Stellantis relaxes workplace safety protocols as COVID-19 Delta variant spreads

Shannon Jones

Global carmaker Stellantis says that it is dropping temperature screening at its US auto plants starting Monday along with the relaxation of other limited COVID-19 related safety protocols put in place last year in the wake of wildcat job actions by autoworkers concerned by the unchecked spread of the deadly virus.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, hundreds of autoworkers have been infected by COVID-19 and scores have died, although the actual number of deaths is unknown due to the cover-up of data by the car companies in collusion with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. In many cases workers have only become aware of deaths through Facebook or through second- and third-hand sources.

New Stellantis Covid safety protocols

According to a memo distributed by Stellantis management, along with temperature checks, ten-minute cleaning times before shifts as well staggering shift times to prevent thousands of workers from filing past one another, are also ending. Mask wearing is being continued, at least for the present time. Self-reporting of possible COVID-19 symptoms will also continue.

The elimination of a range of safety protocols is clearly a step toward the elimination of all COVID-related safety measures, in particular the self-quarantine of workers exposed to COVID-19, seen by management as a drain on production and profits. The auto companies have refused to recognize the transmission of COVID-19 inside the plants and have bitterly resisted paying sick leave benefits to workers infected or exposed to the virus. This has led to a situation in which symptomatic workers have felt intense pressure to cover up their illness and report to work in order to get paid, increasing the danger to others. The latest measures announced by Stellantis are aimed at further ramping up the pressure.

In announcing the elimination of its safety protocols, Stellantis provided no figures on the number of cases at its plants or the percentage of workers who are fully vaccinated. As recently as April, plants such as Sterling Heights Assembly Plant, north of Detroit, had hundreds of workers infected or out on quarantine. The announcement by Stellantis comes as the highly contagious and more deadly Delta variant of COVID-19 has been detected in Michigan, the center of Stellantis production in the US. To date, there have been nearly 900,000 confirmed cases and 20,000 deaths in Michigan.

The elimination of all safety measures is clearly being planned. In fact, Volkswagen has announced that it is eliminating its masking requirements on June 21 at its US plants, the first carmaker to do so. A number of auto parts suppliers have already moved to eliminate masking requirements.

Stellantis workers at Warren Truck Assembly plant in suburban Detroit (WSWS Media)

A worker at the Detroit Manufacturing Complex-Mack reported that the scheduling changes by Stellantis related to dropping safety measures will add 40 minutes of production to each shift because of the elimination of 10-minute cleanup time and half-hours set aside to stagger shifts.

As it currently stands, the worker reported, the first shift ends at 2 p.m., but the second shift does not come in until 2:30, then has 10 minutes for cleanup—a total of 40 minutes of lost production. Starting Monday, the afternoon shift will now start at 2 p.m. with no stagger and no cleanup.

Assuming a three-shift, eight-hour schedule, the changes amount to an added 120 minutes of production per day of operation, or two hours.

The United Auto Workers had no immediate reaction to the announcement by Stellantis management. In a statement on June 9, the COVID-19 Joint Task Force comprised of the UAW, Ford, Stellantis and General Motors said it was recommending the continuation for now of some existing safety protocols, including masking, “out of an abundance of caution.” However, the UAW-management task force said temperature screenings at facility entrances would be phased out “along with other minor adjustments to entry and exit procedures.” The state of Michigan has fallen in line behind the ill-advised recommendation of the US Centers for Disease Control that masking requirements be dropped in most settings for vaccinated individuals.

Since the there is no way to tell who is vaccinated and who not, these guidelines mean an effective end to most masking requirements. States across the country, including California and New York, have now ended virtually all COVID-19 related health restrictions, guaranteeing the continued spread of the virus and death under conditions where genuine herd immunity has been nowhere achieved in the US. Some rural areas have vaccination rates of less than 30 percent.

A former Stellantis worker told the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter, “My teammates sent text messages saying that they are not comfortable with the changes, seeing as everyone has not been vaccinated. We know it’s all about the money.”

The delay by automakers in collaboration with the UAW in implementing the CDC recommendation to end mask requirements and other health measures has nothing to do with an “abundance of caution” over protecting workers’ lives.

Indeed, at every point in the pandemic, the auto companies, with the support of the UAW, have prioritized profits over lives. This was apparent to autoworkers from the start. As COVID-19 cases spread rapidly in March 2020, autoworkers in Europe and North America staged a series of wildcat job actions demanding a shutdown of nonessential production. Workers at several Detroit-area Fiat Chrysler/Stellantis factories initiated work stoppages in defiance of the UAW.

As a result, all major automakers were forced to declare a temporary halt to operations. Production only resumed two months later, despite the continued spread of the pandemic, through the collaboration of the UAW and the use of threats and lies. This included the implementation of a series of inadequate safety protocols. Despite this, many workers opted to stay home rather than risk infection in the factories. All the automakers have experienced difficulty finding adequate numbers of temporary workers willing to risk infection for the paltry $16.67 starting wages paid by the Detroit automakers.

Given this mood of opposition, auto companies are proceeding cautiously with eliminating remaining safety measures. However, moves to eliminate even cosmetic safety measures will follow in due course. Management can be sure in advance they will face no opposition from the UAW.

