Biden visits storm-struck Louisiana as Hurricane Ida death toll continues to rise

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/hurr-s04.html




Aaron Murch
16 hours ago

President Joe Biden greets Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards as he arrives at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, La., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, to tour damage caused by Hurricane Ida. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“My message to everyone affected is: ‘We’re all in this together,’” President Joe Biden told reporters, repeating his trademark banality as he landed Friday in New Orleans, Louisiana, to survey the damage and destruction from Hurricane Ida. Approximately one million people in the city of New Orleans and surrounding towns have been without power since Ida made landfall Sunday as a Category 4 storm and another 600,000 are without water.

The storm is the fourth most powerful to make landfall in US history and has caused deadly flooding and tornadoes as far as New Jersey and New York, where at least 42 people were killed as water overtook cars and rushed into basement apartments. Louisiana’s death toll from the storm currently stands at 12 but is expected to rise further.

With no power and no gasoline to refuel generators, many residents in New Orleans and across southern Louisiana have had to suffer under sweltering heat conditions as the heat index in the region rose to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. With water service also knocked out, the pumps are unable to filter water, creating potentially toxic conditions in the water that is left.

Biden’s visit came a day after news broke that four nursing home residents had died this week in a massive warehouse shelter in Tangipahoa Parish that had been packed with over 800 people.

Residents from seven different nursing homes across Tangipahoa, Orleans, Terrebonne, and Lafourche parishes had been crammed into the leaky warehouse last Friday, ahead of Ida’s landfall, by Baton Rouge nursing home owner Bob Dean. Senior citizens were reportedly forced to sleep on cots piled on the floor with virtually no privacy available for sensitive care. The infirm were reportedly sitting in their own filth as temperatures rose and emergency services were stifled across the region. In addition to the four known deaths, at least a dozen people were hospitalized in need of medical attention following rescue efforts on Wednesday and Thursday after the storm.

The warehouse in the town of Independence was blocked off Friday by Louisiana State Police and the Louisiana Department of Health. Crime scene tape was placed around the building and the remaining residents had been taken to nearby facilities in Baton Rouge and surrounding towns.

The local coroner’s office has not released an official cause of death for the four victims but did say that three of the deaths were related to the storm.

It is unclear at this time if extreme heat contributed to the deaths at the makeshift shelter; however, local officials are reviewing what legal actions could be taken against Dean as the owner of the nursing homes.

“We’re going to do a full investigation into whether the owner of the facilities failed to keep residents safe and whether he intentionally obstructed efforts to check in on them and determine what conditions were in the shelter,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said during a news conference Thursday.

One anonymous worker at the facility told WWL-TV he was afraid there would be some deaths when he saw the conditions at the shelter, “I knew that wasn’t going to be safe for the residents and for the workers. We did the best we could with what we had.” The worker explained, “Just wasn’t enough room, living conditions wasn’t good. It was too crowded. Didn’t have enough people.” Inspectors with the Louisiana Department of Health came to look at the facility immediately following the storm but were turned away by nursing home workers before eventually being allowed inside.

For many Louisiana residents still living in the affected areas, it is the post-storm conditions that are resulting in hospitalizations and fatalities. Road conditions remain extremely hazardous and thousands of homes are unlivable, forcing residents into crowded and unsanitary living conditions. Three deaths have been attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning, a result of the improper use of fuel generators.

Biden, for his part, was reduced to pleading with insurance companies not to deny payouts to residents facing massive damage to property. Companies are free to refuse claims since city and state officials had announced ahead of the storm that there was no time to issue a mandatory evacuation. According to state insurance regulations, companies are allowed to deny coverage for evacuees if they left during non-mandatory evacuation conditions.

Furthermore, flood insurance is prohibitively expensive for many in the flood-prone areas of the state and therefore water damage to their homes will not be covered, forcing many to leave or face homelessness.

After the Afghanistan debacle, Berlin and Brussels pursue independent European war policy

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/afgh-s04.html




Johannes Stern
15 hours ago







Germany and the European Union are stepping up their offensive for an independent European war policy after the debacle in Afghanistan. At an informal meeting in Kranj, Slovenia, the EU defence ministers discussed on Thursday the establishment of a rapid reaction force that could also act independently of the US military.

EU defence ministers pose for a group photo in front of the Brdo Congress Centre in Kranj, Slovenia, 2 September 2021 (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will prompt the EU to establish its own permanent force, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borell said after the meeting.

“It’s clear that the need for more European defence has never been as much evident as today after the events in Afghanistan,” Borrell said. “There are events that catalyse history. Sometimes something happens that pushes history, it creates a breakthrough, and I think the Afghanistan events of this summer are one of these cases.”

The European powers had initially reacted with a mixture of disillusionment and outrage to the withdrawal of US troops and the rapid collapse of the pro-Western puppet regime in Kabul. Now they seek to position themselves so that in the future they will be able to carry out military operations like the one in Afghanistan without Washington’s support.

