Ireland woefully unprepared for COVID-19 onslaught

Dermot Byrne

As the death toll from the coronavirus surges in Europe, Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar announced last Friday that the government would escalate lockdown measures that have brought the country to a standstill. Varadkar stated that all gatherings outside of a single household are now prohibited. Additionally, Gardai (police) have been given powers to “increase intervention” to enforce compliance with the stay-at-home orders.

On Friday, the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE), the overall governing body dealing with the spread of the pandemic, announced that 424 new cases had been detected with 4,273 people now infected with the COVID-19 virus. The total number of deaths from the virus in Ireland now stands at 120.

Medical experts have repeatedly insisted that up to 15,000 tests a day are needed to stem COVID-19’s spread throughout the country. Just over 4,500 are currently being conducted daily. According to Cillian De Gascun, chairman of the HSE’s coronavirus advisory group, only 1,500-2,000 of these tests are able to be processed in the labs each day.

State broadcaster RTE reported on April 1 that bereaved families were suffering, because in at least two cases in nursing homes, people have died of COVID-19 while waiting for test results.

Ultan Power, a professor of molecular virology at Queen’s University Belfast, stated that 6,000 people could be diagnosed as critical cases in Ireland within the next three weeks. A surge in deaths is predicted to coincide with the rise in cases. Temporary mortuary facilities are being prepared to handle the surge.

RTE reported last week that in preparation for the surge in cases the government instructed HSE to find 10,000 beds, which may include student accommodation, hotel rooms and military barracks. The HSE has also opened step-down isolation wards at Dublin’s Citywest hotel and conference centre to deal with the overflow of patients from the hospital system. Croke Park, Ireland’s largest football stadium, has been transformed into a test centre for the coronavirus along with 41 other centres throughout the country.

There were warnings last week from the European Centre for Disease Control that the intensive care system in Irish hospitals would not be able to cope with rising numbers of coronavirus patients in a critical condition.

Only 301 beds were available at the start of the pandemic. A study commissioned by the HSE more than a decade ago indicated that to remain at normal capacity, 500 intensive care unit (ICU) beds would be needed under these circumstances. Varadkar’s government has only been able to acquire 47 ICU beds from private hospitals in addition to nine laboratories and 194 ventilators. Medical experts have warned that the lack of ICU beds will seriously hamper the hospital’s ability to fight against the virus.

Professor John Crown, an oncology consultant described the situation: “We have unprecedented small numbers of intensive care unit beds, intensive care unit doctors and specialists in every area.”

Like every other country hit by the virus, Ireland is suffering from both a social and economic crisis. Coronavirus job losses have multiplied at a staggering rate over the last two weeks, with the unemployment rate already at 18 percent. Under a job protection scheme revealed by Varadkar last week, the government has said it will pay 70 percent of wages in private companies hit by the pandemic. The proposal would cost the state €3.7 billion over the next three months.

The spread of COVID-19 has coincided with a political crisis in Ireland stemming from the results of the general election held on February 8, which resulted in neither of the main establishment parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, being able to form a government. The combined votes in the 160 seat Dáil (parliament) of both nationalist parties, which for 100 years have dominated electoral politics, fell to a historic low. Based on first preference votes but not seats, the election was won by Sinn Fein.

Varadkar’s government was already facing growing opposition from workers before the coronavirus crisis took hold. Fine Gael, with the compliance of Fianna Fáil, has been slicing off sections of the public health service to the private hospital sector for over a decade, while at the same time placing embargos on nursing recruitment in public hospitals.

In February last year, tens of thousands of people turned out in Dublin in support of the nurses’ campaign of one-day stoppages for pay and improvements to tackle recruitment and retention issues. Over 10,000 health workers went on strike last June against under-funding and low pay.

Between 2008 and 2014, successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments introduced a massive €2.7 billion of health service cuts. Now, as the infection figures rise, a staggering 25 percent of those testing positive with the virus are health care workers.

The selflessness of health workers is widely apparent. Over 50,000 people with various experience in working in the health service have volunteered to help in the fight against the coronavirus.

UK: Elderly will be left to die as coronavirus plunges care sector into crisis

Stephen Alexander

As Britain recorded its largest increase in deaths from coronavirus in a single day, 684, taking the grim toll to over 3,000, it is the elderly who are most at risk from the pandemic. While more than half of all hospital deaths in England were among those aged 80 and over, the number of those dying in care homes now exceeds 600.

The entire care sector faces a substantial spike in deaths, with little or no contingency measures in place to prevent mass contagion.

Evidence has now emerged that suggests that elderly residents in care and nursing homes are possibly being pressured into agreeing to “do not resuscitate” (DNR) notices. The BBC reports seeing a document circulated by the Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group, which covers 35 general practices and 98 residential or nursing homes, directing all homes to "check they have resuscitation orders on every patient." In addition, elderly residents infected with COVID-19 could be refused admission to hospital, with the document stating, "We may therefore recommend that in the event of coronavirus infection, hospital admission is undesirable."

Throughout the country, there are shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and no adequate testing and quarantine protocols exist to protect vulnerable elderly residents and the safety of health-care workers. The Office for National Statistics recently began publishing data on coronavirus-related deaths occurring outside hospitals. It is now estimated that up to a fifth of all COVID-19 deaths in the UK have occurred in care homes, hospices, and individual households. These deaths remain underreported, as many are registered as resulting from chest infections or pneumonia.

A 95-year-old man recently died after being infected by COVID-19 at the Oaklands Nursing Home in Hove, East Sussex. He tested positive along with two other residents. Several others are critically ill, and a member of staff has been admitted to intensive care. Fifteen out of 20 residents at the home have developed symptoms.

Two people with suspected COVID-19 infections have died at Oak Springs care facility in Liverpool. Three other residents are in hospital, with 48 of the remaining 66 residents as well as 50 staff presenting symptoms.

