Australian health workers infected with COVID-19 but governments cover up full picture

Margaret Rees

According to the latest statistics available yesterday from the Department of Health and Human Services in Victoria, 165 health workers in that state have tested positive for COVID-19, ranging across at least seven hospitals and one radiology clinic, out of total infections in the state of 1,349.

One frontline health worker, disability nurse Sumith Pramachandra, aged 55, died in Melbourne’s suburban Dandenong Hospital.

Melbourne, the state capital, has several officially reported coronavirus clusters in medical facilities around the city. This makes its health system one of the worst-affected in Australia, but there is evidence that the state Labor Party government is hiding the true impact from the public.

State authorities kept secret for a month the latest outbreak of 15 cases at the city’s Albert Road private psychiatric clinic, including five staff members. This cluster raises serious concerns about standards of care in mental health facilities across the country.

At the clinic, an 80-bed facility run by Ramsay Health, a psychiatrist tested positive to COVID-19 on March 24, but many health workers were not informed until April 7. The cluster was not publicly revealed till April 24.

Victorian Deputy Chief Health Officer Annaliese Van Diemen defended the government’s position, claiming: “The fact that the Victorian public found out about these [then] doesn’t mean that nothing has been happening since the 24th of March. It’s not the same thing.”

A psychiatrist, however, told the media he would not have referred his patient to the clinic if he had been told about the case on March 24. “It seems strange that the hospital was open to admissions for a month with a positive COVID-19 case there, and referring and admitting doctors weren’t informed so they could use that information in their clinical decision-making,” he said.

Such official stonewalling enables Premier Daniel Andrews’s government to sidestep any examination of the conditions that health workers face in their workplace, in which personal protective equipment (PPE) is often inadequate.

The sites of infection for only about 30 of the 165 affected workers have been publicly revealed.

At Werribee Mercy Hospital, four doctors were infected. At the Alfred Hospital in Prahran, 10 staff in haematology and oncology wards have tested positive, and two patients have died. At Eastern Health, six staff tested positive, mostly at Box Hill Hospital. Six infections were registered at the I-Med Radiology Clinic in Frankston, and one each at Assisi Aged Care in Rosanna, Rathdowne Place Aged Care in Carlton (a visiting doctor) and Monash Health (an ICU nurse.) Outside Melbourne, Swan Hill District Health, in the state’s north, had one reported infection.

When the cluster occurred at the Alfred Hospital, a major teaching hospital, 100 staff had to isolate. Brendan Crabb, the CEO of the Burnet Institute, a medical research facility located in the Alfred, said the tragic deaths and staff infections were “a big warning sign.”

Crabb told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio: “They are really in the literal firing line. It’s a very dangerous place for health workers to be. If their services get overwhelmed we’re going to see a lot of damage done to our health workers, not just to the broader community. And of course that has a snowballing effect.”

Australian Medical Association (AMA) Victoria president Associate Professor Julian Rait told the media: “I’m very concerned by these numbers, because although healthcare workers comprise about 3 percent of the population, this means they are accounting for about 12 percent of the infections.”

“We know internationally that infections acquired in hospitals and clinics are a significant problem if proper procedures are not followed. Not only does protective equipment need to be sufficient, but the procedures to fit and remove the personal protective equipment need to be rigorous,” Rait said.

At Eastern Health, a major hospital network, leaked minutes from a recent meeting between senior medical management and doctors revealed shortages of medical scrubs and protective masks, while some newly-sourced masks were found to be defective.

One doctor at Eastern Health said: “Our hospital network is refusing to provide doctors and nurses with hospital-laundered scrubs to use. We don’t want to bring COVID home to our families.”

The state health department refuses to reveal the number of workers who have tested positive per hospital, citing privacy reasons. Nor would it release a breakdown of the source of the infections.

That is because the authorities want to maintain that health workers have not contracted the virus in their workplace. A health department spokeswoman claimed that the “overwhelming majority” of healthcare workers contracted the virus outside their workplace, either through international travel or close contact with an infected person.

This also serves to cover up government indifference and inaction, including the limiting of testing so that asymptomatic carriers remain undetected.

In lockstep, the unions covering health workers—the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF), Health Workers Union (HWU), Health Services Union (HSU) and Health and Community Services Union (HACSU)—have remained silent about the sites of infection, and about the shortages of PPE.

Health workers told the WSWS of their concerns. One infection control officer said: “We just don’t know what we will be dealing with. There may be a wave to come.”

A hospital doctor likened his experience to “a pre-war situation.” He added: “They are not providing the slaves with essential PPE. We have to take matters in our own hands. Nobody can stop us from trying to self-protect.”

On April 5 the Labor government announced a “Hotels for Heroes” program to accommodate up to 8,000 healthcare workers if they become infected. The state government will pay the bill to self-isolate in hotels.

A community health nurse commented: “Well thanks for the free hotel room, but I just don’t think that should be a substitute for the lack of PPE. Instead of offering me a free hotel room, I’d rather not get positive and have PPE.

“We are re-using PPE. We are putting them in a paper bag and coming back to them hours later. I know that for the staff, the level of anxiety is very high. It’s natural, because we don’t have enough PPE. I have to face 150 people a day without adequate PPE.”

The Victorian situation is part of a wider pattern, in Australia and internationally. Health workers everywhere have been on the front line of the pandemic, often falling victim to it because of the lack of PPE and other basic resources.

In Australia, there have been major outbreaks among health workers, patients and their families in Burnie, Tasmania and in two aged care facilities in Sydney—Newmarch House and Dorothy Henderson Lodge. These cases show how rapidly infection can spread in health facilities and underline the danger involved in the premature lifting of community restrictions as part of the back-to-work drive by governments and the corporate elite.

Cuban working class facing disaster due to coronavirus-related tourism collapse

Alexander Fangmann

Due to a fairly robust public health system and the implementation of an aggressive system of contact tracing and isolation and quarantine practices, Cuba has managed to slow the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the near total collapse of the tourism industry as a result of coronavirus-related travel restrictions has left the Cuban working class at the precipice of disaster due to its key role in the economy.

