Global economic slump accelerating

Nick Beams

As the coronavirus spreads, taking more lives at an escalating rate, its effects are penetrating ever deeper into the global economy.

Goldman Sachs warned last week that US gross domestic product (GDP) would contract by 24 percent in the second quarter. There are forecasts that up to 5 million jobs will be lost in the American economy this year, with the fall in economic output to total as much as $1.5 trillion.

Goldman expects, at this stage, that US output will contract 3.1 percent this year and the unemployment rate will rise to 9 percent from the current level of 3.5 percent. This is on a par with the jobless rate of 10 percent in October 2009, following the financial meltdown of 2008.

But just as the health impact of the virus was significantly underestimated, the same may apply to the current economic forecasts.

“Things look so gloomy right now that perhaps we should be grateful if we can get out of this health crisis with a brief recession,” Bernard Baumohl of the Economic Outlook Group told the Wall Street Journal.

“You just cannot rule out the prospect of a longer, more destructive depression,” he said.

In other words, a relatively short but deep recession is now the “best case” scenario.

The eurozone is expected to experience a fall of around 10 percent of GDP. But this forecast could well be exceeded. There is no end in sight to the spread of the virus and no clear assessment of the economic effect of the shutdowns being implemented to try to combat it.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the chief economist of the European Union, Paolo Gentiloni, indicated that officials were working on new measures.

“The consensus is growing day by day that we need to face an extraordinary crisis with extraordinary tools,” he said.

“This idea of a V-shape [recovery] that you can see in the first semester of 2020 is now completely impossible. We have no previous analysis of the impact of such a widespread lockdown in major economies.”

Gentolini conducted the interview as part of a political battle inside the EU over the economic and financial measures, bringing further into the open the widening rifts between leading member states.

Powerful forces in Germany and the Netherlands are opposed to all-European action, regarding this as a bailout for weaker economies such as Italy.

On the other side, the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire last week warned that failure to act in a unified manner meant the eurozone was in danger of disappearing.

European Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau wrote yesterday that the situation facing the eurozone was “far worse” than the sovereign debt crisis of 2012.

“The coronavirus will prove to be an economic shock, a corporate solvency crisis and a political crisis all folded into one,” he said.

Münchau noted that European countries had fiscal stabilisers such as unemployment insurance, but these “shock absorbers” were designed to deal with “normal fluctuations.” They were not “big enough or strong enough for emergencies like this one.”

Pointing to the deepening divisions in Europe, Münchau wrote that not everyone would want to be in a monetary union with countries like the Netherlands where the prime minister was “ideologically opposed” to all-European measures. “This sort of unwilling partnership is not sustainable.”

In the absence of data on overall output, the Financial Times conducted a survey, particularly covering retail and services, to give some indication of what to expect.

It showed that vehicular traffic had halved in many of the world’s largest cities, while spending in restaurants and cinemas had collapsed.

Greg Daco, the chief US economist at Oxford Economics, said: “Looking at the data across various sectors of the US economy, it appears we could be heading for the most severe contraction in consumer spending on record.”

The rapid shrinkage in the real economy will further escalate the already severe crisis in the financial system, and extend from the stock and credit markets to the banks.

In a Financial Times comment, Sheila Bair, the former chief of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, wrote: “Big banks throughout the world are substantially exposed to the pandemic, particularly as it hurts corporate borrowers.”

Around the world, non-financial corporations covering every industry, including the hard-hit energy, transport, retail and hospitality sectors, had racked up debts to the tune of $70 trillion, she wrote.

“To survive, they are increasingly hoarding cash and tapping into their massive back-up lines of credit, placing additional strain on the banking system,” Bair wrote, noting that as bond markets “seize up,” bank credit may be their only source of cash.

But the ability to supply credit, she wrote, had been considerably weakened by the $325 billion paid out by the major global banks last year on dividends and share buybacks, some $155 billion of which was laid out by the eight largest banks in the US.

Meanwhile, fears are growing that the enormous pile of debt around the world could start to collapse as the economic effects of the coronavirus deepen and widen.

According to the Institute of International Finance, in a report published last November, total global corporate, government, finance sector and household debt had reached $253 trillion, equivalent to 322 percent of global GDP.

The unravelling could start in so-called emerging market economies where there is $72.5 trillion of debt, much of it denominated in US dollars. The growing dollar shortage in international markets, which has seen national currencies fall against the greenback, means obligations on interest and principal payments are rapidly rising.

This increase in the debt burden is occurring as all economies drop into recession, or something worse, and have less cash to meet their commitments.

It is not just emerging market economies that are affected. The Australian dollar, one of the most traded in the world, saw its rate against the US dollar drop to as low as 55 cents last week, compared to just under 70 cents a few months ago.

This means that the debt burden of a company or financial institution that had raised $100 million, when the Australian dollar traded at 70 cents to the US currency, would rise in Australian dollar terms from $A143 million to more than $A180 million when the Australian dollar fell to 55 cents, placing it under enormous strain as revenues drop.

The cash flow crisis is striking at the heart of the major economies as well.

In the UK, the Tory government is considering a plan to take out equity holdings in airlines and other companies because the economic stimulus packages announced so far are not sufficient to prevent collapses.

In the US, the Wall Street Journal has reported that “scores of US companies,” from the aircraft maker Boeing to the telecommunications Verizon, are “furiously lobbying” to be included in the bailout packages being prepared by the Trump administration that could run as high as $2 trillion.

For more than a century, the semi-official religion in the US has been the denunciation of socialism, which Trump had planned to make the centre of his re-election campaign.

Now the universal cry is: the state must intervene; once again billions must be handed to the corporations on an even larger scale than in the crisis of 2008.

The calls will only get louder. According to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday, investors and analysts say the more than 30 percent drop in the share market over the past month is not over, despite extraordinary actions by the Fed involving trillions of dollars.

Summing up the voracious outlook in corporate and financial circles, a representative of the global investment and banking firm State Street, told the Journal: “Market participants need to feel they are backstopped without question.”

Coronavirus total in US skyrockets as testing expands

Bryan Dyne

Officially confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States increased by nearly 14,000 over the weekend to 32,356, and the number of deaths more than doubled from 158 to 414. Worldwide, there were 60,000 new cases in the past two days, bringing the total to more than 335,000, along with just under 15,000 deaths. The United States now leads the world in new cases and is second only to China and Italy in the number of patients infected with COVID-19.

The majority of new cases have occurred in New York City, where there are now over 9,000 cases in the city alone and nearly 16,000 cases statewide, along with 114 deaths. New Jersey has surpassed both Washington and California to have the second largest number of cases in the country. Thirty states now have at least 100 cases and thirty-four have at least one death.

Despite having fewer cases than Italy, hospitals across the US are already being overrun. Nurses, doctors and other medical professionals are reporting a shortage or lack of masks, gowns, gloves and other personal protective equipment necessary to keep themselves from getting coronavirus in cities across the country, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle. There is also a shortage of intensive care units and ventilators, which are used to keep the most critically ill patients alive.

