Pregnant women endangered by “herd immunity” policy and conflicting official advice on COVID-19

Julie Hyland

The health and lives of pregnant women and their unborn babies have been recklessly endangered by the herd immunity policy of British and international governments that have allowed COVID-19 infection to spread.

Recent data from England shows that nearly 20 percent of the most critically ill COVID-19 patients are pregnant mothers. Almost all of them (98 percent) are unvaccinated, due to contradictory official advice. This will also have been impacted by anti-vax propaganda from spurious “parent” groups associated with right-wing Tories and promulgated by the media.

On November 1, Saiqa Parveen, 37, passed away after five weeks in intensive care. Saiqa, from Birmingham, contracted COVID-19 when she was eight months pregnant with her fifth child. She never got the chance to see or hold her newborn who was delivered by emergency caesarean section.

A pregnant and intubated COVID-19 patient is pictured in the Surgical Intensive care unit (SICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Kyle Green)

Samantha Willis, 35, a care worker and mother of three from Derry, Ireland, was also eight months pregnant when she and her husband, Josh, received positive COVID-19 test results on August 1. On August 5, Samantha’s baby, Eviegrace, was delivered by emergency caesarean. Samantha died in the early hours of August 20, again without holding her baby.

Saiqa and Samantha are two of the 13 pregnant or postpartum women killed by COVID-19 since July. In the 10 months between February and November, 1,714 pregnant women were admitted to hospital with the virus. Studies suggest that pregnant women are 13 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people of a similar age who are not pregnant.

Experts say pregnant women infected with SARS-CoV-2 are three times more likely to need an emergency delivery, and much earlier than planned. The Independent revealed that 694 babies have been born prematurely to mothers hospitalised by COVID-19 over the 17 months of the pandemic, of which 604 have had needed critical care.

Nine-day old Ivy-Rose Court died on October 22. Her mum Katie Leeming, 22, contracted COVID and Ivy-Rose, who was born 14 weeks premature, tested positive a few days after birth. Already suffering major complications, including pulmonary and brain haemorrhages due to her early birth, Ivy-Rose deteriorated rapidly and could not be saved.

Asya, 35, from south-east London, also contracted COVID-19 and went into labour at 27-and-a-half weeks. Although her symptoms were “bad, but manageable at home”, she realised her baby was not moving as much and was admitted to hospital. Her premature son, Daniel, tested positive for COVID-19 and was transferred to a neonatal unit, requiring treatment for bleeds on his brain and his lungs, where he remained for eight weeks.

Speaking from Downing Street on November 16, England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, urged all women already pregnant or planning to be, to get vaccinated. Citing the “stark” data on the numbers ending up in hospital with COVID-19, he described these as “preventable admissions.”

Likewise, the Daily Mail featured the latest appalling data under the headline that “hospital labour wards are at breaking point as pregnant women who refuse Covid jabs plunge maternity services into ‘crisis’,” claiming that this had led to “healthy mothers being ‘abandoned’ mid-labour, midwives self-isolating and birth units forced to close.”

The Daily Mail is a leading proponent of herd immunity, whose occasional support for vaccination is only to prevent other mitigating measures it argues will “damage the economy.” The numbers of expectant mothers critically ill with COVID-19 is worse today than in earlier stages of the pandemic, when vaccines were not available, because the Delta variant was left free to surge.

As for the crisis in maternity services, midwives, students of midwifery and support staff held protest vigils on November 21 over major staff shortages caused by more than a decade of austerity, leading to “completely unsustainable” staffing levels during the pandemic.

Blaming individual pregnant women for “refusing” vaccination and putting hospital and midwifery services “at risk” stands reality on its head.

Official advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) at the start of the vaccine roll-out in December 2020 was that only pregnant women considered at “high risk” should get vaccinated. This is the same JCVI that first declined to support the vaccination of children over the age of 12 and then limited this to just one jab.

It was only in April that data from 130,000 pregnant women in the US showing the vaccine to be safe caused the advice to be changed. But mothers-to-be were only offered vaccination at the same time as everyone else in their age group. As most are under the age of 40, this meant further delays.

The sudden change in advice also created confusion and hesitancy. According to the BMJ, (formerly, British Medical Journal) on November 22, vaccine uptake among pregnant women increased from 65,000 to 80,000. Even so, data from Public Health Scotland (England does not collected data related to vaccinations, pregnancy and birth) showed that only 23 percent of those aged 35-39 who gave birth in August 2021 were fully vaccinated, compared with 71 percent in the general population.

The BMJ cited Pat O’Brien, consultant obstetrician and vice president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who said the cause was two-fold. First, “the natural and understandable reluctance of pregnant women to take anything unusual or new during pregnancy because of fear that it might harm their baby”, compounded by initial JCVI advice that pregnant women should avoid the COVID vaccine.

April’s change in advice was still left as an individual choice, with little to no information given on its importance.

Samantha had been advised against vaccination at earlier antenatal appointments, her husband told the Guardian. “They gave her a flyer telling her there wasn’t enough research on the Covid vaccine in pregnant women.” This said that “until more information is available, those who are pregnant should not routinely have this vaccine.” Likewise Saiqa, who was close to her due date when the guidance changed, decided to wait until after the birth.

Those pregnant women who did attempt to book vaccinations encountered great difficulties as online booking systems did not allow them to specify the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, in line with JCVI advice, and many were turned away.

