Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

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blindpig
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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 16, 2022 1:28 pm

Jilin vows all-out effort to contain outbreak
By LIU MINGTAI in Changchun and ZHOU HUIYING | China Daily | Updated: 2022-03-16 10:06

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Residents wait in the snow to get sampled for COVID-19 nucleic acid tests in Changchun, Northeast China's Jilin province, March 15, 2022. [Photo by WANG QIANG/FOR CHINA DAILY]

Province records more than 3,000 confirmed cases on Monday

Jilin province will make an all-out effort to contain its COVID-19 outbreak and clear cases outside quarantine areas within one week, top provincial officials said on Monday.

"We should improve work efficiency, including nucleic acid screening for all residents in the province, provide medical treatment for all positive patients, and centralized quarantine for all close contacts," Han Jun, governor of Jilin, told a conference on COVID-19 prevention and control on Monday night.

The province reported 3,076 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 991 asymptomatic carriers on Monday. In the first nine hours of Tuesday, another 317 local cases and 27 asymptomatic carriers were logged.

By 9 am Tuesday, the province had also recorded 1,427 preliminary positive cases that are awaiting further examination and have been placed in closed-loop management, Zhang Li, deputy director of the Jilin Provincial Health Commission, said at a news conference on Tuesday morning.

"Five makeshift hospitals have been built, including one in Changchun (the provincial capital) and four in Jilin (city)," he said. "Seven medical institutions in the province have been vacated and 22,880 beds are available to receive infected patients."

Inspection teams will be set up in designated hospitals to provide special medical services for pregnant women and patients undergoing dialysis, radiotherapy or chemotherapy, he added.

"We are facing a complex and challenging situation of epidemic prevention and control as the epidemic is on the rise," Zhang said.

"Medical and epidemic prevention supplies for the whole province can only meet our needs for two to three days. We are making a concentrated effort to get support from all sides."

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Workers build a makeshift hospital at a sports facility in Changchun, Northeast China's Jilin province, March 15, 2022. [Photo by WANG QIANG/FOR CHINA DAILY]

On Tuesday, the Red Cross Society in the province called on the whole of society to donate materials for epidemic prevention and control.

Protective equipment, disinfectants and medicine are needed, it said in a statement, adding that donations of money will be also accepted via designated channels.

Medical teams have been dispatched from around China to help curb the outbreak. According to the Changchun city government, 1,014 medical workers and over 25 metric tons of medical supplies had arrived in the provincial capital by Monday.

Key groups, including people under home quarantine, close contacts of positive cases, travelers who have returned from overseas and those under locked down management in controlled areas should test themselves daily using rapid antigen tests in the first five days of quarantine, according to a guideline released by the provincial leading group on COVID-19 prevention and control on Tuesday.

A new round of mass acid testing was conducted in Changchun and Jilin city on Tuesday.

Changchun-based automaker FAW Group suspended operations at its five finished automobile plants in the city on Sunday, Changchun's industry and information technology bureau said. The date of resumption will be determined based on the overall epidemic prevention and control situation and related government requirements, the bureau said.

Despite the strong resurgence of cases, government departments are making efforts to ensure the smooth progress of spring plowing, Zhang said.

"As of Monday, over 80 percent of funds for spring plowing production had been raised, and 73.8 percent of seeds, 50.7 percent of fertilizers and 24.4 percent of pesticides had been sent to farmers," he said.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 512b8.html

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Inhalable vaccine for COVID-19 a step closer
By ZHANG ZHIHAO | China Daily | Updated: 2022-03-16 09:59

An inhaled COVID-19 vaccine developed by CanSino Biologics has entered late-stage clinical trials, with data suggesting it is eligible to apply for emergency use in China, the company's chief scientist said.

Zhu Tao, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, said future COVID-19 vaccination may replace the "jab" with a "huff", and the procedure is as simple as "sipping a cup of coffee".

The recipient takes a deep breath from a cup containing the aerosol of the vaccine, holds the gas for around five seconds, and slowly breathes out. The whole process takes around 10 seconds and is completely painless, making it ideal for individuals who are scared of needles, he said.

Zhu said clinical data shows that the inhaled vaccine is safe and can deliver broad protection against the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, including its mutated strains.

As respiratory viruses typically target the lungs and upper airways, an inhaled vaccine can bolster the immune response in cells that form the mucous membrane in those parts of the body, serving as the first line of defense against the pathogen, Zhu said.

"This respiratory mucosal protection is a property that is lacked by vaccines delivered through intramuscular injection," he said.

Studies have shown that one of the key reasons behind the Omicron variant's high transmissibility is that it is very efficient at infecting the upper respiratory tract, so a person taking an inhaled vaccine would be better protected against that kind of virus, Zhu added.

In addition, inhaled vaccines require a lower dosage to elicit an immune response, he said.

The inhaled vaccine being researched by CanSino is based on its Convidecia adenovirus vector vaccine for COVID-19, which has been approved for use in more than 10 countries, including China, Pakistan, Mexico, Chile, Indonesia and Malaysia.

"The inhaled version only uses about one-fifth of the dosage of a conventional injection," Zhu said, making it much easier to administer and more accessible to people around the globe.

With these advantages, some experts around the world believe that an inhaled vaccine could be a game changer in the global battle against COVID-19.

Researchers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India and Japan are also developing inhaled or nasal spray COVID-19 vaccines designed to fight the virus in the upper airways, according to the World Health Organization.

However, while inhaled medicine has been widely used to treat asthma and other respiratory diseases, inhaled vaccines are a relatively new technology, and not all vaccines can be huffed, Zhu said.

For example, vaccines that require aluminum-containing adjuvants, a common ingredient to help vaccines induce a stronger immune response, are not suitable because the adjuvants cannot be atomized into tiny particles with diameters less than 5 micrometers, or five-thousandths of a millimeter.