National Guard personnel stand at attention as they wait for patients to arrive for COVID-19 coronavirus testing facility at Glen Island Park, Friday, March 13, 2020, in New Rochelle, N.Y. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

An intensive care nurse in a Midwestern city gave her account from being a front-line health care provider during this pandemic. “As I sit here after my 16-hour shift, 8 of it being our designated COVID floor, I can't keep quiet any longer. This is no joke people. This is nothing like the flu. This is nothing like anything I've experienced before in my 8 years that I've been a nurse. I don't think that people can understand the realness of this situation unless you are on the front line like me and all the other healthcare professionals.

“This is just the beginning. It will only get worse before it gets better. Numbers continue to rise. Hospital policies are changing by the hour. Step-down units are no longer that, they are designated coronavirus units because of their proximity to the ICU. I can't imagine what our healthcare would be like if we weren't doing everything we've been doing. like closing schools or social distancing. As healthcare workers, we've all been exposed. We all go back to our families, our young children or elderly parents and risk exposing them.

“Then we come back to the hospital for our next shift and even more uncertainty. Are we going to have the proper PPE to help keep ourselves safe? What if we are quarantined to the hospital for days and can't see our families? What would I do if I get it? Making plans with my husband about how I would be quarantined to my basement and how hard it would for my children to have to stay away. When will I get to see my parents again? This is no joke. So please stop saying this is all political or it is just an irrational fear. I know, because I’m it.”

Conditions in New York City are increasingly dire. Mayor Bill de Blasio, appearing on the NBC program “Meet the Press,” described the conditions in apocalyptic terms, warning there would be many, many deaths, some of which he attributed to the failure of the Trump administration to provide necessary medical supplies and equipment. “If the president doesn't act, people will die who could have lived otherwise,” he said.

“I'm worried about saving lives right this minute. And I don't see the federal government at this moment,” de Blasio continued. “April is going to be worse than March. And I fear May will be worse than April. So bluntly, it's going to get worse, a lot worse, before it gets better.”

Remarkably, Trump was not asked either about the huge rise in coronavirus positives or the warnings from de Blasio in the course of a 90-minute White House press briefing Sunday evening. The reporters had either internalized Trump’s threats against media questioning, from Friday’s press conference, or had been directed by their editors not to mention the skyrocketing infection total because it might further inflame popular anger.

Such acts of censorship and self-censorship will not save either the Trump administration or the entire social order of American capitalism as working people become aware, through bitter experience, of the complete indifference of the US ruling elite to the impending public health catastrophe.

Official Washington is preoccupied, not with saving lives, but with carving out various pieces of a new bailout bill, estimated at as much as $2 trillion, to reward the corporations and industries that control both the Republican and Democratic parties and dictate their policies. The bill stalled in the Senate Sunday, amid wrangling over its precise terms, but the bulk of the funding will go straight into the coffers of the giant corporations and the billionaires.

The sudden increase in new cases is partly a reflection of the increase of testing for COVID-19, particularly in New York. While both the United States and South Korea had their first confirmed cases the same day, January 20, it took the Trump administration two months to begin testing on a mass scale, with nearly 200,000 tests in the past seven days, compared to under 26,000 before then.

The experience in New York, and the example of countries which have tested aggressively, like South Korea, indicate that if testing were implemented in such a scale in other states, the case numbers would increase by a factor of five or even ten.

In addition, testing is still only provided to those who show symptoms of the coronavirus. New York City’s coronavirus web page explicitly says that, “Unless you are hospitalized and a diagnosis will impact your care, you will not be tested.” In other words, even if the level of testing currently being implemented in the city is implemented across the country and based on the level of hospitalization needed in China and Italy, it would still likely underestimate the number of infected people in the United States by a further factor of ten.

This has essentially been the policy of every state and the entire Trump administration since the coronavirus entered the country. It was established at the onset of the outbreak that COVID-19 can be transmitted from person to person even when an infected patient has no symptoms. Even as late as March 10, Trump patronizingly told the country that, “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” Millions of people in factories and distribution warehouses across the country have still not been provided with adequate safety equipment to continue working, even though these are areas where the virus can easily spread.

The only official document regarding the coronavirus from the federal government to the general population is the two-page guideline encouraging “social distancing” to “slow the spread” of the pandemic. As has been repeatedly pointed out by the World Health Organization, this is wholly insufficient. WHO has repeatedly pleaded with world governments to expand their testing capabilities and to test everyone with the symptoms of the coronavirus and everyone with whom they were in contact.

This is both to stop the pandemic now, as well as in the future. A study released last week by London’s Imperial College makes clear that the coronavirus will return even after large-scale efforts to prevent social gatherings. Even in the best-case scenarios, the disease still spreads to large sections of the population and, by their estimates, at least 1.1 million die in the US alone. The research underlines the fact that any type of mass quarantine is only truly effective when systematic testing is available to the entire population.

These numbers also assume that adequate care will be available for every coronavirus patient. The Society of Critical Care Medicine notes that there are only 96,600 intensive care units in the country and 62,000 ventilators. Even if they are all dedicated to helping coronavirus patients, which would sacrifice tens of thousands suffering other ailments, hundreds of thousands of people each day would not have access to these lifesaving devices.

The danger of loss of life in the millions is not the chief concern of the Trump administration or its counterparts in Europe, who have provided many trillions of dollars to financial markets and major corporations in the forms of bailouts and promises to purchase various toxic assets. At the same time, paltry sums to provide economic relief for the tens of millions of workers facing destitution from reduced hours, being laid off and a myriad of other financial hardships are still being haggled over in Congress by both the Republicans and Democrats.

There are also increasingly high-profile calls for the military to be deployed to deal with the pandemic. During yesterday’s broadcast of “Meet the Press,” New York City Mayor de Blasio called “for the military to be mobilized” and that soldiers “should be sent to places where this crisis is deep, like New York, right now.” He claimed that the US military is “the best logistical organization in the nation” and as such should be used to distribute masks, ventilators and other medically necessary equipment to combat the coronavirus.

Whatever the military is being used for in the short term, workers should have no illusions that the military will not be at some point ordered, alongside the police and National Guard, to suppress the growing social unrest from the increasing physical and economic suffering caused by the pandemic. There are already numerous reports, although currently being denied, that the governors of New York and California are considering declaring martial law to enforce the lockdown of their states.

Coronavirus kills more than 2,600 across Europe in one weekend

Alex Lantier

The coronavirus pandemic surged across Europe this weekend, with more than 2,600 deaths, the majority of them in Italy, followed by Spain, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The weekend toll by itself nearly equaled the entire three-month death toll in China, where the epidemic began.

On Sunday alone there were 1,287 deaths and 17,303 new cases, with Italy, Spain and France all seeing record numbers of deaths from the epidemic. The total for the continent as a whole reached 168,803 cases and 8,785 deaths.

