Collapse of quarantine building in China exposes public anger over Beijing’s COVID-19 measures

Ben McGrath

The March 7 collapse of a hotel in China being used as a quarantine center for people possibly infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus has triggered public anger over the measures taken by the regime in Beijing to curb the virus.

Seventy-one people were inside the Xinjia Hotel, in the city of Quanzhou, Fujian Province, when it collapsed. The death toll reached 29 last Thursday as the final victim was recovered from the rubble, the authorities said. All those in quarantine had previously tested negative for the virus.

The exact cause of the collapse is still not known, but the building’s first floor had been undergoing renovations. The building was opened in 2013, but its third, fourth and fifth floors were converted into a hotel in 2018. Construction workers reported a deformed pillar minutes before the collapse. The building’s owner, surnamed Yang, was summoned for questioning by the police.

People expressed outrage at the hotel’s collapse and solidarity with those trapped. On the evening of March 7, the accident was the top trending topic on the social networking site Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. One person wrote: “The Quanzhou government must be scrutinized! This is not a natural disaster. This is a man-made disaster!” Another wrote: “Gravely hold those responsible accountable.”

This anger is being fueled by the fact that millions in China have been forced to endure lockdowns of entire cities and forced quarantines. Despite these measures, nearly 81,000 people have been infected in China, and more than 3,000 have died, although the spread is said to be slowing, with just eight new cases officially reported on Thursday.

On Weibo, another person contrasted the feelings of being quarantined to being trapped in rubble: “I feel despair after getting locked into a room for just one hour. I can’t imagine those people trapped under rocks for many hours. Hope they are all surviving and strong.”

Building collapses and industrial accidents are common in capitalist China, where companies often cut corners and ignore safety regulations to inflate profits. Last May, a building in Shanghai collapsed, killing 10 construction workers. It was also undergoing renovations.

Many people on social media referred to the hotel as another example of “tofu-dreg construction,” meaning shoddy work. This term gained wide use after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, when several schools collapsed as a result of poor construction, leading to the deaths of thousands of children.

The collapse of the hotel threatens to crack the narrative that the measures taken by Beijing to curb COVID-19 should be emulated. On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping visited Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have originated, and claimed that the spread of the disease had been halted in the city.

However, a building collapse or other disaster could easily contribute to the further spread of COVID-19, for example, by exposing rescue workers to infected patients or preventing people from accessing medical care.

These types of construction accidents demonstrate the subordination of healthcare and other social services to the capitalist market, which Beijing defends. This greatly exacerbates any catastrophe, whether arising from a new virus, earthquake or other disaster.

Beijing is working to deflect criticism from inside China to prevent an explosion of social anger, as well as counter criticism from the US that is of an entirely different and right-wing character. Beijing’s state publishers recently put out a book for this purpose titled, A Battle Against Epidemic: China Combating COVID-19 in 2020. Social media users in China have circulated pictures of the book, denouncing it as “totally shameless.”

Wuhan’s new party secretary, Wang Zhonglin, also earned scorn by demanding residents of the city show gratitude to President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party. Journalist Chu Zhaoxin retorted: “You are a public servant, and your job is to serve the people. Now the people you serve are broken, the dead are still cold, and the tears of the living have not yet dried. The sick have not yet recovered, and much of their dissatisfaction is completely reasonable.”

Wang seemed to be responding, at least in part, to Wuhan residents who denounced the handling of the quarantine during Vice Premier Sun Chunlan’s visit to the city the previous week. As he toured a residential compound, people shouted, “Fake! Fake! It’s all fake!” according to the Los Angeles Times. Residents said they had been neglected while the compound’s management orchestrated a phony clean-up and grocery deliveries shortly before Sun’s visit.

However, China is under pressure from the United States government, which is using the virus outbreak as a pretext for ramping up tensions with Beijing.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week: “Remember, this is the Wuhan coronavirus that’s caused this, and the information that we got at the front end of this thing wasn’t perfect and has led us now to a place where much of the challenge we face today has put us behind the curve.”

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang criticized Pompeo, saying: “Despite the fact that the WHO (World Health Organization) has officially named this novel type of coronavirus, [a] certain American politician, disrespecting science and the WHO decision, jumped at the first chance to stigmatize China and Wuhan with it. We condemn this despicable practice.”

Washington is similarly trying to deflect fear and anger in the United States as the COVID-19 outbreak grows and it becomes clear that the US government is completely unprepared. A number of American politicians have taken to calling COVID-19 the “Wuhan virus” or the “Chinese coronavirus.”

Pompeo claimed on Monday that this was being done to counter propaganda from Beijing. In reality, Washington is exploiting the health crisis to escalate its war drive against China.

Trudeau exploits coronavirus crisis to strengthen Canada-US imperialist alliance

Roger Jordan

While Canada’s ruling elite has wasted critical weeks in initiating efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government suddenly swung into action yesterday. In a press conference, Trudeau announced a series of nationalist and xenophobic measures that were clearly motivated by pressure from, and a desire to coordinate policy with, the Trump administration and US imperialism.

