Coronavirus – Public Reading Rooms

We’d better be prepared: COVID-19 is here to stay – even after vaccination

Public Reading Rooms — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 13:49:08 +0000

Marc Vandepitte writes: When the vaccination campaign got underway at the end of 2020, we expected to have a normal life again in the foreseeable future. However, that was without reckoning with new, worrying variants. Today, a successful vaccination campaign in itself is no longer a guarantee of victory against the virus. We will probably have to learn to live with corona for a long time.ⁱ

Herd immunity

The favorable prospects we had at the end of last year were based on the expectation that vaccines would allow us to build up herd immunity fairly quickly, either through vaccination or past exposure to the virus.

Herd immunity makes the virus disappear on its own. Initially it was thought that inoculation of 60 to 70 percent of the population would be sufficient for this. But with the new variants and taking into account new insights, we realize that the percentage will have to be a lot higher. We should even take into consideration that we will never achieve herd immunity.

For one thing, infection-induced immunity declines over time. This is also the case with other coronaviruses. Studies indicate that current infection-induced immunity lasts for at least six months, and at least eight months in people who have developed severe symptoms. Afterwards, immunity may weaken and disappear. In addition, findings from South Africa and Brazil have shown that previous infection offers little immunity to the new variants.

This means vaccination is left as a way of acquiring permanent herd immunity. But here there are at least five obstacles.

The limits of vaccination

First of all, some variants behave almost like new viruses, against which vaccines offer only partial protection. Governments’ clumsy corona approaches, especially in the West, have resulted in 136 million people being infected to date. This uncontrolled spread increases the risk of new mutations that current vaccines do not protect against.

Second, it is believed that the protection of the vaccines is not permanent. People are still in the dark about this, but experts believe the vaccines provide protective immunity for six months to two years. That is why boosters are already available to ensure lasting protection after six months. In Israel, the validity period of a vaccine passport is also six months.

Third, it is not certain whether and to what extent the vaccines will stop the infection itself. It is suspected that they prevent the transfer to a large extent, but there is still no definitive answer. That is not an unimportant detail. “Herd immunity is only relevant if we have a transmission-blocking vaccine. If we don’t, then the only way to get herd immunity in the population is to give everyone the vaccine,” said Professor Bansal of Georgetown University in Washington DC.

Fourth, not enough people are being vaccinated. With the current variants, at least a good 80 percent of the population must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Only a handful of countries currently reach the 80 percent willingness to be vaccinated mark. Moreover, you still have to deduct all youngsters under the age of 18, because they will probably not be able to get a vaccine until 2022 at the earliest. This is about at least one fifth of the population.

Finally, there is the slow and chaotic roll-out of the vaccines. Given the urgency, we could and should have put companies to work, as in a war economy. Instead, production was left to a few pharmaceutical giants. As a result, the vaccine campaigns are running far too slowly.

Vaccine Nationalism

At the current rate of vaccination, the effect of the vaccines will be finished sooner than they can be administered to the entire population. In the rich countries we may get vaccinated against the newest variants several times a year, but the question is whether this will be fast or complete enough to achieve herd immunity.

The situation is much worse in the poorer countries because the distribution of the limited supply of vaccines is very uneven. Rich countries, which account for 20 percent of the world’s population, have bought up 55 percent of all vaccines. Chances are high that many people in poor countries will have to wait for their vaccine until 2023 or 2024.

This vaccine nationalism is shortsighted. Even for a country with high vaccination coverage, the potential for new outbreaks remains if neighboring countries have not done the same and the populations can mix. The world is four to six times more likely to get a new variant from an under-vaccinated country than from a vaccinated country. “No one is truly safe from Covid-19 until everyone is,” said experts from the Lancet Commission on COVID-19.

“Maximum suppression”

Every day there are almost 700,000 new infections worldwide. With such a high rate of infection, new worrisome variants will inevitably emerge that will spread and against which vaccinations or previous infections will not provide immunity. The longer that situation persists, the more we may expect such variants. According to experts at the Lancet Commission, we are in a race against time to get global transmission rates low enough to prevent the emergence and spread of new variants.

Vaccine arrogance is misplaced. According to the experts, a successful vaccination campaign in itself is no longer a guarantee of victory against the virus. Chile is a good example of this: today 60 percent of the population has already received a first dose of vaccination, but the number of infections is still increasing. In a population of 19 million, there are 7,000 new infections and 100 COVID deaths every day.

That’s why experts at the Lancet Commission argue for a “maximum suppression” of COVID-19. It is vital to significantly reduce the number of infections, not over time, but as fast as possible. This means combining vaccination with known measures such as limiting social contacts, maintaining strict safety measures (mouth masks, hand hygiene, safe distance, better ventilation, etc.), fast testing, accurate and fast tracing of contacts.

Taiwan, China, Australia, Vietnam and New Zealand have shown that it is possible to almost completely eradicate the virus. Regions where the virus is raging continue to act as breeding grounds for resistant variants. In this way we will never subdue the pandemic.

In addition to the strong reduction in the number of infections, a number of other things are needed, according to the experts. First, we need to distribute vaccines fairly worldwide and accelerate vaccine programs in all countries. That will not be possible without the removal of patents and without production planning. Second, surveillance programs are needed that enable us to detect new variants based on DNA sequencing techniques. Third, international research is needed into the effectiveness of vaccines on existing and new “variants of concern”. There is still a lot of work to be done in these three areas.

Winter waves

A common pattern of contagious diseases is that they become more contagious over time but less potent. After all, if the host does not die, this provides an advantage in the natural selection of the virus. This is apparently not the case with the current virus. The known variants so far are more contagious but no less dangerous, on the contrary.

If that trend continues, and given that we cannot achieve group immunity in the current constellation, we are likely to face a permanent cycle of outbreak and relapse. As with the flu, the seasonal factor may also play a role here. Especially in the winter periods, we can expect new outbreaks for the time being. According to top virologist Peter Piot, in the absence of masks and keeping a safe distance next winter, the reproduction rateⁱⁱ could even be higher than during the previous winter. That is, despite the protection of vaccination.

That is why Piot advocates making face masks mandatory during peak months, promoting teleworking and digital education (for larger groups), and motivating people at risk (e.g., over 65 years old or with a health problem) to avoid attending large events or public settings such as bars, restaurants, etc. He also advocates increasing the capacity of the IC units during the winter months.

The new normal

Eradicating an infectious virus is not self-evident. The smallpox virus pandemic is one of the few to have been completely overcome in the past. Like the flu virus (Influenza A), Covid-19 will probably never be completely eradicated.

The good news is that very efficient vaccines have been found quickly. As Israel shows, they cause fewer infections and significantly fewer hospitalizations or deaths.ⁱⁱⁱ As a result, lockdowns may be avoided from now on. But as we saw above, vaccines alone will not get us there.

All in all, the question is not how soon we will return to normalcy, but what kind of normalcy that will be. The new normal will in any case – for the time being – be one without herd immunity and therefore with the necessary precautionary and protective measures. In the long term, COVID-19 could then evolve into an endemic disease^iv such as the flu.

We had better prepare ourselves, but also our society, to dealing with this as well as possible. We seriously messed up the approach start of the corona crisis. It would be unforgivable to screw up the rest of the crisis too.

Translation: Dirk Nimmegeers

i In Belgium, for example, 16 percent of the population has antibodies.

ii The reproduction factor is the average number of people who infect a carrier of the virus.

iii Currently, there are 250 new infections and 8 COVID deaths every day, out of a population of 9 million.

iv In an endemic disease, outbreaks are fairly constant in number and remain local.

We are all Minneapolis

Public Reading Rooms — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 16:24:37 +0000

Jonathan Neale writes

We are all Minneapolis

Jonathan Neale

We have been waiting to see what world would begin to emerge from the lockdowns. Now we have some clues.

The tragedy of George Floyd’s death has changed things, let us hope permanently and in important ways.

Spoiler alert: We are winning. The US army have refused to follow Trump’s public order to intervene.

A Break with History

I grew up in the United States. I was part of the movements of the sixties there. Friday and Saturday I wrote my book on climate jobs in a garden shed in England, switching back and forth from Twitter, to write, to Facebook, to write. Usually when I do that I’m stalling. This time my writing was flying because my body was shaking with joy.

Everywhere you look in the photos and videos of the protests and riots, you see black people and white people and Latino people, and lots of people who could be anything. This is a break with history.

The St Louis “race riot” in 1917 and the Tulsa riot in 1921 were pogroms – gangs of whites going into black neighbourhoods to kill. In the Detroit riot in 1943, white people and police fought black people, and 75% of the dead and wounded were black. In the 1960s there were riots in the segregated black areas of cities across the north. These were almost all public reactions to police brutality. And in the 1960s it was no longer white workers against black workers, but it was still the police against black people, and almost all the dead were black.

This time round we are seeing people all mixed up. The black people are usually leading, not in the sense of hogging the microphone, but actually leading, there they are, in front. As far as I can tell, most of the protesters are working class. And young.

People keep saying that white people in the United States need educating about racism. I don’t believe it. I grew up among white people in Texas. There was racism all around me. I spent two years in St Louis recently. In St Louis it feels like everything, not just this thing or that thing, but everything is about race.

The problem is not that white people don’t know. It’s that so many white people choose to be on the wrong side. That is part of what’s changed. The people who rule the US, Republicans and Democrats, really, really don’t like it. So they have started to talk rubbish about riots. Some context is necessary here.

Context: A Global Perspective

A Chilean friend of mine who lives in England was up all Friday night watching the videos from the US, using social media to talk back on forth with her friends in Chile. Since last autumn her friends have been going through months of an uprising on the streets, then the lockdown, and now the uprising is beginning again on the streets. They were riveted by Minneapolis, and kept saying to each other, “They are doing what we are doing. They are just like us.”

In Chile, they had not expected this.

But the similarities of the global response to George Floyd’s murder is another part of what has changed.

What we are seeing in the US is crowds in motion, angry, afraid, determined, seeking justice. This is what we saw last year from Sudan, Lebanon, Hong Kong, India, Iraq and Iran. It was what we saw in the Arab Spring in 2011. In those places we did not think it was odd. When CNN or Al-Jazeera covered those events, no one thought it was odd.

It’s not odd in the US either. Riots happen when crowds assemble in moments of overwhelming feeling, on edge, not sure what they want to do. The police, on edge, stand confronting them, and then the police lash out.

At that point the media call what is happening a riot. Then the media will show videos of cops beating on people who are trying to run away, and they also call that a riot. But it is in fact a police riot.

But sometimes, when feeling runs very high, the crowd seriously try to fight back. And that actually is a riot.

Riots never happen if just a few people in a crowd are looking for a fight. They happen because the majority are scared, but also because they have had enough.

Context: Recent History

What’s happening in the US is not an explosion out of nowhere. One of my friends walked through the protesting crowds in New York Friday night, asking people if it was their first protest. He expected them to say yes. Most of them said no.

According to the academics who count these things, fifteen million Americans protested in the first 18 months of Trump’s presidency. The last eight years have seen Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the high school walkouts against guns, the women’s marches, climate strikes and teachers strikes.

These have all been spread out all across the country, sometimes coming in waves like the present protests, sometimes a reaction to a local atrocity. High school students have been central.

None of these events, except the women’s marches, have been centrally organised. None of them are simply spontaneous. They are organised, typically by a few kids on phones or talking in corridors, giving courage to others.

They have also been many hundreds, I think thousands, of cases of resistance to rape and sexual harassment at work. Nancy Lindisfarne and I have been writing a book on the roots sexual violence, and we have been following all the #MeToo cases we can in the US. Those are usually seen as media events, but in almost all cases there is workplace organization, sometimes in one workplace, sometimes across an industry like Hollywood or women’s gymnastics, sometimes in a university department. They are also almost all confrontations exposing management cover-ups and bullying – confrontations that managers now usually lose.

When people have taken part in one protest it is easier for them to join the next. When they take part in the second, about something else, they begin to generalize about the system.

One result of all this is that there are now many people on the ground who have already played a part locally in organizing a walkout, a march, a protest, a strike or workplace resistance. My guess would be perhaps a million, but who knows? Certainly lots.

Context: Covid

Here’s another context. The people on the streets now have lived through Covid. There have been lockdowns in almost all cities in the US. The epidemic in the US, as in many other countries, has been saturated with racism and class.

Black Americans are far more likely to be doing the essential jobs which expose them to the virus. At those jobs, they are more likely to be forced to work without protection. They have had to go to work for fear of losing their job. They have been more likely to lose their jobs, and less likely to be working from home on a computer. They have known they are in danger, and known why they are in danger.

Everything I have just written about black people in the epidemic can be said in the same words about manual workers. The two vectors of discrimination and danger reinforce each other. Tens of millions of Latino and white manual and essential workers have been in danger too.

Unlike European countries, the US has not had any form of wage subsidy for furloughed workers. Out of a workforce of 150 million, 40 million have lost their jobs during the epidemic. Some have got their jobs back, 20 million are currently receiving unemployment pay and an unknown number are out of work but not on benefits. American workers get their health insurance though their employers, and lose it the day they lose their jobs. Some people may still qualify through a spouse, but many millions of adults, and their children, have joined the 15 million people already without health insurance.

Losing their income means that the majority of renters were not able to pay their rent at the beginning of May. All over the country, hospitals are cutting staff, because they have lost income they depend on from expensive, elective operations. Health workers are furious. Some of the lines for food banks have been 10,000 people long.

Then there is Trump’s management of the virus. Everyone knows deep down that it is the government’s job to protect people. He has put everyone at risk. The US has one of the highest death rates in the world, and is number one in terms of total dead. It is not that he lies, blusters, is madly self-centered. It’s that he does not care.

Things Come Together: Covid, Trump and Murder

A lot of nonsense is talked about Trump’s solid base. He has been losing support steadily in the polls. This is especially the case among older white people, until now his most solid supporters, but also now the people most at risk of death from the virus. The number of Americans who are partly or fully opposed to the protests is now down to 22%.

Then came the video of Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd. In an astonishing, cruel, calculating way. While three other cops watched.

The emotional resonances are manifold. This is in the middle of an epidemic. Everyone has been thinking about death every day. Everyone knows how this disease kills. You can’t breathe. So, yes, this is an uprising against death, for life.

But also, Officer Chauvin stands for Trump. This is an uprising against the man who is killing us for his stock market.

And, yes, this is an uprising against racism. It is led by the people most at risk from the president, the police, the economic system. But others flood in to join them. This is something completely different from having and then giving up white privilege. For one thing, an awful lot of them are Latino. For another, the experience of white working class people has not in the epidemic has not been privilege. It has been poverty and danger. They rally now to defend a man killed because he was among the people most in danger every day.

Many say that Americans need to be schooled about racism. I don’t believe it. I know white people, and they know about it. They may have trouble talking to black people about racism. They may not know the details, they may be defensive, and they may lie to themselves. But deep down, they all know. White people also know they can take sides, for racism, against, or trying to balance in the middle. The virus has pushed millions to take sides on the street.

I cried the night Barack Obama was elected. With joy, and the memory of long struggle and long suffering. I have cried every day for the last week. I am not sad.

Context: The Northern Riots

Another context is the memory of the Northern riots. There were two arms to the African-American movement of the 1960s. One was civil rights, mainly in the South. The participants were mostly working class, the leaders were students and teachers and preachers. The demands were integration and voting rights. The other arm was the riots in the black ghettoes in the cities in the North. All of them were protests against police brutality. The leaders were in working class crowds. All of them started with nonviolent protests. There was one week of exceptions. When Martin Luther King was murdered, his people came together and rioted in more than 110 cities across the country.

It was obvious at the time that civil rights and the Northern riots were of equal importance. Together, they forced the change that happened.

On an official level, that memory has been obliterated. When the 1960s are mentioned, it’s all and only about civil rights. There are literally thousands of history books on civil rights. There are six serious book on the riots, and none of them is an oral history based on interviews with participants. (Note to graduate students in history – go for it.) The Northern riots are never mentioned in Black History Month.

But the old people remember. And they have passed that memory down. During the Black Lives Matter protests before Covid, you could see the memory hovering in the background. The police, usually so brutal, were extraordinarily careful during the BLM protests not to provoke the young crowds. And the crowds were angry but utterly disciplined, for fear the police would massacre them.

Now, in Minneapolis, after Covid, it’s different. The crowd burned the police station.

But it’s also different in another way. It’s not just that there are Latino and white people among the protesters. Their presence, and the political experience of the last few years, means the protests have a different geography.

In the 1960s the protests against police brutality and the riots were always in black areas of the city. Now the protesters walk anywhere, and they move to the center, to the plazas and squares, to defy the rich, to SoHo in New York, to Beverly Hills and down Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. In DC they are not in the ghetto, they are outside the White House.

Context: The Democratic Party

There are three ways the Democratic Party is important. First, the eruption is much easier because Sanders has just lost the Democratic nomination to Biden. The wave of resistance protests across the US was much larger in the first two years of Trump’s presidency than in the last eighteen months. I would guess that had a lot to do with the candidacies of Sanders, Warren, Yang and some of the others. People in the Democratic machine said don’t rock the boat, don’t alienate older voters, and many people took that to heart. The most important piece of evidence, for me, was that no national feminist organization called for mass protest in Washington over the Kavanaugh nomination.

But now, with “shoot em in the legs” Joe Biden as the candidate, people may vote for him, but they are going to stand up for themselves.

The second context is electoral. The protests are shredding support for Trump. It looks likely they will put Biden into the White House.

The third context is brilliantly evoked by Bob Vulov’s article in McSweeney’s, “I am your progressive mayor, and I think we ought to cut our roving death squads bit of slack.”

The Democratic Party governors, and the mayors in the big cities, white and black, have presided over racist and brutal police forces for generations. African-American politicians use the language of race and solidarity, but they too back the cops. And for forty years they too have presided over racist mass imprisonment. Two stern prosecutors, Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris, are two representative faces of the Democratic party, one white, one black.

These protests trap such Democratic politicians. On the one hand, they must back the cops. That is the heart of their whole job in the system. But, on the other, they cannot back the cops, because their people will not have it. So they have tried a bizarre conspiracy fantasy. They said that the protesters were from out of state, and the white protesters were starting all the violence. Then they say that the black protesters wanted nonviolence, which is, of course, how black people always are. In one variety of this lie, the violent whites are fascists, in another variety they are antifascist anarchists.

Of course there are agent provocateurs in the crowds. There always are. That’s why we have an old French term for them, now also used for underwear. But also, everywhere, it is the crowd and not the provokers who do most of the fighting. We should not be ashamed when people fight back.

These lies are now being widely ridiculed, but there is still a lot of confusion.

Context: The World

There is another context. Think back to all those Chileans riveted by what is happening in the US, sharing videos and pictures. Last year similar uprisings broke out across the world. They had much in common with what is happening in the US now.

Except for Hong King, the protesters were responding to economic crisis. The solidarity with oppressed groups was striking to the participants in Chile, where the indigenous Mapuche had been fighting for generations. In India the whole uprising was in protest at discrimination against Muslim refugees, in a country where the world view of the governing party centers on racism against Muslims. In Lebanon rejection of the communalism that has divided society for generations was the core of the movement, which was strongest among the despised Shiahs of Tripoli.

In every country, too, the protests were against all existing political parties. As we have learned under Covid in the UK and the US, we are on our own.

In the dictatorships these are movements for democracy. In the democracies, they are movements for far more democracy. The American movement fits this mold.

In the months and years to come, we will see new movements all over the world, angry, anti-racist, anti-sexist, very young, mostly working class and eager to strike. They will have contempt for almost all existing politicians.

I have been a climate activist for fifteen years. Covid is both a terrible tragedy and only a taster. And hose young, angry, confident movements who trust no established powers are my hope for the future of the planet.

We are Winning

What is happening in the US is only one part of what is happening across the world. The struggles elsewhere have been, and will be, more important. But those Chilean activists were watching the US, in a way that people in the US have not been watching Chile, India or Hong Kong yet. The US is one of the two great powers in the world, and the dominant power culturally and intellectually. What happens in the US radiates across the world.

That’s why it’s important that the protests are winning. In the first three days, it looked like there was a real prospect of far right activists shooting rioters, which did happen in at least three places, or running them over, which happened in more. Since then there has been one small patrol by middle aged white men with baseball bats in the Fishtown neighbourhood in Philadelphia. But the kind of aggressive, far right armed anti-lockdown we were seeing are now nowhere to be found. They simply do not have the support the protesters enjoy and would be humiliated if they looked for a fight. Any armed public protests in city centers would now be met by overwhelming police and military force.

This does not mean there are will not be right wing killings in the months to come.

Frightened and humiliated, Bunker Boy Trump called on the army to put down the protests. That increased the spread and number of the protests, to all 50 states.

To see the balance of forces, look at the video of the protests in Boise, Idaho, and the number of protesters, young, overwhelmingly white because Idaho is overwhelmingly white, and the homeland of the survivalist right.

Yesterday it became clear that the protesters are winning. One sign is that all four cops have been charged. Another is that North Carolina has refused to hold the Republican convention. It is unclear if any other state will be mad enough to hold it.

But the turning point is that the Pentagon has defied Trump. The army is 40% black, Latino and other minorities. If they are told to beat and shoot protesters, the generals cannot know for sure what would happen. The soldiers might carry out orders, and kill. If they did so, the largest wave of revolt since 1865 would break out.

The soldiers might fight each other. Or they might make friends with the protesters. There are already videos a National Guard unit in Tennessee laying down their shields, and others taking the knee with the protestors. Any of those outcomes would be a catastrophe for the generals.

Yesterday the last Secretary of Defense, Trump’s appointee Mattis, excoriated the President. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are the generals and admirals who head the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. The last Chairman of the Joint Chiefs wrote in The Atlantic that he could stay silent no longer. The current Chairman said the military would not be deployed against the people. Every one of the joint chiefs has sent messages to their subordinates saying, very clearly, that the right to assembly and public protest is central to the values of the American military. And the current Secretary of Defense, Trump’s appointee Esper, held a press conference yesterday. In a confident and ringing voice, he said that the military would not be deployed.

The journalists say Trump is furious, but he dares not fire Esper now.

The White House is now protected, illegally, by corrections officers from the federal prisons, agents from the customs and border patrol, and part-time soldiers in the Utah National Guard, from almost 3,000 miles away. None of them wear their insignia. That scares the protesters, but it is because Attorney General Bill Barr is breaking the law to bring them in. A video from yesterday shows a dizzyingly long line of military police leaving the White House. It is hard to know for sure, but I think they were being withdrawn.

The future is not ours to see. But this round is going to our side, in ways everyone in the world can also see, and they are looking. Many are responding, and the BLM demonstrations are continuing around the world. And further upheavals in the US lie ahead. The number of covid deaths are falling there now, because they are falling in New York, the center of the epidemic. But they are going to rise in the South and in the Midwest, where the lockdowns have been withdrawn. Unemployment, now 40 million, will not remain that high, but it will remain very high indeed. There have been hundreds of wildcat strikes in the last two months. They seem to have gone quiet because of the protests, but they will be back in force.

A friend, a nurse in a public hospital for working class people in Chicago, reported on Monday that 60 nurses in her unit were off, some sick, but many because they could not get in through the protests. The management promised them discounts on Uber rides, but all the Ubers had stopped running.

Accident and emergency was still full of the wounded from the protests at the weekend, mainly with head injuries. Intensive care and the other wards were still full of Covid. All the staff were on edge. A manager told a doctor not to wear an N95 mask, and the doctor started screaming at him, that all this was the fault of you people. The nurses had never seen such a thing before. They had a strong feeling that something big will happen soon, something different from anything they have seen. They don’t know what it will be.

Jonathan Neale is a writer and climate jobs activist. He’s @NealeSayles on twitter.