The government had a relatively swift reaction to the spread of the pandemic, having formulated a plan in January. Once the virus was confirmed in the country on March 11, tracing and isolation was established, and tourist arrivals were banned starting March 20. People who test positive for the virus are required to list all the people they had contact with in the previous 14 days. Those contacts are then themselves isolated and tested to determine if they are infectious.

According to the Ministry of Public Health, there have been a total of 1,437 confirmed cases in the country, with a little over 800 active cases, and 58 deaths, out of a total population of around 11.2 million. The highly-populated capital of Havana, also a major tourism center, has some of the largest number of cases, with five of its municipios alone reporting 300 cases.

According to Raúl Guinovart Díaz, dean of math at the University of Havana, the efforts have so far been successful. Quoted in Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, he said, “The forecast now indicates that approximately next week we will reach the peak, ahead of the international average. This is a reserved prognosis that will depend on the evolution of the disease over the next few days.” He also warned that any relaxation of the existing measures would reverse this progress.

The Cuban health care system is also being threatened by the increased need for supplies and testing materials, which eat up scarce foreign currency reserves, as well as the cruel and punitive American embargo. The latter was cited by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez as “the main obstacle to purchase the medicines, equipment and material required to confront the pandemic.”

In an open letter, the Engage Cuba Coalition, a group of private companies and other organizations seeking to end the embargo, called for its suspension on humanitarian grounds. It said, “Though there are supposed to be humanitarian allowances under the embargo framework, in practice, there are severe limitations and obstacles to delivering humanitarian assistance to Cuba.”

With tourism effectively zeroed out, 139,000, or 19 percent, of “self-employed” small business owners in Cuba’s private sector have asked for their licenses to be suspended in order to avoid tax payments. Another 120,000 hotel workers have been put out of work due to the collapse in tourism. Some of these workers have evidently been assigned to help manufacture personal protective equipment for the health care system.

Although this fall in tourism is unprecedented since Cuba opened up the industry in the 1990s, the sector had been in decline before the start of the pandemic. In 2019, the number of tourists had dropped 9.3 percent, in large part due to heightened sanctions implemented by the administration of US President Donald Trump. January and February tourism numbers were even worse, with a decline of 16.5 percent from the previous year.

As the second largest sector of the Cuban economy, tourism brought in $3.3 billion in revenue. This revenue is crucially important for the government as a key source of foreign currency, which it requires to import food, fuel and other necessary commodities. The Economist Intelligence Unit expects Cuban imports this year to total $9.1 billion, compared with $11.7 billion in 2015.

This will mean shortages of all kinds of goods are likely. To make matters worse, the shutting down of travel will also exacerbate these issues by cutting off trade in the black market that has been quietly tolerated.

In an effort to address the shortages, the government has added certain items to the libreta rationing system, including cleaning products, while adding more rations of chicken. Attempts to bring some aspects of online shopping into the system in an effort to remove the need for shoppers to stand in line crashed the system, according to a Reuters report.

The economic crisis has also led to an effective re-dollarization of the economy, as the government attempts to draw out as much loose currency as possible. Officials claimed 77 stores would open across the country selling goods such as appliances, televisions and electric motorcycles, among other items, in hard currencies such as US dollars or euros. Although many of these items had been available for purchase with the Cuban convertible peso, which is pegged at the value of one US dollar, the hard currency prices at these stores have been much lower.

A Cuban economist interviewed by Reuters, Omar Everleny, made the point that this was effectively an admission that the convertible peso is worth less than the dollar to which it is officially pegged. He said, “We are going back to before 2004 when there was only the peso and certain products were priced in dollars.” Such a change in economic policy would have a devastating effect on Cuban living standards by decreasing the value of wages, pensions and savings.

Despite the appeals for humanitarian assistance for Cuba, every indication is that the Trump administration plans to continue its aggressive attitude toward Cuba and Venezuela.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said on Monday, April 27 that he would return to the Obama-era US posture toward Cuba. In a CBS television interview Biden said, “In large part, I would go back,” but made clear that he would in no way step back from the goal of replacing the Cuban government with one more pliant to US interests, saying, “I’d still insist they keep the commitments they said they would make when we, in fact, set the policy in place.”

Biden also made clear he did not mean an end to US economic sanctions, but rather an approach intended to give US corporations a toe-hold on the island. Revealing only tactical differences with Trump, Biden said, “there’s no reason why we cannot still sanction them. But failing to recognize them at all is a different thing than sanctioning them.”

Biden had previously explained during a March 15 CNN debate that, “[Obama] was trying to change Cuba policy so the Cuban people would get out from under the thumb of Castro and his brother.”

The Socialist Equality Party has called for an end to all sanctions and trade war measures in order to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Every possible assistance should be given to Cuba in regard to equipment, medicines, food and other supplies.

As millions face destitution gravy train continues for US auto execs

Shannon Jones

Amid the global coronavirus pandemic, with a large section of the economy shut down and tens of millions of workers in the US and around the world laid off and facing destitution, executives for the Detroit-based auto companies are continuing to pull in multi-million pay and incentive packages, according to recently released proxy statements.

General Motors CEO and Chairman Mary Barra remained the highest paid auto executive pulling in $21.6 million last year. That included $2.1 million base salary, $2.7 million in short-term incentives, and $12.1 million in stock awards and another $3.5 million in stock options, making her one of the 20 highest paid CEOs in the US.

Ford paid its top six executives $70 million last year, which was more than the company’s net income of $47 million in a disastrous 2019. Ford CEO Jim Hackett led the list with total compensation in 2019 of $17.36 million, down a hair from $17.75 million in 2018. Executive Chairman Bill Ford made $16.76 million last year, up from $13.83 million in 2018. Tim Stone, the newly hired chief Ford financial officer, hired from Amazon based on his brutal record of cost cutting, made $8.1 million.

Fiat Chrysler CEO Mike Manley made $14.45 million in 2019, about 400 times the $35,360 annual salary of one of the company’s thousands of part-time temporary workers.