Similar reports are emerging daily across the country, with the UK trailing Italy and Spain, the deadliest pandemic hotspots in Europe, by just a few weeks. In those countries, care homes have been crippled by mass contagion, double-digit deaths and staffing shortages. Some elderly residents in northern Italy and Madrid were left without care and food for days due to staff absences and impossible working conditions. The military, which belatedly intervened to relieve care homes, found 23 dead in one care home in the Spanish capital, including two nuns who had been providing care. France is also now reporting runaway infections and deaths in care facilities.

MHA, the UK’s largest charitable care provider, told the Guardian that care services are already approaching a "breaking point." More than one in ten of MHA’s several thousand strong workforce at its 220 facilities are unable to work due to self-isolating related to suspected infections, underlying health conditions and needing to care for vulnerable relatives. Care organisations and local authorities have appealed for volunteers.

Many care facilities are reporting acute shortages of hand sanitiser, eye protection, masks and gloves. Staff at the Cumbrae Lodge Care Home in Ayrshire, Scotland—where one patient has already died after contracting COVID-19—are working without PPE, the Daily Record reported. The care home is owned by Four Seasons, one of the largest and most profitable private care providers in the UK. Other care homes have been issued with face masks that have passed their use-by date by four years.

Most residential homes are neither built nor equipped to carry out the effective isolation of infected residents. UK government PPE and isolation protocols for care homes refer only to symptomatic residents, advising otherwise that “no personal protective equipment is required above and beyond normal good hygiene practices.” Yet it has been known for months that COVID-19 is highly infectious in the week prior to the appearance of symptoms as well as in asymptomatic carriers.

Sam Monaghan, chief executive of MHA, told the Guardian, "Our people are also working day and night with those who are most vulnerable to coronavirus and we are yet to be included in the testing that is being rolled out for the NHS."

One MHA worker said, "We are risking our lives. It makes us feel like we are cannon fodder."

Instead of providing safe working conditions and care services for the elderly, disabled and vulnerable, Boris Johnson’s government has obliterated care standards as part of the Coronavirus Act. The bill, which withdraws key duties under the Care Act, was passed as emergency legislation with next to no debate.

The provision of essential care for the elderly has suffered from years of austerity, cuts in services and shifting the burden from the state onto the individual. According to the Ferret, Glasgow’s Health and Social Care Partnership has cut home visits completely for some elderly, sick and disabled people who depend on several home visits per day to help them get dressed, eat and take medication. The organization now only delivers “critical care.” Dr Sally Witcher, chief executive of Inclusion Scotland, warned that "it’s not necessarily the virus that is going to kill people… It’s going to be the absolute failure to provide people with the support they need."

Amid a surge in coronavirus admissions, the Johnson government has finally made available a paltry £3 billion to the care sector—a mere one percent of the £300 billion sum handed over directly to the banks and big business in response to the pandemic—to support the NHS in discharging hospital patients to care homes. Several care facilities have publicly refused to accept patients from hospitals, with one manager describing the policy as "madness," stating that it would expose entire care homes to possible infection.

The dire situation in care has been prepared over decades by successive Conservative and Labour governments. The elderly are forced to sell their homes or run down life savings to fund their own care. Large swathes of the sector have been handed over to private operators, with just 8 percent of the care sector remaining under the control of local government.

A report published last year by the Centre for Health and Public Interest (CHPI) revealed that the largest private care providers—including HC-One, Four Seasons Health Care, Barchester Healthcare, and Care UK, which control around 900 care homes—pocket roughly £1.5 billion in profits from an annual revenue of £15 billion. Many of these companies are owned by offshore hedge funds or private equity groups, which evade paying taxes by utilising thousands of shell companies and an array of shady financial mechanisms.

The deadly crisis enveloping the care sector in the UK and internationally is not the result of a lack of money or resources, but an expression of the bankruptcy of the capitalist system, which subordinates human life to the drive for profit. While immense sums of public money have been funneled into the stock market to protect the wealth of the ruling class, capitalist governments have uniformly enforced the fascistic rationing of healthcare and protective equipment for the working class.

UK corporations scramble for coronavirus bailout funds

Paul Bond

The financial measures of governments globally in response to the coronavirus pandemic are laying bare class divisions under capitalism.

In Britain, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced on March 17th that a £350 billion bailout would be made available for businesses. The bailout is an unprecedented financial handout to UK corporations, conducted without even the rubber stamp of a parliamentary vote.

Virgin Atlantic was quick to demand a £7.5 billion bailout of the British aviation industry, while simultaneously demanding that its workforce agree to eight weeks “unpaid leave.” The company also offered all employees “voluntary redundancy.” Owner and tax exile, Sir Richard Branson, whose personal worth is $3.8 billion, made a show of putting $250 million into the company to keep it afloat. His aim is to maintain operations under conditions in which it has virtually no customers, while he awaits a vast transfer of public resources into the company’s coffers. It has been reported that Branson will claim £500 million pounds from the bailout fund.

The firm staying afloat is vital for the continued profitability of other corporations and entities. Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Heathrow Airport have all lobbied Transport Secretary Grant Shapps in support of Virgin’s bailout application.

EasyJet owner Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, whose personal wealth is $1.7 billion, is also set to receive government loans. Sir Stelios has instructed his pilots and cabin crew to take two months’ unpaid leave. He has also called on the company’s board to cancel an order for new aircraft and to fire staff just days after receiving his personal dividend of nearly £60 million.

Multimillionaire Tim Martin, chairman of the JD Wetherspoon pub chain, recently alerted his 40,000 staff that they would not be paid because there was no money coming in and contemptuously said they should look for work at the Tesco supermarket conglomerate. He told suppliers they would not be paid for goods already delivered until the pubs reopened. JD Wetherspoon had a turnover of £1.8 billion and reported pre-tax profits of £102.5 million last year.

It should also be recalled that Martin fought against calls for social distancing and the closure of restaurants as the pandemic was developing, absurdly claiming, “There’s hardly been any transmission of the virus within pubs.”

Sunak’s initial bailout of these corporations pledged £330 billion in loans, equivalent to 15 percent of the UK’s annual GDP, to be made available to businesses at “attractive rates.” He insisted that it could be extended with “unlimited lending capacity” if required. A further £20 billion was pledged as tax breaks, cash grants and compensation for companies required to pay statutory sick pay.

