South Africa sees surge in COVID-19 as restrictions lifted

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/safr-j08.html






By Stephan McCoy
8 July 2020

The lifting of the lockdown and social distancing measures has caused a surge of coronavirus infections in South Africa.

The total number of cases is now approaching 210,000 and the number of deaths is over 3,300. This makes South Africa the country with the second highest number of deaths, behind Egypt, and the largest number of cases on the continent.

The numbers are expected to peak in July and August, particularly in Gauteng, the country’s industrial hub—where the sharp increases in cases could overwhelm the province’s health system—as well as the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces. Health experts have warned that deaths from COVID-19 could reach from 40,000 to more than 70,000 deaths before the end of the year.
The surge follows the government’s reopening of the economy in May, as South Africa’s economy teeters on the brink. The pandemic has worsened the already high rate of unemployment and drastically increased hunger.

Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, speaking of the devastating impact of these numbers, said, “We’re seeing a spike in infections in Johannesburg [the country’s largest city]. The number of people that we are diagnosing on a daily basis now is absolutely frightening.”

He added, “Who we are finding positive now is an indication of who will be in hospital three weeks from now.”

Despite the surge in cases, President Cyril Ramaphosa has said that the African National Congress (ANC) government does not intend to reinstate a nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of the virus. Ramaphosa told Business Insider, “Another hard lockdown is not being considered for now, the issue of jobs lost concerns us. Other countries are experiencing even bigger losses. We are developing various other ways of responding to this.” By this, he means social distancing and mask wearing.

Bandile Masuku, the health minister in Gauteng province, which has the highest number of active cases and 44 percent of all the cases in the country, called for restrictions on the number of people at gatherings and on public transport, including taxis. But, he stressed, “We wouldn’t want to return to hard lockdown because of the implications it has for the economy. What we are putting across is that we also have to get into it with proper insight because we’ve got experience with the previous lockdown.”

Following the lifting of the lockdown, the Western Cape also saw a spike in infections, resulting in it becoming the epicentre of South Africa’s epidemic. In the most poverty-stricken neighbourhoods in Cape Town, such as Khayelitsha and Klipfontein, the infection rates and possible mortality rates are starting to rival some of the worst-hit parts of the world.

Epidemiologist Professor Andrew Boulle, from the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research, said the Klipfontein health subdistrict, with a population of 3.6 million people and 6,316 confirmed cases, already had a mortality rate of about 700 per million people. In Khayelitsha it was 500 per million. He told Independent Online (IOL), “If the Western Cape was a country and was compared to other countries, at this point in time globally we might be one of the countries with the highest currently daily mortality rate per million population in the world.” He warned that the pandemic had not yet peaked.

The government is spearheading its back-to-work campaign with the reopening of schools. Forced to delay its original plans to reopen fully in June due to teachers’ opposition, the government has said that schools will be fully open by August. In Gauteng province, at least 589 schools recorded positive cases of the coronavirus before the “second-phase” of the reopening began and 71 have had to close. In KwaBhaca in the Eastern Cape, 200 students tested positive at Makaula Senior Secondary School.

The reopening is happening even as hospitals near collapse due to the growing number of cases. Siviwe Gwarube, a Democratic Alliance MP and Shadow Minister of Health, has called for the Eastern Cape be placed under administration as the local government could not “fulfil its constitutional obligations” in “providing adequate health care to all in the province.”

ICU beds are filling up nationally. Times Select reports, “South Africa needs more than 7,000 additional critical beds, with a combination of oxygen, non-invasive ventilators and invasive ventilators.”

In Netcare Linksfield Hospital in Eastern Johannesburg, 15 staff members tested positive for COVID-19 according to a nurse, who said many nurses were worried because deep cleaning had not taken place at the facility and, while they were in isolation, the hospital used agency nurses to run the ICU. Another nurse told News24, “They even suggested that, since we tested positive, if we don’t see symptoms in the next seven days, then we are good to come back to work.” This flies in the face of government recommendations. The nurse said the hospital’s primary concern was money, not the pandemic and that nurses were calling for the hospital to allow affected colleagues to retest before returning to work after 14 days.

South Africa’s economy—which was already in recession before the pandemic with an official unemployment rate of more than 30 percent—contracted by 2 percent in the first quarter of 2020 compared with the previous quarter due to a downturn in mining and manufacturing, two pillars of the economy, and a 20 percent reduction in capital investment.

GDP per capita has been declining since 2013. South Africa’s debts were downgraded to junk bond status in March. Economy Minister Tito Mboweni is expecting a contraction of more than 7 percent for the year as a whole, the biggest downturn since the 1930s, and a budget deficit of nearly 16 percent of GDP, double earlier estimates. He warned that the country was, like Argentina, on the path of bankruptcy. He pledged to close the budget deficit by 2024 and to find $13.5 billion of spending cuts in the next two years that will slash public sector jobs and wages and increase taxes.

The government’s attempts to impose the full burden of the mounting economic crisis on the working class is being met with rising opposition. There have been numerous strikes and walkouts by transport and health care workers over safety issues and the lack of personal protective equipment. In the Eastern Cape, municipal workers at Port Elizabeth protested outside a council meeting demanding permanent employment because, as outsourced workers, they are being paid less than those on the city’s payroll. The workers, who include meter guards, meter readers and seasonal workers, were met with stun grenades from the police.

