https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjwGSTmSETc
Friday, June 11, 2021
World food prices rose 40 percent over past year amid expanding global hunger triggered by pandemic
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/04/food-j04.html
Kevin Reed
3 June 2021
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) food price index rose by 40 percent over the past year, including a rise of 4.8 percent since April.
The FAO report released on Thursday states: “The May increase represented the biggest month-on-month gain since October 2010. It also marked the twelfth consecutive monthly rise in the value of the FFPI to its highest value since September 2011. ... The sharp increase in May reflected a surge in prices for oils, sugar and cereals along with firmer meat and dairy prices.” The FFPI (FAO food price index) is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities.
Women wait in line for food donated by the Covid Without Hunger organization in the Jardim Gramacho slum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, May 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
According to the report, corn prices are 67 percent higher than a year ago, sugar is up nearly 60 percent and prices for cooking oil have doubled. The surging food prices are catastrophic for millions of people around the globe—already facing desperate conditions from the coronavirus pandemic—with hunger driven up rapidly in the poorest countries of the world.
The UN World Food Program reports that 270 million people are currently suffering from acute malnutrition or worse situations in the 79 countries in which the agency operates, double the number in 2019. Among the regions facing a rising hunger crisis that is exacerbated by skyrocketing food prices are Southeast Asia, Africa and Central America.
The World Bank estimates that up to 124 million people sank below the international poverty line—living on less than $1.90 a day—in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. Up to 39 million people more are expected to be added in 2021, taking the total number of those living in extreme poverty to 750 million people.
Analysts attributed the food cost increases to a series of global climate and economic factors. Bloomberg, for example, reported: “Drought in key Brazilian growing regions is crippling crops from corn to coffee, and vegetable oil production growth has slowed in Southeast Asia. That’s boosting costs for livestock producers and risks further straining global grain stockpiles that have been depleted by soaring Chinese demand.”
Among the food supply issues driven by China’s economic expansion are an increased demand for feed to rebuild pig herds that were struck in recent years by disease. The pig feed contains staples, such as corn and soybeans, that are also consumed by people.
Other analysts have pointed to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global food supply saying that restrictions on movement have increased logistics costs while decreased incomes have driven up demand for less expensive food items.
Economists have warned that the resumption of eating out around the world, following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions despite the ongoing pandemic, is adding to price increases. Abdolreza Abbassian, senior economist at the FAO, said, “The decline in eating out was not totally compensated with eating at home, but as people start to go to restaurants again, you will see food prices rise.”
Comparing the present increases to the food price surge 10 years ago, chief economist at the United Nations World Food Program, Arif Husain, said, “What is unique about this time is that prices are going up, and at the same time people’s incomes have been decimated. The combination of the two, rising prices and no purchasing power, is the most lethal thing you could deal with.”
The extreme global food price increases and expanding hunger are among the sharpest manifestations of the crisis of the capitalist system, posing the necessity for socialist revolution and economic planning by the international working class as an immediate life-and-death matter.
Food price inflation has developed over the past year in parallel with the spread of the deadly pandemic across the globe. While the imperialist powers have hoarded the vaccines and denied them to the poorest countries, the pandemic is now surging among these populations as the cost of the basic necessities of life are becoming increasingly out of reach.
The Wall Street Journal got right down to the primary concerns of the financial aristocracy amid the food price crisis: social instability, migration and political unrest. In an article entitled “Food Prices Soar Compounding Woes of World’s Poor,” the Wall Street Journal wrote on May 20: “Previous spikes in food and fuel prices contributed to political instability in recent decades, including the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions in 2011. While nothing of that scale has emerged this year, expensive food is part of the mix in several countries now experiencing unrest.”
Pointing to mass protests in Colombia and Sudan and rising hunger as a primary cause of migration across the US southern border—the number of people facing acute food insecurity jumped 20 percent in Guatemala and tripled in Honduras this year compared to 2019—the Wall Street Journal is raising alarm bells among the capitalist ruling elite.
The Wall Street Journal spoke with Guatemala’s coordinator of humanitarian programs for the global charity Oxfam, Iván Aguilar, who said: “In terms of food insecurity, we are at the worst point in Guatemala in at least 20 years. It’s a very worrisome combination of factors, and making things worse, you have weak governments in the region with scarce means to help the poor.”
The broader economic implications of price inflation have been discussed in recent weeks and are a growing area of concern within ruling circles, such as the US Federal Reserve Bank and the European Central Bank.
While the Biden administration has officially stated that inflation is not a concern, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on May 4 that the Federal Reserve could easily control inflationary outbreaks with interest rate hikes. However, Yellen tried to walk back those comments later that same day because raising the rates would disrupt the flow of cash into the markets that is the basis of the ongoing spectacular rise of share values on Wall Street and the unprecedented increased in the number and wealth of billionaires throughout the pandemic.
According to the report, corn prices are 67 percent higher than a year ago, sugar is up nearly 60 percent and prices for cooking oil have doubled. The surging food prices are catastrophic for millions of people around the globe—already facing desperate conditions from the coronavirus pandemic—with hunger driven up rapidly in the poorest countries of the world.
The UN World Food Program reports that 270 million people are currently suffering from acute malnutrition or worse situations in the 79 countries in which the agency operates, double the number in 2019. Among the regions facing a rising hunger crisis that is exacerbated by skyrocketing food prices are Southeast Asia, Africa and Central America.
The World Bank estimates that up to 124 million people sank below the international poverty line—living on less than $1.90 a day—in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. Up to 39 million people more are expected to be added in 2021, taking the total number of those living in extreme poverty to 750 million people.