European defence policy will “only be credible if we are also able to launch complex military operations outside our borders,” the acting EU Commissioner for Internal Market and Industrial Policy Thierry Breton told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. This would require an EU intervention force that could be mobilised quickly, “with all that that implies in terms of logistics, preparations and command structures—and with a view to the risks for those men and women who would be deployed for Europe.”

Even before the meeting in Kranj, Borell had published a guest column in the New York Times. Under the headline “Europe, Afghanistan is Your Wake-up Call,” he pleaded for the establishment of a European military force and a further increase in European defence spending.

“Alongside increasing pivotal military capabilities—airlift and refueling, command and control, strategic reconnaissance and space-based assets—we need forces that are more capable, more deployable and more interoperable,” he wrote, adding, “But we must go further and faster. The European Defence Fund, established to boost the bloc’s defense capabilities, will receive close to 8 billion euros, or $9.4 billion, over the next six years. That should be used to significantly support collaborative research and the development of much-needed defense technologies.”

Borell left no doubt that the EU is not concerned with “human rights” or “democracy,” the propaganda used to justify US-led military interventions in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq, but with the enforcement of imperialist interests through war.

“A more strategically autonomous and militarily capable EU would be better able to address the challenges to come in Europe’s neighborhood and beyond” and “to defend its interests,” wrote Borell in the Times .

The EU would not only have to fight “threats,” such as “the risk of renewed terrorist attacks” and “irregular migration,” but also fight back against other powers. “China, Russia and Iran will have greater sway in the region, while Pakistan, India, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies will all reposition themselves,” he warned. Europe cannot “cannot let them be the only interlocutors with Afghanistan after the Western withdrawal” and “along with the United States, has to reframe its engagement.”

German imperialism is behaving particularly aggressively. In a statement, German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) complained that Europeans had not been able to prevent the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan. “We Europeans hardly offered any resistance to the US decision to withdraw because we were unable to do so for lack of our own capabilities,” she complained on Twitter.

That is unequivocal. If Berlin had had its way, the brutal 20-year war effort, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in pursuit of imperialist control and exploitation of the resource-rich and geostrategically important country, would have continued. For Kramp-Karrenbauer and the German bourgeoisie, the central lesson from Afghanistan is not less but more rearmament and war.

According to the defence minister, “Europe must now become stronger in order to make the Western alliance as a whole stronger on an equal footing with the USA.” In doing so, one should not stop at “the question of whether we want a ‘European intervention force’ or not.” The central question for the future of the European Security and Defence Policy is “how we finally use our military capabilities together in the EU! With what effective decision-making processes, real joint exercises and joint missions.”

In order to implement the war plans, “coalitions of the willing could move forward in the EU after everyone has made a joint decision.” It would also be necessary to examine whether EU member states “establish regional responsibilities for security, train special forces together and jointly organise important capabilities, such as strategic airlift and satellite reconnaissance.” Germany was already “in discussion with interested EU states on these issues.”

Workers and youth across the continent must take this as a warning. The ruling class in Germany has long been working feverishly to organise Europe under its leadership in order to rebuild itself as a major foreign policy and military power after losing two world wars. After German reunification and the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy 30 years ago, leading politicians and military leaders have been pleading for a stronger role for Germany in Europe and the world.

At the Munich Security Conference in 2014, then Federal President Joachim Gauck and his Social Democratic successor Frank-Walter Steinmeier, together with the current President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), finally announced the return of German militarism. This was followed by a massive rearmament of the Bundeswehr, the redeployment of German combat troops to the Russian border and new war missions in the Middle East and Africa. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ruling class is now exploiting the debacle in Afghanistan to push forward the offensive it has begun.

The federal government can only appear so aggressive because its course is also supported by the nominally “left” opposition parties. More than two decades after the Greens helped launch the first German war mission since the end of World War II in Kosovo, they are at the forefront of the German-European war offensive.

In the current election campaign, the Green candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, consistently criticises the Grand Coalition from the right with regard to a German-European great power policy. In the last television debate, she accused the CDU/CSU and SPD of “ducking away” internationally and called for a “more active German foreign policy.”

The Left Party also has both feet in the camp of German imperialism. In the elections, it is eyeing a government alliance with the SPD and the Greens and has long since made it clear that as a governing party it would support NATO and German missions abroad.

On August 25, the Left approved the “deployment of armed German forces for military evacuation from Afghanistan.” While the majority of the parliamentary group abstained, five MPs, including its spokesperson on security policy, Matthias Höhn, openly voted for the deployment.

There is something megalomaniac about the plans of the ruling class to replace the US as the leading interventionist power. But they must be taken with deadly seriousness. Ultimately, the same fundamental contradictions of capitalism that lie behind the aggression of US imperialism and which, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, increasingly directly conjure up the danger of nuclear war with Russia and China, are fueling the German-European military offensive.

This in turn intensifies the conflicts between the imperialist powers themselves—also within Europe.