Supreme Court upholds Obamacare, ruling opponents have no standing to sue

Patrick Martin

In a decision announced June 17, the US Supreme Court struck down the latest right-wing challenge to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The court handed down a 7-2 ruling that avoided the substance of the law and instead found that the states and individuals who brought the suit lacked standing because they could not demonstrate that the ACA had caused them any material injury.

The initial lawsuit, Texas v. California, was brought by 17 states and two individuals. States supporting the ACA countersued in California v. Texas, and both suits were disposed of by the court’s decision. The ruling was authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the five justices who first upheld the constitutionality of the ACA in 2012.

United States Supreme Court Building at Dusk (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Joe Ravi)

The law was also upheld in a 2015 ruling in King v. Burwell, where the margin was 6-3. The law has thus received growing support on the court over the past decade, even as the court’s membership has shifted steadily to the right, particularly with the appointment of three new justices by President Donald Trump.

That alone makes clear that support for the ACA is not the outcome of a liberal or “progressive” political outlook. It is tied much more to the increasing dependence of giant health care, insurance and pharmaceutical companies on the flow of money from the federal government, and Wall Street looking askance at the prospect of that spigot being shut off.

Countless commentaries have been published over the last few days on the intricate legal technicalities and behind-the-scenes conflicts among the justices that produced the latest ruling. However informative, they miss the main point, which was stated bluntly in a headline in the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call: “Industry cheers Supreme Court ruling on health care law.”

As the ensuing article explained: “Several health care industry groups had urged the Supreme Court to uphold the law in amicus briefs filed before the November oral arguments. Hospitals, physicians, insurers and others stood to lose financially if the law had been overturned.”

Virtually every corporate group associated with health insurance and health care applauded the Supreme Court ruling.

Matt Eyles, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Providers, the trade group of the health insurance industry, issued a statement saying, “We believe the Supreme Court rightly concluded this case does not belong in court, as the challengers have not suffered any injury. The ACA remains the law of the land.”

He noted the more than one million people who have signed up for coverage during the special enrollment period provided by the Biden administration, on top of the more than 11.3 million already enrolled through state and federal exchanges.

These constitute, to be blunt, 12 million more paying customers for the insurance companies represented by AHIP. That was the real function of the Affordable Care Act from the very beginning. It strengthened the private, profit-gouging components of the retrograde US health care system, in which health care is not a human right of all people, but a commodity offered for profit and available only to those who can pay.

For the same reason, Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, issued a statement in which he said: “The tens of millions of Americans who depend on the ACA for affordable health coverage can breathe a sigh of relief—their access to care was upheld today by the Supreme Court.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the true value of this law, with a record number of consumers now getting affordable coverage through ACA exchanges.”

Again, the hospital industry is breathing “a sigh of relief” because the ACA has been a windfall to their bottom line. They are dependent on the “record number of consumers” whose hospital care is being paid for under the ACA, either through insurance policies patients have purchased on the exchanges or through the expansion of the federal Medicaid program, carried out in 38 of the 50 states under the ACA.

The stock prices for health insurers Centene Corp. and Molina Healthcare, which have a major presence on the ACA exchanges, jumped sharply in response to the court ruling.

The American Benefits Council, which represents large companies that provide health insurance coverage for employees, applauded the “cautious certainty” that would now be preserved for its member companies by the Supreme Court ruling. In a statement, the group’s president, James Klein, said, “We hope the court’s ruling re-establishes the ACA as settled law that can be relied upon—and improved.”

Many corporate employers have dumped sections of their lower-paid workers into the ACA marketplaces, viewing this as cheaper than continuing to provide employer-paid insurance.

The Affordable Care Act was never a progressive social reform, let alone a step to establishing access to health care as a basic right. It was devised in conjunction with the insurance companies, the profit-making hospital chains and medical device and pharmaceutical industries to provide a growing market, while shifting the burden of paying for health care as much as possible onto the backs of working people.

The health care exchanges, far from attracting tens of millions of people, as Obamacare propagandists had predicted, still have only 12.3 million people enrolled after seven years, fewer than the 18.8 million people newly enrolled in Medicaid under the ACA because of expanded eligibility and outreach.

The latest Supreme Court decision thus represents a victory for the dominant faction of corporate America over a more right-wing faction that has sought to overturn the ACA primarily on ideological grounds, seeking to whip up fears of “socialized medicine,” when the ACA is anything but.

The legal basis of the latest challenge to the ACA was threadbare, to say the least. In 2017, Trump’s tax cut for the wealthy legislation reduced to zero the penalty paid by those who were without health insurance and refused to enroll in the subsidized market provided by Obamacare.

Texas and 17 other states argued that since the ACA mandate had been upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012 as a legitimate exercise of Congress’s power to tax, the elimination of the tax meant that the ACA itself should now be considered unconstitutional. This particularly muddled argument found favor with an ultra-right federal district judge in Texas, who was then overturned on appeal, a ruling that was then appealed to the Supreme Court.

The case was further confounded as the Trump administration first supported the overturning of the mandate without the full overturning of the ACA, then shifted to advocating that the ACA as a whole be struck down, in arguments made to the court last November. Then the incoming Biden administration reversed the position of the federal government and urged the court to reject the challenge to the law.

The 7-2 ruling avoided any discussion of the underlying argument about the meaning of the word “tax” and whether the ACA rose or fell based upon it. Instead, Breyer wrote that neither the two individuals nor the states that brought the case had suffered any injury from the law, and therefore lacked standing to file a suit against it.