"If the particle is too big, it is unsafe to breathe into the respiratory tract," Zhu said.

"The vaccine also cannot contain any form of solid particles. Overall, making a safe and effective inhalable vaccine is much harder than traditional ones."

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 512a4.html
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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 19, 2022 1:34 pm

Official: China's COVID spike caused by imported cases
By Zhang Yangfei | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2022-03-18 17:03

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Wang Hesheng, deputy director of the National Health Commission, presides at a news conference, March 18, 2022. [Photo/scio.gov.cn]

The recent COVID-19 outbreaks in China were the result of imported cases arriving via multiple transmission chains and complex sources, posing a huge challenge to prevention and control work, a health official said.

Wang Hesheng, deputy director of the National Health Commission, said the fourth wave of COVID-19 began in December and has lasted 11 weeks and appears to be peaking now, with the number of reported cases exceeding 10 million per week worldwide. Neighboring countries have reported a surge in infections in recent months, placing pressure on prevention work in China.

Wang said that from January to February, the daily average of imported cases was 91, much higher than the daily averages of 22 in 2020 and 32 in 2021. Since March, the number has exceeded 200, with the highest single day so far in excess of 300.

This recent wave of COVID-19 is dominated by the Omicron variant and its BA.2 subvariant, which is more transmissible and more insidious than previous strains. Most Omicron cases show only mild or no symptoms, making early detection and control more difficult.

This wave of outbreaks coincided with the end of the Chinese New Year holiday, during which many people traveled, leading to the rapid spread of the virus. Perceiving the Omicron variant as less harmful, some areas relaxed control measures, which was the wrong move, he added.

Wang said that according to the experts, this wave is still at its peak and will not end in the short term. China faces a serious and complex virus control situation.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202203/ ... 51d3a.html

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Dynamic zero-COVID policy working, NHC says
By WANG XIAOYU | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2022-03-16 07:19

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Chinese mainland medical workers leave Shenzhen Bay Port for Hong Kong on Monday to support the local fight against the COVID-19 epidemic. The team includes 36 doctors and 39 nurses from 14 public hospitals in neighboring Guangdong province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The latest COVID-19 epidemic, which has affected 28 provincial-level regions, is controllable, and China will continue with its dynamic zero-COVID policy, which has proved to be effective against the highly infectious Omicron variant, the National Health Commission said on Tuesday.

Mi Feng, commission spokesman, said at a news briefing that the fast-spreading Omicron variant is the principal cause of most of the domestic outbreaks.

"With the increasing occurrence of infection clusters, the number of new cases has risen rapidly and a growing number of regions have been hit by the virus," he said. "The epidemic situation is severe and complicated."

Lei Zhenglong, deputy director of the commission's Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control, said that as of Monday, the Chinese mainland had recorded more than 15,000 local infections in 28 provincial-level regions this month, amid the fourth wave of pandemic that hit its neighbors hard.

On Monday, the Chinese mainland registered 3,507 locally transmitted infections, nearly double the figure from the previous day. About 1,650 asymptomatic infections were also reported for Monday, according to the commission.

Lei said that the outbreaks in Jilin, Shandong, Guangdong and Hebei provinces, as well as in Shanghai municipality, were still developing and some regions are seeing a rapid increase in new cases.

Nearly 90 percent of the confirmed cases on Monday occurred in the northeastern province of Jilin. However, most of them are asymptomatic or mild cases, and only six patients were in critical or severe condition in hospitals, the commission said.

Health authorities said that China's dynamic zero-COVID policy-which features a combination of targeted lockdowns, mass testing and rapid isolation-has proved effective in tackling outbreaks of Omicron.

"Local governments are accelerating screening and the transferring and quarantine of people at risk," he said, adding that the situation is controllable.

The State Council's Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism has sent working groups to at least six provinces to help local governments take more resolute and science-based virus control measures.

Lei said greater effort will be devoted to strengthening examination of imported cold chain products, improving cross-regional coordination in tracking down high-risk groups, and further promoting mass vaccinations, particularly for people over age 80.

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Monday that the key to China's virus control strategy is to cut transmission chains in a timely, accurate and thorough manner.

"As long as we overcome lax attitudes and stick to strict implementation of regular virus control measures, this round of the epidemic will be effectively contained in the next couple of weeks," he said.

According to the commission, China has fully vaccinated nearly 1.24 billion people, including more than 211 million people age 60 and above.

Wang Huaqing, chief immunization planning expert at the China CDC, said that the emergence of Omicron has lifted the death rate for seniors to a record high in some foreign countries.

"At present, we should not treat the COVID-19 disease as seasonal flu," he said. "Primary inoculation and booster shots are very essential for the elderly."

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202203/ ... 51124.html

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Over 3.2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses administered on the Chinese mainland
Xinhua | Updated: 2022-03-16 14:50

BEIJING -- Over 3.2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered on the Chinese mainland as of Tuesday, data from the National Health Commission showed Wednesday.

Given the recent COVID-19 resurgence in multiple regions, China has announced it will adhere to its dynamic zero-COVID policy and strategies to tackle both imported and domestic infections.

The commission has urged strict implementation of control measures to stop the spread of the virus as soon as possible.

It also called on the public to practice personal protection and get vaccinated against COVID-19.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202203/ ... 51428.html
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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Thu Mar 24, 2022 2:10 pm

The Ongoing Covid Disaster
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 23 Mar 2022

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Photo (Getty Images)

Pollsters have advised Joe Biden to declare covid over. But the pandemic revealed all the shortcomings of a political system which is dedicated to austerity and to protecting capitalist interests. Declarations of victory should be treated with skepticism.