Analysts attributed the food cost increases to a series of global climate and economic factors. Bloomberg, for example, reported: “Drought in key Brazilian growing regions is crippling crops from corn to coffee, and vegetable oil production growth has slowed in Southeast Asia. That’s boosting costs for livestock producers and risks further straining global grain stockpiles that have been depleted by soaring Chinese demand.”
Among the food supply issues driven by China’s economic expansion are an increased demand for feed to rebuild pig herds that were struck in recent years by disease. The pig feed contains staples, such as corn and soybeans, that are also consumed by people.
Other analysts have pointed to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global food supply saying that restrictions on movement have increased logistics costs while decreased incomes have driven up demand for less expensive food items.
Economists have warned that the resumption of eating out around the world, following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions despite the ongoing pandemic, is adding to price increases. Abdolreza Abbassian, senior economist at the FAO, said, “The decline in eating out was not totally compensated with eating at home, but as people start to go to restaurants again, you will see food prices rise.”
Comparing the present increases to the food price surge 10 years ago, chief economist at the United Nations World Food Program, Arif Husain, said, “What is unique about this time is that prices are going up, and at the same time people’s incomes have been decimated. The combination of the two, rising prices and no purchasing power, is the most lethal thing you could deal with.”
The extreme global food price increases and expanding hunger are among the sharpest manifestations of the crisis of the capitalist system, posing the necessity for socialist revolution and economic planning by the international working class as an immediate life-and-death matter.
Food price inflation has developed over the past year in parallel with the spread of the deadly pandemic across the globe. While the imperialist powers have hoarded the vaccines and denied them to the poorest countries, the pandemic is now surging among these populations as the cost of the basic necessities of life are becoming increasingly out of reach.
The Wall Street Journal got right down to the primary concerns of the financial aristocracy amid the food price crisis: social instability, migration and political unrest. In an article entitled “Food Prices Soar Compounding Woes of World’s Poor,” the Wall Street Journal wrote on May 20: “Previous spikes in food and fuel prices contributed to political instability in recent decades, including the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions in 2011. While nothing of that scale has emerged this year, expensive food is part of the mix in several countries now experiencing unrest.”
Pointing to mass protests in Colombia and Sudan and rising hunger as a primary cause of migration across the US southern border—the number of people facing acute food insecurity jumped 20 percent in Guatemala and tripled in Honduras this year compared to 2019—the Wall Street Journal is raising alarm bells among the capitalist ruling elite.
The Wall Street Journal spoke with Guatemala’s coordinator of humanitarian programs for the global charity Oxfam, Iván Aguilar, who said: “In terms of food insecurity, we are at the worst point in Guatemala in at least 20 years. It’s a very worrisome combination of factors, and making things worse, you have weak governments in the region with scarce means to help the poor.”
The broader economic implications of price inflation have been discussed in recent weeks and are a growing area of concern within ruling circles, such as the US Federal Reserve Bank and the European Central Bank.
While the Biden administration has officially stated that inflation is not a concern, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on May 4 that the Federal Reserve could easily control inflationary outbreaks with interest rate hikes. However, Yellen tried to walk back those comments later that same day because raising the rates would disrupt the flow of cash into the markets that is the basis of the ongoing spectacular rise of share values on Wall Street and the unprecedented increased in the number and wealth of billionaires throughout the pandemic.
COVID pandemic spawns vaccine billionaires amid global mass death
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/28/pers-m28.html
Bill Van Auken
27 May 2021
Profits reaped from the production of COVID-19 vaccines have spawned nine new billionaires with a combined wealth of $19.3 billion. They have likewise fattened the portfolios of eight existing billionaires with fortunes tied to corporations involved in vaccine production by $32 billion.
These staggering figures, exposing an obscene accumulation of private wealth in the midst of global mass death and immiseration, were released in a report produced by an alliance of aid organizations in advance of a G20 Global Health Summit.
Family members pray next to the burning pyre of a person who died of COVID-19, at a crematorium in Srinagar, May 25, 2021. (AP Photo/ Dar Yasin)
The report estimates that the newly minted fortunes of Moderna and Pfizer CEOs and investors-turned-billionaires could pay to vaccinate all 780 million people in the so-called “low-income countries” 1.3 times over.
The $32 billion raked in by the pre-existing billionaires over the past year would pay for the full vaccination of all 1.4 billion people in India. The country is the new epicenter of the COVID-19 catastrophe, where infections have doubled in the past two months. Recorded daily deaths have risen to 4,000, overwhelming the health care system and overflowing crematoriums and burial grounds with bodies.
The new vaccine billionaires include Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO ($4.3 billion); Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech ($4 billion); Timothy Springer, an immunologist and founding investor of Moderna ($2.2 billion), and Noubar Afeyan, Moderna’s chairman ($1.9 billion).
The foundation for the immense wealth amassed by these individuals was laid by government-funded research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and university laboratories, along with the outlay of some $10.5 billion in public funding for the development and production of vaccines.
The private appropriation of socially produced scientific achievements has allowed Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and other corporations to jack up the price of the vaccines at least 20 percent over their production costs and secure monopoly control that bars countries desperately needing vaccines from making cheaper generics.
On top of that, the fortunes of the big pharma-biotech billionaires have been swelled by a soaring stock market underpinned by huge government cash infusions. Moderna’s share prices, for example, have quadrupled over the past year.