The only way to prevent a catastrophic third world war is to build an anti-war movement of the international working class. The objective conditions for this are rapidly maturing. In its perspective on US President Joe Biden's latest speech on the debacle in Afghanistan, the WSWS wrote:


The humiliating retreat from Afghanistan signals the failure not just of US policy in that one country but of an entire strategy, world view and program of global domination and domestic reaction that has persisted for 30 years. This debacle, which is intersecting with an escalation of the class struggle in the US and internationally under the impact of growing social inequality and the homicidal, profit-driven policies of the world’s ruling classes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has profoundly revolutionary implications.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) is fighting in the federal election to arm the developing struggles of workers, including the important strikes of train drivers, nurses and delivery workers in Germany, with a socialist and internationalist perspective to stop the development of war and eliminate its cause, the capitalist profit system.

Dana worker slips and slams head on concrete working in unsafe conditions at Fort Wayne, Indiana plant

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/head-s04.html




George Kirby
18 hours ago







On Thursday, a production worker handling parts inside a robot cage at Dana’s Fort Wayne, Indiana plant stepped on a loose controller cord, fell, and slammed her head twice on the concrete floor. Workers who witnessed the injury contacted the World Socialist Web Site to report that an ambulance came to the plant after she was taken to the factory infirmary. The worker returned to work Friday out of fear for being docked for poor attendance.

Dangerous conditions at Dana

The injury comes as workers in the plant are angry over unsafe conditions that subordinate workers’ lives and safety to corporate profit. At the same plant, workers report that the company sprayed down workers with dangerous disinfectant and then forced them to keep working when they got sick.

Workers on the same production line are furious that the injury took place. It is just another example of the type of sweatshop conditions against which Dana workers nationwide are rebelling.

One worker told the WSWS that machines in the plant routinely “leak fluids all over the place.” Workers say the line is never shut down when oil leakage becomes a hazard because the company and the union, the United Steelworkers, are only concerned with meeting quotas. Management reportedly purchased a floor scrubber but workers say the scrubber is hardly used. Another worker reported to the World Socialist Web Site that the floors are often covered in oil or rainwater and that injuries are common in the plant.
Two inches of oil on the shop floor at Dana Fort Wayne

The injured worker was forced to return to work today, despite the fact that she may have a concussion. She apparently feared losing her job, despite the risk to her long-term health. It appears that the worker was so symptomatic at work Friday that Dana instructed her to seek additional medical help.

One coworker said, “If she called off from work, it would’ve gone against attendance, and she would’ve been unpaid. With the holiday mandate, they [Dana] take away your holiday pay.” The worker continued, “Workers have raised hell when the gassing occurred and about oil spills in the plant. But Dana, the company just likes and does nothing because, once again, the whole money thing.”
More oil on the floor in Fort Wayne

Like most Dana plants, Fort Wayne workers voted down the sweatshop contract, 362 votes to 39. Many workers believe due to the voting down of the contract workers were mandated to work through the Labor Day holiday. Like all Dana plants, Fort Wayne workers are expected to keep up with Big Three automotive demands regardless of their health and safety.

A group of workers who saw the aftermath of the fall said, “Numerous employees have lost fingers or parts of fingers in accidents in the last 10 years. After the shutdown [March-May 2020] employees were called back to work without a choice, in danger of their lives. We were then completely shut out of profit-sharing for 2020! I understand that management did receive bonuses though for 2020!”
Oil and coolant on the floor in the 541 department

Injuries and death are reportedly common at Dana. Workers say that three production workers and one skilled tradesman died from cancer after working in an area where materials are buffed and machine repairs take place. One worker who had inhaled smoke from a smoldering fire at work later became ill with cancer and passed away.

Workers at this plant were sprayed with a powerful chemical disinfectant, Aspen One Step, that is dangerous if ingested or inhaled or if it comes in contact with eyes or skin. One worker revealed that initially management blamed cleaning workers for spraying the incorrect chemical while stating to others that it was just hand sanitizer that was sprayed. He continued, “I saw this Aspen One Step on my shift. You see these people spray this with a container and an air hose. It’s similar to spraying insecticide. They don’t even have PPE for the people that spray it, they don’t have masks.”

The worker explained that with the way the cleaning crew sprays, “Most of the time they will spray down equipment or the air. I have trouble breathing after they do that. It’s an everyday process, you see them spraying. Sometimes they will clear the line for an hour or two, then have people back on the line. The infected person could’ve been all around the plant, cleaning one area wouldn’t do anything. For the amount of time they spray the plant it should be shut down for months.”

An injury to one is an injury to all! To contact the DWRFC about organizing a new leadership for the struggle at Dana and to make the workplace safe for all workers, email danawrfc@gmail.com or text at (248) 602–0936.

UAW and USW leave Dana workers in the dark after massive repudiation of pro-management contract

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/dana-s04.html




Shannon Jones
14 hours ago







Now that Dana workers have decisively rejected a pro-management contract negotiated by the United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers, a determined mood is taking hold among workers to demand a contract that addresses their needs. However, since the vote, representatives of the UAW and USW have kept a low profile, giving no indication that they plan to set a strike deadline or seek improvements in the contract.

