“Endemic” COVID-19 may lead to 250,000 deaths each year in the US

Benjamin Mateus

The silence on the number of COVID-19 deaths occurring in the US is chilling. The entire state and federal apparatus has shifted gears to declare COVID endemic and to end all mandates that had provided the population with a modicum of protection against infection and death.

It bears reviewing Tuesday’s statistics from various COVID trackers.

BNO News reported that 3,349 more Americans died from COVID, with a seven-day average of 2,488 deaths every day. The Johns Hopkins COVID tracker placed the figure of additional deaths at 2,777, with a seven-day average of just under 2,000 per day. The New York Times’ COVID tracker reported the fourteen-day daily average of additional deaths to be 2,454. The Worldometer COVID dashboard reported that 2,013 people had perished on Tuesday. Its seven-day average of daily deaths is now at 2,121.

Workers burying bodies in a mass grave on Hart Island, April 9, 2020. (Credit: AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Yet, there is no mention of these grim statistics by any major news outlet. Since Omicron first emerged in the US, more than 137,000 people have lost their lives. The cumulative total is approaching 950,000 deaths. At the current trajectory, one million will have died before April.

Less than 65 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, with just over half a million vaccinations being given each day. The campaign to vaccinate has essentially stalled. This will be a significant factor as the newer variants of SARS-CoV-2 are driven by selection pressures to develop more immune-evading characteristics that will take advantage of the population’s waning immunity.

However, federal public health officials and policymakers have little stomach to discuss such prospects or consider what the so-called “new normal” will look like when the coronavirus is allowed unimpeded access to every home on every street across the country.

This is the burning question that was raised in a recent segment of the “In the Bubble” podcast featuring Dr. Kristian Andersen, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research in California. The show is hosted by Andy Slavitt, who was an interim senior adviser to the COVID-19 response coordinator in the Biden administration. The discussion centered on the implications of Denmark’s nearly complete abandonment of public health measures against the pandemic.

This is being done under conditions where, despite having very high rates of vaccination, Denmark is experiencing levels of infection and death not seen since last winter’s highs.

Andersen authored the critical “Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2,” which carefully reviewed the scientific evidence against the notion that the virus was constructed in a laboratory or purposefully manipulated. On this week’s podcast, he said of Denmark’s action:

The problem is again that we need to be realistic about what that means, and probably what that means is that—in a country like Denmark, for example, it probably means that we should expect if we go back to 2019 that everybody should expect to get infected probably at least twice a year… If we are looking at the number of deaths resulting as a result of this, we have to be realistic too that this is not going to be no common cold or flu.

Slavitt followed with this chilling observation:

Look, I don’t think they want to say that, but I do think that implicit in this is an acceptance that there are going to be, at least in the US, 200,000 to 250,000 deaths a year at baseline.

Both Andersen and Slavitt agreed that such a scale of death could continue for 10 years, if not longer.

As epidemiologists such as Dr. Ellie Murray have predicted, a cyclic pattern is emerging in which there is one dominant winter wave followed by one or two smaller waves in summer and fall. The scale of death we have witnessed in the supposedly “mild” Omicron wave has been massive and informs us that even estimates of 250,000 annual deaths in the US for years to come may be low.

Moreover, the last several months have provided ample objective evidence that children suffer considerably from infection. The Omicron wave saw hospitalizations among children rise to record highs, especially among those under the age of five.

According to the CDC’s data, COVID-19 killed 539 children in the US in 2021, mostly in the second half of the year, after schools reopened. By comparison, the flu killed three children in 2021.

This only underscores the difference between these viral infections despite the limited mitigation measures in place. With little infrastructure spending to address the need for highly reliable heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, the lifting of all mask mandates and complete opening of schools and businesses will have a considerable impact on the lives of these innocents.

In response to the federal government and states’ reckless ending of the mask mandates, over 300 public health experts and professionals have signed an open letter urging elected officials to re-evaluate “the end of school mask mandates.”

The letter, written by Sonali Rajan, EdD; Katherine Keyes, PhD; Kara Rudolph, PhD; Dustin Duncan, ScD; and Charles Branas, PhD of Columbia University, notes:

Over the past several weeks there have been sustained calls by a vocal minority to actively reduce COVID-19 mitigation measures in schools. Elected officials, pundits on cable news, and national media outlets have been pushing for mask “off-ramps.” And as of this week, several states (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, among others) are planning an end to indoor mask mandates in schools by a specific date. These calls, however, are not guided by rigorous accumulated scientific evidence. Removing indoor mask mandates by a particular date—as opposed to tying them to a threshold of community transmission and hospitalizations—is unscientific.

According to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), over 12.3 million children in the US have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. Almost 4.5 million of these infections occurred since New Year’s Day 2022. For 27 straight weeks, pediatric COVID cases have remained over 100,000 and COVID-19 has become the sixth leading cause of death among school-aged kids.

These figures do not include the long-term implications of heart disease and diabetes among children infected with the coronavirus. And the long-term impact of post-COVID syndrome remains unknown. Long COVID has significant impact on the mental health of children and may have a considerable negative influence on their adult lives.