The ANC government’s response is to abrogate democratic rights and turn to dictatorship, using the army to help police enforce restrictions, along with forces under the South African Military Health Service deployed as medical personnel. Ramaphosa has told parliament he is extending the deployment of 20,000 soldiers, a reduction from the 76,000 deployed in April, until September 30 to enforce coronavirus restrictions. “The army will work in cooperation with the police to maintain law and order, support other state departments, and control the country’s border line to combat the disease,” he said.

Peru lifts quarantine restrictions as coronavirus infections pass 300,000 mark

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/peru-j08.html






By Cesar Uco
8 June 2020

On July 1, Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra initiated the third phase of a “targeted quarantine” to fight the COVID-19 epidemic. While the blanket quarantine has been lifted, including on Sundays, a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew remains in effect. The new measures are called “targeted” because the quarantine remains in force in regions considered to be at high risk, while certain restrictions are continuing in Lima’s working-class neighborhoods.

As of July 6, the Ministry of Health (Minsa) had confirmed 302,718 infections and 10,589 deaths. The per capita death toll is huge. It represents half the number of fatalities reported by India, which has 42 times the population of Peru. It is also reported that of Peru’s 11,302 hospitalized COVID-19 patients 1,227 are in intensive care on mechanical ventilators.

In South America, Peru trails only Brazil in number of deaths, but ranks first in terms of fatalities per capita. This week Peru jumped to fifth place among the countries with the highest number of coronavirus infections.
Vizcarra is acting against the advice of many health experts, who have condemned lifting the quarantine as premature under conditions in which roughly 3,000 new infections are being reported daily and deaths continue to rise.

As a result of implementing the third phase of “targeted quarantine,” most businesses are now allowed to open their doors and most Peruvians can move freely, with certain exceptions in regions where the pandemic is growing, such as Arequipa, Ica, Junín, Huánuco, San Martín, Madre de Dios and Ancash.

In addition, people over 65 years of age are not allowed to leave their homes at any time. Another restriction is that young people, 14 and under, can go out for only half an hour and only 500 meters away from their homes.

The newspaper El Comercio reports that the capital’s 19 high-risk districts, where it is recommended that young people under 14 years of age not be allowed to go out, coincide with the most populated and poorest of Lima’s 43 districts, with an estimated population of over 6 million. In short, the government is making a distinction, giving full freedom to capitalist interests and limited freedom to working-class neighborhoods.

More than 50 percent of those infected reside in Lima. With 10 million inhabitants, the capital comprises roughly a third of Peru’s population and consists predominantly of workers, the poor and immigrants who have poured in from every region of the country in search of better living standards.

Sunday, the first day of “targeted quarantine,” saw a record number taking to the streets, most of them ignoring social distancing rules. El Correo reports that “markets [in particular], emporiums, malls and the beach registered a great agglomeration of people, despite the contagion and the recommendations of the Minsa.”

Measures banning large number of people gathering in the streets have been enforced mainly against workers, who are suffering the most from the pandemic, unable to feed their families and pay rent and utilities. The Vizcarra government executed more than 1,000 arrests in the first two days of phase three, all of them in working-class neighborhoods. To date, there have been 52,000 arrests for violations of government rules imposed to counter the spread of the coronavirus.

In terms of economic stagnation, the Ministry of Labor estimates that 1.2 million jobs were lost between February and May. But the daily Correo speaks of 3.2 million people losing their jobs. The Peruvian central bank has estimated that the economy will contract by 12.5 percent this year.

The implementation of the “targeted quarantine” turned chaotic in Lima, with long lines of people waiting for buses, as a condition for resuming public transportation is that no one should travel standing. At rush hour the buses are usually crowded with more people standing than sitting, packed like sardines.

A transport strike scheduled for Thursday was suspended at the last minute by Ricardo Pareja, representative of the Urban Transport Chamber. The drivers had expressed their disagreement with the government’s measures. The public transport union of Lima and Callao staged a stoppage last week demanding economic compensation.

With the initiation of the “targeted quarantine,” skirmishes with police forces took place in the popular markets of Mesa Redonda and La Parada. To enter these markets, vendors must show a permit that they have complied with the hygiene rules imposed by the Minsa. But in a country where three-quarters of the workers and markets like Mesa Redonda and La Parada are part of the informal sector there were a high number of small vendors without permits who were forcibly ejected by the police. Later, the same vendors would look for another way to enter the marketplace, arguing that “we also have to feed our families,” before being evicted again.

These confrontations quickly gave way to police abuse. El Comercio reports that “a member of the Peruvian National Police slapped an alleged criminal twice during his interrogation at a police station in the district of El Agustino.” A video of the interrogation began to circulate on social media, sparking outrage over police violence.

While anger is growing in the working class over unemployment, social inequality and state repression, Peru’s ruling capitalist oligarchy is dissatisfied with the pace of the economic reopening. Speaking on behalf of big business, economist Elena Conterno, president of the Peruvian Institute of Entrepreneurial Action (IPAE), accused the government of hindering the normalization of economic activity. Writing in El Comercio she denounced the “cumbersome process through which companies have to go to get authorization for activating operations. This is because the firms have to present a protocol to the Health Ministry and a second one to the ministry in charge of their activities.”