Dana Incorporated World Headquarters in Maumee, Ohio [WSWS photo]

A worker at the Dana Driveline plant in Toledo, Ohio said of the unanimous 435–0 contract rejection vote at their plant, “People think we have a chance now with everyone coming together and doing the right thing.”

Another worker wrote, “It's not just a contract we’re negotiating, It's a movement and ain't no telling where we headed in the coming days, weeks and months ahead.”

The vote to reject was decisive. As of this writing 12 plants had rejected the contract and the results at four others were unconfirmed. In addition to Toledo, Auburn Hills, Michigan voted 96 percent “no”; St. Clair, Michigan 97 percent; Warren, Michigan 56 percent; Fort Wayne, Indiana, 90 percent; Pottstown, Pennsylvania 78 percent and Paris, Tennessee 83 percent. Lima, Ohio, Danville, Louisville and Dry Ridge, Kentucky and Columbia, Missouri also voted “no” by wide margins. Henderson, Kentucky, Lugoff, South Carolina, and Crossville and Humboldt, Tennessee did not report results.

A video statement supporting the fight of Dana workers by Marcia Walters, the widow of Dry Ridge, Kentucky Dana worker Danny Walters, has been viewed hundreds of times. Danny Walters died after suffering a seizure at Dana on the evening of June 1-2 of this year. Nobody from the UAW or management informed Marcia Walters, who was out of town at the time, of her husband’s condition. This led to him dying unattended at home.

In a statement to the WSWS, Marcia said, “This has to stop, there can be no more Danny Walters. I want to use my voice for the people that work there.

“Demand reasonable hours so that you can have some kind of life outside of work. I will forever use my voice for you.”

The vote to reject the agreement, which did nothing to address 7-day, 12-hour workweeks and abysmal pay levels, is only the first step. While Dana workers are in a powerful position, given the disruptions to the global supply chain, there is no time to lose.

The Dana Workers Rank and File Committee issued a statement Thursday night demanding the setting of a strike date and which issued a set of demands corresponding to the needs of Dana workers, not the profit requirements of management.

Workers are determined to end a low-wage regime at Dana that has been cemented by a series of concessionary contracts imposed by the UAW/USW since Dana emerged from bankruptcy in 2008. In the distant past, Dana workers, like other auto parts workers, enjoyed near wage parity with Ford, Chrysler and GM.

Through its betrayal of a series of strikes, including the AP Parts strike in Toledo in 1984–85, the UAW was able to impose a series of substandard contracts, slashing pay for auto parts workers to promote greater “competitiveness” for the major auto companies. This was followed by the spin-off of the parts operations of the Detroit automakers, which one after another declared bankruptcy, robbing workers of pensions and hard-won benefits.

In 2007, Dana offloaded its retiree health care obligations onto the UAW for pennies on the dollar, resulting in a massive cost saving for the company. The deal, which involved handing the union-controlled retiree healthcare trust fund and $780 million in stock and cash, lead to cuts for retirees, but gave the UAW control of a huge investment vehicle. The Dana agreement paved the way for similar deals with the major Detroit automakers. The contract also froze pensions and imposed a two-tier structure. None of these concessions were ever restored even as the company returned to profitability.

The Dana Worker Rank-and-File Committee advised, “The ‘no’ vote means the fight is just beginning. We are in a two-front war: against Dana and its bought-and-paid-for unions. We cannot let down our guard. To prepare for the next stage of this fight, we must lay out a battle plan, study the forces arrayed against us and marshal all our forces and allies.”

The UAW and Dana have been extending the contract day-by-day, shamelessly abandoning the old principle of “no contact no work.” In Dry Ridge, Kentucky workers report that the UAW has even been appointing supervisors as strike captains.

From the start of the contract struggle the UAW and USW have done everything possible to try to divide and confuse workers. The unions never revealed to workers what its demands were or even seriously sought workers’ input. When the contract expired in mid-August, the UAW and USW did not set a strike deadline. Talks continued in secret while the company hired more and more temporary workers in order to increase production in case of a strike.

When the UAW and USW finally announced a tentative agreement, it withheld details until just hours before ratification votes, giving workers almost no time to study the deal. However, their dirty tricks could not hide the fact that the contract maintained the right of the company to impose virtually unlimited forced overtime and did nothing to provide meaningful raises or eliminate the hated tier system.

At informational meetings called to supposedly explain the contract, union officials refused to answer questions and browbeat and intimidated workers who pushed for answers.

In the wake of the stunning rejection, the unions have maintained their silence and have provided no word if negotiations will resume if a strike takes place. Workers report that in St. Clair, Michigan, where only four workers voted in favor of the deal, management, and at least some officials within the UAW, are calling for a re-running of the contract vote.

A worker at St. Clair complained about the voting procedures on the contract, which was held in the plant, not a neutral location. “You just checked your ‘no’ and walked away.” There was no privacy in the voting since it was held out in the open without any screens.

Reflecting the inhuman conditions that Dana workers confront and the utter contempt of management for their health and safety, workers in Fort Wayne, Indiana report that they have been sprayed with the toxic cleaner, Aspen One Step, supposedly to prevent the spread of COVID. While spraying the work area, management insisted on keeping production going, leading to workers becoming ill. Workers report that Aspen carries a warning label citing the dangers of ingestion, inhalation or eye or skin exposure.