The corporations are covered by the Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF), a scheme allowing companies to sell commercial paper—unsecured, short-term debt that can be held for up to 12 months—to the Bank of England. CCFF was criticised because companies needed to be defined as investment grade by a rating agency in order to be eligible. Rating agency Fitch noted that only just over 100 UK companies qualified.

The government subsequently allowed lending banks to make their own assessment of a company’s credit worthiness. This was ostensibly to allow the inclusion of medium-sized concerns, but the majority are still unlikely to meet the Bank of England’s criteria, which would depend on their financial health at the beginning of March.

The priorities were clear. Only days later did Sunak issue any wage subsidy measures. This was originally slated for the following week but had to be brought forward because of business anxiety over the spiraling economic crisis and mounting concerns by millions of workers facing unemployment.

Former Business Secretary Greg Clark MP warned that many businesses were rejecting the idea of government-backed loans because they had “no idea when they would be able to pay back the debt they would incur.” Workers were just the pawns in this negotiation between business and the Tories.

Senior Tories told the Times that Sunak’s initial measures were “simply not going to be enough.” Clark said businesses could see “no choice but to lay off workers now.”

Their concerns were not over the fate of workers, but the bailout of corporations. Sunak announced that companies furloughing workers would be able to claim up to 80 percent of their wages in a job retention scheme, to a maximum of £2,500 per month for the initial period of three months. Only later were provisions made for the self-employed and gig economy workers, who now make up 15 percent of the labour market, 5.75 million workers.

Only a fraction of the Sunak bailout will go towards paying wages. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, economist Julian Jessop described the cost of the scheme as “bearable.” An average wage subsidy of £1,500 a person each month for three months would cost around £4.5 billion per million jobs covered. He posited a total upfront cost of up to £40 billion—around two percent of annual national income—demonstrating just how little relatively has been reserved for paying workers.

Even after this move, some companies continued laying workers off. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay issued redundancy notices to more than 500 workers in his restaurants.

The latest billionaire to demand public money is Philip Green, head of fashion retailer Arcadia. Arcadia shut its 550 shops two weeks ago and is demanding wages support for 14,500 of its 16,000 staff. Arcadia is owned by Green’s wife Tina, a tax exile based in Monaco. Her salary in 2017 was £25 million. Green became a symbol of venality and greed following his role in the systematic plunder of his BHS retail chain and its pension scheme before its final collapse, with the loss of 11,000 jobs.

On Tuesday, the Bank of England reached agreement with Britain’s largest banks that they would temporarily halt shareholder pay-outs and share buybacks for 2019 throughout 2020. This was intended to hand the lenders an additional £8 billion in reserve for increased lending demands from corporations during the pandemic. Such is the economic volatility that the move triggered a collapse in banking shares Wednesday, as part of broader chaos on the market. Many of these supposedly cancelled bonuses had already been paid out before the agreement was reached.

Opening of the cash spigot for big business is fueling anger among millions. Nearly 70,000 people have signed an online petition demanding “Tax dodging Virgin—no bailout!” The petition’s author wrote, “Branson has avoided paying taxes in our country. He has taken vast amounts of money from the railways and bled the NHS [National Health Service] dry. He has a huge amount of personal wealth, and should not be subsidised by our nation.”

The raid on the public purse for big business, just as was the case after the 2008/09 bailout of the banks, will be paid for by working people.

The last act in the pathetic exit of nominally left party leader Jeremy Corbyn was to endorse the bailout without even his customary whimper. The Trades Union Congress, who were involved in lengthy discussions with big-business representatives to put a case to the government before Sunak’s budget, was effusive in its praise. TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady, who sits on the Bank of England’s court of directors, described the jobs retention scheme as a “breakthrough.” Praising Sunak’s “real leadership,” she stated she was “glad he’s listened to the unions.”

Coronavirus crisis: Hunger and malnutrition spread in Germany

Carola Kleinert & Andy Niklaus

Research indicates some 13 million people in Germany are living in poverty or confront hunger, malnutrition and social misery due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. This total includes three million children condemned to poverty by the policies of Germany’s ruling CDU-SPD (Christian Democratic Union-Social Democratic Party) grand coalition.

Kindergartens and schools across the country have now been closed for more than two weeks due to the spread of Covid-19. This means that the supply of free hot lunches for the children of those living on Germany’s miserly Hartz-IV welfare payments has been cut off. This has disastrous consequences for the affected kids and their parents.

The Hartz IV system allocates just five euros [US$5.41] per day for the feeding of a 15-year-old—a completely inadequate sum. The staff at job centres responsible for implementing the payments are well aware of this fact and often advise Hartz IV recipients to turn to the nationwide network of charitable organisations that provide food for the needy.

Germany has the largest low-wage sector in Europe due to the Hartz laws introduced by a previous SPD-Green coalition. Those laws plunged broad sections of the working class, particularly families and pensioners, into poverty. In Berlin, one in three children is dependent on the meagre benefits. In the former industrial Ruhr area, more than 30 percent of all children live in Hartz IV families. The situation is similar in Hamburg, Cologne, Düsseldorf and other big cities. Even the SPD newspaper, Vorwärts [Forward] , had to admit last week that poor families needed an extra 200 to 250 euros a month to feed their children.

Last year, up to two million people were dependent on food donated from the non-profit Tafel [Table] food bank network. Those using Tafel services included children and young people (30 percent) and pensioners (20 percent). Now this emergency aid has collapsed following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

Of the 940 Tafel food banks nationwide with over 2,000 dispensing points, 400 have closed down. All of the 150 outlets of the charity project “Die Arche” [The Ark], where children and adolescents receive food, as well as help with recreational and school activities, have also closed down.

The consequences are devastating. The Tafel organisation reports that it receives calls for help from the needy on a daily basis. Families can no longer adequately feed their kids. “Children no longer have anything to eat,” warned Wolfgang Büscher, spokesman for the Berlin Arche.

Hunger and malnutrition are now on the agenda for the wealthier capitalist countries and it is likely that the mass destruction of jobs as a result of coronavirus and the introduction of short-time work for millions will lead to even further impoverishment. Precarious workers—such as Germany’s eight million “mini-jobbers” and self-employed—are already unable to pay rent and food due to the loss of their entire income.