The toll from the pandemic in Europe has now reached more than double the impact in China, which saw 81,054 cases and 3,261 deaths. Worldwide, there have been 335,377 declared cases of coronavirus and 14,611 deaths.

French soldiers discuss inside the military field hospital built in Mulhouse, eastern France, to treat coronavirus patients (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)

A third major epicenter is Iran, where there have been at least 21,638 cases including 1,685 deaths, while the number of cases in the United States has skyrocketed to more than 32,000, with 400 deaths. There is also a rapid growth in the number of cases in Africa and Latin America.

Though Italy, Spain and France are under country-wide lockdown, as well as large parts of Germany, the contagion is spreading relentlessly across Europe, after governments refused for weeks to adopt shelter-in-place orders or make any serious effort to actually stop the contagion by combining lockdowns with testing, contact-tracing and quarantining all those either infected or in contact with the infected.

Italy, Europe’s worst-hit country for now, saw 5,560 new cases and 651 deaths on Sunday after 6,557 new cases and a record 793 deaths on Saturday, for 59,138 cases overall and 5,476 deaths. On Saturday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that all factories would close indefinitely except for those “strictly necessary ... to guarantee us essential goods and services.” Officials in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region, warned that stricter measures, like a ban on anyone leaving their homes, might be taken as hospitals continue to be flooded with critically ill patients gasping for air.

While Russian military aid and a group of Cuban doctors arrived in Italy, the European Union (EU) still refuses to provide aid to the devastated country. A diplomatic incident ensued this weekend over the theft of a shipment of 680,000 Chinese face masks to Italy in the Czech Republic, whose government initially denied that anything had been stolen. The Czech government is now sending masks and respirators to Italy, however.

Italian health officials pointed to the slight fall in the number of infected and of deaths on Sunday, as well as the fact that only 30.4 percent of new cases were in Lombardy, as signs the contagion might be slowing. The incubation period of the virus typically ranges from three to seven days and can go up to 14. As confinement orders to prevent further spread of the disease took effect over a week ago, many of those already infected and incubating the virus at that time could be expected to have already started showing symptoms.

However, officials also warned not to take false hope. “I hope and we all hope that these figures can be borne out in the coming days. But do not let your guard down,” commented Italian civil protection service chief Angelo Borrelli.

In Spain, there were 3,925 new cases and 288 deaths Saturday and 3,107 new cases and 375 deaths Sunday, bringing the total to 28,603 cases and 1,756 deaths. One of those who has fallen ill is the beloved opera singer, Placido Domingo, lately a target of the right-wing #MeToo movement. Moreover, 12 percent of the confirmed cases (3,475) are doctors, nurses or health staff, devastating the health system which is already flooded with patients in key areas such as Madrid.

On Saturday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned that “the worst is to come.” As confined Spanish people banged on pots and pans to protest his handling of the pandemic, Sanchez pledged to organize more mass testing for coronavirus. The Sanchez government has prolonged Spain’s state of alarm and lockdown until at least April 11.

In France, where the first doctor died of coronavirus in Compiègne, the total number of cases rose to 16,018 with 674 deaths, including 112 on Sunday alone. Health Minister Olivier Véran also said he believed the true number of cases in France is 30,000 to 90,000. However, he brazenly ignored calls from health professionals to carry out mass testing to identify and isolate all the sick before they can spread the disease to others. Instead, Véran said France would increase testing “once confinement orders are lifted,” that is, at some point in the indefinite future.

In Germany, officials are reportedly considering a nationwide lockdown as the number of sick rose 2,488 on Sunday to 24,852. Amid growing fears of coronavirus infections in rest homes, nine elderly residents of a home have died and thirty people have been infected, including some of the rest home’s staff, in the town of Würzburg, where 166 people have already fallen ill. Among those now self-isolating, moreover, is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who reportedly came into contact with a doctor who later tested positive for the virus.

In Britain, 48 people died and 665 fell ill on Sunday, bringing the total to 281 deaths and 5,683 cases—including the first teenager to die of coronavirus in Britain, aged 18.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson came under growing criticism for his refusal to act against the pandemic. After his scientific advisor Patrick Vallance said it was “not desirable” to prevent Britons from contracting the disease—claiming this would prevent them from becoming immune—Johnson was forced to deny a Sunday Times report that his far-right adviser Dominic Cummings had argued to “let old people die.”

The pandemic is rapidly bringing to the fore deep class divisions internationally. The financial aristocracy is determined to let the disease run its course, so long as they are able to emerge richer than ever before. While the European Central Bank has printed €750 billion since the pandemic began to bail out stock markets and the super-rich, and national states are offering hundreds of billions of euros in financial guarantees for the corporations, businesses across Europe demand workers stay on the job to keep making profits for them.

Anger is mounting among health workers and industrial workers, however, at the ruling elite’s irresponsible attitude to this deadly pandemic. Amazon has stopped shipping non-essential products in Italy, after strikes last week and threats of strike action by Amazon workers in France.

After a wave of wildcat strikes in Italy forced Conte to adopt the initial confinement order, health professionals are bitterly criticizing decades-long EU austerity policies that have slashed health budgets and devastated hospitals .

In Spain, a hospital supply purchaser spoke to El Espanol to criticize Sanchez’s Spanish Socialist Party-Podemos government’s failure to order face masks and emergency respirators. “He did not buy them on time, it is a scandal,” he said. “In the meantime they were debating about local elections in the Basque Country and Galicia or asking whether the Montero law on sexual freedom was creating conflict in the ruling coalition. What stupidities, with coronavirus looming over it all! What a waste of time!”

In France, a group of 600 doctors has sued Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn before the Republic’s Court of Justice (CJR) over their handling of the pandemic. They are accusing Philippe and Buzyn of having “voluntarily abstained from taking or launching measures” against “a danger for the security of persons.” After Buzyn admitted she had warned Philippe of the danger of a pandemic since January, the group is demanding a criminal investigation of Philippe and the seizure of his computers.

Amid growing class conflict, as workers clash with the state and the banks to try to secure social resources to fight the pandemic, the ruling elite—assisted by the union bureaucracy and its pseudo-left political allies—is moving to suppress opposition. Obsessed with giving handouts to the banks and the super-rich, it is preparing attacks on wages and basic social and democratic rights and accelerating moves towards authoritarian forms of rule.

As Portugal’s social-democratic government voted a state of emergency on March 18, suspending the constitutional right to strike for the first time since the fall of the fascist Salazar dictatorship in 1974, Spain deployed the army at home to enforce the state of alarm. In France, the government adopted a bill for a new state of emergency during the coronavirus crisis that allows businesses to slash a week of vacation and eliminate restrictions on the length of the workweek—even after the coronavirus crisis is over. These measures emerged from talks between business and the unions.

In Germany on Friday, the IG Metall union used the coronavirus crisis as a pretext to abandon talks with employers and accept contracts with no wage increases—claiming this was necessary to protect business activity. Left Party official Dietmar Bartsch hailed Merkel’s policies, tweeting, “The Left party fraction will support all measures that demand solidarity to avoid damage to the nation, people and the economy.”