The murder of George Floyd — just another day in Trump’s America

Public Reading Rooms — Fri, 29 May 2020 17:15:23 +0000

Whether is was the robotic-like lack of emotion on the face of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin as he slowly choked the life out of George Floyd on the ground, keeping his knee on his neck for five long minutes despite Floyd screaming that he couldn’t breath, and despite him pleading; or whether it was the fact that Chauvin felt completely at ease in executing his prey in front of witnesses and in broad daylight; the image of him doing so was at that moment more representative of America than the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Statue of Liberty, or any of the baubles deployed in service to the myth of the United States as the land of the free.

Chauvin with his knee on the neck of a supine George Floyd was the acme of evil that is white supremacy. He was the overseer with his knee on the neck of a runaway slave. He was the Confederate Flag raised in triumph, the slaver’s whip, the lynch mob’s noose, the prison guard’s boot. In other words, Chauvin symbolised in those five horrifying minutes the entire legacy and long history of racial oppression in country that was born in genocide and developed and nourished for two centuries on the back of the African slave trade.

Here we are obliged to wrestle with an unvarnished truth — namely that though slavery in its chattel form may have been ended, the consciousness of the slaveowner remains alive and kicking within the diseased minds of racist white police cops all over that God-forsaken land. They are, in fact, less police officers protecting and serving, and more members of increasingly militarised right wing militia groups hunting for prey — black prey.

Those commentators who assert that the struggle for justice for black people has not progressed since the Black Civil Rights Movement in the Sixties are, with all respect, mistaken. They are mistaken because the struggle for justice for black people has actually and manifestly regressed since then. The most obvious symbol of this regression is embodied in the current occupant of the White House, Donald J. Trump.

Trump’s election was a racist pushback against Barack Obama’s two terms in office. You don’t have to approve of Obama’s legacy as president (I certainly don’t) to appreciate the symbolism of a black American with an African name being elected to the highest office in America back in 2008. For racists everywhere it was a moment to mourn, with Trump’s championing of a birther movement designed to prove that Obama was not a ‘real American’, leaving not doubt that he was among them.

You see, it’s very simple. In the hearts and minds of white supremacists, black and brown Americans are not real Americans. They are instead a threat to real Americans, white and proud Americans, and thereby dehumanised, demonised, and ultimately murdered with impunity as such.

With Trump’s election as president in 2016 the KKK and every card carrying white racist and white supremacist in America finally got their most precious wish; they finally got their man in the White House. And since he entered it has been open season on black and brown people.

Shifting focus for a moment, the issue of racial oppression in America is hugely important for people of conscience and consciousness living outside America to understand. For if the most powerful truths are the most simply expressed, then who better than Malcolm X to remind us that ‘You can’t understand what’s going on in Mississippi if you don’t understand what’s going on in the Congo’.

In other words, there exists a circular relationship between racial oppression at home in America and US imperialism abroad. As James Baldwin so eloquently put it: ‘A racist society can’t but fight a racist war. The assumptions acted on at home are the assumptions acted on abroad’.

And staying with Baldwin, when he averred that ‘To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time’, he gave voice to the rage behind the riots that have taken place, and continue at time of this writing to take place, in various cities across the US in the wake of George Floyd’s execution.

Founding member of the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton, was not a man who ever wasted time in beating around the bush.

To wit:

The racist dog oppressors have no rights which oppressed Black people are bound to respect. As long as the racist dogs pollute the earth with the evil of their actions, they do not deserve any respect at all, and the “rules” of their game, written in the people’s blood, are beneath contempt.

The militancy with which he was writing in 1967 was forged by racial oppression. As these words are being written a new generation of Malcom X’s and Huey Newton’s are likewise being forged.

New York protest against the murder of George Floyd.

The people are rising in Minneapolis and across the US. The police station where Floyd’s murderer worked was burnt to the ground and there have been dozens of other protests across the whole country. As many protesters said ‘we’ve had enough’.

Solidarity with those who resist.

Pandemic creations – links to a new world.

Public Reading Rooms — Tue, 19 May 2020 08:27:37 +0000

These are links to many articles, memes, strikes and songs produced in the wake of and by the pandemic. They have been compiled by Ken Knabb who has kept the Situ flame flickering over many decades.

I. GENERAL OVERVIEWS

Coronavirus Spells the End of the Neoliberal Era. What’s Next?
Article by Jeremy Lent, author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning.

Ten Premises for a Pandemic
Ten brief theses by Ian Alan Paul.

The Corona Reboot
Another text by the above author, notable for its analysis of the “domesticated/connected” sector and the “mobile/disposable” sector.

Coronavirus Capitalism — And How to Beat It
Short video by Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

The Impossible Has Already Happened: What Coronavirus Can Teach Us About Hope
Article by Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.

The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations
Article by science-fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson.

Corona Virus and the Collapse of Our Imagination
Short article by Jonathan Carp.

To Heal from Covid-19, We Must Imagine a Different World
Interview with authors Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin.

Coronavirus
Remarks by Raoul Vaneigem, author of The Revolution of Everyday Life.

The Plague and the Wrath
Article by Charles Reeve, author of Le Socialisme Sauvage.

Practicing Anarchy While the State Fiddles
Observations by San Francisco writer Chris Carlsson.

Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting
As noted by several people in this online discussion, this article by Julio Vincent Gambuto reflects some rather naïve notions about capitalism and American society, and its melodramatic narrative is sometimes corny and simplistic. But it has the merit of stressing that the “Great Pause” we are now experiencing is indeed an unprecedented break and opportunity.

The Pandemic Is a Portal
This article by novelist Arundhati Roy is mostly about conditions in India, but its eloquent concluding passage has already been shared and reshared among millions of people:

“Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality,’ trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

VII. MEMES

World: “There’s no way we can shut everything down in order to lower emissions, slow climate change and protect the environment.”
Mother Nature: “Here’s a virus. Practice.”

Things are not getting worse. They are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.

Also highly contagious is kindness, patience, love, enthusiasm, and a positive attitude. Don’t wait to catch it from others, be the carrier.

Nothing should go back to normal. Normal wasn’t working. If we go back to the way things were, we will have lost the lesson. May we rise up and do better.

May we grow back not to what was but instead toward what we can become.

Normal: Getting dressed in clothes you bought for work then driving through traffic in a car you’re still paying for in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car and the house you leave vacant all day just so you can afford to sleep there.

The economy isn’t “closed.” Everyone is working diligently homemaking, cooking meals, and taking care of their loved ones. It’s just not valued by economists because it’s normally women’s unpaid labor. Have a great day at work everyone!

The great irony coming out of all this is that the world’s economy is in danger simply because people are only buying what they need. Think about that.

Suddenly the whole nation is depending on the very people they don’t believe should make $15 an hour.

At least once in your life you will need a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, but day after day you will need a farm worker.

People currently in their second or third home want you to get back to your second or third job.

If the economy is crashing because people can’t work, I don’t understand why the entrepreneurs don’t just create more wealth. I’ve been told for years that they are the wealth creators. What’s the matter? Do they need the workers or something?

The number of billionaires pushing for everyone to go back to work early proves one thing and one thing only. They don’t make their money. You do.

Wouldn’t it be crazy if there was a large external shock to our extractive capitalist system that proved without a shadow of a doubt that our entire economy runs on the labor of the working class, not the unseen and immeasurable genius of plucky billionaires?

Isn’t it weird that people living from paycheck to paycheck are supposed to have months’ worth of savings for emergencies while billion-dollar corporations are so poorly managed they’re on the brink of bankruptcy after a week of reduced profits?

GADFE: Grandparents Against Dying For the Economy

Capitalism 1970: “Work hard, you too can be rich.”
Capitalism 1990: “Work hard and a few crumbs will fall down.”
Capitalism 2020: “You should be willing to die in order to save the economy for the top percent.”
Are you guys still all in for this?

Upon closer analysis I have concluded that we are not, in fact, “all in this together.”

We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm.

In hindsight, maybe structuring our society so that the greediest, most ruthless, and most shameless self-promoters get to hold all the power and make all the decisions was a mistake.

If you made $180,000 a day since the birth of Christ, Jeff Bezos would still have more money than you.

Have you ever considered the possibility that Jeff Bezos just works 130 billion times harder than you?

Challenge: Try to explain to me how the complex $6 trillion corporate bailout bill was better policy than taking the $6 trillion and simply giving all 157 million American workers $38,000 each?

What’s the difference between a ventilator and a bomb? There’s never any shortage of bombs.

Nancy Pelosi, April 2019: “When most people say they’re for Medicare-for-all, I think they mean health care for all. Let’s see what that means. A lot of people love having their employer-based insurance.” Have you polled the 10 million newly unemployed to see how they like it now, Nancy?

BIDEN: He Won’t Inject You with Bleach.

Do not under any circumstance take a disinfectant if you are currently taking Windex for windmill cancer.

The same people who said they voted for Trump because he says what he means are now telling us he doesn’t mean what he says.

America is the only place I know where you can institute a policy to save lives, watch it work, then have a large portion of the population complain that not enough people died to justify having instituted the policy.

A mob of the MAGA persuasion
Conducted a statehouse invasion.
Though heavily armed,
They parted unharmed,
And that’s how you know they’re Caucasian.

Calm down, everyone. These white dudes are just waving confederate flags, carrying assault weapons, and putting others’ lives at risk protesting their right to eat at Wendy’s . . . it’s not like they’re black athletes peacefully kneeling during a song protesting their right to live.

Folks, I feel we aren’t doing enough to provide our white men with hobbies.

Hell hath no fury like a white person mildly inconvenienced.

During the pandemic Far Right extremists have staged an armed occupation of a state capitol building while Far Left extremists are running food pantries and mutual aid organizations, but in a few months we’ll be hearing how both sides are equally violent.

The spread of Covid-19 is based on two factors:
1. How dense the population is.
2. How dense the population is.

Even on Gilligan’s Island they listened to the professor, not the millionaire.

Feels weird having to say this, but if you’re willing to go out and protest for haircuts and Häagen-Daz but not caged migrant children, you’re an enormous dickhead.

Imagine if in London during the Blitz there’d been a whole bunch of people going “I’ll turn on my lights if I feel like it.”

Did you ever notice that the Trump supporters protesting shutdowns aren’t demanding that bookstores and libraries be reopened? Why is that?

The first places open for regular business should be government buildings and offices. If the lawmakers aren’t ready to take those risks then what does that tell you?

They’re taking a “wait and see if you die first” approach.

We isolate now
So when we gather again
No one is missing.

We spent two decades mourning and analyzing and lamenting 3000 people from the September 11 attacks. Now, apparently, 3000 dead people a day is the price of doing business.

In the other timeline, Hillary’s impeachment trial begins today for her shameful handling of the COVID-19 crisis that has left 12 Americans dead.

They want to reopen the economy to save capitalism, because if the government was forced to distribute resources in a way that ensured our survival, they know we would never go back.

Relax. If the pandemic doesn’t kill you, Trump’s 100 environmental rollbacks probably will.

Stock Market: A graph of rich people feelings.

I wish white people protested when a black man is murdered the way they do when they need a haircut.

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.’’ (Mark Twain)

“All man’s misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to stay at rest in a room.” (Blaise Pascal, 1670)

One thing this pandemic has made abundantly clear: A whole lot of people simply cannot be alone with themselves. It’s telling.

Yes, lockdown poses its own mental health challenges. But can we please stop pretending that our former world of long working hours, stressful commuting, hectic crowds, shopping centers, infinite choice, mass consumerism, air pollution and 24/7 everything was a mental health utopia?

Alarming Report Suggests Americans Can’t Go Much Longer Without Jobs and Haircuts Before Becoming Hippies.

Marijuana is legal. Haircuts are not. It took fifty years but the hippies have finally won.

Now that I’ve lived through an actual plague, I totally understand why Italian Renaissance paintings are full of naked fat people lying on couches.

Back in my day, you could eat a raw bat without causing a global crisis.

We’re fighting a billion-dollar propaganda industry with memes. How fucking cool is that!

Wear a mask! It’s in the Ten Commandments! Thou shalt not Covid thy neighbor!

Since we’re all going to die, if anyone is secretly in love with me, now is the time to speak up.

It’s amazing how we’re screwing up an apocalypse on “easy” setting. We’re clearly not ready for zombies or aliens.

This lockdown is bringing out our innate creativity. Hard to imagine anything worse.

History essays in 2053: “Explain the use and role of memes as a coping mechanism during the Corona Virus Pandemic of 2020.”

Illustrated memes:

[Kindly doctor examining a little boy] “You’re a goner, Billy, but the economy is gonna be just swell.”

[Book cover with sultry woman] Pam Demic: She’s much worse than the flu! Nothing could flatten her curves!

[Picture of burning house] The fire has passed its peak, you can go back in now.

[Worker looking outside nervously] “Why is going back to work worth dying for?”
[Boss relaxing in easy chair] “Don’t ask me. You’re the one who’s going to be dying.”

PREGNANT PAUSE: Remarks on the Corona Crisis

Public Reading Rooms — Tue, 19 May 2020 08:13:48 +0000

from Ken Knabb

We were already living in a general global crisis, but most people were only vaguely aware of it since it was manifested in a confusing array of particular crises — social, political, economic, environmental. Climate change is the most momentous of these crises, but it is so complicated and so gradual that it has been easy for most people to ignore it.

The corona crisis has been sudden, undeniable, and inescapable. It is also taking place in an unprecedented context.

If this crisis had taken place fifty or sixty years ago, we would have been totally at the mercy of the mass media, reading about it in newspapers or magazines or sitting in front of a radio or television passively absorbing whatever instructions and reassurances were broadcast by politicians or newscasters, with scarcely any opportunity to respond except perhaps to write a letter to the editor and hope that it got printed. Back then, governments could get away with things like the Gulf of Tonkin incident because it was months or years before the truth eventually got out.

The development of social media during the last two decades has of course dramatically changed this. Although the mass media remain powerful, their monopolistic impact has been weakened and circumvented as more and more people have engaged in the new interactive means of communication. These new means were soon put to radical uses, such as rapidly exposing political lies and scandals that previously would have remained hidden, and they eventually played a crucial role in triggering and coordinating the Arab Spring and Occupy movements of 2011. A decade later, they have become routine for a large portion of the global population.

As a result, this is the first time in history that such a momentous event has taken place with virtually everyone on earth aware of it at the same time. And it is playing out while much of humanity is obliged to stay at home, where they can hardly avoid reflecting on the situation and sharing their reflections with others.

Crises always tend to expose social contradictions, but in this case, with the intense worldwide focus on each new development, the revelations have been particularly glaring.

The first and perhaps most startling one has been the rapid turnabout of governmental policies. Since the usual “market solutions” are obviously incapable of solving this crisis, governments are now feeling obliged to resort to massive implementation of the kinds of solutions they previously scorned as “unrealistic” or “utopian.” When anybody, rich or poor, native or foreign, can spread a deadly disease, anything less than free healthcare for all is self-evidently idiotic. When millions of businesses are closed and tens of millions of people are thrown out of work and have no prospect of finding a new job, the usual unemployment benefits are obviously hopelessly inadequate and policies like universal basic income become not just possible, but virtually unavoidable. As an Irish satirical website put it: “With private hospitals being taken into public ownership, increased welfare supports for the vast majority of the nation and a ban on evictions and the implementation of a rent freeze, Irish people are still trying to comprehend how they woke up today to find themselves in an idyllic socialist republic.”

Needless to say, our situation is actually far from idyllic. Although Ireland and many other countries have indeed implemented these kinds of emergency measures, when we look closer we find that the usual suspects are still in charge, with their usual priorities. Particularly in the United States, where the first to be rescued were the banks and corporations, as several trillion dollars were pumped into the financial markets without the slightest public debate. Then, when it became apparent that a more general bailout was needed, the vast majority of that bailout money also went to those same huge companies; much of the smaller amount designated for small businesses was snapped up by large chains before most of the actual small businesses got a penny; and the allotment for ordinary working families and unemployed people was a one-time payment that would scarcely cover two weeks of typical expenses. To add a twist of the knife, governors in several states have come up with the clever idea of prematurely reopening certain businesses, thereby making those workers ineligible for unemployment benefits if they refuse to endanger their lives.

The point of such bailouts is that certain industries are supposedly so essential that they need to be “saved.” But the fossil fuel industries don’t need to be saved, they need to be phased out as soon as possible. And there’s no reason to save the airlines, for example, because if they go bankrupt they can then be bought for pennies on the dollar by someone else (preferably the government) and restarted with the same workers, with the losses being borne by the previous owners. Yet these immensely wealthy and grossly polluting industries and others like them are getting hundreds of billions of dollars of “crisis relief.” But when it comes to things that lower- and middle-class people depend on, suddenly the message is: “We need to tighten our belts and not increase the federal debt.” Thus, Trump continues to push for a payroll tax cut (which would sabotage Social Security and Medicare) and he has threatened to veto any bailout that gives any assistance to the U.S. Postal Service (though UPS and Fedex have already been given billions of dollars of taxpayer money). The Republicans have tried for decades to bankrupt and privatize the Post Office — most blatantly in their 2006 act requiring the Post Office to fund its employees’ retirement benefits 75 years in advance (something no other entity, public or private, has ever been obliged to do) — but Trump’s particular vehemence on this topic at this time is due to his desire to prevent the possibility of mail-in voting in the coming election.

It shouldn’t take a genius to realize that the people at the lower end of the scale should be prioritized. Not only do billion-dollar corporations not need any more money, if they get more money most of it does not “trickle down” but is salted away in offshore tax shelters or used for stock buybacks. Whereas if each lower- and middle-class person gets, say, $2000 a month for the duration of the crisis (which would cost the government much less than the current bailouts of the super-rich), virtually all of that money will immediately be spent for basic needs, which will help at least some small businesses to remain in business, which will enable more people to keep their jobs, and so on. Small businesses also need immediate assistance (especially if they have been temporarily forced to suspend operation during the crisis) or they are likely to go bankrupt, in which case large businesses and banks will buy them up at bargain rates, thereby exacerbating the already extreme gap between a few mega-corporations at the top and everybody else at the bottom.

The corona crisis has exposed many national governments as criminally negligent, but most of them have at least attempted to deal with it in a somewhat serious manner once they realized the urgency of the situation. This has unfortunately not been the case in the United States, where Trump first declared that the whole thing was just a hoax that would soon blow over and that the death count would be “close to zero,” and then, when after doing virtually nothing for more than a month he was finally forced to admit that it was actually a serious crisis, announced that thanks to his brilliant leadership “only” around 100,000 or 200,000 Americans will die. Months into the pandemic there is still no national stay-at-home order, no national testing plan, no national procurement and distribution of life-saving medical supplies, and Trump continues to downplay the crisis in a frantic effort to open things up soon enough to revive his reelection chances.

Since his dillydallying has already been responsible for tens of thousands of additional deaths, and since he is also presiding over an economic chaos not seen in America since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Democrats should normally have no trouble in defeating him in November. But as it did four years ago, the Democratic Party establishment has demonstrated once again that it would rather risk losing to Trump with a business-as-usual corporate tool than risk winning with Bernie Sanders. Sanders’s programs (Medicare for All, Green New Deal, etc.) were already popular with most voters, and they have become even more so as the corona crisis has made the need for them more obvious. The fact that such commonsensical reforms are seen as radical is just a reflection of how cluelessly reactionary American politics has become by comparison with most of the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, since it soon became clear to just about everyone that Trump hasn’t the dimmest idea of how to deal with the corona crisis except to showcase his amazing medical knowledge and brag about his TV ratings, everyone else has been left to deal with it on their own. Though some state and local governments have helped, it should be noted that many of the earliest, most extensive, and most creative responses have been carried out by ordinary people on their own initiative — young people doing shopping for older and more vulnerable neighbors, people making and donating the protective masks that the governments neglected to stockpile, health professionals offering safety tips, tech-savvy people helping others to set up virtual meetings, parents sharing activities for kids, others donating to food banks, or crowdfunding to support popular small businesses, or forming support networks for prisoners, immigrants, homeless people, etc.

The crisis has vividly demonstrated the interconnectedness of people and countries all over the world, but it has also revealed, for those who weren’t already aware of it, that vulnerability is not equally shared. As always, those at the bottom bear the brunt — people in prisons or immigrant detention centers or living in crowded slums, people who can’t practice social distancing and who may not even have facilities to effectively wash their hands. While many of us are able to stay at home with only mild inconvenience, others are unable to remain at home (if they even have a home) or to share so many things via social media (if they even have a computer or a smartphone) because they are forced to continue working at “essential jobs,” under dangerous conditions and often for minimum wage and no benefits, in order to provide food, utilities, deliveries, and other services for the people who are staying home. (See Ian Alan Paul’s provocative analysis of the “domesticated/connected” sector and the “mobile/disposable” sector in The Corona Reboot.)

The “mobile/disposable” workers are usually too isolated and too vulnerable to dare to struggle (especially if they are undocumented), but because most of their jobs are indeed essential, they now have a potentially powerful leverage and it is not surprising that they are starting to use it. As the dangers and stresses build up, their patience has given way, beginning with widespread wildcat strikes in Italy in March, then spreading to several other countries. In the United States protests and strikes have broken out among workers at Amazon, Instacart, Walmart, McDonald’s, Uber, Fedex, grocery workers, garbage workers, auto workers, nursing home workers, agricultural workers, meat packers, bus drivers, truck drivers, and many others; nurses and other healthcare workers have protested medical equipment shortages; workers at GE have demanded repurposing jet engine factories to make ventilators; homeless families have occupied vacant buildings; rent strikes have been launched in several cities; and prisoners and detained immigrants are hunger-striking to expose their particularly unsafe conditions. Needless to say, all these struggles should be supported, and frontline workers should be first in line in any bailout.

After months of staying at home, everyone is naturally anxious to resume some degree of social life as soon as possible. There are legitimate debates about just how soon and under what conditions it is safest to do this. What is not legitimate is to deliberately ignore or deny the dangers simply so that businesses can resume and politicians can get reelected. The most grossly illuminating revelation of the whole crisis has been seeing pundits and politicians openly declare that it’s an acceptable trade-off for millions of people to die if that’s what it takes to “save the economy.” This admission of the system’s real priorities may backfire. People have been told all their lives that this economy is inevitable and indispensable, and that if they just give it free rein it will ultimately work for them. If they start seeing it for what it actually is (a con game that enables a tiny number of people to control everyone else in the world through their possession and manipulation of magic pieces of paper), they may conclude that it needs to be replaced, not saved. “Once society discovers that it depends on the economy, the economy in fact depends on the society” (Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle).

In the links list below, you can find articles going into detail about these and other aspects of the crisis. But at this point I’d like to step back and look at what I consider the most significant aspect of this whole situation: the experience of the shutdown itself.

This experience is so unprecedented, and it is changing so dramatically from day to day, that we still don’t quite know what to think of it. We keep secretly hoping that we’ll wake up and discover that it was just a nightmare, but each morning it’s still here. But as we have gradually gotten at least somewhat used to it, it is offering its own revelations.

Any pause may give us time to reflect on our lives and reassess our priorities, but knowing that everyone else is doing this at the same time gives these reflections a more collective focus. This pause is shaking us out of our usual habits and presumptions and giving each and all of us a rare chance to see our lives and our society in a fresh light. As each day brings fresh news, things seem to be speeding up; yet so many things have stopped or at least drastically slowed down, it also sometimes seems like everything is in slow motion; or as if we’d all been sleepwalking and were suddenly awakened — looking around at each other in amazement at the strange new reality, and how it contrasts with what we previously considered normal.

We come to realize how much we miss certain things, but also that there are things we don’t miss. Many people have noted (usually with a half-guilty hesitation, since they are of course quite aware of the devastation that is going on in many other people’s lives) that they personally are appreciating the experience in some regards. It’s much quieter, the skies are clearer, there’s scarcely any traffic, fish are returning to formerly polluted waterways, in some cities wild animals are venturing into the empty streets. There has been much joking about how those who like quiet contemplative living are hardly noticing any difference, in contrast to the frustrations and anxieties of those who are used to more gregarious lifestyles. In any case, whether they like it or not, millions of people are getting a crash course in cloistered living, with repeated daily schedules almost like monks in a monastery. They may continue to distract themselves with entertainments, but the reality keeps bringing them back to the present moment.