As a cosmetic gesture Manley said he would take a 50 percent cut in his salary for the next three months. As a point of reference, Manley’s base salary in 2019 was $1 million. He will continue to collect the rest of his compensation, which was in incentives, stocks and non-monetary “fringes.” By contrast, 15,000 US Fiat Chrysler salaried workers will take a 20 percent pay deferment not to be repaid until 2021. GM’s 69,000 salaried workers have been hit by a six-month, 20 percent pay deferral, while Barra will take a token temporary 10 percent pay cut on top of a deferral. The cut does not apply to her highly lucrative stock options.

While rewarding their stockholders and top officers, all the Detroit-based auto companies are carrying out cost cutting and restructuring programs aimed at satisfying the demands of Wall Street for ever-greater returns. In 2019, GM carried out a global restructuring, including the layoff of 8,000 white-collar workers and the closure of four factories in North America aimed at $6 billion in cost savings. It weathered a 40-day strike that ended in a sellout agreement negotiated by the United Auto Workers that contained paltry wage increases and sanctioned the expanded use of low paid temporary workers.

Ford is also into a major restructuring after posting profits of $3.7 billion in 2018 and $7.7 billion in 2017. It carried out 7,000 white-collar job cuts last year and closed several plants in the US and Europe.

Fiat Chrysler recently signed a merger deal with French automaker PSA Group that will involve massive cost cutting. It has recently carried out layoffs, including the elimination of a shift at its Belvidere, Illinois assembly plant.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the Detroit automakers have drawn down their credit lines to get through the production shutdowns and are reportedly burning billions in cash. Ford announced a first quarter 2020 loss of $2.0 billion Tuesday and predicted losses in the second quarter could hit $5 billion. While its first quarter sales were down 11 percent, the company had $35 billion in cash on hand, so it did not face an imminent crisis.

GM’s profit report is due out May 5. Its sales were down 7 percent in the first quarter, but it had about $32 billion in cash as of the end of March. GM stock is up from its low of $16.80 per share on March 18 to near $22 yesterday, due to the massive federal infusion into the markets. Ford stock has also risen in recent weeks.

In response to Ford’s sizeable quarterly loss the Detroit Free Press wrote, “Ford Motor Co. and its competitors have warned for weeks that their finances are teetering on the brink of uncertainty as a global pandemic continues to brutalize America and bring manufacturing to a standstill.

“While the current landscape is grim, coming months promise to be unrelenting. This is Ford’s first quarterly earnings net loss since April 2009 during the Great Recession.”

In an Automotive News podcast, a leading automotive analyst said, “You’ve just got to rip the Band-Aid off,” in other words, the pandemic would force accelerated cost cutting and downsizing. Another analyst warned, “The current external environment merely exposed Ford’s ever weakening condition 12 to 18 months sooner. Indeed, Ford had negative cash flow of $8 billion in Q1 2020, yet the lockdowns and shutdowns were only for about two weeks out of the 13 weeks of the quarter.”

In a further warning shot from Wall Street, Ford’s credit rating was downgraded in March to junk status.

The coronavirus pandemic will inevitably be used as the justification for a new wave of attacks on autoworkers exceeding the cuts in the 2009 bankruptcy and restructuring of Chrysler and GM.

The talk of a cash crisis for the Detroit automakers raises the question of what happened to the bumper profits over the last 10 years? The fact is the auto companies have squandered billions of dollars enriching shareholders and executives through massive stock buybacks and dividend payments. All of this was taken out of the hides of workers who suffered a decade of falling real wages, the halving of pay for new hires and other concessions, enforced by the UAW whose top officials have been indicted for taking company bribes.

Once again the auto companies and their political frontmen are heading to Washington to ask for a share in the trillions of dollars in corporate bailout money. While millions of workers have been left destitute, auto execs are floating the idea of an incentive program to spur cars sales on an even larger scale than the multi-billion-dollar Car Allowance Rebate System initiated under the Obama administration in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crash.

Always with their fingers to the wind, auto executives are looking for ways to cash in on the crisis. In an interview Sunday on a local CBS news program, Michigan Matters, Gerald Johnson, GM’s vice president for global manufacturing, boasted that the pandemic had opened up new profit-making opportunities. “Some people are no longer comfortable using a public transit situation, so a vehicle is part of their safety protocol,” he said, adding that production could quickly resume at plants in Flint, Michigan, Ft. Wayne, Indiana and Silao, Mexico, which made the company’s most profitable vehicles.

Despite the deaths of at least 24 autoworkers from COVID-19, the auto companies are working with their UAW flunkies to engineer an early return to work so they can begin cranking out profits again. Ford, Fiat Chrysler and GM are now planning for a May 18 startup date, giving the UAW time to tamp down the anger of workers over being made to work in an environment that ensures the rapid spread of the coronavirus.

In a statement Tuesday UAW President Roy Gamble claimed the union was committed to protecting the health and safety of workers, declaring, presumably with a straight face, that “This pandemic may be unprecedented in our modern history, but our role as the protector of the working class is unwavering.” As autoworkers are aware, the UAW is committed to the defense of the sanctity of corporate profits, not human life. It was only the independent action of workers who carried out wildcat strikes and other job actions in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Canada that forced the shutdown of auto plants in mid-March.

There is a fundamental conflict between the elementary needs of workers to decent pay and a healthy and safe work environment and the profit drive of big business that cannot be papered over by the phony declarations of the UAW and auto executives. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the incompetence and criminality of the corporate gangsters who dominate society and their paid servants in the UAW and other unions.

Autoworkers should begin now to form rank-and-file safety committees, independent of the UAW, to organize opposition to the rushed return to work and demand full income and debt relief for those who are unemployed or furloughed. These committees must demand workers’ control over health and safety, in consultation with medical experts, and free and universal testing and medical treatment for all.

Instead of another bailout to the giant corporations and banks, the auto giants should be transformed into public enterprises under the control of workers, with no compensation to their super-rich shareholders.

Work resumes in Sri Lanka’s free trade zones but thousands are sacked

Nandana Nannetti

Last week several big companies, including those in the free trade zones (FTZ), resumed work after being shut down for nearly a month as part of the pandemic lockdown. However, these companies have sacked tens of thousands of workers with the backing of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his government.