The defense of workers’ health, livelihoods and democratic rights after years of EU austerity and police-state repression demands a social revolution and a break with this rotten establishment. The struggle to stem the pandemic, obtain decent wages during lock-downs, and obtain free and decent medical coverage for all is an international political struggle. This requires the organization of the working class across Europe and internationally in rank-and-file committees of action, independent of the unions, and a struggle to transfer political power to the working class.

Cyber-Nuclear Security Challenges: An Issue that Won’t Go Away

Manpreet Sethi 

As the world—pretty much the entire world—grapples with COVID-19, it is clear that the enormity of the pandemic will not leave any aspect of the economy untouched. Inter-state and societal interactions are also expected to feel the impact. Life may never be the same again. An event of almost similar magnitude in recent memory is the one that took place on 11 September 2001, when the twin towers in New York city came crashing down. That incident, too, changed many things, particularly how the world traveled; as elaborate and many inconvenient security restrictions became the norm.

With the current uncertainty generated by the new Coronavirus, it is a good time to spare another thought for the dangers of nuclear security that too can emerge quickly and leave a widely destructive trail. The subject of nuclear terrorism has silently faded out of public sight and political attention ever since the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) process ended in 2016. Of course, institutions like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Interpol, and some arms of the UN have continued to implement action plans that were drawn when the NSS process wound up. But, over the past four years, there has not been much public scrutiny of the implementation of measures related to the many dimensions of nuclear security. This is too important an issue to let out of sight, and any untoward incident that would qualify as an act of nuclear terrorism would yet again have an impact of the kind that 9/11 or COVID-19 have wrought on countries.

The NSS process that lasted through 2010-2016 paid special attention to the securing of nuclear and radiological material through proper material accounting and regulatory processes. National responsibilities were clearly delineated and were to be performed in keeping with some identified international instruments and benchmarks. During these four years, the number of  subscriptions to these instruments increased, and countries took pride in showcasing efforts towards the fulfillment of their relevant obligations. Attention was also drawn to the physical security of nuclear sites, including obviating chances of airplane crashes into nuclear reactors, à la 9/11.

The NSS process, however, finished without adequately shining the spotlight on all dimensions of nuclear terrorism. While the chances of theft of nuclear material or physical intrusion into nuclear sites and unauthorised access to orphan radiological material were addressed and sought to be minimised, the possibility of cyber-attacks to virtually interfere with nuclear operations did not get as much attention.

In contemporary nuclear threat perceptions, cyber threats to nuclear power plants and facilities as part of a country’s critical infrastructure have significantly grown. With physical access becoming difficult, cyber-attacks—which can be long distance, remote-controlled, and non-attributable—have naturally emerged as more attractive. These can be undertaken for purposes of espionage of technological information, data theft from networked systems, or to trigger some sort of malfunctioning of command and control systems, including accidents such as the loss of coolant (LOCA) kind at a nuclear power plant.

While no such incidence of a great magnitude has yet taken place in the 400-plus nuclear power plants operational across the world, cyber probes of various kinds have, nevertheless, occurred. As per one publication, “There have been over 20 known cyber incidents at nuclear facilities since 1990 all over the world…” A recent such incident came to light in the context of the cyber-attack on the Indian nuclear power plant at Kudankulam in September-October 2019.

According to media reports that began to come out in October 2019, a US-based cyber security company had, on 4 September 2019, informed the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), the operator of all Indian nuclear plants, that an unauthorised actor had breached domain controllers at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (KKNPP). The initial reaction from the plant officials was a complete denial of any malware infection in their systems since such a cyber-attack was “not possible.” A press release from the KKNP Training Superintendent and Information Officer stated, “KKNPP and other Indian nuclear power plants control systems are stand alone and not connected to outside cyber network and Internet.” But, a day later, the NPCIL admitted that there had indeed been a security breach that had been informed to them by the Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In). The breach was eventually traced to an infected personal computer that was used for administrative purposes, but was also connected to the Internet. Fortunately, as was reported, the PC was isolated from the critical internal network.

Indeed, the Computer and Information Security Advisory Group of the Department of Atomic Energy (CISAG-DAE), which is responsible for the cyber security of nuclear power plants, has long argued that the practice of air gapping, or physically isolating critical computers or networks from unsecure networks such as the Internet, is an effective way of securing critical infrastructure. However, several cyber experts have pointed out vulnerabilities in this process that may be created by use of removable media, approved access points for maintenance activities, third-party updates, or even by charging personal phones via reactor control room, etc. For all its benefits, air gapping obviously does not guarantee adequate security and cannot be a reason for complacency.

Much speculation has taken place after the KKNPP incident about who might have been behind the attack. Several theories abound, and some are backed by analysis undertaken by cyber professionals. Most have concluded that the motive of the attack was theft of information and not sabotage of plant operations. While plant control and instrumentation systems were not compromised in any way, the attack did highlight the challenge of definitive attribution in case of cyber-attacks. This can be exploited by both state and non-state perpetrators of such attacks. Another benefit accrues from the ambiguity about the purpose of the attack. Even when ostensibly unsuccessful, an incidence of this nature nevertheless sends nuclear operators scrambling for patches for perceived vulnerabilities, and thus causes accretion of costs and dissipation of energies.

While enough cyber experts are engaged within and outside the nuclear establishment to secure them from cyber threats, it needs saying that the cyberspace allows new opportunities to resolute enemies to create problems at functioning nuclear plants by causing sabotage to effectuate different degrees of malfunctioning. These threats will only increase as greater digitalisation of power plants’ control systems takes place, which is inevitable given the pervasive utilisation of such technologies. The only defence against them can be stringent articulation and implementation of cyber security standard operating procedures (SoPs) by all those involved, and zero-tolerance for any violations by vigilant regulators. Outsiders (adversaries of all kinds) will constantly be on the lookout for vulnerabilities, and the onus will be on the insiders to keep all avenues blocked.

India must remain engaged with the international community on this issue and be part of national or IAEA-driven technical or training programmes. Regular cyber security courses for all plant personnel, depending on their involvement in digital networks, will be critical to imbue the establishment with a cyber security culture. This culture, in fact, must pervade a wider universe that should also include suppliers, vendors, contractors, and even transporters; any of whom could be used by resolute adversaries to sneak in cyber-attacks. In case of nuclear power plants, virtual security is going to matter as much as their physical security.

COVID-19 May Prove Fatal To Those Exposed To Pollution

Rohin Kumar

According to the experts, the health hazard inflicted on people by long-standing air pollution is likely to impact the fatality rate emerging from Covid-19 infections.

Polluted air is known to cause respiratory diseases and is responsible for at least 8m early deaths annually. This means that Covid-19, which spreads through  respiratory droplets is expected to have a more serious impact on city dwellers and those exposed to toxic emissions from fossil fuels.