I suspect that the frantic urgency of various political leaders to get things “back to normal” as soon as possible is not only for the ostensible economic reasons, but also because they dimly sense that the longer this pause goes on, the more people will become detached from the addictive consumer pursuits of their previous lives and the more they will be open to exploring new possibilities.

One of the first things that many people have noticed is that the social distancing, however frustrating it may be in some regards, is ironically bringing people closer together in spirit. As people get a new appreciation of what others mean to them, they are sharing their thoughts and feelings more intently and more widely than ever — personally via phone calls and emails, collectively via social media.

Many of the things shared are of course pretty modest and ordinary — reassuring each other that we’re doing okay (or not), comparing notes about how to deal with this or that inconvenience, recommending films or music or books we’ve been bingeing on. But people are also coming up with memes, jokes, essays, poems, songs, satires, skits. However amateurish many of these things may be, the ensemble effect of thousands of these personal expressions being shared all over the globe is in some ways more moving than watching professional performances under ordinary circumstances.

The simplest and most common social-media posts have been memes: short stand-alone statements or captions added to illustrations. In contrast to traditional political slogans vehemently for or against something, these memes typically have a more deadpan tone with an ironical twist, leaving it up to the reader to recognize the contradictions being revealed.

It is interesting to compare these memes with the popular expressions of another crisis just over fifty years ago — the graffiti of the May 1968 revolt in France. There are some obvious differences in tone and context, but in both cases there’s a marvelous mix of humor and insight, anger and irony, outrage and imagination.

The 1968 crisis was intentionally provoked. A series of protests and street fights by thousands of young people in Paris inspired a wildcat general strike in which more than ten million workers occupied factories and workplaces all over France, shutting down the country for several weeks. When you look at the graffiti, you can sense that these people were actively making their own history. They were not merely protesting, they were exploring and experimenting and celebrating, and those graffiti were expressions of the joy and exuberance of their actions.

Our present situation resembles that earlier one in the sense that suddenly everything has come to a virtual standstill, leaving people to look around at each other and wonder: What next? But during May 1968, when the government had momentarily backed off (since it was powerless in the face of the general strike), that meant: What should we do next? (Should we take over this building? Should we restart this factory under our own control?) In our more passive situation it mostly means: What’s the government going to do next? What’s the latest news about the virus?

The memes being shared during the present crisis reflect this passivity. For the most part they express people’s reactions to finding themselves in an unpleasant situation that they did not choose, let alone provoke. Some frontline workers are striking, but only sporadically, out of desperation. Virtually everyone else is staying at home. They may denounce various outrages, or advocate various policies that might make things better, or root for politicians who they hope will implement such policies, but it’s from the sidelines. Participation is limited to things like signing petitions or sending donations, though there are occasional mentions of things that people might do once they are free to go out into the streets again.

At the same time, however, millions of people are using this pause to investigate and critique the system’s fiascos, and they are doing this at a time when practically everyone else in the world is obsessively focused on the same issues. I think this first ever global discussion about our society is potentially more important than the particular crisis that happened to trigger it.

It is admittedly a very confused and chaotic discussion, taking place within the even more chaotic background noise of billions of people’s ongoing individual concerns. But the point is that anyone can take part whenever they wish and potentially have some impact. They can post their own ideas, or if they see some other idea or article they agree with, they can email the link to their network of friends or share it on Facebook or other social media, and if other people agree that it is pertinent, they may in turn share it with their friends, and so on, and within a few days millions of people may be aware of it and able to further share it or adapt it or critique it.

This discussion is of course far from being a democratic decision-making process. Nothing is being decided beyond vague fluctuations of the popularity of this or that meme or idea. If a significant global movement comes out of this crisis, it will need to develop more rigorous ways to determine and coordinate the actions that the participants feel are appropriate, and it will obviously not want its communications to depend on privately owned and manipulated media platforms as they do now. But meanwhile we have to work with what we’ve got — on this terrain where virtually everyone in the world is already connected, however superficially. It’s already a big first step that everyone is able to personally weigh in instead of leaving things to leaders and celebrities. To go further, we need to be aware that this is happening, aware that what is going on within us and among us is potentially more promising than all the farcical political dramas we are watching so intently.

These ideas may seem extravagant, but they are hardly more so than the reality we are facing. The International Labor Organization has reported that nearly half of the global workforce is now at risk of losing its livelihoods. That amounts to 1.6 billion workers out of a total of 3.3 billion — a level of social disruption far more extreme than the Great Depression of the 1930s. I have no idea what will come of this, but I don’t think that 1.6 billion people are going to meekly curl up and die so that the ruling elite’s economic con game can continue to thrive. Something is going to give.

Whatever else happens, it is clear that nothing will ever be the same again. As so many people have noted, we can’t “return to normal.” That old normal was a mess, even if some people were in sufficiently comfortable circumstances that they could tell themselves that it wasn’t all that bad. In addition to all its other problems, it was already propelling us toward a global catastrophe far worse than what we are going through now.

Fortunately, I don’t think we could go back even if we wanted to. Too many people have now seen the deadly insanity of this society too clearly. Organizing a different kind of society — a creative, cooperative global community based on generously fulfilling the needs of everyone rather than protecting the exorbitant wealth and power of a tiny minority at the top — is not simply an ideal, it is now a practical necessity. (My own views on what such a society might look like and how we might get there are set out in The Joy of Revolution.)

The coronavirus is simply one side effect of climate change (one of the many new diseases being generated by deforestation and its resulting disruption of wildlife habitats). If we don’t act now, we will soon face other crises, including other pandemics, under much more unfavorable conditions, after climate change and its associated disasters have crashed our social and technological infrastructures.

The corona crisis and the climate change crisis are very different in timing and in scale. The first one is sudden and fast-moving — every day of delay means thousands of additional deaths. The second is far more gradual, but also far more momentous — every year of delay will probably mean millions of additional deaths, along with a miserable existence for those who survive under such dystopic conditions.

But this shock we are now experiencing is also an opportunity for a new beginning. Hopefully, we may one day look back and see it as the wake-up call that managed to bring humanity to its senses before it was too late.

BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS
May 17 2020

Mexico’s response to the pandemic

Public Reading Rooms — Sun, 17 May 2020 15:00:32 +0000

David Raby writes: The Covid-19 pandemic, the worst such event in a century, has laid bare the best and the worst among governments around the world. The efficiency of China and South Korea – two neighbouring but politically very different countries – contrasts with the complacency, followed by panic, of several Western countries, notably the US and the UK.

The most chaotic and tragic failure is that of the US under Trump, followed in the Americas by its client states in Brazil and Ecuador. This contrasts dramatically with the success of socialist Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua in protecting the health and welfare of their peoples, with Cuba’s extraordinary medical internationalism once again earning praise from around the world.

Mexico has had to confront this unprecedented crisis just as it embarks on an ambitious programme of radical transformation under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, inaugurated in December 2018. His “Fourth Transformation” (4T) aims to establish social and economic justice, eliminate corruption and create real participatory democracy in the country by peaceful and consensual means.

The drive to create a Mexican NHS

Before López Obrador’s inauguration on 1st December 2018, Mexico had a patchwork and incomplete health system which had never covered the entire population and which had been seriously run down by the neoliberal governments of the previous three decades. The ISSSTE (Institute of Social Security Services for State Workers) covered public-sector workers; the IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute) encompassed many private-sector workers in formal employment; the Armed Forces and PEMEX (the national oil company) had their own systems; and those who could afford it used private medicine.

The neoliberal governments of the previous three decades had splashed public money around with abandon, encouraging patronage and corruption, with the result in the health sector that scores of “new” hospitals were incomplete, some in ruins and others requiring substantial new investment to get them up to standard. When López Obrador took office in December 2018 his team found 217 health centres and 110 hospitals abandoned. By May 2020 54 of these health centres had been completed, 56 were in process of reconstruction and 107 had been condemned as unfit for use; of the hospitals, 18 had been completed, 50 were in process of reconstruction and 42 condemned.

A key component of the new government’s Fourth Transformation was to integrate these diverse institutions and create a universal service, a Mexican NHS. In mid-2019 López Obrador began systematically visiting hospitals in the most deprived areas so that his team could gather information on their shortcomings and on the health needs of local communities. His government prepared a legislative initiative to reform Article 4 of the Mexican Constitution (which deals with social security in general), among other things to establish the universal right to health care as a fundamental principle; this was passed by both Houses of Congress and officially became law on 4th April 2020 following approval by a majority of the State legislatures.

With the decision to make health care a fundamental right, the Department of Health budget was increased by 40 billion pesos (about 1.6 billion dollars), and a new institution, the INSABI (Institute of Health for Welfare) was created to provide free services to all those not covered by the existing programmes. INSABI was inaugurated on 1st January 2020 and by 31st January 23 of 32 States had affiliated to it. Also from 1st January to early May 2020 over 40,000 more doctors and nurses were hired by the various public health institutions.

With a universal health system in process of construction, the country inevitably faced problems in dealing with the pandemic, but its rapid and organised reaction to the emergency enabled it to take appropriate measures when Covid-19 arrived. In addition to the measures outlined above, in mid-April the government negotiated an agreement with private hospitals which agreed to provide free treatment to non-Covid patients in order to relieve pressure on public institutions.

López Obrador also made personal contact with President Trump and with Chinese President Xi Jinping to request assistance with the supply of medical equipment. A formal agreement with China created a “puente aéreo” (a special airborne connection) to supply ventilators, test kits and protective equipment (PPE), and Trump also agreed to facilitate a ventilator deal with a US company.

The first flight from Shanghai arrived with 200 ventilators on April 8th (although already on April 1st 50,000 test kits had arrived), and weekly flights have continued with more supplies. These are commercial purchases at favourable prices, but Mexico has also received donations from China, the US, South Korea, Denmark and Switzerland.

Communication with the population about the pandemic has been exemplary: in addition to the President’s morning press conferences where the health chiefs are often present, Dr López-Gatell gives daily briefings with exhaustive information and responds in detail to questions, refusing to be provoked by hostile and ill-informed queries.

At the time of writing (mid-May 2020) Mexico has just announced its plan for exiting from lockdown. At the mañanera of May 13th López Obrador, accompanied by Health Secretary Dr Jorge Alcocer, Deputy Health Secretary Dr Hugo López-Gatell and several other ministers, explained in detail how they will ease restrictions in three stages. Restrictions will be lifted on a regional and sectoral basis depending on data regarding Covid-19 infections and deaths, and will be subject to weekly review. Non-essential economic activities will be resumed and schools will reopen on this same regional basis, and guided by a four-colour traffic light system (red, orange, yellow and green). Economic reactivation will take place but the first priority will always be public health.

The politics of the pandemic

The expected arrival of Covid-19 in Mexico was eagerly seized upon by the domestic opposition and the international media as a stick with which to beat López Obrador and his progressive plans. Scarcely had the first virus cases been reported than the media began to accuse the President of complacency and to compare him (with no justification) to Brazil’s Bolsonaro.

From the beginning the President insisted that Mexico would avoid panic and repressive measures in dealing with the pandemic; he would be guided by medical and scientific advice at all times. In his daily morning press conferences (mañaneras) he began to be accompanied by leading figures from the Ministry of Public Health, notably Dr Hugo López-Gatell, Deputy Secretary of Health Protection and Promotion, whose clarity, knowledge and attention to detail are outstanding.

Both the President and the Deputy Secretary refused to impose a lockdown when the country still had only a very small number of cases, and for this they were repeatedly accused of complacency and indifference by a hostile media. They pointed out that a premature lockdown would cause massive disruption and hardship for the majority of Mexicans who depend on precarious employment and small businesses for survival.

Unfortunately for those who accuse López Obrador and his government of complacency, as early as February 4th 2020, when Mexico had yet to report any Covid-19 cases, WHO international advisor on health emergencies Jean-Marc Gabastou declared that “Mexico was the first country [in the world]to react and to activate its emergency system along the lines established by international health regulations”.

In March Dr López-Gatell outlined a clear three-stage plan for dealing with the pandemic, based on evidence of the extent of transmission of the virus. Phase 1 is that of containment: detection, diagnosis and isolation, when there are very few cases and they can easily be isolated and contacts followed up. Phase 2 is that of social distancing and mitigation when local transmission has begun. Phase 3 is when community transmission has become widespread, a Health Emergency is declared, all non-essential activities are suspended and people are urged to stay at home and self-isolate.

Phase 1 began early in March when the first cases were confirmed, and phase 2 was declared on March 22nd after confirmation the previous day of the first two deaths, with a total of 251 confirmed cases. A National Safe Distancing Campaign was decreed, with an iconic Superwoman, “Susana Distancia”, as mascot (Su Sana Distancia means “Your Safe Distance”). The Easter school break was brought forward to begin on March 23rd and continue to at least 19 April (later extended); all mass events were cancelled; and a maximum of 50 people with safe distancing was decreed for any meetings.

Unlike many countries that have used draconian decrees and police repression to enforce restrictions during the pandemic, Mexico has relied on persuasion and cooperation to achieve distancing, staying at home and closure of enterprises in non-essential sectors. López Obrador quotes Benito Juárez, “Nothing by Force, Everything by Reason and Law”, and in this field as in everything he relies on voluntary compliance. Time and again he praises the Mexican people for their public spirit and good sense, and this positive social psychology seems to be working: figures indicate that well over two thirds of the population are staying at home and 95% of non-essential enterprises have closed down or adopted home working.

None of this has diminished the right-wing propaganda campaign against Mexico and its 4T transformation, and the complex health situation arising (as in all countries) from the pandemic is being used for this purpose. On May 8th the New York Times published a sensationalist article by Azam Ahmed with the title “Hidden Toll: Mexico Ignores Wave of Coronavirus Deaths in Capital”, and similar articles were then published in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and El País of Spain. The article alleges that real deaths are much higher than the official figure and that patients are dying in corridors or on the street while searching for treatment. But it is based entirely on rumours and hearsay, without a single piece of hard evidence, and its arguments for questioning official statistics could be applied to virtually any country, even the most efficient. It should be seen as just one more example of how the mainstream media have become more than ever part of the global establishment, designed to discredit any real alternative to neoliberalism.

As explained above, Mexico’s record on dealing with the pandemic is excellent, and its per capita data on Covid-19 infections and deaths are significantly better than those of major European countries or the US. Its plan for exiting from lockdown is exemplary in its clarity and thoroughness and its insistence on health and welfare as the highest priorities.

The Fourth Transformation and the pandemic

The Mexican opposition and much of the international media have seen the crisis caused by the pandemic as a perfect excuse to derail López Obrador’s 4T agenda for radical change in Mexico. Opposition strategy has been both to discredit the government’s handling of the pandemic and to insist on “business as usual” as the only way forward.

López Obrador and his team are well aware of this and have reacted accordingly. Time and again he has insisted that the real cause of the crisis is neoliberalism and that the pandemic only makes the 4T more necessary: “There can be no half measures, it’s either corruption or transformation!”

Faced with the economic crisis that accompanies the pandemic, López Obrador insists that it is a crisis of neoliberalism and that his government cannot react by rescuing the wealthy and the corporate sector, as used to be the case, “socialising losses and privatising profits”. The priority must be to help the poor and excluded and small and medium enterprises, and to do this the government has a plan which is intended to help 70% of the population, “starting from the bottom upwards”.

On April 16th the President declared “Even in this economic crisis, there are solutions: if we take care of the weakest, the poorest and the marginalised”. What is being proposed is a moral economy, not one based on individual gain. While respecting big businesses that pay their taxes and avoid sacking workers, the government will not spend vast amounts rescuing bankrupt enterprises or financial interests as happened in the 1990s with the FOBAPROA scandal, a deposit protection scheme that became a massive corruption scandal and cost the country over 3 billion dollars.

Instead, the economic crisis is being addressed by reinforcing a raft of welfare schemes already begun or planned as part of the 4T. Pensions for Senior Citizens, already established, were brought forward in terms of scheduled payments and distributed directly to over 8 million people. Special credits of 25,000 pesos are being paid to over a million small businesses, 90% of them with no more than 5 employees; they are at the lowest available interest rate of 6%, with 3 months’ grace before repayments begin, and are issued “on trust” (without collateral). Housing credits, also approximately a million of them, are being issued, and in the poorest areas are in the form of grants rather than credits.

The list continues: a grant scheme for young people in neither education nor employment, Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro (Young People Building the Future) is being extended; the Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) scheme to support small farmers who combine reforestation with agriculture is also being increased; the new education plan called “The School Is Ours” which allows each community to manage its own school budget is being accelerated; and so on.

A crucial aspect of all these schemes is that payments are made directly to recipients from the Federal Treasury, without intermediaries, to prevent corruption or bureaucratic delays. López Obrador insists that what exists or is being created in Mexico is “a people that governs itself” – “We are governing with the People, so as to create a responsible society, a conscious citizenry”.

Employment is also being generated by a range of public works investments such as the Mayan Train and new suburban railways around Mexico City and Guadalajara, the restoration of the public oil company PEMEX to serve domestic needs rather than export, and the restoration of the Federal Electricity Commission, including support for local renewable energy schemes. The entire welfare and public investment plan with its broader economic implications is so ambitious that it cannot be analysed in one article, and I shall return to it later in more detail.

Mexico’s international role

Most significant has been Mexico’s international role on matters relating to the pandemic. On March 26th López Obrador participated in a virtual meeting of the G-20 countries, in which he pointed out the relationship of the pandemic to issues of inequality and the need to address these issues.

On April 1st at the United Nations Mexico presented a resolution in support of the UN and the World Health Organisation in the campaign against the pandemic, and calling on all countries to stop commercial speculation in medicines and medical equipment and to ensure universal access to any vaccine or treatment for the virus. This resolution was passed on April 20th with the support of 179 of 193 countries.

López Obrador has made it clear that he regards this as a fundamental political issue: on May 5th he wrote an article, which has since been translated into English and French and widely distributed on social media, with the title “Some Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic”.

The article does not pull any punches. “First, it is a fact that, during the neoliberal period, public health systems were not a priority for most governments in the world…” and it is clear that “We must strengthen the public health systems, in the understanding that – just as with education and social security – health cannot simply be a commodity or a privilege but is rather an inherent right of all human beings”.

– “We must urgently address the serious problem of chronic diseases which are, de facto, the pandemics that have caused the most deaths in the world…many more lose their lives because of heart attacks, obesity and diabetes than those who, tragically, will die from the coronavirus…”

– “We need a more caring world in order to strengthen universal brotherhood, and we should start by putting an end to the stockpiling of food, medicine and hospital equipment…There must be a guarantee that no-one on the planet is deprived of medicines, medical care or hospital services due to the lack of financial resources or because market forces put these benefits out of reach.”

– “States must stop using a model that creates wealth without wellbeing…It is the responsibility of the State to reduce social inequalities. We cannot continue to leave social justice off the governments’ agenda…”

– “The ideas and actions of the governments of the world should be guided more by humanitarian principles than by economic or personal interests, or by the interests of groups or powers…We must say no to violence or wars of any sort…”

Finally, López Obrador recognises that the coronavirus pandemic will leave us with a legacy of tragic deaths and with a much diminished economy, and declares that as we rebuild, we must do so on a basis of human values and solidarity. His statement is a manifesto for fundamental global change.

David Raby is a writer, political activist and retired academic living in Norwich (UK). Professor Emeritus in Latin American History, University of Toronto, and former Senior Fellow in Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool. Former City Councillor in Norwich. Executive member, Venezuela Solidarity Campaign; Chair, Norwich-El Viejo (Nicaragua) Twinning Link. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @DLRaby.

Nurseries: Protecting Small Children, Staff and Parents

Public Reading Rooms — Sat, 16 May 2020 14:13:22 +0000

Jonathan Neale

The UK government plans to start opening schools, nurseries and day care on June 1. There is a very large movement of resistance, led by school staff and parents. I have three thoughts that might be useful.

First, the worst danger is not that children die. It’s not even that vulnerable staff die, which is much more likely. The worst danger is that a child catches a light case and takes the virus home and a mum or dad with an underlying condition dies, and the child lives with that for seventy years.

Some people wonder if children can transmit that disease. If you wonder too, ask yourself two questions. Why do you think governments all over the world closed the schools in the first place? And – have you ever caught a cold or flu that a small child brought home from school?

Nursery schools and day care

Second, the education unions are putting up strong, united and very public resistance to the government’s push to reopen the schools. But there is a flaw in the unions’ strategy. They are calling on union members in school to resist the reopening school by school, forcing the school management to try to prove that it will be safe. This strategy may force most schools to concede. It may also force the government to change course.

But there is a real danger that staff in the least organised schools may fall through the cracks. This is particularly true of nursery and day care workers.

The government says that three year groups in primary schools should come back on June 1. But they say that all private nurseries and day cares are supposed to reopen on June 1. If those workers do not go back, they lose their jobs. Social distancing is impossible.

In nurseries and day care, you cannot stay two meters away while you change a nappy. You cannot stay two meters away from a two-year old. You will pick up a crying baby. You cannot make three-year-olds stay two meters apart. The odds are that at least one child will vomit on you, and the poo of another one will get on your hands.

There is danger here to the workers. And there is danger some children will give the virus to a parent.

Teachers believe they will be paid if the union at their school refuses to go back. I think they are right. Very few private nursery and day care workers have a union. They believe they will be sacked if they do not go back. They are very low paid anyway, and have little savings.

The education unions are fighting school by school. That may win, and at least helps nursery workers. But nursery and day care workers also need some sort of fight across the board, because they are so few and week workplace by workplace. That means they have to get organised and start protesting in public and online, so everyone can see them. It also means they need vocal support from all other school staff.

Just as it seems everyone is now discussing opening the schools, we need everyone discussing the nurseries and day cares.

10,000 protesters

Third, on Tuesday the casino workers union in Las Vegas organised a protest drive down the strip by 10,000 workers in cars. The casinos plan to reopen, and the workers were demanding a series of safety measures which would effectively stop the reopening.

A bit like education unions in England, actually.

There is a lesson from Vegas. In a time of lockdown, it is possible to have a mass demonstration with safe social distancing. If you have popular support, there is nothing the authorities can do to stop you.

I personally know quite a lot of teachers. Most of the ones I know have some sort of access to a car.

I leave you with these three thoughts.

Jonathan Neale is a writer, a grandparent and a climate activist. He tweets @NealeSayles.

Don’t Go Back Until it’s safe And it’s not safe now

Public Reading Rooms — Tue, 12 May 2020 08:09:51 +0000

Jonathan Neale

In his speech Sunday night Boris Johnson said that workers in manufacturing and construction should go back to work.

This is class cruelty. The government and employers aim to send mostly manual workers in manufacturing and construction into danger. There they will join the essential workers in cleaning, shop work, logistics, care homes, hospitals and all the others. The people at work will be mostly manual workers and low paid service workers. The people working from home will be the professionals and the better paid office workers. It will not be just the manual and service workers at risk, though. Their families will be exposed too. And the statistics already tell us that the low-paid, manual workers, and black and minority ethnic people are all dying in greater numbers.

We already know that we live in an unfair world. But this is going too far.

So please do not go back. If possible, simply refuse to go back to work until you are safe, collectively, across the board. If that is not possible, go stand outside work together and start to negotiate with management. Tell them your collective demands for safety before you start.

If that is not possible, go into work and start talking to each other and keep talking to each other. See if you can come together to make management negotiate.

You need to talk to your workmates and act together, and all the workplaces, across the board, need to stick together too.

This government has been forced to change course before. Public opinion forced them to lockdown in the first place. The opinion polls say 80% of the people support the lockdown. The law says that workers can refuse to work if there is imminent danger in health and safety. This is all about danger, health and safety. The governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are saying stay home and stay safe.

Almost all the unions are saying do not work if it is not safe. But many of the unions are only telling us to fight workplace by workplace. An awful lot of workplaces have no union. In many more the union is weak and people are not confident. We will have to fight this one workplace at a time. But we also need unions to say no non-essential workers should be at work now.