Rajapakse gave the green light for business to open, saying in an interview on April 20, it was necessary to halt the “collapse of the economy.” Like capitalist governments around the world, he said that threat to lives from the pandemic and the economy should be “balanced.”

The government is forcing workers back in unsafe conditions as the number of COVID-19 cases takes a sharp upturn. The figure has risen to nearly 700, some 300 of those in the last four days. The relatively low figures are because the government has limited testing, saying the situation is not so serious.

Prior to opening the factories, various industrialists declared that they would have to cut jobs by at least 30 percent as well as slash wages and pension funds.

Last week the presidential media division released guidelines for restarting businesses. These stated: “All the state departments, corporations, statutory boards and private sector industries, working places, fish, vegetables and retail stores can also be operated under strict regulations.”

It continued: “The head of each [private] organization has the freedom to decide who should report to work and the number of employees.” This means workers are completely at the mercy of management.

Sri Lanka has 15 FTZs where hundreds of thousands of workers are employed. According to the Investment Board, only 20 percent of factories were opened last week with reduced workforces.

When the government-imposed, country-wide lockdown was imposed on March 20, companies shut down suddenly. However, the government and employers tried to force FTZ workers to continue work. As concerns about the coronavirus spread and workers protested, forcing the closure of factories.

Tens of thousands of workers were stranded in the Katunayake, Biyagama, Mirigama, Horana and Seethawaka FTZs without transport to their hometowns. It was only after workers started protesting that the government arranged transport. Many workers had not even received wages for March and April when they ultimately returned.

Ignoring workers’ protests over non-payment of their wages, D. L. P. Samarasinghe, the Director of the Investment Board, said he could not do anything because “there is no proper complaint against not paying salaries.”

Minister Dinesh Gunawardena also refused to take action saying that proper steps would be only taken by the Labour Department after inquiries had been made.

When the Koggala Garment company—located in the Koggala FTZ in the island’s south—resumed work on April 20, the workforce had been drastically slashed. Previously it had employed about 1,500 workers but management recalled only 450 workers. Other workers were told not to report for work until further notice. There is no guarantee they will be reemployed.

Workers who reported for work on April 20 were not given their usual noon meal. The company’s excuse declared that it was to ensure the good health of workers.

As in most other companies, this factory employs many workers on a casual basis, depriving them of allowances received by permanent workers. Permanent workers were not given their April bonus and will have to wait till the end of the month to find out about their wages. Office staff were not called back to work.

Star Garment, which is one of the country’s oldest garment companies and started up in 1978, employs 8,000 workers in 10 factories, including in the Koggala FTZ.

Its branch in Pinnaduwa in Galle recalled 200 of its 300 workers to complete the unfinished work. They were also not given an April bonus.

About 800,000 garment pieces were being produced by this company, but it is now facing cancellations of orders. A similar situation faces other garment factories.

Vogue Tex, which started in 1984, employs more than 7,500 workers in seven factories. At one situated at Gonapeenuwala in Hikkaduwa, more than 1,000 workers are employed.

A female worker explained: “Work was stopped on March 19 and restarted on April 22. Only 250 were called on to work. Letters were sent informing workers who had worked less than six months and who were more than 50 years of age that they were fired. Most workers had worked there less than six months.

“Our monthly basic salary is 18,500 rupees (about $US95). The attendance allowance is 4,000 rupees. If one day's leave is taken, 1,800 rupees is deducted out of this allowance. If you take leave for two days the whole amount is slashed. If someone takes leave without giving prior notice, the attendance allowance is gutted.”

The government is ready to do everything it can to preserve the profits of investors including risking the lives of workers and their families.

Like investors in all countries, they are terrified that if they do not restart their business they will be driven to the wall in the competition on the international market.

Forty percent of Sri Lanka’s export earnings comes from the garment industry. The earnings in 2019 were $5.6 billion and the government projected this to rise to $8 billion in 2025. These calculations have now been shattered.

In an interview on Hiru TV, the chief marketing executive of Orange Apparel, Muditha Silva, said that garment companies lost some 350 billion rupees during the previous four months.

Insisting that workers must bear the brunt, he declared: “The government cannot deliver relief to people in the country that do not have something to eat. What it has to do is allocate financial assistance to the garment industry, without it being considered as a debt for at least six months.”

Trade unions are fully backing big business. On April 22, leaders of the Free Trade Zones and General Workers Union, the Ceylon Mercantile Union and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna-controlled, Inter-Company Employees Union (ICEU) met with labour ministry officials and employer representatives to discuss job and wage cuts. Union bureaucrats claim that they demanded compensation but company representatives have not agreed.

ICEU leader Wasantha Samarasinghe told Lankadeepa yesterday that companies are cutting jobs and wages drastically. However, far from mounting a struggle to defend jobs and wages, he declared that the government must provide funds to revive business. At least 300 billion rupees must be released and each company must be supported according to their annual turnover, he added.

In the name of protecting jobs, trade unions, which are thoroughly tied to the state and defend capitalism, are protecting big business.

BBC Panorama exposes government responsibility for UK health worker deaths

Thomas Scripps

Monday’s investigation by BBC’s Panorama, “Has the Government Failed the NHS?” was a staggering indictment of the Conservative government’s failure to provide health workers with personal protective equipment (PPE).

The documentary, with reporting by Richard Bilton, details the criminal lack of preparation for the pandemic reported by workers in the National Health Service (NHS) and public health experts. It exposes the Conservative government’s attempt to cover up its failings, which continue to put the lives of more doctors and nurses at risk.

Using documents from within the NHS supply chain, the investigation rips apart ministers’ claims to have provided 1 billion items of PPE in the last two months. More than half of these items are surgical gloves, with each individual glove counted as a separate piece of PPE in most cases. The second largest stock of items is for plastic aprons, described by one Accident and Emergency doctor as, “What you’d expect a dinner lady to wear … it does nothing.” Items like cleaning equipment, waste bags, detergent and paper towels are also counted as PPE in the official figures.