However, strict confinement measures in China, where the coronavirus outbreak began, and in Italy, Europe’s most affected nation, have led to falls in air pollution as fewer vehicles are driven and industrial emissions fall.

According to a report by Guardian, a preliminary calculation by a US expert suggests that tens of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution may have been avoided by the cleaner air in China, far higher than the 3,208 coronavirus deaths. It is said particularly in the context of China and Italy (currently most affected with Covid-19), where maximum cities under lockdown witnessed immense emission reduction. Experts clearly stated, It does not mean in any way that experts  are claiming the pandemic as good for health. However, experts have also cautioned saying it is too early for conclusive studies on relation of air pollution and coronavirus.

Observations from previous coronavirus outbreaks suggest that people exposed to polluted air are more at risk of losing lives. Scientists who analysed the Sars coronavirus outbreak in China in 2003 revealed that infected people who lived in polluted areas were twice as likely to die as those in less polluted areas. Early research on Covid-19 also red flags smokers.

Aaron Bernstein, the Interim Director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said, “Given what we know now, it is very likely that people who are exposed to more air pollution and who are smoking tobacco products are going to fare worse if infected with [Covid-19] than those who are breathing cleaner air, and who don’t smoke,” quoted Washington Post.

With the lockdowns in place, reductions in emissions have been recorded in Italy. In China, emission reduction was observed in the four weeks after 25 January, when regions shut down as a rapid response to the corona outbreak. The level of PM2.5 fell by 25%, while nitrogen dioxide, produced mainly by diesel vehicles, dropped by 40%.

In Indian context, the 2019 World Air Quality Report released in the last week of February this year, pointed to a 20% reduction in annual emission levels but attributed this to economic slowdown. According to the report, the findings were arrived at by comparing India’s economic growth with air pollution data, where it “appeared” to have a correlation between lower growth and lesser pollution. Having said that, it is also noteworthy to be reminded of the notice served by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to the polluting power plants for non-compliance of emission standards.

CPCB’s Notice

On January 31 this year, in an unprecedented move Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) issued show cause notices to 14 coal based power plants (5 plants in Haryana, 3 in Punjab, 2 in Uttar Pradesh, 2 in Andhra Pradesh, 2 in Telangana and 1 in Tamil Nadu) with a total capacity of approximately 15 GW. The notices were issued for non-compliance to the deadlines given to these power plants to reduce SO2 emissions by 2019 December under notification issued on 7th december 2015 and later on extension in timelines by CPCB in 2017.

CPCB in its notice asked the power generators, “Why should the plant not be closed down and environmental compensation be imposed for continuing non-compliance of the directions?” The show cause notice cited the notification issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change in the year 1984, 1986, 1989, 1999 and 2015 which mentioned the revised emission limit for particulate matter and notified new limits for Sulphur dioxide (SO2), Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) and mercury emission, and water consumption limit for coal/lignite based thermal power plants.

The notice also elaborated on how the power plants have not retrofitted Electrostatic Precipitators (ESP) and missed the deadline for installing Flue Gas Desulphurization (FGD) units. CPCB also strictly advised the power plants to immediately take measures such as installation of low NOx burners and  provide Over Fire Air (OFA) to achieve progressive reduction so as to comply with NOx emissions.

In order to achieve the target of limiting warming to 1.5°C, polluting power plants need to be shut down. Analysts have repeatedly argued that if India is really concerned about the pollution crisis, no new fossil fuel infrastructure should be built.

Fossil Fuel Emissions, deaths and Covid-19

Last year, a report by the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) found pollution to be the largest environmental cause of premature death on the planet, causing 15% of all deaths – some 8.3 million people. Among the 10 countries with the most pollution deaths in 2017, the latest year for which data was available, included both developed and developing nations.

India and China led in the number of pollution deaths, with about 2.3 million and 1.8 million respectively, followed by Nigeria, Indonesia and Pakistan. “India has seen increasing industrial and vehicular pollution from urban growth while poor sanitation and contaminated indoor air persist in low-income communities,” the report said.

Experts’ concerns around air pollution and Covid-19 transmission, if at all, stand substantial in the long run, it calls for caution for countries particularly such as India.

According to the media reports, the link between air pollutants and early deaths are well known and Marshall Burke, at Stanford University in the US, used the data to estimate the impacts on air pollution mortality. The young and old are worst affected by polluted air. As per Burke’s calculation, the cleaner air is expected to have prevented 1,400 early deaths in children under five and 51,700 early deaths in people over 70.

“The study on the relation between fossil fuels emissions and Covid-19 as published by the international publications lacks clarity and the methodology too is unknown, so it’s better to not comment on that,” said Independent Energy Analyst, Kshama Afreen. However, according to Kshama, India is suffering heavily for pollution and that must be addressed immediately. “India is estimated to bear 10.7 lakh crore, or 5.4 per cent of India’s GDP annually, the third highest costs from fossil fuel air pollution worldwide. That amounted to a loss of Rs 3.39 lakh per second, according to the report by environment organisation Greenpeace Southeast Asia. That must be a concern for the governments,” she added.

Experts also believe that indirect impacts of Covid-19 may be probably much higher than currently known. Talking to the Guardian Sascha Marschang, the acting Secretary General of the European Public Health Alliance, said, “Once this crisis is over, policymakers should speed up measures to get dirty vehicles off our roads. Science tells us that epidemics like Covid-19 will occur with increasing frequency. So cleaning up the streets is a basic investment for a healthier future.”

Coronavirus: The Unfolding of an Epistemic Crisis

Ghulam Mohammad Khan

Epistemology involves the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it informs the ontology of the concepts like truth and belief or how beliefs are formed, internalized and justified. Notwithstanding the fact that it is happening, however, the whole process of formation and internalization of these beliefs is almost imperceptible. Since the history of the becoming of beliefs is far too deep and elaborate, the occurrence of a sudden anti-epistemological rupture,unbecoming this deep-rooted tradition of beliefs, appears very unlikely. The process of unbecoming may actually take as much time as the process of becoming. However, a black swan event like the present coronavirus pandemic can, if not completely decimate the structured field of our beliefs and values, at least help us to reconsider the relevance of different beliefs, ideologies, institutions and patterns of human behaviour.

The unrelenting coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc across the globe. The confused world leaders addressing their nations, the unprecedented media clamour for stricter control and prevention, social media histrionics, the lockdown of towns, cities, and centres of business and education reflects the enormity of the crisis. However, being an immediate threat to life as it certifies the presence of an otherwise normalized absence or uncertainty about death, coronavirus distracts our attention from how actually it subverts the relevance or the semblance of truthfulness from varied forms of behaviour, beliefs and other so-called powerful functional institutions of our world society, which silently evolve along the life itself.Though this pandemic may not completely annihilate humanity from the planet, however, it should teach us some serious lessons to reconstruct our social structure so as to tackle such pandemics with greater readiness and control in the future.