As the “In the Bubble” podcast was ending, Andersen reflected on the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is extremely fit and has been able to mutate and survive over the last two years, underscoring not just the immediate dangers it poses to the population, but its tenacity to persist.

As he has explained, SARS-CoV-2 had a natural origin. But the current strains of the coronavirus and the prospect of a pandemic in perpetuity are a product of human activity—in particular, the deadly and reckless policies, driven by the financial interests of the corporate ruling elites, which are forcing the populations of nearly every country on the globe to accept the coronavirus as a permanent threat to their lives, their health and their livelihoods.

Donor list leak exposes business and far-right forces sponsoring Canada’s “Freedom Convoy”

Niles Niemuth

Data from the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo was leaked online Sunday. It provides insight into the right wing donors who have helped bankroll the far-right “Freedom Convoy” movement, which has occupied the neighborhood around Canada’s parliament in Ottawa for more than two weeks and set up blockades at border crossings with the US.

Endorsed by former President Donald Trump, various January 6 coup plotters, Fox News and the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the Convoy organizers have been flooded with donations from across Canada, the US and the rest of the world. A GoFundMe initiative raised US $7.9 million before it was shut down for violating the crowdfunding site’s terms of service which prohibit the use of funds to promote violence and harassment.

Following the suspension of the GoFundMe initiative, Convoy organizers moved to GiveSendGo, a self-proclaimed Chrsitian crowdfunding site. GiveSendGo has been used by the far-right in the United States to raise funds for the defense of fascist shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, members of the Proud Boys, a designated terrorist group in Canada, as well as the insurrectionists who took part in the invasion of the US Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021.

Rally in support of the far-right Convoy in Vaughan, on the outskirts of Toronto, Jan. 27. (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP)

On Sunday night the GiveSendGo website was taken offline in an apparent hack and redirected to GiveSendGone.wtf. A message posted on the site read in part, “You helped fund the January 6 insurrection in the US. You helped fund an insurrection in Ottawa. In fact, you are committed to funding anything that keeps the raging fire of misinformation going until that it [sic] burns the world’s collective democracies down.” A file was released which exposed the data of all the donors, including their names, businesses and addresses.

According to the leaked data, $8.4 million had been raised from 92,844 donors. An analysis by Queen’s University Professor Amarnath Amarasingam, an expert on terrorism and political violence, found that 56 percent of donors are based in the United States. The second largest group of donors, 39 percent, are from Canada.

Among other countries, donations were also given by individuals in Great Britain, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, France and Norway. Nine individuals donated $7,600 from addresses in the Cayman Island, a popular tax haven utilized by the ultra-rich. Despite the significant international support for the convoy the majority of funds, $4.31 million, came from donors based in Canada while $3.62 million came from the US.

Monmouth University graduate researcher Sara Aniano found that among statements left by donors were: “I look forward to the day you tyrants are swinging from a noose.”; “We have 2A [Second Amendment] here in America send your mounties and see what happens.”; “CABAL PIGLETS ARE CORRUPT CRIMINALS WHO NEED SEVERE PUNISHMENT UNDER LAW”; “Death to all liberal traitors.” Donors also left messages of support using language associated with the fascist QAnon movement.

The largest single donation was for $215,000 but the donor remains unidentified. This was followed by $90,000 from US tech billionaire Thomas Siebel, a prominent Republican Party funder. The next largest donation came from Brad Howland, the owner of a power washing business in Sussex Corner, New Brunswick.

Howland, who has posted statements in support of Trump on Facebook, confirmed to CBC News that he had made the donation. “We are thankful to be blessed enough to support their efforts to do what they have to do in a peaceful way until the government removes the mandates to restore all our freedom as pre-COVID,” he explained.

Ben Pogue, the CEO of a construction company based in Dallas, Texas gave $20,000 to support the Ottawa occupation. Pogue and his wife gave over $200,000 to Trump’s reelection campaign in 2019 and posted photos with the Trump family on social media. Pogue’s father subsequently received a pardon from Trump in 2020 for evading $400,000 in taxes.

A vice-president of an AutoCanada car dealership in London, Ontario gave $25,000 and another $20,000 was given by the chair of a community and family support organization in Cannington, Ontario. Other donors used email addresses associated with the Correctional Services of Canada, US Bureau of Prisons, US Department of Justice, Transportation Safety Administration and NASA.

Significant business donors to the scuttled GoFundMe identified by news outlet PressProgress include: the Range Langley, Canada’s largest shooting range, located in Langley, British Columbia which gave $18,000; Marine Tech Industries, a ship repair company in Surrey, British Columbia, which provided $5,000; and Murray Wedge, a portfolio manager at National Bank Financial based in Toronto provided $5,000.

Another significant stream of funding for the convoy has come in the form of Bitcoin. The popular cryptocurrency allows for anonymous payments, which has allowed Convoy organizers to utilize donations despite their bank accounts being frozen. Bitcoin Magazine reported Monday that nearly $1 million had been raised so far from 5,511 donors in a campaign operated by the libertarian group HonkHonkHodl.

With the backing of the Conservative Party official opposition and sections of the mainstream corporate media, a rabble of small business owners, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, religious fundamentalists, fascist thugs and owner-operator drivers have been mobilized under the “Freedom Convoy” to demand the scrapping of a vaccine mandate for truck drivers crossing the US-Canada border and as a wedge for ending all COVID-19 mitigations. Organizers have openly discussed plans for overthrowing the government of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and replacing it with an unelected junta.