The Moderna and Pfizer CEOs and investors may be among the most direct, but are hardly the only, “pandemic profiteers.” As the annual report by Forbes magazine spelled out last month, the collective wealth of the world’s billionaires surged by more than 60 percent last year, from $8 trillion to $13.1 trillion. This, as the pandemic and its socio-economic effects have wiped out at least 255 million full-time jobs globally over the past year and will, according to the World Bank, push another 150 million people into extreme poverty in 2021.
While the production of vaccines has yielded immense fortunes for a tiny layer within the ruling oligarchy, the vast majority of the world’s population have been denied access to vaccinations. Distribution of vaccines has been hobbled by nationalism, profiteering and the outright sabotage by the major imperialist powers of any coordinated international campaign to combat the pandemic.
The corporations and finance capital have ferociously resisted calls for the World Trade Organization to waive patents on COVID-19 vaccines, effectively breaking the production monopolies. The companies and their lobbyists have insisted that the waiver would be ineffective because it would take months to transfer technology and develop manufacturing capacity in other countries. They have been making this argument for months, while the people of these countries are dying, deprived of the vaccines that could save their lives.
At the opening of the World Health Organization’s 74th World Health Assembly on Monday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that the number of coronavirus cases so far this year has surpassed those for all of 2020 and that, given existing trends, the number of COVID-19 deaths will outstrip 2020’s total death toll within the next three weeks.
In a report released last week, the WHO estimated that three times more people may have died from the pandemic than is reflected in official figures. This would put the real global death toll at over 10 million.
Pointing to the vast inequality in global vaccine distribution, Ghebreyesus declared that “the ongoing vaccine crisis is a scandalous inequity that is perpetuating the pandemic.” He noted that 75 percent of the world’s vaccines have been administered in just 10 countries.
“There is no diplomatic way to say it. A small group of countries that make and buy the majority of the world’s vaccines control the fate of the rest of the world,” he said, while pointing to the “vastly inadequate” doses supplied to COVAX, the global agency created to supposedly assure equitable vaccine distribution.
The stated aim of COVAX was to distribute two billion doses by the end of 2021. As of early this month, it had managed to distribute just 70 million doses to 125 countries, less than enough to vaccinate 1 percent of their combined populations even once.
Africa, with 17 percent of the world’s population, accounts for just 1.5 percent of vaccinations worldwide. COVAX has been able to distribute just 300,000 doses for the 15 million people of Somalia, 355,000 doses for 23 million in Niger and 175,000 for 6.8 million in Libya. In the Middle East, just 336,000 have been provided for 39 million Iraqis, 364,800 for 43 million Algerians and 164,000 for 4.7 million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Similar figures prevail in impoverished countries in Latin America, where Bolivia, for example, has received just 421,000 doses for its 12 million people; and in Asia, where the Philippines has gotten just 2.6 million doses for a population of 108 million.
COVAX was deprived of vaccines from the outset, and its mission of equitable distribution was sabotaged as the major imperialist powers, with Washington in the lead, signed deals with Pfizer, Moderna and other companies bypassing the international agency to buy up the lion’s share of vaccines for themselves.
The dire effects of this vaccine nationalism have been exacerbated further as the Indian government has responded to the uncontrolled surge of the pandemic that its own policies fueled by ordering the country’s Serum Institute (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, to halt all exports. As a result, tens of millions of health care workers in the world’s poorest countries who had received a first dose of the vaccine will not be getting a second.
The US and the European imperialist powers have responded to the crisis with promises of vaccines that amount to less than a drop in the ocean. The Biden administration has pledged 80 million doses, and the European Union 100 million.
With new records of global infections and deaths being set daily, this response appears not only heartless, but irrational and indeed lunatic. There will be no end to the global coronavirus pandemic on a national basis. As the WHO’s Ghebreyesus warned Monday, “No country should assume it is out of the woods, no matter its vaccination rate.” With the virus spreading uncontrollably in India, Brazil and other countries, the threat remains that new vaccine-resistant variants will emerge.
The criminal indifference of capitalist governments and ruling classes to the burning need for a global vaccination campaign is in sync with their entire homicidal response to the pandemic. From the outset, they have subordinated the defense of human life to the profit interests of the banks and corporations and a ruling oligarchy that has concentrated unfathomable wealth in its hands.
The pandemic has laid bare the necessity of abolishing the capitalist nation-state system, expropriating the wealth accumulated by the financial oligarchy and ending private ownership of the means of production as the preconditions for defending the rights and interests of working people, including life itself.
Workers all over the world are entering into struggles fueled by the social catastrophe created by capitalism’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These struggles must be armed with a socialist and internationalist program, uniting workers across national boundaries in a common fight for a society that places human needs over the profits and wealth of the oligarchs and advances the international unity of the working class against capitalism’s drive to war.
Global excess deaths during the pandemic range from 7 to 13 million lives lost according to new estimate
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/20/econ-m20.html
Benjamin Mateus
19 May 2021
Last week, the Economist published a special report, a modeling study looking at excess deaths attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic globally. As of May 2021, they concluded, there have been 7.1 to 12.7 million excess deaths worldwide. Their central estimate places the toll at 10.2 million people—three times the official figures—who would have otherwise been living today, had the world’s governments responded in earnest to the threat posed by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
As the Economist explained, the number of fatalities officially reported country by country grossly underestimates the actual figures. This is a result of the lack of testing to confirm the cause of death and a lag in registering deaths. Inundated health systems also mean people who died at home have never been counted. Using “excess deaths,” a process that counts the number of people who die in a region and compares it to historical baselines, statistical models can be developed to address the question of the actual death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic.