WHO reports fifth “variant of interest” as COVID pandemic worsens

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/usco-s04.html




Benjamin Mateus
16 hours ago

A scientist researching Covid-19 [Credit: Creative Commons)

This week the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the presence of a fifth variant of interest called “Mu,” designated by the alpha-numeric code B.1.621, with several characteristic mutations that make it more resistant to vaccines.

It was first identified in Colombia in January 2021. Though the global prevalence of the Mu variant globally remains low, it accounts for 39 percent of all strains sequenced from Colombia and 13 percent from Ecuador, and its frequency has consistently been rising.

The designation “variant of interest” means that the new version of the virus has genetic markers suggesting a potentially increased capability to infect or increased resistance to vaccines, but it has not yet risen to the level of “variant of concern,” which actually demonstrates increased transmissibility, lethality or resistance in the field.

Additionally, scientists in South Africa announced that they have detected a new variant designated as C.1.2, first discovered during the country’s third wave in May. Though the strain has not been designated a variant of interest by the WHO, it has spread across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Pacific into nine countries, including China and New Zealand.

The C.1.2 appears to harbor a significant number of mutations with an unusually high mutation rate, which makes it important to track. Newsweek wrote, “It was found to contain many mutations that were found in all variants of concern (VOCs) and three variants of interest (VOIs), as well as additional changes within the NTD (C136F) RBD (Y449H), and adjacent to the furin cleavage site (N679K).

The pre-print study noted, “Like several other VOCs, C.1.2 has accumulated a number of substitutions beyond what would be expected from the background SARS-CoV-2 evolutionary rate. This suggests the likelihood that these mutations arose during a period of accelerated evolution in a single individual with prolonged viral infection through virus-host co-evolution.”

Currently, there have been more than 220 million COVID-19 infections reported and 4.56 million deaths attributed to complications from the infections. The moving average in cases has peaked at close to 660,000 cases per day, while the average in deaths is skirting 10,000 each day. Regionally, the Americas and Europe have seen cases reach previous highs. These developments are being compounded by both the return to school and the reopening of all nonessential businesses and travel.

The United States continues to remain the epicenter of the pandemic during the Delta phase of the pandemic. It has now surpassed 40 million reported cases and 663,000 deaths. The moving average has reached 164,000 new cases per day, having climbed 14 percent from two weeks ago. The average daily death toll has jumped to more than 1,500 per day, a 67 percent rise in the same period.

US hospitalizations continue to climb, with close to 102,000 having been admitted for treatment. Approximately a quarter of these are in intensive care units.

The push to get children back to schools will only produce more devastating results as the majority of them remain unvaccinated. The American Academy of Pediatrics noted that for the week ending August 26, 2021, children accounted for 22.4 percent of reported weekly COVID-19 cases, meaning nearly one in four cases are among this layer of the population.

Since July 22, 2021, when the number of pediatric cases was at 38,000 for the week, that figure has risen to 204,000, just shy of the winter peaks. And all schools have yet to open.

However, rather than acknowledging the failed and bankrupt proposition that children must return to in-class instructions, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky put her usual spin on the matter, saying at a press briefing, “Cases, emergency room visits and hospitalizations are much lower among children and communities with higher vaccination rates. Vaccination work!”

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluations (IHME) modeling projection, which estimates total reported deaths by December 1, 2021, has been revised upwards. The IHME now expects that more than three-quarter million Americans will have died by then, a social crime for which the capitalist ruling class and its two parties are primarily responsible.

A Johns Hopkins webinar yesterday highlighted South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida as reporting more COVID cases per capita than any other state or any single country across the globe. This demonstrates the lethal role—in a literal sense—of the ultra-right campaign against vaccination, masking, social distancing and all other public health efforts, spearheaded by Republican politicians like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

The policies of Democratic governors and the Biden administration are merely a slower route to the same destination, since reopening schools, social venues and workplaces, with or without masking, means facilitating the spread of coronavirus with all its horrific consequences.

At the Johns Hopkins webinar, one of the experts on the panel, Dr. Bill Moss, the executive director at the International Vaccine Access Center at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, pointed out that allowing hospitals throughout much of the country where the pandemic has accelerated to be inundated by patients was a serious mistake.

Dr. Moss went on to say, “I think one of the most egregious failures of our society, one of our gravest sins as we look back at this particularly during this wave, will be allowing hospitals to be overwhelmed. We have overwhelmed the hospital staff; we are seeing shortages in nurses and respiratory therapists and other hospital personnel. We’ve seen limited bed capacity in hospitals, particularly in intensive care units in a number of counties and states. We are seeing shortages of oxygen. And we should just not be in this place where our health system is overwhelmed now that we ... have three safe and effective vaccines. That was more understandable in the winter surge when vaccines were just being rolled out. … But this is impacting on people who don’t have COVID and need health care services.”