Panorama's Has the Government Failed the NHS

According to World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on PPE, staff caring for COVID-19 patients should wear a full protective gown, gloves, face mask and eye protection.

Panorama cited the case of an NHS nurse in his fourth week on a ventilator, who fell ill with COVID-19 while working in Southend hospital. Its investigation found that the whole Mid and South Essex NHS trust, which runs several community hospitals and three major hospitals including Southend, received just 360 protective medical gowns in the five weeks before the nurse was hospitalised. This is less than 10 a day. An anonymous health manager explains, “The supply chain is erratic, unpredictable and incompetent. We might ask for 10,000 gowns and instead be sent 5,000 aprons.”

A video taken by a nurse shows boxes of out-of-date masks he and his colleagues are expected to use, some of which expired in 2016. “The sticker that they’ve covered up the out of date sticker with is out of date.”

Health workers in General Practice surgeries are told they only need plastic aprons and basic surgical masks.

The toll taken on the workforce is disastrous. The programme notes that nearly 100 NHS workers have died after falling ill with the coronavirus. Nursing Notes reports that, as of Tuesday morning, 140 health and social care workers are believed to have died of COVID-19. Referring to the government’s hypocritical praise for health workers, one intensive care nurse told Panorama, “calling us heroes just makes it okay when we die.”

Inadequate personal protective equipment donated to NHS staff

With a contempt for the value of health workers’ lives, the government announced on the day of the Panorama broadcast that they would pay just £60,000 to the families of NHS and social care workers killed by COVID-19. This filthy blood money barely amounts to two years’ wages for households which have lost, in many cases, decades of life of their loved ones. It will inevitably be used to undermine any future legal cases, which might be brought against government ministers for their endangering of workers’ lives.

As Panorama documents, the possibility existed to prepare a safe response to the pandemic. Irial Eno, a doctor, told the programme, “[The government] keep saying ‘this is completely unprecedented.’ It is unprecedented. But it wasn’t unexpected.” Bilton explains, “For almost a decade, [a pandemic has] been designated the greatest threat to Britain.” No action whatsoever was taken to address this threat.

The government’s 2009 pandemic guidance states that full protective gowns, the best type of facemask and eye protection are standard requirements for health care workers, who might be in contact with a virus during a pandemic. In the next 10 years, however, the government “didn’t buy any hospital gowns at all.” Even when government advisers warned gowns would be needed in the stockpile, none were bought. Nor was a single visor, swab or body bag. Over 20 million respirator masks are unaccounted for. There are 33 million on the original stockpile list, but only 12 million have been handed out. Bilton reports, “The government refuses to explain where the other life-saving masks might have gone.”

European Centre for Disease Control advise on the stockpiling of respirator masks, eye protection, gowns and gloves

The refusal to stockpile basic items required by health workers was part of the multi-billion pounds cuts programme of the 2010–15 Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition. Between 2013 and 2016, as they enforced savage austerity to pay for the 2008–09 bailout of the bankers, the value of the national PPE stockpile was slashed by 40 percent.

Even at this stage, the investigation insists, the UK “still had time” to prepare its response “when COVID-19 first appeared.” At the start of February this year, the European Centre for Disease Control issued a warning on the coronavirus and advised the stockpiling of respirator masks, eye protection, gowns and gloves. Under its guidelines, the most serious cases of COVID-19 would require 20 full sets of PPE per patient per day.

The government failed to set supply chains in motion to provide these resources. Panorama shows a factory in Bolton which produces the protective material used to make gowns. They offered their services to the government and to Public Health England (PHE) but had heard nothing back in the 10 days that had passed when Panorama visited the site. By the time the investigation was broadcast, the factory was producing for the NHS via a private supplier, but the unused weeks meant the loss of a potential 300,000 gowns that were sold to the US. The NHS needs hundreds of thousands per day, but the government has made just over 1.3 million gowns available during the crisis.

A massive propaganda campaign was launched to keep these shortages concealed. Heads of Procurement at several NHS trusts spoke to Panorama anonymously. One said, “We’ve been told not to talk about the shortages outside of meetings. They don’t want people to know how bad it is.”

When the government realised the scale of the catastrophe they had prepared could not be kept under wraps, they moved to create a get-out clause. In January, COVID-19 was given the designation of a High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID). The UK’s Health and Safety Executive states that all health care staff dealing with a HCID should be given respirator masks, full-face visors and gowns, meaning the government has a legal obligation to meet these criteria.

PPE gloves were counted as individual gloves rather than pairs by the government

Six weeks ago, Panorama reports, the government downgraded its designation of COVID-19. The UK now formally considers the COVID-19 coronavirus of less consequence than SARS, MERS and H1N1. At the same time, PPE guidelines were moved away from the WHO’s advice to the lower standard of gloves and less-protective aprons and surgical masks in all but the most dangerous situations.

Bilton reports, “It seems clear that the rules have been changed because of the shortages.” Sources in the scientific committee that made the decision to downgrade the classification told Panorama, “[I]t had to be a pragmatic decision based on the availability of PPE.”

Public health expert John Ashton explains, “COVID-19 is the biggest infectious disease to hit this country in the last hundred years. Why on earth shouldn’t it be in the most serious category?”

On the government’s response to the crisis, he says: “They failed to get a grip. They took advice from too narrow a range of people. And when things continued to escalate out of control, they started to spin the story to make out that—actually—they’d been following the science and everything that they did made perfect sense. I think it’s disgraceful.”

The tragedy unfolding in the NHS is repeated in care homes across the country. Millions of key workers in transport, food shops and logistics are suffering the same fate. Operation Cygnus, carried out in 2016 to model the effects of pandemic, predicted up to 750,000 dead.

The morning after Panorama was broadcast, Britain’s national newspapers carried headlines endorsing a rapid return to work, including “Turning the Tide,” “Hope in sight: talks this week of easing the lockdown” and “Time to fire up the engines, says PM.” The damning investigation barely received a mention. Meanwhile, the Labour Party and trade unions continue to work “constructively” with the government, demanding it map out an “exit strategy” from the lockdown.

