Thursday, July 9, 2020
UK meat processing factories involved in COVID-19 outbreak back up and running
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/meat-j08.html
By Tony Robson
8 July 2020
The 2 Sisters Food Group (2SFG) chicken factory on the island of Anglesey, North Wales is the last of three meat processing companies involved in the largest industrial outbreak of COVID-19 in the UK to restart production.
The multi-millionaire owner of 2SFG, Ranjit Boparan, now portrays himself as a responsible owner, and the decision to suspend production for a fortnight ending July 3 as a grand gesture and an “opportunity to supplement our existing control measures.”
The implication is that the previous safety measures were insufficient, rather than essentially non-existent. But the company knows it will not face any legal action or be forced to implement any safety measures that might impede its efforts to maximise profit.
The first reported case of COVID-19 at the chicken factory was on May 28. It spread unchecked before the factory was finally forced to close on June 18 after the number of infections had reached 58. Subsequent testing has seen the total climb to 216—nearly half the workforce.
Employees told Wales Live they had been forced to work in a climate of fear before the decision was belatedly taken to suspend production. “We could see people around us catching it and going off ill, and we had to carry on, scared to breathe at times, knowing it was in the air around us,” one said.
Another said they felt like “cannon fodder.” While 2 metre social distancing applied to corridors and the canteen it did not apply to the factory floor. Protective visors had holes cut into them to prevent them steaming up.
The outbreak constituted a far wider threat to the whole island, with a population of 70,000 people. The Welsh government’s planned reopening of schools announced for June 29 had to be cancelled locally. However, any further lockdowns have been resisted in Anglesey, as in all other areas hit by an outbreak of the virus in the meat processing industry.
All the agencies tasked with responding to the emergency—local health bodies, councils, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the trade unions—have instead worked to conceal the criminality of the corporations so it does not interfere with the premature re-opening of the economy by the Johnson government.
The HSE’s monitoring of the situation and new safety measures implemented at the 2 Sisters site, even as production is ramped up, are no guarantee of workers’ safety. Hundreds of workers have been infected without the HSE serving a single prohibition notice.
According to media reports, the company has implemented 30 additional safety measures which include full “opposite” and “side-by-side” screening, teams managed in “bubbles”, and CCTV surveillance of potential high traffic areas. But there has been no suggestion of a re-engineering of the ventilation system, which has been identified as a distributor of the virus in cold and damp factory settings. Neither is there any reference to the controlling of line speeds to ensure social distancing.
Another significant factor identified in the spread of the virus was the overcrowded housing of predominantly migrant workers who work in the meat processing plants. The recommendations drawn up for the meat processing industry by the Welsh Labour government—together with the unions—did not propose rehousing these workers in decent accommodation. Rather it suggested that workers’ living arrangements should conform to their “working cohort” within the factory.
The promise by the Unite union that “no stone would be left unturned” over safety improvements has proved to be a fraud. The union has instead provided 2 Sisters with a clean bill of health. “The company have recognised that they need the help of their staff in getting back to business,” said Paddy McNaught, Unite’s regional organiser. “They’ve been honest and open with us as we worked to put new procedures in place.”
On the local community based Facebook page, “Anglesey Mon News,” the announcement of the reopening of the 2 Sisters site received many angry responses from locals, including: “As usual ££££££ comes first”, “Owners are greedy, they don’t give a toss about the staff. They are only a number,” and “Time to get out of Anglesey, before it kicks off again.”
The pleas and entreaties by Unite for a new era of corporate responsibility are directed against a growing recognition among workers that their interests are incompatible with the profit drive of the corporations.
At Rowan Foods in Wrexham—the other meat processing plant in North Wales where the virus has swept through the workforce—talks between Unite and the company have broken down.
The company has refused even to pay any more than the weekly Statutory Sick Pay of £95 per week for workers having to self-isolate, and there are reports that workers have continued to work while awaiting their tests results. A petition circulating to demand the temporary closure of the site states:
“Management are plucking people off the lines as they get notifications of positive results, but everyone is still working alongside these people until they are removed. So even staff that were tested Monday that came back negative have still been in contact with people who have tested positive later in the week.”