With many health experts expressing their opposition to lifting the quarantine, the IPAE declares the capitalist ruling elite’s contempt for human life, which boils down to the insistence that profit is more important than the lives of workers.

This position was made clearer by Ricardo Márquez, president of the National Society of Industries (SNI), when he declared: “If the factory is in San Juan de Lurigancho [one of the largest poor working-class districts with over 1 million inhabitants] they tell you that you cannot operate because it is located in one of the districts with the most cases of coronavirus.”

His argument is that it is in an industrial zone and the fact that there is a high concentration of exposure to COVID-19 is inconsequential.

Meanwhile the crisis in the health care sector has reached alarming levels, with reports from all corners of the country calling for more equipment as well as showing high rates of infections and deaths among doctors, nurses and other health sector personnel.

What has been exposed is the lack of preparation of the state in regard to the health of the majority of the population. This is a result of the policies dictated by the International Monetary Fund and applauded by Latin American governments for cutting health care budgets in favor of encouraging the extractive sectors—mining for export—which benefit world capital and its junior partners in the Latin American bourgeoisie.

Given the alarming statistics of new infections and deaths, it is clear that President Vizcarra is a puppet of the Peruvian ruling class, which is looking with envy at how the capitalists in other countries are returning to “normality” at the expense of workers’ lives and health.

A genuine struggle to defeat the pandemic, as well as the attacks of the bourgeoisie and its president, Vizcarra, can be begin only by the Peruvian working class forming rank-and-file committees in factories, mines and neighborhoods, independent of the unions and the so-called bourgeois left. Using social media and the internet these committees must fight to coordinate joint action with workers of the region and globally in a common struggle for socialism.

Brazil’s fascistic President Bolsonaro tests positive for coronavirus

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/braz-j08.html






By Tomas Castanheira
8 July 2020

Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro announced yesterday morning to a group of reporters that he tested positive for the new coronavirus, after first presenting symptoms on Sunday.

The COVID-19 pandemic has already reached catastrophic dimensions in Brazil, with more than 1,600,000 infected and 66,000 dead, according to the official count. This toll is surpassed internationally only by the United States. The impact of the virus continues to expand, with a weekly average of about 37,000 new cases per day.

Amidst this scenario, Bolsonaro used his interview, watched by millions of Brazilians and an international audience, to reaffirm his criminal message on behalf of the entire Brazilian ruling class: “Life goes on, Brazil has to produce, we have to activate the economy.”
Bolsonaro reminded everyone that, at first, he was attacked by his political rivals for his sociopathic perspective. “Some people talked in the past, criticizing me, that the economy recovers, life doesn’t,” he said in direct reference to a phrase by Wilson Witzel, governor of Rio de Janeiro. “The guns were all pointed at me, criticizing me very harshly. We suffered a lot, but now you can all see that we were right”.

The positions that Bolsonaro claims have been substantiated are actually a set of unscientific assertions about the nature of the coronavirus and policies in response to the pandemic that have proven completely false and of terrible consequence.

The fascistic president’s main argument is that the virus is like a “rain” that will inevitably fall on everyone. But, he claimed, the dangers of the disease, which has already killed more than half a million people worldwide, would pose no serious risk to the population.

According to him, COVID-19 was “overestimated” and “the vast majority of the population, once infected, doesn’t even take notice, feels absolutely nothing.” He also said that the virus would behave completely differently in the Brazil’s hot climate, making its effects much milder.

The explosion of cases before the winter and with devastating consequences in the warmer states, in the north and northeast, absolutely refuted these assumptions, which had no objective foundation from the beginning.

Bolsonaro contends, against all scientific evidence, that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19 and that “doctors have been saying all over Brazil...that the chance of success of [hydroxychloroquine] reaches 100 percent.”
“I took the first pill yesterday,” he said. “I confess that if I had taken hydroxychloroquine from the first day...[in a] preventive way, I would have been doing very well, without any trace of reaction.”

In reality, not only did the World Health Organization (WHO) abandon studies of the drug for treatment of COVID-19 due to its inefficiency, but two Brazilian health ministers left office because of their differences over the indiscriminate prescription of the drug advocated by the president.

Bolsonaro reaffirmed his denunciation of social-distancing measures as a means of spreading panic among the population, attacking governors who proposed measures such as restricting access to beaches. He defended the reopening of schools and so-called “vertical isolation”—i.e., isolating only the elderly and people with comorbidities.

He defended his practice of “contact with the people, which has been quite intense in recent months,” that is, his participation in the fascist demonstrations in front of the Government Palace, advocating the closure of Congress and the Supreme Court and military intervention.

How much the devastating results of the coronavirus in Brazil can be attributed to Bolsonaro’s actions is hard to estimate. His combination of official decrees preventing measures of social distancing and forcing the opening of many businesses; dissemination of false information; covering up data; and the extra-governmental mobilization of openly fascist forces to break the quarantines, and even invade hospitals, played a substantial role.