Professor Marian Knight of the University of Oxford leads the MBRRACE-UK collaboration conducting surveillance and research into the causes of maternal deaths, stillbirths and infant deaths. She told the Guardian this month, “Never before have I wanted to cry so much as I have in the last few weeks, because I feel we’ve failed these women.” They died “from a vaccine-preventable disease due to the high levels of uncertainty among pregnant women, and inconsistent advice.”

Dr Latifa Patel, a senior paediatric registrar and chief officer at the British Medical Association, told the i newspaper, “I feel pregnant women have been let down by society, the NHS and the government” due to conflicting advice.

Pregnant women, said Patel, were told at the end of last year, regarding the vaccine, “There is a sweet in front of you, but you can’t eat that sweet in any circumstances. It’s not for you.”

Then—in February—they were told “you can have the sweet” but only if an obstetrician “put in writing that they are giving you permission to eat it.” In April this was changed to, “you can have the sweet. We just need you to sign you are happy to have it.

“And now pregnant people are being told: ‘Of course you can have the sweet’”.

Similar tragedies are repeated internationally. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, just 35 percent of expectant mothers in the US were vaccinated for COVID-19 as of November 6. More than 24,700 expectant women have been hospitalised with COVID-19 and, as of November 8, 227 had died.

Rise in coronavirus outbreaks in German workplaces

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Germany’s new Infection Protection Act has been in force since 24 November. The law stipulates that employees are only allowed access to workplaces according to the 3G rule. This means that they must prove that they have been vaccinated, have recovered from a Corona infection or tested negative. Governments and corporations claim that this is to protect workers, but this is patently not true.

The aim of the Infection Protection Act introduced by the Germany’s new “traffic light” coalition of the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and neo-liberal Free Democratic Party is not to protect the health and lives of the population, but rather to ensure that the economy and profits flourish as the pandemic spreads uncontrollably.

Worker in a slaughterhouse processing meat (Wikipedia Commons)

For almost two years the principle of “profits before lives” has determined official pandemic policy. Governments and corporations are ruthlessly accepting tens of thousands of deaths in order to keep factories, warehouses, offices and schools open.

Protection against infections and the health of the population is not and never was the priority. This would have necessitated a rigorous vaccination campaign, far-reaching contact restrictions and, above all, the closure of schools and non-essential businesses—with resources made available to deal with the resulting social consequences—until the virus was suppressed.

Instead, against all warnings from scientists, schools were opened in the summer, contact restrictions lifted and vaccination centres closed. At the end of last week the COVID-19 death toll in Germany passed the 100,000 threshold, with the threat of at least as many more deaths this winter. This danger is compounded by the new Omicron variant, first identified in southern Africa, which is clearly different from the previous variants and much more contagious.

In addition to schools, workplaces are major hotspots for infection, but the facts and figures pertaining to infection are being carefully concealed. The ruling class have no interest in counting and making public the many thousands of cases of workers who have become infected in workplaces or carried the virus into workplaces from their infected children. The number of workers who have died from COVID-19 has also been suppressed. Even the death toll among health care workers is no longer published.

Workers are left in the dark regarding the extent of coronavirus infections in their workplaces. There is no central accounting and evaluation of infections which would provide the basis for concrete protective measures. Even the local press is increasingly failing to report on outbreaks in factories. Companies are intent on covering up the figures anyway because they fear protests and economic losses.

Health offices are either unable to adequately trace the contacts of those infected or have been asked to stop doing so by political leaders. Earlier this year, enquiries to occupational health and safety authorities across Germany made by Report-Mainz and BuzzFeed News revealed that 90 percent had approached businesses about violations of COVID-19 regulations, but had imposed almost no fines and closed only a small minority of businesses. At best, companies were given verbal or written warnings.

Despite the suppression of statistics, skyrocketing national and state incidence rates plus occasional reports in the local press give some idea of the dangerous situation developing in many workplaces.

Last week, for example, the logistics company BLG in the port of Bremerhaven had to arrange mass testing after 19 employees tested positive for COVID-19. According to the company's own statements, around 1,300 employees were tested with no new cases detected. BLG is a global logistics company, which employs 20,000 workers in ten countries at a hundred locations in Europe, America, Africa and Asia. Over half of its staff work in Germany.

The city administration suspects that a factory meeting was behind the outbreak. A Bremerhaven spokesperson told local media that the health department was aware that company meetings with around 800 people had been held in rooms designed for 200 people. Social distancing had not been observed and those in attendance had not worn masks.

Also last week several major outbreaks were reported in slaughterhouses. Sixty-one workers at the Vion slaughterhouse in Landshut (Bavaria) contracted the virus and the slaughter of animals was suspended for several days. Operations in cutting, packing, dispatch and other areas continued.

According to Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), 40 employees initially tested positive last week and slaughter operations were suspended. At the beginning of the week, the number of infected persons had nevertheless risen, leaving the company—including those workers in quarantine—with just 90 workers from a total workforce of 400.

There had already been major COVID-19 outbreaks in slaughterhouses last year. In June 2020, more than 2,100 workers at Germany's largest slaughterhouse, Tönnies in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, contracted the virus. In November 2020, 100 workers at the Vion slaughterhouse in Vilshofen were infected. At the Vion slaughterhouse in Landshut, which is now affected again, 70 workers had been infected in December last year.