After all, the danger is not just workplace by workplace. The danger is for everyone, because the number of cases and deaths each day is still so high. This is not the time to unleash the monster. We need unions that say nationally, and loudly, for everyone, don’t go back.

The bottom lines

Three things matter most in negotiation – distance, touching, testing and keeping vulnerable workers at home.

Standing two meters apart out of doors is crucial. But as many building workers have discovered, it is very, very hard to keep that up consistently. That difficulty makes building sites unsafe.

Then there’s touching the surfaces, tools, machines and materials other workers have touched. That is hard to avoid in any number of jobs.

Moreover, indoor work is dangerous even if you keep distance. You are not safe when you work in a room and someone in that room has covid. Even if you are more than two meters apart the virus will still build up in the air. You breathe that air for eight hours.

The key thing in whether you catch the virus is how much ‘viral load’ you breathe in. Several things affect the load. You get more load the closer you are to the person, the longer you share the air with them, the more the air is trapped in a room, the more they or you talk, and the more they sneeze or cough. A safe workplace is a workplace where no one is breathing out the virus.

For clear, detailed explanations of why sharing big rooms while distanced from each other, see this article by Erin Bromage, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth: https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

Tests

There is a way you can make sure no one at work has the virus. Tell management to set up tests so no one starts until they have their results back. Then everyone gets retested every few days. If anyone tests positive, everyone who has been in contact with them, or worked in the same small room, or big room, or workshop or garage or shopfloor as them, goes home and stays home until they are confirmed negative.

The employers will tell you they can’t get the tests, and they can’t get the results back in time. That’s the problem, right there. It’s a problem for the government. And the government can fix it if they want to. Many other countries do far, far more tests. Our government has known of the need for testing for four months now, and not really bothered to get it sorted. It is frightening to think how little they care about us. If people in danger won’t work, they will have to bother.

By the way, doing those tests is skilled work, and the results are useless if the tests are not done correctly. So avoid the cowboy firms who are doing the tests now.

Protect the most vulnerable

One other condition is important. If humanly possible, get management to agree that vulnerable workers can stay home until everyone is consistently testing negative. That means workers who are themselves vulnerable are paid to stay home, but also workers who live with someone vulnerable.

The employers will say they cannot afford that because too many workers will be vulnerable, and there is still a lot of covid in the wider community. Again, that’s the problem right there.

Management may try to get you to negotiate on all sorts of other things. If you can’t win on testing and vulnerable workers, you may have to negotiate other partial solutions. But try to stick to the bottom line.

Sticking together

The crucial thing is – don’t let them pick you off one by one. Talk to each other on phones, on social media, outside work, in work. Talk to people you know on other jobs. Share information widely on every job where people refuse to work, or try to refuse to work. Keep talking. Human beings get strength from each other.

This is not about teenagers flirting in parks. It is not about picnics and shopping. Most healthy people will probably be OK if they shop quickly and keep distance. Shop workers who breathe in those rooms eight hours a day are not OK. Not OK at all. We owe them a debt, like we owe the health, care and other essential workers. But all the media fuss about the lockdown is coming from the government and the employers. And it’s about one thing – getting us to work eight hours a day in the same room with someone who is contagious – to make profits.

If enough workplaces act together, and everyone keeps talking to each other, online and in reality, we can stop this.

Jonathan Neale is a writer, and a covid and climate jobs activist. On twitter he is @NealeSayles.

A public inquiry on the UK government coronavirus response is necessary and urgent

Public Reading Rooms — Fri, 08 May 2020 13:38:25 +0000

Laura Parker and Andrea Pisauro write: Over the course of just a few months, the coronavirus pandemic has brought about a considerable loss of human life, a severe and ongoing public health emergency and significant disruption to virtually all human activities across the planet. Far from being suppressed, it appears extremely likely that the epidemic will accompany our lives for many months to come. Its implications will profoundly reshape the economic, political and cultural institutions which govern society.

Due to the uneven spread of the epidemic amongst different countries and the differences in their governments’ response to it, it is impossible to predict exactly how this crisis will unravel. However it is possible, some three months after the beginning of the epidemic in the UK, to draw the first conclusions about the UK governments’ response and how it compares with elsewhere. It is already clear to those who have had the chance to scrutinise the UK government’s actions that these have been characterised by catastrophic errors and a staggering level of complacency. A tragic farce which will have cost the lives of thousands of citizens and pales in comparison to the more effective responses of most other European countries.

In a symbolic coincidence, the coronavirus epidemic officially arrived in Britain on the 31st of January, Brexit day, when two patients in Newcastle tested positive to the COVID-19 test, upon their return from a trip to China. The news broke on the cover page of most newspapers alongside the celebration of Brexit. Unlike Brexit, COVID-19 related news has not left the front pages since then. At the time of writing (1 May), some 177,000 people are known to have been infected in the UK and 27,510 have died, although it is known that both numbers significantly underestimate the actual extent of the virus’ spread.

It should have been clear of course that ‘exceptional’ Britain would be given no special treatment by a virus. Viruses have no respect for British exceptionalism; they know no borders; they make no distinction on the basis of passport or race. They only know how to reproduce themselves in the human body and there is only one human race – whether it is in Britain, China or anywhere else.

Yet for almost two months the UK government ignored the alarming news breaking first from China, where a city of 10 million people was locked down on January 23rd, and then from Europe, where northern Italy experienced a severe outbreak from February 20th.

It now sounds almost incredible but until March 16th, the government’s strategy was merely to “mitigate” the spread of the coronavirus, following a protocol for a flu pandemic developed in 2011, despite the deadliest flu estimated by some to be up to 30 times less deadly than COVID-19. This was implicitly admitted by the government itself, in its coronavirus action plan published on March the 3rd. This plan provided details of a 4 phased response which aimed to Contain, Delay, Research and Mitigate the impact of the virus, without ever mentioning the need to suppress its spread.

Despite subsequent protestations to the contrary, and an attempt to suggest that attaining so-called ‘herd immunity’ was a by-product, rather than a strategic aim, it is clear that the government’s strategy was indeed based on achieving herd immunity. That is, allowing the infection of a considerable proportion of the UK population, which would then be assumed to be immune in the long term – something which has to date not been confirmed by any scientific study. This was made clear in one of the daily, live briefings by Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance, on March 13th.

The previous day, the study from Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College London was first discussed in a meeting of SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), the scientific advisory committee that informs the government policy. It predicted that in a best case scenario, under the mitigation strategy pursued by the government, NHS surge limits for “both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold” and 250,000 deaths had to be expected.

This was not the highest estimate for the death toll which was likely under the government policy. Reuters reports that an assessment produced by SPI-M (the group of scientists modelling the spread of the virus) on March the 2nd implied 500,000 casualties. Widely discussed death estimates on the news in the first half of March ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. We know now from multiple sources that the government knew that these death tolls were likely and to be expected under their policy.

For precious weeks, the Government had relied on the assumption that stopping the contagion was impossible – despite China having done precisely that already at the time. It had been ready to accept that a significant proportion of the population would be infected and that there was little to do about the fact that up to one hundred thousand people might have died as a result. That this was possible beggars belief.

The Government has made much of the fact that its strategy is “science-based” but as many critics have noted, eminent scientists among them, this should not be understood as a guarantee that everything it has been doing, or seeking to do, was therefore ‘objectively right’. As is now becoming increasingly clear, some of the scientific assumptions underlying the government initial approach turned out to be deeply flawed.

To begin with, as noted earlier, one of its first and most grievous mistakes was to approach COVID as if it was a flu. It is not. Even in the most conservative estimates, its mortality is at least 10 times higher than the worst flu. And it could easily become 30-40 or 50 times higher if hospitals are saturated by patients of all ages who need ventilation machines to breathe for them for days or even weeks, as we have witnessed in hospitals up and down the country and the world over.

The idea of nudging people into reducing transmission, for instance by mild suggestions that they wash their hands and sing happy birthday twice, was also fundamentally flawed. The point of nudging is making sure people do something without really being aware of it. If the desired outcome is in fact to bring about major changes in lifestyle, it is fundamental that the public has a deep level of understanding and awareness of what is at stake and why it is important to abide by what have to be very clear instructions, not mere suggestions. Quite clearly, those very clear instructions took too long to arrive.

Another deeply flawed notion, repeatedly mentioned throughout the initial phase of the crisis, was that people get fatigued if shut down measures are adopted too early. Behavioural scientists who study motivation and fatigue know well that there are so many different factors that are completely beyond a government’s control which can determine if people are fatigued. 629 behavioural scientists, including one of the authors, wrote an open letter to the government in mid March, expressing their concern that the invitations to “carry on as normal” were undercutting the sense of urgency the situation required.

Indeed the initial strategy was scientifically so weak that it is hard to accept that it was suggested by any scientist at all. On March 15th, when the government had not yet instructed serious social distancing measures, a Harvard Professor of epidemiology made the obvious point that the “herd immunity” argument was good for satire but was not a serious strategy that any government could contemplate in fighting COVID-19. “We talk about vaccines generating herd immunity, so why is this different? Because a virus is not a vaccine” – the coronavirus causing COVID-19 actually kills people. Similar arguments were put forward on the same day also by the British Society for Immunology.

Two key scientific advisers allegedly influenced the government’s resistance to enforce social distancing measures, despite such measures being in place in most European countries: Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance. Is it credible to believe that they were unfamiliar with these arguments? It is not.

The chart below is from a paper published in Nature in 2014. It is Chris Whitty’s major success story from when he was Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department for International Development. In the article entitled “Infectious disease: Tough choices to reduce Ebola transmission” Whitty advocates decisive and quick interventions, arguing that “hesitation is more dangerous than trying out potentially ineffective methods”. He suggests that contact-tracing, nudging appropriate behaviours and isolation of patients with symptoms is not enough and that a strong intervention to encourage social distancing by voluntary sequestration in government built facilities must be a priority. “We invite critiques and suggestions, but must act swiftly. Further delay will result in more infections and deaths, and only sabotage future efforts” he wrote.

Did Whitty really believe that what was urgent and imperative in 2014 in Sierra Leone was not urgent or imperative in the UK in 2020? Are British citizens the only ones affected by behavioural fatigue in his opinion? Were further delays not causing more infections and deaths for the British public? Of course Whitty knew very well that drastic measures were required to suppress the spread of the virus. Except that the government’s aim was not suppressing the spread of the virus.

This is where the Government hiding behind the shield of science stops being a credible and adequate defence of the choices it has made. Ultimately scientific advice to politicians is just that – advice, informing the decision-maker about the likely consequences of the different options they might pursue. It is how this scientific advice is interpreted by politicians and how they weigh the likely consequences of each choice against other factors which count. This is a matter of policy and policy only, based on political judgements and priorities.

In the case of the COVID-19 emergency, it was the government’s political judgement to initially choose a path of minimal intervention. Even more worryingly, a number of elements suggest that, to a significant extent, it was the government’s priorities shaping its scientific advice, rather than the other way round.

Dominic Cummings’ participation in the SAGE meetings, alongside Vote Leave data scientist Ben Warner, is extremely concerning. A supposedly independent scientific advisory group needs not seek the opinion of the most influential aide to the Prime Minister, in formulating its independent advice. The government has vehemently denied a recent Sunday Times report quoting Cummings saying during a cabinet meeting “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad”, but there can be little doubt that Cummings, a self proclaimed science-lover, has been extremely influential in shaping the early phase of the government response.

So clearly defined were the government priorities at the time that the Prime Minister – whose communications are frequently (deliberately) vague – expressed them quite clearly himself as early as in February. On the 3rd of February, Boris Johnson explained to an audience in London, during a celebratory Brexit speech, that in the face of a global pandemic, the UK could make a profit by avoiding lockdown and becoming a “supercharged champion” of global free trade. It is worth quoting extensively the Prime Minister to understand his political judgement:

“There is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other. And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role”.

It is worth also emphasising that this policy of championing free trade in the face of a likely pandemia was presented during a celebratory Brexit speech. Indeed “unleashing” the country’s potential in global trade is an integral part of the government strategy in rewriting its trade relationships in light of Brexit. No wonder that the suggestion to prepare for a likely lock down, proposed by Professor Ferguson in a SAGE meeting in January (two weeks before the Brexit speech) was dismissed by some ministers as linked to some “post-apocalypse movie”, as reported by the Sunday Times.

In a similar vein, more than a month later a senior source in the UK government labelled as “populist non science-based measures” the lock down just ordered by the Italian authorities. These were just the first and the last of a number of dismissive quotes from ministers, covering the period from the end of January to mid March and reported by a variety of sources. Illustrations of a widely shared complacency amongst the politicians in charge of the country who for more than one month were refusing to engage with the dreadful facts presented to them by scientists. Viewed with alarm at the time by scientists, quotes such as that from Conservative MP Rob Roberts (below) will now be seen with horror by all people in the UK.

There has of course since this point been a change in strategy by the Government – mostly as a result of the lobbying of a large part of the scientific community. This included several letters from different groups of scientists questioning the scientific basis upon which the Government was giving its advice. The critical paper written by the team at Imperial College – which was discussed on 12 March, although only published on 16 March – was also fundamental in steering this change of direction.

This intense pressure from the scientific community was accompanied by what is thought to have been an unprecedented step by Buckingham Palace, announcing that the Queen would cancel all public engagements for the following week “as a sensible precaution”. There were also statements of criticism from those hostile to the government from within the Tory Party, including Rory Stuart and Jeremy Hunt, two former Tory Party leadership candidates, and the pressure from devolved governments who consistently anticipated measures then taken by the UK governments. Ultimately the shift in policy was also the result of international pressure, with President Macron threatening to close the border with France and the WHO raising increasingly explicit concerns about the lack of action in the UK.

But still, there followed 11 days from the Imperial College report to implementing a lock down on March 23rd. When this did come, it represented a gigantic u-turn for a Prime Minister who was recorded live on March the 3rd congratulating himself for having shaken hands with potential coronavirus patients – quite possibly one of the occasions in which he might have caught the virus himself which resulted in his ending up in intensive care, from which luckily he recovered in mid April. Yet the government still denies any u-turn and in a press conference one month later, the first since his recovery from COVID-19, the Prime Minister continues to repeat his soundbite claim that his government took “the right measures at the right time”. A comparison with other European countries shows quite clearly that they did not.

Looking at the five largest European countries – Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain – which are relatively comparable in terms of population (83, 67, 67, 60, 47 million people, respectively), it is possible to highlight few key comparisons and draw some preliminary conclusions about the relative effectiveness of the response of different governments in tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

The UK was the last among these countries in announcing a lockdown, on March 23rd. Italy did so on March the 9th, Spain on the 11th, France on the 17th, Germany on the 22nd. Even accounting for the different start of the epidemic, the UK locked down 15 days after the third COVID-19 deaths, compared to 9 days for Germany, 10 for Spain and 14 for Italy and France. Indeed the UK arrived last in implementing virtually all containment measures compared to all EU countries, both when considering the absolute date of the announcement or when considering the date relative to the onset of the epidemic, as reported by a comparative analysis published by Politico. This delay in relative terms in implementing measures to suppress the transmission of the virus was particularly appalling: not only did the government not learn anything from the lessons from its nearer neighbours, but in fact it ignored “the facts on the ground” in its own country for longer than any other government in Europe.

This delay brought serious consequences, allowing a quicker spread of the virus. At the time of writing the UK is the third country in Europe by the number of identified cases of COVID-19, following Spain and Italy. Yet because the lockdown here has started later, the number of identified cases in the UK is growing more rapidly than in any other European country, overtaking in the last few days France and Germany. It looks likely that the UK might end up being the first or second country in Europe by the number of COVID-19 cases, both in absolute terms and in relation to the population, where only Spain (and Belgium) may fare worse.

The situation may result in being even worse than that. The number of positive cases is, as a matter of fact, strictly dependent upon the number of tests for COVID-19 administered, as a positive case can only be identified if tested. Therefore the more tests a country administers, the higher the number of cases it will identify. Whilst not all European countries systematically release data about the number of tests performed, a snapshot of the situation from the 17th of April, tweeted by ITV journalist Robert Peston, shows the UK tested less both in absolute terms and in relation to the population than all other four major European countries and several other European ones. The rush to increase testing to meet the 100,000 target by the end of April set by the government has also increased the number of cases detected per day, despite the fact that the epidemic is past its peak.

A better indicator of the spread of the virus in a country is actually the ratio between the number of positive cases identified and the number of people tested. If the criteria to test suspected cases do not change too much over time, the higher this ratio, the higher the proportion of the population that is likely to be infected. Its variation over time estimates the spread of the infection. Comparative data from Italy and the UK show quite clearly that the peak arrived in the UK two to three weeks after Italy but also that during the peak, the proportion of positive tests in the UK was higher than in Italy, suggesting a higher number of people were infected overall in the UK than in Italy despite the pandemic having arrived in the UK later.

Percentage of people who tested positive in Italy (blue) and UK (red). Day 1 is the 21st of February. Light colors represent figures reported daily, dark colours represent averages smoothed and weighted on the number of tests. Number of people tested for Italy is interpolated based on the number of tests on early days when official figures were lacking.

The thesis that the epidemic spread more in the UK than in any other European country is confirmed by the official statistics reported by each government – which indicate that the UK is going to be the country in Europe experiencing the heaviest COVID-19 related death toll. These numbers are certain to be lower than the true figure as reported COVID-19 deaths require performing a test to confirm the presence of the virus which almost certainly will not happen in all cases. Whilst a certain degree of under-reporting is happening in all European countries, once again the UK appears to be doing poorly, both in absolute and relative terms, compared to its neighbours.

A recent analysis from the New York Times showed that COVID-19 deaths in the UK during the peak of the epidemic accounted for only 66% of the excess in mortality during this period (calculated by the difference to the average mortality in the same weeks over the previous three years) with more than 10000 deaths unaccounted for by the official statistics – a higher difference than Spain, France and Germany (data from Italy were not reported in this analysis). The Financial Times came up with an even higher estimate of more than 23 thousand deaths unaccounted for, by looking at the relationship between the official statistics and the trends in excess mortality. It was also because of the increasing discrepancy between the official statistics and the results of independent analysis that on the 29th of April the government decided to retrospectively include 4 thousand COVID-19 related additional deaths outside hospitals, a figure which is almost certainly underestimating the number of people who died in care homes alone.

These continuous changes in the reported statistics, combined with the lack of details on the number of patients hospitalised and self-isolating at home (data which is available in other countries), and the refusal to publish the minutes of SAGE meetings, has contributed to a widespread perception of a lack of transparency of the government about the handling of the emergency.

A quicker response from the government would have certainly saved thousands of lives. We can see that clearly in countries like Germany, where the virus arrived relatively late compared to Italy and Spain and where a prompt reaction from the federal government, combined with a strong national health service, has enabled the number of deaths to be limited significantly.

It is also worth emphasising that contrary to the Italian, and to some extent Spanish, governments, which found themselves discovering at the end of February outbreaks which were very likely to have started developing since mid January, the UK outbreaks are very likely to have developed precisely in those precious weeks in which the government lingered with its herd immunity approach. Furthermore, whilst the Italian government immediately created a red zone blocking free movement around the towns where the first cases were detected (later expanded to include all of northern Italy and then the entire country), no significant measures were taken by the UK government when the first cases due to local transmission were detected, at the beginning of March, nor were airports significantly monitored in the previous weeks.

The handling of the emergency remained poor even after the government implemented its policy u-turn. Downing Street knew that the NHS would struggle to increase capacity in case of a pandemic. Four years ago, Operation Cygnus, a simulation exercise in preparation for a pandemic flu, revealed that the NHS would face a shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Despite knowing this since 2016, the government failed to scale up production and many hospitals were left waiting for shipments from overseas, forcing many workers to literally risk their lives to keep treating coronavirus patients – more than 100 NHS workers have died since the beginning of the crisis.

A ridiculous series of excuses was provided by the government to justify its failure to join an EU joint-procurement scheme for vital ventilators, in mid March. Almost embarrassing was the way in which the government managed to meet its own target of 100,000 tests per day by the end of April. To do so the Health Minister changed the way tests were counted by including in the figure 50,000 tests which were frantically sent to the homes of people who had booked them online, some of whom members of the Conservative Party invited through an internal newsletter, without even waiting for the tests to be returned. Many will not be returned for days, but the minister can claim to have met a target that Germany hit several weeks ago without any such tricks.

Whilst the UK has created more beds, and the Government has been keen to publicise the way in which it has worked to ‘protect the NHS’, increasing hospital beds is not the same as creating full additional capacity – given the failures outlined above to manage testing or ensure adequate safety for those working in hospitals. Responding to Covid requires a holistic approach which encompasses far more than physical infrastructure. The Nightingale Hospitals risks being a cruel monument to monumental failures, left empty because it was built without sufficient equipment for the most severe cases and in any case without sufficient staff to service it for the cases which could be treated.

Nowhere can the need for a holistic approach be better seen than in social care. Long the Cinderella story of care in the UK, the tragedy still unfolding in care homes for the long-term ill and elderly is one of the greatest indictments of long-term state neglect and under-funding of social care services. A highly fragmented ‘system’, in significant part privatised and historically poorly regulated, it is almost universally reliant upon very poorly paid staff many of whom at the best of times are not enabled to do their jobs well. Now, in the worst of times, stories emerge daily of care staff working long days with makeshift aprons and homemade face-masks their only protection.

Belatedly included in death statistics only in the last few days, it is clear that care homes are one of the major epicentres of the pandemic, in the UK as elsewhere. The need for a fully funded, National Care Service, must now be abundantly clear to all. This must be one of the major political lessons to be learnt from Covid in the UK, and must remain a key plank of any Labour Party policy programme going forward.

Many other policy lessons must be learnt – and there can also now be no doubt that all of this will have to be the subject of a comprehensive, independent inquiry. This must be initiated as soon as it is practically possible: it is vital that lessons are learnt real-time. There can be no ‘waiting for Covid to end’ as, at this stage, we have such limited understanding of when and how it might ‘end’. The risk of a second peak in a number of European countries remains. No successful antibody test is yet available and there is limited evidence about the degree, or longevity, of any immunity acquired by those who have had the virus. Meanwhile, there is a clear – and in some places, including Brazil and Ecuador – horrific and rapid scaling up of the levels of infection beyond those regions of the world where it first originated.

An inquiry must look at the composition and role of government scientific advisory groups, and the role of political advisors within them. What has been the role of behavioural science in determining the UK’s early response? Was it really behavioural science or actually the exaggerated libertarian instincts of Boris Johnson which inhibited the Government from giving out clear guidance to the public in the early days of the pandemic?

Why was it not possible to set in train at an earlier stage the mass production of PPE? Why has the UK struggled to increase its testing capacity? Why was the government so slow in acknowledging the incredibly risky situation in care homes? How much can we trust the official statistics on COVID-19 deaths in the UK?

Were Government Ministers too preoccupied with ‘getting Brexit done’ to dedicate the time and attention necessary in January 2020 as the first warning signs appeared? To what extent, in fact, had preventative measures been run down over the previous two/three years because Brexit preparations were the overriding, even the only, political priority? From the failure to engage with the European procurement scheme to the insistence in ruling out an extension to the Brexit transition phase, there are obvious signs of ideological barriers to the UK government co-operating effectively with European partners.

A worldview based on ‘keeping calm and carrying exceptionally along’ – hard wired into the British establishment, and given sustenance in recent Brexit years – has without doubt impacted significantly upon its mis-handling of COVID-19. It is hard not to conclude that some were not willing, whether they were able or not, to learn lessons in the early stage of the pandemic from elsewhere, and particularly if those lessons were coming from the rest of Europe. For all our sakes, they must start learning now.

