Mounting concerns in US-NATO circles over critical minerals and war with China

Gabriel Black

The United States and its European allies are increasingly concerned that efforts taken so far to stop China’s control over the global critical mineral supply chain are inadequate, complicating US-led preparations for war.

Fighter aircraft from the US, Japan and South Korea conduct a trilateral escort flight of a US B-52H bomber in the Indo-Pacific region, Oct. 22, 2023 [Photo: Air Force Senior Airman Karrla Parra]

China is the single-largest processor of nearly every critical mineral, having operated for the last 40 years as the nexus of global capitalist production. China holds control over three-fourths of the world’s Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries, and its electric car companies now surpass Tesla in their function and cost.

To combat China’s relative dominance in critical minerals and battery technology, the United States and the European Union have both passed laws and measures to stimulate domestic production while putting in place tariffs on Chinese goods—such as a 100 percent mark-up on all Chinese EVs in the United States.

These measures, however, increasingly seem inadequate, prompting a chorus of advisers to the American and European ruling classes to substantially increase their efforts.

Last month, for example, a report from the Financial Times found that 40 percent of the projects sponsored by either Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act or Chips Act have experienced significant delays. According to the FT, “companies said deteriorating market conditions, slowing demand and lack of policy certainty in a high-stakes election year have caused them to change their plans.”

Partially in response to this report, the FT published an editorial statement on September 8 calling on the US and its allies to take “concerted action on mining, refining and research” to stop China’s “command of the sector.” Above all, it calls on governments to quickly and significantly reduce the regulations required for new major mining and refining projects for critical minerals—two notoriously dangerous and environmentally toxic industries.

The FT’s warning is just the latest of a string of increasingly panicked comments and actions coming from the American and European financial and geopolitical establishment.

In February, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warned in a major report that “NATO militaries could face shortages of critical minerals, especially if U.S.-China tensions escalate.” The report warned that the EU “imports between 75 and 100 percent of most metals it consumes” and that none of them have stockpiles.

The Carnegie Endowment cites extensively from histories of mineral consumption during World War II, emphasizing that a new war of similar proportions is on the horizon, requiring the mobilization of vast quantities of precious resources. Explicitly framing the war as a NATO-US conflict against China, they write, “in a possible U.S.-China conflict, the United States and other NATO countries would face increased risks of mineral shortages.”

Also in February of this year, the International Energy Agency launched a program which explores the possibility of holding critical minerals in an emergency strategic supply, similar to how the organization and several other countries hold a strategic petroleum reserve. The agency is run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—a US-led, Euro-American Cold War economic coalition.

In April of 2024, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) launched its own initiative, the Project on Critical Minerals Security. The new project highlights the “sense of urgency to increase U.S. security for these critical inputs” among the entire ruling class, Democratic and Republican parties alike.

In May, the Wall Street Journal declared that “China is Winning the Minerals War,” stating that “Western efforts to make a dent are languishing.” In a more recent article by the same WSJ author, they worry, “America’s War Machine Runs on Rare-Earth Magnets. China Owns That Market.”

In August, Politico reported that the Biden administration was considering a new scheme to “prop up” American critical mineral projects, as these worries mount. The reported measures would create a minimum price for critical minerals in the United States, paying the difference if prices go below that amount on the open market. This would be a significant development that put in place a price scheme that goes far beyond measures in the oil and gas market to prop up production.

Meanwhile, various Western green tech companies have gone bankrupt this year or showed signs of economic distress. This includes the Swedish battery company Northvolt, which lost a major contract with BMW over delayed development of its gigafactories, and TitanSolar, SunPower and Sunrun, three major US solar companies. 

The worries in the United States and Europe about “losing the mineral war” result from at least three key problems facing their ruling classes.

First, the projects that they are trying to start—new multibillion-dollar mines, refiners and manufacturing processes—are massive, long-term investments that oftentimes take at least a decade to begin production. Constructing these large projects requires time and assurance that the costs will be paid back.

Second, China has major cost advantages over these expensive new projects. New processors of minerals will have a very challenging time competing with China when it has been the epicenter of mineral refining for several decades, and generally it has lower wages and environmental regulations. Most recently this cost advantage has been reflected in the significant decline in the price of many critical minerals in 2023 and 2024. For example, lithium has dropped more than 80 percent. Albeit, these prices—connected to the global financial system and all its speculative activity—remain volatile.

Third, and most importantly, there are conflicting time horizons in the US-led attempt to counter China’s dominance of this sector. While the US and EU require time, at least 10 years, to secure for themselves new robust supplies of critical minerals in the event of war, the US fears that the longer it waits to go to war with China, the greater China’s ability may be to develop countermeasures to advanced US missile technology.

These combined factors put pressure on US policymakers to find other sources of critical minerals as quickly as possible.

As the WSWS has previously explained, this pressure informs the US-NATO proxy war with Russia, centered around Ukraine. The geostrategic benefits of fatally weakening Putin’s regime and, ultimately, breaking apart Russia into smaller states include control over the country’s vast resources. This would (1) further isolate China, by depriving it of its most minerally rich geostrategic partner, while (2) adding to US-NATO large quantities of hydrocarbons, diamonds, nickel, platinum group metals, rare earth metals, Niobium, cobalt and graphite—all already under active production. Ukraine also contains major prospective deposits of lithium.

China, for its part, has begun to flex its geostrategic control of critical minerals.