A worker in protective suits takes a break amid graves at a newly opened cemetery for the victims of COVID-19 in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)
They write, “Using known data on 121 variables, from recorded deaths to demography, geography, and mobility, we have built a pattern of correlations that lets us fill in gaps where numbers are lacking.” However, for the same reasons mentioned, many countries cannot provide reliable figures for excess deaths. Much of the available data was extracted from the data set kept at the Kohelet Economic Forum, an Israeli think-tank, with the World Mortality Dataset project.
According to Sondre Ulvund Solstad, the Economist’s senior data journalist, “The challenge becomes estimating excess deaths where they are unknown. You don’t just want to spit out a number and say, here is the truth, because the truth is you can’t know the exact number of excess deaths. The data doesn’t exist. So, what we have done and have invested tremendous effort in doing is to provide ranges that capture the variations that is possible…we tried to collect as much data as we could on all sorts of indicators so that if some data was missing at least, we would have some moderate data that could fill in.” He also explained that when data was missing, it was recorded as such, noting that “it says something in itself.”
He added that lack of data is most severe for low- and middle-income countries. “In these places, testing is less widespread mostly because it is expensive and not something elected officials there like to prioritize. We also suspect that in some countries governments would not want to prioritize testing because it would reveal how bad the pandemic really is.”
After the pandemic ravaged through Wuhan city and Hubei province in China, the coronavirus swept through the “rich world,” then moving into more isolated and internationally connected developing regions, causing mass amounts of fatalities. “Deaths have been rising for most of the past year [33 out of 52 weeks] and every month. That is not total deaths, but deaths per day. What we are seeing now is another spike by what’s happening in India.”
According to their modeling, India is experiencing 6,000 to 31,000 excess deaths per day, far above the 4,000 daily deaths reported. Their estimates are corroborated by other epidemiological models that place the numbers in the same range. If these are correct, then just in 2021 alone, more than one million have perished in India from COVID-19.
Solstad explained, “Unfortunately, India is not an outlier. Many countries’ modeling suggests they have been hit much harder than India. For instance, Peru, which is one of the worst hit in the world, has seen deaths per person per million population about 2.5 times what we currently estimate as to the case in India.”
The Economist model estimates that as of May 10, 2021 deaths in Asia ranged from 2.4 to 7.1 million excess deaths while the official COVID-19 deaths are around 0.6 million. Russia, by example, has an excess COVID-19 death rate of more than five times the official report. While Latin America and the Caribbean have reported 0.6 million COVID-19 fatalities, the number of excess deaths is 1.5 to 1.8 million.
In Africa, the range peaks at 2.1 million deaths, though the official figure stands at close to 130,000, an estimated death rate 14 times the official numbers. With a reported 55,000 COVID-19 deaths, South Africa has recorded 158,499 excess deaths. Health officials believe 85 to 95 percent are directly attributable to SARS-CoV-2, highlighting the difficulty to access tests and health care. Those over 60 have seen excess deaths of over 120,000.
Excess deaths in Europe stand at 50 to 60 percent higher, 1.5 to 1.6 million, than the official COVID-19 death figures. Estimates for the US and Canada combined are between 600,000 to 700,000. They calculated that excess deaths in the US are only seven percent higher than the official COVID-19 deaths, implying that the actual COVID-19 mortality is just over 650,000.
By the numbers, the working class of rich countries has faced the brunt of the pandemic where “herd immunity” was the de facto policy. But the modeling also tells the story of a very fast-moving pathogen that infects quickly, even the youngest. In a report published in the Journal of Public Health on April 12, 2021, a seroprevalence anti-SARS-COV-2 antibodies study conducted on 1,675 blood samples collected from residents in Karachi, Pakistan, from May to July 2020 found that 34 percent of the community’s population had contracted the virus, implying its high prevalence early in the course of the pandemic across many regions.
Solstad explained that age must be taken as a significant factor, meaning that older populations face a much higher consequence from the coronavirus. The estimate of the risk of dying from COVID-19 in Japan, for instance, where the median age is 48 versus in Uganda, where it is 17, is thirteen times higher. Yet, when age is accounted for, the younger population in developing countries faces a higher consequence from the coronavirus than their counterparts in more affluent regions simply because of the lack of health care resources.
The Economist notes the study published by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington on May 7, 2021 which estimates nearly 7 million excess deaths globally. They explained that the IHME applied fixed multipliers based on test-positivity rates to obtain estimates. Such a method can fail to match reported excess deaths as evidenced by their estimates for Japan and the US. But they applaud their effort highlighting the need for accurate data, which is woefully lacking. As they write, “Resources should be put into such measures not just to honor the dead and the truth, but also because, without such basic numbers, estimates of other impacts—economic, educational, cultural or in the health of survivors—are hard to understands, or to compare.”
One would think that such a devastating account of the actual toll of the COVID-19 pandemic’s human cost would make the front-page story of the leading press. The editorial boards would insist on opinion pieces that would explain to their readers the failures on the part of their respective governments to prepare for global threats. There may even be a statement by the paper calling for real-time data for every middle- and low-income country to address the grossly inadequate metrics to address medical and humanitarian needs in these regions. The British Journal of Medicine (BMJ) published a critical essay in February declaring the handling of the pandemic as tantamount to “social murder.”