Protect the People Charter launched

Public Reading Rooms — Fri, 01 May 2020 09:44:06 +0000

A L Kennedy on the pandemic and the launch of the Protect the People Charter

We are all, by now aware that the Covid – 19 pandemic is affecting every aspect of our lives. Around the world we worry about our loved ones, our own health and our ability to build a secure future. Family after family is experiencing horrible loss. This is an unprecedented challenge and requires an unprecedented response. Expert opinion has long predicted a flu pandemic, but governments and institutions have – for reasons of economy and ideology – lacked preparedness. Some governments have responded quickly and well, basing their actions on good science and a common assumption that human life should be preserved. New Zealand has managed to suppress casualties with remarkable success. Germany, while more badly affected, has passed financial assistance to households quickly and effectively, while cooperating with other nations’ health services and even treating patients from abroad.

In contrast our own government and chronically underfunded health service and social care networks have struggled to respond. Our leaders have produced confusing and contradictory advice, they have prioritised British exceptionalism over common sense and expert advice. Offers of help and equipment have been ignored, or refused and a fog of evasion and misdirection have settled over public pronouncements. We still don’t have mass testing for Covid – 19. This means we only know about confirmed C-19 deaths in hospitals. Those dying alone at home, or among frightened relatives, dying locked down in care facilities, or even dying in hospitals without being tested are not being given the dignity of remembrance. While a lower death toll is less embarrassing for our government, lack of testing has meant we can’t even begin to trace contacts and limit the spread of the disease, we can’t know who has had the disease and recovered and may be safe to return to work. Meanwhile lack of Personal Protection Equipment is endangering and beginning to kill health workers, care workers and all the essential workers on whom we now rely. An early wrong-headed pursuit of ‘herd immunity’ in the absence mass vaccination, advocated in contradiction of expert advice, has lost us weeks of vital time.

Other countries are struggling because mass poverty puts everyone at risk. Those with no shelter can’t shelter in place, those with no running water cannot wash their hands. On the roads on India, in refugee camps, in beleaguered Gaza, in already-traumatised Haiti, the desperately poor aren’t baking sourdough bread, or meeting friends via Zoom – they’re dying. Inadequate access to healthcare, food or clean water amongst the poorest in multiple countries is putting everyone at risk – even, eventually, the wealthy. Unless all are safe, no one is safe.

The UK is not a poor country. We have enough resources to keep everyone fed, housed, usefully occupied, defended from preventable ill-health and given access to assistance in times of illness, want or distress. But only a patchwork of volunteer efforts has helped to save some of our homeless from death on the streets. As those we pay to govern and serve us fail at almost every turn, volunteers buy and provide PPE, make PPE, distribute aid, bring companionship and apply ingenuity and solidarity to problem after problem. And frontline workers care for our most vulnerable every day, no matter the personal cost. As our government shows all that is petty, self-obsessed, impractical and cultish, our citizens are displaying heart-breaking bravery and human devotion. Imagine how much we could achieve if we were to harness and organise all that is good about us to defend our futures together.

Families already hard pressed by austerity are facing starvation at home. A decade and more of cuts and an increasingly fashionable condemnation of the poor for being poor, the sick for being sick mean that most families in the UK have less than £100 in savings. Those households can’t weather the lengthy lockdown we face to save us all from infection without being destroyed by want. Those in low paid but essential jobs face infection and possible death every day they go to work. Those whose employers force them to work have to choose between earning and becoming infected, every day. The prioritisation of profit over every other values has left us all precarious with no spare healthcare capacity, fragile infrastructure and a government wracked by learned helplessness, arrogance and an obsession with PR. They have turned a crisis into a catastrophe that could bring about the end of a mature, first world democracy. Imagine if we chose to do better, as a nation.

Sooner or later, with or without our government’s help, we will pass through the worst of this inferno. We need to plan now for secure, constructive, practical measures that will protect all of us. After the loss and waste of World War Two, we built a Welfare State. Long years of shared struggle had damaged us horribly. Family after family experienced horrible loss. Our cities were in ruins and we were, in many ways, exhausted. We had come to define ourselves as something better and stronger than we were – as people devoted to life. Having met each other, helped each other, faced death with each other and come through, we saw each other differently. For a while, judging each other according to class, accent, race and gender was revealed for it was it is – a destructive absurdity. We had learned that to survive we had to co-operate, be useful, ingenious, practical and devoted to the value of human life. We thought human values were worth fighting for and we had fought for them. We had won a war on their behalf. We set about building a country which might protect as many of us as possible. We worked to provide a decent education for all, access to healthcare for all free at the point of need, adequate financial assistance for those in need, shared infrastructure operated for the benefit of all. We had seen the worst of people – black propaganda that aimed to divide us, looters stripping bombed out families’ homes, black marketeers and war profiteers indulging unchecked human greed. We had fought worse than that and witnessed the cruelties of authoritarianism of all kinds. And we won. We won the right to a Welfare State that would defend us against the ignorance, inequality and want that nearly meant we lost our struggle. We turned our back on waste and weakness.

For generations, our healthcare and education systems have been vandalised and looted, first slowly and now at breakneck speed. We believe we can change that. Our infrastructure no longer belongs to us and does not serve the public good. We believe we can change that. While the world looks on in horror, the UK is now a byword for catastrophically poor, even absent leadership. We can change that. We don’t need to live in a country where profiteers crow about Covid-19’s potential to provide profits for those betting against our currency and economy. We don’t need to live in a country where nurses have to wear bin bags instead of PPE. We don’t need to live in a country where we are divided, neighbour from neighbour, community from community. We ’ve been told that some jobs don’t deserve decent pay, or conditions, that low-paid workers are low-value people, that black Britons aren’t British, that life on zero hours contracts isn’t a precarious daily hell. We know different now – underpaid and under-protected workers are turning out every day to keep our communities functional: provisioning and staffing our supermarkets, cleaning our buildings, keeping our public transport functional, making deliveries and performing so many other essential tasks. Our lives are being saved by people from all over the world and Britons of all colours.

It can seem there is no hope, but across the globe, people of goodwill are organising to save lives. Distilleries in multiple countries have changed production to provide free hand sanitiser. Across Argentina communal cafes are providing food, in a matter of days thousands of volunteer cells bloomed across Ireland, coordinated through a central website, all over the world people are 3D printing face masks, donating supplies, bringing groceries to the elderly, providing entertainment and education for lockdown kids. And, while our government swings between genuine helplessness and ideological cruelty, the UK is organising, changing. This pandemic is a global tragedy, but from it we can grasp an opportunity. We can put in place measures that mean we are all safer, all working to move forward in health and contentment and able to face the coming challenges of Climate Change. Protect the People, its Charter and the movement growing behind it have never been more necessary.

All photos Guy Smallman

Trump and Dominic Cummings: Caligula and Dr Strangelove

John Wight — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 17:21:30 +0000

For four years between 37 and 41 CE the Roman Empire was ruled by one Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. He is known both to history and infamy as Caligula, an emperor whose wanton cruelty, barbarity, caprice, sadism and perversity is immediately suggestive of a grotesquely disordered mind.

Among his more outlandish ideas was his plan to make his horse a consul — in other words a high official within his retinue of officials and advisers. Caligula, somewhat inevitably, was assassinated, hacked to pieces by his own Praetorian Guard in his own palace.

History repeats itself, Marx famously opined, the first as tragedy, then as farce. In the personage of Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, tragedy and farce are both present. The tragedy was his election in 2016, which marked the nadir of this grand experiment in placing democratic lipstick on the pig of a state then empire forged in genocide, ethnic cleansing and human slavery. It was a victory for anti-intellectualism and mass ignorance, of which both prevail in large parts of this ill-starred land. They say that you can’t blame a mushroom for growing the dark, which is true, and the intellectual and cultural darkness in which millions of Americans exist is evidenced in a gun culture that connotes societal madness, along with a hatred and fear of the other that blows out of the water any vestige of social cohesion.

Within Trump we have embodied the Trail of Tears, the overseer’s whip, the Klu Klux Klan, the Pinkerton detectives sent to crush the Homestead strike, along with too many others to mention during the US Labor Wars of the late 19th and early 20th century. Within him, too, is embodied the police batons of Jim Crow, the slum landlordism of urban America, the electric chair and the gas chamber.

In other words, Donald Trump is the land of the free with its mask removed.

His daily press briefings have also left no doubt that he, like Caligula, carries all of the symptoms of a disordered mind. His assertion that disinfectant could be injected or ingested as a potential cure for Covid-19, as his advisers looked on with the po-faces of shuffling courtiers, was a moment of peak insanity and crack-pottery, even for him. We can only hope, metaphorically speaking, that the Praetorian Guards in Washington are now astir.

This having been said, we in Britain, we are obliged not to forget, have our own problems with disordered minds in our midst. With a clutch of fanatical ideologues at the helm, led by a prime minister whose practiced buffoonery and nuttiness has quite literally got more people killed in this past month than can be put down to events, we find ourselves cursed with the worst possible government upon whose lap has landed the worst possible crisis.

Dominic Cummings

Learning as we just have that Boris Johnson’s brain — the other-wordly and decidedly dangerous Dominic Cummings — has been sitting in on meetings of the government’s top scientific advisory panel should be grounds for public alarm. Firstly, it confirms that the medical and scientific advice that the country has been receiving has been politicised, and thereby compromised, throughout. Secondly, Cummings is a man who eclipses every Bond villain ever created in the sinister stakes, a malign character whose approach to politics is that of a mad scientist conducting mad experiments in a laboratory of the damned.

But have no fear, because Keir is here, what with his ‘constructive opposition’, ‘forensic’ questions, and the ‘functioning opposition’ to the government he’s leading. Indeed our centrist/Blairite chorus was in full orgasmic voice in response to this trusty knight of the realm’s debut at Prime Minister’s Questions.

It didn’t exactly hurt that facing him at the despatch box was a political pygmy in the shape of Dominic Raab. It likewise didn’t hurt that the newly elected leader of the opposition enjoys the full-throated support of the entire media class all the way from Guardianista liberal to Thatcher-loving right. Call me old fashioned, but when a former Tory chancellor such as Gideon Osborne — the man who injected the country with the anti-people poison of austerity — endorses the leader of the Labour Party, it’s a party headed at warp speed for perdition.

When it comes to the comparing of Keir Starmer and Dominic Raab at what was the first PMQs both men conducted, one is reminded of the sage words of Gore Vidal:

‘One does not bring a measuring rod to Lilliput’.

Lebanon: Financial Collapse, Revolution, and Pandemic: Where are the Unions?

Public Reading Rooms — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 15:51:50 +0000

Rima Majed writes:

If the last six months in Lebanon have taught us anything about extraordinary times—whether financial collapse, revolutionary moments, or pandemic waves—it is the centrality of having grassroots organizations that can play an important role in protecting collective interests, providing social safety nets, and envisioning alternatives that hold social justice at their core. At a time when the economic situation is in a “free fall”, and people are requested to stay home in order to contain the pandemic, the elephant in the room remains the social and economic consequences of such a measure. After all, a pandemic does not only require medical and public health interventions, but also social, political, and economic plans that can uphold society in such difficult times, especially as this hits in an already collapsing economy.

Several weeks into the lockdown in Lebanon, the government has only taken very slow and limited measures to protect what they qualify as being the poorest. Of course, this gave room—intentionally, I would argue—to sectarian leaders to resurface with their clientelism in the form of donation boxes. But in times like these, social protection cannot be equated to a charity program targeting the poor. Given the magnitude of the crisis, it is society at large that needs protection, and with it, a broader vision is required in order to get out of the multiple crises the country is going through simultaneously. Who will protect the daily wage workers who have lost their jobs due to the lockdown? The unemployed who have no social protection? The workers and employees who have been laid off? The employees who have lost more than half of their salaries because of the financial crisis? Who will protect domestic workers or migrant workers? What about the medical staff that are risking their lives to save ours? The cleaners, garbage collectors, and delivery workers who have been our essential workers, keeping us clean and safe in our houses, while being exploited and underpaid? Who will protect people who are unable to pay their rent? Or those who are unable to put food on their tables anymore? Who will protect the owners of small businesses who are unable to make ends meet anymore? After all, weren’t the youth encouraged for decades to be “entrepreneurs” and create their own businesses? Who protects them now that their small investments have only resulted in debts and losses? These social categories do not all qualify as the “poorest”, but they all require immediate social protection in the form of social justice, not charity.

One of the main predicaments of the Lebanese uprising and the current COVID-19 pandemic lockdown is the absence of strong and active unions and labor organizations. It is in times like these that unions and syndicates play a crucial role in protecting the interests of most people in society, and take a leading role in pushing for social and economic plans that guarantee social protection.

Why Labor Organizations?

While some consider it to be ‘old school’ to insist on the importance of labor organizations, an informed reading of socio-economic and political dynamics in Lebanon points to the centrality of such types of organizations in challenging the existing neoliberal-sectarian regime. It is not a coincidence that the post-civil war era in Lebanon was marked by a systematic and violent crackdown on unions that led, by the end of the 1990s, to a full cooptation of the General Confederation of Workers (GCWL), the country’s national trade union center. Similarly, professional orders were also dominated by sectarian party politics, and played an important role in upholding the interests of the ruling elites.

The post-war neoliberal rolling back of the state and the flourishing of non-state welfare in the form of clientelism created a system of inequality whereas only party partisans can potentially benefit. It is a system where bankers, businessmen, and sectarian leaders are able to accumulate wealth and exploit workers and employees with little to no resistance “from below”. The weakening of the unions meant that the power of collective bargaining and the struggle for social justice were made impossible. In such context, two types of activism flourished in post-war Lebanon: Sect-based mobilization (mainly in the form of political parties) and issue-based campaigns (mainly taking the shape of civil society activism). Despite their seemingly opposite paths, both streams have contributed—directly or indirectly—to the reproduction of the neoliberal-sectarian regime through the fragmentation of causes, the elevation of identity politics, and the professionalization of issue-based activism without ever questioning the very structure of the political or economic system.

Therefore, it is only when society starts to organize along class interests and to demand social justice by questioning the accumulation of wealth or by pushing for social protection as a right for all, rather than clientelism, that the regime is really threatened in its core. This is not an overstatement of the power of the people, but rather a reminder of the understated power of organization that is interest-based. The mobilization of the Union Coordination Committee in 2012, which aimed to improve working conditions of civil servants and teachers, is one such example of the power of alternative unions to pressure and to achieve benefits that contribute to social protection—despite the unfortunate crackdown that brought the movement to a halt in 2014.

Revival of Labor and Professional Organizations since October 2019

Since the start of the uprising in October 2019, new groups of workers, employees, and professionals started to emerge. While these movements were mainly spontaneous and largely unorganized, the severity of the financial crisis and its catastrophic implication on the labor market pushed employees to come together on many occasions, either informally or through pre-existing unions, to protect their rights and to collectively negotiate salaries and benefits.

As expected, the official GCWL did not mobilize in the uprising, and professional orders also remained widely silent and at the margin of the historic events. It was only after the election of an independent candidate as president of the Beirut Bar Association that the role of professional orders in the uprising surfaced. Simultaneously, new bodies of shadow unions or professional associations started to take shape and to organize as alternatives to the coopted and dysfunctional syndicates and orders. Clearly inspired by the Sudanese Professionals’ Association, a new Association of Professionals (تجمع مهنيات ومهنيين) was declared on 28 October, calling on professionals, employees, and workers to organize in their workplaces, and to couple the political struggle with a socio-economic struggle that brings back the question of labor and social justice to the core.

While such initiatives can play a crucial role in the unfolding of the uprising, their success in revamping the role of syndicates and creating a nationwide labor movement will largely depend on their ability to organize in a democratic and coherent way. These nascent organizations are now faced with the sudden shift to “work from home” for many employees, and the emergency of “essential workers” to report to work without interruption. In such difficult and unusual times, the challenge becomes to come up with a new repertoire of contention that can devise tactics of organizing and mobilizing that pressure for bargaining and protecting labor rights and social safety nets.

Moreover, such initiatives should also make room for types of organization that are not merely traditional labor unions or professional associations. For example, given the prevalence of the informal sector in Lebanon and the high rates of unemployment, it would make sense for these groups in society to organize based on informality or unemployment. Such organizations are crucial for social protection since they would raise very important demands such as the right to unemployment benefits, which would limit clientelism and youth migration, or the right to free universal healthcare. Had we organized and activated such unions and associations long before, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic at the social and economic level would have been much different today.

Finally, building a strong and independent labor movement is crucial to channel the popular demands of the October uprising for social justice into a political project that can have serious leverage in the balance of power between the regime and the people. Looking at the experiences of the Arab uprisings over the past decade, it becomes clear that the only two countries that were able to build on their popular upheavals to launch a somehow democratic transitional political process were Tunisia and Sudan. In both cases, labor unions and professional associations played a key role.

Imagining a political transition in Lebanon toward a more just and fair system will surely require unions and syndicates to play a central role. This is even more crucial today, at a time when the whole world will be going into a recession and when opportunities for “exporting” our youth to work abroad—as has been the Lebanese formula for decades—will be shrinking considerably. Protecting society means organizing based on our interests as workers, employees, unemployed, or underemployed. After all, a job and a decent income are a right, not a privilege; and the core of the problem is in the distribution of wealth, not in its existence.

Rima Majed is Assistant Professor of Sociology at American University of Beirut and LCPS research fellow.

This article was first published by the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies

Ecuador’s coronavirus catastrophe: interview with Marcela Aguiñaga

Public Reading Rooms — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 12:58:38 +0000

Fiona Edwards writes: The rapid spread of coronavirus in Ecuador is having a devastating impact. According to the government’s official data Ecuador has 10,128 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 507 deaths, as of the 21st April. These figures are, however, widely considered to be a fabrication, with experts estimating that this official data amounts to less than 10% of pandemic’s actual casualties.

The lies of Lenin Moreno’s right wing government, which has been attempting to cover up the true scale of the destruction caused by the coronavirus, have been dramatically exposed. Images of hundreds of dead bodies lining the streets of the major city of Guayaquil have flooded social media and been reported widely in the international media. The authorities in this city have been totally overwhelmed by the virus.

Under Lenin Moreno’s Presidency, since 2017 Ecuador has swung to the right wing. The government is now closely aligned with the United States, is pushing forward a neo-liberal economic model, and has severely cut health expenditure and expelled Cuban doctors from the country.

I interviewed Marcela Aguiñaga to discuss the unfolding coronavirus catastrophe in Ecuador. Aguiñaga is a member of the National Assembly in Ecuador and part of the Citizens’ Revolution – a political movement led by former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.

The Covid-19 virus is spreading fast in Ecuador. What is the current situation in Ecuador? Do you think the government is taking the necessary measures to contain the virus and save lives?

Marcela Aguiñaga: Ecuador is being hit hard by the pandemic. Every province has cases of Covid-19. The province of Guayas accounts for 70% of total cases. It is home to the city of Guayaquil with the most reported cases and deaths.

The world needs to know that Guayaquil is living out a horror story, where daily people report corpses in the streets or in houses that go days without being collected by competent authorities. Others report that hospitals fail to give their loved ones a respectable burial, or they are sent to look for their relative’s body amongst the corpses, compromising their own health. It was only on 4th April that the Presidency delegated one of its officials to organise the removal of bodies. According to official reports, in the past week 631 bodies have been removed from hospitals and 771 from homes.

While it is true that no country was ready to face a pandemic of this magnitude, the government should have prioritised life over its external debt repayment. With that money we would have guaranteed the biosecurity of medical staff and saved more lives, and today we would not have to mourn the deaths of our doctors who went to fight this war unprotected.

Staying at home is an effective way to stop the spread of the virus. But for those who must work, how can we ask them to stay at home if they have no other way to survive? We need a social protection policy. One that takes into account those that have the least, and that the promise of delivering food rations reaches the corners where poverty and vulnerability plague thousands of families.

Do you think the Ecuadorian government is doing enough to follow the World Health Organisation’s advice to “test, test, test” as much as possible? Have economic measures been introduced to support people staying at home for self-isolation and quarantine if they are infected with Covid-19 or suspected to be?

Marcela Aguiñaga: From our caucus of the Citizens’ Revolution, we have requested that the tests are used widely and that they are acquired urgently. This is why we insist on the non-payment of external debt. This money can be used to buy necessary tests and therefore allow us to follow the WHO recommendation that we detect the virus early and treat it on time and free of charge, saving as many lives as possible. Our caucus has made the specific proposals: the suspension of basic services collection for three months (water, electricity, telephone and internet); that the BIESS and the private financial system introduce a three-month extension, with no interest or repayment, for debts (mortgage, loans, credit cards); that the tariffs allowed by the World Trade Organization be set to the maximum for luxury goods and those that have a substitute in national production. Products needed to deal with Covid-19, such as raw materials and capital goods for exportation, must be excluded from this. Finally, although there is more, we must do what the world is doing: take care of employment, decrease credit interests, return internal financing mechanisms to normal, revive electronic money (essential for transfers), and forgive or reschedule external debt, etc.

However, the government is implementing the provision of food rations to vulnerable families, and $60 food vouchers for those with economic difficulties as a result of quarantine. But these promises are not enough without an efficient social protection policy. The country needs social protection measures to support people who stay at home. They must be effective and executed in low-income areas so that the hunger families suffer today can be alleviated.

Additionally, private companies and citizens are collaborating with food donations and cleaning kits, among others. A laudable initiative. Ecuador is a country of caring people that come together in the face of adversity. However, we need a clear and convincing public policy, one that is especially designed for the country’s poorest.

How does the response of Ecuador’s government compare to other countries in Latin America and around the world?

Marcela Aguiñaga: World powers like South Korea decided to test for Covid-19 on a large scale. Of course, they have 500 authorised clinics to run these tests. They also installed ambulatory clinics, and they have the capacity to carry out at least 10,000 tests a day. While in Ecuador we can process 1,500 tests a day, with approximately 46 hospitals, and just 17 private laboratories nationwide. In other words, it is incomparable. South Korea is a powerhouse with 51 million inhabitants, with a strengthened public health system.

The case in Latin America is different. For example, Honduras has suspended the payment of electricity, water, telephone, cable and internet for three months. As well as mortgage and rent payments, for both housing and commercial premises. These are radical measures that will help to endure the emergency. While in Ecuador, we are still demanding that these services not be cut if someone is unable to pay, leaving the decision in the hands of the provider.

Another case is Argentina, where it is clear that they have a statesman at the head of a nation. One that prioritises the health of the people, before debt repayment. Meanwhile in Ecuador we continue to pay the debt, but we still cannot make the tests available to all, or buy necessary supplies to save our people.

When we heard of the first confirmed case of Covid-19, the governor of Guayas still allowed the Copa de Libertadores football match in Guayaquil to take place, with a huge attendance. This error continues to take its toll today, although this negligence is not admitted. Ecuador waited until there were two deaths to close its borders and declare quarantine, unlike other countries. We are victims of delayed decisions. We could continue to talk about what was done, and what was not, but now we must focus on how to overcome this pandemic, move on, and then be able to tackle our country’s economic situation.

Since 2017 President Lenin Moreno has pushed Ecuador back towards a neo-liberal economic model. How is this impacting the country’s capacity to deal with the coronavirus crisis?

Marcela Aguiñaga: The anti-popular model executed is not compatible with employment, rights and needs of the Ecuadorian people. From our caucus of the Citizens’ Revolution, we warn that the “Productive Development Law” would exacerbate poverty and unemployment in the country as it would authorise a waiver of USD $4.6 billion to large tax evading groups. Today this money would help us save lives.

Using the excuse of “reducing the size of the State”, hundreds of health workers from different specialities were fired. Because of political vanities, they concluded the cooperation agreements with Cuba – a relationship that gave us Cuban doctors working in our hospitals. This led to their immediate departure, without these jobs being replaced. Hatred and apathy were stronger than their great contribution, a great support to our country.

Regrettably, more effort was given to persecuting political opponents than to strengthening a public health policy. The criticism was greater than the work; not one more health centre has been built. The truth is that without the previous government’s investment in health, facing this pandemic today would have been impossible.