He also went on to indirectly fault the Biden administration’s early messaging on the vaccines giving “false hope that vaccines were going to prevent infections,” calling for public health measures to prevent infection. Vaccines have always been intended for the prevention of severe disease and not infections.

At the present rate of infections, the world will reach 300 million reported cases of COVID-19 by January 2022, the beginning of the third year of the COVID pandemic. With 5.4 billion doses of vaccines administered thus far, the world will have reached 8 billion, or about one dose for every person on the planet, before the year’s end. But the inequity in the distribution continues to disadvantage the poorest nations.

This inequity could be further exacerbated if it becomes necessary to administer booster vaccines on a mass basis in the countries where most of the population has already been inoculated, particularly in Europe and America, because of declining effectiveness of the vaccines and increased ability of the Delta variant to evade immunity.

It is also conceivable that if newer strains create conditions that the vaccines are deemed insufficiently ineffective, the leading pharmaceuticals will have to return to the drawing board and manufacture the next generation of vaccines against the latest variants, with the chilling possibility that the global vaccination would have to start all over again.

UK’s BBC disparages scientific concerns over the unsafe reopening of schools

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/03/lint-s03.html




Thomas Scripps
19 hours ago







The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Lisa Diaz, a parent and leading member of the SafeEdForAll (Safe Education For All) campaign group, after an interview she gave to the BBC was used to belittle her scientific concerns over the unsafe reopening of schools.

Lisa's Diaz' video exposing the BBC's manipulation of her interview with the broadcaster (creditit: Liza Diaz @Sandyboots2020)

The BBC article, titled “Mixed emotions as pupils return to school across England” described Lisa as “fearful about the possible health effects [of Covid] on children,” adding, “although studies show they are much less likely to get seriously ill.” It referred to her genetic blood disorder “which makes her particularly concerned” and quoted her saying she was “‘devastated’ by the choice” to keep her kids out of school.

Lisa tweeted in response, with a video —which has received more than 177,000 views and been retweeted over 2,300 times—“Annoyed to be depicted as just an anxious mum in today’s @BBCNews article. Like it’s somehow MY problem for NOT wanting my children to catch a deadly virus which causes multi-organ damage & unknown long-term effects. Typical gaslighting. You should be calling out the Govt [government] not me.”

She was supported by leading US epidemiologist Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, who wrote, “Shameful that @BBCNews is accusing a mother worried about #COVID19 & #LongCovid in kids of being anxious—it’s another way of dismissing someone as ‘alarmist’ & ‘hysterical’.”

Speaking with the WSWS, Lisa explained that she had “mentioned in passing that of course I’m gutted for my son, of course I’m upset, he should be going to school, but I’m not going to send him into a Covid petri dish. That was the context. And they’ve taken it all out of proportion and only quoted those two little bits about my underlying health condition. I do have a condition, and it makes it even more callous the way I’ve been treated, but at the end of the day it’s irrelevant. Even if I was completely healthy it’s still an issue—healthy people die from Covid and get Long Covid.”

For most of her BBC interview, Lisa “focussed on the utter lack of mitigation within schools, how the meagre and measly mitigations that were in place in the last academic year have been rolled back; that there’s going to be no masks, no adequate ventilation, no HEPA air filters, CO2 monitors won’t be ready—though, in any case, that’s like putting a plaster on a gaping wound.”

She also explained how “the government are actively taking measures to encourage, as it were, the virus to spread in schools. They’re no longer isolating close contacts… I said about how they’re encouraging assemblies, about senior leadership in schools being told to only reach out for help when 10 percent of the school population has been infected.”

“I said [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson is a liar. He’s using our children in a murderous experiment. And I said these are not my words: this is Professor Michael Baker, an epidemiologist who advises the New Zealand government. I said it’s barbaric. I mentioned again about Boris Johnson lying because he admitted at one point that children are vectors of transmission, that school holidays would offer a firebreak.”

Lisa pointed to the catastrophic situation in the United States and rates of Long Covid and hospitalisation among children. “I said it’s not a benign illness in children and this is a myth that needs obliterating. That it causes potentially lifelong complications, damage to the respiratory tract, the heart, the brain, cognitive impairment. We have no idea the full extent of what we’re dealing with and we won’t know for years to come. I said there’s an increase in hospitalisations, that 1,153 children in England alone had been hospitalised [in July].

“There is nothing controversial about saying you don’t want your child to catch Covid, you don’t want your child to be exposed to risk in school. All I want is for schools to be made safe, if they can be made safe.

“I said what we really need to go for is a Zero Covid policy, because it’s completely unacceptable having nearly a thousand people die in a week. That is not living with Covid, that is dying with Covid. There is so much the government can do to drive cases down. Instead, they’ve no regard for human life, they’re selling it as ‘Freedom Day’ and the media are helping to cover it up.”

After her treatment in this interview, Lisa made the principled decision to tell the BBC not to use a to-camera piece she had provided to the broadcaster’s Breakfast news programme, tweeting, “Told @BBCNews that I don’t want them to use interview with me in their @BBCBreakfast piece on Monday. I’m not ‘fearful’, I’m informed. The Government are conducting a dangerous experiment on our kids. And you are complicit.”