Yet, there has not been any mention of this scathing report, which underscores the malign neglect pursued by the capitalist elite. The lives of these ten million are immaterial for them. The pandemic has shown that mass death is highly lucrative for the financial oligarchs. They increased their combined wealth by 60 percent, from $8 trillion to $13.1 trillion in 2020. The number of billionaires rocketed to 2,775, the highest rate of increase in history. In short, the coronavirus has been a critical instrument for amassing ever greater piles of wealth.
As the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) noted, almost every wealthy nation chose not to heed the World Health Organization (WHO) warnings at the end of January 2020, when the virus was declared a global threat. The wasted month in February 2020 helped seed the pathogen throughout every region of the world, leading Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus to declare the coronavirus epidemic a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
Over the intervening months, wave after wave of horrific COVID-19 surges compelled many countries to implement lockdowns to stem a complete collapse of their health care systems, with bodies piling up in the corridors and backroom of hospitals and morgues. Health care workers without proper equipment, staffing, and emergency supplies were sent back into the deluge to shore up the crumbling edifice. Presently, Amnesty International has placed the figure of health care workers lost to COVID-19 at over 17,000.
While the wealth of the billionaires shot up, the pandemic led to the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression. In April 2020 alone, 20.6 million jobs were wiped out in the United States. According to a collaborative study from the University of Chicago and Stanford, it is estimated that 32 to 42 percent of the COVID-induced layoffs will be permanent. Despite the push to reopen the economy full throttle, the current trend indicates that, as even President Joe Biden acknowledged, the US economy has a “long way to go,” with growth reportedly constrained by the shortage of workers and raw materials.
According to a report published on January 25, 8.8 percent of global working hours were lost relative to the fourth quarter of 2019, which amounts to 255 million full-time jobs, impacting hardest regions like Latin America, Southern Europe, and Southern Asia, amounting to $3.7 trillion in labor income lost. Estimates suggest that 2021 will continue to see losses in working hours equivalent to 90 to 130 million full-time equivalents. The IPPPR forecasted that the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world economy will amount to $22 trillion. The World Bank has estimated that an additional 150 million people may be pushed into extreme poverty this year.
After a year of death, human suffering continues to unfold on massive scale. Collapsing health systems are struggling to care for patients desperate for oxygen. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 vaccines trickle down all too slowly for the billions anxiously waiting for these lifesaving treatments. As the BMJ noted, the “vaccine gap between rich and poor countries is growing by the day.”
They write, “Using known data on 121 variables, from recorded deaths to demography, geography, and mobility, we have built a pattern of correlations that lets us fill in gaps where numbers are lacking.” However, for the same reasons mentioned, many countries cannot provide reliable figures for excess deaths. Much of the available data was extracted from the data set kept at the Kohelet Economic Forum, an Israeli think-tank, with the World Mortality Dataset project.
According to Sondre Ulvund Solstad, the Economist’s senior data journalist, “The challenge becomes estimating excess deaths where they are unknown. You don’t just want to spit out a number and say, here is the truth, because the truth is you can’t know the exact number of excess deaths. The data doesn’t exist. So, what we have done and have invested tremendous effort in doing is to provide ranges that capture the variations that is possible…we tried to collect as much data as we could on all sorts of indicators so that if some data was missing at least, we would have some moderate data that could fill in.” He also explained that when data was missing, it was recorded as such, noting that “it says something in itself.”
He added that lack of data is most severe for low- and middle-income countries. “In these places, testing is less widespread mostly because it is expensive and not something elected officials there like to prioritize. We also suspect that in some countries governments would not want to prioritize testing because it would reveal how bad the pandemic really is.”
After the pandemic ravaged through Wuhan city and Hubei province in China, the coronavirus swept through the “rich world,” then moving into more isolated and internationally connected developing regions, causing mass amounts of fatalities. “Deaths have been rising for most of the past year [33 out of 52 weeks] and every month. That is not total deaths, but deaths per day. What we are seeing now is another spike by what’s happening in India.”
According to their modeling, India is experiencing 6,000 to 31,000 excess deaths per day, far above the 4,000 daily deaths reported. Their estimates are corroborated by other epidemiological models that place the numbers in the same range. If these are correct, then just in 2021 alone, more than one million have perished in India from COVID-19.
Solstad explained, “Unfortunately, India is not an outlier. Many countries’ modeling suggests they have been hit much harder than India. For instance, Peru, which is one of the worst hit in the world, has seen deaths per person per million population about 2.5 times what we currently estimate as to the case in India.”
The Economist model estimates that as of May 10, 2021 deaths in Asia ranged from 2.4 to 7.1 million excess deaths while the official COVID-19 deaths are around 0.6 million. Russia, by example, has an excess COVID-19 death rate of more than five times the official report. While Latin America and the Caribbean have reported 0.6 million COVID-19 fatalities, the number of excess deaths is 1.5 to 1.8 million.
In Africa, the range peaks at 2.1 million deaths, though the official figure stands at close to 130,000, an estimated death rate 14 times the official numbers. With a reported 55,000 COVID-19 deaths, South Africa has recorded 158,499 excess deaths. Health officials believe 85 to 95 percent are directly attributable to SARS-CoV-2, highlighting the difficulty to access tests and health care. Those over 60 have seen excess deaths of over 120,000.
Excess deaths in Europe stand at 50 to 60 percent higher, 1.5 to 1.6 million, than the official COVID-19 death figures. Estimates for the US and Canada combined are between 600,000 to 700,000. They calculated that excess deaths in the US are only seven percent higher than the official COVID-19 deaths, implying that the actual COVID-19 mortality is just over 650,000.