Despite the outsized attention given to the protests and their demands, the majority of Canadians are vaccinated, including almost 90 percent of truck drivers, and COVID-19 mitigation measures remain popular.

At its peak, 5,000 to 8,000 have gathered in downtown Ottawa, while several hundred trucks block city streets where hooligans have run amuck. Occupiers have been allowed to set up hot tubs, barbecues and full music stages with video screens. The protests and blockades have been treated with kid gloves by the police from the local to federal level, with active duty and retired officers expressing their open sympathy. Organizer Tamar Lich responded to Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act on Monday by declaring that the occupiers will “hold the line.”

The exposure of the Convoy’s financial backers is another confirmation that, regardless of the involvement of a smattering of confused or backward workers, the protest is not a working class movement. It has drawn support from sections of the Canadian and American ruling elite who backed Trump and his coup attempt and mobilized enraged sections of the middle class and small business owners.

The GiveSendGo data also exposes the effort to turn the crisis of the Canadian government outward and manipulate popular anger into support for the anti-Russia war drive being pursued by Canadian and American imperialism in Ukraine. The Canadian Press published an article Tuesday with a headline which asked, without providing any evidence, “Are Canadian protest over COVID-19 restrictions a factor in Putin’s Ukraine timeline?”

The homicidal calls for an end of anti-COVID-19 measures and a “return to normal” are the opposite of what the working class requires and has been demanding. Teachers and students across Canada have been protesting the unsafe reopening of schools and demanding more, not less, protection from a virus which has infected over 3 million and killed more than 35,500 thanks to the “herd immunity” strategy which has been pursued by every party in government, including the New Democratic Party.

In response to the Convoy, provincial, territorial and federal governments are moving to rip up all remaining mitigation measures including vaccine passports, indoor crowd limits and masking requirements. Workers in Canada and around the world must oppose the rightward shift in Canadian politics now underway and take up the demand for a science-based elimination strategy to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save lives by bringing the pandemic to an end.

Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government approve anti-working class labor law

Santiago Guillén

The Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos coalition government has passed a reactionary anti-working class labor law. It was designed by the trade unions, big business and the Podemos-led ministry of labour; overseen by the European Union (EU); passed with thanks to parliamentary support from right-wing parties, and has received the blessings of Spain’s financial aristocracy.

The reform continues the one approved by the right-wing Popular Party (PP) in 2012, the harshest attack Spanish workers suffered since the end of the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco in 1978.

The PP reform led to Spain’s being one of the EU countries with the most temporary contracts. It led to mass job destruction, wage cuts and hundreds of thousands of youth leaving the country to seek jobs elsewhere. Coming after the 2008 global economic crisis, the explicit aim was to cut wages and thus increase exports to increase profits for the ruling class.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (PSOE), second left, walks next to Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, second right, and First Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, left, at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Jan. 14 2020. (Image Credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

The new law effectively validates the PP’s reform. Despite the attempts of Podemos, the PSOE and liberal media like El País, eldiario.es and Público, to market the new reform as “progressive,” the truth is that key aspects of the PP 2012 law remain. These include:

• The reduction in compensation for unfair dismissal from 45 to 33 days per year worked with a maximum of 24 months instead of the previous 42;
• The ability to sack workers by simply alleging foreseeable losses in the future;
• Collective dismissals are simplified through Employment Regulation Files (ERE). These no longer require administrative authorization, and corporations have sacked tens of thousands of workers using EREs;
• Employers’ ability to cut salaries, modify working hours, change employees’ place of work or job description by alleging “economic, technical, organizational or production reasons.”
• Employers’ ability to withdraw from collective agreements.
• Employers’ ability to impose overtime on workers in part-time contracts, a mechanism that facilitates exploitation, fraud and precariousness.

The continuity with the PP’s labour reform is such that Mariano Rajoy, the right-wing prime minister who oversaw the law, told the conservative ABC newspaper that the PSOE and Podemos “left the labour reform where it was.”

Juan Ramón Rallo, a neo-liberal economist, wrote in El Confidencial digital, “Honestly, I think it is good news that this reform has gone ahead. As I said at the time, it consolidates all the central elements of the 2012 labor reform and turns them, from now on, into a shared consensus from [the far-right] Vox [party] to Podemos.”

The law has been supported by various right-wing parties such as Citizens, the Navarrese-regionalist UPN and the Catalan nationalist PDeCAT. The two largest parties of the Spanish right, the PP and Vox, voted against it, not because they disagreed with its contents, but because they hoped its rejection would provoke a crisis in the governing coalition.

Major factions of Spain’s financial aristocracy have come out to defend the reform. Ana Patricia Botín, CEO of Santander, Spain’s largest bank, said, “I think it is very important what has been agreed and that it has been done by consensus, it is positive,” referring to the unions and the big business association CEOE all agreeing to the reform. Botín is fully aware that the previous labour reform helped Spanish banks earn more than 20 billion euros last year after laying off 19,000 employees.