She told the WSWS she had taken the decision “having seen this article and how it had been misconstrued and how everything that I’d said had been left out and I was just presented as almost neurotic, as somebody who’s just ‘fearful’. I’m not saying anything different from people with PhDs in epidemiology. Just because I’m a mum from Wigan, don’t patronise me.”

Lisa described the media’s role during the pandemic as “Absolutely pathetic. There has been a media blackout, radio silence. The media are completely complicit… But the reason why they’re doing that is because they’re in cahoots with the government—they want bums on seats so parents can get to work. They couldn’t care less if my child ends up with debilitating long Covid… In terms of what’s gone out in the mainstream media on Sky and the BBC, it’s actually criminal. I think it’s something like 777 people have died in the last week of Covid. Why is that not all over the news?”

Referring to the work of the WSWS, Lisa said, “you are doing a sterling job. Really, you should be in charge of the BBC!”

Many parents and educators have expressed outrage in the last few days at another BBC article headlined, “Long Covid in children 'nowhere near scale feared'”, also posted with the title, “Long Covid in children—time to be reassured”. The article cites a University College London study which has found that up to 14 percent of 11-17 years olds had symptoms linked with the Covid-19 virus 15 weeks after infection.

Deepti Gurdasani, a Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology at Queen Mary University, tweeted: “Not sure how this can be described as 'reassuring' at all. 1 in 7 children having persistent symptoms at 15 weeks with ~34,000 children estimated to be affected (very similar to ONS estimates). Quite shocked by some of the media spin I've seen on this.”

Lisa commented, “I’m not sure how much worse it can be than playing Russian roulette [with a child’s health]—seven to one. We’re talking about, 15 weeks afterwards, your child being in pain, and there was a big list of symptoms including debilitating exhaustion, headaches—imagine living with that. It’s not okay. How is that ‘not as bad’. How much worse do they want it to be? How can they paint this as a good result?

“And this is an ongoing study. This is the tip of the iceberg. We don’t know, in five, ten years, what the debilitating symptoms could look like. We don’t know [the long-term effects], but we know things are bad at the moment, so let’s use the precautionary principle and do everything we can to protect our children.

“Any normal person would say it’s not okay for one in seven children to be ill for weeks, and we don’t know if they’ll ever get better … The government are keen to say we’ve got to live with it like flu. Covid is nothing like flu.”

Referring to another BBC article posted a day later, “Schools aren't infection hubs, says public health boss,” Lisa added, “They just lie … It’s like saying black is white.”

The same article was also criticised by Dr Feigl-Ding, who tweeted, “Seriously, @BBCNews is now a full on @BorisJohnson propaganda mouthpiece machine now. This story is totally bullshit. Experts like @trishgreenhalgh agree.” Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Health Care at Oxford University, said in response to the claim that schools were not transmission hubs, “They are, actually. Why wouldn't they be? Schools bring unvaccinated, mostly unmasked people together for prolonged periods in indoor spaces that are inadequately ventilated.”

Speaking about the political situation, Lisa said, “When the government fails to look after us, when the media fails to present the truth—that Covid isn’t a benign illness for children, that schools aren’t safe—then grassroots pressure groups like mine (SafeEdForAll) and concerned parents have to hold the government to account.” She added, “the Labour Party are absolutely pathetic, they’re totally complicit as well,” and “I’m shocked at the unions as well to be honest. They’ve got a duty of care to their members. How many more teachers need to die?”

Lisa pointed to reports by the Office for National Statistics that show workers in teaching and education have the highest rates of Long Covid outside of workers in health and social care. She noted, “I think another four children have died in August of Covid and one died on August 31 who was between 0 and 4 years old. Why’s that not on the news? And how many plane crashes a week is it that we’re looking at now [in terms of overall deaths]? It’s not okay and I will never be okay with that many people dying.”

After disastrous jobs report, Biden doubles down on reopening schools, ending pandemic relief

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/jobs-s04.html




Barry Grey
14 hours ago







On Friday, President Joe Biden responded to the Labor Department’s disastrous jobs report for August by brushing aside the sharp slowdown in hiring due to the spread of the Delta coronavirus and reaffirming his policy of economic reopening combined with the termination of pandemic-related social relief measures.

Joe Biden [Credit: Flickr.com, Gage Skidmore]

The employment report was issued three days before Labor Day, September 6, when federal unemployment benefits first enacted in March 2020 officially expire. Upwards of 7.5 million unemployed workers will be cut off of all jobless benefits. They will be stripped of a critical lifeline, as inadequate as it is at $300 a week, on which they have relied to avoid destitution and homelessness. An additional 3 million people still receiving benefits from their state system will suffer a $300 cut in total jobless pay.

The report shattered the administration’s claims of a surging economy and booming labor market, the pretext for ending vital benefits for the working class while continuing to pump $120 billion every month into the financial markets and provide virtually free and unlimited credit to the corporations and banks.