Let’s begin with the belief or ideology that drives our economic system and how it is being run roughshod over by the coronavirus onslaught. In wake of the deepening crisis, the roof of our economic system is slowly crumbling on the very structure supporting it. And this supporting structure is capitalism. When doctors advice people to stay back at home to prevent the contagious virus from spreading, the working class, unlike the super-wealthy who have private jets to flee to germ-free hideaways, can’t afford to stay back and wait for the virus of hunger take them over. In this system of compulsion a worker has to come out of the bed, use public transport, work in crowded places and silently adhere to the compulsive mechanism to save both himself and the system. Under this system even the medical treatment (nobody knows how patients will be saddled with bills who seek the still-awaited vaccine for coronavirus)may not be affordable to the working class. Based on their findings,Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkson extensively highlight in their book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger that inequality of wealth and power ‘leads to a state of chronic stress.’ This stress further wrecks havoc on ‘bodily systems such as cardiovascular system and the immune system, leaving the individuals more susceptible to health problems.’ Therefore, what the present adverse situation teaches us is not that some utopian new liberal system should provide free medicare to face the coronavirus pandemic, but that it is time to rebuild our society where human needs govern the process of production. In the new system we won’t at least have our healthcare regulated by the decisions of wealthy capitalists owning hospitals, medical equipment manufacturing firms, pharmaceutical companies and insurance systems. In other words, it deconstructs the capitalist ideologies of market mechanism which have become ever stronger in the modern age of radical nationalism.

Secondly, let’s see how the novel virus can alter the semantics of the phenomenon of nationalism. In India the sentiment of nationalism or patriotism is not only a strong behaviour but also a religion.Somehow, unfortunately, this sentiment has been merely confined to the sublimated borders and the imaginary soldiers sacrificing their holy blood all the time to safeguard these borders. However, the pandemic should teach us to align our sentiment of patriotism to a different direction. In these real hard times out patriotic feelings should not be driven by the mercenaries or enlisted soldiers fighting imaginary wars but by the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, volunteers and utility workers who risk their lives for others. There can’t be a greater effort to serve and save a nation than their real unflinching hard work. This way, the novel coronavirus can redefine nationalism as something cultivating life and health of a nation and not as something threatening the same of some other nation.

Another important lesson coronavirus can teach us would be redefining the overbearing influence of some religious teachings in the shaping of our ‘sociological imagination.’ In all adverse situations in the past, be it epidemics, disasters, wars, diaspora or prosecutions, religion has not only managed to survive but also emphatically pronounced judgements about such occurrences. The underdeveloped as well as the developing countries where healthcare systems are already inadequate and unequipped to combat the novel virus are unfortunately controlled by, to use a phrase by Milan Kundera ‘sacrosanct certainties.’ Whereas some unanimously profess the belief that cow urine and cow dung can be used as antidotes to prevent coronavirus outbreak, the others exclusively tout themselves as the God’s ‘chosen few’. With a strange celestially approved supercilious attitude, they disavow any possibilities of this virus infecting them. Some even sadistically justify the plight of other humans in different nations simply for being non-religious or anti-religious. In this time of quarantine,these religions of congregation need to falsify some of their obsolete beliefs before it is too late. It is high time to realize that coronavirus doesn’t choose people on the basis of their religious beliefs. The way we justify religious teachings like ‘namaste’ or five time ‘wudu’ (ablution) a day as preventions from coronavirus, in the same breath we should falsify other teachings like congregational supplications, drinking cow urine or handshake. Coronavirus is a real big threat to our collective well-being and the impervious nature of religions, causing much of our non-seriousness to the pandemic, can only make us more vulnerable.

The other possibility is the emergence of a new hyper-real world order. It may sound weird or even unfounded but the people of this generation can never easily be complacent to touch, visiting crowded places or breathing air in an enclosed space. Distancing could be a new normal, pushing technologically advanced societies for a greater telemanipulation of information. Simulated reality, modern Platonic ideal forms will significantly influence our understanding of the new world.

Furthermore, the outbreak of coronavirus has seriously called into question the very phenomenology of love, empathy and compassion. Sadly, it has again proved them irrelevant in the time of sanctions, nationalism and capitalism.

Let’s hope the coronavirus pandemic ends soon and makes space for better changes for a better world.

South Africa: State of national disaster declared as coronavirus hits and social tensions mount

Stephan McCoy

South Africa has become the latest country to see a sharp rise in confirmed cases of COVID-19, making it the hardest hit on the African continent.

On Thursday, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told the South African Medical Association (SAMA) that the spread of the coronavirus was only just beginning and that between “60 percent and 70 percent” of the population were likely to be infected.

His estimates echo those of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

On March 15, in a national address, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus had reached 61—a development which came as shock to many. By yesterday, the figure was 202, including 52 new cases in a single day. At least eight cases recorded by March 18 had no previous travel history.

The African National Congress (ANC) government’s response to the pandemic has been lacklustre and incompetent—spending weeks doing nothing to prepare for the inevitable arrival of the virus. Despite declaring a national state of disaster, the measures Ramaphosa outlined were paltry and do not take into account the kind of action that organizations such as the WHO and other experts have said are needed to stem the spread of the virus.

The address made no mention of plans for extensive testing and contact tracing—the two key measures required to halt the spread of the virus. Ramaphosa largely outlined such things as social distancing. Certain land, air and seaports were also to be closed, and a half-hearted approach to school closures was taken—with primary and secondary schools closed while universities were not addressed—leaving them to decide when to close. Most did so haphazardly, cancelling graduations and angering many students. The secondary and primary school closures came only after it was reported widely that a Grade 9 student had tested positive for coronavirus.

The government has now announced that it will focus on closing borders, including building a 40-kilometre fence along the border with Zimbabwe to stem undocumented migration, having already closed 35 of 53 land entry points. Zimbabwe has not yet reported cases of coronavirus.

The crisis has fueled hostility towards the government. Many workers and young people took to social media to voice their anger at this incompetence and indifference, both before and after the address. Some protested being forced to go to work as the virus spreads, noting that the taxi ranks on which many rely were overcrowded and unsanitary.

Health workers took to social media to denounce the government for not doing enough to ensure their safety or to deal with the lack of much needed supplies, such as gloves and masks—exacerbated by thefts from hospitals.

A Science Magazine article titled “A ticking time bomb”, cited scientists’ concerns about coronavirus spread in Africa. The article notes that with the populations of many African countries “disproportionately affected by HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and other infectious diseases” and with most having “weak health care systems… experts worry the virus [will] ravage” the continent. Additionally, “[s]ocial distancing” will be hard to do in the continent’s overcrowded cities and slums.”

The BBC reported on the situation in the informal settlements in Alexandra on the outskirts of Johannesburg, where people often live in cramped single rooms and share communal outdoor toilets. Electrician Nicholas Mashabele warned, “If the virus comes here, it’s going to kill everyone… We don’t have money to buy hygiene [products] to protect ourselves. We’re living in high risk.”