Like Trump earlier in the week, Trudeau’s address, albeit in less aggressive language, focused on the need to strengthen Canada’s borders and portrayed the virus as a foreign problem. Speaking from self-isolation at Redhall Cottage, where he will remain for two weeks after his wife was diagnosed with COVID-19, Trudeau warned Canadians against all foreign travel and declared that a “Team Canada response” was required to manage the crisis.

He also announced unprecedented restrictions to travelers coming into Canada, including reductions in flights and the number of airports to which passengers can fly. “We are looking to reduce the number of airports that will accept travelers from overseas in order to be able to give the proper resources on all arrivals to ensure we’re doing everything we can to keep Canadians and Canada safe,” stated Trudeau.

A group of federal ministers, including Health Minister Patty Hajdu, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, and Transport Minister Mark Garneau, unveiled additional measures at a separate press conference. These included enhanced security checks at airports, the banning of all cruise ships from Canada, and the recommendation that all international travelers entering Canada go into two weeks of voluntary self-isolation.

These measures were clearly a response to Trump’s Wednesday night address, during which he banned virtually all travel from Europe for 30 days and sought to blame the coronavirus pandemic solely on China and the inaction of the European powers. Earlier this week, Canada’s Foreign Minister, François-Philippe Champagne, stressed that Canadian officials were in daily contact with their US counterparts to coordinate their policies.

This coordination has nothing to do with developing a concerted global response to the pandemic, systematically mobilizing the resources of the world to halt the spread of the virus and provide the quality health care urgently required by the population. On the contrary, it is aimed at exploiting the current deadly public health pandemic to strengthen the Canada-US imperialist alliance.

This was underscored Friday when the Trudeau government announced an agreement with the opposition Conservatives, New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Greens to suspend Parliament for five weeks. One of the terms of the agreement was that Parliament would rush through passage of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) by the end of the day. The deal, which replaces NAFTA, contains provisions aimed at consolidating North America as a continental trade bloc against international rivals, above all China, so it can serve as a basis for trade war and military conflict.

Also Friday, the Bank of Canada announced a snap decision to cut interest rates by 0.5 per cent for the second time in ten days, funneling billions of dollars into the coffers of the financial markets and big business.

Meanwhile, the attempts by all levels of government in Canada to combat the virus have been utterly inadequate. Trudeau announced the derisory sum of $1 billion in assistance for Canada’s dilapidated health system on Wednesday, which is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the tens of billions required to repair the damage done by decades of austerity measures. Hospitals in Ontario and British Columbia are already reporting a shortage of critical medical supplies, resulting in patients seeking treatment being turned away. Additionally, the measures announced to help workers who fall ill or who have to go into self-quarantine were no more than a tiny fraction of what is needed to provide millions of Canadians with the financial resources to support their families through illness, self-isolation or the loss of income due to workplace shutdowns.

The attitude of the ruling class to the vast majority of the population was summed up in comments by Hajdu to the House of Commons Health Committee Wednesday. After describing the coronavirus outbreak as a “national emergency and crisis,” she went on to blandly declare, “There are a range of estimates. But I would say that it is safe to assume that it could be between 30 per cent of the population that acquires COVID-19 and 70 per cent of the population.”

The Globe and Mail article that reported her remarks did not indicate that any MP challenged Hajdu’s incredible statement, which accepted the worst prognoses of the World Health Organization and other experts as an accomplished fact. Nor did anyone ask why, given that this crisis has been developing internationally for several months, nothing was done by the Canadian government to expand hospital facilities, purchase critical medical equipment, roll out testing to all communities, and establish isolation facilities for those who need them.

Even taking the lower end of Hajdu’s estimate as a starting point, this would mean that 12 million Canadians would be infected. The general medical advice states that 15–20 per cent of all cases will require an intensive care bed due to breathing problems, which would translate into between 2 million and 2.4 million people. Assuming a mortality rate of 2 per cent, which is well below the rate in several countries, 240,000 Canadians would die. If the higher end of Hajdu’s projection comes to pass, with a rate of infection of 70 per cent, the death toll would be 560,000.

There is no reason for working people to passively accept that the vast majority of the population in Canada and internationally must contract the virus. What is required is billions of dollars of investments in testing, high quality medical care and supplies, including breathing equipment, masks, gloves and gowns. Billions more must be made available to compensate workers for loss of pay, allowing them to stay at home and follow medical advice rather than risking infection by continuing to work to make ends meet.

But none of this will be forthcoming from Canada’s criminal ruling elite. Instead, workers must mobilize independently to fight for the urgent measures needed to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from becoming a human and social catastrophe.

Spain declares state of emergency as unions agree to mass layoffs

Alejandro López

Yesterday, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government announced that it was implementing a state of emergency for 15 days to control the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The decision comes as there are 4,209 confirmed cases, 1,000 more than the day before, and 120 deaths.

At a press conference yesterday afternoon, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the state of emergency would come into effect today, allowing the government to temporarily restrict the movement of citizens and mobilise the police and the army. He claimed the measure “would allow for the maximum mobilisation of resources against the virus.”

Sánchez added that “We are only in the first phase of combatting the virus,” and “We have some very tough weeks ahead of us. We cannot rule out reaching 10,000 [infections] by next week.”

The state of emergency allows the government to limit the free movement of people and vehicles; to temporarily requisition any kind of asset; to intervene and temporarily take over industries, factories, workshops, operations or commercial premises; limit or ration the use of services or the consumption of essential items; and issue necessary orders to ensure supply to markets and the functioning of facilities making essential products.