Vion insisted it had already introduced the 3G rule in September. According to a company spokesperson, a “considerable portion” of the Landshut workforce has been vaccinated twice. The seven-day incidence in the Landshut district was 869 (infection cases per 100,000 population) on November 25.

In Harsewinkel (NRW), an undisclosed number of workers have been infected at the sausage and ham producer Windau. “We're talking about an infection rate in the mid-single digits,” explained managing director Andreas Hilker, i.e. around 20 to 30 of the total workforce of 500. According to Hilker, “the positive detections are affecting our production for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic.” The company plans to overcome the restrictions in production by additional work schedules. Harsewinkel had by far the highest incidence in the Gütersloh district with 454 as of November 15.

Here, too, the company boss emphasises that “the infections occur outside our company.” Staff are tested daily before starting work. The health department confirmed that hygiene controls, including extensive testing, are working.

This line of defence, i.e. that people are infected outside and not in workplaces, is aimed solely at preventing factory closures.

Due to the “good cooperation” between companies and the authorities, Clemens Küpper, spokesperson for the Baumgarte iron foundry in Bielefeld, was also able to declare in September that he was glad “we did not have to close down due to the administration.” In September, 54 of 260 employees were infected with the coronavirus, and production output had dropped by about 25 percent. Once again the short-term loss of turnover was made up for by overtime working.

At the steel company Thyssenkrupp, the number of infected workers among the 13,000 strong workforce in Duisburg has doubled from 36 to 70 within a week. In addition, 40 workers are absent due to quarantine, i.e. a total of 110 workers are affected—and the trend is rising.

Alongside the health authorities and company managements, the trade unions and their affiliated works councils ensure that infection rates are concealed and business operations continue.

Health protection is subject to the German corporatist system of “co-determination.” In every company, the works council has the right to be informed about the coronavirus situation but in reality the works councils and trade unions systematically block and stonewall.

Referendum in Switzerland: A vote for the fight against the coronavirus pandemic

Marianne Arens

Amid an explosive new coronavirus wave, a clear majority of 62 percent in Switzerland voted on Sunday to keep the COVID-19 law in place. The turnout was unusually high at more than 65 percent. This should not be interpreted as approval of the government’s coronavirus policies but rather as a vote by the population for a truly effective fight against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

At the centre of the vote was the COVID-19 law, the legal basis for the official “3G” certificate documenting a person’s status as vaccinated, recovered or tested negative. The referendum was initiated by a committee of “friends of the constitution,” close to the right-wing populist Swiss Peoples Party (SVP). The committee claims the certificate is an “attack on personal freedoms” and should be abolished because it leads to “health apartheid” in Switzerland. There were loud demonstrations for a “No” vote with cowbells and the waving of Swiss flags.

Despite all the propaganda, the result on Sunday was clear. Only two cantons, Schwyz and Appenzell-Innerrhoden, rejected the coronavirus measures. Several major cities—Basel, Bern, Zurich, Lucerne—approved them by over 70 percent. This reflects the growing will of the most advanced layers of the population to fight the pandemic effectively.

Unlike other Alpine countries, Switzerland kept its ski resorts open throughout the pandemic (AP Photo/Jamey Keaten)

In this country of 8.7 million people, case numbers have been climbing steeply for weeks. Nearly one million, or 11.32 percent of the population, have already been infected, according to official figures, and 11,471 coronavirus patients have died. The seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants was over 500 on voting day, meaning that 5 out of every 1,000 residents had been infected with coronavirus in the past week. The vaccination rate is also below the European average: just 65 percent are fully vaccinated. The first suspected cases of the Omicron variant are now forcing the government to tighten entry regulations.

The clear vote in favour of the COVID-19 law should not be seen as giving the Swiss government policy a blank cheque. Rather, it shows that people want to oppose the right-wing lobby, which is pursuing a profits-before-lives policy under the slogan of “national freedom.” Under pressure from big business and the banks, the government was one of the first to lift pandemic measures last spring. Cinemas, theatres, restaurants and entertainment establishments were reopened, while commercial businesses were never closed and the recommendation to work from home was being implemented only very half-heartedly.

The Pandemic Act would indeed allow the Bundesrat (federal executive) to establish nationally applicable rules up to and including a lockdown. But with an eye on the business associations and the SVP, which sits in the all-party government, Health Minister Alain Berset (Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, SP) has so far refrained from imposing any drastic measures.

Schools in particular have long been open without restrictions and have deliberately dispensed with mask wearing, testing and social distancing rules for the younger grades. The Swiss Society of Paediatrics (SGP) has explicitly endorsed this herd immunity strategy.

Concerned parents have responded by joining forces on social media in advocacy groups such as #ProtecttheKids, “Safe School,” or “Protect Children—Now!” They published an “Open Letter to Swiss Paediatricians—Protect the Kids” with 15 questions, the last of which reads, “How do you justify your current recommendation to abandon virtually all attempts at containment in children—especially since vaccination for children under 12 will only be available in a few months?”

The paediatric association’s policy has also drawn open criticism from scientists, including Geneva-based virologist Isabella Eckerle. She has written a document, “A science-based public health strategy for SARS-CoV-2 should guide Swiss schools through the coming winter.”

One of the signatories is Bern epidemiologist Christian Althaus, who left his position as a government adviser in January 2021 in protest. The National Council (lower chamber of the federal parliament) Economic Commission tried strenuously to muzzle the members of the federal government’s scientific task force and ban them from speaking out.