The two individuals, he argued, were no longer required to pay a tax penalty. They suffered no injury at all. The states claimed that the ACA mandate was encouraging people to apply for Medicaid (as is their right) for which the states must pay their share, less than 10 percent of the cost. But once the mandate was eliminated, they could not demonstrate that connection, and so lacked standing to sue.

The overwhelming consensus within the US ruling elite in favor of the ACA is demonstrated by the shift of Clarence Thomas, one of the most right-wing justices, from a vote to overturn the ACA in 2012 and 2015 to a vote to retain it—albeit on this technical ground—in 2021.

Mass demonstrations erupt across Brazil as COVID deaths pass 500,000 mark

Tomas Castanheira

On Saturday, Brazil saw a second round of national mass protests against the government of fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The demonstrations were even larger than those that took place last May 29, this time gathering, according to their organizers, 750,000 people across the capitals of every state as well as dozens of other Brazilian cities, and even in other countries.

What brought hundreds of thousands into the streets was graphically expressed by the grim milestone of 500,000 deaths from COVID-19 reached by Brazil also on Saturday. The staggering number of deaths from by the pandemic is the result of a conscious policy of social murder that continues in full swing.

Demonstrators protest against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic on Paulista Avenue, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Saturday, June 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Marcelo Chello)

Since the beginning of 2021, Brazil has experienced an overwhelming wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths. More than 300,000 deaths and 10 million cases were recorded in the first six months of this year alone.

This explosion of infections was driven, first, by the widespread adoption of the policy of total reopening of economic activities and schools in opposition to the recommendations of public health experts and serving the interests of capitalist profit. Also, an important factor was the spread of the more contagious P.1 variant of the coronavirus, which appeared in Amazonas, itself a terrible product of the ruling class’s experiments with herd immunity.

The wild spread of the coronavirus caused the overflow of intensive care units in every Brazilian state, leading to “the greatest health and hospital collapse in the history of Brazil,” according to the public health institution Fiocruz. Between the end of March and the beginning of April, the country reached averages of more than 3,000 deaths per day and set a record of 4,200 deaths in a single day.

The mass deaths and the inhumane conditions to which many patients were subjected—dying while waiting for an ICU bed or suffocating from lack of medical oxygen—had a strong impact on the consciousness of large sections of the Brazilian population. At Saturday’s protests, once again, many of the demonstrators carried placards bearing the names of relatives and friends who died from COVID-19, deaths that they blame directly on Bolsonaro’s homicidal policy.

The uncontrolled pandemic in Brazil has had a murderous impact on its neighbors in South America. Uruguay, for example, on Brazil’s southern border, after a relatively controlled first wave in 2020, has had an explosion of cases driven by the P.1 variant and a reopening policy that led the country in April to the highest number of daily deaths per capita in all of South America. Countries such as Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela, bordering Brazil to the north, have also seen their cases soar as a result of the Brazilian variant.

Colombia and Paraguay, countries which have also been rocked by mass protests in opposition to their governments’ disastrous handling of the pandemic, are experiencing horrific hospital collapses that doctors largely attribute to difficulties in handling the new Brazilian variant.

After some weeks of decreasing cases and deaths, Brazil is once again experiencing a new rise in numbers. The country is in an extremely critical moment of the pandemic’s development. Institutions such as Fiocruz and leading scientists claim that Brazil is now entering a potentially more devastating third wave of the pandemic.

In an interview last week with O Globo, neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, who had precisely predicted that Brazil would reach averages of more than 4,000 deaths per day and surpass 500,000 deaths by July, once again warned that if measures are not immediately taken to strictly shut down economic activities and effectively control the virus, “We will pass the US and become the country with the highest number of deaths from COVID-19 in the world, even though we have a smaller population.”

Describing the current situation in Brazil, Nicolelis cited as critical factors: the “hospital collapse that has not been remedied,” the “multiple variants of the virus entering the country,” the slow progress of vaccinations, and the relaxation of isolation measures, grotesquely symbolized by the hosting of the Copa América soccer tournament in the country.

All the malign elements of the political response to the pandemic that caused 500,000 deaths in Brazil and countless others across the continent continue to be criminally implemented by the Brazilian ruling elite.

The fascistic Bolsonaro, with his sociopathic calls for the continuation of the economic reopening regardless of how many deaths it causes, expresses this policy most bluntly. But no political party in Brazil’s political establishment offers a consistent alternative to the bleak prospects of the pandemic foretold by Nicolelis and other scientists.

This has been exposed by the total failure of the states governed by the Workers Party (PT) and its allies the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) and Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) to control the pandemic. Instead, all of them have continued to promote the unsafe reopening of economic activities and schools.

The mass demonstrations that have taken place in the last weeks in Brazil express the growth of an uncontrollable social opposition in the country. In response, the so called opposition to Bolsonaro within the political establishment is desperately trying to deflect this anger from clashing with the capitalist political system.

The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) set up to investigate the government’s handling of the pandemic is striving to present itself as a definitive settling of scores with the crimes committed by the Brazilian state over the past year. Leading members of the CPI have published a note in response to the surpassing of 500,000 deaths (clearly in response to the pressure from mass protests). It states, “We did not arrive at this devastating, inhumane picture by chance. There are guilty elements and they, as far as the CPI is concerned, will be exemplarily punished.”