Despite these developments, the defence of the obscene wealth of a minority is the first priority of the German government during the current crisis—not the health and well-being of the broad population. This was confirmed by the bipartisan approval in the Bundestag [German parliament] for a 600-billion euro package to support large companies and the financial elite.

The measures of the grand coalition include a so-called “social protection package” that will do little to alleviate the situation for those in greatest need. Mini-jobbers and the self-employed are not entitled to any short-time benefits. Payments of rent and loan instalments can be waived for a period, but must still be paid at a future date. All Hartz IV benefits will be approved without interviews and probes into the financial status of new Hartz IV applicants will be suspended for six months. In addition, extra child benefits of up to 185 euros per month will be made available.

The government, however, has so far ignored the poorest of the poor. Der Spiegel, the news magazine, reports that only parents with jobs can apply for the additional benefits for children—unemployed parents are excluded. Even prior to the pandemic, cramped living conditions, financial hardship and the pressure resulting from social exclusion and stigmatisation made life very hard for the poor. Now “the hardship is clearly more noticeable,” said Büscher from the Berlin Arche.

The restrictions placed on public life and interaction due to the crisis also have a particularly dramatic effect on the homeless and refugees.

Last year, there were around 1.2 million homeless in Germany and around 50,000 rough sleepers. Numerous aid organisations presume the number of homeless people is actually much higher. Existing emergency shelters for the homeless have been closed due to the pandemic. The extreme restrictions on medical care and the almost complete elimination of donations via collecting bottles or selling newspapers, combined with the lack of Tafel support, make survival very difficult.

Confronted with the rapid spread of the coronavirus, German state governments have undertaken some measures to “get the homeless off the streets,” while at the same time taking into account the current hygienic and “social distancing” regulations. All of these measures, however, are completely inadequate.

In Berlin, for example, the SPD-Left Party-Green coalition in power in the nation’s capital since the beginning of 2017, has merely allowed emergency shelters to be used by the homeless around the clock. According to the Senator for Integration, Labour and Social Affairs, Elke Breitenbach (Left Party), the Berlin Senate has no intention of making available to the homeless the tens of thousands of empty hotel rooms in the city or the approximately 2,000 free places in the facilities of the State Office for Refugee Affairs.

Instead, space for just 350 people is to be created in a youth hostel with 200 beds and another 150 places prepared in an emergency aid shelter. This is despite the fact that the official number of homeless in Berlin is 2,000, with other sources estimating up to 10,000 homeless people in the city.

The situation is also dire for those without permanent accommodation, including hundreds of thousands of refugees. As a result of the strict pandemic measures, they are penned up indefinitely in cramped accommodation and—like everyone else—are only allowed to leave their quarters for the purposes of basic services or for a short walk.

Asylum seekers are especially hard hit by the measures taken by the state governments. Recently, the state government in Thuringia locked down a refugee centre with the help of police following a report of an asylum seeker being tested positive for the coronavirus. There has been no extensive testing carried out to reduce the quarantine restrictions nor decent accommodation made available to prevent further infections.

The crisis has brought to light the true extent of the division of society into rich and poor and the relentless class-based agenda of the bourgeoisie and its henchmen in all political camps.

Moves to strengthen the powers of the state apparatus and permit the deployment of the German army for domestic purposes are not aimed at bringing the pandemic under control, but rather at enforcing this class policy.

In the Italian cities of Naples and Palermo, hunger has already led to workers seeking to loot stores to obtain basic foodstuffs to feed their starving families. The Italian government responded with a brutal police operation and has now delegated police to patrol the stores.

Mounting opposition among German health care, industrial workers

Ulrich Rippert

Germany’s federal government has implemented a so-called “coronavirus bailout program” for major companies, banks and the super-rich. But workers in hospitals and care homes and in industry, whose work is essential to the population’s basic needs, are being forced to work under catastrophic conditions.

Elementary measures to ensure workplace safety are absent, while work loads are rising dramatically. Instead of demanding that the government adopt emergency measures, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the official agency for infectious diseases, recommended a loosening of quarantine guidelines for medical personnel last week.

An employee wearing a face mask and gloves is waiting for the next patient behind the door of the corona diagnostic centre in Düsseldorf [Credit: AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

From now on, an unprotected health care worker who comes into contact with an infected patient will not automatically have to go into quarantine. This has prompted widespread outrage among doctors, nurses and other health care staff because the new policy will allow the virus to spread unhindered in hospitals and care homes.

Shortly after RKI’s announcement, Health Minister Jens Spahn (Christian Democratic Union—CDU) announced a loosening of restrictions on working hours for health care staff. This came on top of the suspension of minimum staff requirements for certain types of hospital wards.

A Berlin nurse, Nina Magdalena Böhmer, posted the following statement on on Facebook: “As a nurse, I feel like we’re really being made a fool of and I don’t know what to think any more. First, no material there, then we have to continue working after contact, now this. And then Spahn adds that it isn’t about the money and the profession just has to be made more attractive. I wonder how much connection with reality these people actually have.”

In comments to the daily Tagesspiegel, Böhmer said, “The health care emergency has been common knowledge for years. There were reports, talk show discussions, but nothing was done.”

She added, “I think the health system ought not to be privatised. I think it’s absurd that wards have to take in more patients than they have capacity for because otherwise they wouldn’t make money.”

She noted that at times she is the only trained staff member on a ward and has to care for 50 patients, assisted only by a trainee.

Truck drivers protest

Like health care staff, truck drivers are often described as the heroes of the coronavirus crisis. They ensure that the supermarket shelves are refilled. They are on the go day and night and spend their breaks on the road. But their working conditions are continuously deteriorating, in part because almost everything they require for food and basic hygiene is unavailable due to closures.

A report by the radio station NDR-1 Lower Saxony noted: “Due to the coronavirus, the restaurants at the rest stations on the motorways have all been closed. If anything is on offer at all, it is just snacks.”

“It is inhumane,” complained truck driver Bernhard Schumann in an interview with the broadcaster. “Before the coronavirus we were treated without respect, now we are treated inhumanely and without respect.”