Most recently, China put in place restrictions on antimony, a largely unknown critical mineral that is used in armor-piercing ammunition, military optics and solar panels. Last year, Beijing launched similar restrictive measures on gallium, germanium and graphite—all of which it controls most of their global supply. These measures were put in place in response to US restrictions on the sale of advanced semiconductor chips to China – a ban which it seems Chinese business have largely been able to work around.

The restrictions on antimony, put in place earlier this month, has led to a doubling of its price on global markets.

This developing conflict over critical minerals underscores the immense danger posed by a US-China war.

Mpox cases on the rise in Canada

Omar Ali

Despite the World Health Organization (WHO) having declared mpox an international public health emergency, cases continue to mount in Canada. The latest surge in cases stems directly from the neglect of the threat posed by the mpox virus, irrespective of the clade of the virus, by governments at the federal and provincial level.

A colorized transmission electron micrograph of mpox particles (red) found within an infected cell (blue), cultured in the laboratory [AP Photo/NIAID]

As of mid-August, 164 cases have been recorded in the country this year, far outstripping the totals registered by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) in 2023. The government has been quick to note that the current spike is much lower than the figures observed during the initial spread of mpox globally in 2022 when more than one thousand were infected in Canada before the outbreak was unceremoniously declared over. 

Presently the clade 1 strain of mpox is ravaging parts of central Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), prompting the declaration of the second public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) for mpox by the WHO in August. The current declaration comes on the heels of a new strain of mpox, clade 1b, that emerged late last year in South-Kivu, one of 26 provinces located in the eastern part of the DRC. 

Initial investigation of the outbreak revealed it transmitted more easily between people and concerns were raised that the infection among the population was growing with its potential spread throughout the region and beyond the country’s borders. With a case fatality ratio of 3.6 percent, it made it far deadlier than infections with the clade 2b strain that has spread to more than a hundred countries across the globe. 

More recently, the presence of the clade 1b strain in the densely populated capital of Kinshasa, located 2,000 kilometers to the west of the epicenter of the outbreak, is raising new concerns. There are more than 17 million people living in the capital that has access to the rest of the world via its international airport, raising the immediate concerns that the clade 1 strains of the mpox virus may spread uncontrolled throughout the rest of the world.  

The presence of the clade 1b strain in Sweden and Thailand may be the proverbial canary in the coal mine signaling the all too real threat of this strain spreading broadly. The complete abandonment of any semblance of a response to the clade 2b mpox outbreak in 2022 raises ample concerns over how public health authorities will respond once the clade 1 strain takes hold.

The lack of any sound epidemiologic response by Canada’s health officials to the current strain of mpox is emblematic of the international anti-public-health response globally. At every turn, public health statements and announcements downplay the dangers posed by the virus and attempt to offer false assurances that these pathogens are no serious threat, and all the necessary tools are in place should they be needed. Statements like the one made by Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam, who admitted that the lack of any positive samples of clade 1 in wastewater “could change,” should raise eyebrows.

The mpox virus has primarily affected the province of Ontario, where 142 confirmed cases have been reported since the beginning of the year. Two cases have needed hospitalizations, and no one has died so far.

Few, if any, of the positive cases were associated with international travel. Once introduced, the virus fueled a large outbreak entirely driven by local community transmission. Only 15 percent of cases reported travel outside the province in the 21 days before the onset of symptoms and the positivity rate for testing has been higher than 27.3 percent since late June, according to the provincial health ministry. 

This implies health authorities have adopted the “live with the virus” strategy which has been taken in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic rather than fighting to eradicate the disfiguring and potentially deadly mpox virus.

Officials are hoping that existing therapies, principally the antiviral Tecovirimat, combined with targeted vaccination of at-risk populations, can limit the spread of the disease. 

However, individuals who have been recommended to get the vaccine in Toronto report experiencing extensive delays with booking appointments. Considering that post-exposure vaccines should be administered within two weeks of initial exposure according to Toronto Public Health, such delays can be catastrophic in a rapidly growing outbreak.

Additionally, the use of Tecovirimat did not seem to reduce the resolution of mpox lesions among children and adults in the DRC. What seemed to make the difference in mortality is hospitalization and delivery of high-quality supportive care. But a widespread epidemic can very quickly overwhelm health facilities, where they begin to act as vectors of spread of the disease.

Health Canada has cited its “sufficient supply” of vaccines as adequate in curbing the spread of the mpox virus even as the epidemiologists and other health professionals have criticized the futility of this approach, with one quoted by CTV News noting that “sooner or later that fire is coming for you.” 

A recent opinion piece in the medical journal BMJ denounced the vaccine nationalism of rich countries when it comes to mpox and pointed to the similarities with the response to COVID-19, where hoarding of vaccines led to untold deaths in poorer nations and ultimately facilitated the emergence of deadlier variants. The authors noted corporate interests at play, explaining that currently  

Africa CDC [reports] a need for approximately 10 million vaccine doses to control the outbreak, of which only about 280,000 are available, i.e., less than three percent of the estimated need, even as wealthy countries hoard, stockpile, and refuse to share vaccines. These same countries hoarded COVID-19 vaccines, actively blocked or delayed the patent waiver that could have enabled Global South countries to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic and eroded the equity clauses in the draft pandemic accord after lobbying by big pharmaceutical companies.

The Canadian government says it has no plans to share from its vaccine stockpile, which includes millions of doses of smallpox vaccines that are considered effective against mpox. With the eradication of smallpox in the early 1980s, younger age cohorts will not have received the smallpox vaccine at any point in their lives. 

Experts have noted that the characteristics of the mpox virus should make efforts to curb its spread far more manageable than COVID, even in the crowded conditions of displaced persons camps in the war-torn DRC. The major impediment to achieving this remains, as it does with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the relegation of public health behind the profit interests of the capitalist ruling elite and the division of the world into competing nation states.