At the same time, the PT and its allies who called for the demonstrations on May 29 and on Saturday are struggling to divert these protests into empty appeals to the state, subordinating them to a political alliance with the most reactionary forces of the bourgeoisie to replace Bolsonaro.

Last Saturday’s protests were marked, in addition to the increased number of demonstrators, by increased efforts by their leaders to turn them into political rallies aimed at preparing for the 2022 elections.

Former President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva of the PT, who is being promoted as the most likely candidate to confront Bolsonaro in the next elections, publicly considered participating in the demonstrations. Although, in a staged maneuver, he stayed away in order not to turn “a political act into an electoral act.” Instead, he sent for this very purpose the PT’s Fernando Haddad, who lost the 2018 presidential elections to Bolsonaro.

Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) leader Guilherme Boulos, who is intimately involved in the PT’s electoral maneuvers and the forging of alliances with right-wing political forces against Bolsonaro, was also present and speaking at the demonstration in São Paulo.

In addition to the presence of the PT, with its leaders and supporters holding flags, Saturday’s demonstrations also had a participation by the Unified Workers Central (CUT—which is controlled by the PT), and other trade union federations, which this time formally backed the protests.

The participation of the unions was an apprehensive response to the growth of a political opposition within the working class, which these reactionary organizations subordinated to capitalism are desperately trying to suppress.

This was exposed by the bureaucratic maneuvers by the unions to demobilize workers on the eve of the protests. On June 18, the day before the demonstrations, the unions called for a “national day of mobilization in workplaces.” The “mobilization” was a complete fraud. Despite the immense attacks faced by workers, which fueled recent struggles in different sections of the working class, the unions openly refused to advocate a strike on this day.

The president of the Union Force (Força Sindical—the second largest federation in Brazil) Miguel Torres, said to Carta Capital that the “strike issue is very controversial.” Torres declared that “he doesn’t see conditions for a strike, because of the pandemic, the high unemployment and the contract suspensions.” That is, the very issues pushing workers into struggle preclude any action!

The unions are continuing what they have systematically done throughout the pandemic: collaborating to keep workplaces open, sabotaging workers’ strikes and struggles, and forcing them to continue producing profits for the capitalist class regardless of the deadly dangers posed by the pandemic.

This reactionary role of the unions is joined with the efforts of the PT, the PSOL and their pseudo-left satellites to prevent the social opposition from developing on a path capable of truly confronting the COVID-19 pandemic and the social problems of the working class, which involves confronting the interests of the capitalist class and its state.

These political forces strive to prevent Brazilian workers from recognizing the identity of their interests with those of their class brothers and sisters throughout Latin America and internationally.

A scientific response to the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be effective within the framework of a single country. Both the fight to stop the coronavirus, which crosses borders without the need for a passport, and an effective campaign to vaccinate the entire population are essentially global questions. Their realization is impossible without a struggle against the capitalist nation-state system and private property, and without the advance of socialist policies.

Spain quietly drops probe into “Russian meddling” in Catalan referendum

Alice Summers

Spain’s National Court has dropped an investigation into alleged “Russian interference” in the 2017 Catalan independence referendum due to lack of evidence.

The investigation had been opened in November 2019 but was secretly closed by the judge presiding over the case only nine months later, in July 2020, on the advice of the prosecution. The collapse of the case was not made public until last month, almost a year later, when it was reported by Eldiario.es, with sources from the National Court verifying it to numerous other news sites.

Carles Puigdemont (Credit: govern.cat)

One of the most ludicrous allegations made by the probe was that Russia had offered to send 10,000 troops to Catalonia in support of the now-exiled former President of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, under whose tenure the referendum had taken place. Puigdemont allegedly turned down the offer at the eleventh hour.

The case is yet another exposure of this type of propaganda used by NATO powers aiming to create casus belli against nuclear armed Russia and China. No lie is too big for the imperialist powers in their bid to whip up nationalism and deflect social tensions outwards.

The main characteristic of this form of propaganda is that it is sensational and fact-free. The sources tend to be either anonymous intelligence officers, government sources or the police. Whatever the target, usually Beijing and Moscow, the aim is to portray the countries as the source of all evil.

The Spanish probe followed other similar smear campaigns, including the lie that Moscow interfered in the US elections in 2016 and 2020 and the story that the Russian military intelligence agency GRU had paid bounties to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan to kill American soldiers.

The latest are that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory, and that Beijing is carrying out genocide against the Muslim Uyghur minority.

The Spanish campaign centred on claims that Russian intelligence officers had been present in Catalonia in the days leading up to the October 2017 referendum and that Russia had sought to influence the election in favour of the secessionists through funding, disinformation campaigns and potentially even military intervention.

Among those mentioned in the investigation was businessman Oriol Soler, considered one of the top communication strategists of the Catalan secessionist movement. Soler was last year accused of masterminding a “disinformation strategy” with the input of the Kremlin, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The accusations against Soler stem from his November 2017 visit to Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder was at the time effectively imprisoned, after being granted asylum by that country. Soler then reportedly travelled to St Petersburg. But the investigation mentioned no evidence of any “conspiracy” linking Soler, Assange and Russia to the referendum in Catalonia.

The majority of the links cited came from Bellingcat, a “research collective” which has specialised in “uncovering” and disseminating spurious and often falsified anti-Russia propaganda stories since it was founded in 2014.