At the time, the task force had called for “nationwide strong measures analogous to the March [2020] lockdown.” However, while coronavirus deniers and QAnon types receive the most media attention, warning voices from scientists are being systematically sidelined.

Meanwhile, outbreaks at schools have been erupting for weeks, and hospitalizations and admissions to intensive care units are steadily increasing. Employees at old age and nursing homes are also increasingly reaching their limits, and resentment is rising.

This was also clearly demonstrated on Sunday in a second vote on emergency care. The popular initiative “For strong care” also received more than 60 percent approval. It is explicitly directed against a half-hearted counter-proposal by the government and parliament.

Significantly, the care initiative goes back to a petition that took place long before the coronavirus pandemic. As early as November 2017, the Swiss Professional Association of Nurses (SBK) had submitted more than 120,000 signatures for its initiative against the nursing crisis. Amid the pandemic, it has now been approved by a large majority.

The pandemic has exacerbated all the smoldering social conflicts and taken them to the extreme. However, the vote has by no means resolved the conflicts. They are deeply intertwined with the class interests of big business and the banks, as is evident from the fact that the controversial COVID-19 law simultaneously authorizes the government to hand out large sums of money to businesses as “Coronavirus aid.”

Army general to lead Germany’s coronavirus crisis response team

Peter Schwarz

Major General Carsten Breuer, the commander of the German army’s (Bundeswehr) Territorial Tasks Command, has been appointed head of the coronavirus crisis response team of the future German government. His appointment was announced early on Monday. The crisis team is to be set up this week, although the confirmation and swearing-in of the “traffic light” coalition of the Social Democratic Party, Greens and Free Democratic Party are not due until next week.

Two-star General Carsten Breuer (Photo: KdoTA Presse / CC BY-SA 4.0)

The decision to put an active Bundeswehr general in charge of the COVID-19 crisis team permits only one conclusion: the traffic light coalition does not regard the pandemic as a medical problem, but rather as a security issue.

The purpose of the crisis team is not to protect the population from the virus, but to protect the government from the population. The incoming German government is preparing to declare a state of emergency in order to suppress resistance to its policy based on sacrificing countless lives to ensure increased profits and share prices. It is a policy that plays Russian roulette with the health of an entire generation of children and adolescents.

Major General Breuer has not the slightest medical or virological expertise. What he does bring to the job is decades of experience drawn from international combat missions, and leading command bodies of the Bundeswehr, NATO, the Ministry of Defence and domestic military operations.

Born in 1964, Breuer commenced his military career 36 years ago immediately after graduating from high school. He was trained at various Bundeswehr institutions, the German Army University in Hamburg and a general staff course in the US. He went onto command units in missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. From 2008 to 2010, he held a leading command post with NATO in Brussels.

Between his various assignments as a troop commander, Breuer was repeatedly appointed to the Ministry of Defence. In 2015, he led the revision of the “2016 White Paper on Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr” for the Ministry headed at that time by Ursula von der Leyen (CDU).

In addition to proposals for massive rearmament and the expansion of the Bundeswehr’s foreign missions, the White Paper advocated the deployment of the Bundeswehr for domestic purposes. The German post-war constitution had set narrow limits to the domestic use of the military due to the disastrous role of the military in the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Nazi dictatorship. The revised White Paper demanded that the Bundeswehr “also perform sovereign tasks using powers of intervention and coercion” during domestic missions—i.e., that it could arrest and search people like the police.

Since the beginning of 2018, Breuer, as commander of the Territorial Tasks Command, has been personally responsible for the Bundeswehr’s domestic operations, which have been massively expanded since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Bundeswehr, there are currently 8,000 soldiers available for pandemic duties, of which 3,950 are currently deployed. Although these troops often perform logistical, medical or administrative tasks, the main aim for those in charge is to accustom the population to the use of the military in all spheres of society.

At the start of the pandemic the WSWS had already warned: “But regardless of how much medical assistance the army actually provides, the deployment serves another goal. Leading generals are openly declaring that the key issue is imposing military-police control over the population and defending the institutions of the capitalist state.”

According to a report in the magazine Der Spiegel at the time, the Green Party-CDU coalition in the state of Baden-Württemberg had already considered “officially declaring a state of emergency and calling in the Bundeswehr because of the catastrophic staffing levels in the police force.”

In a guest article for Der Spiegel, the FDP politician Marco Buschmann, who is due to be sworn in as Minister of Justice next week, warned at the time of revolutionary uprisings: “The small amount of time bought by the state, society and the economy at an enormous price, will soon run out. ... Then at some point revolution will be in the air.”

The appointment of General Breuer as head of the coronavirus crisis response team confirms the warnings of the WSWS. The SPD, Greens and FDP are determined to continue the irresponsible “profits before lives” policy of the previous government and anticipate massive resistance.

On November 18, based on their majority in the Bundestag, they passed a new version of the Infection Protection Act, which massively restricts the measures needed to combat the pandemic. Although 100,000 people had already died from COVID-19, the explosive rise of the fourth wave of infection was unmistakable and scientists warned urgently of a catastrophe, they did not deviate from their course.

They refused to extend the existing “epidemic situation of national scope” and shifted responsibility for COVID-19 measures to the state governments, whose hands were effectively tied by the new law. Restrictions on going out, the prohibition of major events, restrictions to travel, the closure of daycare centres and schools, and other lockdown measures that had proven highly effective in the past are now explicitly ruled out.