His wife, Shebi Mapiane, pointed to the wall of her house, saying, “My neighbour is just here. If I catch it, he’ll catch it, and everyone will catch it.”

Dr. Alison Glass, a clinical biologist, commented, “My biggest worry is... if this spills over into poorer communities where it’s more difficult to identify patients and to contain [the virus].”

South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV of any country on Earth, a direct result of the ANC’s and former leader Thabo Mbekiʼs criminal irresponsibility at the outset of the HIV epidemic. There are 2.5 million people living with HIV who are not on antiretrovirals, the drug used to fight the onset of Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

In those living with HIV, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, warns, “[W]e’re likely to see more severe infections.” Those with AIDS, which brings with it pneumonia and recurring respiratory tract infections, face even graver danger.

South Africa is riven by social inequality. The official unemployment rate stands at 26.7 percent—6.7 million workers—youth unemployment is 57 percent, the highest in the world, and the rate of HIV infection is 15 percent, meaning the threat of this virus devastating the population is all too real.

One only need recall Mbekiʼs downplaying of the HIV epidemic to know what the attitude of the South African ruling elite will be. As the situation spiraled and HIV became the single biggest cause of death in South Africa, Mbeki cynically claimed that the reports of alarming number of deaths from HIV was a conspiracy by the World Health Organisation and others to attack his government. At one point he stated, “Whatever the intensity of the hostile propaganda that might be provoked by the WHO statistics, we cannot allow that government policy and programmes should be informed by misperceptions, however widespread and well-established they may seem to be.”

It was Thabo Mbeki who fallaciously used statistics from a much earlier period, with much smaller figures, to downplay the HIV epidemic. One can already see in Ramaphosa’s response to the coronavirus pandemic a similar negligence, denial and cynicism.

On the other hand, with the coronavirus only beginning to take hold, Ramaphosa is already making pledges to business and the corporations to implement “bailout packages” like those offered by his counterparts around the world. While workers are forced to keep going to work in unsafe conditions and risk exposing themselves and their loved ones to the virus, the profits of the bourgeoisie are treated with care and delicacy. Surely no harm must come to them.

As Times Live reports, Ramaphosa told various political parties, “All social partners, specifically government, business and labour, need to jointly develop and implement measures to mitigate the economic impact of Covid-19. Companies in distress need to be helped.”

This means business will be given billions to shore up profits, while the trade unions work to repress mounting opposition, as the police and military are readied for any serious resistance by the working class.

In recent comments, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus scolded African governments, saying, “Africa should wake up, my continent should wake up.” As far as the fate of the working class is concerned, the African ruling elite will not heed this call.

As coronavirus cases surge in Pakistan, its prime minister preaches “no need to worry”

Sampath Perera

Pakistan is seeing a surge of COVID-19 cases, with the number of confirmed victims of the virus rising from fewer than 30 to 495 in the span of less than a week. There have been three COVID-19 deaths to date.

The rapid spread of the deadly virus will be catastrophic for millions of people in this poverty stricken South Asian country of more than 200 million.

As of now, Pakistan reports the highest number of confirmed cases in South Asia. Despite severe COVID-19 outbreaks in neighbouring countries, including China to the east, the initial epicentre of the virus, and Iran to the west, Pakistani authorities did little to nothing to prepare for the inevitable spread of the coronavirus to the country.

While the government attempted to delay the spread of the virus by refusing to evacuate its citizens from China’s Hubei province and imposed air travel restrictions, no significant measures were taken to mount a medical response to the outbreak. According to reports, most initial tests were conducted on patients who had become infected while traveling in Iran.

Despite the rapid increase of cases, the government has allocated only a paltry 5.4 billion rupees ($34 million) to deal with the pandemic.

The actual infection numbers are certainly far higher than reported, given the severe lack of testing. Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Islamic populist Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) government hurriedly convened the National Security Council March 13 amid reports indicating an unchecked spread of the virus. Following the military-government huddle, it shut down schools and the country’s borders while enforcing restrictions on air travel. However, fearing a backlash from an increasingly powerful Islamic right, the government did not ban prayers or large religious gatherings.

As panic built throughout the country, Reuters reported Wednesday that there was a “growing dispute in Pakistan between federal and provincial authorities.” Provincial authorities were scrambling to secure coronavirus testing kits, according to the report. Additionally, the central government has been blamed for its failure to test and quarantine those returning from abroad.

The criminal indifference of Pakistan’s ruling elite to the well-being of the masses was illustrated by Khan in an address to the nation on Tuesday. As the government is increasingly coming under criticism for a severe lack of testing kits in public health facilities and the prohibitive cost of the test in private medical centres, Khan demanded only those with “intense symptoms” to go to hospitals. “There is no need to worry,” he claimed, demagogically declaring, “We will fight this as a nation. And God willing, we will win this war.”

Pakistan’s public medical facilities are dilapidated, having been ravaged by decades of IMF austerity, and are utterly inadequate to fight a highly contagious and novel virus like the coronavirus. The medical crisis is enormously exacerbated by the poor living and hygienic conditions that the venal Pakistani bourgeoisie imposes on the majority of the population.

In the major cities, where whatever available social infrastructure is concentrated, health facilities were on life-support even before the arrival of coronavirus cases. In rural areas, including in the two most populous provinces, Punjab and Sindh, medical facilities are hardly existent. The situation is even worse in the war-ravaged former Federally Administered Tribal Areas that are now part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and in Balochistan, where the military is brutally repressing a longstanding nationalist-separatist insurgency.

The cost for the coronavirus test in a private facility, 7,900 rupees, or more than US $49, is about equal to the monthly income of most Pakistanis. With extreme poverty, food insecurity and widespread malnutrition among children, the consequences of the virus spreading widely in Pakistan will be catastrophic and far reaching.

Further worsening the current health emergency is the 20.4 percent cut the Khan government made in health expenditure from the 2018-19 financial year, in order to appease the IMF and Pakistan’s other creditors

The impact of the gutting of health care spending is exacerbated by skyrocketing inflation, which has been running at double-digit levels since July. Public health facilities face severe shortages of medical supplies and personnel, neglected maintenance of equipment and facilities, and a shrinking capacity to meet even the usual needs of the population, not to mention a highly contagious pandemic.

Pakistan only provided 0.6 beds per 1,000 people in 2014, the latest statistic available from the World Health Organization. According to the country’s representative for the WHO, the federal and provincial governments have made only 2,000 isolation beds available to deal with the current pandemic.

While utterly indifferent to the horrendous social conditions and virtually non-existent health care services available to the vast majority of the population, Pakistan’s ruling elite fears the pandemic could trigger an economic collapse, which would threaten their wealth and potentially ignite a social explosion.

Speaking to Associated Press, Khan appealed to the “world community” to consider “some sort of a debt write-off for countries” like Pakistan, while voicing concern that the virus outbreak and the measures to arrest its spread could trigger an “unstoppable slide backward” of the economy.