Calling for the closing of the probe last summer, the assistant prosecutor in the case, Miguel Ángel Carballo, issued a scathing letter, reported by Eldiario.es, in which he explained that the only “evidence” provided by the police had been one testimony from an unnamed source and a number of links to online news articles on the subject.

Pointing to the bogus nature of the case, Carballo’s letter stated: “Nothing has been brought by the police that would allow us to keep this investigation open, unless we seek a general case to search for any evidence which would confirm the basic premise. This would be ignoring the fact that in criminal proceedings, with all the safeguards, these sorts of investigations are prohibited.”

On the allegations of links between Assange, Russia and the Catalan nationalists, the Prosecutor’s Office was forced to admit: “These statements are devoid of any factual basis.”

The dropping of the case is further confirmation that the whole investigation was a fraud from the very beginning, carried out with definite political objectives.

The investigation shines a light on the methods employed in such politically motivated and state-promulgated disinformation campaigns. Ludicrous media claims that Russia meddled in the Catalan referendum and even planned to invade the region—likely fed to the press by the police and secret services themselves—are then cited by the very same agencies as evidence of the fabricated crime.

Opposition to these bizarre stories is cited as proof of “misinformation propaganda” made in Moscow. Thus, NATO operative Daniel Iriarte tweeted last year against those who were criticising the case as baseless from the start, saying it was “a classical example of Russian disinformation technique called ‘hahaganda’: each time Russia comes out badly from an event, they look at the most extreme or bizarre example, it’s laughed at, ridiculed and then the WHOLE [story] categorised as absurd.”

In contrast to the wall-to-wall coverage given to the initial claims of Russian interference, the cases are dropped with little media comment.

While news sites like El País devoted numerous prominent articles and editorials to promoting the lie that there was indisputable evidence of Russian meddling in the referendum, reporting on the collapse of the case quickly disappeared.

Claims of “Russian meddling” were aimed at fabricating a spurious conspiracy involving Madrid’s two “evil” enemies, Russia and Catalan nationalists, while dragging in figures hated by the NATO powers for exposing their war crimes, incarcerated journalist Julian Assange and persecuted whistle blower Edward Snowden.

This served not only as a pretext for stepped-up attacks on the democratic rights of Catalan nationalists and pro-independence protesters but have also been used to further escalate tensions with nuclear-armed Russia, increasing the danger of an all-out war.

A military conflict between the United States and China or Russia —the largest militaries in the world stocked with 12,000 nuclear warheads between them —would have catastrophic consequences for all of humanity.

Child malnutrition and hunger skyrocket in Haiti as COVID-19 infections spike

Alex Johnson

At least 86,000 children are at risk of developing “severe acute” child malnutrition this year in Haiti, according to sources connected to the United Nations Children’s Fund. The number of children projected to suffer from starvation this year has doubled as the impoverished nation continues to grapple with extraordinary political and social crises exacerbated by the pandemic.

Amazon Annegardine, 11, being treated for abnormal blood sugar levels at the Hospital of Immaculate Conception, in Les Cayes, Haiti, Wednesday, May 26, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Joseph Odelyn]

According to a UN survey, there are now 217,000 children currently suffering from acute malnutrition. Acute malnutrition had been steadily rising in the child population for several years before the pandemic triggered a massive food crisis that raised the total by 61percent in 2020. In an interview with the Miami Herald, Bruno Maes, Haiti’s UNICEF representative, said that nearly 5 million Haitians are affected by malnutrition and struggle to obtain daily nourishment.

In the first three months of this year alone, the number of admissions of severely acute malnourished children in health facilities has increased by more than 26 percent compared to a year ago. Jean Gough, the UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, pointed to the significant danger facing a large portion of small children if the crisis continues unabated.

“We can’t look the other way and ignore one of the least funded humanitarian crises in the region,” declared Gough in a UNICEF press release. Gough warned that without “urgent funding in the next weeks,” treatment against malnutrition “will be discounted and some children will be at risk of dying.”

Meanwhile, Haiti has been left dangerously unprepared for the onslaught of COVID-19. Despite being noticeably unaffected at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, Haiti has witnessed in recent weeks an alarming acceleration of infections and deaths, with its dilapidated medical infrastructure completely unequipped to handle a significant outbreak.

On May 6, the Ministry of Health reported 13,245 COVID-19 infections and 268 deaths. Exactly one month later on June 6, the number of infections had ballooned to more than 16,079, while confirmed deaths rose to 346. These numbers, however, are surely gross undercounts, as the healthcare infrastructure needed to perform contact-tracing and identify all coronavirus-related deaths is all but absent.

New cases are already starting to stretch hospital capacity and the country’s oxygen supply. Antiviral treatments and other crucial supplies remain, for most of the population, out of reach. Reports are emerging every week of at least one hospital in the country's capital and most populous city, Port-au-Prince, running out of beds and denying the entrance to COVID patients.

Haiti remains the only country in the Western Hemisphere that has yet to administer any vaccines to its population. A shipment of 132,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses from the UN-backed COVAX program was supposed to be sent to the country on Monday, but has been delayed indefinitely, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

The Biden administration belatedly announced this week that it plans on delivering a significant number of US vaccine doses to the country. A White House official said the administration was “actively engaging” with the Haitian government on how best to conduct a national vaccination program. The official made this declaration before admitting that no plans had been finalized on how exactly vaccines are to be delivered or when they would arrive.