Responding to the claims by the Economy Ministry that basic provision of food on the motorways was guaranteed and normal standards of hygiene would “of course be retained as much as possible,” Schumann expressed his astonishment.

“It’s a disaster for any long-distance driver who lives on the road,” he said. “Theory and practice are certainly very far apart on that.”

Schumann demanded that the showers and toilets at least be thoroughly cleaned and that measures be taken at car parks and rest stations to ensure that truck drivers can protect themselves from the coronavirus.

Responding to the hypocritical media talk of truck drivers being “coronavirus heroes,” he said, “We’re just normal truck drivers doing our job. And whether someone stands up and claps or says, ‘Thank you,’ that won’t get us anywhere. We want to live like human beings at the rest stations.”

Airport workers

An employee of FraCareServices raised serious accusations about the lack of infection protection measures at Frankfurt Airport in a report posted by the Offenbach Post Online. “The conditions at Frankfurt Airport are a scandal and totally irreconcilable with the country’s pandemic rules,” he said.

FraCareServices is a joint subsidiary of Fraport, the operator of Frankfurt Airport, and Lufthansa. The approximately 800 workers support passengers who require extra assistance, such as the elderly, children or people with disabilities. Their tasks include assisting people who have difficulty walking, which cannot be accomplished without physical contact even at a time when the coronavirus is spreading.

“We don’t get disinfectant or face masks, not even gloves,” the worker said. “And this is in spite of the fact that we inevitably have contact with the customers. It’s often impossible to maintain the required distance.”

He said the wheelchairs should be disinfected after each passenger, but calls to this effect by employees and the works council have been ignored by management. “There is no crisis committee, and no attention is paid to a pandemic plan,” he added.

As is the case at many other workplaces, Fraport dismissed the accusations and said employees were free to wear masks or gloves if they wished.

The FraCareService worker also pointed to serious safety problems. “It is outrageous that planes are still landing here from Iran and other crisis regions,” he said. The daily arrival of planes from Italy and China can no longer be justified, he argued. He said he had not seen any special measures, amid the inevitable pushing and shoving, for passengers arriving from high-risk areas. “Their temperature is not taken when they arrive, nor is any attention paid to safe distancing,” he noted.

Steel workers continue on the job

At ThyssenKrupp Steel anger and disbelief over the absence of protective measures and guidelines is widespread. In steel plants, most rules, including maintaining a safe distance from colleagues, are impossible to follow.

The news that Industrial Solutions, a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Steel, had donated 38,000 medical masks and other protective clothing to the health authority in the city of Dortmund met with opposition on Facebook. Most steelworkers have no masks. The masks donated by Industrial Solutions were taken from the plant’s stockpile and handed over by the company’s works council.

The workers are extremely concerned. This is above all due to the drastic downsizing programme that was implemented by management, in collaboration with the IG Metall trade union. Many fear that the crisis will be exploited to eliminate their jobs even more rapidly.

A steelworker at Outokumpu’s plant in Krefeld wanted to remain anonymous. “From my own experience, I know,” he said, “that German companies are using the coronavirus pandemic to boost their profits at the expense of the workers. They want to profit from their competitors having closed their factories in Asia. They have full order books and even allow workers to work overtime, without any concern for their health.”

He considers himself to be part of an at-risk group and complained that there is no disinfectant or other provisions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. While the main administrative offices are empty because those employees are working from home, the production workers are considered “fair game.”

“A two-class society in the plants,” he said.

“We are all angry,” he continued, “and feel like we’re being messed around. Even those of us in at-risk groups have to carry on working. An information leaflet said we should speak to the company doctor. I did that. He advised me to wash my hands and use disinfectant. But we don’t have any disinfectant or face masks. I operate keyboards, telephones etc.”

Grocery delivery company Picnic steps up exploitation

While many workers face unemployment or being placed on reduced working hours, others face even greater workloads.

Amazon is not the only company with booming sales that is intensifying exploitation. Other delivery services are also profiting from the crisis. The Dutch grocery delivery service Picnic, which has operated in Germany for two years, is expanding. The subsidiary, Picnic GmbH, which is headquartered in Düsseldorf, operates purely online and has no stores. Products are ordered and paid for via an app, and then delivered to the customer’s home.

The company opened its second fulfillment centre in Germany on Wednesday in the town of Herne in the Ruhr region. The company’s capacity will be more than doubled. It was supported in this by the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Picnic now delivers to some 80,000 customers in the Ruhr region and the Lower Rhine area and employs over 1,000 people. Two hundred additional workers have been hired in recent weeks. The low-cost service, featuring cheap products and free delivery, and the growing profits of shareholders are at the expense of the working class.

The World Socialist Web Site received an email from a Picnic employee. Like many of her colleagues, she is a student. She is employed by a temporary job agency.

She reported that demands by the workers for safeguards to protect themselves as well as customers, many in the high-risk category, were rejected by the company. Although disinfectant is supposed to be available on every electric delivery trolley, no face masks are being purchased.

Calls for an increase to the low wage (€10 per hour before taxes) were dismissed with the claim that Picnic is not Amazon and is still a young company in Germany. In other words, management has no intention of sacrificing its lucrative business model for a few more euros per hour to the workers, never mind to protect the health and safety of workers and customers.

In the United States, larger protests and strikes at grocery delivery services like Instacart, Amazon and Whole Foods have broken out. On Tuesday, the WSWS published a statement from the Socialist Equality Party urging support for these job actions.

It declared:

There is no reason why the distribution of food and other essential items should be run by Instacart, Amazon and other private corporations. This vital social service should instead be part of a centrally planned socialist economy, based on addressing social needs, not generating private profit. All of society’s material and human resources must be marshaled on a socially rational basis not only to fight this deadly disease, but to put an end to poverty, social inequality and class exploitation.

US jobless numbers head toward Depression levels

Nick Beams

US job-loss figures for March, which show employers cut the workforce by 710,000, are only the start of what is shaping up to be the deepest collapse of the labour market since the Great Depression—one, moreover, that is occurring at a much faster rate.