However, his stability in power and open defense of criminal policies would not have been possible without the collaboration of the entire Brazilian political establishment. If, from the scientific point of view, the policies promoted by Bolsonaro were exposed as a farce, from the point of view of the profit interests of the ruling class, they were completely substantiated.

All parties, including the self-declared opposition of the Workers’ Party (PT), embraced the criminal measures of Bolsonaro and are unanimous in promoting the reopening of all economic activities in the country despite all medical and scientific recommendations.

But, as Bolsonaro recalled in his interview, his greatest support comes from the fact that all bourgeois governments around the world are defending his fundamental policy for general contamination of the population, justified in the name of a “herd immunity” that lacks any basis in science. And they all have embraced what he said long ago, “One cannot fight the virus when the collateral effect of this fight is worse than the damage caused by the virus itself.”

Just days before Bolsonaro’s announcement that he had contracted COVID-19, he attended a July 4th celebration at the US Embassy, where neither masks nor social distancing were in evidence. US Ambassador to Brazil Todd Chapman and his wife have “tested negative and will remain at home in quarantine,” according to the embassy’s official Twitter account, which added that the embassy’s entire staff is being “evaluated.”

The episode recalls the visit by Bolsonaro to US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida resort in early March, when 23 members of his entourage returned testing positive for the coronavirus. Bolsonaro previously concealed his own test results, which he performed under pseudonyms.

The virus has increasingly infected Trump’s own inner circle, with eight members of his staff testing positive after his Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally, as well as a senior aide to Vice President Mike Pence and the girlfriend of his son Donald Jr.

Canadian establishment downplays failed attempt to assassinate Trudeau

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/trud-j08.html






By Roger Jordan
8 July 2020

46-year-old Corey Hurren was arrested by the RCMP last Thursday morning after crashing his pick-up truck through the gates of Rideau Hall, the official residence of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Governor General Julie Payette. Hurren, an army veteran and current member of the Canadian Rangers, a reserve unit operating in remote areas, was heavily armed when he was detained, including with an M14 assault rifle, a loaded high-standard revolver, an illegal high-capacity magazine of ammunition, and two loaded shotguns.

According to the charge sheet released Monday, Hurren, who was on full-time army duty at the time of his arrest, is accused of 21 firearms offences and one count of uttering threats against Trudeau. Hurren “did knowingly utter” or “convey a threat to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau … to cause death or bodily harm,” reads the charge sheet. Contradictory reports have appeared on how this threat was delivered. Initially the RCMP stated that Hurren had wanted to deliver “a note” to Trudeau, but declined to divulge anything about the note’s contents. Subsequent media reports have claimed that Hurren uttered the threat during his exchanges with RCMP officers on the grounds of Rideau Hall.

Although much about Hurren’s political biography and views is still unknown, it is clear, at the very least, that he has been influenced by far-right views.

He served in the military from 1997 to 2000, reaching the rank of corporal, and rejoined as a reservist in 2019.

Hurren appears to have been radicalized by the social and economic upheavals triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, including the difficulties facing the sausage-making business he set up in 2014 in Bowsman, Manitoba, the small community where he lives.

In late March, he shared a post on the Instagram account of his small business advocating the views of “QAnon,” a far-right group that claims US President Donald Trump is being targeted by forces in the “deep state.” “I am not sure what will be left of our economy, industries, and businesses when this all ends,” a Facebook post from Hurren noted in May, indicating that he feared for the survival of his business. Just one hour prior to the attack, he shared a post supporting the claim promoted by the far right in the US and Germany that Bill Gates and various international organizations created the COVID-19 pandemic.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the available evidence is that Hurren plotted a political assassination. He drove his truck laden with firearms, military food rations, and ammunition from his home in northern Manitoba to Ottawa (a distance of more than 2,500 kilometers/1,550 miles); purposefully crashed it through the gates of the Prime Minister’s temporary official residence; and then sought to proceed on foot, heavily-armed, towards Trudeau’s home. He was intercepted by an RCMP security detail, who took him into custody after a long verbal exchange lasting 90 minutes.

However, judging by the response of the corporate-media and political establishment, Trudeau included, little out of the ordinary happened last Thursday morning. After a few perfunctory news reports on Hurren’s detention, including a handful pointing to his sharing of far-right conspiracy theories online, the story largely disappeared from the media. Trudeau, who was not at Rideau Hall when the failed attack took place, blandly remarked at a press conference Friday that he was happy that the RCMP had responded swiftly to this “concerning” incident. Only after the charge sheet against Hurren was released Monday could the National Post bring itself to admit the obvious: that the attack looks “like an assassination attempt.”

Prosecutors have to date refused to bring any national security or terrorism-related charges against Hurren. Displaying an astonishing degree of complacency, Leah West, a former national security lawyer with the Department of Justice, told the Toronto Star: “In order to bring charges of terrorism, they would need to have reason to believe that he was motivated by political, ideological or religious motives, and that he intended to intimidate likely in this case the prime minister or elements of the government. That may not have been apparent on its face from the initial investigation.”

One can only wonder how different the response would have been had the heavily armed assailant and would-be assassin expressed any affinity for Islamist terrorist groups.