Behind the inability of the poorest countries of the world such as Haiti to procure necessary vaccines is the noxious nationalism and profit-gouging of the governments of the US and other more advanced capitalist countries, which have systematically sabotaged all international efforts to deploy vaccines outside their national borders.

Dr. Richard Frechette, a health practitioner working in St. Luke Hospital, which runs one of the few COVID-19 treatment centers in Port-au-Prince, spoke on the contradiction between the supposed generosity of the Biden White House and Haiti’s hospitals receiving expired vaccines due to constant delays. Frechette said it was “totally absurd from every humane point of view and justice.” St. Luke is one of many hospitals running low on oxygen tanks and beds.

Haitian doctors have stressed that the $16 million the US Agency for International Development said it is donating is grossly insufficient for combatting the massive influx of COVID-19 patients. In many hospitals, doctors are seeing so many patients that anywhere between 400 and 500 oxygen tanks a day are required, which dwarfs the 50 oxygen concentrators the USAID is proposing to distribute to a dozen or so facilities.

The surge in the pandemic has also intensified Haiti’s staggering food crisis. More than one in four Haitians is facing acute food insecurity. This includes at least 1.9 million children, according to Integrated Food Security Phase Classification and UNICEF estimates. UNICEF reports that it is desperately seeking US $48.9 million to meet the humanitarian needs of 1.5 million people and 700,000 children, a situation which has been significantly exacerbated by COVID-19.

In 2020, UNICEF and the Haitian government had to treat well over 33,000 acutely malnourished children through the UN’s Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food program, which provides live-saving assistance to the most poverty-stricken communities. UNICEF has warned, however, that it has begun to run out of funds to support the program and needs at least $3 million to purchase supplies to carry out preventative treatment.

The food crisis engulfing the Caribbean nation is just one manifestation of a global spike in malnourishment and famine. In a Global Report on Food Crises released by the World Food Program last month, at least 155 million people in 55 countries were found to have faced acute hunger in 2020—20 million more than 2019.

Blame for the hunger crisis and the surge in COVID-19 cases in Haiti and other underdeveloped countries lies squarely with the profit-driven capitalist system, which has prioritized the enrichment of the world's ruling classes at the expense of saving lives. In stark contrast to the surge in malnourishment for the world’s poor, the world’s richest billionaires increased their wealth from $8 trillion to $13 trillion while the pandemic spread and claimed 3 million lives.

Haiti’s ultra-wealthy oligarchy and their political henchmen like authoritarian President Jovenal Moïse have presided over a social crisis where Haitian households have seen their income drop by more than 60 percent. The Moïse regime has spent the past year shrugging off the danger of the pandemic and ignoring the need to adopt preventive health measures against outbreaks.

Moïse’s government has been at the core of a political crisis that has gripped the country for months after his attempts in February to upend the constitution and establish a presidential dictatorship.

Backed by the United States and other imperialist powers, Moïse remained in power after his five-year term as president expired in early February. His government has orchestrated plans to hold a referendum that would effectively grant him sweeping dictatorial powers. The referendum proposal included removing the prohibition on presidents serving more than two consecutive terms, which was instituted after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986.

The president was forced to backpedal on his plans after tens of thousands of people carried out protests in Port-au-Prince and other cities against his right-wing agenda. Police responded to the groundswell of social opposition by attacking protestors with tear gas, rubber bullets and other means of repression. Popular anger against the government had been rising since early 2020 when Moïse refused to hold constitutionally required parliamentary elections after the terms of deputies in the legislature expired, thereby ruling by decree. Moïse has since dismissed all the country’s mayors and handpicked his own reactionary loyalists to fill critical positions in the police and federal agencies.

Moïse stated Thursday that there was “nothing to worry about” about in terms of the country holding its parliamentary, local and presidential elections scheduled to take place September 21.

These comments are aimed at deflecting the international bourgeoisies’ growing unease over the protest and strike movements that have erupted in Haiti against homicidal pandemic policies, obscene levels of social inequality and the lurch towards dictatorship. The only way that the tragic and life-threatening crises facing the Haitian people can be resolved is through a revolutionary socialist movement, led by the working class and allied with workers across the globe, aimed at overthrowing capitalism and ending the centuries-long legacy of imperialist oppression.

COVID-19 cases surge in Britain as government considers ending restrictions weeks earlier than announced

Robert Stevens

COVID-19 cases are surging in Britain. Daily cases have risen more than fivefold in the last month. According to Public Health England (PHE) data out this week, case rates per 100,000 people continue to increase in all regions and age-groups.

On May 17, the day most of the economy was reopened, 1,979 coronavirus cases were reported. A month later, on June 17, the daily case number was 11,007—the highest for almost four months. In the week to Friday 61,181 people tested positive, up 15,286 on the week prior.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson gives a press conference concerning the Covid pandemic with the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty and the Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance. 9 Downing Street, June 14, 2021 (credit: Picture by Andrew Parsons /No 10 Downing Street)

Deaths due to the disease are increasing after having finally reached zero in Britain on June 1 due to the rollout of the vaccination programme and limited lockdown measures. In the last week, 72 deaths have been reported, up 18 percent on the week before.

The R (Reproduction) rate of the virus jumped in the last week in England from between 1 and 1.2 to between 1.2 and 1.4. The north-west had the highest rate at 1.3 to 1.5, with London’s surging from 1.1 to 1.4.