World’s two biggest economies show recessionary trends

Nick Beams

Economic developments in the US and China, the world’s number one and two economies respectively, point to recessionary trends in the global economy as a whole.

A young couple walk near office buildings in Beijing's Central Business District on March 2, 2024. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

The latest data from the US released last Friday show a decline in the labour market while price numbers from China on Monday indicate that deflation is starting to become entrenched.

Chinese industrial producer prices fell by 1.8 percent, year on year, in August in the largest decline in four months, largely as a result of falling prices for steel. This compared with a decline of 0.8 percent in July and exceeded expectations of a drop of 1.4 percent.

The consumer price index rose by 0.6 percent year on year, slightly above 0.5 percent in July but below market expectations of a 0.7 percent rise, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

As far as analysis of the direction of the economy is concerned, the main focus is not consumer price index but the GDP deflator which seeks to measure the growth of the economy after prices changes across the board are taken into account.

It has been negative for the past five quarters, giving rise to concerns that China is entering a deflationary spiral. If it extends into next year, as appears likely, that would amount to the longest period of deflation since data were first collected in 1993.

The deflationary trend has led to further calls for action by the government to stimulate the economy which so far it has been resisting, fearing this will only add to debt problems.

Commenting on the latest numbers, Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley, said: “We are definitely in deflation and probably the second stage of deflation.”

By this he meant that deflationary forces starting in one area of the economy spread more broadly, leading to falling wages and a decline in consumption spending.

“Experience from Japan suggests that the longer deflation drags on the more stimulus China will eventually need to break the debt-deflation challenge,” Xing said.

There is evidence of spreading deflation. Bloomberg reported that even in sectors of the economy which have been supported by the government as part of its drive to develop new “high quality productive forces”—such as electric vehicles and green technology—entry level wages have declined by almost 10 percent from their peak in 2022.

Chinese government officials have sought to prevent discussion of deflation and have told analysts not to use the term. But cracks are opening in the political establishment as the situation becomes more serious.

Speaking at the Bund Summit, an annual economic conference in Shanghai last Friday, the former governor of the People’s Bank of China, Yi Gang, directly addressed the issue.

The state-backed media outlet Caijing reported that he told the conference that policy makers they should loosen monetary policy and support the real economy.

He called for “proactive fiscal policy and accommodative monetary policy” and that officials “should focus on fighting deflationary pressure” with the aim of bringing the GDP deflator back into positive territory.

Apart from the ongoing slide in the housing and property market, which has been a mainstay of the Chinese economy for around a decade and a half, there are many other indicators of the slowdown in the economy.

The steel industry is one of them. Last month, the chief executive of one of the largest steel conglomerates warned of a “long winter” for the industry because of overcapacity that has reduced profitability. A recent survey, the results of which were reported in the Australian Financial Review, suggested that only 1 percent of Chinese steel mills were operating profitably.

Steel production in China dropped 6 percent in July compared to a year earlier with forecasts that it could fall further.

The price of iron ore, the export of which is crucial for Australia and Brazil in particular, has been falling, reaching $90 a tonne on Monday, its lowest level since November 2022.

The price of copper, regarded as a bellwether for the global industrial economy, has also fallen in recent months.

Another warning signal, reported on by the Financial Times (FT) is the fall in demand in office space. It said that offices in some of China’s largest cities were emptier than they were during COVID lockdowns. At least a fifth of high-end office space in Shenzhen, a centre of high-tech, was vacant in June.

According to Lucia Leung, a research analyst at the global real estate firm Knight Frank: “The biggest challenge is still the significant reduction in market demand due to the weakening of China’s growth expectations.”

There is now considerable doubt that the official target for growth of 5 percent will be met with major global banks cutting back their estimates for growth this year and next.

The economic situation in the US presents itself very differently but the same underlying trends are present.

Much attention has been focused on the US labour market in recent days in the search for clues as to the size of the expected cut in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve when it meets later this month.

The labour market report issued last Friday showed that 142,000 jobs were created in August, well below forecasts of 160,000. But in some ways even more significant was the revising down of the July number from 114,000 to 89,000. This followed the downgrading of the number of jobs created in the year to March by 818,000.

It has been noted that such downward revisions most often occur when the economy is starting to move into recession.

Other data showed that the number of US job openings in July fell to its lowest level in more than three years and has been falling steadily since reaching a peak in 2022 and declining by 13 percent over the past year.

There are signs of financial turbulence as well amid speculation about the size of the Fed’s interest rate cuts. On Friday, Wall Street closed down after having had its worst week in more than a year, before rising again this week. But the gyrations are signs of a worsening economic outlook. High tech stocks, which have led the market up, have been the hit with the tech-heavy NASDAQ index dropping 5.8 percent last week.

The AI chipmaker Nvidia, which has had led the tech frenzy, lost 14 percent in market value. The decline of $406 billion in market value was the largest weekly drop by a single company ever recorded, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

The FT reported that last week US companies issued a record amount of debt as they sought to bolster their cash holdings to counter economic and financial turbulence.

An official at Bank of America told the newspaper the reason for the high debt issuance was an “effort to de-risk ahead of potential economic risks out there, including upcoming economic data reports, the Fed’s decision on interest rates, the election and ongoing geopolitical risk.”

Violent attacks on asylum seekers in Dublin, Ireland continue

Steve James

Recent incidents point to the ongoing victimisation of asylum seekers by the Irish authorities and the far right. Saturday afternoon, August 31, a Jordanian asylum seeker was assaulted by a group of stick-wielding thugs at a property in Ormond Quay, Dublin.