The official March data are a significant underestimation because they are based on surveys conducted in the first two weeks of the month, before widespread lockdowns were in place. Since then, some 6.6 million people filed for unemployment benefits this week on top of the 3.3 million who submitted claims two weeks ago.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said the report reflected “some of the early effects” of the pandemic and it was not possible to “precisely quantify” its full effects over the month.

But even though the latest data are an underestimation, they nevertheless express the speed of the crisis. More jobs were lost than in any month since the worst days of the 2007-2009 recession. The unemployment rate for March rose to 4.4 percent from 3.5 percent in February, the largest one-month increase since January 1975.

More than half the job losses, 417,000, were at restaurants and bars, among the first areas affected by shutdowns. The job losses exceed all the gains over the past two years.

Hotels and other hospitality areas recorded 42,000 job losses. Retailers cut 46,000 jobs, health care employment went down 43,000. Manufacturing lost 18,000 jobs and construction 29,000.

A report in the Wall Street Journal said the real situation was much worse than the headline figures indicated. It was likely that 3 million had lost their jobs, with the bad news only just beginning.

Even though understated, the article described the employment report as “stunningly grim.” It noted that economists, on average, had expected only a “modest loss of 10,000 jobs.”

The BLS report showed that the number of unemployed people increased by 1.35 million from February to March. But this may also be an underestimate, as those who have given up looking for work, because there are no jobs available, are not included in the unemployment rate. The number of people who consider themselves to be employed fell by 3 million.

Forecasts by Oxford Economics are that the US will have lost 27.9 million jobs by May and the unemployment rate will have shot up to 16 percent. This means that in the space of just a few weeks, all expansion of employment since 2010 will have been wiped out.

The Congressional Budget Office has said that the unemployment rate will go over 10 percent in the second quarter.

The rapidly rising US jobless numbers are only one expression of the plunge of the world economy into deep recession, if not depression. All talk of a V-shaped recovery and a sharp rebound, common just a month, ago has gone.

Today, the Financial Times reported: “The coronavirus pandemic and lockdown imposed on both sides of the Atlantic has pushed the global economy into the sharpest downturn since the Great Depression.”

It drew this conclusion on the back of the jobs data in the US and the latest purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for the services sector of the UK economy. With a level of 50 indicating neither expansion nor contraction, it fell from 53.2 in February to 34.5 in March.

IHS Market, which conducts the surveys, said it was the fastest fall in the services sector since it began taking the survey in 1996.

PMI data across Europe have all fallen by about 20 points, indicating that levels of business activity are going below those reached at the worst stage of the 2008-09 global financial crisis. One set of PMI data in Italy hit the lowest level on record at 17.4.

Speaking on a joint television presentation with the World Health Organisation, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, said: “This is a crisis like no other. Never in the history of the IMF have we witnessed the world economy coming to a standstill. It’s way worse than the global financial crisis.”

She warned that just as COVID-19 hit hardest at individuals with pre-existing conditions, so the economic impact would take its worst toll on weaker economies.

The demand for IMF financing has skyrocketed. “In, fact, never in the 75 year history of our institution have so many countries found themselves in need of emergency financing—85 countries have approached us so far, all at one time,” she said.

The assets of so-called emerging market economies are being dumped on a scale never seen before. According to the Institute for International Finance, foreign investors have withdrawn $95 billion from stocks and bonds in the period since January 21. This is a rate of withdrawal four times faster than took place in the global financial crisis.

The fall in oil and commodity prices is a major factor in the crisis, as producers in Latin America and Africa have seen the price drop from near $70 a barrel to somewhere between $20 and $30.

And the job cuts in restaurants, bars, hotels and the hospitality industry in the major economies are sending out shock waves around the world. A large portion of the workforce in these areas are foreign-born workers who send remittances to their families in their countries of origin in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. These remittances are now drying up, putting a further strain on foreign currency reserves.

Much worse is to come, as major rating agencies move to downgrade emerging market corporate bonds and other financial assets. Yesterday, Fitch cut its rating on the debt of Mexico’s state oil company, Pemex, to junk status and forecast that the company would have a clash outflow of between $15 and $20 billion for the year.

If other rating agencies follow Fitch, then investors who are required to hold only investment grade debt will be forced to sell. This could trigger turbulence in the unstable junk bond market that goes beyond Pemex and oil.

Unemployment surges in Europe amid COVID-19 pandemic

Alex Lantier

Yesterday, as the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide topped one million, 35,520 new cases and 3,964 deaths were confirmed across Europe, for a total of 558,873 cases and 42,070 deaths. Europe, which once boasted of its “social market economy” and world-leading health systems, currently has over 70 percent of the world’s 58,149 COVID-19 deaths and has transmitted the disease to multiple countries in Africa and Latin America, from Algeria to Brazil.

With half of humanity now under lockdown and over 10 million jobs lost in two weeks in the US, Europe faces not only its greatest health crisis since the 1918-1919 Spanish flu epidemic, but its greatest social and economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Even based on the incomplete statistics available, over 11 million European workers have lost their jobs in just the last two weeks. In Germany, 470,000 firms have applied for state subsidies for over 2 million laid-off workers, 50 percent more than after the 2008 crash. In France, four million laid-off workers are to receive state subsidies. In Spain, 900,000 workers have been fired outright and 1.84 million are receiving subsidies after layoffs—more in two weeks than in the first 20 weeks after the 2008 crash.

One million Britons have applied for welfare, 800,000 workers have lost jobs in Finland and Norway, and Austrian unemployment has risen 52.5 percent to 545,000 workers, the largest number since World War II.

These statistics leave out Italy, the COVID-19 pandemic’s original epicenter and the country that has faced the longest lockdown due to the pandemic. Rome has neither posted statistics for the number of workers fired nor those laid off and slated to receive state unemployment subsidies. However, when the Italian government’s server to process online applications for unemployment subsidies went live this week, it crashed in barely two hours, overloaded by hundreds of thousands of applications.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thus caused not only the greatest health emergency but the greatest social and economic crisis facing European capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Responsibility for this catastrophe lies not only in the virulence of the coronavirus, but above all in the bankruptcy of European capitalism, torn apart by intractable class and political conflicts. Europe’s health systems, devastated by decades of funding cuts, have suffered a historic collapse. Even with most of its largest economies under lockdown in a desperate attempt to halt the spread of the illness, tearing apart Europe’s economy, the disease has spread so far that thousands of new cases are still being found daily, weeks after the first lock-down began in Italy.