The measure announced complements others taken at the regional level. The region of Madrid has ordered the closure of all hotels, bars and restaurants. The Basque Country has announced a “health emergency”, which empowers the regional government to confine municipalities. Regional elections in the Basque Country and Galicia will likely be suspended.

In Catalonia, the regional government ordered a complete lockdown—the first of its kind—of Igualada, Vilanova del Camí, Santa Margarida de Montbui and Òdena, confining a total of 70,000 inhabitants to their towns. In Igualada alone, 58 of the 319 cases in Catalonia have been identified. This was a bid to slow transmission of the largest outbreak of the coronavirus so far identified in Catalonia, after the regional government refused to close down schools and other large gathering places.

Showing the utter contempt of the ruling class for health care workers, they account for 36 of those infected recently in Catalonia, and there are 250 people isolated, including 200 hospital staff.

Murcia decreed the confinement of eight coastal towns and cities on Friday, affecting 376,000 people. No person may enter or leave these locations except for work or health reasons, and all businesses will be closed except for pharmacies and food stores. The decision came as seven new cases were reported in one night, mostly from Madrid residents who fled from the capital to the coastal areas.

The pandemic is rapidly exposing the inability of the capitalist system to deal with such a crisis. The Spanish government, like all others, has responded with a staggering level of incompetence and disarray. Last Sunday, they allowed the March 8 feminist protest, which gathered 120,000 protesters, to go forward, despite receiving warnings that the spread of coronavirus was accelerating. The Ministry of Health was aware the day virus had begun to spread “without control”, especially in the region of Madrid.

Prime Minister Sánchez insisted that his ministers attend the protest to “show an image of unity of male minsters against sexism”, El Confidencial Digital wrote, forcing some “who expressed reservations, like the head of Social Security, José Luis Escrivá.”

While Sánchez appealed to patriotism and the “heroism of cleaning one’s hands regularly and staying at home” in his press conference, social anger is mounting among health care workers over the lack of basic medical equipment. Department heads of large hospitals are telling the media their centres lack personal protective equipment. It is also widely acknowledged that there is a lack of respirators, which are essential to keep coronavirus patients who are in critical condition alive.

At the same time, private health care centres are charging €300 to test for coronavirus. The Catholic Church has announced it will continue holding mass, even though the Ministry of Health is calling on citizens to avoid large crowds. And the notorious detention centres for migrants will remain open, threatening to spread the virus among innocent refugees imprisoned there.

The pandemic is rapidly exposing the anti-working-class character, not only of the Sánchez government, but also of the trade unions. The Stalinist Workers Commissions (CCOO) and the social-democratic General Union of Labour (UGT) are calling for mass redundancies to let companies offload the economic effects of the coronavirus on workers and their families. As at the time of the 2008 Wall Street crash, the ruling class and its trade union agents are doing everything possible to bail out companies at workers’ expense.

The day before the government announced the state of emergency, the CCOO, UGT and the big business association CEOE and small business Cepyme, agreed on a joint document, calling for big business to implement a temporary workforce adjustment plan (ERTE). This allows the temporary suspension of job contracts on “economic, technical, organizational or production grounds or due to force majeure.”

Employees affected by an ERTE can access unemployment benefits, but only under certain conditions, like having contributed more than 360 days to social security. Labour lawyer Álvaro San Martín told El Pais, “Workers will earn less and will have no access to any compensation for dismissal.”

Car manufacturer Nissan has already announced a workforce adjustment plan (ERE) affecting 2500 workers. Seat is expected to follow suit. Kostal Eléctrica, which produces components for cars, announced a plan affecting 800 workers. Air Europa’s plan will affect 3,600 workers. Hotel group Melia will sack 230 workers. Spanish airline Iberia has announced an ERE affecting 90 percent of its 16,000 workforce.

A wave of mass redundancies is in preparation. Government sources told the Barcelona daily La Vanguardia that “in a few days a large number of ERTE requests could arrive so that companies can adjust their workforces.” The CCOO has already confirmed that 70 procedures have been opened in the Madrid region alone.

Workers and youth must be warned that the state of emergency will be used against striking workers and protesters. The government is empowered to mobilise the police and the army to crush social opposition against job cuts and safeguard conditions against the virus.

The pandemic is proving the urgent necessity of a mass political movement of the working class in Spain and internationally against capitalism and for the socialist reorganization of world economy. This can only be carried out against the misnamed pro-austerity and militarist “progressive” PSOE-Podemos government and the trade unions. An essential principle that must guide the response of the working class to the crisis is that the health and safety needs of working people internationally must take absolute and unconditional priority over all considerations of corporate profit and private wealth.

Universities and colleges close across the US as COVID-19 disrupts the lives of millions of students

Owen Mullan

Hundreds of universities and colleges around the United States have canceled in-person classes in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. A reported 520 campuses across 47 states shut down before Friday. For many students the shutdown comes just days before the spring semester recess.

University and college students in the United States are joining over 300 million students across Asia, Brazil, Iran and Europe to have their schooling affected by the spread of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus which first emerged late last year in China’s Hubei province.