In October 2018 massive protests erupted in Ecuador against neo-liberalism and the IMF. President Lenin Moreno responded to this mass movement with severe repression and state violence. Can you see political persecution and repression playing a role in Moreno’s response to the evolving coronavirus crisis?

Marcela Aguiñaga: Violence takes many shapes and forms. Sometimes it chases you to prison, and sometimes, like now, it hits you in the soul. The second is the most painful because it takes the lives of those we love.

There is no greater cruelty than hiding or belittling the pain that follows. They violate us every time they lie about how many people have died or been infected. They insult us every time they leave an Ecuadorian without medical attention. They mistreat us every time a child is unable to give their loved ones a respectable burial. They persecute us every time someone raises their voice to declare that they have to search through dumpsters, without protection, to find the body of a loved one.

History has already taught us how to judge each heinous character of this government.

Ecuador’s next Presidential election is scheduled for next year, in 2021.Will this election be free and fair? Can you see the left winning this election and defeating Lenin Moreno who betrayed those that voted him into office in 2017? How do you think the coronavirus crisis will impact this election?

Marcela Aguiñaga: A free and fair election is what we expect in a country that claims to be democratic. However, we have attempts to violate our right to participate, denying the Citizens’ Revolution the inscription of our movement three times.

Recently, they used inaccurate laws to try to remove the “Social Commitment for the Citizens’ Revolutions” group from the electoral register. This group has opened doors for us and we will join them in 2021, which is why they are now threatening to remove our official registry, through illegal National Audit Office reports.

2021 is the year of restoring hope to the country, so that never again will we have to face a pandemic without a strong, transparent and free public health policy, available to all. We must restore the rights which, during these last three years, have been snatched from us. We must return the dignity of the public services that has been lost, and move towards an inclusive economy that generates jobs with employment benefits where companies and entrepreneurs are supported. Under these circumstances and all those that are not regressive, we can move towards progressivism.

Ecuador should go beyond these discussions and return to the system we had a decade ago, where people were prioritised over capital.

Our government is digging its own grave. People have little faith in the system. They are tired of not having a leader to get them out of this crisis that has been building up for the last three years.

There is a general unease. People feel that they were better off before. Today they feel abandoned.

Is there anything that the left internationally can do to support the people of Ecuador during the global coronavirus pandemic?

Marcela Aguiñaga: “Solidarity is the tenderness of the people”, said Gioconda Belli.

Integration is vital in facing a crisis. A study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) indicated, among other things, that technical and financial resources should be designed to support countries with fiscal pressure and consider the possibility of granting low interest loans. Today we must unite to waive our countries’ debts according to the initiative by Correa, Lula, Fernandez and others.

This article was first published on the Eyes on Latin America website

No Going Back – The COVID-19 Pandemic Theses

Public Reading Rooms — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 15:49:14 +0000

Public Reading Rooms is publishing these theses – on the pandemic, the nature of the crisis and the necessary next steps. We want to initiate a wide-ranging discussion on the left. Please send us any comments, thoughts or longer pieces to [email protected]

1) We live in the age of the pandemic. We live in an age of environmental destruction and climate change. None of these are natural disasters – they all result from the way society and production is currently organised. The pandemic is one of many diseases emerging in, and resulting from, late capitalism, including HIV, Avian Flu, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Ebola.

These new illnesses have all developed in a similar way and are linked to the processes of capitalist agriculture and environmental destruction which are also major contributors to climate change. The wanton destruction of nature by capital creates the perfect conditions for the emergence and spread of pandemics. The destruction of the tropical rain forests and the depletion of the oceans destroys the livelihoods of millions of poor people pushing them to desperation. The Amazon, the lungs of the world, is being cut down to make way for corporate livestock production. Capitalism drives the engine of environmental destruction and climate change. The COVID-19 virus and other viruses that emerge in this period are a product of a decaying economic system in its barbaric phase; they travel through the circuits of capital. The continuation of capitalism represents a mortal threat to human survival on the planet.

2) The pandemic is not just a global health crisis: it also exacerbates the economic and social crises which express the structural limits of the entire system of social reproduction. It exposes the deep wells of inequality which exist between peoples and classes throughout the world and underscores the oppression of women, affected not only by poverty but by a tidal wave of domestic violence in the wake of the lockdown. In the metropolitan capitalist countries it is the working class, the poor and the vulnerable who bear the biggest burden of the virus, disproportionately from BAME communities. In the global south and the oppressed and colonised countries of the world, the pandemic threatens the lives of millions. In those countries medical systems have been hollowed out and destroyed by the neo-liberal structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s and 90s. The privatisation programmes demanded by Western governments have been a catastrophe for public health. More than 1 billion people have no access to proper sanitation or running water, nor any means of sustaining themselves during the pandemic without going out to work. We need to ensure that our politics recognises the impact of the virus in respect of imperialism, of class, race and gender. Neo-liberal economic policies were then imposed wholesale across Europe and beyond, destroying the post-war welfare states, depriving public services of adequate funding and leaving health systems unfit to confront the pandemic.

3) The most important factor in world politics is the struggle of working people, the poor and dispossessed to remake the world: most immediately it is to defend themselves against both the pandemic and the poverty of their everyday lives, resulting from decades of redistribution from the poor to the rich. In that struggle to defend themselves they can challenge the brutality of the existing system and a space can open up in which the possibility of creating a new society becomes real. The pandemic has vividly demonstrated which work has real value in society and which doesn’t – often those whose work is most essential are on the lowest levels of pay; this is clear to all and can help transform the discontent of the oppressed into a new consciousness. The people already know that the current organisation of society is profoundly wrong. They no longer wish for life to return to the way it was before: they sense that the world can and must be changed to meet their needs and the needs of humanity as a whole. The emergency policies that have been implemented demonstrate that there are alternatives; society and the economy can be organised in other ways. Extensive and spontaneous social solidarity, as well as material international solidarity, are ongoing and essential examples of what can be achieved. What was once impossible is now made possible. The pandemic indicates the possibility of ending the permanent subordination of labour to capital.

4) The pandemic is global; it cannot be stopped in one country. The response of most countries to the emergence of COVID-19 has been to treat the pandemic as a series of national crises, always refusing to learn from the experience of others; it has included competition within and between states for scarce medical and protective resources rather than collective action to provide sufficient for all. Racism and reactionary national insularity play a central role in this process. Each country aims to protect its own economy at the expense of others and at the expense of the majority of its own population. Thus the leading capitalist economies avoided taking essential preventative action to stem the virus only to have to retreat at a later stage when the damage had been done and their populations had been seriously imperilled. But in a pandemic no country is an island. The key to ending the conditions which give rise to this and other pandemics lies not only in ending the existing social relations of production but in ending the nation state as the dominant form of political and economic organisation. This challenge cannot be underestimated but it must be addressed and debated by the left.

5) Reactionary nationalism has arisen from the crisis of neo-liberalism. The structures of capitalist globalisation no longer guarantee its own reproduction. The basic institutional structures of the post-war world order are being dismantled. International bodies are starved of funds and their national components are likewise undermined. Central to the development of a world economy had been the establishment of bodies like the World Health Organisation through which the international community sought to invest in disease prevention. Now we are witnessing the end of long-established international co-ordination; its disintegration sharply expresses the limits to global capitalism.

Trump – who blames the Chinese for the pandemic – has been central to this process and embodies the increasingly destructive role of the US during its long decline as the pre-eminent global power and the erosion of its hegemony following defeat in Vietnam and economic decline from the 1970s. It has turned to its unrivalled military power to retain its global standing, while its economic supremacy has been increasingly challenged by the rise of China. US imperialism is in its most dangerous phase and a military response to China’s economic advance cannot be ruled out.

In the European Union tensions have been fuelled by the failure of states such as Germany, France and Austria to come to the aid of Italy when it asked for help. This stretches beyond the pandemic into the financial structures of the European Union and threatens its end. A central truth is illuminated by this descent into nationalism: only on a socialist basis can there be the integration of Europe’s political and economic structures and the development of a world economy that meets the needs of the world’s population.

6) We understand that the system, in attempting to resolve its own inner contradictions, will enter into ever more destructive and authoritarian forms as it spirals into decline. Should progressive and socialist forces in society fail to rise to the challenges created by the interlocking crises that we are facing, then the road will be clear for the strengthening of existing reactionary parties and movements. Orban in Hungary has taken the opportunity presented by the crisis to move from authoritarianism towards dictatorship, and laws extensively limiting rights – including women’s reproductive rights – are being passed in many countries. Generally, the rise in social solidarity and support for migrant workers in health and social care and other key sectors of the workforce has been a setback to the racist, anti-migrant narrative of the far right. But as the health crisis lessens and the economic crisis increases, the far right will grow in strength to the extent that the left fails to offer an alternative vision of society.

7) There can be no support for those in the labour movement who present the struggle against the virus as a national crisis in which class war is suspended; they should recognise that the ruling class seeks to co-opt the labour movement. Leaders of the movement who fight for the interests of their members must be given every backing. But we cannot support those who seek to corral the working class into subordination to the existing system. The institutions of social democracy have failed to adequately challenge capitalism, and have even failed to defend their own achievements – the post-war introduction of the welfare state and modest industrial reform. Indeed, their embracing of neo-liberalism in the 1990s made them complicit in the savaging of the welfare state. The pandemic exposes the illusory nature of systemic transformation through incremental social change.

8) Recognition of the need for, and the possibility of, replacing capitalism with a planned economy meeting the needs of the people and protecting humanity and the environment as a whole. To nationalise and take into public ownership all those companies whose functioning is essential to society – the current state intervention must be developed and extended for the benefit of all in the post-virus world. To implement a full arms conversion programme – not just for the period of the pandemic – to produce to sustain and enrich life, not to bring death and destruction.

9) Recognition of the splintering of the forces of the left over many decades. The acceptance of the need to overcome this on the basis of a common understanding of the tasks necessary in the coming period to meet the challenges faced by humanity. The socialist movement must be radically re-articulated as a truly international undertaking that will work to resolve the crisis in the interests of the people. The convocation of a Zimmerwald conference – which united the anti-war left in 1915 – for our times, to unify all those prepared to fight for a fundamental change in society; who understand the necessity of renewing the left’s strategic and theoretical framework as well as going beyond its existing organisational forms.

10) Millions of people are developing their own ideas about how their lives should be lived in the future. They are no longer prepared to accept life as it once was. There is a general understanding that the provision of essential public services are a vital human need and express the essence of solidarity between peoples. All human beings have a right to health and welfare and a productive existence. The most urgent political task is to create a world that works in the interests of all the peoples of our planet. We refuse to look away from those condemned to poverty and starvation and disease. All the threats to humanity are global in character so our response must rise to that level too. There can be no return to life as ‘normal’: there is either the building of a new society or a descent into barbarism. The pandemic is a wake-up call to humanity. Let us build a new international movement. There is no going back.

Covid-19: Labour must provide real opposition to government policy

Public Reading Rooms — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 13:37:47 +0000

Diane Abbott writes: The global coronavirus pandemic is the most serious crisis for everyone alive today, and it has enormous consequences for the whole of society as well as the economy and people’s livelihoods.

Because of these consequences the entire crisis is intensely political.Only government can command the resources necessary and only government has the authority, including legal authority, to direct the resources of others as necessary.

Those of us who are critical of the government’s handling of the crisis — and there is every reason to be critical — are often accused of “politicising” Covid-19. Sometimes World War II is invoked, with claims that when the nation pulled together under threat of fascist invasion there was no dissent from government policy.

This fails basic history as well as being politically dangerous. After war broke out the Chamberlain-led Tory government was under constant criticism and finally fell in 1940 because that crescendo of criticism peaked after the debacle of the Norway campaign. Genuine patriotism requires a relentless focus on the interests of the people of this country, and to understand how these interests are connected to the global community.

Genuine concern for the well-being of the people of this country has nothing in common with empty jingoism, or still less providing a blank cheque to an incompetent Tory government which is leading people to unnecessary deaths. Strangely, a variant on this argument that criticising this woeful government is “politicising” the crisis now comes from the political chattering classes in the media themselves.

They say they are “too busy,” or are pursuing loftier matters and are certainly not going to interest themselves in the grubby internal machinations of the Labour Party. The same journalists who gleefully reported every piece of tittle-tattle if it was useful in undermining the Corbyn leadership now claim to be too busy to report on the leaked Labour Party document.

Reporters who led the news with false claims that a Labour activist had assaulted a Tory staffer are now too busy to report the evidence showing that the most senior Labour apparatchiks did not want Labour to win the 2017 general election. Yet, remarkably, they do have time to offer their sage advice to Labour’s new leader that he should not criticise the government and that he should get rid of the Labour left.

The truth is that the coronavirus crisis and the government’s abject response to it are connected to the leaked Labour document and the role of opposition. The title afforded the largest non-government party is “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.”

Unfortunately, throughout Labour’s history there are those who have placed far too great an emphasis on the adjectives rather than the noun. When not in government we are supposed to provide genuine opposition, to ask questions, to probe, to raise concerns and, ultimately, to say loudly and clearly when we believe the government is going down completely the wrong path.

This is a crisis where the official death toll in this country — which is understated by not recording deaths in care homes and the community — is more than three times that of Germany, which has a larger population. The government’s claims that it has “made all the right decisions at the right time” is absurdly and ghoulishly false.

An extra 7,300 have died in this country, even on the official data compared with Germany. And Germany is not even a global leader in managing the crisis. You have to look to east, including South Korea, Vietnam, New Zealand and China to see best practice in tackling the coronavirus spread.

Former WHO director of maternal, child and adolescent health and former Lancet Commission chair Anthony Costello describes it as: “The UK strategy that led to potentially 30-40,000 preventable deaths.” The truth is ministers have lied — about our preparedness, about availability of PPE and ventilators, about co-operation with the EU, about testing, about “herd immunity,” about contacts with supermarkets, about contacts with manufacturers, about protecting the vulnerable.

And people have died where deaths were avoidable. Now is absolutely the time to raise these issues and provide real opposition, not just leaving it to beleaguered essential workers and their unions. Some in the labour movement are shocked that there are many senior people in the movement and the Labour Party who do not want to oppose Tory governments when they are failing so spectacularly — the same senior people who struggled every day to undermine Jeremy Corbyn and who clearly preferred a Tory election victory to a victory led by the Labour left.

Yet these people have always been with us. We on the left are dismissed because we are proposing “opposition for opposition’s sake.” Anecdotally, I can recall being subject to a tirade in 2019 from one of our “highly respected“ backbenchers who claimed that I was indulging in “opposition for opposition’s sake.”

He has since gone off to work for the Tory government via a brief detour at one of the forgotten Labour splinters from the last parliament. My crime? Upholding the principle that we do not facilitate extradition to the US where people might face the death penalty.

I was actually “opposing the death penalty under all circumstances,” which happens to be the law of this country. Tony Benn used to argue that MPs should always uphold Labour Party conference policy.

He also argued that MPs should vote in the way their conscience and their principles dictated. These seemingly contradictory positions are resolved by a further proposition — that MPs should also be accountable to their constituency members.

Accountability must include replaceability, otherwise it becomes a dead letter. If Labour MPs, if Labour Party appointees, or if trade-union appointees or secondments to the Labour Party are not acting in line with the members’ stated polices, if they refuse to call out this rotten government, or if they even actively work to undermine the prospects of a Labour government, they must be held to account.

This is a vital matter for the health of the Labour Party and for our entire politics.

Currently it is a life-and-death matter for our own citizens.

Diane Abbott is Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

This article was originally published here

Dangerous Times

Public Reading Rooms — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 05:17:23 +0000

Susan Pashkoff writes

This has been a rather impressive week even for Donald Trump. Whenever you think that he has reached the nadir of his Presidency, he always manages to continue the downward trend; it is like a sink-hole that appears in the middle of an area that simply sucks everything in its path downwards.

The freezing of funding to the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic was jaw dropping; Richard Horton the Editor in Chief of The Lancet, Britain’s premier medical journal, rightly called his behaviour “a crime against humanity.” Thinking that this may be useful in case Trump actually wins the next election (if nothing else if charges were brought against him that may keep him trapped in the US fearing arrest) this in and of itself clearly is insufficient to stop the extremely dangerous actions of this President.

Trump’s Response to the Pandemic

Trump has absolutely and consistently refused to take any responsibility for the death and destruction wreaked by the spread of Covid-19 across US society, aided by the appalling incompetence of his government. He started by down-playing the virus and its potential for contagion – arguing that it was similar to seasonal flu. When that became unsustainable, he blamed the Chinese – as Chomsky argues playing on century’s old anti-Chinese racism. He also blamed the Europeans and latterly the World Health Organization (WHO). In doing so he has undermined the international fight against the virus and its effects by prioritising the short term needs of the American state over international cooperation.

Rather than work across borders to address a global pandemic, Trump has gone out of his way to undermine an international response; the defunding of WHO just being the latest example. He prevented N95 masks (the ones that protect the wearer rather than those around them) produced by US company 3M being sold overseas, tried to corner the market on a potential vaccine produced in Germany, literally stole PPE and ventilators from other countries whether by outbidding them or diverting delivery. This has all done little to ensure international goodwill or cooperation.

He banned Chinese tourists coming to the US; hoping that would show he was taking the virus seriously while using racism as a tactic again but of course did not stop Europeans coming and did nothing to prevent the spread of the virus through community transmission.

In a problem that is peculiar to the US due to the number of politicised religious believers, religious services among some sects have continued despite the pandemic. The “Freedom of Religion” so important to Americans has led to the defiance of lock-down orders in many states. Refusing to stop religious services due to the pandemic (or to even hold them on line like Catholics, Anglicans in Britain, and most Muslims and Jewish sects), right-wing Christian fundamentalist religious leaders (this seems to be a problem with other fundamentalist religious leaders across religions) insisted on holding open services in the middle of the pandemic which has also led to the spread of the virus. Moreover, several Pastors and Reverends have died from the virus following these public services. Essentially, we are waiting for the impact on their parishioners of their religious leader’s fears of the “evils of science.”

The US was particularly vulnerable to a pandemic due to the insufficient level of public healthcare. Moreover, the elimination of the Directorate for Global Health and Security and Bio-Defense as part of the National Security Council (NSC) in 2018 under John Bolton certainly did not help with pandemic preparedness. The existence of public healthcare in most advanced capitalist countries allowed European countries to at least mobilise their healthcare systems even if too late to prevent large numbers of deaths.

China gave western countries time to prepare for the virus and yet this was squandered by many of their governments; the purchase or production of did not happen, healthcare systems were not put on pandemic alert, this led to a delayed response with catastrophic consequences which we are now witnessing. Trump’s insistence that the Chinese are lying about the extent of the deaths from the virus irrespective of the fact that clearly once again America is #1 is simply bizarre; is this a competition?

Without a doubt, once deaths at home and in care centres around the world are counted, we will see a far higher death toll from the virus; but this fact does not alter the reality that the Trump Administration (and for that matter Republican Governors, Legislators at both state and federal levels) have grotesquely failed to prepare and fight the virus. Rather than introduce a lock-down earlier, they allowed beaches to remain open during Spring Break (e.g., Florida), allowed Mardi Gras celebrations to continue (Louisiana), and some are still opposing lock-down measures that are needed to contain the virus. Even more so, Trump actually played desperate state governors against each other, telling them that they were responsible for obtaining PPE and ventilators and then sabotaging their attempts to get this essential equipment by buying it out from under them; there are reports that Trump has erected a blockade preventing hospitals and states from getting PPE … the fear of his using his powers to withhold distribution of desperately needed PPE to states where governors support him are increasing.

The Production vs Protection Problem

Trump has always trumpeted the state of the US economy as the primary accomplishment of his Presidency. Addressing a dangerous pandemic has required many countries to be put in lockdown and that means that their economies are also in lockdown except for key sectors needed to provide healthcare, guarantee food on shelves (food production and distribution), and to provide for basic necessities. The pandemic has resulted in a massive slowdown of the world economy and the probability that an economic depression will occur.

Trump’s fantasy that he can single-handedly save the US economy would be humorous if it was not so completely confused. The collapse of the world capitalist economy into a depression is something that honestly is beyond Trump’s personal ability to avoid; addressing and mitigating this depression will require a world-wide capitalist response to revive production, trade and consumption. This the US cannot do on its own; moreover, Trump is a rentier and speculator and just does not understand how the capitalist economic system works and that capitalist production requires more than his say-so to restart. In many senses, any government serving the interests of capital can actually provide both a source of autonomous demand (guaranteed purchase of goods and services) and ensuring that income for working class is available for them to purchase goods and services. The need for demand to drive production and for that matter international trade (remember that many necessities are not produced domestically in the advanced capitalist world) means that government can play an important role in trying to mitigate the economic crisis that is coming but due to globalisation, these economies are far more interdependent and as such a global response will be required.

Trump’s desperation to restart the US economy to ensure that he has something to campaign on has led to his latest ploy of trying to reopen the economy in the middle of a pandemic. His insistence that he can actually do so has once again run smack into reality: while he can close the economy, he cannot open it; that is under control of State Governors. While there are certainly some state Governors that are willing to do so because they are also in denial about the dangers of this virus (for some reason they seem to think that because NY and NJ are flattening the curve, that holds for the whole country) and politically they support Trump and are quite willing to risk the continued spread of the coronavirus and deaths of their citizens if it keeps Trump in office. The reopening of beaches in Florida (irrespective of its overall state death toll hitting 726 people yesterday) yet again was shocking in its denial and stupidity. Florida’s population has a high number of elderly people who are extremely vulnerable to developing fatal cases of the virus; perhaps the Governor thinks that because they are Democratic voters means that it will not hurt his chances of re-election? I cannot think of any other reason for this incredibly stupid and dangerous decision.

The Anti-Lockdown Protests

Getting state governors to reopen their economies in a pandemic is viewed by Trump as crucial to his re-election. The protests that have been organised this week (and which are continuing) throughout the weekend are part of that strategy. If it were only that which was happening we could laughingly talk about winners of the Darwin prize this year (there are a multitude of candidates for this honour). However, the use of right-wing extremists (and they are not Conservatives in any manner irrespective of what they insist) to undermine the lock-down is by no means humorous as there is far more going on than is apparent.

These protests that have been organised by the far-right in the US have several purposes and only superficially are attempts to pressure governors to open their states. On the one hand, we can snicker at people who want to be exploited by their bosses and talk about natural selection at work. On the other hand, the real situation contains far greater dangers.

What is the purpose of these right-wing protests against the lockdown?

It is not only economic interests that are relevant; there is a strong political impetus at work. These are protests organised and funded by the leaders of the far-right like Charles Koch and organised by the Proud Boys and survivalist and white-supremacist armed militias holding Nazi and Trump flags on the streets.

I would argue that their goals are currently three-fold:

Organise and coordinate the far-right to develop a larger political movement;

Prepare these groups to be used against opposition to Trump and the left;

Use these groups to threaten both the legal arms of the state and political opponents; this is right out of the historical fascist handbook where roving groups of fascists were used against both the left and other opponents as threats to force their demands and to obtain control over the country.

To illustrate the danger we are in, let’s put this disastrous situation in the world context of the revival of fascism and extremist right-wing nationalism in the world and let’s discuss the dangers of their coordinating together which is what we have been seeing for years. So currently, governments are run by extreme right-wing nationalists (e.g., the US, Russia, Brazil, Hungary, India, Poland and Israel) and/or these hard-right political organisations have seats in legislators around the world, (see most of Europe like Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, etc). But it does not stop there as there are far-right political organisations that are organising on the mass level in many countries and coordination between them exists. We are in an extremely dangerous situation. The hard and extreme right is gaining supporters and the left is far weaker than the last time fascism reared its head. The question arises what will the centrist and liberals do if this struggle intensified? Anyone that is under any illusions that they will stand with anti-fascists may probably live to regret that.

Can Trump Cancel the Election?