The pandemic has since spiraled completely out of control. Daily infection rates are many times higher than in previous waves, the virus is spreading almost unchecked in schools, numerous intensive care clinics have reached the limits of their capacity, long queues are forming in front of vaccination centres, and the number of fatalities every day is equivalent to the crash of a jumbo jet. The spread of the more infectious Omicron variant has made the situation even worse.

On Friday, Germany’s stock markets, which have soared in the pandemic and reached record highs, reacted. At some times, the Dax and EuroStoxx50 fell as sharply as they did during the stock market crash that accompanied the first wave of the pandemic in March 2020. The Dax closed down 4.2 percent.

For the traffic light coalition, this is one more reason to stick to their murderous course. The coalition’s coronavirus policy is geared exclusively to the interests of big business and the banks. Like the US government and other capitalist governments around the world, its concern is not how many lives will be lost, but rather what will take place the next day on the stock exchanges and how best to delay any action until the end of the Christmas shopping period.

That is why the new coalition has appointed a two-star general with 36 years of military experience to the chancellor’s office as head of its crisis response team.

Indigenous people in Australia twice as likely to be infected with COVID-19

John Mackay

A third wave of COVID-19 infections in Australia has seen a 45-fold increase in the spread of the virus among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Even before the arrival of the Omicron variant, they were being infected with the Delta strain at twice the rate of non-indigenous people.

Australian Medical Assistance Teams in Wilcannia offering door-to-door COVID-19 vaccinations and testing. (Source: Wilcannia On The Baaka Darling River Facebook)

By last week, some 7,000 infections had been reported among indigenous people, with 14 recorded deaths, 700 hospitalised and 80 in intensive care units. Most of the deaths were under the age of 60. Until mid-June, only 153 indigenous people had been infected, with no deaths.

Just half of indigenous people over the age of 16 are double vaccinated, compared with around 80 percent across the population nationally.

The increasing number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in indigenous communities was both predicted and preventable. The warnings of health experts and community leaders were ignored, resulting in the failure to protect these populations from the pandemic.

Indigenous people have a high prevalence of chronic health conditions as a result of widespread poverty-level living conditions, which include overcrowded housing, poor access to quality food and limited access to medical care. Prevalent health conditions, such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular and depression and other mental health disorders, are also known to increase the risk of hospitalisation or death due to COVID-19.

With the spread of the virus from Sydney to rural and remote New South Wales in August, the town of Wilcannia in the state’s west was among the first communities put at risk. Some 152 people were infected—more than 20 percent of the town’s total population and almost 40 percent of the indigenous community.

At that time, Wilcannia had the highest transmission rate in the country. The town’s hospital had one ventilator and the nearest intensive care unit was approximately 200 kilometres away in Broken Hill. The life expectancy for an indigenous man and woman in Wilcannia is 37 and 42 years respectively, more than 40 years less than their city and non-indigenous counterparts.

Repeated warnings about the catastrophic impact that the pandemic would have if it was allowed to reach indigenous communities were ignored by federal and state governments.

In March 2020, the Maari Ma Aboriginal Health Corporation wrote to the federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt expressing “grave fears” if the pandemic reached far western NSW. The letter, leaked to the Guardian, stated: “Basic mathematics says that by the time our first hospital patient presents, around 100 cases will already exist in the community, and this based on best case modelling.”

This October, leaked minutes from an emergency meeting one year before the outbreak and reported by New Matilda, revealed that the NSW Liberal-National Coalition government ignored pleas from the Wilcannia community about the state of overcrowding. The government dismissed the proposals to prepare for the spread of the virus.

The government refused to lock down the town before the virus arrived, or to purchase tents and sleeping bags to address chronic housing shortages. Overcrowding was deemed “not the issue” by the NSW Department of Health and the Department of Family and Community Services, which were meant to be in charge of the safety of the community during the pandemic.

It was not until the community in Wilcannia was infected that roadblocks were imposed, and lockdown measures implemented. This left the locked-down community in overcrowded housing, thus accelerating the spread of the virus throughout the town.

Contrary to the state and federal governments’ declaration that the transmissibility of the Delta variant made zero-COVID outcomes unattainable, Wilcannia declared the last two infected people free of the virus in October. That was a testament to the effectiveness of lockdowns and public health measures in preventing the spread of infections.

The ending of lockdown restrictions through the state and the opening up of regional travel now risks the virus again spreading to Wilcannia and other indigenous communities.

The contemptuous lack of planning continued as infections hit elsewhere in NSW, causing unnecessary death and suffering. Rural and Remote Medical Services in the Walgett region in the state’s northwest was forced to cancel its first vaccination clinic for 60 patients because its Pfizer vaccine doses were sent to the wrong place. The rollout was described as chaotic. Many Walgett residents could have had at least the first vaccination before the outbreak in the town occurred.

Late last month cases in the NSW central northern town of Moree rapidly increased to 70 during the course of a week following an indigenous man’s funeral. Some 20 percent of the 13,000 Moree Plains population is indigenous. The region’s double vaccination rate of 83.5 percent is far lower than the state average of 92.5 percent, and the indigenous rate is far lower again. Moree Hospital has a COVID-19 ward with just eight beds available.