The latest figure on the total number of COVID-19 infections at Rowan Foods is 283, around a fifth of the workforce. In its defence, Rowan Foods was able to cite an HSE statement of early March that the safety measures it had in place were “successful”, Public Health Wales’s agreement that there is no evidence the workplace is the source of the outbreak, and the Welsh government’s decision not to use its powers to close the plant. “We have no serious issues which need addressing and we continue to comply with the law,” a company spokesman said.
The lack of enforcement is mirrored at the Kepak pork plant in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. The company has one in eight of its workforce infected based on recent testing, a total of 130. It has continued operating, stating that it is cooperating with the HSE. The Welsh government has not introduced any local lockdown measures even though the town has a weekly infection rate of 179 per 100,000 people. This is higher than Leicester in England, which has 141 per 100,000, where local lockdown measures are in place. Merthyr, the former mining town, is second in Wales for COVID-19 death rates, with 108 per 100,000 people.
In England, a further outbreak of COVID-19 has been reported at another meat processing plant owned by the major supermarket chain, Asda. On July 2, Forza Foods confirmed that 17 workers had tested positive for the virus at its site in Normanton, West Yorkshire, which supplies sliced and cooked meat. Asda was at the centre of the original outbreak in meat processing plants with its Kober plant in nearby Cleckheaton, which was temporarily closed, with 165 reported cases.
No action has been taken to close the Normanton site on the pretext that the confirmed cases were from the same shift. Around 300 employees have been offered tests or the option to self-isolate at home out of a workforce of 1,200. This is with the seal of approval of the local authority and the HSE.
The past few weeks have demonstrated that further outbreaks are inevitable in the meat processing industry and that they will invariably be followed by cover-ups. This is an international phenomenon, proving that the most significant “super-spreaders” of the virus are the brutal methods of exploitation employed by the corporations. The fight against the pandemic requires a root and branch transformation of society, based upon the mobilisation of the working class and the fight for socialism.
UK: Coronavirus exposes Leicester’s sweatshops and government hypocrisy
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/leic-j08.html
By Thomas Scripps
8 July 2020
The lockdown imposed on the East Midlands city of Leicester after an outbreak of COVID-19 has been linked to garment factory sweatshops. This has forced government ministers to strike a pose of outrage at a situation they have not only ignored for years, but also intend to replicate across the country.
Last Wednesday, the day after a local public health lockdown of Leicester was ordered by the Boris Johnson government, campaign group Labour Behind the Label (LBL) published a report, “Boohoo & COVID-19: The people behind the profit.” The group has been informed of multiple Leicester factories where no social distancing has been implemented and no masks have been provided.
Workers were told to come into work while sick or be sacked. In several factories of up to 100 people, workers were forced to carry on working while known to be infected with coronavirus or while living in households known to be infected. Factories continued running as normal throughout the national lockdown.
On Sunday, the Times published an undercover investigation carried out earlier that week, while Leicester was formally under local lockdown. Their reporter spent two days working at a garment factory, where he was told by another worker to expect to be paid between £3.50 and £4 an hour. A foreman explained, “Anywhere in Leicester you will only find textile factories that pay up to £4 an hour.” This is less than half of the already pitifully low national minimum wage. There were no gloves, health warning signs or social distancing measures and only a few workers wore masks.
Conservative Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Home Secretary Priti Patel feigned surprise. Hancock told Sky News, “There are some quite significant concerns about some of the employment practices in some of the clothing factories in Leicester,” putting on a stern face to tell such supposedly maverick businesses, “We’re not just asking nicely.”
Patel outdid herself in a customary display of cynicism, referring to the “abhorrent practices” uncovered by the Times report and declaring, “These allegations are truly appalling.” She directed the National Crime Agency to investigate modern slavery in Leicester’s clothes factories and said in Parliament, “Let this be a warning to those who are exploiting people in sweatshops like these for their own commercial gain. This is just the start. What you are doing is illegal, it will not be tolerated, and we are coming after you.”