There is no doubt that school closures are a necessary and important measure from a public health standpoint. However, the haphazard manner in which these school closures have taken place is another stark indication of the complete lack of preparedness within the political establishment to handle a public health crisis of this magnitude. The consequences for workers, students and youth have already been immense.

Many universities followed the announcement to end in-person classes with a notification that students had to leave campus midweek, or in the most sudden cases within 24 hours. The University of California system was among the first to close down. They announced plans to close eight of their nine campuses by Thursday, just over a week before spring break, forcing the tens thousands of students with homes across the United States to hastily make arrangements for travel across the country.

In many cases little or no thought was given to what the implications would be for the tens of thousands of homeless and home-insecure students as well as hundreds of thousands of international students.

Alek, a student at the University of Dayton (UD) in Ohio, spoke to the WSWS about his experience with the school’s sudden closure: “Lots of my friends had to kind of scramble to find ways home or places to stay since the school did not make it very easy to apply for an ability to stay on campus. And to put it into context the school owns most of the housing around the campus as well so I’d estimate anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of students live in school owned housing.”

Alek expressed particular concern for low-income students: “Housing subsidies, for the unused housing that students have already paid for, have yet to be provided so low income students are really getting screwed… Ohio is a state with lots of rural poverty too and that’s really endangering those kids who don’t have great social nets near them.”

He contrasted the lack of support for students with the enormous resources at the school, noting, “UD has an endowment over half a billion dollars.”

Thousands of students are suffering from similar experiences. One Harvard student posted on Twitter, “72 hours Harvard told me to leave campus. My mom and I are homeless and I no longer have my term-time job I use to support my family.” The full impact these measures will have on students and their families is yet to be determined.

International students face similar obstacles. At Princeton, classes were canceled preemptively on Monday and students told to leave before the end of the week, at first with no exceptions and also applying to the nearly two thousand international students.

By Wednesday morning, students had circulated a petition with over 4000 signatures calling for temporary options to be available for those on financial aid, those with unstable home conditions and international students. The petition also raised the concern of sending international students home without testing them for the virus, especially those from both East Africa and East Asia, regions with no reported cases and regions with high risk travel warnings.

As one student wrote on Twitter, “I am signing because as an international student from 4000 miles away, I cannot travel on a whim back home.” This situation applies to most international students, particularly the hundreds of thousands of Indian and Chinese students studying in the United States, who would in addition have to log into online classes in the middle of the night local time. Other students expressed concern if their American visas would even allow them to continue officially studying in different countries.

Some universities and schools have already decided to suspend classes for the rest of the semester, including the State University of New York (SUNY) and City University of New York (CUNY) systems and Temple University in New Jersey. Hundreds of thousands of students trying to pack up and leave campus within a week has caused immense anxiety and confusion on the campuses. For these schools with mostly in-state residents, the move also means that parents and student workers have to take time off from their jobs to spend a day packing and driving home.

Rutgers University closed campus a day early on Thursday after trying to switch to online classes in the middle of the week, a move which many universities are attempting to implement in order to keep education disruptions to a minimum.

Already there are growing concerns from students about the quality of learning online, often taking place in bedrooms and living rooms. Students are also forced to rely on their personal technology and varying levels of access to the internet in their homes.

Over the last week, the transition to online class for grade school students in Seattle forced the city’s Department of Education to provide Wi-Fi routers to dozens of households who didn’t previously own one. A similar crisis will be met by tens of thousands of college students without Wi-Fi routers in their homes or who are in more precarious situations.

At the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in the city of New Brunswick, the related hospital for Rutgers-New Brunswick’s health department and nursing school, nursing and pharmaceutical students that normally would have worked over the spring break were asked to continue coming into the hospital and connected labs. EMT nursing trainees were also asked to work over the break to build up their training hours but forcing students to either commute for early morning or night shifts, or scramble for the limited housing available over the spring break period.

Nursing students have reportedly been told that this will be a learning experience like no other.

While there is certainly much confusion among students, youth and workers regarding the political and social causes and consequences of the crisis, there is also an immense level of anger with the current state of affairs.

Alek told our reporters that he thought the response from the Trump administration was very poor so far: “His CDC’s initial test failed. They de facto banned private testing from being rolled out until after the CDC had a working one. The travel ban from Europe is stupid if American citizens cannot come back, but regardless no travel ban would ever work… I’m not optimistic.”

One student from University of Maryland, Kelly, told the WSWS, “What is taking place is the beginning of a complete catastrophe. People will die because of how unprepared the political figures have been on these issues. If they think the whole world does not see this, they have another thing coming.”

Global auto industry in downward spiral as coronavirus spreads worldwide

Jessica Goldstein

Financial analysts have voiced alarm over the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on the global automotive industry in recent days. Auto sales in China have plunged after the country’s government imposed sweeping social distancing measures, which have been credited with the recent slowing of the deadly virus’ spread in the country in recent weeks.

The China Passenger Car Association reports that new car sales in the country dropped 80 percent year over year in February, the largest monthly dip on record for the agency. On average, car sales fell to 7,100 units a day during the month compared with 45,000 units per day in February 2019. At the very beginning of the year it projected a decline of only 2 percent for 2020, before the major impact of the virus throughout China was fully realized.