A month ago, South Korea, Iran and Italy were key countries facing spread from the original epicenter in China, with 5,621, 2,922 and 3,809 cases respectively. Other European countries had a few hundred cases. Today, most of South Korea’s 10,062 cases have recovered, after a program of sheltering at home, mass testing of the population, and treatment and isolation of the sick. However, its total has been overtaken not only by Italy (119,827), Spain (117,710), Germany (90,964), France (64,338) and Britain (38,168), but countries with far smaller populations than South Korea.

Even Switzerland (19,606 cases, 591 deaths), Belgium (16,770 cases, 1,143 deaths) and the Netherlands (15,723 cases and 1,487 deaths) have overtaken South Korea’s 174 COVID-19 deaths.

In one early COVID-19 hotspot in Vò, Italy, health staff succeeded in isolating the epidemic by mass sheltering at home, testing, and isolation of the sick. Regional governor Luca Zaia said, “Here there were the first two cases. We tested everyone, even if the ‘experts’ told us this was a mistake: 3,000 tests. We found 66 positives, who we isolated for 14 days, and after that 6 of them were still positive. And that is how we ended it.’’

However, European governments all rejected the strategy of mass quarantines, targeted shutdowns of economic production, and mass testing and isolation of the sick adopted in South Korea and in Vò. They rejected such strategies, which require a massive investment in testing equipment, masks, respirators and protective equipment to be implemented on a larger scale. While the European Central Bank created €750 billion in fresh cash to bail out financial markets amid the COVID-19 pandemic, health systems were left to manage with infrastructure devastated by tens of billions of euros in spending cuts imposed since the 2008 crash.

European authorities dismissed the significance of the outbreak with criminal light-mindedness. Italian Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio dismissed warnings of a COVID-19 pandemic as an “infodemic” designed to harm Italy’s economy with false information. Former French Health Minister Agnès Buzyn, a leading member of France’s ruling party, described the risk of spread of COVID-19 to France as “basically zero.”

It was only after the uncontrolled explosion of COVID-19 cases in Italy provoked wildcat strikes across the country—as workers demanded the right to shelter at home if they worked non-essential jobs—that Rome, followed by other European governments, agreed to a lock-down. A broad movement emerged as workers across Europe and in America walked off the job or protested in an attempt to compel a more rational approach to fighting the pandemic.

This is an international and political fight, however, requiring the unification of the working class in a struggle against the entire European bourgeoisie that is organized independently of the trade union bureaucracies.

Workers’ basic needs cannot be subordinated to political deals between the unions and capitalist governments. Workers sheltering at home must remain on full pay, and those still working in key food and medical industries need safe working conditions. The provision of full and modern care to all the sick requires massive emergency investment in health care and the transformations of factories across the continent into internationally-coordinated public utilities, producing critical medical equipment to fight the pandemic. Enforcement of quarantines should be taken out of the hands of army units and brutal riot police units that pose a clear danger to democratic rights.

Above all, the decision of when workers should return to work cannot be left to capitalist governments that serve as barely disguised dictatorships of the financial aristocracy. As the epidemic continues to escalate out of control across Europe, leading European governments are continuing to push to find fraudulent or unscientific methods to compel workers to return to work to produce profits for the major banks and corporations.

London and Paris are both seizing upon initial research at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research at Braunschweig, in Germany into antibody tests for the coronavirus. These experimental tests are designed to check whether an individual has developed antibodies to fight the virus, which would indicate that they have been exposed to the virus and may perhaps be immune to it. However, it remains unknown whether and how long someone testing positive for antibodies would be immune to the virus.

Nevertheless, UK and French officials are calling for the administration of mass antibody tests, after which anyone who tested positive to the virus could be forced back to work.

“We are looking at an immunity certificate,” UK Health Minister Matt Hancock said Thursday. “People who have had the disease have got the antibodies and then have immunity can show that and therefore get back as much as possible to normal life.”

Several of the tests have proven defective, testing positive when an individual has been exposed not to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but other more common coronaviruses, many of which cause the common cold. Nevertheless, the British government has bought millions of these tests.

While openly acknowledging that the tests are ineffective, Hancock insisted that the British government would nonetheless continue pressing this policy. “The early results of some of them have not performed well. But we hope the later tests we have got are reliable enough for people to be confident in using,” he said, adding: “That is something we will be doing and will look at, but it is too early in the science … to be able to put clarity around that.”

Nevertheless, French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe has also announced that antibody tests “will be ready to organize the exit from the shelter-at-home policy,” which the Philippe government has claimed could be in as little as two weeks.

Amid war threats, Washington blocks UN resolution demanding end to sanctions

Bill Van Auken

Washington and its allies Thursday killed a United Nations resolution calling for the lifting of unilateral sanctions that are severely impeding efforts to combat the spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The resolution was drafted by Russia and co-sponsored by 28 other member states. In addition to backing the call by the World Health Organization for an internationally coordinated campaign against the deadly virus, it appealed for all countries to “refrain from raising trade barriers, imposing new export restrictions, or implementing protectionist and discriminatory measures inconsistent with the WTO [World Trade Organization] rules as well as not to apply any unilateral coercive measures undertaken without the mandate of the Security Council.”

Under rules adopted by the UN with the General Assembly not in session, approval of resolutions requires unanimous consent. Joining the US in blocking the resolution were the European Union and the United Kingdom, along with the right-wing anti-Russian governments of Ukraine and Georgia.

Following the vote late Thursday, the Russian mission to the UN issued a statement declaring, “We regret that a small group of states championing sanctions-based policy appeared unready to respond to the call of the UN Secretary-General and refused to cast aside politicized approaches and interests.”

