Monday, August 10, 2020
US hits five million COVID-19 cases as testing declines and schools reopen
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/coro-a10.html
By Benjamin Mateus
10 August 2020
It has taken just over two weeks for the United States to record an additional one million cases of COVID-19. On August 6, the nation reached the grim milestone of five million cases.
As of this writing, there have been 5,187,611 cases and 165,500 deaths. There are 2,367,820 active cases and over 50,000 people hospitalized for treatment of COVID-19. After a low point in the positivity rate of 4.5 percent in mid-June, it has risen to 8 percent, where it has remained for several weeks despite claims of more testing by the Trump administration.
Globally, there are now 20 million cases of COVID-19 and the death toll is 732,000. The United States, comprising 4.25 percent of the global population, accounts for 26 percent of all cases and 22.6 percent of all fatalities. On a per-capita basis, only Brazil, Peru and Columbia have more daily cases than the US (with approximately 163 infections per million people).
Alarmingly, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine is now projecting that America’s death toll will reach 295,011 by December 1. The institute estimates that another 135,000 people will succumb in the next 113 days (1,195 deaths per day). These estimates are based on the assumption that mask usage will be inconsistent and that half of the school districts in each state will opt for online rather than in-person instruction.
IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray acknowledged that should the public adopt near-universal mask usage, estimated additional deaths by that date would drop by 49 percent, to reach a lower total of 228,271. If mandates were eased, the death toll could rise to over 391,000. The present estimate of community mobility, using cell phone data, is at 25 percent below pre-pandemic norms. At the peak of the nationwide restrictions, mobility had declined to 55 percent below pre-pandemic patterns.
The IHME has consistently been overly conservative in predicting the number of infections and deaths from the pandemic, and, by all accounts, the transition to fall and winter seasons can have a significant impact on the dynamics of community transmission.
Given the continuing rise in the rate of new infections and deaths and the lack of any nationally, let alone internationally, coordinated plan to scale up testing, contact tracing, quarantining and treatment, the drive to reopen the schools in the US assumes a homicidal and criminal character.
Several early school openings—Indiana, Mississippi and Louisiana—have been marked by confirmed COVID-19 cases on day one, necessitating closure or quarantining of students and teachers. Experience has already exposed the falsity of claims that schools can be safely reopened for in-person instruction. What, in fact, is being prepared is an explosive increase in infections and deaths.
This is perhaps most clearly exemplified by Florida, with over 530,000 COVID-19 cases statewide and 8,500 new cases on Saturday. Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran told the Hillsborough County School Board that it “needs to follow the law, it’s that simple,” after the board issued a statement that the district did not meet the requirements for safely offering in-classroom instruction when schools resume. In the meantime, Governor Ron DeSantis, who has pushed hard for the schools to reopen, instructed health directors across Florida to refuse to give school boards recommendations or risk assessments.
On August 5, three rural school districts in Texas were the first to head back to the classroom. With some Dallas-area districts poised to begin the first day of fall sessions, state officials were debating if data on COVID-19 infections at public schools should be collected. “This question on data collection is still under active deliberation by the agency, and we expect to have an update in coming weeks on what, if any, data will be required, and how it will be recorded,” said Texas Education Association spokesperson, Frank Ward.
Several school reopenings in Europe and Asia that proceeded with little incident have been cited as examples of the low risk of transmission among school-aged children. However, these nations have a per capita transmission rate significantly lower than the US, along with a much more capable surveillance system to track and trace new infections.
It is worth mentioning that the outbreak in an Israeli school in May of two known COVID-19 cases led to 153 students and 25 staff testing positive, including 87 close contacts outside the school. At the time, the number of daily cases nationwide had for many days been below 30.
Trump's illegal power grab and the specter of American Bonapartism
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/pers-a10.html
10 August 2020
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced a series of measures ostensibly targeting the cutoff of federal unemployment benefits that mark a new stage in his effort to abolish all constitutional restraints on the power of the president.
Trump announced a deferral of the federal payroll tax, which would defund Social Security, and the extension of federal unemployment benefits at a much lower level.
Congress allowed federal extended unemployment benefits to expire more than two weeks ago, plunging the 16 million unemployed workers in the US and their families into poverty. The expiration of federal jobless aid of $600 a week means that the weekly payments have fallen to the level of state benefits, which can be less than $300.
Trump’s measures constitute an illegal imposition on the powers of Congress, as spelled out in the Constitution, which declares that “Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes… and provide for the… general Welfare of the United States.”
Trump’s usurpation of the congressional prerogative to tax and spend is the latest act in a series of unconstitutional actions. In February of last year, Trump declared a State of Emergency to misappropriate Pentagon funds, in defiance of Congress, to build up his apparatus of repression on the Southern border.
In June, amid mass protests against police violence, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military throughout the country. When sections of the military resisted this attempted coup, fearing it was not adequately prepared and would create a social explosion, Trump instead dispatched federal border agents to Portland, Oregon, where they beat demonstrators and snatched protesters into unmarked vehicles.