In this photo taken Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020, a worker cleans the glass doors at an empty auto showroom in Beijing, China [Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan]

The sharp decline in Chinese auto sales comes on top of a two-year slump. Sales in 2019 slid by 8.2 percent and 3 percent in 2018, the first contraction in the auto market since the 1990s, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

American automakers General Motors and Ford hold a strong presence in China and have been struggling with sales in the country for the past year. General Motors, which has announced the closure of facilities in the US and has already laid off workers this year, has seen Chinese vehicle sales decline for two years in a row and recorded its largest drop in 2019.

Ford, which has also announced a plant closure and layoffs in the US, saw vehicle sales in China fall for the third consecutive year in 2019 by 26.1 percent. Both GM and Ford expected sales to continue to fall in China for 2020, a decline that will be intensified by the present crisis.

At the same time, auto manufacturers have struggled to keep production going in China, which shuttered plants beginning with an extension of the Lunar New Year holidays as the disease took hold in Wuhan, the country’s auto industry capital. China produces nearly one-third of all motor vehicles worldwide, producing 27.8 million vehicles in 2018.

The auto slowdown in China reveals the global interdependence of the nature of the auto industry and will have a deep and direct impact on workers’ lives in China and throughout the world. Modern auto manufacturing is globalized, dependent on a complex, integrated supply chain and division of labor. Any disruption in the global supply chain will impact production in every other country through lower sales or parts shortages.

Autoworkers who are impacted by the virus in one country are deeply connected to their brothers and sisters throughout the world. They manufacture the same products for the same corporations and take part in the labor process as part of one interdependent network.

• China: The world’s leading auto producer shuttered plants across the country last month including US-based General Motors, German automaker Volkswagen and Japanese automaker Nissan. Many plants have since restarted operations. However, re-opened plants are not all running at full capacity as many workers travel from outside provinces and continue to be affected by quarantines. About 80 percent of world auto production is dependent upon parts from China, making it a vital part of the global production process.

• South Korea: Earlier this month South Korean automaker Kia suspended production at its plants in the country after wiring harness supplies from China dried up. The spread of the pandemic throughout the country and quarantine measures also led to a significant drop in auto production coming out of the Hyundai and Kia plants in the country which is not expected to recover until the end of this week. Domestic auto sales in South Korea are projected to be down by up to 40 percent and to not recover until April.

• Italy: Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler has closed four factories across Italy, which are tentatively expected to re-open on March 16. Volkswagen announced Thursday that it will close its Lamborghini factory in Italy, due to reopen March 25. Pirelli tires has also announced production cuts across Italy amidst the economic crisis caused by the virus.

• United States: The world’s second largest auto producer has tripled its dependence on auto parts from China between 2010 and 2018. Most manufacturers keep only a one- to two-month parts supply on hand, meaning that major auto producers in the US will run out of parts by the end of the month. General Motors CEO Mary Barra said that it has enough supplies to last only through the end of March at the latest.

• Mexico: Auto manufacturing is responsible for almost 3 percent of gross domestic product in the seventh-largest auto producing country in the world. Production is expected to be suspended at auto factories throughout the country and some locations report that they are already running low on parts, and some important plants are not expected to make it through the end of this week. The Mexican car industry is heavily dependent on auto part imports from China. The Mexican auto parts industry is heavily dependent on the US export market, which would cripple the industry if US demand drops due to production shutdowns north of the border.

• Germany: A worker at BMW’s research and development center in Germany tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. BMW has since placed 150 workers in quarantine who may have had contact with the person who was diagnosed. Germany has reported over 1,500 cases of the coronavirus and recorded its first two deaths from the virus on Monday, while Chancellor Angela Merkel has no plans to stem the outbreak, which could infect 70 percent of the population.

The COVID-19 pandemic is projected to erase as much as $2.7 trillion from total global gross domestic product in 2020. Global stock exchanges saw their largest sell-off on Monday since the 2008 financial crisis, with a 7 percent decrease in all market indexes as Italian officials moved to lock down the entire country. The sell-off was compounded by the sharp fall in oil prices.

There are signals that countries in Europe and Asia are entering into recessions, and a recession in the US looms near. The COVID-19 crisis is only a trigger. At the heart of the crisis lies the instability of the capitalist system itself, compounded by the growth of an enormous financial bubble.

A new recession in the US, Europe or Asia will have major implications for the autoworkers around the world. Automakers prior to the present outbreak had announced hundreds of thousands of layoffs and many plant closures worldwide in the past year alone due to falling demand, mainly in Asia, but also in Europe, Latin America and North America.

US sales are expected to decline to 16.5 million units in 2020, according to research group LMC Automotive. The group originally projected close to 17 million auto sales in the US in 2020. It has since said that US auto sales could drop even farther below its initial revision.

Industry analyst group Cox Automotive told the Detroit Free Press that a supply chain disruption will have the greatest impact on US automotive sales, and in the event that the US sees coronavirus outbreaks that lead to workplace closures and travel restrictions, the US will most likely face recession.