The major change of the new law is related to rules limiting most temporary contracts to a maximum of three months. Temp agencies will have to adapt workers' terms to those of the company they are assigned to. However, given that employers often act fraudulently with job contracts, aware that labour inspectors are scarce and overstrained—so much so that they have repeatedly threatened to go on strike over the past year—these measures will likely have a limited impact.

Above all, the new law seeks to strengthen the role of the Workers Commissions (CCOO) and the General Labor Union (UGT) union bureaucracies in collective bargaining.

While sectoral collective agreements will from now on take precedence over company or regional agreements, collective bargaining will become the central instrument for negotiating wages and working conditions. This has nothing to do with strengthening workers’ ability to negotiate with employers. Rather, it aims to strengthen the unions’ role as labor police forces comprised of upper-middle class bureaucrats who enforce wage cuts, redundancies and precarious working conditions.

The unions have recently proven their credentials. In 9-day metalworkers strike in Cádiz involving 22,000 workers, the unions CCOO and UGT sold out the strike, accepting wages below inflation, while aiding the ruthless crackdown of the PSOE-Podemos government using police and military-style tanks. They then scrambled to demobilise or cancel strikes across the country, terrified that workers’ militancy could get out of their control.

Amid a surging increase in inflation and poverty hitting broad sections of the working class, the ruling class view the unions as critical to crushing resistance and imposing wage cuts. For this reason, the state recently showered CCOO and UGT with millions of euros. In 2021, these anti-working class organisations received 56 percent more than previously—an additional 3.5 million euros. It has gone from 9 million in 2020 to 17 million in the latest state budget. This does not include subsidies at the local, regional and European level amounting to many millions more.

In fact, the trade unions and Podemos never intended to revoke the 2012 reform. Yolanda Díaz—Podemos’ de facto leader, current Minister of Labor and promoter of the new law—stated that she would “repeal the labor reform despite all resistance” at the CCOO congress held in October 2021. However, Spain had already committed with the European Union to preserve this law. In exchange, Spain would receive 70 billion euros from the EU’s bailout fund, the Next Generation Plan, to hand out to its corporations and banks.

The Operational Agreement, as the agreement is known, was signed by the Spanish government on November 10. It clearly states that “the actual release of the funds to the Member States will take place in installments and will be conditional on the satisfactory fulfillment of the milestones and targets.” Among those milestones already met is the labor reform of 2012, also imposed by the European Union, and which the Spanish government therefore promised not to touch.

It exposes as a fraud the comments of then-Podemos leader and deputy prime minister of the PSOE-Podemos government, Pablo Iglesias. Endorsing the EU bailout funneling €750 billion to the banks and corporations in July 2020, he said the EU “seems to have learned the lessons after the previous crisis, this time we will not have austerity, but an ambitious plan of fiscal stimuli.”

In fact, the man who led the team supervising Spain’s commitments to disburse the funds in December is Declan Costello, former head of the European Commission Mission for Greece. Under this capacity, Costello oversaw the savage austerity packages implemented in Greece by Podemos’ ally, Syriza, under Prime Minster Alexis Tsipras, that devastated the working class.

The latest labour reform exposes Podemos for what it is: a pro-capitalist party whose record in government includes prioritising profits over lives amid a pandemic that has led to over 122,000 excess deaths in Spain, showering corporations and banks with billions of euros, and spearheading war threats against nuclear-armed Russia amid the Ukraine crisis.

OPEC Fund for International Development OFID Young Professional Development Program 2022

Application Deadline: 28th February 2022

Eligible Countries: OFID Member Countries

About OFID Young Professional Development Program: The YPDP will allow participants to become acquainted with OFID’s operations and how the different departments/units contribute to the achievement of the institution’s overall strategic and operational goals. Based on an Individual Development Plan, YPDP participants should spend at least 50% of the duration of the Program in the home department/unit. Through this Program, participants will gain valuable on-the-job experience, and they will also benefit from a coaching/counselling arrangement as well as a wide range of relevant training and developmental opportunities.

Upon completion of the Program,  a participant may be offered employment  at OFID, based on job availability, OFID’s manpower needs and the outcomes of his/her performance appraisal reviews.

Type: Internship/Job

Eligibility: To be selected for the OFID Young Professional Development Program, applicants must:

• be an OPEC Fund member country national;
• be 30 years of age, or younger;
• hold a Master’s degree;
• be able to demonstrate outstanding academic credentials;
• be fluent in English and proficient in at least one other language; 
• specialize in development, engineering, economics, finance, business administration, law, information technology, human resources or any other discipline relevant to the OPEC Fund’s operations;
• be able to work in an international, multicultural and diverse environment;
• understand the OPEC Fund’s mandate; and
• be willing to work with the OPEC Fund in Vienna for a minimum of two years upon completion of the YPDP, if offered a position.

Selection Process: Young Professionals are chosen through an intensive and rigorous selection process. Applicants accepted will join the Program in the last quarter of the year. Candidates who are offered a position in the YPDP shall respond within 2 weeks. Only candidates who meet the eligibility criteria may be contacted for interviews.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of OFID Young Professional Development Program: OFID offers a compensation and benefits package that is internationally competitive and comparable with other multilateral institutions. Participants will also be entitled to benefits of internationally recruited staff members which include; housing allowance, dependency allowance, relocation grant, home leave allowance, medical benefits plan, children’s education subsidy, accident insurance plan and retirement benefits, amongst others.

