None of this would be possible without the backing of the Labour Party and the education trade unions, who have only called for a delay in the return to classrooms for two weeks to enable testing to be carried out. In an interview with the Guardian , Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), declared, “Our worry is that they won’t make the right decision today and do what they have done all the way through the pandemic, which is to take an ideological line and get schools back before the testing programme can be properly put in place.”

The NEU is refusing to mobilise its more than half a million members to fight the herding back into schools of millions of pupils and staff. The Guardian said of Bousted’s position, “While industrial action is not an option, she said the NEU would be strongly advising members that they have a legal right to work in a safe environment.”

AMLO government falsified COVID-19 data to avoid shutdowns in Mexico City

Andrea Lobo

The government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) falsified data on the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico City to prevent the alert level being raised to “red,” which mandates a shutdown of “nonessential economic activities.”

In the second largest metropolitan area in the Americas with 21.6 million people, Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico have been the epicenter of the pandemic in the country. Together the two entities have recorded 458,000 cases and 34,700 deaths out of 1.39 million cases and 123,000 deaths confirmed nationwide.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the government has connived with corporations and trade unions to cover up outbreaks in factories and other workplaces. Testing levels are so low that Mexico currently has the highest positivity rate—the percentage of tests that come out positive—in the world at 40.6 percent. Moreover, the year is expected to end with 280,000 excess deaths.

Ajusco Medio Hospital workers protesting on November 30 (Facebook, Myriam Lira)

The resulting official figures, which greatly minimize the pandemic’s real spread and death toll, are plugged into a formula with 10 indicators to determine each state’s alert and restriction levels under a “semaphore system.”

On December 4, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, who leads the pandemic response, provided Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who belongs to López Obrador’s Morena party, a report with lower figures than the official ones.

According to documents reported by the New York Times last week, López-Gatell’s report stated that 45 percent of hospital beds with ventilators were occupied, and that the positivity rate was 25 percent in the capital. Official data, however, had shown 59 of these beds occupied and a 35 percent positivity rate.

If the official numbers had been used, the semaphore formula would have exceeded the 32-point threshold to activate a red light. When contacted by the Times, the Health Ministry refused to explain the source of the lower numbers.

The authorities did not declare the red light in Mexico City until a new report was filed on December 18. “Yet officials kept the capital open for business for an extra two weeks, its streets thronged with shoppers, its restaurants teeming with diners,” the Times reported.

Even by December 4, numerous hospitals had reached full capacity. That day, local media said the Ajusco Medio Hospital had reached 122 percent general capacity and 116 percent for ICU beds. This major city-run facility in the south of the capital had seen demonstrations by workers throughout November,

By December 18, coronavirus patients in several hospitals were being examined outside the facilities or inside their vehicles, while oxygen tanks bought by families to treat infected patients in their homes were running out in several stores in the capital. As early as September, only one in five patients who had died of coronavirus nationwide had received ICU care.

Last week, the Center for Research and Teaching Economics (CIDE) and Stanford University projected, assuming greater social distancing measures, that demand for hospital beds for coronavirus patients will exceed capacity by 50 percent by mid-January.

On December 24, hospital occupancy had reached 90 percent in Mexico City. There were 5,559 COVID-19 patients hospitalized, 1,455 of whom were intubated, while there were only 619 beds available in total and 205 ICU beds.

Mayor Sheinbaum announced that there will be 1,240 new beds available by December 31, far from what will be needed. Several hospitals, moreover, have reported shortages in medicines, personal protective equipment, and specialized personnel, while exhaustion among medical workers is universal.

In this context, the Mexican corporate media and state officials have focused their attention on the first vaccinations on Christmas and the contracts to purchase 198 million doses for the population of 127 million. According to the current timelines, which are far from certain, Mexico will receive just over 3 million doses by the end of March.

The lies regarding Mexico City figures are yet another exposure of the AMLO administration’s conscious policy of sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives in order not to impinge on the profits of the financial and corporate oligarchy.

As early as January and February, the Chinese authorities and US and European intelligence agencies briefed governments on the health care disaster ahead. Their Mexican counterparts undoubtedly had access to this information, but AMLO continued holding large rallies and calling people to “keep going about our lives as normal.”

On November 30, as the resurgence of cases became clear in Mexico, the World Health Organization specifically asked the López Obrador government to “get very serious” and for Mexico’s “leaders to set the example.” The Mexican president responded to the WHO that he would continue refusing to wear face masks since they are “not indispensable.”

Shutting down commerce, particularly during the Christmas holidays, constituted a major blow for the economy, with further bankruptcies leading to losses in the financial system. The employer organization COPARMEX estimated in early December that nearly 50,000 businesses had closed this year in Mexico City, and about 10,000 more could close if the red light was declared.

On the other hand, there are fears that these closures will increase social unrest as the AMLO administration refuses to provide any aid to workers or small businesses, the majority of whom operate in the devastated informal sector.

Instead of providing income for workers and small business owners to shelter at home, the government has prioritized social austerity to meet interest payments to Wall Street financial vultures and raise the military budget.

In an insulting decision, the Mexico City government announced last week loans of 10,000 pesos (US$500) for small businesses and a one-time check of 2,200 pesos (US$110) for restaurant workers who can prove that they were suspended or fired due to the pandemic. Countless workers in the shut-down “nonessential” sectors, including restaurants, will be forced to work to sustain their families.

At the same time, many economic activities that are not essential for the maintenance of human life and combatting the pandemic will remain open. On June 1, the López Obrador administration declared all transportation, manufacturing, construction, and financial services as “essential” in order to secure the supply of parts, finished goods and services for transnational corporations and the banks.

The known result of these policies has been the deaths of workers and their families on a massive scale. According to researcher Héctor Hiram Hernández Bringas at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), 90 percent of confirmed coronavirus deaths are among manufacturing or manual workers, drivers, maids and pensioners, and 75 percent of victims had no studies beyond high school. The pandemic has also killed more than 2,000 health care workers, the highest number in the world.