Nothing shows the abject failure of the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris administration like the continuing toll of covid-19 deaths in this country. A pledge to end the covid pandemic was a centerpiece of their 2020 campaign. They promised to improve upon Donald Trump’s disastrous handling of the crisis which resulted in the deaths of 385,000 people in 2020. Biden and Harris had 446,000 covid deaths as of their first anniversary in office. The total covid death toll is expected to reach 1 million by the end of March 2022. Now an Omicron subvariant, known as B.A.2, is becoming the dominant variant. The U.S. usually follows Europe in its covid rates, and on that basis scientists are predicting a new wave in the next two to three weeks.

The bad news isn’t surprising. Biden made clear where his priorities lay when he appointed Jeff Zient s to be his covid response coordinator. Zients isn’t a physician, scientist, or public health expert. He is a wealthy hedge fund manager and democratic party fund raiser. Zients was an acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration and a Facebook board member. His appointment made clear that Biden meant what he said when he told the U.S. oligarchs, “Nothing will fundamentally change.”

The Biden administration solution to the ongoing crisis was to push for vaccination only and now to pretend that the pandemic is over, despite the fact that the supposedly “milder” Omicron variant killed more than 120,000 people. The reason for the lie is a simple one. They don’t want to use the tools that would bring the pandemic under control. The solutions have not changed. Free access to healthcare, ongoing income support, and letting sick people stay home are all tools that have been proven useful. Instead the Biden administration Centers for Disease Control (CDC) did what corporate America wanted and decreased the number of days needed for infected people to isolate from ten days to five . The CDC is telling the public they can unmask and Biden says it is time to return to the office.

A memo from democratic polling firm Impact Research gives the game away. “Declare the crisis of covid over and push feeling and acting more normal.” In the absence of a system which cares for the people and their needs, ignoring them is the only solution possible. The bad advice continues, “The more we talk about the threat of covid and onerously restrict people’s lives because of it, the more we turn them against us and show them we’re out of touch with their daily realities.”

Notice that changing government action appears nowhere in the dubious advice. Of course people are tired of covid after two long years, but it is a lie to claim that they want the government to throw up its hands and say all is well when it isn’t. Nothing says being out of touch like a climbing death rate.

As always happens in matters of health care, Black people have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. In New York City, the hospitalization rate for Black patients was twice as high as for white patients during the Omicron surge. The story is the same in California , where the death rate for Black people has increased tenfold since the summer of 2021. Nationwide Black patients were hospitalized at four times the rate of whites. The explanation for the stark disparities has not changed. Black people are less likely to have jobs that allow for remote work and are more likely to live in multi-family residences that increase the likelihood of infection. We can see that the front line workers who were rhetorically elevated are in fact still disregarded and are more likely to become covid statistics.

The United States has the worst covid death rate of any of the other so-called rich nations. Conversely, a recent surge in China brought that country the first reported covid death in more than one year. The human rights violator isn’t the country which has been so thoroughly demonized. It is the U.S. which has no legitimacy as it uses capitalism, the source of so much suffering, as the means of ending a pandemic. While China is constantly picked apart and declared a human rights pariah, that nation of 1.3 billion people shows the U.S. the way out of the crisis.

But the way out is not the American way. Neoliberalism and austerity are the rules for public policy in this country. Funding to reimburse for care of the uninsured is about to end. The same Congress that won’t act has acted very quickly to give military aid to Ukraine, and $13 billion was allocated in just one week’s time.

The number of deaths is an indictment of the United States and its political system. The public good was never the priority, not for Donald Trump, and not for Joe Biden either. From the beginning his goal was to defeat covid with vaccines alone, giving more money for big pharma without making any other changes that would help the people. Biden took direction from the private sector instead of telling them what to do. Now the public are whiplashed with bad advice, being told, again, that they no longer need to wear masks and that they should go back to their workplaces even though a new variant is on the horizon. We have seen this movie before and saw it end with devastating Delta and Omicron surges.

Zients is leaving his job to return to the private sector and big money. But the damage is done and the direction is clear. Biden hopes to gaslight the public into thinking that covid is in the past so that he can stave off defeat in the 2022 mid-term elections. But if past experience is any indication, covid will keep killing. The covid response is just one Biden failure. There is no more Child Tax Credit, no increase in the minimum wage, and no health care for all, the simplest solution of all. Having failed to act on his campaign promises, the Biden administration is proving to be dead too.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/ongoi ... d-disaster

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Moderna’s Profits Show why Big Pharma Can’t Meet Our Health Needs
March 22, 2022
By Nick Dearden – Mar 16, 2022

According to company’s own accounts, Moderna brought in $13bn in pre-tax profits in 2021.

Last month, COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna announced its financial results for 2021. They confirmed that Moderna’s vaccine is one of the most lucrative medicines of all time, bringing in nearly $18bn in revenue for the company in a single year. It’s still some way behind the truly astonishing $37bn which Pfizer’s vaccine made, but still, it’s pretty good for a corporation that has no other products on the market.

Even more astonishing than the sales figures is the profit Moderna made. According to company accounts, they brought in $13bn in pre-tax profits. That comes to $36m a day throughout 2021, giving Moderna a profit margin of around 70 percent. It’s the kind of margin which you should find on luxury consumables, not essential medicines.

And no wonder, when experts have calculated that Moderna’s vaccine could be produced for as little as $2.85 a dose, yet is the most expensive vaccine on the market, averaging between $19 and $24, but costing up to $37 a dose to some countries. In other words, the company could be charging up to 13 times the estimated cost price of its vaccine.These profits have turned some of Moderna’s investors into multi-billionaires. At one point during the pandemic, Moderna’s CEO Stephane Bancel, also a major shareholder, was worth over $12bn, and while Moderna’s stock has been volatile, he is still worth $5bn today. In Spring 2021, the People’s Vaccine Alliance calculated that the COVID-19 vaccines had actually created nine new billionaires, with Bancel topping the nine, and two of Moderna’s founders and Moderna’s chair also appearing on the list.

Some will argue, why does it matter? Sure, Bancel and friends might have made a killing, but ultimately we have a vaccine, and that has saved many lives as well as far more cash than these executives have made.