The man, who requested anonymity when he spoke to the Irish Times, said he needed 18 stitches to his head and had feared for his life during the attack. Another man was reportedly attacked with a fire extinguisher. Videos available online show a group of thugs who, having forced their way into the building, pushed asylum seekers onto the street and chucked their possessions out of an upstairs window.

The attack took place at a vacant building that had been squatted over the summer by housing activists who then offered shelter to some of the hundreds of homeless asylum seekers sleeping rough in Dublin.

The evening before, thugs mobilised by the landlord had also forced entry. Online coverage shows terrified asylum seekers trapped in the building while goons battered on the doors. The assault on Friday triggered a major police operation with the Garda’s Armed Support Unit and Public Order Unit attending. No one appears to have been charged.

Another asylum seeker, a 41-year-old from Gaza, said there was a racial element to the attack and one of the goons had threatened to kill everyone inside. He said Saturday’s incident, in broad daylight, was particularly shocking since it took place during a pro-Palestine demonstration in the city. Pointing to police collusion in the assault, he said there were “police everywhere”, nevertheless “people without masks, without anything, came and wanted to kill the people [inside the building].”

The Ormond Quay thuggery comes after months of increasing pressure on asylum seekers with the Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil/Green government and the far right working in tandem.

Government victimisation of asylum seekers

As of mid-August, the Garda National Immigration Bureau, on behalf of the Irish coalition government, had issued more deportation orders to asylum seekers in the previous eight months than the total issued over the whole of last year. To date, 1,100 deportation orders have been issued in 2024, compared with 948 over 2023. Enforced deportations have increased by 128 percent, while so-called voluntary returns have also increased by 157 percent.

Besides increasing deportations, the government is intent on making life as difficult as possible for some of the most vulnerable, and visibly exposed, members of society. It has for months been seeking to displace some hundreds of asylum seekers forced to sleep rough on the streets and parks of Dublin into distant and unsuitable areas of land and large buildings that could be “repurposed.”

Coolock protests

A particular focus has been the Coolock area—a large housing estate to the northwest of Dublin where a former Crown Paints factory on the Malahide Road has been designated by the government as suitable to house hundreds of asylum seekers.

Up to 500 Ukrainians under international protection are to be forced to live in what is currently an empty, largely windowless shell. Should it ever open as an asylum camp, it will inevitably place a tremendous additional burden on local social, health and education facilities already stretched by the endless cost-cutting of successive Irish governments.

The Coolock site has been targeted repeatedly for arson attacks and protests. On July 20, for example, a fire broke out in the former factory’s foyer after a protest attended by as many as 500 people. This followed several days of skirmishes orchestrated by far-right and anti-Muslim groups such as “Coolock Says No”. It was also addressed by far-right councillors, including the National Party’s Patrick Quinlan and Glen Moore of the equally right-wing Irish Freedom Party (IFP).

Both parties, formed in the last decade, are virulently anti-migrant, socially conservative, anti-abortion, anti-vaccination outfits while both wave the Irish tricolour. IFP leader Herman Kelly is a former press officer of Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, while the National Party is currently led by former Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association leader James Reynolds. Reynolds replaced Justin Barret, a Holocaust denier and Hitler admirer, after Barrett turned up to an anti-immigration protest wearing a Nazi uniform.

Coolock is an industrial area, with a significant number of factories taking advantage of a large and cheap labour force and easy access to Dublin airport. Wages for a factory worker in the area start at €13-14 an hour. House prices are astronomical. The cheapest three-bedroom house in the area will cost €300,000.

There are pockets of particularly extreme deprivation too. In neighbouring Darndale, some areas record unemployment figures of as high as 30 percent, while 59 percent of children are in single-parent families.

The absence of any perspective from the ruling parties, Sinn Féin or the trade unions to alleviate this social crisis creates an environment in which the fascists can grow.

The same day as one of the Coolock protests, on July 15, 16 asylum seekers forced to live in tents on the banks of the Royal Canal in Phibsborough, Dublin were attacked by masked men. Two days later another group of asylum seekers were attacked on the City Quay by a group of seven or eight brandishing knives. On August 1, another group of 11 men from Palestine and Jordan were forced to move their tents by police from Herbert’s Park in South Dublin. The asylum seekers were told to move, but not where to go. Another group under international protection were reportedly harassed, beaten and “threatened with death” in a shopping centre.

Another “repurposed” area is around the former St Brigid’s nursing home in Crooksling, South Dublin, which is being used by the misnamed Department of Integration to contain as many as 540 people. Asylum seekers, all men, are forced to live in tents holding 10 to 12 people, without electricity or heating, and with a questionable supply of clean water. Meals can only be had after queuing outside in the rain. Showers, toilets and mobile phone charge points are all inadequate, according to residents, while privacy is more or less nonexistent.

Both asylum seekers and local residents complain that the bus service to central Dublin is now completely inadequate. Another 450 asylum seekers have been dumped in the grounds of the former Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum where they are living in tents. 200 more are in a former seminary in nearby Milltown, South Dublin.

High Court ruling

The government was found last month to have breached the European Union’s human rights charter in its treatment of asylum seekers.

In a High Court ruling on a judicial review brought by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), Justice Barry O’Donnell found that the state’s “response to the needs of IP [international protection] applicants is inadequate to the point that the rights of this class of person... have been breached by the State” because a “failure to provide for the basic needs of applicants amounts to a breach of their right to human dignity.”