Duration of Program: 2 years

How to Apply for OFID Young Professional Development Program: To apply, candidates must submit:

• A YPDP online application form
• A Curriculum Vitae (CV)
• An application essay (in Word or PDF format)
• Academic certificates and transcripts.

Important considerations

• Please ensure you meet the minimum eligibility criteria, outlined above;
• Please upload the Application essay and transcripts under the “Additional documents” section of the application form;
• Please submit a valid and current email address. Email us at csd-hrpp@opecfund.org with new contact details should they change during the application process;
• Answer all the questions in the application form; and
• Please ensure that your application essay adheres to the below guidelines.

Application essay

The OPEC Fund works in cooperation with developing country partners and the international donor community to stimulate economic growth and alleviate poverty in all disadvantaged regions of the world. It does this by providing financing to build essential infrastructure, strengthen social services and promote productivity, competitiveness and trade. The OPEC Fund’s work is people-centered, focusing on projects that meet basic needs – such as food, energy, infrastructure, employment (particularly relating to MSMEs), clean water and sanitation, healthcare and education.

In fewer than 1,000 words, please write an original essay addressing (i) the potential of development actors such as the OPEC Fund to help developing countries overcome obstacles to social, environmental and economic progress, and (ii) how you would hope to contribute to development if you were selected to work for the OPEC Fund. You may focus on a region or set of countries and / or your area of expertise to formulate your essay. 

Please remember, the OPEC Fund will only consider applications from candidates who meet the above criteria and submit an official online application before the deadline of February 2022. 

Also, please note that we will only reach out to short-listed candidates.

APPLY HERE

Visit Program Webpage for details

Omicron rages in German hospitals and nursing homes

Markus Salzmann

Rapidly rising infection levels are having an increasingly serious impact on the situation in health and care facilities.

On Friday alone, more than 206,000 people in Germany became infected and 196 died. At the same time, the German government is preparing to lift the remaining, already completely inadequate, protective measures. Like governments across Europe, the federal coalition under Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) is deliberately accepting mass illness and death.

Protest for better care in front of the Berlin Senate Administration on 29 May 2020 (Photo: Leonhard Lenz/CC0 1.0)

Massive outbreaks are already commonplace. In a nursing home in Heidelberg, 34 residents and two employees recently tested positive for coronavirus. In a care facility in Lichtenfels, Bavaria, 75 people have been infected. In addition, 42 residents and 33 employees have tested positive, according to the operator.

In Schleswig-Holstein, a coronavirus outbreak was reported in a retirement home in the municipality of Tarp, with 65 residents and 19 employees becoming infected. In a facility in Wahlstedt, 54 of the 89 residents and 30 of 39 employees were infected. Here, the outbreak was caused by the significantly more contagious Omicron subvariant BA.2. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), 20 percent of infections in Germany are now due to this variant.

In a care facility in Horb (Baden-Württemberg), 15 residents and 10 staff members have been infected in a new outbreak. A few weeks ago, nine residents died following an outbreak. The list could go on and on.

The numerous infections lead to an enormous loss of staff, which further aggravates the staff shortage that has been rampant in the nursing professions for years.

In Thuringia, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs, this is no longer achieved in 40 percent of facilities. In 129 of 328 homes, the staff quota is below 50 percent, as reported by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Among them are 49 facilities that employ only between 30 and 45 percent specialised staff. Many facilities are not accepting new residents due to a lack of staff. According to broadcaster rbb, several facilities in Cottbus, Brandenburg and the surrounding area have already done so.

The situation is similar in hospitals. At the Bonhoeffer Hospital in Neubrandenburg, for example, one in 10 employees is absent because of a coronavirus infection or is in quarantine. Only urgent emergencies are currently admitted there. At the Südstadtklinikum in Rostock, so many doctors and nurses are absent due to COVID-19 that one ward has already been closed. According to the medical director, there are plans to close another ward.

The situation in Berlin is equally dire. Here, the hospitalisation incidence rate is over 25 per 100,000 inhabitants, which means it has risen by 5 points within one week. This is also associated with a strong increase in bed occupancy in normal wards. The state-owned Vivantes hospitals are currently treating 331 COVID-19 patients, 53 more than a week ago (as of Friday). At the same time, the sickness rate among staff is twice as high as usual.

The picture is similar at the Charité, which cares for most coronavirus patients in the capital. According to the German Red Cross (DRK), its hospitals also do not expect the situation to ease in the short term.

Nevertheless, the SPD-Left Party-Green Berlin Senate (state executive) is pushing ahead with its reopening course. The SPD, the Greens and the Left Party have decided on generous relaxations of protective measures for large events, which came into force on February 12. Others are to follow from February 19.

Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) said that the Senate was currently consulting with virologist Christian Drosten on an “exit strategy” from the coronavirus measures. Drosten had recently claimed there was no alternative to the unscrupulous herd immunity policies of the federal and state governments.

While the governing parties continue to push the policy of deliberate mass infection, even the existing vaccination options are being cut back on cost grounds. Plans are currently being discussed to close five state-run vaccination centres. This would reduce capacity in vaccination centres from 17,000 vaccinations to only 3,600. Of 23 mobile vaccination teams, only 12 are to be retained.