But when you look more closely you find that these profits, like those across the pharmaceutical sector, are built on perverse incentives which encourage secrecy and competition in place of collaboration, which represents poor value for money for the public sector, and which, worst of all, created a terrible inequality in vaccine access which has actually damaged our ability to end this pandemic.

To take the last and most serious point first, Moderna sold most of its vaccines to the rich world. Back in November 2020, before a single vaccine had been authorised, Moderna had already sold 78 percent of the doses it expected to produce by the end of 2021 to rich countries, home to just 12 percent of the global population. Nearly a year later, in September 2021, the situation had become even worse, with 85 percent of Moderna’s total supply delivered to the richest countries, and almost no doses at all going to low-income countries. While the company has sold a tiny three percent to international distribution mechanism Covax, it still hadn’t actually delivered any as of last autumn (fall).

Even if you were lucky enough to get an adequate supply of Moderna’s vaccine, your government was probably paying twice for them. Moderna’s vaccine was backed to the hilt by public money, with US group Public Citizen saying it should be referred to as the “National Institutes of Health (NIH) vaccine” after the United States public research institution that made its development possible. Nearly $1bn of US taxpayer money was poured into research for this vaccine, while the US government put another $1.5bn on the table as an advance purchase agreement through Operation Warp Speed. They also received support from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a body set up to correct the failure of the market to deliver the vaccines the world needs. The United Kingdom is a major contributor to CEPI.

Despite this, Moderna has refused to share its recipe, patents or knowhow with the World Health Organization. South Africa is currently host to an exciting new body – a so-called mRNA hub which is attempting to recreate mRNA vaccines with the express purpose of sharing this technology freely with the world. Moderna was asked to collaborate, but despite their massive profits, and the public backing that made these profits possible, they refused. Scientists will crack this technology, but it will take them much longer and many more people will die as result.

Moderna claims it has already agreed not to enforce its patents during the pandemic, and has recently confirmed this will continue in lower-income countries long term. But it doesn’t include all countries, and in particular, South Africa is not covered. Even more worryingly, Moderna has applied for a broad set of patents in South Africa, even while it dropped such applications in richer countries. The head of the mRNA hub in South Africa has been clear that these patents “will impact on our freedom to operate”.

The reason for Moderna’s behaviour is, ultimately, that the company needs to maintain control of the knowledge behind the vaccine, whether it invented that technology or not, because in today’s pharmaceutical industry a corporation’s main assets are not its factories or its staff, but its “intellectual property”. In essence, they have turned knowledge into a commodity which can be traded on markets. But developing that knowledge in the first place is considered too risky for these corporate giants and so they either take public money to remove any risk, like Moderna, or they simply buy the knowledge from someone else, like Pfizer.

This means that these corporations are quite different from what they’re commonly perceived to be. They aren’t the firms that do the risky but vital research we need to produce the medicines of tomorrow. Some are more or less government contractors, but paid in monopolies rather than cash, preventing the public from properly enjoying the fruits of their tax money. Others are more like hedge funds, buying up and sitting on intellectual property until they’ve squeezed as much value as they can from it, regardless of the cost in human lives and suffering.

Those incentives breed secrecy. During the pandemic, Moderna would release very partial positive results of its vaccine trials to the financial media, rather than releasing full findings in science journals in the spirit of openness and review. The result, for the company, was positive. Massive stock price rises, which made a fortune for their owners. But if we’re concerned with a healthy population rather than the wealth of the financial sector, these decisions undermine the transparent and collaborative approach we need if we’re to deal with both this pandemic and future ones.

Today, Moderna is in patent disputes with the US government and a rival company. Huge sums of money will be spent on litigation, but this is quite normal for the pharmaceutical sector, just as the sector regularly puts bolstering the bank balances of its shareholders ahead of vital research and development. This might be good for a tiny minority, but it’s a disaster for humanity as a whole. We deserve a better model. The experiment in South Africa points in that direction, and we should be ready to defend it against the business as usual approach of companies like Moderna.

https://orinocotribune.com/modernas-pro ... lth-needs/

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Latest on COVID-19 pandemic
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2022-03-24 09:00
We provide the latest updates and crucial information on the global COVID-19 pandemic here.

March 24

China
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Latest data released by National Health Commission by midnight, March 23, 2022.
- Chinese mainland reports 2,054 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 2,010 locally transmitted (Read more)

Outside China
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The latest figures reported by each government's health authority as of March 24, 2022.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 8965f.html

Early end of COVID rules created cases
By JONATHAN POWELL in London | China Daily Global | Updated: 2022-03-24 09:37

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Women wearing protective face masks walk in front of Paris Town Hall, amid the rise of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases due to the Omicron variant, in Paris, France, Jan 25, 2022. [Photo/Agencies]

World Health Organization says Europe seeing a surge as a result

A surge of novel coronavirus cases in Europe is linked to the new, more transmissible BA2 sub-variant, with the numbers exacerbated by restrictions being eased too soon, according to the World Health Organization.

Infections have been rising in 18 out of the region's 53 countries, said WHO Europe director Hans Kluge.

Kluge noted that the BA2 variant is less dangerous than other variants but more transmissible.

"The countries where we see a particular increase are the United Kingdom, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, France, Italy, and Germany. Those countries are lifting the restrictions brutally from too much to too few," he said.

He added that he was "optimistic but vigilant" about the European situation, noting that "there is a very large capital of immunity… either thanks to the vaccination or due to the infection".

After peaking toward the end of January, cases in Europe dropped abruptly, according to WHO figures.

But infections have been increasing since early March, and more than 5.1 million new cases and 12,496 deaths were reported in the last seven days, reported the Agence France-Presse.

There have been a total 194.4 million cases recorded across the region and more than 1.92 million fatalities since the start of the pandemic. Countries that have reported the most cases are France, UK, Russia, Germany, and Turkey.