According to data compiled for the last seven days by Worldometers, and based on official government figures, the UK’s 34 percent increase in cases is second only to Russia (40 percent) in Europe.

The surge is being driven by the Delta variant of COVID-19, which just months after being detected in Britain has become the dominant strain. Delta was first detected on April 1, but the government did not make its existence public until April 15. A PHE report issued yesterday found that cases of Delta had increased by 80 percent in just the last week, making up 99 percent of all COVID cases nationwide.

These figures torpedo claims made in the media this week that virus infections were levelling off. The assertions were made based on data from the ZOE Covid study app. However, the lead scientist on the app, Prof Tim Spector, has consistently played down the danger of the Delta variant. On May 20, Spector said that the Delta variant “hasn't altered numbers significantly”, adding, “While the outbreaks remain localised and UK numbers are steady and most cases appear mild, it’s highly unlikely to cause the NHS to be overrun or stop us coming out of lockdown [scheduled for June 21].”

The reality was that the surge in COVID cases was such that even Boris Johnson’s government, which has overseen at least 152,000 deaths due to its herd immunity agenda, did not feel able to end all restrictions on June 21, with Parliament voting Wednesday to extend the deadline by a month.

This week Spector said, “The good news is that this isn’t going up as fast as it was… This has been a much better week than it was last week. I think we can start to see an end to this little mini wave in the young and the extra time [after the government was forced to back down on the June 21 reopening] we’ve got should be able to squash this from getting out of control.”

He concluded, “If we look at the way past waves have come and gone I would be predicting that this should be peaking around 10 to 14 days’ time and then start to fall, so by four weeks we are at a much lower level than we are now, and much more manageable.”

In fact, the government is preparing for substantial new waves of infection and death. In announcing the delay to the final ending of restrictions, Johnson said, “At a certain stage, we are going to have to learn to live with the virus”.

Johnson declared that July 19 would be the “terminus date” for a full reopening, justified on the basis that it would allow more people to be vaccinated and establish a “very considerable wall of immunity around the whole of the population'”.

This ignores the fact that millions of people, particularly the youngest in society, will remain un- or partially vaccinated, allowing the virus to circulate in high numbers. Dr Susan Hopkins, the strategic response director for COVID-19 at Public Health England, told Parliament’s science and technology select committee on Wednesday that the Delta variant would spread with an R of 5-7 with no restrictions in place.

As well as infecting the unvaccinated, with potential long-term health impacts, the virus will quickly find the vulnerable whose vaccines have not produced a strong immune response. It will be given every opportunity to mutate again into an even more dangerous variant. Hopkins told the committee that PHE is currently monitoring 25 new variants, eight of which were under investigation.

What “learning to live with the virus” really means was partially admitted by SAGE member Professor Graham Medley and the government’s chief scientific officer Chris Witty. Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether the country could see hundreds of deaths a day again, Medley replied, “Oh easily. I think we still might at some point.”

Witty told the NHS Confederation conference, “My expectation is that we will get a further winter surge, late autumn/winter surge… I think we need to be aware of and brace for the fact that the coming winter may well be quite a difficult one.”

These consequences will overwhelmingly fall on the working class, especially its poorest sections, as they have done throughout the pandemic. Witty added during his speech, “The geographical areas where COVID has hit have been extremely defined, where the biggest problems have been repeated.

“So, you see in situations in Bradford, in Leicester, in bits of London for example, in bits of the North West, you see repeated areas where places have been hit over and over again in areas of deprivation.”

In a chilling statement, given the government’s responsibility for overseeing social murder in the pandemic, Whitty noted, “Indeed in many of them, if you had a map of COVID’s biggest effects now and a map of child deaths in 1850, they look remarkably similar. These are areas where deprivation has been prolonged and deeply entrenched.”

On this basis a substantial section of the Tory party and the media are calling for an end to restrictions as soon as possible.

Fifty-one Tory MPs voted against any delay to June 21, including former party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, chair of the 1922 committee Sir Graham Brady, and chair of the Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs and former chief whip Mark Harper. Rebel MP, Sir Desmond Swayne, said of a delay in ending all anti-COVID measures, “I could understand it if we were a communist party, but this is the party that inherited the true wisdom of the Whig tradition.”

Under a headline “Could we be free on July 5?” The Daily Mail reported Friday, “Downing Street has opened the door to ending restrictions on July 5, amid growing evidence that assumptions used by government scientists to justify delaying Freedom Day were too pessimistic.”

The paper cited a government source who said, “The decision to delay reopening was so finely balanced—probably the most difficult decision of the whole pandemic—that the PM wanted a review point built in so that if things did change we could move sooner.”

The newspaper editorialised that “on the back of scientists’ scaremongering, lives are being wrecked. The economy is shackled, pubs and restaurants are going bankrupt and jobs are lost.”

Global Wealth Report: Fortunes of Germany’s super-rich soared during pandemic

Elisabeth Zimmermann

The COVID-19 pandemic has enormously increased social inequality throughout the world. This is illustrated by the Global Wealth Report, which was published on June 10, 2021. Its authors, from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), had initially expected a decline in total wealth, but their research shows that during the pandemic period, the wealth of the rich and super-rich reached new heights.