The case arose from the government’s decision last December that it would no longer offer accommodation to men seeking international protection. Instead, male asylum seekers were given vouchers worth €75, later increased to €113, weekly on which to survive. Many ended up on the streets, living in tents. The ruling noted that the State had not provided any analysis of “real world purchasing power” or “how in fact an... applicant was expected to access the basic need of housing.” In consequence, “those persons are left in a deeply vulnerable and frightening position that undermines their human dignity.”

The ruling committed the Irish government to nothing, however. Justice O’Donnell rejected the IHREC request for an order to force the government to establish a system to uphold the fundamental rights of all IP applicants as “not appropriate or necessary”. Further, O’Donnell opined that “policing a mandatory remedy framed in such general terms would present real difficulties and give rise to scope for serious disputes about what amounted to compliance.”

In other words, the ruling was not going to be mandatory, because the learned judge fully expected the government to ignore it.

Groundbreaking study uncovers mechanism of blood clotting caused by COVID-19, points to possible treatments

Bill Shaw & Benjamin Mateus

One of the hallmarks of COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, is a multi-organ system process characterized by the formation of blood clots in small vessels. What was most puzzling in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were the unusual blood clots and strokes found among patients, even in those who were asymptomatic and irrespective of age. Most unusual had been that these COVID-induced blood clots were resistant to degradation despite adequate anticoagulation therapy.

A groundbreaking study conducted by the Gladstone Institutes and recently published in the journal Nature has uncovered the mechanism of these processes that lead to substantial tissue and organ damage, including in the brain, lungs, heart, and kidneys, as well as viral persistence and Long COVID. The authors write:

The prevalence and severity of coagulopathy [blood clotting] and its correlation with the immune response and neurological complications in Long COVID suggest as yet unknown mechanism of COVID-19 pathogenesis.

With respect to the pathological blood clotting disorder common in COVID-19 patients, they explain:

Hypercoagulability in COVID-19 is associated with extensive fibrin deposition in inflamed lung and brain. Fibrin is derived from the soluble blood protein fibrinogen after activation of coagulation and forms the central structural component of blood clots. 

Fibrin is deposited at sites of vascular damage or blood–brain barrier (BBB) disruption and is a key proinflammatory and prooxidant activator of the innate immune response in autoimmune, inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. Neurovascular injury and reactive microglia are detected at sites of parenchymal fibrin deposition in brains of patients with COVID-19. 

BBB disruption correlates with brain fog in long COVID, and increased plasma fibrinogen is a predictive biomarker of cognitive deficits after COVID-19. However, the role of blood clots in COVID-19 inflammation and neurological changes remains largely unclear, and therapies to combat their effects are not readily available.

Spike and fibrinogen immunoreactivity in the lungs at 3 days post-infection. [Photo by Ryu, J.K., Yan, Z., Montano, M. et al. / CC BY 4.0]

With more than 400 million people the world over estimated to be suffering from symptomatic Long COVID, and essentially everyone having already been infected three to four times on average, identifying this crucial primary mechanism in the disease and possibly developing treatments for this unmet need is of the highest urgency.

Tendency to form blood clots is well understood as part of inflammatory pathways. Specifically, under conditions of homeostasis, the tendency to form clots is balanced by inhibitory pathways. However, when inflammation is encountered, such as in tissue damage and injury, the clotting cascades that recruit cells and molecules to form clots and stop bleeding are initiated. 

In COVID, these processes are over expressed and until recently were thought to be a byproduct of the immune response to the invading virus that led to a severe inflammatory response known as a cytokine storm.

However, the researchers discovered that a key protein in the clotting cascade, known as fibrin, is directly responsible for the toxic inflammatory effects of COVID. As the study found, fibrin becomes more toxic in COVID as it binds to the virus and immune cells, leading to unusual clots and fibrosis which cause inflammation. The discovery also underscores the possibility that new treatments can be designed to address the main problems caused by SARS-CoV-2.

As the senior investigator at Gladstone and the director of the Center for Neurovascular Brain Immunology at UC San Francisco, Dr. Katerina Akassoglou, noted, “Knowing that fibrin is the instigator of inflammation and neurological symptoms, we can build a new path forward for treating the disease at the root. In our experiments in mice, neutralizing blood toxicity with fibrin antibody therapy can protect the brain and body after COVID infection.”

Co-investigator, virologist and director emeritus at Gladstone, Dr. Warner Greene, added, “We know of many other viruses that unleash a similar cytokine storm in response to infection, but without causing blood clotting activity like we see with COVID.”

Prior to this study, scientists and researchers had thought that the blood clots associated with COVID were a byproduct of the immune response against the virus that led to a super-charged inflammatory state. 

Akassoglou and her group felt such explanations were not correct. She explained, “We began to wonder if blood clots played a principal role in COVID—if this virus evolved in a way to hijack clotting for its own benefit.” And this proved correct. 

What the researchers found in their experiments using mice was that fibrin bound directly to the virus spike protein, leading to unusual blood clots that demonstrated enhanced inflammatory activity. To confirm this finding, they then genetically reengineered the mice such that it blocked the fibrin’s inflammatory properties without altering the protein’s critical blood clotting abilities.

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and quantification of the fibrin clot fibre radius in human plasma with spike, showing that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds to fibrin [Photo by Ryu, J.K., Yan, Z., Montano, M. et al. / CC BY 4.0]

An accompaniment review from the Gladstone Institutes to the Nature report notes:

When mice were genetically altered to carry the mutant fibrin or had no fibrin in their bloodstream, the scientists found that inflammation, oxidative stress, fibrosis, and clotting in the lungs didn’t occur or were much reduced after COVID-19 infection.