Most restrictions were officially lifted across Germany last Sunday, a day dubbed "Freedom Day", although the country's regional authorities remain cautious and continue to enact measures. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach warned "the situation is much worse than the mood".

Waning immunity from vaccines is likely another contributor to the surge in cases, along with the easing of measures, and easier transmission of the new strain, according to health experts.

Research suggests that a fourth COVID-19 booster vaccine dose gives increased protection for elderly people and those with health problems, but there are doubts about revaccinating younger, healthy people, reported the Financial Times.

The European Medicines Agency has said there is a lack of evidence on the need for a fourth jab. It cites concerns that repeated boosters "could overload people's immune systems".

France, Germany, the UK, and Sweden are among countries already offering fourth doses. The FT noted findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week, said that, for young and healthy people, a fourth vaccine offered "little protection" above three doses.

Penny Ward, a professor at King's College London, was quoted by the paper as saying boosters are important to help protect health systems from being overloaded.

"Allowing the situation to continue where the health service is completely overwhelmed with disease, now we have the tools to prevent it, is irrational," Ward said.

Meanwhile, the UK government has announced that free lateral flow tests will no longer be available, and those who want to check whether they have COVID-19 will have to pay. Critics warn that ending free testing will make it difficult to monitor the spread of the virus.

The updated guidance states: "Most people without COVID symptoms no longer need to take rapid lateral flow tests. Most tests are now needed for people at higher risk in England".

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202203/ ... 52ed4.html

BRICS team up on vaccine research
By ZHANG ZHIHAO | China Daily | Updated: 2022-03-24 09:24

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A staff member tests samples of the COVID-19 inactivated vaccine at a vaccine production plant of China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) in Beijing, April 11, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]

The BRICS nations-Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa-will enhance collaboration in vaccine research, manufacturing and certification to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and make vaccines more accessible and affordable for developing countries, officials said.

The five countries have also launched an initiative to make vaccines a global public good, enhance capacities for preventing infectious diseases and responding to public health emergencies, and conduct exchanges and cooperation ranging from vaccine development to epidemiological surveillance.

At the online launch ceremony for the BRICS Vaccine R&D Center and workshop on vaccine cooperation on Tuesday, Science and Technology Minister Wang Zhigang said the center represents pragmatic cooperation between BRICS countries to jointly address common challenges in public health.

The BRICS countries have donated over 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines through various international organizations and initiatives, Wang said.

"The BRICS have played a constructive role in facilitating the accessibility and affordability of vaccines, and provided great energy for developing countries' fight against the pandemic," he said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a news conference on Wednesday that the center is currently a cloud platform consisting of a network of research institutions and vaccine developers from BRICS countries, and construction of the physical facility will begin in due course.

Public health and vaccine cooperation will be key areas of collaboration for BRICS countries this year, he said.

"We hope the vaccine R&D center can pool the strengths of the five countries, deepen BRICS sci-tech cooperation, improve prevention and control capabilities for infectious diseases, and contribute to the global fight against the pandemic," Wang Wenbin said.

Blade Nzimande, South Africa's minister of higher education, science and technology, said on Tuesday that the BRICS partnership involves a strong commitment to joint ownership and shared responsibility, and South Africa is excited and committed to participate in the initiative.

The BRICS Vaccine R&D Center should also explore the use of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and big data, to help countries improve their science systems' capacities to prevent and tackle global health challenges, he said.

Mikhail Murashko, Russia's health minister, said in a video address that the center showcases BRICS' commitment to providing assistance to the global population, such as making vaccines more effective and available to combat existing and future biological threats.

"BRICS countries unite over 40 percent of the world's population, and the potential of our scientific communities is at a high level," he said, adding that there is a need to intensify efforts against other infectious diseases including tuberculosis, AIDS and influenza.

"It is highly important to support this initiative with BRICS mechanisms," he said.

Mansukh Mandaviya, India's minister of health and family welfare, said the center will be instrumental in streamlining and promoting vaccine research among BRICS countries.

"The BRICS Vaccine R&D Center is a welcomed initiative for cooperating with other countries and sharing experiences for mutual benefits," he said. "This will save lives and livelihoods, and propel us toward economic recovery for the citizens of BRICS countries and the world."

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202203/ ... 52e98.html
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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 13, 2022 1:35 pm

Latest on COVID-19 pandemic
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2022-04-13 09:00

We provide the latest updates and crucial information on the global COVID-19 pandemic here.

April 13

China

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Data released by the National Health Commission on April 13, 2022.
- Chinese mainland reports 1,513 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, 26,525 asymptomatic cases

Outside China

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Latest count of confirmed COVID-19 cases in hardest-hit countries tracked by Johns Hopkins University at 0000 GMT, April 13, 2022.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 8965f.html

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China Rejects US Smear Campaign Against Shanghai Lockdown

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A maintenance worker in Shanghai, China, on April 11, 2022. | Photo: EFE

Published 12 April 2022 (21 hours 38 minutes ago)

"The United States should immediately stop attacking China's prevention policy and using the pandemic for political manipulation," Zhao said.

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian expressed his "strong opposition" to the U.S. decision to evacuate non-essential personnel from its consulate in Shanghai, a city in which authorities have tightened actions to control the pandemic.

"The United States should immediately stop attacking China's prevention policy and using the pandemic for political manipulation," Zhao said, adding that his country filed a formal complaint for such attitude since China's epidemiological policy is "scientific and effective."

Besides recalling that local governments have offered assistance to foreign diplomatic personnel, he expressed confidence that Shanghai will overcome the outbreak very soon.

On April 8, the U.S. State Department authorized the voluntary evacuation of consulate workers and advised to "reconsider" any trip to China due to "the arbitrary execution of local laws" and the current restrictions to contain the pandemic.