Some people are concerned that Trump might cancel the Presidential elections; which he cannot do legally. Even the introduction of martial law would not allow him to cancel or delay them. It would substitute military for police control and suspend Habeas Corpus; leading to a real suspension of democratic rights and the arrest and detention of opponents. So, he could formally declare martial law and the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act (2007) passed under George W Bush means that he could take control over national guards of each state without their governors’ permission if an insurrection or rebellion occur and order cannot otherwise be maintained.

This is a serious danger and it may become extremely relevant if the armed protests continue and seriously escalate; it is certain that Democratic State Governors are very aware of this possibility and will be very reluctant to set this process in motion.

An additional worse case possible scenario (hopefully remote as there is not sufficient support for this in the US) is the use of these groups to allow the declaration of martial law with the excuse it would be used against them, but instead using it against their opponents. But whether the far-right are deluded enough to try and force this step at this point and hope to succeed is another issue altogether.

The possibility of a coup d’état appears remote. That requires more than a few right-wing militias and Trump has actually infuriated the military leadership several times; so it is doubtful whether he can actually pull that off. This does not mean that the situation is not extremely dangerous.

However, Trump cannot prevent the election on his own or delay it. On a legal (Constitutional) level, he is constrained despite all his fantasies. Any delay to the election requires Congressional support; getting this past Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives is not likely. If there is no election, Trump is out of office in January 2021 which would put Pelosi in the driver’s seat and he certainly doesn’t want that. This does not mean that the situation is not extremely dangerous.

Fascist goals

In essence, this is a political issue and it goes well beyond keeping him in office. While certainly some of the participants are simply Trump supporters, the real danger are the fascist and white supremacists groups looking to expand their movement. The normalisation of fascism, its ideas and groups is a major part of their agenda.

Uniting the far-right and creating a serious fascist movement is the goal; so while Donald Trump is certainly trying to benefit from the actions of these groups, their agenda is far greater than him. Trump is useful to them; his use of divide and rule in the forms of spreading racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia and undermining the creation of solidarity between people is useful for these fascists and the normalisation of their politics.

The use of the “don’t tread on me” flag (aka the Gadsden Flag) resonates with the right-wing understanding of American history — this is irrespective of the fact the flag itself initially did not have those connotations — it is a flag from the American Revolutionary War. The appropriation of this flag by the hard-right nicely coincides with the idea that the lockdown is a threat to American democracy as it is a threat to American individualism and of course the capitalist basis of the US which appears (and underlies) this demand (think of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Von Hayek’s Capitalism, freedom and democracy ideological nonsense for the economic justification of this argument).

Trump benefits from these far-right protestors and they are useful to him as they are serving his current agenda. He doesn’t however control them. If the situation were not dangerous enough, this increases the danger for American citizens. This is because the far right’s true goal goes way beyond Donald Trump. It is far more dangerous than anything he can produce. We need to be aware of their real agenda and be prepared in case this spreads beyond a few right-wing arseholes and leads to a consolidation of a fascist movement.

Some final thoughts

There have been counter-protests against these right-wing protests in NY. It is understandable that people do not want to allow the far-right control over the streets, the question whether this is the best use of the left in this moment arises. Do we let the right-wingers risk their lives on their own or will we allow them to put our lives in danger? Is this the way to fight against them at this time or can we do organise in other ways against them?

Grass-roots organising and preparation are essential in fighting back and countering their messages. At the moment, this is a small group of fascists on the streets; this may stay as astro-turfing on the part of the American hard right. However, allowing them to endanger us and potentially extending the spread of the virus (as they are doing through these protests) must be opposed. We need to find new ways to do this in the current context of the pandemic as well as discussing across the left as a whole what are the ways forward in isolating the far right. This pandemic will not last forever and we need to discuss how and on what basis we can coordinate to develop a left-wing response.

First published by the Anti-Capitalist Meetup group on the Daily Kos and republished with the author’s permission.

Coronavirus: the fight to take the country back must begin

John Wight — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 07:56:59 +0000

When politics is reduced to theatre, when the gesture becomes prized over the deed — and this in the midst of the worst crisis we have faced in Britain since 1940— then we’ve reached the point where mass somnolence and acceptance of a status quo dripping in injustice has taken the place of public anger and accountability.

The unvarnished truth is that after decades of free market assault on the public sector, accompanied by the demonisation and devaluation of public sector workers by a reactionary mainstream media — owned by a clutch of billionaires for whom the public realm is the sworn enemy of their fanatical attachment to the verities of the market — we find ourselves today naked and trembling in the face of a global pandemic.

Coronavirus has exposed our government as a clutch of third rate incompetents whose threadbare response to the crisis has been of a piece with slapstick comedy. The grim reality is of course no laughing matter, however — not when we have care homes transformed into veritable death camps; not when a month into this crisis NHS workers, care workers, and others on the frontline still lack sufficient personal protection equipment, ventilators and testing; and certainly not when there is a distinct lack of organisation and joined up thinking between the various government departments.

But the calamitous response to coronavirus is not just the doing of the current government. It marks the culmination of the hegemony of free market ideology and nostrums going back four decades and peaking with ten years of austerity that cut to the bone what was left of our public services, including the NHS, turning us into latter day spectators at the Coliseum of the despair and suffering of the most vulnerable among us. It did so while propagating the grotesque idea that this is the best of all possible worlds.

Health expert brands UK’s coronavirus response ‘pathetic’

A leading public health expert has launched a devastating critique of the government’s handling of the coronavirus…

www.theguardian.com

Philosopher and psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm, whose works resonate ever still, argues persuasively that ‘Human existence is characterized by the fact that man is alone and separated from the world; not being able to stand the separation, he is impelled to seek for relatedness and oneness’.

The point Fromm is making here is not that we desire relatedness with one another, but that our species being dictates that we need it — and that when denied relatedness alienation and dysfunction is the result. In societal terms, relatedness is expressed in the level of social organisation and health and strength of our public services and institutions at any given point.

Free market (neoliberal) ideas are antithetical to human relatedness. It is why that if this pandemic teaches us anything it’s that we’ve been systematically reduced to a disorganised and disconnected mass of human dust. Thus the collective appreciation we now rightfully feel for the NHS and all who work in her, and also for our carers, cleaners, transport workers, bin men, and supermarket workers, remind us of the truth that no man is an island — that we need each other, and moreover that we need the aforementioned now more than we ever needed hedge fund managers, bankers, and a billionaire class whose greed is now so obscene you’d associate it with the dying days of Rome.

It is an utter and unalloyed disgrace that our key workers currently find themselves compelled to risk their lives just by going to work in the midst of a public health crisis and emergency that was entirely foreseen. Anyone who claims otherwise is an execrable liar and propagandist. Boris Johnson went to sleep at the wheel, embracing inaction in the interests of the economy rather than prompt action in the interests of public health at the outset. The result is that the UK is well on track to being the hardest hit country in Europe from coronavirus. If austerity can be categorised as social murder, this knavish Tory government’s handling of coronavirus has been public slaughter

We are entitled to ask how many of clapping these past few weeks voted in this government of fanatical privatising anti-NHS buccaneers (Dominic Raab, anyone) last December, highlighting the regressive part which false consciousness has played in fashioning this dystopia we have the temerity to call a society. Clapping along with Tory ministers, MPs, and right wing ideologues for the NHS and carers is like clapping along with cancer for chemotherapy.

Once this crisis ends, and who knows when, there must be a political reckoning, one that ensures there is no going back. And make no mistake, such a reckoning is at this juncture beyond the remit of parliament or the ballot box. The days of just taking it and going along to get along must end and they must end now. We need a mass movement — militant, determined, united — to take to the streets and take this country back from those who have wrecked it.

End.

The UK Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Public Reading Rooms — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 13:43:28 +0000

Colin Leys writes: The UK government’s handling of the pandemic does not look good. The country is locked down at enormous economic, social, and psychological cost, while the number of people dying from the infection is rising towards a thousand a day.

As a result of the lockdown, which began on 23 March, it is hoped that the numbers being admitted to hospital, and the numbers dying, will soon start to decline, thanks to the interruption of community transmission. Of course, the interruption is only partial, because essential services must continue to be provided, and people need to go out to shop and see their doctor and take exercise and not all keep a safe distance. The government says the hospitals can cope, but so far they cannot prevent some 15% of their COVID-19 patients, especially those with co-morbidities, from dying. One hospital in London that had four wards ready for COVID-19 patients a few weeks ago now has eighteen wards open and full, while huge temporary hospitals are being prepared in several conference centres around the country, with correspondingly large temporary mortuaries.

The problem now is that until an effective vaccine is developed and mass-produced, which could take up to eighteen months, the lockdown will have to continue, which is impracticable on every ground, until some other way of containing the pandemic is found. Anthony Costello, a professor of global health at University College London and former director of maternal and child health at the World Health Organization, argues that there is only one option: to test for the virus on a mass scale, with a nation-wide field force capable of tracing and isolating contacts at the local level, until a vaccine is available. This could enable something like normal life to resume, with ongoing local lockdowns sufficient to prevent a fresh surge in infections – the policy being pursued, notably, by China and South Korea. At this point, however, no such field force is on the government’s agenda.

How the UK arrived at this situation may one day be fully accounted for. Perhaps there will be a public inquiry, like the Chilcot inquiry into the UK’s participation in the attack on Iraq, which lasted seven years and thus reported too late to prevent the disaster being repeated. But it is possible to work out what has happened, or has not happened, and we need to try to keep the record straight. The decisions that the cabinet and prime minister – himself now in intensive care with COVID 19–have had to make are undeniably difficult. Little is yet known about the new virus, and balancing the need to protect people from it against the need to protect people with every other kind of health need, and all the collateral victims of the lockdown, is extraordinarily complex and involves painful choices. But we should nonetheless record the circumstances and what we have been told about them.

A team of Chinese doctors submitted a report to The Lancet, the leading British medical journal, which published it on 24 January. It concluded that the new coronavirus was being transmitted between humans and had a case fatality rate among the hospitalized patients studied of 15%, and urged other countries to prepare for it. At that time Boris Johnson’s government was fresh from winning a large parliamentary majority in the general election of December 2019, on the basis of promising to “get Brexit done” by 31 January 2020.

In these circumstances the Chinese warning clearly did not reach the cabinet, which the prime minister was in any case busy planning to “reshuffle” with a view to delivering on its other main election promise: to “level up” the economies of the deindustrialized North and Midlands, from where the key support for Brexit, and for the Conservatives in the December election, had come. Apart from the flooding, this was the only significant concern of the cabinet throughout February.

The cabinet reshuffle began on 13 February, and involved a telling incident: the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the minister of finance) resigned rather than accept that his special advisers should be replaced by advisers selected by the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings. Cummings was credited with having been the mastermind behind both the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union and the Conservatives’ December 2019 election victory, and had been given the extraordinary powers that led to the departure of the finance minister. He was openly contemptuous of the way government had traditionally been conducted. He intended to run it in a new way, using new kinds of unorthodox thinkers as policy advisers, strongly controlled from the prime minister’s office. Civil servants were under notice to conform or quit.

This new policymaking culture was being imposed just when the pandemic was taking hold. Such senior professional advisors as the government’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) represented yesterday’s way of doing business. Their advice on how the pandemic should be tackled was mixed with advice from Cummings and also from David Halpern, the head of the prime minister’s “Behavioural Insights Team”, or “nudge unit”. Halpern was interested in the potential of the pandemic to give rise to “herd immunity” through the infection of a large enough proportion of the population. Cummings also showed an interest in this, and the CSA, Patrick Vallance, even put a figure of 60% on the proportion that would need to be infected.

This gave rise to heated protests from epidemiologists, who pointed out that it was not even known whether the new virus conferred any immunity–or, if it did, for how long it did so. It also attracted criticism from many others who considered it outrageous to rely on herd immunity at the expense of an unknown toll in deaths. It actually seems unlikely that anyone was pushing this as policy. The development of herd immunity was assumed, rightly or wrongly, to be a fact, and its casual introduction in the debate seems rather to indicate a lack of appreciation of the gravity and urgency of the threat on the part of the non-medical advisers. Halpern, for example, speculated as late as 11 March that while herd immunity was being acquired vulnerable people in care homes might need to be “cocooned” for their protection, with the help of a volunteer force of students who could be trained over the coming summer.

The impact of Cummings’ new policymaking culture was all the more serious because of the effects of the Conservatives’ attempt in 2012 to turn the National Health Service (NHS) into a healthcare market. This had included abolishing the Health Protection Agency (HPA), an organization independent of the Department of Health, which had been charged with protecting the population in health emergencies; its functions were merged with those of health promotion, in a new organization called “Public Health England” that was attached to the Department of Health. HPA’s regional personnel were redistributed to some 150 town and county councils and subjected to budget cuts which by 2020 had reduced them to impotent teams of as few as two or three people. So by the time the pandemic struck, protection against an epidemic was no longer the responsibility of any single body with resources and status, or implementation capacity on the ground. The CMO was no longer in direct charge of managing pandemics, but only one adviser among others, with no budget. A symptom of the consequences was that serious shortcomings in pandemic preparedness revealed in a routine exercise in 2016, and reported by the then CMO, were not acted on. Another striking symptom of the dispersal of responsibility is that there is still (in early April) no single official website, such as exists in other countries, providing daily updated comprehensive official information on the progress of the pandemic.

During February the Department of Health and Social Care did, however, produce a Coronavirus Action Plan, and the prime minister called a meeting of the Civil Contingencies Committee to discuss it on 2 March. The plan called for “phased actions to Contain, Delay, and Mitigate any outbreak, using Research to inform policy development”. “Containment” meant following up new cases and isolating them and their contacts, focusing mainly on individuals entering the UK from abroad. “Delay” meant slowing the spread by encouraging people to wash their hands and self-isolate if they had symptoms, so as to slow the onset of peak demand on the NHS. “Mitigation” meant caring for infected patients, and helping other people and organizations affected by the pandemic. The plan document foresaw that the virus would spread and warned of likely deaths, but its general tone still suggested that the impact was not likely to need more than good behaviour on the part of the public.

This impression was reinforced when on 11 March the government introduced a budget which, while providing £3 billion for the mitigation phase of the Action Plan, was otherwise entirely focused on delivering Brexit and “levelling up”. At the same time, the NHS started restricting testing to patients admitted to hospital. This was presented as a shift from containment to mitigation, but it was dictated by the fact that the NHS’s whole testing capacity–then just 1500 tests a day–was barely adequate to deal even with the sharply rising number of suspected COVID-19 patients being admitted to hospital.

Behind the scenes, however, both Public Health England and a team of modellers based at Imperial College London were finally getting their message through to the politicians in reports which became public on 14 and 15 March. They concluded that the existing policy was likely to lead to 7.9 million hospital admissions, which would overwhelm the NHS, and cost some 250 000 lives. In a series of reluctant steps over the next week, the cabinet eventually accepted the need for an enforced national lockdown. Their reluctance was due partly to awareness that the public would hate it and fear that the government would pay a political price, partly to the fact that the cost would bury their political project for “levelling up”, as indeed it did. The £3 billion allocated to mitigation in the 11 March budget disappeared into the £350 billion committed to supporting the lockdown less than three weeks later. They also had to swallow their intense dislike of state intervention of any kind. Worst of all, there was no exit strategy.

There were plenty of criticisms of the lockdown, most of them based on the fact that the modelling it was based on depended on assumptions for which there was little solid evidence. It was bound to reflect the experience of previous epidemics, but the new coronavirus was unlike previous ones in crucial ways: for example, its lethality might prove much less than was being assumed. But the most telling criticisms came, as described earlier, from Anthony Costello, and the editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton. They endorsed the precautionary principle that underlay government policy but attacked the government for failing to act much faster, and above all for failing to undertake mass testing while tracing and isolating the contacts of every positive case. Epidemics, they pointed out, have regional and local areas of intensity, arguing that it is only by identifying these and clamping them down that national epidemics can be suppressed – not eliminated, but managed – so that national life can recover.

This criticism showed how the lockdown could be ended, but it also highlighted the fact that even if the government had been focused on the pandemic in February, the capacity to implement the nation-wide community-based testing, tracing, and enforcement of local quarantines that are needed did not exist. An adequate pandemic preparedness plan in a rich country should have included this, but the UK’s did not. On the contrary, the deliberate financial starvation of the NHS over the previous decade had left it short of capital equipment; bed numbers, including intensive care beds, had been cut to the bone, and there was still a shortage of some 5,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses. As the disease spread during the lockdown the lack of preparedness came into public view in a new way: there was not enough testing capacity even to test NHS staff to ensure that they were safe to work with patients, or enough personal protection equipment to keep them, or the staff of residential care homes, from becoming infected. Ventilators were also in short supply. It emerged, too, that the government had spurned an opportunity to join an EU initiative that had begun in January for the collective procurement of equipment to fight the pandemic. The government later claimed, falsely, not to have known about it.

Unfortunately, spin has become the default response of UK governments to any criticism, and the fact that the NHS’s lack of readiness and capacity was the result of successive Conservative government policies pushed the official spinners into overdrive. Besides routinely understating the risk, officials and ministers serially misled the public and substituted nationalistic and militaristic rhetoric for honest acknowledgement of the problems they and the country faced.

Meantime, and in contrast, NHS hospital staff at all levels have responded with impressive speed to the terrifying surge of seriously ill patients, rapidly repurposing both hospitals and clinical specialists and caring devotedly for COVID-19 patients at high risk of becoming infected themselves – a risk hugely increased by the shocking shortage of adequate protective equipment. In the hospitals no one goes uncared for, even as the dead become too numerous for the mortuaries to contain (the plight of the 400,000 highly vulnerable people in predominantly private care homes is another story, and a shocking one). The surge will fall back, and sooner or later a rational programme to manage the pandemic will be adopted, the lockdown will be limited, and eventually a reliable vaccine will, presumably, be available. But new viruses will appear, and the question remains whether the UK will learn a sharp enough lesson from this one to restore the NHS to financial health and adequate preparedness for the future.

Colin Leys is an emeritus professor of political studies at Queen’s University, Canada, and an honorary research professor at Goldsmiths, University of London. A political economist of development and healthcare whose work has spanned a wide range of topics, from decolonization in Kenya and Namibia to socialism in contemporary Britain, Leys has written powerfully and extensively against the privatization of the UK National Health Service (see, e.g., here, here, and here).

This article was first published here

Greece in the time of the coronavirus

Public Reading Rooms — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 15:25:43 +0000

Dimitris Karellas and Stamatis Vardaros* write from Greece

At the time of writing, the officially recorded cases of the virus in Greece amount to 1,884¹, while the number of deceased is 83. These numbers are comparable to most EU countries and indeed with a better prognosis, while the measures taken by the neoliberal and overly conservative New Democracy government are more or less identical to the measures adopted all over the world – with the exception of the class-blind and fatal Trump and Johnson nonsense.

Almost all measures in Greece were adopted 10 to 20 days before their implementation in most other European countries: successive closure of schools, universities, restaurants and cafes, art, culture and entertainment venues, retail stores, partial circulation ban for ports and airports, support (inadequate) for workers and (biased in favour of) employers. All of the above has been accompanied by a wide information campaign and constant calls to stay home. It is true that concerning the lock-down measures for limiting the spread of the virus, the Mitsotakis government is so far following the recommendations of the experts. It is adopting most of the restrictive measures that have already been tested in Europe and beyond; and it is now imposing a universal prohibition of traffic, with only a small number of possible exceptions and the obligation to report any such movement to the competent authorities.

However, on the other important front of the pandemic, the strengthening of the National Health System (NHS), much less has been done than is really needed. There is already a noticeable shortage of personal protective equipment, a reinforcement of the NHS with additional staff (medical and other health professionals) is long overdue, a lack of planning for permanent posts and a reluctance to complete the pending procedures for already-hired permanent staff to enter in the Service. Furthermore, there was no provision for incorporating the Primary Health Care structures into the Ministry of Health‘s planning to tackle the pandemic, and a lack in developing or even properly utilising home care services for vulnerable groups. The NHS and University laboratories soon reached their maximum capacity for the diagnosis of coronavirus infections, there is a real risk of deterioration in the regular monitoring and treatment of patients with chronic or other serious diseases. There are long queues and tribulation for citizens visiting the public pharmacies of the National Organisation for the Provision of Health Services (EOPYY) for the provision of high-cost medicines, increasing shortages of simple but vital medicines in the market, lack of blood to meet the country’s needs, and more specifically the needs of polytransfused patients.

There is also a lack of targeted measures for vulnerable groups, such as refugees, Roma, prisoners, homeless, drug addicts, people living in nursing homes or welfare institutions, people living in crowded housing conditions or with inadequate means of protection and incapacity to observe even the basic rules of personal hygiene. This is a situation conducive to the creation of a “social Darwinism” and “natural choice” context for those who are more powerful and more resilient to the pandemic.

An obligatory policy

In reality, the neoliberal Mitsotakis government is called upon to confront the pandemic using the plan and weapons of its left opponent. While before the elections, but also during the first months of the new government’s term from July 2019 onwards, their health policy amounted to a passive privatisation of the NHS, preparing the active privatisation phase with the introduction of the first PPPs (Public–Private Partnerships), they are now obliged to tackle the pandemic brandishing the NHS as their main weapon. Not surprisingly, the NHS currently enjoys levels of social acceptance and political consensus comparable only to the first period of its establishment in the early 1980s.

This swift reaction by the right-wing government was dictated by two reasons. First, an attempt to save the tourist season, at least the 2020 July-September period, as tourism accounts for about 23% of Greek GDP and, directly or indirectly, 35% of jobs. The second reason was the relatively fragile structure of the welfare state following the collapse of the country due to the economic crisis, the harsh austerity memoranda imposed by the IMF, the European Commission and the European Bank (the infamous Troika) and the scary numbers one can read after a (lost!) war in 2009-2015: 25% fall in GDP, 28% unemployment, 40% income reduction, collapse of the national health and social protection systems, 25% of the population excluded from the social insurance and health system, increase of the material deprivation rate to about 22% compared to the approximately 8% in the other EU countries. This war image was complemented by the pressure put by hundreds of thousands of refugees and immigrants who have passed through the country, and the tens of thousands who still remain trapped after the central European countries closed their borders.

At the same time, the government’s ability to implement these measures and their widespread acceptance by the population is based on the conviction of the people that the reinstatement of the welfare state during the term of the SYRIZA government (2015-2019) will have the required continuity, especially after having seen even hardline neoliberal politicians expressing vows of faith to the (public of course!) welfare state as the only available shield in times of crisis.²

A few words about recent past

In 2015, the SYRIZA government, in a state of financial strangulation and faced with a severe humanitarian crisis, chose to pursue three, immediately effective, measures for citizens, all free of charge:

provision of food and other basic material, as well as electricity and rent allowance for about 400,000 people in extreme (or absolute) poverty ³
unimpeded access to health care for nearly 2,500,000 people
free public transportation for the unemployed

The elimination of the phenomenon of people looking for food in the trash bins, of sick people dying helpless in their home or pauperised people being forced to sell–off all of their assets in order to pay for basic items or medicines, treatments, hospitalisation, were the first signs that the policies were changing “class indicators” even within the context of an austerity environment. A whole range of policies has been implemented since then, with a focus on reducing unemployment and job insecurity, as well as rebuilding the welfare state, not only to support the needs of the majority but also to restore human dignity in its diversity.

Given that the course and impact of the current crisis are determined not only by the current government policy but also by the previous SYRIZA government policy and its already measured performance results, we will seek to describe the current crisis in relation to everything we know regarding key pillar reforms in the health and social welfare sectors, while we were working at the respective Ministries. Thus, among many other things, we will not speak about the reduction of unemployment by almost 10 percentage points or the increase in the minimum wage by 11% or the obligation for employers to justify lay-offs. By the way, the latter is one of the first measures the right-wing government has cancelled – and rightly so: no neoliberal (i.e. capitalist!) would ever tolerate the slightest restriction on the employers’ management rights.