Autoworkers in the US were forced to bear the brunt of the White House’s bailout to the big banks and corporations after the 2008 financial crash. The Big Three US auto manufacturers—Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors—received billions in financial aid from the government in return for a massive restructuring of the auto industry, which slashed thousands of auto jobs, cut wages and benefits for existing workers and new hires, forced older workers into early retirement and created a two-tier system of wages and benefits with the full complicity of the United Auto Workers.

The banks and corporations will use the onset of recession as an opportunity to carry out a further brutal restructuring on the backs of workers. The corporations see a silver lining in the spread of the COVID-19 infection, which carries a high fatality mortality rate among older adults, since it could potentially save them billions in pension and health care costs.

World Health Organization pleads for $675 million to fight coronavirus

Bryan Dyne

The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday issued a plea for $675 million a month to fight the global coronavirus pandemic. This came as confirmed cases of COVID-19 surpassed 145,000, including upwards of 7,700 new cases in Italy, Iran, Spain, Germany and France alone. At least 93 countries reported at least one new case and at least 442 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, raising the death toll above 5,400.

“We are at a critical point in the global response to COVID-19, we need everyone to get involved in this massive effort to keep the world safe,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated. Referencing the vast spread of the coronavirus, he noted: “More cases are now being reported every day than were reported in China at the height of its epidemic.”

While Dr. Tedros praised the response of South Korea, Singapore and Japan for their “aggressive testing and contact tracing,” which has so far kept the mortality rates in those countries relatively low, he warned against any complacency. “Any country that looks at the experience of other countries with large epidemics and thinks ‘that won’t happen to us’ is making a deadly mistake. It can happen to any country.”

Travelers wearing protective masks arrive to the main bus station in Bogota, Colombia, March 13, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Fernando Vergara]

While WHO officials did not name names, it is not a stretch to relate the last comment to the response of the US political establishment to the pandemic. Instead of providing the necessary resources to combat the greatest public health crisis the United States has faced in decades, the Federal Reserve instead yesterday announced it will provide $1.5 trillion to the financial sector in an effort to reverse the collapse of the stock market seen over the past several days.

If this sort of money had been made available to the world to stop the coronavirus when it first emerged, its spread would have been stopped cold. Those that were infected could have received the best treatment, saving potentially thousands of lives. The economic disruption to the lives of workers caused by any necessary quarantines could have been mitigated. COVID-19 would have remained a deadly but ultimately small outbreak.

The concern instead was not for the lives lost and that will be lost in the weeks to come, but whether or not Wall Street needed a bailout. It was only when the Dow Jones lost more than $2 trillion of its market capitalization that the US government intervened.

In his press conference today, US President Donald Trump announced a “national emergency” as a result of the pandemic, while at the same time maintaining the lie that the “risk to the average American is still very low.” In reality, there are currently 2,269 confirmed coronavirus cases in the US and that number is slated to increase by a factor of 10 every seven days. At the current rate of spread, the number of COVID-19 cases in the US will surpass those in China in two weeks.

Officials at WHO also made the point that travel bans, such as those imposed on Wednesday by Trump against Europe, are generally ineffective. In a statement from February 29, before Trump’s ban was in place, it stated, “WHO continues to advise against the application of travel or trade restrictions to countries experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks.”

The statement continued: “In general, evidence shows that restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions. Furthermore, restrictions may interrupt needed aid and technical support, may disrupt businesses, and may have negative social and economic effects on the affected countries.”

This again applies most sharply to the US government, which has refused coronavirus testing kits from WHO and China, which have been proven to work, insisting instead on using kits developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In every aspect, the deployment and use of these kits has been bungled and mismanaged. They were not available until the middle of February and were not distributed to every state until March. Patients exhibiting some but not all of the symptoms have been turned away from doctors, clinics and hospitals, despite the fact that the virus is known to spread even when its victims have no symptoms.

The breakdown of testing in the United States was openly admitted during a House hearing on Wednesday. Doctor Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the members of the task force ostensibly assembled to combat the coronavirus in the US, was forced to state: “The system is not really geared to what we need right now.”

Fauci attempted an about face to this statement during Trump’s press conference, agreeing with the president’s claim that the CDC would be able to do five million tests by the end of the month. Virtually every account of those attempting to get tested on social media or in the mainstream news says the opposite: that getting tested is still essentially impossible in the United States.

In addition, while tests done by the CDC itself are free, much of the testing has been outsourced to the private sector, including to corporations such as DiaSorin Molecular and Qiagen. For those with insurance, just to be tested for the coronavirus can cost up to $500. For the 27 million Americans without health insurance, the cost is often triple that—a price that the majority of people simply cannot afford. Workers are being forced to choose to go bankrupt or risk the lives of their friends, coworkers, neighbors and family.

The situation will only become more acute as the pandemic spreads unimpeded. The US health care system, like those in Europe, is being taxed beyond its limit and the number of cases is only set to rise. The neglect and criminality by Trump and his fellow oligarchs directed towards the working class means that the death toll in the country could rise into the millions.

The response of the ruling elite to the coronavirus pandemic: Malign neglect

Alex Lantier & Andre Damon

The global coronavirus pandemic entered a new phase yesterday, with 16,000 new cases recorded worldwide by the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker. Another 250 people died Friday in Italy, which announced 2,547 new cases. Spain’s cases nearly doubled, growing by 2,086. In the United States, nearly 572 new cases were discovered, with nine new deaths.