By the numbers, the working class of rich countries has faced the brunt of the pandemic where “herd immunity” was the de facto policy. But the modeling also tells the story of a very fast-moving pathogen that infects quickly, even the youngest. In a report published in the Journal of Public Health on April 12, 2021, a seroprevalence anti-SARS-COV-2 antibodies study conducted on 1,675 blood samples collected from residents in Karachi, Pakistan, from May to July 2020 found that 34 percent of the community’s population had contracted the virus, implying its high prevalence early in the course of the pandemic across many regions.
Solstad explained that age must be taken as a significant factor, meaning that older populations face a much higher consequence from the coronavirus. The estimate of the risk of dying from COVID-19 in Japan, for instance, where the median age is 48 versus in Uganda, where it is 17, is thirteen times higher. Yet, when age is accounted for, the younger population in developing countries faces a higher consequence from the coronavirus than their counterparts in more affluent regions simply because of the lack of health care resources.
The Economist notes the study published by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington on May 7, 2021 which estimates nearly 7 million excess deaths globally. They explained that the IHME applied fixed multipliers based on test-positivity rates to obtain estimates. Such a method can fail to match reported excess deaths as evidenced by their estimates for Japan and the US. But they applaud their effort highlighting the need for accurate data, which is woefully lacking. As they write, “Resources should be put into such measures not just to honor the dead and the truth, but also because, without such basic numbers, estimates of other impacts—economic, educational, cultural or in the health of survivors—are hard to understands, or to compare.”
One would think that such a devastating account of the actual toll of the COVID-19 pandemic’s human cost would make the front-page story of the leading press. The editorial boards would insist on opinion pieces that would explain to their readers the failures on the part of their respective governments to prepare for global threats. There may even be a statement by the paper calling for real-time data for every middle- and low-income country to address the grossly inadequate metrics to address medical and humanitarian needs in these regions. The British Journal of Medicine (BMJ) published a critical essay in February declaring the handling of the pandemic as tantamount to “social murder.”
Yet, there has not been any mention of this scathing report, which underscores the malign neglect pursued by the capitalist elite. The lives of these ten million are immaterial for them. The pandemic has shown that mass death is highly lucrative for the financial oligarchs. They increased their combined wealth by 60 percent, from $8 trillion to $13.1 trillion in 2020. The number of billionaires rocketed to 2,775, the highest rate of increase in history. In short, the coronavirus has been a critical instrument for amassing ever greater piles of wealth.
As the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) noted, almost every wealthy nation chose not to heed the World Health Organization (WHO) warnings at the end of January 2020, when the virus was declared a global threat. The wasted month in February 2020 helped seed the pathogen throughout every region of the world, leading Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus to declare the coronavirus epidemic a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
Over the intervening months, wave after wave of horrific COVID-19 surges compelled many countries to implement lockdowns to stem a complete collapse of their health care systems, with bodies piling up in the corridors and backroom of hospitals and morgues. Health care workers without proper equipment, staffing, and emergency supplies were sent back into the deluge to shore up the crumbling edifice. Presently, Amnesty International has placed the figure of health care workers lost to COVID-19 at over 17,000.
While the wealth of the billionaires shot up, the pandemic led to the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression. In April 2020 alone, 20.6 million jobs were wiped out in the United States. According to a collaborative study from the University of Chicago and Stanford, it is estimated that 32 to 42 percent of the COVID-induced layoffs will be permanent. Despite the push to reopen the economy full throttle, the current trend indicates that, as even President Joe Biden acknowledged, the US economy has a “long way to go,” with growth reportedly constrained by the shortage of workers and raw materials.
According to a report published on January 25, 8.8 percent of global working hours were lost relative to the fourth quarter of 2019, which amounts to 255 million full-time jobs, impacting hardest regions like Latin America, Southern Europe, and Southern Asia, amounting to $3.7 trillion in labor income lost. Estimates suggest that 2021 will continue to see losses in working hours equivalent to 90 to 130 million full-time equivalents. The IPPPR forecasted that the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world economy will amount to $22 trillion. The World Bank has estimated that an additional 150 million people may be pushed into extreme poverty this year.
After a year of death, human suffering continues to unfold on massive scale. Collapsing health systems are struggling to care for patients desperate for oxygen. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 vaccines trickle down all too slowly for the billions anxiously waiting for these lifesaving treatments. As the BMJ noted, the “vaccine gap between rich and poor countries is growing by the day.”
Report shows CEOs in US cashed in during the pandemic as workers lost jobs, wages and lives
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/17/plun-m17.html
Kevin Reed
16 May 2021
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) published a significant report on May 11 that details the rigging of executive compensation plans by corporate boards during the pandemic, so that vast sums could be funneled into the pockets of millionaire executives while workers suffered unemployment, reduced wages, exposure to COVID-19 and death.
Under the title “Pandemic Pay Plunder,” the top finding of the IPS’ 27th Annual Executive Excess report is that among the top US corporations with the lowest paid workforces, CEOs received a 29 percent increase in compensation, while workers’ wages fell by 2 percent on average last year.
The IPS research shows that 51 out of the 100 corporations on the S&P 500 list with the lowest median worker wages bent corporate rules during the pandemic to ensure that their CEOs increased their compensation by an average of $4 million, to a total of $15.3 million, while workers’ wages fell by more than $550 to $28,187. The CEO-to-worker pay ratio for these corporations reached 830 to 1.