The emerging discussion about compulsory vaccination for medical and nursing professions must also be seen against this background. More and more politicians and media outlets are running up a storm against the introduction of compulsory vaccination, according to which, from March 15, employees in hospitals and nursing homes must be fully vaccinated and otherwise are no longer allowed to work in those settings.

It is not possible to stop the pandemic through vaccination alone. Nevertheless, mass vaccination is imperative, especially in the health sector. As outbreaks have shown time and again, if an infected person works with elderly or sick people in a home or hospital, the consequences can be disastrous. Therefore, the requirement that they be vaccinated is legitimate and necessary. Anyone who refuses to be inoculated despite having access to a vaccine will inevitably not be allowed to work in these areas.

Numerous media outlets and politicians are now arguing that compulsory vaccination would lead to mass layoffs in nursing homes and further aggravate the staffing situation. Bavaria’s head of government Markus Söder (Christian Social Union, CSU) had announced that there would be “generous transitional arrangements,” which is tantamount to refusing to implement the law.

Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) has also pleaded for a postponement of compulsory vaccination. The trade unions are also largely in favour of this course. Frank Werneke, head of the Verdi union, warned last year against stigmatising unvaccinated people in this context.

This argumentation is mendacious and reactionary. In fact, more than 85 percent of medical and nursing staff are already fully vaccinated, which is well above the general vaccination rate. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the rate is over 92 percent. In some cities it is over 95 percent.

That there is a significant proportion of vaccination sceptics among nurses and doctors is simply not true. The fact that employees are still not vaccinated is usually because there is no systematic vaccination campaign. Many auxiliary workers in the care sector live under precarious conditions, have a migration background, and lack German language skills.

Moreover, it is not because of compulsory vaccination that dismissals occur, but exactly the opposite. The complete inaction of those responsible has led to thousands of dismissals and career changes by nurses in the last two years. For decades, public health care has been privatised and cut to the bone. The pandemic has added the constant threat of infection and its possible consequences to the mix of poor pay and miserable working conditions.

French COVID-19 deaths reach highest level since the winter of 2021

Samuel Tissot

In the past week France has recorded over 650 daily deaths on two occasions. On February 8, 691 deaths were recorded. On February 10, 655 further deaths were reported. The 7-day average of 324 daily deaths is the highest figure since April 1, when just 4.4 percent of the French population was fully vaccinated against the virus, compared to over 77 percent today.

Despite a level of death that has not been seen for almost a year and one of the highest of the entire pandemic, there has been no mention of the figure in any of the major French newspapers or by the government.

Teachers gather during a protest in Lille, northern France, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. French teachers have walked out in a nationwide strike Thursday to express anger at the way the government is handling the virus situation in schools, denouncing confusing rules and calling for remote learning. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

The rise in deaths in the country has occurred after five consecutive weeks where daily infections have averaged over 100,000. Although average cases are now falling from the peak of 365,000 on January 26, the 7-day average is still above 100,000. Since Omicron became dominant in France on December 31, 2021, 11.5 million people have been infected in the country. This means that in a little over a month there have been more infections than the rest of the pandemic combined.

Citing the fall in cases, the Macron government is moving to remove all restrictions against COVID-19, as has already been done in Denmark and the UK. From February 28, masks will no longer be required in most indoor settings. On February 12, the requirement to present a recent negative test result upon arrival into France was also removed for vaccinated travelers.

According to Junior Minister of Transportation Jean Baptiste Djebbari, the end of the requirement to wear masks on public transport will be discussed at this week’s Defense Council meeting.

The explosion of infections since mid-December shows that the health measures taken by the French government were never sufficient to protect the population. However, the end of even the most minimal public health measures will allow the virus to spread further throughout the population and allow for surges of other variants and Omicron sub-lineages known to be widely circulating in France, across Europe and internationally.

Beyond the current level of death, such high levels of infection are a catastrophe for millions condemned to live with the long-term consequences of COVID-19. The experience from sufferers of Long COVID from the first wave of the pandemic shows that millions will suffer from at least shortness of breath, brain fog and fatigue.

Unfortunately, thousands who survived the initial symptoms of COVID-19 will likely meet an early end in the coming year. Fatal diseases are more common among individuals who have survived COVID-19 infection in the previous 12 months. One recent study found that individuals with a confirmed COVID-19 infection were 63 percent more likely to suffer from 20 cardiovascular diseases, including strokes and heart attacks, in the 12 months after infection.

While such high levels of infection have created a limited amount of “natural” protection against the virus, this is far outweighed by the cost of the mass infection policy. Over the past 2 months alone, there have been 15,000 preventable deaths, in addition to the millions who will suffer from the long-term consequences of COVID-19 infection.

Furthermore, the “protection” gained will not shield the population against further waves driven by newer variants. Such massive rates of infection in France and worldwide entail high rates of mutation in the virus. Newer variants that evade both natural and vaccine-induced immunity more effectively than Omicron will inevitably spread throughout the population, undermining whatever protection has been gained.