In late March, Shanghai went into a lockdown, which has caused food supply problems in some neighborhoods and restrictions on medical care in hospitals. The Chinese "zero COVID" strategy has implied strong restrictions on mobility and the closure of borders. This has caused some concern about the possible effects on the global industrial and supply chains.

However, while major overseas ports witnessed congestion and a shortage of containers, the Shanghai port maintained smooth operation, ensuring the stability and connectivity of supply chains in the Yangtze River Delta region and unimpeded ties with the rest of the globe.

On Saturday, for example, the deepwater dock Yangshan handled 26 international vessels and 42 domestic container ships, basically at the usual level.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0006.html

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The color of Covid: racial inequities in the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic
April 7, 2022

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Source: Shutterstock

“When white folks catch a cold, Black folks get pneumonia.” ~ George Robinson, Sr. (my grandfather)

By Camille Landry (National Co-Coordinator)[/i]

What color is Covid? Many people would say red and blue, citing the familiar graphic of a fuzzy red globe with blue spikes. Others might say that Covid has no color. But the Covid pandemic is anything but color-blind. In the United States, the color of your skin is a predictor of whether you will become infected with COVID-19, how sick you might get, or whether you’ll die.

More than 982,000 people have died in the U.S. from Covid – and this is likely an undercount. This is the equivalent of losing more people than all those who live in Washington, D.C., Boston or San Francisco, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Millions more have become ill, with many requiring lengthy hospital stays. SARS-Covid 19 has disrupted every aspect of life for people around the world.

The pandemic placed a spotlight on systemic racism in the U.S. It has revealed deep-seated inequities in health care, employment, education and economics for communities of color and amplifies social and economic factors that contribute to poor health outcomes. African Americans, Indigenous and Brown people of all ages, genders, education and income levels and locations are disproportionately harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Black, Indigenous and Pacific Islander Americans have experienced the highest death tolls from COVID-19 in the United States, at a rate of douple or more that of white and Asian Americans. One in 500 Black Americans has died of Coronavirus infection. Case data from the CDC show that Blacks, who comprise 13% of the total U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018), make up 30% of COVID-19 cases. African Americans are 2.8 times more likely to require hospitalization compared to whites.

Most of the disproportionate rates of infection and death among BIPOC people stem from the systemic racism that plays a significant role in every aspect of this country. These discrepancies in wealth, education, employment, incarceration, access to health care, plus the burden of dealing with racism in large and small ways, exact a deadly toll on people.

Black, Indigenous and Brown people contract Covid more often than their white counterparts. Black and Indigenous people are more likely to die from it. Race and ethnicity are risk markers for underlying conditions that affect health, including socioeconomic status, access to healthcare, and exposure to the virus related to occupation, e.g., frontline, essential, and critical infrastructure workers.

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Source: COVID Race Tracking Project

Brown, Black and Indigenous people:

*Have higher rates of underlying health conditions such as diabetes, asthma, hypertension, and obesity compared to whites;
*Are more likely to be uninsured and to lack a usual source of care which is an impediment to accessing COVID-19 testing and treatment services;
*Are more likely to work in the service industries such as restaurants, retail, and hospitality that are particularly at risk for loss of income during the pandemic;
*Are more likely to live in housing situations such as multigenerational families or low-income and public housing that make it difficult to social distance or self-isolate;
*Often work in jobs that are not amenable to teleworking; and
*Are more frequent users of public transportation, which puts them at risk for exposure to COVID-19.
*Age plays a major factor in who lives and who dies. Among whites, death rates are higher for older people. Because Blacks and Latinx people are younger on average than whites, one might predict that they would be less likely to die from a disease that has been brutal to the elderly. But that’s not what is happening.

Instead, the CDC, adjusting for population age differences, estimates that in this country, Indigenous, Brown and Black people are two to three times more likely than white people to die of COVID-19. (The death rate unadjusted for age is 1.4 x that of whites.) Latinx people are dying at much younger ages than other groups.

37% of Latinx deaths were of those under 65, versus 12% for white Americans and 30% for Black people. Latinx people between 30 and 39 have died at five times the rate of white people in the same age group. (See below.)

The CDC reported a total of over 920,000 deaths from Covid as of February 15. As shown in Figure 1, among cases and deaths with known race/ethnicity:

*Hispanic people represent a larger share of cases relative to their share of the total population (24% vs. 18%), while their share of deaths is more proportionate to their share of the population (17% vs. 18%). The disparity in cases relative to their share of the population has decreased slightly over time. (As of early October 2021, they accounted for 27% of cases.)
*Black people make up a similar share of cases relative to their share of the population (13%), but account for a slightly higher share of deaths compared to their population share (14% vs. 13%). This pattern has been consistent since October 2021.
*American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) people make up similar shares of cases and deaths relative to their shares of the population, which is consistent with data as of October 2021.
*White people account for a lower share of cases compared to their share of the population (54% vs. 60%) but a larger share of deaths compared to their population share (63% vs. 60%). The higher share of deaths relative to their share of the population reflects a shift from October 2021, when their share of deaths was slightly lower than their share of the population. This shift largely reflects a higher death rate compared to other groups during the fourth quarter of 2022, amid the Omicron surge.
*Consistent with data as of early October 2021, Asian people make up a lower share of cases and deaths compared to their population share (4% and 3%, respectively, vs. 6%).

Race, class and gender play a large role in infection rates because race plays a role in what job you do, your access to healthcare, and even your ability to take time from work to get vaccinated or recover from vaccine side effects. BIPOC people are less likely to have employer-sponsored health insurance and thus less likely to have a primary physician, less likely to have sick or personal leave on their jobs, and more likely to work in jobs that place them in proximity to other people, with little or no control over how they interact with others. They are less likely to be in executive or supervisory positions, or to hold jobs with flexible hours. They are less likely to be able to work from home. They are less likely to have enough personal or familial wealth that can carry them over if they lose their jobs or must stay home to care for their families. They have fewer options for avoiding Covid infection than white people have.