Somewhat paradoxically, the researchers also recognized that although fibrin activates many white blood cells to cause inflammation, it conversely suppresses the activity of a type of immune cell called natural killer (NK), which normally work to destroy viruses in the body. In mice where fibrin had been depleted, the NK cells functioned to eradicate the SARS-CoV-2 viruses. The authors wrote:

These findings indicate that fibrinogen is required for SARS-CoV-2 infection in the lung and pulmonary lesion formation through inflammatory activation and suppression of viral clearance involving NK cells.

With respect to neurological manifestations of COVID infections, including the ubiquitous “brain fog,” and which scientists believe can trigger neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis, the Gladstone Institutes team showed that fibrin was responsible for the pathologic activation of the brain’s immune cells known as microglia that led to the degeneration of the neurons.

The autopsy of infected mice demonstrated fibrin together with toxic microglia. However, when fibrin was inhibited, inflammation in the mice brains was significantly reduced. In the discussion section of their study, they remarked:

Increased BBB [Blood Brain Barrier] permeability associated with parenchymal fibrin deposition is a feature of COVID-19 neuropathology. In the brain of some patients with COVID-19, detection of spike and viral RNA suggests potential neuroinvasion. Our data and previous literature support that, while spike can enhance fibrin toxicity, even in the absence of spike, fibrin is deleterious in diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, colitis and periodonditis. Thus, fibrin may be deposited either together with spike when spike is present in the brain or through an open BBB after peripheral infection without neuroinvasion or spike coupling.

After elucidating how fibrin leads to tissue injury after COVID infection—activating a chronic form of inflammation and by suppressing a beneficial NK cell response capable of clearing virally infected cells—the authors speculate that if these negative consequences could be neutralized, this may resolve the severe symptoms seen with COVID and prevent or mitigate Long COVID. 

In support of these hypotheses and potentially developing a new treatment against severe COVID and Long COVID, Dr. Akassoglou’s lab employed a monoclonal antibody they had previously developed that targeted fibrin called 5B8, which protected against neuronal inflammation and degeneration. This immune therapy was injected in mice either before SARS-CoV-2 infection or 24-hours after. They also tested it in a mouse-model infected with the Delta variant known for high neurological involvement and associated with greater risk of Long COVID. 

In all instances, mice receiving immune therapy with 5B8 were found to suppress SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis. The brain of immune-treated mice infected with the Delta variant demonstrated “decreased microglial reactivity and white-matter injury compared to… controls. In infected mice, 5B8 reduced the loss of cortical neurons… a feature of severe COVID-19 brain pathology associated with microglial nodules and neurovascular injury.” Inflammation was suppressed and increased neuronal survival was observed. Notably, 5B8 does not increase bleeding.

Given these successes, Gladstone Institutes reported that 5B8 is already in phase one safety and tolerability clinical trials to assess how humans will react to the new treatment before proceeding with more advanced trials in COVID and Long COVID patients. In support of these developments, Greene said, “The fibrin immunotherapy can be tested as part of a multipronged approach, along with prevention and vaccination, to reduce adverse health outcomes from Long COVID.” 

Importantly, the authors underscored the fact that the anti-COVID vaccines that utilize portions of the spike protein do not elicit the fibrin-inflammatory response seen with infections. They note that a study of 99 million vaccinated individuals led by the Global COVID Vaccine Safety (GCoVS) project found no excessive clotting or hematologic disorders that met any of their prespecified thresholds for safety. On the contrary, the vaccines ameliorated and protected individuals from clotting complications caused by COVID.

The findings of the present study are a pivotal moment in the elucidation of the pathology caused by COVID-19, especially under the now universal policy of “forever COVID,” in which mass infection has been normalized at great detriment to the world’s population. The fact that a potential treatment exists that can be used to prevent or mitigate the dreaded manifestations of this dangerous virus is a boon for humanity.

Bankrupt Thames Water demands rate hikes as UK waterways flooded with sewage

Margot Miller

Debt-stricken utility company Thames Water, which serves 16 million in London and South East England, is demanding a taxpayer bailout or an increase in customer bills of 59 percent a year by 2030 to keep afloat—while it continues the criminal practice of pumping raw sewage into the environment.

On Thursday, the Labour government led by Sir Keir Starmer tabled its new Water (Special Measures) Bill in parliament, promising to end “years of neglect” with threats to bonuses, of fines and imprisonment.

Lack of investment driven by the thirst for ever-increasing profits has led to a situation where the basic sanitation infrastructure introduced by the Victorians is at breaking point—which a Labour government will not reverse.

Thames Water, only the worst offender, initially approached price regulator Ofwat for a 44 percent hike in household bills. Ofwat’s final decision is due in December, though it suggested a figure of 22 percent.

The company, according to the Guardian, asked the government to sidestep Ofwat, permit the price hike and help it avoid administration by underwriting its debts—to prevent a “chilling effect” on the UK’s attractiveness to global investment. Indebted to the tune of £15 billion, it says money will run out by June next year.

Thames Water HQ by the Thames In Reading, Berkshire [Photo by Jim Linwood / CC BY 2.0]

Thames Water is one of ten regionally based water companies formed in 1989 after the privatisation blitz begun under the Thatcher government (1979-90), with Ofwat created supposedly to curb the excessive rapaciousness of investors and CEOs. The consequences for the environment and potentially for human health have been catastrophic.

Last year, sewage spills into rivers and seas around England hit a record 477,000 incidents totaling over 4 million hours, an increase of 58 percent from the previous year.