Carnival Cruise CEO Arnold Donald made $13.3 million while his company lost $10.2 billion. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
In introducing the report, IPS authors Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project and co-editor of Inequality.org, and Sam Pizzigati, IPS associate fellow and co-editor of Inequality.org, write: “American families have been simply unable, on their own, to bear the COVID crisis. Meanwhile, corporate chief executives in the United States have continued to score the sorts of windfalls that have ballooned billionaire wealth.”
In explaining how corporate boards modified compensation rules to ensure a windfall for executives, the report says that the companies engaged “in various rigging maneuvers” such as (1) lowering the performance numbers so executives could meet their bonus targets, (2) awarding special “retention” bonuses, (3) excluding poor second-quarter (March-May 2020) results from performance evaluations and (4) replacing performance-based awards with time-based awards.
The IPS report says that “an army of ‘independent’ compensation consultants” was retained by the corporate boards in order to “give all this rule-rigging a veneer of legitimacy.” For example, Carnival—the largest international cruise line company—paid Frederick W. Cook & Co. $423,274 to give its CEO bonus “a stamp of fiscal probity as the company’s profits cratered and workers suffered.”
In relation to the Carnival compensation scam, the report notes that the company stranded employees at sea for months while it scrambled to get customers back home. But after securing $6 billion in low-cost financing from the US Federal Reserve, it gave CEO Arnold Donald special pandemic “retention and incentive” stock grants valued at more than $5 million. “Arnold’s total 2020 compensation came to $13.3 million, 490 times the company’s $27,151 median worker pay” the report states.
The IPS study does not mention reports that nearly a dozen cruise line workers died in suicides committed during the lengthy period of forced isolation without pay on ships, or as a result of mental health problems after they came ashore.
Other specific examples given by IPS of corporate manipulation of executive compensation in the midst of the pandemic include the meatpacking, poultry and automotive industries. In the case of $30 billion Arkansas-based Tyson Foods, the report says that “executives didn’t meet their cash bonus targets last year,” but the board “gave them stock awards to make up the difference.”
Tyson CEO Noel White earned $11 million, which is 294 times Tyson’s $37,444 median worker pay. The report states, “Another recipient of those special stock awards was company chair John Tyson, a billionaire hardly in dire need of special support. The heir and grandson of the company founder, Tyson has watched his personal wealth increase 72 percent during the pandemic—to $2.6 billion.”
Tyson workers, like all poultry and meatpacking employees, were declared essential workers during the pandemic and forced to stay on the job. The report says the Tyson workers suffered the most COVID-19 infections and deaths in the industry, noting: “As of February 2021, more than 12,000 Tyson workers had been infected by the virus and at least 38 had lost their lives to it.”
The automotive supplier Aptiv—one of the spin-offs from Delphi Automotive, itself a spin-off from GM—has the widest pay gap (5,294 to 1) on the IPS list of 51 low wage corporations. Aptiv CEO Kevin Clark was paid $31.3 million while the median wage earner made $5,906 in 2020. The report says, “The Aptiv board inflated Clark’s paycheck by moving bonus goalposts and excluding 2020 results from the 2018-2020 performance period for long-term executive incentive awards.”
The report also explains that the company justified the massive payout to Clark—totaling an additional $18 million—“as nothing more than the product of ‘accounting adjustments’ related to 2019 and 2020 stock awards.”
Aptiv operates in 44 countries and did not disclose to IPS where the workers earning a median wage of a little less than $6,000 are employed. The global corporation—which specializes in automotive cooling systems—was the product of the multi-billion-dollar July 2015 merger of Delphi Thermal with the German-based Mahle-Behr GmbH and British-based HellermannTyton.
Some of the other companies highlighted in the IPS report for extreme CEO-worker pay ratios in 2020 are:
* Hospitality corporation Hilton Worldwide, where CEO Christopher Nassetta pocketed the largest rigged pay-package adjustments, for a total compensation of $55.9 million in 2020.
*Apparel corporation Under Armour, where half the workforce earns less than $6,669 per year. There, the company board “altered bonus metrics and replaced performance-based with time-based stock awards” for CEO Patrik Frisk, so as to pay him $7.4 million.
* Chipotle Mexican Grill, where CEO Brian Niccol “received $38 million in 2020 compensation, 2,898 times the restaurant chain’s median worker pay.” The firm’s board of directors inflated his bonus by tossing out the company’s poor financial results from the peak shutdown period and excluding COVID-related costs.
While the political conclusions of the IPS editors are for tax reform that will force companies to pay increased taxes for CEO-worker wage gaps of more than 50-1—which is itself a defense of social inequality—the facts and figures presented in the report are a devastating exposure of the criminality of the ruling class under conditions of the worst public health crisis in a century.
The IPS report was published just as the US political establishment was launching a campaign to eliminate weekly supplemental unemployment benefits for millions of workers who remain unemployed as a result of the economic crisis and deadly health conditions caused by the response of the corporate and financial elite to the pandemic.
Already more than half of US states have revived their work search requirements in an effort to force workers back to work at low-paying jobs. As reported by the New York Times on Sunday, Arkansas and Louisiana brought back these requirements months ago and others such as Vermont and Kentucky have done so in the last few weeks.
Laying bare the economic interests that lie behind the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decision to lift the mask requirement for “anyone who is fully vaccinated” last Thursday, President Biden ordered the Labor Department four days before to pressure state governments to put the job search requirements back into place.
The IPS report is a further confirmation of the analysis made by the World Socialist Web Site that the capitalist ruling class lives by the motto, “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” and has used the pandemic to intensify the exploitation of the working class, further enrich itself and expand social inequality to unprecedented levels.