The circumstances surrounding Hurren’s attempted assassination raise extremely troubling questions about his political motivations and ties, including the degree to which he was active in far-right circles, whether he acted alone, and if he promoted far-right views among his fellow members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Just one day before Hurren’s attack, hundreds of right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists gathered on Parliament Hill in Ottawa for what they dubbed a “Dominion Day rally.” Banners at the demonstration included denunciations of “global elites” for fabricating the coronavirus crisis, calls for the abrogation of all COVID-19 related restrictions, and support for the American-based far-right “QAnon” movement. Present at the rally were several so-called “Yellow Vests”, a far-right group based in Alberta and Saskatchewan that has repeatedly organized anti-Trudeau and anti-immigrant protests over the past year-and-a-half. While there is no evidence as yet that Hurren attended the rally, it appears more than just coincidental that his attempted attack on the Prime Minister’s residence took place in the same city only hours later.

Under these conditions, what accounts for the general indifference to an assassination attempt by a supporter of the far-right against a sitting Prime Minister?

Behind much official tripe about Canadian capitalism’s “progressive” and “democratic” ethos, all sections of the ruling elite have joined hands in shifting politics rapidly to the right in recent decades, mounting an offensive against the working class that has produced an explosive growth in social inequality. A recent study revealed that the richest 1 percent of the population owns over a quarter of all household wealth and more than the poorest 40 percent of all Canadians (see: New report exposes staggering level of social inequality in Canada).

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were used to justify a vast expansion of the powers and reach of the national-security apparatus. Following an Islamist-inspired terrorist attack on the House of Commons in 2014, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government granted sweeping additional powers to the intelligence agencies under Bill C-51, including giving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service the right to break virtually any law in disrupting vaguely defined “threats” to national security. The Trudeau Liberal government enshrined these measures with its Bill C-59.

Over the past two decades, Canada’s armed forces have been engaged in virtually uninterrupted wars and military interventions and provocations, from Afghanistan to Haiti (where Canadian and US soldiers completed a coup against the country’s elected president mounted by a fascistic militia), to Libya, Syria, and Iraq.

These developments have led to the strengthening of far-right and even fascistic views among sections of the military. Last November, a military intelligence report revealed that at least three dozen serving military personnel had been identified as supporting far-right groups or expressing racist or right-wing extremist views. None of them were expelled from the military. Instead they were instructed to get counselling or were issued with warnings. The release of the report came weeks after a Manitoba-based reservist, Master Corporal Patrik Mathews, fled to the United States after a reporter exposed his role as a recruiter for a neo-Nazi organization. In January, Mathews was arrested by the FBI for his involvement in a far-right terrorist plot.

In another incident in 2018, a group of CAF sailors affiliated to the far-right Proud Boys group received a slap on the wrist after disrupting a Mi’kmaq ceremony in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The strengthening of far-right groups and networks is not merely a by-product of ruling class policy, but is actively encouraged. After Ottawa played a major role in the 2014 fascist-led coup in Ukraine, Trudeau travelled to the country after becoming Prime Minister in 2015 with members of far-right Canadian-based Ukrainian nationalists in his delegation, many of whom helped supply weaponry to fascistic militias in the country’s civil war with pro-Russian separatists (see: Trudeau bolsters Canadian support for Ukraine’s far-right regime).

Foreign policy is not the only field in which Canadian imperialism cultivates the far-right and fascistic forces. As the class struggle intensifies at home, driven by ever widening levels of social inequality and never-ending attacks by the ruling elite on the living standards of working people, far-right forces are being systematically nourished.

Last month, a Quebec court acquitted the leader of a fascist group who stormed a media office and threatened a journalist who had investigated the activities of the far-right.

During the recently concluded lockout of over 750 refinery workers at the Federated Cooperative Ltd. refinery in Regina, Saskatchewan, FCL chief executive Scott Banda appeared alongside members of United We Roll, a far-right truckers’ group associated with the “Yellow Vests,” to denounce picketing workers. United We Roll broke through a solidarity picket for the locked-out workers set up at an FCL site in Alberta, and also dismantled a blockade near Edmonton during the nationwide anti-pipeline protests earlier this year. In early 2019, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe explicitly declared his backing for a “Yellow Vest” organized convoy to Ottawa to protest the Trudeau government’s support for a UN refugee accord (see: Canadian oil refinery boss lauds George Floyd protests while employing state violence against locked out workers).

Workers in Canada must take the attempted assassination of Trudeau as a serious warning of the danger posed by the far-right. It takes place under conditions of a resurgence of right-wing extremist and fascistic politics internationally, including the promotion and protection of far-right networks within the German state apparatus by the political establishment. Just one year ago, Walter Lübcke, a local Christian Democrat politician in Germany, was assassinated at his home by a known right-wing extremist. The German government was recently forced to announce the reorganization of its elite special forces unit (the KSK) due to widespread sympathy for and ties to far-right and neo-Nazi networks among its personnel.

As in the 1930s, when world capitalism was similarly mired in systemic crisis, bourgeoisie elites, terrified of a challenge from below to their vast wealth and privileges, are cultivating fascist forces as shock troops against the working class. In Canada as around the world, fascistic thugs and state violence will be deployed at home and abroad to enforce the rapacious interests of the financial oligarchy. Only the mass mobilization of the working class on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program can answer the threat posed by the far-right.