UN Secretary General António Guterres on Wednesday issued a report on the COVID-19 pandemic which, in part, stated that “Sanctions imposed on countries should be waived to ensure access to food, essential supplies and access to COVID-19 tests and medical support. This is the time for solidarity not exclusion.”

In place of the Russian-drafted resolution, the General Assembly approved a version vetted by Washington which issued a toothless call for “solidarity,” while ignoring the issues of sanctions against oppressed countries and the trade war and protectionist measures that effectively preclude any genuine international approach to the pandemic.

The US delegation failed, however, in its attempt to get the UN to label the pandemic as the “Chinese” or “Wuhan” virus, a theme pushed by the Trump administration to exploit the crisis to further US imperialism’s geo-strategic confrontation with Beijing and to divert attention from the abject failure of the US government to either prepare for or mount an adequate response to the increasingly uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus throughout the US population.

Despite worldwide calls for sanctions relief, Washington has only escalated the unilateral and illegal sanctions that it has imposed upon Iran and Venezuela, so-called “maximum pressure” regimes that are tantamount to a state of war. The US imposed new sanctions against both countries last month.

Iran, with an officially reported 53,183 COVID-19 cases and 3,294 deaths—both believed to be major underestimates of the real ravages of the disease—is suffering one of the highest fatality rates in the world. “Based on our information, every 10 minutes one person dies from the coronavirus and some 50 people become infected with the virus every hour in Iran,” Iran’s Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said on Thursday.

Even before the pandemic, the country’s health care system was groaning under the impact of sweeping sanctions that have prevented the country from buying essential medicines and medical supplies on the world market, leading to the deaths of many suffering from cancer and other diseases. The Trump administration has repeatedly made the cynical claim that humanitarian supplies are exempted under its “maximum pressure” campaign, but the reality is that access has been effectively blocked with the blacklisting Iran’s central bank and the threat of third-party sanctions against anyone conducting financial transactions with the country.

Iran’s Academy of Medical Sciences released a blistering statement directed to the UN Secretary General on Thursday declaring that the UN and the WHO, “which claim to defend the rights of humanity, have taken no effective measures to lift the cruel sanctions against our dear children, women, men and patients.”

Denouncing the US for its escalating sanctions, the statement continued: “It is certain that history will judge the ineffectiveness and silence of international organizations claiming protection of international law and human rights against such crimes. These institutions have become toothless, if not complicit, and we will undoubtedly see the unraveling of our world order because of this refusal to take action against crass violations of international and humanitarian law by the U.S. regime.”

On Wednesday, Trump issued an explicit threat of military aggression against Iran, claiming, without providing a shred of evidence, that Iran “or its proxies” in Iraq were plotting a “sneak attack” on “US troops and/or assets in Iraq,” and threatening that Iran would “pay a very heavy price.”

The Pentagon has deployed Patriot missile batteries to Iraq, over the protests of the Iraqi government, whose parliament voted in January, in the wake of the US drone assassination of Gen. Qassem Suleimani, one of Iran’s most senior leaders, at Baghdad international airport, for a resolution demanding the immediate withdrawal of US troops occupying the country. Baghdad has opposed the missile deployments, seeing them as potential preparation for an all-out war that could turn war-battered Iraq itself into a battlefield yet again.

Threats against Venezuela, the target of equally punishing sanctions have been even more explicit, with Trump announcing Wednesday that US Navy warships and other assets are being deployed to the Venezuelan coast on the pretext of combating drug trafficking. The announcement followed a US Justice Department indictment of the Venezuelan president and other top officials on trumped-up drug-related charges, replete with the issuing of “Wanted” posters placing a $15 million bounty on Maduro’s head.

The threat of military violence follows the imposition of yet another round of sanctions against Venezuela last month.

Thus far, Venezuela has reported only 146 confirmed cases and five deaths, but the crisis of the country’s health care system under the impact of US sanctions threatens to turn the pandemic into a death sentence against countless numbers of workers and poor.

The flailing militarist threats of the White House, a desperate bid to divert growing anger over the catastrophic failure of the US government to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus, have provoked signs of dissension within the Pentagon as the military brass faces the threat of the pandemic sweeping through military units operating in close quarters, including on ships and overseas deployments.

The magazine Foreign Policy posted an article on its website Friday reporting that “The U.S. Defense Department has pushed back sharply against President Donald Trump’s decision to send a phalanx of naval assets to interdict drug shipments in the Caribbean Sea.” It cited officials as saying that the deployment was “all politics” and came at a time in which the Pentagon was “pausing some deployments due to the impacts of COVID-19.”

It also follows the firestorm over the outbreak of coronavirus on the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and the sacking of its commanding officer, Capt. Brett Crozier, for demanding that the Navy address the crisis by providing quarantine facilities for the more than 4,000 sailors aboard the ship who had been exposed to the deadly virus.

Crozier was sacked after his appeal to the Navy, which insisted, “Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our sailors,” was leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Justifying his decision to relieve Crozier of his command, acting US Navy Secretary Thomas Modly— installed after the former secretary, Richard Spencer, was fired in connection with Trump’s pardoning of the convicted war criminal Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher—said that his plea “created the perception that the Navy is not on the job, the government is not on the job and it’s just not true.”

The captain’s plea, issued in the face of the refusal of the Navy or the Trump administration to take any action, was indeed true in relation not only to the USS Theodore Roosevelt, but to the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as a whole.

The response of his own crew was made clear by videos posted on Facebook early Friday showing several hundred sailors massing in an airplane hangar and chanting his name as he walked down a gangplank from the vessel.

An online petition posted on change.org demanding Crozier’s reinstatement gathered 150,000 signatures within barely 24 hours. Among those signing were members of his crew, Navy veterans and relatives of active-duty sailors.

One sailor wrote, “He’s my CO and I want him to know he did right by us, even if it won’t bring him back.”

Another signer stated, “The Captain’s primary job is to protect the health and well-being of his crew. Captain Crozier did this. And he was punished. In contrast, soldiers convicted of war crimes are pardoned by Trump. That is appalling and wrong. The world is upside down.”

And a third wrote, “Just because his chain of command was prepared to let the ship become a floating morgue he was not.”