In May 2023, the government’s Environment Agency reported that only 16 percent of surface water assessed in and around England was of “good” ecological status. This included 14 percent of rivers and lakes, 19 percent of estuaries and 45 percent of coastal waters.

Since 2020, Thames Water, the largest water company in the UK, has poured 72 billion litres of sewage into the River Thames—the equivalent of 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The company is currently owned by a consortium including Canadian pension funds, the UK university lecturer’s pension fund, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the China Investment Corporation. Its previous owner was Australian infrastructure asset management Macquarie.

Thames Water is not unique. In May, a faulty valve in Pennon Group-owned Southwest Water’s system led to the pollution of the water supply with the parasite Cryptosporidium. Thousands of residents in Devon had to drink bottled water.

The end of August saw further contamination of Lake Windermere in the Lake District by United Utilities.

Sewage was discharged from Hawkshead Pumping Station via Esthwaite Water, and Near Sawrey Waste Water Treatment Works via Cunsey Beck, for seven days continuously. Last year, the lake was subjected to 8,787 hours of raw sewage spills, according to the Save Windermere Campaign which has been protesting pollution for three years.

The Lake District is an area of outstanding natural beauty, an attraction for thousands from all over the world, a jewel in the north of England and inspiration to poets including William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1772-1834) and art critic and historian John Ruskin (1819-1900).

Esthwaite Water is a grade one site of Special Scientific Interest with its “nationally scarce” invertebrate fauna and plants.

A spokesperson from the company responsible, United Utilities, said, “Storm overflows are designed to operate during heavy rainfall, like that seen in the Lake District over recent days…” Founder of the Save Windermere Campaign Matt Staniek disputed that the recent heavy rainfalls fell within the parameters designated “exceptional circumstances” when overflows into waterways are permitted.

The UK has in the main a combined sewerage system, so that both rainwater and household wastewater from toilets, bathrooms and kitchens travel through the same pipes to a sewage treatment works.

During exceptionally heavy rainfall excess capacity is directed into rivers and the sea through stormflows to avoid flooding homes, towns, roads and agricultural land or overwhelming water treatment plants. Wastewater treatment plants and waterpipes, however, have not been properly maintained and upgraded to deal with the extra water capacity which occurs now not as an exception, but on a regular basis—in substantial part due to climate change.

The Met Office reported in its annual State of Climate report that the UK is experiencing more hotter and wetter days, threatening the delicately balanced ecosystem as well as agriculture. The report noted that 2023 was the seventh wettest year since 1836.

Ofwat has revealed that some companies are also “routinely releasing sewage” regardless of the weather.

A BBC investigation found evidence of 6,000 potential dry spills (no rain) by England’s water companies in 2022, some of which occurred during the summer heatwave, thus putting swimmers cooling off in danger of harmful pathogens. Parents are routinely warned to dissuade children from paddling in shallow rivers.

After its investigation into illegal sewage dumping, Ofwat suggested fines totaling £168 million for Thames Water, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water. These fines, however, would doubtless be passed onto customers, or paid for by taking on yet more debt or abandoning even more essential maintenance.

Research by the Financial Times found water companies in England and Wales increased their net debt by £8.2 billion since 2021, while paying out £2.5 billion in dividends.

Before privatisation, the ten regional water authorities were debt free. In the period 1991-2023, profits to shareholders totaled £78 billion, almost half the £190 billion spent on infrastructure, and debt grew to £64 billion. While customer bills rose by 40 percent, 22 water company executives were rewarded £24. 8 million in 2022 presiding over this mess. Thames Water alone has paid out £7.2 billion to shareholders since 1990.

Announcing Labour’s new Water Bill, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Steve Reed, declared, “Under this Government, water executives will no longer line their own pockets whilst pumping out this filth. If they refuse to comply, they could end up in the dock and face prison time.”

But these are hollow promises, made to assuage public anger. Politician’s attitude to corporate criminality has been demonstrated sharply by the recent final report of the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire—in which 72 people were killed and for which no one has been held criminally responsible.

Charles Watson, founder of campaign group River Action, said, “If the secretary of state believes that the few one-off actions announced today, such as curtailing bosses’ bonuses—however appealing they may sound—are going to fix the underlying causes of our poisoned waterways, then he needs to think again.”

According to industry body Water UK, £104.5 billion is needed to update the long-neglected infrastructure, which it insists must be paid for by households.

This private ransacking and pollution of public infrastructure and environments cannot be allowed to continue. The water companies must be immediately brought into public ownership without compensation to their shareholders who have spent years getting rich by running down the water and sewage system. The necessary billions—taken from the super-rich—must be provided to bring sanitation to the standards required by society in the twenty-first century, under the challenging conditions posed by climate change.

Labour’s programme is for the opposite. Since coming into office, the government has made clear its opposition to any reforms and pledged to continue with austerity, starting with plugging a £22 billion “black hole” in public finances, all while promising increased spending on the military.

UK studies on Long COVID reveal its brutal impact and prevalence

Robert Stevens

The spread of COVID-19 continues in Britain with new strains still taking the lives of up to 200 people a week in England alone.

Moreover, an estimated up to 2 million people are suffering from Long COVID in the UK. The condition encompasses a variety of symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, and cognitive impairments. Estimates suggest that approximately 10 percent of all individuals who contract COVID-19 experience Long COVID.

Several recent UK studies have investigated this harm being done to the population’s health by the policy of “living with the virus” enacted jointly by the Conservative and Labour parties.