Striking nurses in Joliet, Illinois denounce unsafe conditions at AMITA hospital

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/joli-a07.html






By Benjamin Mateus
7 August 2020

More than a hundred nurses picketed AMITA St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Illinois Tuesday on the fourth day of the walkout by 700 nurses who are demanding adequate staffing and safe conditions for their patients as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage throughout the US.

Despite the brutal heat and humidity, striking nurses, wearing facemasks, enthusiastically chanted as passing cars honked in support. Among the handmade picket signs nurses held up high were: “Patients before profits,” “AMITA: In sickness and wealth,” and “Some cuts never heal.”

Nurses, who have been working without a contract for two months, told WSWS reporters that their primary concern was for patient safety. While they are certainly concerned with earning living wages, the nurses denounced the corporate media for claiming that salaries were the central issue in the strike. In fact, the pandemic has only worsened conditions for nurses and their assistants that have been deteriorating for decades.

Nurses who spoke to the WSWS requested anonymity to protect them against retaliation. Therefore, the WSWS has changed their names and limited details of their exact responsibilities.

Diane and Marianne said that AMITA does not value the nurses and frontline workers who have been exposed to COVID-19. On the issue of staffing ratio, they explained that hospital negotiators, concerned with costs, were not even discussing the issue. “But that’s the critical part of the fight,” Diane stated emphatically, “That’s the most important part.” On the question of their wages and recent counteroffer made by AMITA, Marianne said, “We heard last night that they would give 1.5 percent.” Diane interjected, saying this “has gone down since the last offer they gave us. That’s not even inflation.”

Marianne explained that she could be assigned up to five patients. Since May, elective surgeries have been rebooked and cases were up until the last few weeks when AMITA began preparing for the strike. Asked if the hospital was sending patients to other AMITA facilities in the area, she replied, “I don’t know if they’re sending surgical cases to another. I think they are going to continue to do emergency cases, but as far as elective type surgeries, they’re putting them off again.”

Marianne explained that the nurses were prepared to “strike as long as it takes.” The nurses openly expressed that striking raises conflicting feelings, but ultimately, they understand that the strike is conducted for their patients. “We’re doing it to improve conditions for our patients.”

Colleen and Kathy were seated in the shade of a pitched tent to stave off the heat. Colleen, a nurse for many years at AMITA, spoke thoughtfully and deliberately to the issues raised. “We are fighting for safe patient care. That’s the main thing. But they keep reporting that it is because we want the money. I’d forgo pay if we could take care of our patients safely.”

Asked by WSWS reporters how the hospital prepared for the pandemic, the nurses spoke about procedures and nurse-to-patient ratios. “On a COVID-19 unit before I left it was supposed to be two-to-one [nurses to patients] because you are donning and doffing gowns. Every time you are going in you are putting on your PPE, and sometimes we did not have the PPE. Now they are taking care of one to two patients.”

Nurses used to have spotters and runners to assist nurses with patient care, but these were quickly dispensed with, Colleen explained. The hospital’s COVID-19 cases remain considerable largely because of the local prison population in Joliet.

Even as nurses face fatigue and anxiety over contracting the disease and taking it home to their families, the hospital administration is taking away paid time off (PTO) and other rights. “The administration keeps taking things away,” Colleen said. “They are taking our PTO and sick time away. We are working with COVID-19 patients and they want to take our sick time away. But that is not getting out there. It's not about our pay, but we want to keep our community safe.”

Kathy said, “they have a convenient excuse” to take things away now. Colleen responded, “Right! I am sure if someone dug into it, they got government money. We did not get hazard pay. McDonalds got hazard pay and we did not get anything. And we jumped right in and started taking care of these patients and risked our families. But we didn’t get any hazard pay. They have always been wanting to do this before and are using the COVID-19 to just get done what they have been wanting to do.”

Kathy explained that she knew some nurses had become infected but didn’t have the numbers. “That’s not something they share with you. They actually hide those numbers. It’s important to know, but they won’t tell us.”

In response to the status of negotiations and wages, Colleen added, “There wasn’t any serious offer put on the table. They keep taking. They are not negotiating in good faith like they are supposed to. We counteroffered but we have not heard from them.” Nurses, she said, were prepared to strike “as long as it takes.” She added, “I was here for the last strike, but people crossed. We must stand united. If you do not stand united, corporations are going to win.”

In a discussion with Jamie and Mildred who were raising their placards and waving to passersby, they agreed that expanding the strike with other nurses in other health systems would be critical. “Our money issues are so that we can’t recruit other nurses to come work here. If we can’t attract other nurses, we will always be short staffed and have unsafe numbers. We don’t want the raises or need them for ourselves. So many nurses have already left because of the staffing issues. How are we going to attract other nurses and fix this problem?”

Stacy explained that when the pandemic first hit Joliet, the nurse-to-patient ratios were supposed to be one-to-one. But it quickly fell aside getting up to four patients to one nurse. “You’re gowning and ungowning, onej room, to the other, and back ... In the ICU, it's supposed to be one-to-one but then they had patients that weren’t intubated so they put them in ‘step down units’ - they called them ‘step down units’ so they could have a nurse take more patients. But they were extremely sick, and they were just as difficult to take care of, just as heavy.” Mildred echoed, “even more so!”