The Northern Territory (NT) in northern central Australia has the highest proportion of indigenous residents in its population. The NT Chief Health Officer Dr Hugh Heggie has blamed anti-vaccine and religious groups for significant vaccine refusal. He warned of the potential need for mass mortuaries in the form of “shipping containers and even meatworks” if the virus spreads into rural regions with low vaccination rates. These regions, which include 72 remote communities, are grossly ill-equipped to handle COVID-19 patients, increasing the risk of mortality.

Rural NT nurse Stacey Niarchos told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “The risk is we are not going to have the resources to adequately look after the amount of acutely unwell people we’re possibly facing.” The only hospital in her region of East Arnhem is the 30-bed Gove District Hospital. For some people, that is 300 kilometres away, with roads that are often dirt tracks, inaccessible for large parts of the year due to bad weather.

Niarchos said she was worried the virus would spread like “wildfire.” There are no permanent clinical staff in remote communities other than Aboriginal health workers. Remote nurses attend outreach clinics, spending a few days in each area. Bad weather can prevent planes from landing to medically evacuate people and cannot land at night.

The nurse’s warnings have come to pass, with more than 50 infections being recorded in recent days, predominately in Aboriginal communities. This is the largest outbreak of COVID-19 in the NT since the beginning of the pandemic.

The rapid lifting of already limited lockdown measures across the country, by Labor and Liberal-National governments alike, risks a massive public health catastrophe, with deaths rising in an over-burdened healthcare system. These reopening measures mirror the “let it rip” or “herd immunity” policies being imposed in most countries around the world.

FedEx locks out Australian workers fighting for improved wages and conditions

Terry Cook

In a highly provocative move, global logistics company FedEx last week locked out workers taking part in rolling four-hour stoppages called as part of a long-running dispute for a new enterprise agreement (EA). The action involves 3,000 drivers across Australia.

The previous EA expired on June 30, 2020, but the Transport Workers Union (TWU) agreed with management to defer negotiations until April this year under the pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic. This prevented workers from taking industrial action to press for their demands under favourable conditions of a surge in delivery volume.

A FedEx truck (Wikimedia Commons)

TWU national secretary Michael Kaine said that after FedEx refused to “consider the reasonable solution” the union had “brought to the table,” the union called “responsible” four-hour stoppages, staggered across FedEx depots around the country.

FedEx responded to this limited industrial action—intended by the TWU to avoid serious disruption to the company’s operations—by standing down workers who participated for the remainder of that shift and the entire following shift. After denouncing the lockout as inflicting “self-harm to the company,” the union has called no further action.

Ahead of the lockouts, FedEx told the media its pay offer, of 9.25 percent over three years, was the “most competitive offer made by any company in our sector.”

Globally, in the year ending June 2021, FedEx recorded revenue of $US84 billion and net income of $5.23 billion, up from $69.2 billion and $1.29 billion the previous year.

Yet the proposed pay increase barely exceeds the current official consumer price index (CPI) of 3 percent and in no way compensates for the rapidly increasing prices of essentials, including fuel, food and rent.

Because the proposed three-year agreement will not be backdated to the expiry of the previous EA, workers will receive no wage increase for 2020 and will be unable to take industrial action again until at least 2024.

FedEx can only make such outlandish claims about the generosity of its paltry pay offer because the TWU has in recent months brokered regressive two-year EA deals, including similar meagre wage outcomes, with FedEx’s competitors.

The union’s agreement with trucking company Toll provides pay increases of 2.75 percent in 2021 and up to 4 percent, linked to CPI, in 2022. The Global Express agreement has increases of just 2.5 percent in 2021 and 3 percent in 2022, while the StarTrack deal contains two 3 percent increases from 2021. Under all these deals workers will miss out on any wage rise for 2020, when the previous EAs expired.

FedEx is touting an offer to increase its superannuation contributions during the three-year period of the agreement, to reach 13 percent in 2024. Not only is this below increases agreed by other delivery companies. Such payments do nothing to boost the immediate income of workers but are fed into union-run superannuation funds to be made available to big business for investment purposes.

FedEx, like its competitors, is determined to retain the ability to outsource work and engage labour hire rather than using full-time employees or directly-employed owner-drivers. Outsourcing and contract hire provides the company with a highly flexible workforce, allowing it to drive down labour costs at workers’ expense.

The TWU claims to be opposed to such arrangements and to be fighting for “job security.” However, at no time during bargaining with FedEx, or any of the other delivery companies, has the union demanded or fought for the abolition of outsourcing and contract hire. In fact, the proliferation of these work arrangements is the outcome of years of EAs in which the union bargained away clauses that inhibited the drive by big business for ever-more exploitative conditions.

In the recent disputes, the TWU has merely called for caps on outsourcing, in reality accepting and further enshrining what amounts to a two-tier system of pay and conditions. The 25 percent cap on outsourcing proposed by FedEx, while lower than figures agreed to by the union at Linfox (30-40 percent) and Global Express (40 percent), still means vast amounts of work can be sent to outside contractors.

Workers engaged by many of the contract delivery companies typically receive minimum award rates, in some cases 25 percent less than those directly employed, and are deprived of many other entitlements.

During bargaining, workers asked FedEx for an assurance that overtime would be offered to full-time employees and directly engaged owner-drivers before being outsourced, but the company said it did not “consider these matters appropriate for inclusion in a negotiated enterprise agreement.”