Protester killed in Lebanon during riots against soaring food prices

Jean Shaoul

Lebanese armed forces have used live fire, rubber-coated rounds, and tear gas to disperse angry protesters, killing one man and injuring dozens more.

The shooting of 26-year-old Fawaz Fouad al-Samman occurred Monday night during the fourth day of nationwide demonstrations over the collapsing currency, soaring food prices and the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed the lives of 24 people. Further clashes took Tuesday place after the funeral of the young man, whom protesters have called “the martyr of hunger.” The protests started in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon’s poorest, at the end of last week and spread rapidly across the country.

Defying the coronavirus lockdown, thousands of people blocked the main highways, setting fire to tyres, attacked banks and ATMs with Molotov cocktails and marched through the streets. Furious at the currency’s rapid devaluation, which has sent the US dollar soaring and halved the value of their wages and savings, they have accused the banks of helping a corrupt political class drive the country towards bankruptcy.

On Monday, men, women and children marched through the streets of Tripoli, where more than half the population are living at or below the poverty line, shouting “Revolution, Revolution” and attacking banks and shops, triggering clashes with the security forces.

There were similar protests in the capital Beirut and Saida in the south, where protesters shouted “Molotov, Molotov, instead of a candle, Molotov” outside a local branch of the Central Bank, as well as towns in the Bekaa valley, with angry clashes with the security forces taking place throughout the night. The exchange shops also closed in protest over the “insane chaos” of the exchange rate devaluation. The main focus of the protests is hunger. In one widely shared video, a protester shouts, “I’m hungry” in Arabic at a security forces member, who then replies, “I’m hungrier than you.”

The army for its part claimed that 40 soldiers had been wounded in Tripoli and other parts of the country when they were hit with stones thrown by protesters as they tried to reopen the blocked highways.

The protests had temporarily abated after the lockdown measures, bans on public transportation and night curfews imposed on March 15. They are a continuation of the widespread protest movement that started last October over deteriorating economic and social conditions, government corruption and sectarianism. Following the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who is closely aligned with Saudi Arabia, and the continuing economic and political paralysis, his successor Hassan Diab, who is supported by Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran and Syria, defaulted on a $1.2 billion Eurobond amid the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, later extending the default to all overseas debt.

Any external loans to see Lebanon, one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world, over the crisis would be dependent upon the usual free market “reforms” that would plunge millions into destitution and require political alignment with the Sunni oil states against Iran.

Three days after the default, Diab declared a state of emergency, introduced lockdown measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus under conditions where there is little in the way of health care for any other than the ruling elite and dispatched the security forces to clear the protest camps in downtown Beirut.

The lockdown in Lebanon’s crowded inter-generational households serves not only to provide the ideal conditions for the rapid transmission of the virus but also to deprive most of the country’s already impoverished people of the means of their existence.

Last year, even before the onset of the pandemic, the World Bank estimated that 45 percent of Lebanon’s 6 million people lived below the poverty line and predicted the country’s impending bankruptcy would lead to a further rise to 50 percent in 2020.

More than 220,000 jobs have gone since the protests began in October. Social Affairs Minister Ramzi Musharrafieh admitted that up to 75 percent of the people are in need of aid, as people scrounge garbage dumps for food and beg passers-by for something to eat. The situation is even worse for Lebanon’s most vulnerable communities—refugees and migrant workers—the overwhelming majority of whom lack food, with many fearing eviction.

As inflation soared and food prices rocketed due to the de facto devaluation of the Lebanese pound, fears mounted of a food shortage. Diab announced some paltry measures to help some of the poorest families but could not secure his cabinet’s agreement on the terms, leaving people bereft of any means of subsistence. The crisis was further exacerbated by the fall-off in remittances from the Lebanese diaspora as the lockdowns and economic slump affected their jobs and wages.

For months, the banks—at the behest of the Central Bank—have limited the amount of withdrawals in both local and foreign currencies to $200 a week, with the latter being phased out almost entirely, and banned foreign transfers. This led to long lines outside the banks as customers pleaded to be allowed to withdraw their money. While the pleas of ordinary people fell on deaf ears, the rich nevertheless managed to transfer some $5.7 billion out of the banks, many of which are owned by prominent politicians, in January and February as a furious prime minister revealed over the weekend.

The Central Bank’s action was little short of outright theft. It served not only to discriminate against the smaller depositors in favour of the rich, but also against Syrians who kept their money in Lebanon, enormously exacerbating the economic crisis in Syria, which was undoubtedly one of its aims.

Last week, the Central Bank’s long-time director, Riad Salameh, who has implemented Washington’s financial sanctions against Hezbollah, issued a directive reversing its policy without any consultation with the government. Those with foreign currency deposits would be allowed to withdraw their money in Lebanese pounds at a value to be set by the commercial banks—expected to be even lower than the black market rate of 3,400 pounds to the US dollar, in contrast to the official and unobtainable rate, set in 1997, of 1,500 pounds to the dollar.

This de facto devaluation was in turn expected to trigger a rapid rise in prices as the newly available cash flooded the market amid a dollar scarcity. This is what happened on Friday, when the pound’s value started plummeting catastrophically, from the already low of 3,400 pounds to the US dollar to 4,000, a fall of nearly 17 percent. Over the weekend, Lebanon’s Central Bank intervened to prop up the currency, setting the exchange rate at 3,200 pounds to the dollar. All this has sparked a furious row between Diab and Salameh, with Diab suggesting that the bank governor had deliberately engineered the pound’s crash.

On Monday, the government’s last lifeline fell as Raymond Ghara, the energy minister, announced there were no commercially viable gas deposits in one of the 10 blocs claimed by Lebanon in the Levant basin. Successive governments have long hyped the prospect of finding gas as the solution to the country’s economic woes, although even if the exploration had been successful, it would take years to come on stream. As it is, the collapse in oil prices has all but scuppered the viability of Cyrus, Egypt and Israel’s gas fields and put paid to any hopes of exploring any of Lebanon’s other blocs.