On Friday, the New York Times published internal CDC estimates outlining various scenarios for the spread of the virus, concluding that “between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected over the course of the epidemic,” and that “as many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.” The Times continued, “2.4 million to 21 million people in the United States could require hospitalization, potentially crushing the nation’s medical system, which has only about 925,000 staffed hospital beds.”

In the face of this mounting disaster, a massive chasm exists between the severity of the situation and the response of world governments.

On the surface, this response appears to be chaotic, disorganized, and improvised. All of this is true. But out of this chaos a definite policy emerges, which can be defined as malign neglect. That is, governments are making a deliberate decision to minimize their response, to adopt an attitude of indifference to the spread of the virus.

In the late 1960s, as mass strikes, urban riots and anti-war protests spread across the United States, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the right-wing advisor of President Richard Nixon, proposed a policy of “benign neglect” of US cities—that is, a policy of ignoring the causes of massive social unrest in the hopes that this would encourage the depopulation of centers of working-class struggle.

In their entirely passive response to the coronavirus pandemic, which is controllable only through massive coordinated government intervention, governments have extended the policy of “benign neglect” into something far more sinister.

This week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said 60 to 70 percent of the German population would likely be infected—potentially meaning the deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions of people. On Thursday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared, “I must level with the British public: many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”

Neither the British nor the German government announced major additional allocation of funds to deal with the crisis. Rather, Johnson’s chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, insisted that the British government should not try to keep the coronavirus from infecting the public: ‘It’s not possible to stop everyone getting it, and it’s also not desirable.”

There is no doubt that at least some members of the ruling class see coronavirus fatalities as desirable. British Telegraph columnist Jeremy Warner stated openly what is being discussed within ruling circles when he wrote, “the COVID-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.”

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, March 13, 2020, in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

But the most callous response has come from United States. On Friday, US President Donald Trump gave a press conference at the White House together with executives from some of the largest healthcare and retail companies in the United States.

Trump announced no additional measures to stop the spread of the disease or expand treatment for the ill. Rather, he announced that virtually the entire government response would be turned over to the private corporations.

Instead of testing by the Centers for Disease Control, effectively all coronavirus diagnostics would be conducted by private corporations such as Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp. Instead of treatment at hospital facilities or on public property, they will be conducted in the parking lots of major retailers, such as Walmart, Target, and CVS. Trump said the website to coordinate and requesting testing would be designed and operated by a for-profit company, Google. Google later clarified that no such website existed.

Trump made clear that the pandemic is a profit opportunity for the corporate executives standing with him, who were paraded around as if they were national heroes.

In fact, their mania for profit lies behind the systematic destruction and defunding of social services that has made possible this disaster. For decades, it is these oligarchs who have subordinated every social need to “shareholder value,” the phrase used to justify the ever-greater accumulation of wealth at the hands of the financial oligarchy.

Trump, flanked by multi-millionaire executives, appeared as the embodiment of the corporate state. The only role he sees for government, aside from pumping Wall Street full of money, is to use the national emergency to build up an apparatus of police repression.

For the ruling elites, the coronavirus pandemic was never viewed as a health care crisis, but rather as a market event. The preeminent concern has always been the impact of this disease on share prices.

The response has been, as it was in 2008 and 2009, a massive infusion of money and social resources into Wall Street. Trump’s press conference followed the announcement of a $1.5 trillion bailout of the financial system by the Federal Reserve, a figure twice as large as the original size of the 2008 bank bailout and over a thousand times larger than the emergency coronavirus funding requested Friday by the World Health Organization.

Trump was sending a very clear message to Wall Street: It does not matter how many people die, what hell the population is forced to live through: My government will protect your wealth.

The financial oligarchy, with their private “concierge health care” and access to the best facilities—antiviral drugs, oxygenation, and emergency ventilators—know that they will get the best care even as medical workers in overrun hospitals are forced to make heart-rending decisions about who will live and who will die.

Wall Street got the message. In the half-hour between when Trump started speaking and the close of the markets, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up by about 1,400 points, in the largest daily stock market run-up in history.

The main fear of the ruling class is not the devastating health consequences of the coronavirus, but the growth of social protests, to which they will respond with violence and repression. The eruption of strikes and walkouts by workers in Italy, protesting the fact that they are being forced to work amidst the pandemic, is only the beginning of the response of the working class.

The development of a movement in the working class throughout the world must be armed with a program and a perspective. In the face of neglect and indifference by the oligarchy, the working class must fight for a massive and globally-coordinated action to fight the disease.

Trillions of dollars must be allocated, not for boosting share values and the wealth of the financial oligarchy, but for ensuring universal testing for everyone who needs it, the construction of new health care infrastructure, the production of desperately needed health care equipment, and emergency assistance for all those who are unable to work because of unsafe conditions.

The monstrous and inhuman response to the pandemic by the ruling class is laying bare the real nature of the capitalist system, which provides for the vast enrichment of the few at the expense of the great many. Securing the most fundamental requirements of civilized society requires the overturning of this system and its replacement with socialism.