“What did the administration and chief nursing officer have to say [about COVID-19 conditions and shortages]?” Mildred blurted out, “They said, ‘wear your mask till they drop off!’ That tells you how they thought. They claimed there was a class that you could take. But we were so short staffed we barely had enough staff that could cover the floors.”

AMITA Health has reportedly spent $5 million to recruit nurses through strikebreaking staffing agencies. Some replacements are coming from Colorado, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina and other states were COVID-19 spikes are currently occurring. However, none of the strikebreakers are from these hard-hit areas are being quarantined for two weeks. While the hospital is paying their air travel, meal, hotel, and bus transportation, striking nurses told the WSWS that the Illinois Nurses Association (INA) was not paying them strike benefits.

The courageous nurses need the support of the entire working class. However, the isolation of the strike imposed by the INA—a tactic used by the United Auto Workers, the International Association of Machinists and other trade unions—must be broken. To fight for this nurses should form a rank-and-file strike committee to reach out to the tens of thousands of nurses, health care workers and other workers throughout the state and beyond, to carry out a common fight to protect lives and end the subordination of public health to private profit.

Florida orders schools to reopen as COVID-19 cases surge

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/flor-j08.html






By David Brown
8 July 2020

On Monday, the Florida Department of Education issued an emergency order requiring school districts to reopen all “brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students” in August in order to facilitate “a return to Florida hitting its full economic stride.” The order, which specifically complains that school closures “limit many parents and guardians from returning to work,” is part of the murderous back-to-work campaign that has led to a spike in COVID-19 cases across Florida and dozens of other states.

The number of new cases in Florida has surged from an average of 700 each day at the beginning of June to a seven-day moving average of 8,587 daily cases on July 6. With the number of cases continuing to escalate, it is certain that COVID-19 will be present throughout the school system next month and face-to-face instruction would become a significant vector for further transmission. Teachers, including those nearing retirement or with health vulnerabilities, will almost certainly contract the deadly disease, while countless students will bring it home to their parents and grandparents.
The order immediately sparked outrage and protests from teachers and parents across the state. Teachers in Orange County, which includes Orlando, organized a protest caravan that blocked traffic. On Facebook, an Orange County teacher, Mia, wrote: “We the People…We can’t let the Governor and the head of the DOE make these decisions without the input of the Teachers. We’re the ones risking our lives. We need to make our voices heard and stand together. This is literally life and death.” A parent, Angela, added, “I'm a Mom and at risk due to an autoimmune issue...why for political reasons am I being forced to expose my child, her teachers, our families and communities to a virus that is not under control. Hell No! We won’t go!”

The Florida order comes as part of a nationwide push to end lockdown measures, “reopen” the economy and force workers into unsafe conditions. The same day as the Florida order, Trump tweeted “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” On Tuesday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in a call of governors, “Ultimately, it’s not a matter of if schools need to open, it’s a matter of how. School must reopen, they must be fully operational.”

Schools across the country, in many cases under pressure from teachers and parents, shut down in-person instruction in March in order to slow the spread of the pandemic. School districts have struggled to come up with any effective plans to reopen schools under conditions where state and federal governments have rejected efforts to contain the virus and pursued a policy of mass infection. During the nearly four months since Florida schools were closed—when there were only 217 confirmed cases acknowledged in the state—no effective measures were implemented to contain or mitigate the disease, such as contact tracing. Now that there are 1,000 times as many confirmed cases in the state, they are trying to open up schools.

In early May, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis rushed to reopen the economy even as his administration was deliberately undercounting the number of COVID-19 deaths and infections. This included firing a state employee in charge of Florida’s coronavirus database after she refused to manipulate the data to justify the governor’s back-to-work order.

The Trump administration and Governor DeSantis are so adamant about getting children physically into school regardless of health cost or educational value, because they need schools as day care centers in order to push parents back to work. Safer, more effective distance learning would require that families take care of children during the day.

The conditions of schools make it effectively impossible to safely have in-person instruction when there is community transmission. Outside of prisons and meatpacking and other industrial facilities there are few environments that squeeze people into such close contact throughout the day as a school. Underfunded districts cram over 30 students into classrooms, making any pretense of social distancing absurd. A high school English or math classroom can easily have over 100 students cycle through during the day. Cafeterias and playgrounds see almost continuous use and cannot be feasibly cleaned between classes.

Proposed measures to minimize transmission at schools are either unworkable or undercut the academic advantages of in-person instruction. Mandatory masks, as proposed in Lake County, cannot prevent transmission in an environment where children eat and play. Daily temperature checks, as suggested in Orange, Osceola and Polk Counties, won’t catch pre-symptomatic students.
Many districts in Florida and across the country have proposed a complicated hybrid model of online teaching with occasional weekly face-to-face instruction to minimize student time on campus. Every proposal made runs into hard limits stemming from decades of underfunding the public education system. There are not enough teachers to adapt and implement the curriculum to small, socially distanced classrooms. There are not enough facilities to handle the student body. There are not enough janitors and facilities staff to disinfect facilities.