The situation in the field of Social Welfare

As the exercise of fundamental social rights is an obligation of the state, the functioning of an effective welfare state and the access of the whole population to its benefits and services are essential elements of the identity of any left-wing party worthy of that name. All the more so for the radical left, which has the additional obligation to implement policies that point the way towards and also highlight the actuality of another society, of equality and generalised social solidarity.

Based on the concept of universal social protection, the measures over the four year period 2015-2019 were grouped around several key axes. In the area of social welfare, the focus was on the fight against poverty and social exclusion, child support, and the elimination of inequalities for disabled people.

In the fight against poverty and social exclusion, the first immediate measures mentioned above were creatively incorporated into the Social Solidarity Income (SSI), a minimum guaranteed income program that replaced a failed and poorly targeted pilot implementation imposed by the Troika upon the previous governments. The Troika, under the almost extortionate pressure of the IMF, has sought to integrate the neoliberal notion that focuses only on “extreme” poverty, arguing that inequality is a normal condition, that people should rely only on themselves for a decent life⁴, that the state will try to reduce inequalities only if and when GDP is on the rise (hence, without the constant redistribution of social wealth), that charity by the “fortunate” is called upon to cover for the shortcomings of the state.

The SSI was designed to offer, in addition to direct financial support, free use of services (nurseries, school meals, electricity and water supply, special programs for food and essentials) and, more importantly, jobs for 10% of the unemployed program beneficiaries. At the start of the program in 2017, the number of the beneficiaries was 650,000, 50% of which were unemployed. Currently, the SSI beneficiaries, following the introduction in early 2019 of a completely new benefit for rent support and along with all other social policy measures, including the fight against unemployment, have been reduced to 450,000.⁵ The election of the neoliberal Mitsotakis government has halted the implementation of already prepared enhancements, such as the increase in the cash SSI allowance, its correlation to the minimum wage, and the automatic increase to 30% of the unemployed eligible to secure a job, with the aim to reach 100% by 2025.

One of the worst interventions by the right-wing government was the abolition of the Special Secretariat for the Coordination of Roma Policies and the consequent interruption of several holistic intervention programs (health, education, housing, work) for a depleted group of citizens.

For the child, the budget from 822 million in 2015 reached 1,424 million in 2019, to (a) extend the child allowance for an additional 160.00 children⁶ (b) implement a new program for free school meals offered to 150,000 primary school children, with the aim to cover all 600,000 students in primary schools by 2021-22 (c) increase free childcare placements from 78,000 in 2015 to 150,000 in 2019 (d) promote de-institutionalisation through the implementation of a new, innovative law on adoption and foster care, and (e) establish and implement a comprehensive guardianship system for unaccompanied refugee minors.

For disabled people, first and foremost no benefit or allowance was reduced, despite the fierce pressure exercised by the IMF for three years; moreover, special benefits were no longer connected to employment status. A number of other measures, such as prioritising 15% of public sector jobs for disabled people and their families, finalising funding for the creation of a large number of Supported Living Units to promote a pilot de-institutionalisation program, a nationwide remote support system for the hearing impaired using video and lip reading technologies, have shown that equality was not only a demand of the disabled people’s movement but also a firm belief of the SYRIZA government.

To support the above measures, and many more, a digitised National Social Welfare System was created, building on a new network of 240 structures across the country’s Municipalities (“Community Centers”), where citizens in need of help can get useful information promptly and are referred, when needed, to the appropriate social care services in their community, both state and private. The same System supports the de-institutionalisation process for the network of the state institutions, covering all 13 administrative Regions, with the aim to promote community care for children, the disabled and chronically ill, and to transform these institutions into co-ordination centers for all welfare policies in their Region.

In addition to the enormous effort to implement these programs, measures and changes, and in the midst of a continuing war from the Troika in a context of budgetary strangulation, it was necessary to quadruple the Social Welfare budget from 2015 to 2019 and redirect European funds to infrastructure and social utility programs. Table 1 depicts these visible results, with poverty and child poverty rates dropping already since 2017 to the pre-crisis levels of 2009. It should be noted that actual results do not yet incorporate the financial years 2018 and 2019, when the indicators are expected to be even lower.

Table 1

Social Welfare Budgets and Poverty Indicators

Statistical Reference Year	2010	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019
Financial Reference Year	2009	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
Welfare Budget (€ millions)	941,8	785,5	677,4	789,7	883,0	1.525,7	1.836,5	3.268,2
Percentage of population at risk of poverty and social exclusion (AROPE index)	27,7	35,7	36,0	35,7	35,6	34,8	31,8
Percentage of Poverty (AROP index)	20,1	23,1	22,1	21,4	21,2	20,2	18,5
Percentage of Child Poverty	23,0	28,8	25,5	26,6	26,3	24,5	22,7

Source: Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT)

For more data see https://www.statistics.gr/en/statistics/-/publication/SFA10/2018

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic found the most vulnerable members of the population under the protection of a functional, universal social welfare system, as the neoliberal government was forced to “tolerate” SYRIZA’s policies, still hesitating to declare a new war on SYRIZA voters.⁷ But very soon they showed their true intentions: reductions in the welfare budget for 2020, freezing of the new, fair and transparent system for adoption and foster care, delays in the de-institutionalisation program for the disabled, poor implementation of the school meal program. And this is no accident, since these fields are very attractive for the private sector – and in the case of adoptions, for infant and hope traffickers.

A widely accepted “Help at Home” program at the municipal level for the elderly and the disabled had been functioning for nearly 20 years (!) with workers on short-term contracts. The regional Social Welfare Centers were understaffed for years. The SYRIZA government voted a bill giving permanent civil servant status to the “Help at Home” workers and allowing the hiring of new permanent staff for the Centers plus auxiliary personnel for at least two years. The current government’s 8 month refusal to abide by the law’s provisions, turned into panic and an attempt to speed up procedures, as the spread of the coronavirus to institutions for the vulnerable threatened to turn them into cemeteries, and the lock-down measures showed the valuable contribution of programs such as “Help at Home”.

The situation in the field of Health

The protracted economic and social crisis in Greece and the austerity measures of the first Memorandum period have inflicted wounds on institutions, the political system, public administration, the welfare state and of course the public health system. For it is well-documented that the crisis not only produces unemployment and poverty, it also produces psychosomatic vulnerability and illness. It creates the need for increased health and psychosocial care. This has been the case in the country but because of the political choice in the initial 2010-2014 Memorandum period to drastically cut health care costs, reduce public health care, pass on much of the cost to citizens, and exclude uninsured people from the NHS, these needs were left unaddressed. This has created a widespread “zone of health poverty“ in society that has endangered the country’s health standards, social cohesion and dignity. The “bottom-up“ social clinics, the civil society solidarity initiatives, the voluntary work of many health-care professionals and the sensitivity of the NHS staff have prevented a real health tragedy in Greece.

The top political priority of the SYRIZA government was to ensure equal access for the uninsured to health care, prevent the functional black out of the NHS and reorganise the public health system. In spite of ongoing and historical problems, despite difficulties and limitations, this key objective has been achieved. In the Greece of severe austerity and under fiscal controls, cuts in public health spending stopped in 2015, the recruitment/retirement rate in the NHS has been positive since 2016, and following Law 4368 of 2016, more than 2 million uninsured citizens enjoy guaranteed and free access to public health facilities, exams, medicines and nursing care. The decoupling of the fundamental right to health from employment, insurance status and income is the major reform in the country’s health and social policy. Health poverty has been tackled drastically and inequality in health care has been measurably reduced: citizens with unmet health needs represented 12% of the population in 2016, while in 2018 the percentage has dropped to 8,3%.⁸.

Budget constraints and budgets “locked” by line item would not allow a significant increase in public health funding. However, under SYRIZA rule, with the utilisation of European resources (NSRF), the redistribution of resources from the private sector to the public health system, cost containment mechanisms for private providers and the pharmaceutical industry, and without passing on additional costs to citizens, we were able to meet more health needs and to move ahead with some crucial reforms.

Health needs were addressed through the strengthening of the National Health System with material and human resources. The largest investment project ever was initiated, which focused on equipment and infrastructure exceeding € 300 million, including investment in expensive and innovative therapeutic technology. At the same time, the NHS saw the largest human resource “injection” in the past 20 years, including 3360 permanent doctors, 5026 permanent nurses and other health professionals, and a total of more than 19,000 NHS employees.

At the same time, important interventions were made in the field of medicinal products, including, inter alia, an initiative for transnational cooperation between the countries of the South (the so-called “Valletta Initiative“), a partnership based on a single trading logic to facilitate access to pharmaceuticals, starting with negotiating better prices.

Another important intervention was made in the field of medical education, as well as physical medicine and rehabilitation with an ambitious program for activating 28 new public structures in major cities for recovery and rehabilitation. Much emphasis has also been placed on the reorganisation of the blood donation system, as well as on interventions in the field of mental health, addiction treatment and health care for refugees, immigrants and other vulnerable groups.

Most important of all is the reform of Primary Health Care, an intervention that completed the major breakthrough that the SYRIZA Government has made in the health system by ensuring coverage for the uninsured. The reform of Primary Health Care has begun to expand the “public space” in Health and to specify the subsidiary role of the private sector, always aiming at universal coverage of the population, equality of access and financial protection in particular for the weaker members of society. Public Primary Health Care was restructured into a human-centered model of health care delivery with the recipient at its core, through functional and targeted changes in order to facilitate the provision of health services and to liaise service providers on the basis of a vertical management system.

New decentralized structures have been created, the Local Health Units (TOMY), targeting a specific population, and staffed by an interdisciplinary team, comprising family doctors, paediatricians, nurses, health visitors, and social workers. TOMY and their health care teams have begun to develop a new example in the National Health System. They established family medicine units, focusing on preventive medicine, school health, vaccinations, chronic patient management, on continuous and holistic citizen care. TOMY are for citizens their first point of contact with the NHS, but at the same time they develop extrovert and community-based interventions (vaccinations for vulnerable groups, information campaigns for the general public, regular visits to schools, workplaces, centers for the elderly).

The goal of the reform was for every citizen, insured or uninsured, to have their own family doctor, their own health advisor, a person responsible for monitoring and managing their health problems, keeping their Individual E-record, for providing holistic and quality care.

Particular emphasis was placed on the re-occupation of the Primary Health Care space by the NHS, at the expense of private interests. The Primary Health Care sector, especially in urban centers, had been open to private sector practices since the establishment of the NHS in 1983 up until 2017. The SYRIZA government strategic choice was to re-occupy this space with the public system. The starting point for institutional intervention in primary health care lies in the pivotal role of the public system, making full use of its capacity and of the potential of the private sector to meet actual NHS needs.

Ideologically, the reform of Primary Health Care is a paradigm shift for the NHS. Until then, citizens used health services mainly, if not exclusively, when they became patients, when they were actually ill. And what’s more they used these public or private services as they thought best, acting as consumers. However, these consumers were lacking sufficient knowledge of the field (as non-experts). The result was that not only did they not maximize, as neoclassical economists say, the benefit through their “consumer choices”, but they often consumed services (exams, medicines, visits to specialists) that were inappropriate for their case. This practice, in the absence of valid and reliable information, often led citizens to seek an appropriate service through hear-say, following recommendations by family or friends (“I know a good doctor over there“), following referrals by specialists mainly of the private sector to other specialists or “appropriate” diagnostic centers, offering bargain packages. This situation obviously had consequences not only for the citizens’ health, but also for the financial capabilities of the health system, due to the arduous demand for health services and the many informal networks flourishing among the various health care providers.

This has been and remains the crucial point of the transition to the new system and this is also a red line when debating this intervention. When the Left was promoting a health system that would assume the responsibility for the citizen’s health, the opposite side was talking about a “blow to free choice”. But what is this free choice? The free choice offered by the former system, a semblance of freedom to choose between an inadequate and overburdened public service and the abundant and overpriced private sector services? The weakest citizens, before the 2016 Law on access by the uninsured to the health system, not only had no free choice but no free access at all. Freedom, Engels said, is the awareness of necessity, and that is precisely the conceptual basis of the Primary Health reform; it is the awareness of the service, the kind of care that a citizen needs, and for which the state has primary responsibility.

Obviously, this latest intervention in Primary Health Care, as well as the evolving NHS, have been targeted by the new government’s neoliberal choices from the very beginning. Before the pandemic made its appearance in Greece, the government had managed, within just eight months, to freeze the Primary Health reform, by gradually disorganising – with not much success – the 127 TOMY structures operating across the country and, at the same time, by creating a fertile ground for the entry of private interests into the NHS through PPPs. The non-renewal of contracts for staff necessary for the operation of departments or clinics, the cancellation of an ambitious recruitment program for permanent staff that the SYRIZA government had initiated, the interferences in the area of substance dependency aimed at saving resources, the centralisation of the control over relevant structures⁹, the suspension of the right to health care for asylum seekers and international protection beneficiaries, both adults and minors, the abolition of a fair framework for evaluating and selecting the NHS hospital administrators, the abolition of social control and accountability procedures at the local health structures, were all “preparatory” steps taken in the NHS in the months before the pandemic.

However, in times of crisis, as has been repeatedly documented in international literature and empirically recorded in Greece during the Memoranda period, people resort to public health systems. For they are systems offering guaranteed and universal coverage, with experienced, “battle-hardened” staff, dedicated to their duty, enjoying social acceptance and political consensus. This is the best combination when you go to battle, the battle for life.

The bottom line

We try not to think about what would had happened to the poor, the impoverished and vulnerable people in Greece in the current health crisis, if the neoliberal policies had continued after 2015, during the culmination of the country’s humanitarian, financial, social and political crisis.

We are aware that society’s current resilience is based on the incomplete, alas, establishment of an almost non-existent welfare state in the period 2015-2019.

We are fully aware that the current COVID-19 crisis is the spark for new, more serious than in 2008, global crises: economic, commercial, environmental, a crisis in the major international institutions of the 1%-99% system, (World Trade Organization, IMF, NATO, G7 v. Russia, Fed-Bank vs. Trump, European Central Bank), a political crisis in major countries (United States, UK, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, India – the list is long).

Exactly because this new crisis is being handled by the same institutions and people that handled the previous ones, namely large corporations, banks, brokers and political personnel plus the Media at their service, they continue to focus – for example – on differences in age-related mortality rates, avoiding any reference to class differences that are affecting mortality due to differences in income and social status: we can all see that access to critical health care for people over 70 varies widely between poor and rich.

Because class inequality is most bluntly captured at the time of need, it is very important that target values such as universal health coverage, strengthening of the welfare state, trust in the National Health System, care without any discrimination, and ultimately protection for the most vulnerable, are currently the central issues in the public agenda. And this is the agenda of the Left, it is a hegemonic agenda that in this critical time even neo-liberals are forced to “buy”, with the dark exceptions of the biopolitical anti-paradigm of Johnson in Britain and Trump in the USA.

When, hopefully, the pandemic subsides, what we need in order to keep our agenda at the forefront is documentation, social alliances capable of forming a front and, of course, political plans for the next day. Indeed, as the effects of the pandemic will be adding to the flammable materials of the upcoming severe and multifaceted crisis, we will need to talk not only about the developmental utility of social spending, social benefits, of the welfare state itself, but also of a political plan, so as not to burden once again the social majority with the consequences of a crisis caused by the same actors as in 2008 – not to mention other crises in the last two centuries. And that is our agenda.

*Dimitris Karellas is former Secretary General for Social Solidarity/Welfare, Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Social Solidarity, Greece

*Stamatis Vardaros is former Alternate Secretary General of Health, Ministry of Health, Greece

[Special thanks to Lina S. for helping with the translation]

1 As on 8^th April 2020.

2The tragicomic ironies of History: The left SYRIZA was forced to implement neoliberal policies. The neoliberal New Democracy is obliged to take Keynesian-type measures in an effort to reserve its harsh anti-social policy for the future.

3Although there is no commonly accepted concept of extreme poverty, it is widely used as a definition for those with less than 40% of the median household equivalent income.

4 As Margaret Thatcher put it back in 1987 : “[A]nd, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families”

5 Due to a number of innovations in its design, the SSI is being studied by international organisations and government agencies in other countries.

6 This benefit was completely redesigned to focus also on families with 1 and 2 children, who were receiving a ridiculous small amount.

7 In the July 2019 elections, there was an impressive record showing an almost complete correspondence between the number of unemployed that voted for SYRIZA and the number of unemployed SSI beneficiaries.

8See Eurostat-SILC at https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=hlth_silc_08&lang=en

9 The Therapy Center for Dependent Individuals (KETHEA) has been an intervention which threatens the Center’s mission itself.

Coronavirus: Nothing is guaranteed, everything is possible

Public Reading Rooms — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 11:42:57 +0000

This is a text on the pandemic from Raoul Vaneigem. Vaneigem is a Belgian writer known for his 1967 book The Revolution of Everyday Life. He was born in Lessines and studied romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 1956. He was a member of the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970.

Translated from the French by NOT BORED! 20 March 2020.

Challenging the danger posed by the coronavirus is surely absurd. But, on the other hand, isn’t it just as absurd that a disturbance in the habitual course of illnesses has become the object of such intense emotional exploitation and mobilizes the same arrogant incompetence that years ago kicked the cloud from Chernobyl out of France? Certainly, we know the facility with which the specter of the apocalypse comes out of it box to seize upon the latest catastrophe, patch together the imagery of a universal deluge and plunge the plowshare of guilt into the sterile soil of Sodom and Gomorrah.The divine curse served to help power. At least it did until the Lisbon earthquake of 1755,when the Marquis de Pombal, a friend of Voltaire, took advantage of the event to massacre the Jesuits, reconstruct the city according to his conceptions and gleefully liquidate his political rivals through “proto-Stalinist” show trials. Odious though he was, Pombal shouldn’t be insulted by comparing his dictatorial feat with the impoverished measures that democratic totalitarianism is applying globally to the coronavirus epidemic. It is cynical to impute the deplorable insufficiency of the medical means being used to the propagation of the scourge! For decades the public welfare has been compromised, the hospital sector has paid the costs of a policy that favors financial interests at the expense of the health of the citizens. There is always more money for the banks and fewer and fewer beds and caregivers for the hospitals. What acts of buffoonery can continue to hide the fact that the catastrophic management of catastrophe is inherent in globally dominant financial capitalism, which today is combated globally in the names of life, the planet and the species to be saved? Without falling into any rehashing of divine punishment (the idea that nature is ridding herself of humanity as if it were an unwelcome and harmful pest), it isn’t useless to recall that for millennia the exploitation of human and terrestrial nature has imposed the dogma of antiphysis, of anti-nature. Eric Postaire’s book, Les épidémie du XXIe siècle, published in 1997, confirms the disastrous effects of persistent denaturation, which is something that I’ve denounced for decades.

Evoking the drama of the “mad cow” (foreseen by Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s), Postaire recalls that scientific progress, in addition to disarming us against certain illnesses, can also cause decades of them. In his plea for a responsible approach to epidemics and their treatment, he incriminates what Claude Gudin calls “cash register philosophy” in his preface to the book. He asks, “doesn’t subordinating the health of the population to the laws of profit, to the point of transforming herbivore animals into carnivores, risk causing catastrophes that will be fatal to Nature and Humanity?” We know well that the rulers have already responded with a unanimous YES. But what importance does this have when the NO of the financial interests continues to triumph cynically?

Was the coronavirus really necessary to demonstrate to the most narrow-minded among us that denaturation in the service of profitability has disastrous consequences for universal health, which is managed without distress by a World Organization whose precious statistics compensate for the disappearance of public hospitals?

There’s an obvious correlation between the coronavirus and the collapse of global capitalism. It is no less evident that what the coronavirus epidemic covers over and submerges is emotional plague, hysterical fear, panic that both hides the deficiencies of the treatment and perpetuates the evil by frightening the patient.

During the great epidemics of the past, the population did penitence and proclaimed their guilt by flagellating themselves. Don’t the managers of global dehumanization have an interest in persuading the people that there is no escape from the miserable lot that is made for them? That all they have is the flagellation of voluntary servitude? The formidable media machine can only rehash the old lie of the heavenly decree, impenetrable, unavoidable, in which crazy money has supplanted the bloody and capricious Gods of the past.The unleashing of police barbarism upon peaceful demonstrators has amply shown that military law is the only thing that functions efficiently.

Today it quarantines women, men and children. Outside: the coffin. Inside: the television, an open window on a closed world! This is a practice that is liable to aggravate existential anxiety because it gambles on the emotions that have been flayed by anguish and exacerbates the blindness of impotent anger.But even the lie gives way to general collapse. Governmental and populist cretinization has reached its limits. It cannot deny that an experiment in is progress. Civil disobedience grows and dreams of societies that are radically new because they are radically human.

Solidarity frees from their individualist sheepskins those individuals who no longer fear thinking for themselves.The coronavirus has revealed the bankruptcy of the State. Well, there’s a subject for reflection (at least)by the victims of enforced confinement. At the time of the publication of my Modestes propositions aux grévistes, friends once again showed me the difficulty of following my suggestion for the collective refusal to pay duties, taxes and levies. But then the recognized bankruptcy of the swindler-state attested to an economic and social deterioration that renders absolutely insolvent small- and middle-sized companies, local commerce, those with modest incomes, family-owned farms and even the so-called liberal professions.

The collapse ofLeviathan has succeeded in convincing people more rapidly than our resolutions to bring it down.The coronavirus has done even better than that. The cessation of production-caused pollutants has lessened global pollution; millions of people have been spared a programmed death; nature is able to breathe; the dolphins have returned to frolicking in Sardinia; the canals in Venice, purified of mass tourism, now once again contain clear water; the stock market is collapsing. Spain is resolved to nationalize private hospitals, as if it has rediscovered social security, as if the [Spanish] State has recalled the welfare state that it destroyed.

Nothing is assured, everything begins.

Utopia still crawls on all fours. Let’s abandon to their heavenly inanity the billions of banknotes and hollow ideas that spin round above our heads. The important thing is to “take care of our affairs ourselves” by letting the wheeler-dealer financial bubble burst and implode.

Let us not lack boldness and confidence in ourselves!

Our present isn’t the confinement that survival imposes on us; it is the opening to all possibilities. It is due to panic that the oligarchic State is forced to adopt measures that even yesterday it decreed were impossible.

It is to the call of life and the earth to be restored that we want to respond. Quarantine is good for reflection. Confinement doesn’t abolish the presence of the street; it reinvents it.

Cum grano salis, let me think that the insurrection of everyday life has unexpected therapeutic virtues.

Raoul Vaneigem

Dated 17 March 2020

Coronavirus – Public Reading Rooms

We’d better be prepared: COVID-19 is here to stay – even after vaccination

We are all Minneapolis

The murder of George Floyd — just another day in Trump’s America

Pandemic creations – links to a new world.

I. GENERAL OVERVIEWS

II. ECONOMIC ISSUES

III. STRIKES, PROTESTS, MUTUAL AID

IV. OTHER TOPICS

V. SONGS

VI. SKITS, SATIRES, CARTOONS, ETC.

VII. MEMES

PREGNANT PAUSE: Remarks on the Corona Crisis

Mexico’s response to the pandemic

Nurseries: Protecting Small Children, Staff and Parents

Don’t Go Back Until it’s safe And it’s not safe now

A public inquiry on the UK government coronavirus response is necessary and urgent

Protect the People Charter launched

Trump and Dominic Cummings: Caligula and Dr Strangelove

Lebanon: Financial Collapse, Revolution, and Pandemic: Where are the Unions?

Ecuador’s coronavirus catastrophe: interview with Marcela Aguiñaga

No Going Back – The COVID-19 Pandemic Theses

Covid-19: Labour must provide real opposition to government policy

Dangerous Times

Trump’s Response to the Pandemic

The Production vs Protection Problem

The Anti-Lockdown Protests

Some final thoughts

Coronavirus: the fight to take the country back must begin

Health expert brands UK’s coronavirus response ‘pathetic’

A leading public health expert has launched a devastating critique of the government’s handling of the coronavirus…

www.theguardian.com

The UK Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Greece in the time of the coronavirus

Coronavirus: Nothing is guaranteed, everything is possible