Albert Einstein Global Fellowship 2021 for Researchers

Application Deadline: 15th May, 2020

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Germany

About the Award:  The purpose of the fellowship is to support those who, in addition to producing superb work in their area of specialization, are also open to other, interdisciplinary approaches – following the example set by Albert Einstein.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Candidates must be under 35 and hold a university degree in the humanities, in the social sciences, or in the natural sciences.
At the end of the fellowship period, the fellow will be expected to present his or her project in a public lecture at the Einstein Forum and at the Daimler and Benz Foundation. The Einstein Fellowship is not intended for applicants who wish to complete an academic study they have already begun.

Selection Criteria: A successful application must demonstrate the quality, originality, and feasibility of the proposed project, as well as the superior intellectual development of the applicant. It is not relevant whether the applicant has begun working toward, or currently holds, a PhD.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value and Duration of Fellowship: The fellowship includes living accommodations for five to six months in the garden cottage of Einstein`s own summerhouse in Caputh, Brandenburg, only a short distance away from the universities and academic institutions of Potsdam and Berlin. The fellow will receive a stipend of EUR 10,000 and reimbursement of travel expenses.

How to Apply:The applications for the year 2021 should include a curriculum vitae and an outline of the project (both in English) and two scientific references, to be submitted by 15 May 2020 .

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Pharma Discovers “Geriatric ADHD”

Martha Rosenberg

Pharma has already discovered the huge profits in labeling school children, toddlers and adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Now, according to some reports, it has discovered “geriatric ADHD.”

“For years, ADHD has been considered a disorder of kids and younger adults. Now, doctors are realizing older people have it too—and it’s sometimes mistaken for dementia recently reported the Wall Street Journal.

Patients may be incorrectly diagnosed with having the cognitive impairments that precede dementia when they actually have ADHD say medical professionals interviewed in the article. Psychiatrist David Goodman at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has already treated over 800 seniors for ADHD, says the Journal.

The expanding diagnosis of ADHD has made stimulants like Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall one of Pharma’s biggest franchises. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least 6 million U.S. children now carry the diagnosis of ADHD. Worse, more than 10,000 2- and 3-year-olds in the U.S. are on the drugs reported the New York Times thanks to Pharma’s hoodwinking of doctors, teachers and parents.

How can a toddler have “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder”?  What two-year-old is not hyperactive?

Are You Sure You Don’t Have Adult ADHD?

After the child ADHD franchise peaked, Pharma rolled out “adult ADHD.” According to a Pharma site selling ADHD drugs, adults with “adult ADHD”

Often makes careless mistakes and lacks attention to details

Often has difficulty paying attention to tasks

Often seems to not listen when spoken to directly

Often fails to follow through on instructions, chores, or duties in the workplace

Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities

Often avoids… or is reluctant to participate in tasks requiring sustained mental effort

Often loses things like tools, wallets, keys, paperwork, eyeglasses, and mobile phones

Often easily distracted by other things

Often forgetful in daily activities, such as running errands, returning calls, paying bills, and keeping appointments

Who does that not describe, especially when we haven’t had enough sleep or are working a boring job? Who doesn’t have a brother-in-law who could be the poster boy for “adult ADHD”?

People younger than Gen Xers may not remember that drugs like Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall were once street drugs that went by names like “Black Beauties,” “White Cross” and “LA Turnrarounds” and of course “meth.”

Adults treating their “ADHD” today with prescribed rather than street drugs are just doing what truck drivers, factory workers, athletes, students, people working two jobs, anyone not getting enough sleep and party animals have done for over 50 years: use speed to make boring and repetitive tasks bearable and even interesting. The only thing different is that Pharma is now the pusher.

The sham of “adult ADHD” was even revealed a few years ago in the medical literature.  In 2017 the New York Times reported “A new study suggests that adult-onset A.D.H.D. is rare — if it exists at all.” The study that the Times cited “all but ruled out adult-onset A.D.H.D. as a stand-alone diagnosis,” and asserted that “Most apparent cases of adult-onset attention deficits are likely the result of substance abuse or mood problems.”

If everyone whose “attention” improves on speed has “adult ADHD,” it could just as easily be claimed that everyone has an “anxiety disorder” since an alcoholic beverage relaxes everyone!

It is amazing that government regulatory bodies have allowed a medical sham in which Pharma enriches itself selling street drugs for a disease it essentially invented.

Watch Out For Pharma Marketing

“Speed” hardly needs selling. An April 26, 2010 segment of “60 Minutes” reported on a survey of nearly 2,000 students at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, that found 34 percent of undergraduates had taken ADHD drugs without a prescription, with the number climbing the longer students were in school. Fifty to 60 percent of juniors and seniors were taking them, Alan DeSantis, a communications professor at the University of Kentucky who was shocked at the drugs’ popularity on campus, told Katie Couric.

But ADHD marketing is also very aggressive.

To sell the “disease” of adult ADHD, drug maker Shire launched a Nationwide Adult ADHD Mobile Awareness Tour replete with “self-screening stations.” Concerta makers ran ads four times per hour on a 26 x 20 foot CBS jumbotron in New York City that said “Can’t focus? Can’t sit still? Could you or your child have ADHD?” They also sent text ads–short enough to not cause attention deficit problems.

The discovery of “geriatric ADHD” could be another goldmine for Pharma. Can we soon expect jumbotron asking if our father or mother can’t focus or sit still?