As Trump demands full reopening of schools

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/usco-j08.html






US coronavirus case count soars past 3 million
By Bryan Dyne
8 July 2020

There have been more than 1 million new confirmed coronavirus cases in the US in the past month, bringing the total to just under 3.1 million. A further 20,000 human lives were lost during that time, bringing the official death toll to more than 133,000, more than the total number of US soldiers killed in World War I and nearly three times the number of lives lost to the flu each year.

Including the fatalities in the United States, there have been 544,000 deaths worldwide and more than 11.8 million cases. Next to the US, Brazil, India and Russia have the most cases, while Brazil, the United Kingdom, Italy and Mexico have the most deaths from the disease. Every day that the pandemic is not brought under control leaves at least another 4,000 people dead.

“The outbreak is accelerating,” said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at yesterday’s press briefing, “and we have clearly not reached the peak of the pandemic.” He continued, “I will say it again. National unity and global solidarity are more important than ever to defeat a common enemy, a virus that has taken the world hostage. This is our only road out of this pandemic.”
A father helps his child with a mask in front of Bradford School in Jersey City, New Jersey on June 10, 2020 (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

The WHO leader’s remarks contrasted sharply to the nationalist action by President Donald Trump, who yesterday formally issued notice to Congress that the United States is withdrawing from the World Health Organization. According to a State Department official who spoke to CNN, the letter is addressed to António Guterres, UN secretary-general, and notes that the withdrawal will be effective on July 6, 2021. When Trump first announced this move, it was decried by Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, as a “crime against humanity.”

Trump is also pushing for a full reopening of in-person classes this fall. He tweeted Monday that “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” His hysterical comment was followed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who stated, “American education must be fully open and fully operational this fall!” The Trump administration views sending students back to school as a necessary precondition for the next stage of the back-to-work campaign. Forcing workers back on the job despite the acute risk of infection and even death is essential for the extraction of surplus value and profit from the labor of workers to back up the trillions in debt piled up to bail out Wall Street.

Trump’s policy would entail all 60 million K-12 students returning to enclosed spaces for several hours each school day as the pandemic gains strength across the country—a recipe for giving the virus to every young person in the country. In that scenario, according to the existing data, some 0.06 percent of students would die—a total of 36,000 children. The rest would bring the disease back home, further spreading the contagion to untold millions of their older and more vulnerable parents and grandparents.

The record number of cases and deaths being reported by various states underscores these mortal dangers. Arizona counted 117 deaths yesterday, 33 percent higher than the previous record set a week earlier. The state has had an average of more than 3,000 cases per day since June 28, and the overwhelmed health system has forced the state’s Department of Health Services to draw up a “crisis of standards care” plan. Patients in Tucson are already being moved to Phoenix because of a lack of available beds. It is expected that Arizona’s medical facilities are only days away from being forced to determine who lives and who dies because of a lack of medical personnel and equipment.

One of the reasons for the pandemic spiraling out of control in the state is the lack of testing. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego has repeatedly asked for federal aid, including a FEMA mass-testing site, and has been told that the county’s case numbers, which are over 67,000, are not high enough for that level of support. As a result, there are many testing sites in the city and around the country, such as the one at South Mountain Community College, where people are forced to wait in their cars for hours to get tested. Currently, a quarter of those who do eventually get tested are being told they have COVID-19, indicating essentially uncontrolled spread in the region.

Arizona’s situation reaffirms the recent warning by the country’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, who stated, “We are still knee deep in the first wave” of the pandemic. Fauci, who stressed that he was extremely concerned and that the situation was getting worse, was referring both to the record number of coronavirus cases and to the low rates of testing and high rates of hospitalization.

The United States is currently testing about 500,000 people a day, about half of the 900,000 tests per day at minimum recommended by Ashish Jha, the director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute. This is the lowest number, Jha’s team estimated, required to find everyone who contracts the virus each day and confirm whether or not their contacts also caught the infection. Other public health experts have said that the US needs to do up to 30 million tests per day in order to truly know the full extent of the pandemic.

The situation as known is already dire. Nine states—New York, California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Arizona and Georgia—report more than 100,000 total cases. Nine are currently reporting more than 1,000 new cases each day—Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, California, North Carolina, Tennessee and Missouri. Only 10 states are reporting fewer than 100 daily cases. Twenty-two states have seen an increase in hospitalizations over the past 14 days, including Arizona, California, Georgia, Florida and Texas.

Despite such perils, states are continuing with their reopening plans or at most putting them on hold. One of the most significant reopenings will be the Walt Disney World theme parks in Orlando, Florida, and Anaheim, California, starting this weekend. While company and park officials insist that safety measures will be put in place, multiple petitions with tens of thousands of signatures, including those of theme park workers, have been circulated demanding that the park remain closed to keep workers and guests safe.

No section of the US political or media establishment is calling for the shutdown of non-essential production and business to halt the explosive spread of the disease. The policy of “reopening” without adequate testing, contact tracing and quarantining—that is, the policy of “herd immunity”—is supported by both big business parties, the Democrats no less than the Republicans.