Facing destitution with the onset of the lockdown, some workers started challenging the government in individual acts of defiance and isolated protests. On April 17, hundreds defied the 7 p.m. curfew in Tripoli and demonstrated to mark six months since the start of the mass rallies against government corruption and economic hardship. Angry protesters hurled rocks at the security forces, who used tear gas to disperse the crowds. Last week, protesters took to the streets to voice their disapproval of the government as parliament met for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak.

These initial protests have now morphed into a nationwide outburst of anger that the government, which represents the interests of Lebanon’s billionaires and upper echelons of its numerous sects, has neither the will nor the capacity to placate. While the government has allowed some businesses to reopen and shortened the night-time curfew, this will do nothing to alleviate the plight of millions of workers and their families.

With over 1 million coronavirus cases and 60,000 fatalities in the US, markets eager to get back to business

Benjamin Mateus

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated, in a briefing last week, “Make no mistake, we have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time…while social distancing measures put in place in numerous countries to slow the spread of the coronavirus have been successful, the virus remains extremely dangerous. Current data shows that most of the world’s population remains susceptible.”

During Monday’s briefing, Dr. Mike Ryan, in response to a Brazilian reporter’s question on his country’s decision to ease restrictions based on figures that are clearly under-reported, stated that if countries begin the opening of their economies too quickly, it may have more dire consequences on the livelihood of the nation, as they would have to reimpose lockdown measures to mitigate a second acceleration of the outbreak.

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove carefully noted that it was insufficient to base decisions to loosen these measures solely on the basis of case numbers and deaths alone. More importantly is the need to have a workforce in place to track contacts, to implement an expansive infrastructure to detect the location and movement of the virus, appreciate the status of hospitalization and critical care capacity, and have schools and workplaces reconfigured to begin slowly receiving people into these physical spaces. The entire population needs to be engaged, informed and cooperative with these processes. “It requires mental preparation,” Van Kerkhove said.

The director-general then added, in one of his rarer displays of measured bluster, that countries that have ignored the WHO’s advice have also been the ones hurt most by the pandemic. He repeated his prior admonition, in response to calls for his resignation over mishandling of the pandemic, that the WHO had made the highest declaration of emergency on COVID-19 on January 30.

At the time when the epidemic was predominately confined to Wuhan and Hubei province, there were only 82 cases outside of China, of which 10 were in Europe. There were no cases in Latin America or Africa. There were also no deaths outside of China. “Every country could have triggered all its public health measures possible,” he said. “I think that suffices the importance of listening to WHO’s advice. We advised the whole world to implement a comprehensive approach. Countries that followed these recommendations are in a better position than others. That is a fact.”

Globally the number of daily cases has been declining slowly since peaking at the beginning of the month and has now reached over 3.1 million cases. Nearly 1 million people have recovered from COVID-19. Similarly, the daily number of fatalities has seen a steady decline, with the number of total critical cases around 56,000. Country after country have been in some form of discussion to begin easing restrictions given these seemingly favorable developments.

However, as much as the response to the pandemic was of an improvisational character, the manner and approach to opening economies are disorganized, woefully unsystematic and grossly premature. Rather than heeding the advice of institutions like the WHO or their own public health officials and epidemiologists, the argument that the economy has suffered too much finds open and unapologetic expression among governors and political leaders.

The United States surpassed 1 million cases yesterday, with only 140,000 of its people recovered. Nearly 60,000 people have died, half in less than two weeks. Yesterday, there were again more than 25,000 cases and 2,500 deaths. Though states like New York and New Jersey find their number of cases and fatalities flattening or declining, several states have seen increasing daily trends, including Virginia, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Iowa, Minnesota and Delaware.

Illinois saw its single highest death toll, with 144 deaths reported in 24 hours, raising the state’s total deaths to 2,125. Many of these cases are occurring in northern Illinois and the Chicagoland area. Health officials say that the state has yet to approach its peak.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has given some businesses in 77 of 99 counties permission to reopen, again with some caveats, which leave significant room for interpretation and are wholly unenforceable outside of large conventions and spectator events. Yet, the trend in daily cases has risen from approximately 100 per day two weeks ago to close to 400 per day. Nevertheless, the number of tests conducted daily has not increased dramatically, with rates of positive tests climbing.

There have been almost 6 million tests performed in the US, accounting for 17,688 tests per 1 million of the population. This week, the number of daily tests consistently approached near 200,000. Still, on average, 17.5 percent of all tests are positive, indicating that the US remains significantly behind on identifying the extent of the epidemic within its national borders. The White House’s health experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, have expressed their concerns that adequate testing remains a necessary milestone in the White House’s phased approach to reopen the country.

In a bizarre exchange at Monday’s White House briefing, ABC’s Jon Karl asked Vice President Mike Pence, “You said, in March, we’d be at 4 million tests by the following week. We’ve just now got there in the last few days. So, what have you learned about what went wrong over the last month and a half or two months, and what’s going to go right now? What lessons have you learned from the mistakes?”

In a nonsensical and disingenuous response in the vein of Trump, Pence replied condescendingly, “I appreciate the question, but it represents a misunderstanding on your part and, frankly, a lot of the people in the public’s part about the difference between having a test versus the ability to actually process the test.” In the face of 60,000 deaths that need not have happened, in just one month, this response is not only insulting, but also shows callousness and disregard for the suffering of so many. This was not a benign slip of the tongue.

Global arms spending tops $1.9 trillion as fight against COVID-19 is starved of resources

Bill Van Auken

Amid the grim worldwide tally of over 3 million confirmed coronavirus cases and roughly 220,000 deaths—along with the scientific certainty that both figures grossly underestimate the real toll of the deadly virus—a report released this week provided another set of sobering statistics.

According to the annual report issued by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), global military spending has reached a new post-Cold War high, topping $1.9 trillion in 2019. This is a vast quantity of social resources that has been funneled into the preparations for a new world war, under conditions in which humanity is confronting the ravages of a global pandemic.

“This is the highest level of spending since the 2008 global financial crisis and probably represents a peak in expenditure,” Nan Tian, a researcher at SIPRI, told the AFP news agency.