FedEx has been able to persist in its attacks on the workers, including its latest lockout provocation, only because the TWU has worked to isolate the dispute, containing previous limited strikes to one workplace or another, in order to suppress the development of a broader movement of workers.

In response to mounting anger among drivers, the TWU threatened a “national day of strike action” across FedEx, Toll, Linfox, BevChain, Global Express and StarTrack, where workers were fighting for similar improvements in pay and working conditions.

From the outset that the union had no intention of allowing this mass strike to proceed. Even before setting a firm date for the supposed day of action, the TWU rushed to push through regressive deals at four of the six companies. One day before the strike, the union announced a “pause” on industrial action at FedEx, so the October 21 “national day of strike action” was limited to workers at StarTrack.

FedEx workers carried out a 24-hour strike on October 25, less than a week later.

Having brokered deals with the other major trucking companies, the TWU claims the continued attacks by FedEx are “ideological warfare imported from America.” Likewise, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus spoke outside a company depot last week, saying: “It is un-Australian to lock out workers and the ultimate sign of disrespect to the people who make this company successful.”

On the contrary, FedEx is utilising Australia’s “Fair Work” legislation, which allows employers to impose lockouts almost instantaneously while workers are compelled to go through a protracted process before taking any form of industrial action.

These draconian laws, which also prohibit all industrial action except during narrow enterprise bargaining periods, were introduced by the former Labor Party government in 2009 with the full support of the unions, which have enforced them in dispute after dispute.

What the TWU seeks to obscure through nationalistic blather is that what is taking place is part of a global offensive. The financial and corporate elites in every country are using the pandemic to massively restructure their operations, slash wages and demolish working conditions, and will resort to the most repressive measures to achieve this end.

The unions, including the TWU, are conscious that this assault is provoking a major upsurge in the global class struggle. Workers around the world are beginning to break out of the union straitjacket, creating the conditions for a powerful unified international counter-offensive by the working class.

To take forward the fight for decent wages, safe working conditions and secure, permanent jobs, FedEx workers have to make a decisive break with the TWU, which serves as an industrial police force for management.

Harvard graduate student union pushes through contract with cut in real wages

Josh Varlin

Graduate student-workers at Harvard University ratified a four-year contract with the university that will result in a cut in real wages in a vote that ended November 27. The deal meets neither student-workers’ needs nor the union’s original demands.

Striking Harvard graduate students in 2019 (WSWS Media)

According to the Harvard Graduate Students Union–United Auto Workers (HGSU–UAW), 73.3 percent of the 2,615 union members voted on the deal. Of those who voted, 70.6 percent (1,353 members) voted for the contract and 29.4 percent (564 members) voted against. Factoring in abstentions, only 51.7 percent of union members voted for the contract, which will cover 4,900 student workers.

The HGSU–UAW claimed the most success on wage increases, with the contract including a 5 percent wage increase for 2021 (retroactive to July 1), 4 percent next year, and 3 percent in 2023 and 2024. The union originally proposed a three-year deal with 5.75, 4.5 and 3 percent raises.

While touted as a success by the union, this wage structure represents an effective pay cut of 1.2 percent this year thanks to skyrocketing inflation, currently at 6.2 percent. If inflation continues at or anywhere near this level, the rest of the contract will see even greater cuts, leaving future student-workers even more exploited.

The situation is even worse for hourly workers, whose hourly wage will go up to $20 and will increase by $0.50 each year for the next two years, a meager 2.5 percent increase. Most of these workers are given limited hours per week, and most international students are not legally able to work outside of the university.

Just prior to the October strike, Harvard announced that it had posted a budget surplus of $283 million the prior fiscal year, despite declining revenue. Moreover, the stock market rally brought its endowment, already by far the largest university endowment in the world, to a staggering $53.2 billion, a 27 percent increase.

Significantly, the contract does not even mention arguably the most important labor-related issue: the pandemic. There are some provisions for remote work, but only if agreed to by a supervisor. It is unlikely that teaching assistants can take meaningful advantage of this “option” if classes continue in-person.

The emergence of the new Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, underscores that the pandemic is far from over. Initial evidence indicates that Omicron is more transmissible than the Delta variant and may be vaccine-resistant. Whatever the precise qualities of Omicron, its plethora of mutations make clear that future variants will inevitably evolve, potentially becoming more resistant to vaccines and natural immunity, as long as the virus runs rampant anywhere on the globe.

The contract follows protracted negotiations between Harvard and the HGSU, during which student workers voted overwhelmingly to strike and struck for three days while the union led the struggle into a dead end. Under these conditions, the ratification of the deal (as well as substantial abstention) should be interpreted less as support for the deal itself than as a recognition by student-workers that the struggle had reached an impasse within its current framework.

It is worth reviewing the last semester or so in this light. Over the summer, members narrowly voted to extend their contract, in large part because the union provided no meaningful alternative. This occurred during a rebellion against the UAW at Volvo Trucks in Virginia by 2,900 autoworkers, which saw workers vote down three union-backed contracts and form the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee before the UAW claimed the third contract had passed by a handful of ballots in a re-vote.

The HGSU then held a strike authorization vote that lasted until September 30, which returned 91.7 percent (1,860 members) voting in favor of a strike. After weeks of delaying, the union eventually called a strike for October 27, during midterms and freshman parents’ weekend at Harvard College, but limited it to three days in advance.