In introducing the report, IPS authors Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project and co-editor of Inequality.org, and Sam Pizzigati, IPS associate fellow and co-editor of Inequality.org, write: “American families have been simply unable, on their own, to bear the COVID crisis. Meanwhile, corporate chief executives in the United States have continued to score the sorts of windfalls that have ballooned billionaire wealth.”
In explaining how corporate boards modified compensation rules to ensure a windfall for executives, the report says that the companies engaged “in various rigging maneuvers” such as (1) lowering the performance numbers so executives could meet their bonus targets, (2) awarding special “retention” bonuses, (3) excluding poor second-quarter (March-May 2020) results from performance evaluations and (4) replacing performance-based awards with time-based awards.
The IPS report says that “an army of ‘independent’ compensation consultants” was retained by the corporate boards in order to “give all this rule-rigging a veneer of legitimacy.” For example, Carnival—the largest international cruise line company—paid Frederick W. Cook & Co. $423,274 to give its CEO bonus “a stamp of fiscal probity as the company’s profits cratered and workers suffered.”
In relation to the Carnival compensation scam, the report notes that the company stranded employees at sea for months while it scrambled to get customers back home. But after securing $6 billion in low-cost financing from the US Federal Reserve, it gave CEO Arnold Donald special pandemic “retention and incentive” stock grants valued at more than $5 million. “Arnold’s total 2020 compensation came to $13.3 million, 490 times the company’s $27,151 median worker pay” the report states.
The IPS study does not mention reports that nearly a dozen cruise line workers died in suicides committed during the lengthy period of forced isolation without pay on ships, or as a result of mental health problems after they came ashore.
Other specific examples given by IPS of corporate manipulation of executive compensation in the midst of the pandemic include the meatpacking, poultry and automotive industries. In the case of $30 billion Arkansas-based Tyson Foods, the report says that “executives didn’t meet their cash bonus targets last year,” but the board “gave them stock awards to make up the difference.”
Tyson CEO Noel White earned $11 million, which is 294 times Tyson’s $37,444 median worker pay. The report states, “Another recipient of those special stock awards was company chair John Tyson, a billionaire hardly in dire need of special support. The heir and grandson of the company founder, Tyson has watched his personal wealth increase 72 percent during the pandemic—to $2.6 billion.”
Tyson workers, like all poultry and meatpacking employees, were declared essential workers during the pandemic and forced to stay on the job. The report says the Tyson workers suffered the most COVID-19 infections and deaths in the industry, noting: “As of February 2021, more than 12,000 Tyson workers had been infected by the virus and at least 38 had lost their lives to it.”
The automotive supplier Aptiv—one of the spin-offs from Delphi Automotive, itself a spin-off from GM—has the widest pay gap (5,294 to 1) on the IPS list of 51 low wage corporations. Aptiv CEO Kevin Clark was paid $31.3 million while the median wage earner made $5,906 in 2020. The report says, “The Aptiv board inflated Clark’s paycheck by moving bonus goalposts and excluding 2020 results from the 2018-2020 performance period for long-term executive incentive awards.”
The report also explains that the company justified the massive payout to Clark—totaling an additional $18 million—“as nothing more than the product of ‘accounting adjustments’ related to 2019 and 2020 stock awards.”
Aptiv operates in 44 countries and did not disclose to IPS where the workers earning a median wage of a little less than $6,000 are employed. The global corporation—which specializes in automotive cooling systems—was the product of the multi-billion-dollar July 2015 merger of Delphi Thermal with the German-based Mahle-Behr GmbH and British-based HellermannTyton.
Some of the other companies highlighted in the IPS report for extreme CEO-worker pay ratios in 2020 are:
* Hospitality corporation Hilton Worldwide, where CEO Christopher Nassetta pocketed the largest rigged pay-package adjustments, for a total compensation of $55.9 million in 2020.
*Apparel corporation Under Armour, where half the workforce earns less than $6,669 per year. There, the company board “altered bonus metrics and replaced performance-based with time-based stock awards” for CEO Patrik Frisk, so as to pay him $7.4 million.
* Chipotle Mexican Grill, where CEO Brian Niccol “received $38 million in 2020 compensation, 2,898 times the restaurant chain’s median worker pay.” The firm’s board of directors inflated his bonus by tossing out the company’s poor financial results from the peak shutdown period and excluding COVID-related costs.
While the political conclusions of the IPS editors are for tax reform that will force companies to pay increased taxes for CEO-worker wage gaps of more than 50-1—which is itself a defense of social inequality—the facts and figures presented in the report are a devastating exposure of the criminality of the ruling class under conditions of the worst public health crisis in a century.
The IPS report was published just as the US political establishment was launching a campaign to eliminate weekly supplemental unemployment benefits for millions of workers who remain unemployed as a result of the economic crisis and deadly health conditions caused by the response of the corporate and financial elite to the pandemic.
Already more than half of US states have revived their work search requirements in an effort to force workers back to work at low-paying jobs. As reported by the New York Times on Sunday, Arkansas and Louisiana brought back these requirements months ago and others such as Vermont and Kentucky have done so in the last few weeks.
Laying bare the economic interests that lie behind the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decision to lift the mask requirement for “anyone who is fully vaccinated” last Thursday, President Biden ordered the Labor Department four days before to pressure state governments to put the job search requirements back into place.
The IPS report is a further confirmation of the analysis made by the World Socialist Web Site that the capitalist ruling class lives by the motto, “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” and has used the pandemic to intensify the exploitation of the working class, further enrich itself and expand social inequality to unprecedented levels.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)