In announcing the new measures, Trump presented himself as the arbiter of a logjam in Congress. “Political games that harm American lives are unacceptable, especially during a global pandemic, and therefore I am taking action to provide financial security to Americans,” Trump said. Asked if he was “trying to set a new precedent that the president can go around Congress,” Trump replied, “Congress has obstructed… people from getting desperately needed money.”
Trump’s actions have the character of Bonapartism. The term is derived from the historical example of the famous French general who ruled France for 15 years as a dictator. In its modern usage, it denotes a political situation that arises in a period acute social tension, when the traditional norms of bourgeois democracy become dysfunctional. The executive of the capitalist state—in the US, the president—exploits the impasse to augment its power.
The Bonapartist appears to rise above classes or the contending political factions through which bourgeois politics, in accordance with constitutional provisions, normally proceeds. Relying increasingly on the repressive forces of the state—the military, the police, intelligence agencies and, if necessary, paramilitary forces—the president asserts himself as the super-arbiter of conflict between factions and classes. In fact, however, he speaks for definite class interests.
Writing about the phenomenon of Bonapartist dictatorships in Europe that came to power prior to the rise of fascism, Trotsky wrote:
Raising itself politically above the classes, Bonapartism, like its predecessor Caesarism, for that matter, represents in the social sense, always and at all epochs, the government of the strongest and firmest part of the exploiters; consequently, present-day Bonapartism can be nothing else than the government of finance capital which directs, inspires, and corrupts the summits of the bureaucracy, the police, the officers’ caste, and the press.
Trump has not yet created a dictatorship. The real estate and casino con artist—without military conquests to brag of—has limited credentials to posture as a modern-day Bonaparte. But all his actions are directed toward creating such a dictatorship.
Trump’s power grab is facilitated by the mendacious and two-faced character of his opposition in the Democratic Party. The Democrats present themselves as sympathetic to the plight of unemployed workers, while in reality representing the interests of a corporate and financial oligarchy which materially benefits from cutting unemployment benefits—the same interests for whom Trump speaks.
On the one hand, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said that she is seeking a full extension of the federal unemployment benefits. On the other hand, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer last month introduced a bill that would cut extended unemployment benefits “by $100 when the rate fell below 11 percent [in a given state], and by another $100 each time the rate dropped by another percentage point,” according to the New York Times. Given that the official US unemployment rate is already at 10.2 percent, Schumer’s proposal would mean a cut in jobless benefits for the vast majority of unemployed workers in the US.
The New York Times, the main newspaper associated with the Democratic Party, called Schumer’s bill “a smarter way to provide workers with necessary and timely aid.”
The Washington Post, the other major US newspaper aligned with the Democratic Party, called for a “renewal of unemployment benefits at an elevated rate without disincentives to work.” The term “disincentive” is a backhanded euphemism for cutting unemployment benefits, which supposedly discourage workers from returning to workplaces.
In an op-ed published in the Washington Post last month, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Jason Furman and former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, both under Obama, declared that “extending the $600 weekly unemployment insurance benefit enacted at the start of the shutdown does not make sense now.”
The basic reality is that the Democrats, Congressional Republicans and Trump, despite the different political roles that they play, support the same fundamental, bipartisan policy of the ruling class in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In mid-March, when the pandemic threatened to cause a major financial crisis for overindebted US banks and corporations, the Democrats and Republicans united nearly unanimously to pass the so-called CARES Act, which sanctioned the multi-trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street and the rich. When it came to handing money to the rich, the “gridlock” in Washington suddenly disappeared.
Once the massive corporate bailout was passed, the US ruling class immediately adopted the mantra that “the cure can’t be worse than the disease,” demanding that workers get back on the job.
Both the federal government and the states quickly abandoned even the most minimal efforts to contain the pandemic, with more than half of governors reopening businesses in defiance of the CDC’s own guidelines, including the Democratic governors of Maine, North Carolina, Kansas and Colorado.
The premature reopening of businesses has fueled a massive resurgence of the pandemic, with more than 1,000 people dying every day.
The cutting of unemployment benefits is critical in forcing workers back on the job through a form of economic conscription, aimed at driving down labor costs and boosting the profits of major corporations by sacrificing the lives of workers and their family members.
It is entirely possible that Democratic and Republican members of Congress will come to an agreement on a plan to extend unemployment benefits, using Trump’s proposal as a baseline to reach a deal that cuts benefits, which they all agree is necessary. This, however, will resolve nothing.
Capitalism is incompatible with the needs of society, as it is incompatible with democratic forms of rule. Any resolution on a progressive basis to the catastrophe of the spreading pandemic and the social catastrophe engulfing the United States depends upon the independent intervention of the working class on the basis of a revolutionary and socialist program.
Andre Damon
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