BIPOC families were more likely to send their children to school rather than opt for a learn-at-home situation during the pandemic. Working class children must attend daycare and school because their parents have little choice other than to show up to work or face dire economic consequences. This leads to the spread of infection. Children and teens infected with Covid often do not show symptoms even when they are contagious. This increases the likelihood of them infecting others, since no one realizes the children are spreading the disease.

Impacts on education

Brown, Black and Indigenous children – who were already experiencing an education gap compared to their white peers – have lost more educational ground during the pandemic compared to white children, as a result of class cancellation and the shift to distance learning formats. They have fewer family resources and less internet access, fewer devices for accessing online learning resources, and are more likely to be at home alone or with an adult who cannot offer learning assistance.

The pandemic is widening the already huge racial gap in educational success. I checked on friends whose children attend schools in metropolitan Oklahoma City, where I live. My next-door neighbor, Ruth, who is retired, cared for three of her grandchildren when schools closed. “We waited weeks for workbooks for these kids. Without them, they couldn’t do assignments. Lots of days, they were supposed to be in class on the computer but the computer wouldn’t load the classes, so the kids missed out.”

The chronically underfunded city school district was pushed to its limits. Two of her grandchildren had substitute teachers all year due to a chronic teacher shortage in the state. When the shift to online learning came, those inexperienced teachers struggled with the change. “The District announced during spring break 2020 that they would not reopen. Nobody was ready for that,” Ruth said. “I help the children as much as I can. I go over their work with them. I worked as a bookkeeper and I feel like I’m good at math but the kids tell me ‘that’s not the way we do it.’” She feels like the entire year-and-a-half that they were learning from home has been mostly wasted from an academic perspective.

Ruth also worries about the additional grocery bills. “The children were getting breakfast and lunch at school every day. She can drive down the street and pick up the food the school hands out but it’s not as much food as they’d get in the school cafeteria. The kids ask for more. They’re eating me out of house and home!” She laughed, but said that she had to put off getting tires for her car and paying bills because of the added expense.

“Their uncle taught the boys how to change a tire and put oil in the car. That’s a good thing. I’m teaching them how to cook. We read together when we can. It doesn’t seem like enough. I really worry that they are not going to be ready for the next grade.”

Separate and unequal. More than 60 years after school desegregation became the law, education in the U.S. is highly segregated by race and income. Schools are still segregated and Brown and Black children are paying a price. Students in well-funded districts have resources and opportunities that their inner-city peers do not have. The zip code you live in largely determines the quality of education and future success.

In a nearby suburb my friend Carissa, who is white, juggled working from home with the responsibility of overseeing the education of her children ages 9 and 12. Her suburban district provided iPads to its students; they haven’t had many problems getting the online classes to work. Her children attended two of the highest-performing schools in the area. “They did a good job, as good as anyone could have expected,” she said. Carissa holds a master’s degree. “That education and experience have made it easier for me to step into this role. I was able to help them when they needed it.” Her children have now returned to school full-time. The eldest attends a private tutoring center to help him with math, which he struggled to learn through online classes. “I’m glad we had the resources to see us through the last two years,” Clarissa explained. “My friends who aren’t as fortunate have seen their kids fall behind.”

Experts agree. The U.S. Department of Education found widening disparities between Black and Brown children and their white peers as a result of the pandemic’s changes in schooling. Children for whom English is a second language and children with special needs have lost the most ground. Academics aren’t the only thing that has suffered. The Department’s report on the educational impact of Covid states:

“Nearly all students have experienced some challenges to their mental health and well-being during the pandemic and many have lost access to school-based services and supports, with early research showing disparities based on race, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ identity, and other factors. Heightened risks of sexual harassment, abuse, and violence during the pandemic, including from household members as well as intimate partners, and online harassment from peers and others, affect many students and may be having a continued disparate impact on K-12 and postsecondary girls and women and students who are transgender, non-binary, or gender non-conforming.”

The Department of Education also identified increased harassment and bullying of Asian and Pacific Islander (API) students that mirrors the increased racism faced by these communities since the start of the pandemic.

“The pandemic has widened the gaps that have always existed. It has been an educational disaster for the children and youth we teach,” according to the principal of an Oklahoma City high school. “My hope is that this won’t close doors to them that were only ever half open.”

Jobs matter

Jobs matter. The woman checking out your groceries who comes face-to-face with hundreds of people each day, many of whom refuse to wear masks, is at higher risk of becoming ill than someone who works in an office. The bus driver, teacher, receptionist, food service worker, daycare provider, factory worker, and people who are incarcerated or living in a shelter are at higher risk of infection. These people are more likely to be Brown, Black or Indigenous. Many are women. Few of these workers have the protections or support of a union.

We see the effects of sexism, racism and other forms of marginalization in today’s labor market. Data show occupational segregation, racial and gender wage and wealth gaps, persistent racial and gender unemployment disparities, hiring discrimination, barriers to employment for those who have been involved in the criminal justice system, and more. The pandemic did not directly cause these centuries-old issues, but it made them worse.

The Covid pandemic has amplified existing challenges in Black, Indigenous and Brown communities. Layoffs and furloughs have resulted in many people being thrust into joblessness. They are facing eviction, loss of their homes, their cars, and even the ability to feed their families.

Impacts on poverty and food insecurity

Black and Brown families experience crisis-level rates of poverty and food insecurity, especially when compared with their white counterparts. This is not by chance. These disparities are direct consequences of policies and decisions made by those in power. Dating back to colonial times and in every realm of their existence, Black, Indigenous and Brown families have been excluded from the systems and institutions that have provided financial security, upward mobility, and generational wealth to white families.