Unvaccinated school children are at particular risk from long-term complications of the virus. They are the least vaccinated group in society and have borne the brunt of the most recent wave. In the most recent data from French public health agency, in the week beginning January 31, among 10- to 19-year-olds the incidence rate was 3,954 per 100,000 (the highest of any age group), and among 0 to 9-year-olds it was 2,707. More than 90 percent of French children under 12 remain unprotected, even though child vaccinations started in early December 2021.

Nevertheless, the Macron government is determined to extend its purge of any last COVID-19 measures to schools. A new COVID-19 protocol will come into effect beginning February 21.

Now children and staff will only be required to show a negative self-test on Day 2 of isolation to return to classrooms. Parents will also no longer be required to pledge that their child has taken a test at all. Relying on single self-tests, which are notoriously unreliable and unfit for tracking and tracing cases, and effectively eliminating the testing rules mean French classrooms will be flooded with even larger numbers of children testing positive for COVID-19.

Macron has only been able to enforce such a murderous policy in schools due to the criminal role played by the so-called teachers unions. Acting as a police force throughout the pandemic, they isolated and extinguished all eruptions of struggle by rank-and-file teachers while enforcing each intensification of the government’s herd immunity policy in the schools and universities. The most recent protocol was only announced by Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer after it was signed off by the teachers unions in a closed-door meeting on February 8.

In the last two months alone, hundreds of thousands of French children have been infected with COVID-19. A whole generation has been condemned to struggle with the long-term effects of a virus which damages vital organs. Preliminary evidence indicates COVID-19 infection increases the risk of diabetes in children. The true extent of these long-term effects will only become clear over a period of years and decades.

The mass infection policy pursued by the Macron government and its counterparts throughout Europe will go down in history as a great social crime.

For most of the pandemic, governments across Europe pursued a mitigation strategy, which the WSWS has described as “an amorphous collection of measures that tries to negotiate between the realities of the virus and the financial interests of the ruling elites.” Seizing on the false pretext that Omicron variant is “milder,” this has shifted to an open policy of herd immunity in the past two months.

France is one of the most extreme examples of the consequences of this shift, as not a finger was raised by the government in response to eye-watering daily case figures that reached 500,000. Infections have been so high that even among a highly vaccinated population, serious illness and death have reached levels seen before mass inoculation was possible.

As far as the French and European ruling class is concerned, even limited health measures must be avoided at all costs. From here on in, in the face of new surges and more dangerous variants they intend to tolerate no barrier to the extraction of profit from the working class.

The French ruling class has been united in its response to the fascist-organized and -led “Freedom Convoy” that tried to occupy Paris on Saturday. Although this small movement was easily quashed by Paris police, its demands for the end of measures against COVID-19 were sympathetically welcomed by all sections of the ruling class and its representatives, from fascistic presidential candidate Eric Zemmour to pseudoleft candidate Jean Luc Mélenchon. Macron himself described their calls for a policy of mass infection as “legitimate.”

US moves embassy from Ukraine’s capital Kiev to the western city of Lviv

Clara Weiss

Amid an ongoing war frenzy in the American media, the US cleared out its embassy in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and relocated its diplomatic staff 340 miles west to Lviv, near the border with Poland. Since Thursday, the Biden administration and the corporate press have peddled unsubstantiated allegations that a Russian invasion is “imminent,” naming Wednesday as a potential date for the military offensive.

A view of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022 [Credit: AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko]

According to the Wall Street Journal, the State Department has ordered the destruction of networking equipment and computer workstations and the dismantling of the embassy telephone system. Classified material, along with 56 of the embassy’s workers, were moved to Washington on Sunday. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented, “These prudent precautions in no way undermine our support for or our commitment to Ukraine.”

The move of the US embassy came as dozens of countries have called upon their citizens to immediately leave Ukraine and numerous other states have announced the closure or downsizing of their embassies. The OSCE Special Mission to Ukraine has received orders from the US and UK to withdraw its forces from the Donbass and has begun to do so on Sunday. Several airlines have suspended service to Ukraine while others are struggling to receive insurance coverage for their flights over Ukrainian airspace.

Over the weekend, some 20 charter flights and private jets carried Ukraine’s oligarchs out of the country, including the two richest Ukrainians, Rinat Akhmetov ($11.54 billion) and Viktor Pinchuk ($2.6 billion), as well as many other members of Ukraine’s “richest 100” list.

In yet another sign of growing frictions between Kiev and Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had earlier rejected the latest US allegations of an impending invasion by Moscow, denounced the moving of the US embassy as a “big mistake,” adding, “I think they have to return, otherwise we as a state have to draw certain conclusions. Believe me, we will draw these conclusions.”

A source in Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” party told the Ukrainian outlet strana.ua that the president had told the parliamentary caucus on Monday that “three friendly countries are making up a story about war. He tried to explain to us in the caucus that we are being played with, but that we are resisting.”

The secretary of Ukraine’s Council of National Security and Defense, Alexei Danilov, backed Zelensky’s line on Monday, stating that Ukrainian intelligence has found no evidence substantiating the Western warnings of an invasion by Russia in Ukraine in the near future.