After yet more delay, the HGSU called a second strike for November 16, only to scuttle it at the last minute after announcing a tentative agreement. A bargaining committee member on November 15 said the deal was necessary “even if the members won’t like it” due to an alleged lack of engagement from members, even though the union strung along purported negotiations, limited strikes in advance and made clear to all involved that they would prefer to avoid strikes if possible.

US corporate profits hit new record

Shannon Jones

As the death toll from the pandemic continued to mount, US corporations enjoyed the widest profit margins in more than 70 years during the second and third quarters of 2021.

US corporate profits before adjustments rose to a record high of $3.14 trillion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate in the third quarter of 2021. After tax and adjustments for inventory, profits rose to a record high $2.74 trillion, according to the most recent figures reported by the US Commerce Department.

A sign for a Wall Street building, Wednesday, May 19, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

These numbers, released as the official pandemic death toll in the US nears 800,000, are the direct product of the government’s prioritization of profits over human lives. This was underscored again Monday when President Biden declared there would be no public health measures taken besides vaccines in the face of the spread of the Omicron variant, despite warnings by scientists it may be resistant to vaccines.

Fueled in large part by the government’s mass injections of cash into the economy, profits of domestic nonfinancial corporations increased $67.5 billion in the third quarter and a massive $221.3 billion in the second quarter of 2021. Compared to the final quarter of 2019, the last reporting period prior to the onset of the global pandemic, profits are up an astonishing 39.6 percent. In dollar terms, the annual increase in profits since before the start of the pandemic has been over $500 billion, based on US Commerce Department figures.

Profit margins, that is the share going to profits out of each sales dollar, are at their highest level since 1950, during the early part of the post-World War II economic boom. Nearly two thirds of publicly traded US corporations have reported higher profit margins this year compared to 2020. One hundred of the largest have booked profit margins at least 50 percent above last year’s levels.

The spread of COVID-19 has been used by the ruling class to effect a further vast transfer of wealth from the working class into the coffers of the corporations and very wealthy. Pandemic financial assistance went disproportionately to the rich while the US Federal Reserve has been pouring trillions into the financial markets while keeping interest rates at near zero.

Amid soaring profits, according to figures released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this month, real average hourly earnings for all employees decreased 0.5 percent from September to October 2021. With inflation rising at the fastest pace since 1990, year-over-year real wages fell 1.2 percent, seasonally adjusted, from October 2020 to October 2021. When combined with a 0.3 percent decrease in the average workweek, there was a 1.6 percent fall in real weekly earnings.

While inflation has had the impact of lowering real wages for workers, corporations, for the most part, have been able to pass higher prices onto consumers. Major retailers such as Walmart, Home Depot and Target saw higher third quarter profits, despite supply chain issues and labor shortages. Walmart’s stock is up 25 percent for the year and Target’s is up 47 percent.

Procter and Gamble, a supplier of home and personal care products, reported a massive 24.7 percent profit margin for the third quarter, with $14.3 billion in net earnings for fiscal 2021. In April, the company announced major price increases for its line of products. Rather than give a price break to consumers, P&G decided to reward investors instead by buying back some $3 billion of its own stock.

Among the big winners were oil companies, whose profits rebounded from last year’s slump amidst rising petroleum prices. ExxonMobil had net income of $6.8 billion in the third quarter of 2021 while Chevron, the second largest US oil company, reported an adjusted profit of $5.7 billion, its best result in eight years and 17 times greater than its earnings one year ago.

The glaring contradiction between soaring profits and the precarious circumstances in which millions are living, facing the danger of infection while soaring inflation erodes incomes, is fueling a wave of working class militancy. On the side of the ruling class, the increase in strikes is raising fears that workers are breaking free from the grip of the corporatist trade unions after decades in which the class struggle has been suppressed. There is the concern that workers will seek significant wage increases, undermining the financial house of cards that has been created by the continual pumping of cheap money into financial markets.

This has already been the case at many companies, including US farm and heavy equipment company John Deere, hit by a bitter five-week strike by members of the United Auto Workers. However, rather than demanding Deere divert money from profits to restore previous concessions forced on workers, the UAW imposed a rotten contract falling far short of workers’ demands and shutting down the strike by 10,000 Deere workers. The UAW used threats and lies to get the contract ratified, falsely claiming the company did not have money to provide adequate wages increases, including the restoration of decades of concessions.

This was despite the fact that the company reported net income of $6 billion for the fiscal year ending October 31, more than double the previous year’s total of $2.8 billion. The company’s previous record was $3.5 billion in 2013. Deere is predicting net income of $6.5 to $7 billion for the current fiscal year.

Cereal maker Kellogg is threatening to hire permanent scab replacements for 1,400 striking workers at five plants across the US. The company reported operating profits of $447 million in the third quarter of 2021, up 9.1 percent from the same period last year. However, management has refused to meet workers’ demands for the elimination of the hated multi-tier wage structure that leaves 30 percent of the workforce at a “transitional level” with lower pay and benefits, as well as grueling 7-day and up to 16-hour work schedules.

The bumper profits for US corporations amid the worst health catastrophe in 100 years is due to the policies of a criminal ruling class that at every point has prioritized profits over human lives. There is no level of death that will make the government change course, because policy is entirely subordinated to the profit interests of the wealthy.

This has been the case since the start of the pandemic, when the ruling class decided to conceal the dangers posed to the population by the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in order to shore up financial markets and forestall a stock market collapse.