This is like Al Capone threatening to clean up the Mafia. The Tories and the entire ruling class have knowingly presided over Leicester’s sweatshops for years. In 2015, the Ethical Trading Initiative commissioned research by the University of Leicester into the city’s garment industry. “New Industry on a Skewed Playing Field: Supply Chain Relations and Working Conditions in UK Garment Manufacturing” found that “the majority of garment workers are paid way below the National Minimum Wage, do not have employment contracts, and are subject to intense and arbitrary work practices.” It uncovered “work practices that result in health problems [and] inadequate health and safety standards…”
This research was presented to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, who then produced a report, “Human Rights and Business 2017: Promoting responsibility and ensuring accountability,” which found that “labour rights abuses are endemic in the Leicester garment industry.”
In January 2017, Channel 4’s “Dispatches” produced, “Undercover: Britain’s Cheap Clothes.” A reporter worked at three Leicester factories producing clothes for brands like River Island, New Look, Boohoo and Misguided. He was paid between £3 and £3.50 an hour. In one factory, the fire exits were blocked, and a worker was smoking on the factory floor.
A Financial Times investigation in 2018, “Dark factories: Labour exploitation in Britain’s garment industry,” found average wages of £4.25 an hour and significant fire safety hazards. The reporter explained, “The enforcement agencies can hardly claim to be unaware of what is happening. Representatives from UK Visas and Immigration, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority all attended a meeting hosted by Leicester mayor Sir Peter Soulsby last October, where the problems were discussed in detail. But a comb through of freedom-of-information requests, MPs questions and public records does not reveal a state that has done much to sort this out.”
In 2019, the government rejected every recommendation by the Environmental Audit Committee’s “Fixing Fashion Report: Clothing Consumption and Sustainability,” which noted, “we were told it is an open secret that some garment factories in places like Leicester are not paying the minimum wage.”
This January, Tory MP for North West Leicestershire Andrew Bridgen raised the “miserable conditions” in Leicester’s factories and requested a meeting with the business secretary. In April, Conservative politicians led by Baroness Verma sent an email to Leicester’s Labour councillors and mayor raising concerns about factories operating illegally and asking if the Labour Party was reporting these activities to the police and trading standards.
But neither the Tory government, nor the Labour Party, has lifted a finger to address this criminal exploitation. HMRC announced in January that in the last six years just six factories in Leicester had been fined for failing to pay the minimum wage. As for lethal safety failings, LBL report that workers’ complaints to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have been ignored. Nationally, the HSE has not issued a single prohibition notice shutting down a factory since the pandemic began and only two improvement notices.
No action has been or will be taken because Leicester’s sweatshops—and those elsewhere—form an integral part of Britain’s fashion industry, earning huge profits. The onset of globalisation in the 1970s and 1980s prompted the collapse of the UK’s apparel manufacturing industry, as companies moved to cheap labour platforms in the Far East. Following the 2008 financial crash, however, and the expansion of “fast fashion,” new retailers have used local labour forces (largely composed of migrant workers) and a network of small, outsourced, unregulated suppliers to produce new clothing lines at even lower costs.
This business model has flourished during the pandemic. Boohoo’s sales surged 45 percent in the quarter to the end of May this year, taking the company’s valuation to £5.3 billion. Its owners and CEO are in line for £50 million payouts if Boohoo continues to grow.
More important still, far from being outraged by these practices the government consider them a model for the future. Prime Minister Johnson’s Brexiteer cabinet is built around the ideologues of Britannia Unchained, an ultra-free market Thatcherite screed written by Patel, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, International Trade Secretary Liz Truss, Minister of State for Business Kwasi Kwarteng and Tory MP Chris Skidmore.
Britannia Unchained attacks the UK’s “bloated state, high taxes and excessive regulation” and “unproductive” workers, described as “among the worst idlers in the world.” Its advocates call for a completion of the “Thatcher revolution,” in the words of her former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, to secure the profitability of British business through massive tax cuts and deregulation.
The coronavirus pandemic is bringing the terrible social consequences of such unbridled capitalist exploitation into sharp relief. While Leicester represents one of the worst and most advanced cases, this is a danger that confronts the whole working class. Food processing workers suffer under nearly identical conditions, while warehouse, postal, transport, health and social care workers are being forced to risk their lives in unsafe conditions for minimal wages.
No resistance has been offered by the trade union bureaucrats and nor will they ever do so. Workers must organise their own independent rank-and-file committees to secure genuinely safe conditions and liveable pay in a common struggle across all sectors, as part of the struggle for a socialist transformation of society.
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.
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