US nonfarm payrolls increased by only 235,000 in August, less than half the monthly average since January of 586,000, and far below economists’ predictions of 725,000. Job creation plunged from June’s figure of 962,000 and July’s total of 1,053,000.

This dismal result was likely an underestimation of the slowdown. The Labor Department data was collected in the second week of August, before the full effect of the fourth wave of the pandemic or the impact of Hurricanes Henri and Ida in the second half of the month.

The report’s breakdown of the job market clearly showed the decisive impact of the ongoing surge of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths, fueled by the virulent Delta variant and facilitated by the ruthless reopening of businesses and, above all, schools, despite the explosive spread of the virus among children and educators.

The ruling class and its political servants in both parties are united in forcing workers back into unsafe workplaces and schools to feed the ravenous demand for corporate profits. But they are caught in a contradiction. The more they “reopen” in the midst of a rampaging pandemic, the more their efforts come up against the impact of the COVID surge on production and economic activity.

The economic recovery has been driven by increased employment in the low-wage service sector, particularly retail trade and “leisure and hospitality.” The latter has increased by 350,000 on average for each of the last six months, boosted by the dropping of all social distancing measures and the Biden administration’s proclamation of the imminent end of the pandemic and return to normal.

In August, however, as restaurant, dining and vacationing stalled due to the resurgence of the pandemic, this sector failed to register any increase in hiring. Retail payrolls declined.

The Wall Street Journal wrote:


The details of the report had the Delta variant written all over them. Hotels and other accommodation businesses, which in the half year through July added a seasonally adjusted average of 56,700 workers each month, added just 6,600. Restaurants, bars and other food services and drinking places shed 41,500 jobs in August; over the previous six months, they recorded average job gains of 227,400.

The cutoff of federal jobless benefits follows last week’s Supreme Court ruling terminating the moratorium on evictions ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a public health measure. Various think tanks and advocacy groups estimate that as many as 11 million households are behind on their rent and will face eviction in the coming months.

At the same time, health insurers are beginning to charge COVID-19 patients for hospital stays and other medical treatment, adding an additional financial burden to devastating and often long-term health consequences of the virus.

In remarks from the White House on Friday, Biden callously dismissed the impact on workers of both the dismal jobs report and the cutoff of government benefits.

“Despite the impact of the Delta variant,” he said, “what we’re seeing is an economic recovery that is durable and strong. The Biden plan is working. We’re getting results. America is on the move again.”

Oozing a combination of cynicism and incipient senility, Biden went on to hail the Labor Day holiday as a celebration “honoring the dignity of work, honoring the American worker.”

He then indicated how he planned to “honor the American worker.”


Even as some of the benefits that were provided are set to expire next week, states have the option to extend those benefits and the federal resources from the Rescue Plan to do so. Not more federal taxes, state taxes, but they have the federal money to be able to do that.

This, of course, is a brazen lie. Twenty-six states weeks ago terminated the federal unemployment benefit programs prematurely, one of which is Democratic-controlled. They did so, moreover, with the explicit blessing of the White House, whose press secretary told reporters in June that Republican governors “have every right” to “not accept” federal unemployment benefit funds.

What Biden was really telling workers was: “Tough luck. You’re on your own.”

When it came to the pandemic profiteers, however, the president could not be more solicitous. After boasting that “there have been so many records the stock market has hit under my presidency,” he said, “[T]he very wealthy will—they’re still going to have three homes or four homes, if they want. It’s not going to change what schools they can send their kids to. It’s not going to change their standard of living. But just pay a fair share.

“Corporate America—it’s going to continue to do very well. … We’ll still have millionaires. We’ll still have billionaires. We’ll still have corporations that do incredibly well and CEOs that make a lot of money. But everybody has to start paying their fair share.”

There is no “fair share” in a society where billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk double their fortunes off of the death and suffering of millions of people in the US and around the world.

The homicidal policy of reopening the economy and letting the pandemic rip—rejecting science-based policies to eradicate the virus because they cut across corporate profit-making—is bound up with the termination of the meager social relief measures imposed at an earlier stage of the pandemic. They are two sides of the same coin.

This connection was spelled out by the financial press on Friday. The Financial Times wrote of the end of US jobless benefits:


Goldman Sachs economists estimate that July’s jobs growth would have been 400,000 higher had the enhanced benefits expired nationwide, and forecast next week’s termination to add 1.5 million in payroll gains by the end of the year.

On the reopening of schools, the Wall Street Journal noted:


Economists expect that school reopenings in August and September will help pull some parents, particularly mothers, back into the labor force as child-care responsibilities ease.

Workers—from autoworkers and bus drivers to school teachers and college professors—must be blackmailed into risking their health and lives, and the lives of their loved ones and friends, under the immediate threat of destitution, hunger and homelessness. Once back on the job, they face intensified exploitation, sweatshop conditions, intolerable work schedules and low pay—all for the purpose of extracting the maximum profit to back up the mountain of debt resulting from the bailout of the financial oligarchy.

This is how Biden and the American ruling class “honor” the American worker on Labor Day.