A PSE&G utility worker watches military jets fly overhead. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

As always, US imperialism led the surge in ever more obscene levels of expenditure on militarism, accounting for 38 percent of global arms spending. Washington’s military budget for 2019 (fiscal 2020) was $738 billion, a 5.3 percent increase over the previous year, and equal to 3.4 percent of US GDP. US military spending exceeded that of the next 10 highest-spending countries combined.

Driving this spike are the massive appropriations being made for the Pentagon’s nuclear triad—including new land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, new long-range bombers, a new cruise missile and a new nuclear-armed submarine. There has also been a focus on producing new smaller, more “usable” nuclear weapons, bringing the threat of a catastrophic war ever closer.

The total figure given by the SIPRI does not include $12.6 billion appropriated to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy, for “Weapons Activities,” i.e., manufacturing, maintaining and modernizing US imperialism’s stockpile of nuclear missile warheads and bombs.

The immense sums being spent to modernize and develop the US arsenal are in preparation for what US strategy documents define as “great power conflicts,” with China and Russia first among the targets. The Pentagon expects to spend $500 billion over ten years in modernizing all aspects of the US nuclear triad.

US imperialism’s arms expenditures far exceed those of its “great power” rivals. In 2019, it spent well over two and a half times more than its chief economic rival, China, whose $261 billion military budget is the world’s second largest, and well over 10 times more than the supposed arch menace, Russia ($61.4 billion), which placed fourth on the list of top spending nations.

Washington’s immense military buildup enjoys the support of all factions of the US political establishment, proceeding under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Democratic opposition to Trump has never been based upon hostility to militarism; it has instead targeted his administration over its supposed reluctance to adopt a sufficiently aggressive posture toward Russia.

It is assured that both parties will provide ample support for the Pentagon’s latest budget request of $740.5 billion, which represents a $2.5 billion increase over the last year.

China’s increase in military spending has closely tracked the country’s economic growth, which means that, while it was 5.1 percent higher than in 2018, it was 85 percent greater than in 2010. It accounts for 1.9 percent of Chinese GDP, as compared to 3.4 percent for the United States.

Following the US and China, the third highest military budget was that of India, which climbed to $71.1 billion in 2019, a 6.8 percent increase over the previous year, and a 37 percent increase compared to 2010. The military buildup under the right-wing Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi dwarfs that of its regional rival, Pakistan, which spent $10.3 billion, 1.8 percent more than in 2018. The two nuclear-armed South Asian countries have repeatedly come to the brink of war.

Rounding out the top five in terms of military expenditures was Saudi Arabia ($61.9 billion), whose blood-soaked ruling monarchy spends the greatest share of GDP (8 percent) on arms of any country in the world. The lion’s share of this weaponry has been funneled into the kingdom by the US, which—under both Obama and Trump—has supplied the warplanes, missiles and bombs that the Saudi regime has used to wage a near-genocidal war against Yemen, killing over 100,000 and bringing millions to the brink of starvation.

Germany, while placing seventh on the list after France, had the distinction of achieving the highest rate of increase (10 percent) in military spending of any of the major powers. The coalition government in Berlin has deployed troops in multiple military interventions in Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Afghanistan. Seventy-five years after the defeat of the Third Reich and the end of World War II, the German ruling class is itself once again preparing for “great power conflicts.”

As this report documents the immense wealth that has been spent to prepare for and to wage global war, it is abundantly clear that the global coronavirus pandemic has deterred none of the major powers, least of all the US, from further escalating this buildup.

On the contrary, Washington has systematically weaponized the deadly virus, using it as an instrument for vilifying China and justifying a military escalation in the South China Sea. At the same time, it has tightened sanctions against Iran, which has faced one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world, and sent warships against Venezuela, whose health care system is threatened with collapse, with the aim of advancing its agenda of regime change in both countries.

The continued spending of trillions of dollars on arms and war amid the present pandemic represents a crime against humanity.

While the Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly approved the $738 billion for the Pentagon, they have systematically starved the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the principal US agency for combating pandemics, of funding, with its budget suffering a 10 percent cut over the last decade (FY 2010-19). These funding cuts played a major role in the government’s failure to prepare for the pandemic and its chaotic response to the outbreak once it began, sabotaging the agency’s rollout of testing for the coronavirus and translating into unnecessary and preventable deaths.

The CDC receives barely 1.5 percent of the funding that is lavished on the Pentagon. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is preparing to spend billions of dollars bailing out major arms manufacturers, even as tens of millions of laid-off workers are unable to secure unemployment compensation, facing the threat of hunger and homelessness, while small businesses, denied promised aid, confront bankruptcy.

The vast resources spent on weapons could provide the means for combating the pandemic and preventing working people from being driven into poverty.

As a recent report prepared by the Global Campaign on Military Spending pointed out, the $89 million being spent to buy a single F-35 fighter jet—the Pentagon projects purchasing as many as 3,000 of them—would fund 3,244 ICU beds for a year, while the $44,000 it costs per hour to operate these planes is roughly the equivalent of the average annual salary for a nurse across the OECD countries. Similarly, the price tag for one nuclear-capable Trident II missile—$31 million—would pay for 17 million N95 respirator masks.

The SIPRI report exposes the fact that roughly three decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, US imperialism is fomenting a new arms race that threatens humanity with destruction in a catastrophic world war between nuclear-armed powers.

In the struggle for the control of resources, markets and sources of cheap labor, capitalist militarism continues to consume a colossal amount of resources, diverting them from achieving the essential rights of the masses of working people to livable incomes, education, health care and a decent life.

The contempt of the capitalist ruling class for the lives of workers all over the world is demonstrated in its back-to-work orders, issued as COVID-19 claims an ever-increasing number of victims, just as it is in their resort to militarism to achieve the geo-strategic and profit interests of the banks and corporations.

The only answer to the criminal drive to war that threatens all of humanity lies in the mobilization of the international working class against capitalism. Workers must fight for the expropriation of the vast arms industry without compensation and the confiscation of the obscene profits of its major shareholders so that these resources can be mobilized to combat the global pandemic and assure the social needs of the vast majority of the population. These indispensable demands are bound inextricably to the fight for the transfer of power to the working class and the establishment of socialism.