In his address Tuesday, Khan argued against shutting down daily life in the county’s cities with the claim, “people are already suffering” and if they were to be “saved from corona [virus]” by such means, then “they’ll die of hunger.”

The PTI government, as its negligent response to the pandemic and the policies it has pursued in its year and a half in office demonstrate, is chiefly concerned with protecting the wealth of the super-rich.

Khan and his PTI won election in July 2018 by cynically promising an “Islamic welfare state.” Predictably, no sooner did they take office than they pivoted to imposing further austerity and began to lay the groundwork for seeking a new IMF bailout. Khan has increasingly staffed his government with prominent members of the former dictatorial regime of General Pervez Musharraf, which, in addition to making Pakistan the logistical linchpin of the US war in Afghanistan, carried out a wave of privatization and other “pro-investor” neo-liberal reforms.

Pakistan’s coronavirus outbreak has overlapped with the Khan government’s negotiations with the IMF over a further round of austerity and economic “reforms” so as to secure another $450 million tranche of the current $6 billion bailout package. According to reports, the IMF has agreed not to aggregate coronavirus related expenditure towards the budget deficit. Otherwise, the government is expected to fulfill its pledges to the IMF to cut social spending and raise taxes and electricity rates, further increasing the economic burdens on the poor.

When massive floods in 2010 put millions of people at risk of starvation, disease and financial ruin, the government, then led by the Pakistan People’s Party, dutifully followed the diktats of the IMF and refrained from providing any substantial aid to the suffering masses.

Khan’s rise to power in 2018 was facilitated by the country’s nuclear-armed military, which, having ruled the country for decades with Washington’s backing, continues to wield effective control over foreign and military policy, and internal security

While Khan justifies his government’s negligent response to the coronavirus pandemic by claiming the state is bereft of resources, it is spending massive sums on Pakistan’s armed forces, amid dangerously escalating war tensions with India. In February 2019, the reactionary strategic conflict between India and Pakistan came to the brink of all-out war, after their air forces engaged in a dog-fight over disputed Kashmir.

The PTI government has allocated 16 percent of all state expenditure for defence. But this figure excludes pensions for retired military personnel, and never publicly revealed spending on major procurements and strategic programs.

Medical expert warns India could be next coronavirus hotspot

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Several medical experts have warned that India is at risk of a devastating coronavirus outbreak throughout the country. With a crisis-ridden public health system that lacks basic facilities and suffers from widespread staff shortages, and hundreds of millions living in extreme poverty, especially in high density cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, the country is vulnerable to a rapid spread of the pandemic.

Having reported over 223 positive cases and four coronavirus-related deaths so far, however, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has refused to initiate mass testing. Indian authorities have limited their response to the imposition of travel restrictions, tests for incoming travelers and contact tracing of those who have registered a positive result.

These steps alone are woefully inadequate to halt the progress of the pandemic in a country of 1.3 billion people. Even though it is weeks since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed, just 14,175 tests have been conducted across the country.

Despite a growing number of infections, the ministry of health has asserted that there is “no evidence” of person-to-person transmission within India in a bid to justify the lack of mass testing.

Dr. T. Jacob John, the former head of the Indian Council for Medical Research’s Centre for Advanced Research in Virology, has warned that while infection rates appear to be relatively low so far, the number of cases will likely increase ten-fold by April 15.

In comments reported by NDTV on March 18, John warned that the authorities were “not understanding that this is an avalanche. As every week passes, the avalanche is growing bigger and bigger.”

Health ministry officials have called for social distancing as a means of slowing the spread of the coronavirus, however medical experts have warned that this is impractical in high density areas.

Across India, an average of 420 people live in every square kilometre, compared with just 148 per square kilometre in China. More than 400 million people live in cities. In Mumbai alone, the population density is 21,000 per square kilometre. Nearly half of Delhi’s 18 million residents live in overcrowded shanty-towns.

Under these conditions, Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India has bluntly declared that “social distancing is something often talked about but only works well for the urban middle class.”

Reddy, who is also adjunct professor of epidemiology at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told NDTV: “It doesn’t work well for the urban poor or the rural population where it’s extremely difficult both in terms of compactly packed houses, but also because many of them have to go to work in areas which are not necessarily suitable for social distancing.”

The response of the Indian ruling elite, like its counterparts around the world, has been criminally negligent. Despite these warnings, the Modi government has done nothing to prepare mass testing or to boost funding to the shambolic public health system.

In an interview with Indian Express on March 17, Nivedita Gupta, senior viral scientist at the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), stated that India had limited its testing to symptomatic travelers and contacts of confirmed cases. Only on Tuesday was it announced that testing would be extended to health workers who are at risk due to contact with infected patients. According to Gupta, India currently has a capacity for 6,000 tests per day. There are around 150,000 test kits in 51 labs.

Responding to World Health Organisation guidance for countries to test as many people as possible to curb the pandemic, Balaam Bhargava, head of the ICMR said mass testing would be “premature” for India. Bhargava sought to justify this position by claiming that community transmissions had yet to be detected.

This assertion has been countered by a number of medical experts. Ramadan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy told the Hindustan Times on Thursday: “Community transmission began in India two to three weeks ago, around the same time as other countries. India is not an exception to the way the virus behaves,” he stated. “We just haven’t tested a representative sample that the country’s population of 1.34 billion demands.”

The Times also quoted an anonymous public health expert who warned: “Unless you test, you won’t know. Enough testing is not happening. In the initial phase of the epidemic, there are very few cases. But once it begins, it spreads like wildfire.”

Millions of people’s lives have already been placed in danger by the slow response of the authorities.

Indicating the prospects of a mass catastrophe, Dr. T. Jacob John wrote in the Economic and Political Weekly on March 14: “If 10 percent (80 million)—out of India’s total 800 million adult population—get infected and 10 percent of them developed severe illness (8 million; in particular the elderly, those with diabetes, chronic lung diseases, etc. who are more vulnerable), 80,000 may die at a 1 percent case fatality rate and 160,000 at 2 percent case fatality rate, all in one year.”

The Indian government has claimed that its response has been aimed at preventing mass panic and ensuring that the country’s hospital system is not overwhelmed by testing. In reality, its primary concern is to limit public spending amid an ongoing drive to slash costs and drive up the fortune of the country’s investors and wealthy elites.

While no money is made available to fight the pandemic, the Modi government allocated $US66 billion for defence in this year’s national budget, the third largest annual spend by any government in the world. The same budget provided just $9.7 billion for healthcare. This demonstrates that for the Indian elite, boosting its military power to pursue its predatory geo-political interests is a greater priority than the health, and the very lives of ordinary people.

Meanwhile, a tiny and corrupted super rich layer has accumulated a mountain of wealth. Oxfam’s “Time to Care” report released earlier this year found that India’s richest 1 percent hold more than four-times the wealth of the poorest 70 percent of the country, some 953 million people. The collective wealth of the country’s 63 billionaires is more than the annual national budget.