In an address to the nation on Monday, Zelensky said that, “We are being told that February 16 will be the day of the attack, we are turning it into the day of national unity.” Zelensky stressed that the Ukrainian government was preparing for all possible scenarios and that the Ukrainian army was ready to defend the state. He also emphasized that East Ukraine and Crimea would “return to Ukraine” but “exclusively through diplomatic means.” This statement directly contradicts the military strategy to “retake” Crimea and East Ukraine that his government adopted in early 2021.

As the CIA and State Department have made one unsubstantiated allegation about a “Russian false-flag operation” after another, the Kremlin and pro-Russian separatists have warned that the Ukrainian army is planning a provocation in East Ukraine. According to Russian news reports, the Ukrainian military has amassed about half of its 250,000 troops near the front line in East Ukraine. This would amount to roughly the same size as Russia’s reported troop deployment near Ukraine’s border.

While Zelensky has been denying both war plans by Kiev and the threat of an imminent invasion by Russia, it is far from clear that his government is in control of the Ukrainian military, let alone the substantial fascist paramilitary forces in the country. Last summer, Zelensky, formally the commander-in-chief, was banned by the military leadership from visiting the front line in East Ukraine for several days, a highly unusual move that was never fully explained.

Earlier this month, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry claimed to have thwarted a plot to stage violent demonstrations against the government, which would have demanded a military offensive in the Donbass and Crimea. It is to be assumed that these plans involved forces either actively or formerly employed by the Ukrainian security forces as well as the far right.

US-armed and funded far-right paramilitary forces like the Azov Battalion have staged multiple demonstrations against Zelensky over the years with similar demands, several of which were addressed by former president and oligarch Petro Poroshenko (net worth $1.5 billion).

Poroshenko returned to Ukraine in January and only avoided arrest in a treason case thanks to the direct intervention of the US and Canada. He has since been engaged in a press campaign, attacking Zelensky for his supposedly soft line on Russia. Zelensky’s former interior minister, Arsen Avakov, who has close ties to both Washington and Ukraine’s far right, recently called for early elections, threatening Zelensky that, otherwise, he might be ousted in another “Maidan”—the name of the right-wing protests in the leadup to the February 2014 coup.

In a clear indication that Washington is eyeing Zelensky’s removal, the New York Times claimed Zelensky’s attempts to “caution against panic and overreaction” made him appear “nearly delusional about the grave risks his country faces.”

In another remarkable shift, Zelensky indicated on Monday that his government may give up on its goal to join NATO in the near future, stating: “Maybe the question of open doors [to NATO] is for us like a dream.” In his address to the nation, Zelensky only mentioned Ukraine’s efforts to join the EU, but not NATO. Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, visiting Kiev, said at a joint press conference with Zelensky, “The question of [Ukraine’s] membership in alliances is basically not on the table, that’s why it’s very strange to see that the Russian government has made something that is basically not on the agenda the subject of a major political problem.”

In reality, Ukraine’s joining of NATO was a central goal of the US-orchestrated February 2014 coup in Kiev. Over the past three years, the Zelensky government has pushed for an acceleration of the process of including Ukraine in the alliance. The Kremlin has long denounced such a move, with Putin recently declaring that Ukraine in NATO would mean war between Russia and NATO. A guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO was one of the principal demands that the Kremlin submitted to NATO in December that the US has flat-out rejected.

While avoiding any clear statement on the controversial Russian-German gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, which both the US and Ukraine want to see stopped, Scholz said on Monday that Berlin was working, together with the US and EU, “very intensely” on a “package of sanctions” that would have “substantial influence on the potential for Russia’s further economic development.” He also announced that Germany would give Ukraine another $150 million in financial aid.

Scholz has come under significant pressure from both the US and within his own coalition with the Greens and Liberal Democrats to tell Putin, during his visit to Moscow Tuesday, that a war between Russia and Ukraine would mean the end of Nord Stream 2. Germany is one of the biggest importers of Russian gas; overall, 40 percent of Europe’s gas supplies come from Russia, with some countries like Hungary depending almost entirely on these deliveries for their gas consumption.

On Monday, gas prices in Europe rose to over $1,000 for 1,000 cubic meters, while oil prices passed the $95 per barrel mark. Since January, Europe has also significantly increased its imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). In a recent piece, the German news magazine Der Spiegel pointed out that America’s LNG industry, which became the world’s largest exporter of LNG in December, was making hefty profits off the Ukraine war crisis.

Meanwhile, the US and NATO continue to ratchet up military tensions in a clear attempt to provoke all-out war. In a phone conversation with UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson—who has been co-leading the NATO provocations against Russia with the US—US President Joe Biden discussed further reinforcements to NATO’s eastern flank. Johnson and Biden also stressed again that the EU must decrease its dependence on Russian gas.

On Monday, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin had a public discussion stressing the need for further diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis. A day prior, Russia launched military drills in the Black Sea involving over 30 warships, on top of ongoing joint military drills with Belarus. Pointing to the provocative moves and military exercises by NATO in the Black Sea last year, Dmitry Zhukov, a retired army captain of the first rank, told the Russian Gazeta.Ru, “The US lays claim to the Black Sea. Moscow has to either accept this or respond. A hypothetical situation in which NATO ships patrol the Black Sea while our military is sitting on the shore and just looking at it is unacceptable for Moscow.”