Susanne Klatten at the BMW stand, IAA 2017 [Credit: Olaf Kosinsky/CC BY-SA 3.0 DE]

While more than 3.8 million people died of COVID-19, according to official figures, wealth in the form of financial and physical assets, including real estate, rose last year by 8.3 percent. Total global wealth, minus debt, reached $431 trillion (about 355 trillion euros), an unimaginable sum with 12 zeros that exceeds five-fold the world’s gross domestic product.

According to the BCG report, private financial assets alone rose by 8 percent to a record $250 trillion, mainly due to rising stock prices.

As consistently reported by the World Socialist Web Site, stock markets have exploded, fueled by pandemic bailouts and “rescue packages” forked out by capitalist governments to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, euros, pounds and so on. These handouts to the corporations and banks drove the profit-before-lives policies of the world’s capitalist governments that forced the international working class to continue working despite the dangers of COVID-19.

According to the Global Wealth Report, the number of super-rich increased by about 10 percent last year, to 60,000 people, who alone own 15 percent of the world’s wealth. To be counted among the super-rich, one needs a net worth of over $100 million.

This development finds extraordinary expression also in the rise of the super-rich in Germany and the exorbitant rise of the wealth of the already rich, who profiteered in the course of the pandemic.

Stock prices rose in parallel with COVID-19 deaths. There have been 90,000 fatalities in Germany alone. During the same period, the number of German super-rich owning over $100 million grew by 186, to 2,900, placing Germany only behind the USA (20,600 super-rich) and China (7,800 super-rich), followed by France with 2,500 and the United Kingdom with 2,100.

The number of dollar millionaires in Germany increased by 35,000 to 542,000. Although the increase is partly due to the strengthening of the euro versus the dollar, its primary cause is the world’s rich and super-rich amassing more wealth in the crisis year 2020 than they ever have before. They have profited from the hardship and misery into which hundreds of millions of people around the globe have been plunged by the pandemic.

The Tagesspiegel, which reported on these developments in its June 10 edition, tabulates the 10 richest people in Germany, based on the Forbes list of richest individuals, indicating their wealth in 2019 and 2021 in billions of dollars. The top five places are occupied by the following individuals:

• Beate Heister and Karl Albrecht Junior (Aldi Süd): their combined wealth rose from $36.1 billion (2019) to $39.2 billion (2021) in those two years—an increase of $3.1 billion.
• Dieter Schwarz (Lidl, Kaufland): from $22.6 billion (2019) to $36.9 billion (2021)—an increase of $14.3 billion (the largest increase in this list)
• Susanne Klatten (BMW): from $21 billion (2019) to $27.7 billion (2021)—an increase of $6.7 billion
• Klaus-Michael Kühne (Kühne & Nagel, logistics): from $12.9 billion (2019) to $26.3 billion (2021), more than doubling his wealth!
• Stefan Quandt (BMW): from $17.5 billion (2019) to $21.6 billion (2021)—an increase of $4.1 billion

Andreas Sprüngmann & Family (Hexal) follow in 10th place. They are among the major shareholders of BioNTech, the company that has made huge profits in recent months on its eponymous vaccine. The Sprüngmanns’ fortune has also more than doubled, from $4.4 billion (2019) to $11 billion (2021)—a $6.6 billion increase.

Ugur Sahin, founder and CEO of BioNTech, likewise leapt up Germany’s list of super-rich. With a fortune of $7.7 billion, he ranks 20th.

All of those named are direct beneficiaries of the pandemic. They either own shares in discount supermarket chains, such as Aldi, Lidl, Kaufland; or they run logistics groups like Kühne & Nagel and own assets in other companies, which also made big profits; or they control pharmaceutical companies, like the BioNTech owners. BMW’s major shareholders, Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, profited from rising share prices based on maintaining production despite the pandemic and restructuring measures at the expense of workers.

While the rich and super-rich raked in staggering fortunes, the situation for the working class worsened. Thousands have paid with their health and lives for the ruling class’s profit-before-life policies.

Corporate boards and unions have used the pandemic as a pretext to eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs. Wherever workers are fighting layoffs, plant closures, wage cuts and deterioration of their working conditions, they face a battle on two fronts: they face not only the inhabitants of the boardroom, but also works councils and unions that function as corporate co-managers.

In February of this year, unemployment in Germany had risen by 500,000 to 2.7 million compared to a year before. Many marginalized and low-wage workers also lost their jobs without being mentioned in the official statistics.

In May of this year, 2.3 million Germans were still on reduced hours, with a corresponding loss of wages.

More than 40 percent of German workers suffered income loss last year, and lower-income workers were hit particularly hard. In addition, the inflation rate also rose to 2.5 percent in May, with prices for energy and food rising particularly sharply.

Two years ago, in 2019, the poverty rate in Germany reached an all-time high of 15.9 percent (13.2 million people). The pandemic has now further exacerbated social inequality.

The concentration of wealth at the top of society and of unemployment and poverty at the bottom have produced a degree of social polarization that is no longer compatible with democratic forms of rule. Once again, the ruling class is preparing dictatorship and fascism in the face of social dissent. This is evidenced by regular revelations of right-wing extremist conspiracies in the state apparatus, the armed forces, the police and the secret services.

The hoarded billions, provided to the pandemic profiteers from state coffers, must be reclaimed! They are urgently necessary to attend to the needs of society. The giant corporations and financial institutions must be transformed into democratically controlled public utilities.