Research carried out by academics at Newcastle University found a fifth of GP patients in some areas of northern England suffer from Long COVID. The study, “Navigating the Long Haul: Understanding Long Covid in Northern England”, also found that there were regional inequalities in terms of the incidence of Long COVID in the North East of England and Yorkshire, where rates in the most deprived areas were 5.2 percent higher than in the less deprived areas.

Its summary explains, “Our ‘A Year of Covid-19 in the North’ report showed Covid-19 hit the region harder than the South of the country and this report shows this pattern is repeated in Long Covid in the region. In some areas of the North the prevalence of the illness is as high as 20%.” It adds, “The average for England as a whole was 4.4%.”

The highest rate of prevalence was recorded among patients at Parklands medical practice in Bradford and Margaret Thompson medical centre in Liverpool. All ten of the GP surgeries with the highest rates of Long COVID among patients are in the North.

Drawing attention to the lack of care and support available to Long COVID sufferers, the report notes, “While many employers in the North provide support for Covid-19, this is specified on an acute basis, rather than in response to Long Covid/post Covid illnesses.” The report notes that “Only three out of 10 northern employers contacted offered a specific rehabilitation package to employees living with Long Covid despite the high prevalence in the region.”

Protesters hold placards outside the COVID Inquiry at Dorland House in London, Monday, Dec. 11, 2023. [AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Separate research published in the Journal of Infection on August 28 details the prevalence and impact of persistent symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers. Researchers from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and Public Health Scotland analysed data from the SARS-CoV-2 Immunity and Reinfection Evaluation (SIREN) study.

It explains that “SIREN participants were eligible for the survey if they had a recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection by 12 September 2022 and had not withdrawn from the study before the survey date.” 16,599 health care workers were eligible to complete the survey. Of these 6,677 responded and 5,053 were included in the final analysis.

The study found that “A substantial proportion of UK healthcare workers in our cohort experienced persistent symptoms following their initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, and this has impacted their life and work.”

Another important conclusion was the higher prevalence of persistent symptoms found among those who were unvaccinated (38.1 percent) than among those who were vaccinated (22 percent).

The study notes, “When asked about the impact of persistent symptoms on day-to-day and work-related activities, 51.8% and 42.1% replied ‘a little’ (for day to day and work-related activity respectively) and 24.0% and 14.4% replied ‘A lot’ (first infection only).

“When asked about at work adjustments among those reporting persistent symptoms, 8.9% reported they had reduced their working hours and 13.9% had changed their working pattern. The medium number of sick days participants reported taking off work due to persistent symptoms for their first infection was 14 days”, with an interquartile range of seven to 50 days and an overall range of one to 680 days.

That the upper range of sick days required is approaching two years shows the horrific impact of the disease on a layer of workers in the National Health Service.

Despite the widespread prevalence of COVID and Long COVID among health workers, there is no general mask mandate in place in the National Health Service. The reality of the virus and its impact has, however, pushed a number of NHS hospital trusts to implement their own mandates.

In July it was reported that at Worcestershire’s Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, with COVID cases at their highest level in seven months, mask wearing was required “to protect patients, their loved ones and hospital staff.”

The Royal Stoke University Hospital and County Hospital in Stafford also introduced mask requirements in clinical areas. The Daily Express reported that in “Staffordshire, the situation is equally dire, with 108 patients battling the virus and two wards at Royal Stoke Hospital completely occupied by those affected.” The trusts acted after COVID hospitalisations rose, as the summer holiday season got underway, to 3.31 per 100,000 people from 2.67 in the preceding week.

A study by researchers from the Institute of Health Informatics and the Department of Primary Care and Population Health at University College London (UCL), in collaboration with the software developer Living With Ltd, analysed self-reported symptoms from 1,008 people in England and Wales.

Its report, “Long COVID symptoms and demographic associations: A retrospective case series study using healthcare application data”, published in JRSM Open, looked at the health of people referred to a National Health Service post-COVID clinic who had reported their symptoms on the Living with COVID Recovery Digital Health Intervention app. The data covered the period November 30, 2020, to March 23, 2022. 

The findings concluded that pain, including headache, joint pain and stomach pain, was the most common symptom, as reported by 26.5 percent of participants. Other common symptoms included anxiety and depression (18.4 percent), fatigue (14.3 percent), and dyspnoea, or shortness of breath (7.4 percent).

ScienceDaily noted that “The study also examined the impact of demographic factors on the severity of symptoms, revealing significant disparities among different groups. Older individuals were found to experience much higher symptom intensity, with those aged 68-77 reporting 32.8% more severe symptoms, and those aged 78-87 experiencing an 86% increase in symptom intensity compared to the 18-27 age group.”

Deprivation (broken down by geographical area), gender and ethnicity were also significantly associated with symptom severity. The least deprived decile had symptoms 68 percent less intense than those of the most deprived, women reported symptoms 9.8 percent more intense than men, and non-white groups 23.5 percent more intense than white.

The UK research adds to a growing body of scientific evidence internationally showing the seriousness of Long COVID.

Last month, the World Socialist Web Site reported on a position paper on Long COVID published by Drs. Ziyad Al-Aly, Akiko Iwasaki Eric Topol, and other acclaimed researchers, published in the Nature Medicine journal.

The WSWS explained, “Basing their estimates on meta-regression studies that pooled all the available evidence, they estimated that figure for the first four years of the pandemic at 409 million cases of Long COVID. The authors remarked, ‘It is crucial to emphasize that these estimates only represent cases arising from symptomatic infections and are likely to be conservative. The actual incidence of Long COVID, including cases from asymptomatic infections or those with a broader range of symptoms, is expected to be higher.’”