Black and Latinx communities have been particularly hard hit by the health and economic crises, experiencing more job losses, higher rates of infection and mortality, and greater likelihood of evictions and hunger than their white counterparts — and more — in just the past two years. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real median income declined 4.5% among Asian households (from $99,400 to $94,903), 2.6% among Hispanic households (from $56,814 to $55,321), 2.7% among non-Hispanic white households (from $77,007 to $74,912), and was statistically unchanged for Black households (from $46,648 to $46,600).

The greatest effect on economic equity during the pandemic is a result of the disproportionate shares of women – Black and Latinx women in particular – who lost full-time, year-round work. This was largely due to job loss by workers in face-to-face service jobs like retail and leisure/hospitality. Restaurants and stores closed; food service workers whose income depends on tips were hard hit by closures and by people using take-out and delivery services rather than dining in.

Vaccinations

Race is also a factor in vaccination rates. Even as the nation rushes to vaccinate people and end the pandemic, African American and Indigenous people are not doing well. As of March 7, 2022, 84% of Asian, 64% of Latinx, and 62% of white people had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, higher than the rate for Black people (57%).

There are many reasons why BIPOC people in the U.S. refuse or delay vaccinations. Some distrust public health initiatives. African Americans remember the Tuskegee Study, where Black men were told they were receiving treatment for syphilis but received only placebos; many died from the disease and a lot of them infected their partners. People recall how Brown and Indigenous women were secretly sterilized when they went into hospitals to give birth. They recall the story of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman who received inadequate treatment for her cancer but whose body tissue was used without her permission to establish what was the first, and, for many years the only human cell line able to reproduce indefinitely. Neither she nor her family received any compensation for this. We’ve heard stories of cruel medical experiments carried out on our ancestors.

Many people distrust the medical establishment as a result of their own negative personal encounters when seeking healthcare. Treatment at teaching hospitals – often the only source for medical care – often involves having medical students, residents, and other minimally-trained practitioners providing care; sometimes that care is less than stellar. Many BIPOC people have experienced racism, subtle and blatant, at the hands of medical providers. Medical apartheid is real in America. Others distrust the government and its role in creating the vaccine. Regardless of the reason for vaccine hesitancy, the fewer people who receive the vaccine, the higher the rate of infection will remain.

Impacts on mental health

Mental health, always a challenging issue in the Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, is similarly under attack by COVID-19. The journal Psychiatric Times reports that the economic downturn and staggering job losses due to the pandemic have resulted in lost health insurance, financial instability, food insecurity, and loss of housing among those lacking the safety net of savings and family resources. The median net worth of white families is nearly 10 times higher than Black families, 8 times higher than Brown families, and significantly higher than Indigenous families. These stresses and losses increase the risks of depression, anxiety, substance use, and suicide, as well as poor physical health.

Black and Brown individuals with preexisting mental illness are among the most vulnerable. They are more likely to live in poverty, often in group settings (which greatly increase the risk of infection). Mentally ill people are more likely to be incarcerated. They suffer the stigma and marginalization of mental illness plus bias and discrimination due to their race and economic status. The risk of death from COVID-19 is 50% higher for those with a history of mental illness compared to those without that history.

Black and Brown individuals with preexisting mental illness are among the most vulnerable for a myriad of reasons, including greater chances that they are living in poverty and population-dense conditions, or are homeless or incarcerated. Not only do they experience stigma and marginalization related to their mental illness, but also bias and discrimination related to race and class. The risk of death from COVID-19 is 50% higher for those with a history of mental illness compared to those with no such history.

The stress of coping with lost jobs, lost income, children who must be cared for during the school day while parents work jobs with no flexibility, and the other burdens wreaked on them by systemic racism have an impact on mental health. The well-publicized incidents of police brutality and murder of BIPOC people are a further stress.

A recent report by the U.S. Surgeon General reveals that African American, Brown and Indigenous people have less access to mental health services than do whites, are less likely to receive needed care and are more likely to receive poor quality care when they do seek help.

The pandemic has been particularly hard on young people. “The pandemic’s negative impacts most heavily affected those who were vulnerable to begin with, such as youth with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ youth, low-income youth, youth in rural areas, youth in immigrant households, youth involved with the child welfare or juvenile justice systems, and homeless youth,” according to an advisory by the U.S. Surgeon General on the mental health of youth.

The deadly effects of conservative politics

No discussion of the racialized effects of the Covid pandemic would be complete without mentioning the damage done to Republican voters by the politicization and rampant anti-science, anti-fact falsehoods that circulate in social media and right-wing news sources. The areas of the country with the lowest vaccination rates are those that have Republicans – especially far-right Republicans – as their local and national representatives. Self-identification as a political conservative who voted for Trump is the strongest indicator of not being vaccinated.

The increase in Covid deaths among people who are younger, southern, rural and white represents a shift from the demographics of the first wave of this pandemic. The first wave of people to suffer and die from Covid were disproportionately Black, Brown, Indigenous and/or older adults, and people with underlying conditions that made them more vulnerable to the virus. Now, severe Covid infections requiring hospitalization or leading to death are most common among the unvaccinated. These deaths are largely preventable.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll shows a stark divide in vaccination hesitancy by political affiliation. More than a third of Republicans and white conservatives refuse to get a vaccination. Even more refuse to wear masks and abide by social distancing and other safety recommendations. We’ve seen their protests at school board and city council meetings. We watched as rowdy truckers drunk on white privilege protested Covid protocols by shutting down the capital of Canada and disrupting traffic throughout the U.S.

Conclusion

Just as the COVID-19 pandemic has lifted the covers off racism and inequality in this society, it has also shown us what many people have been saying for years: things need not be this way. Covid has forced institutions and policies to change in ways that better accommodate all people, and that can at least start to right the wrongs caused by racism and white supremacy. We now see that education can take place outside of a classroom and that we can tailor education to the needs of individual students. We see that it is possible for the government and private industry to provide life-saving medical care to all who need it. We know that people can work from home instead of commuting to an office. We know that governmental support in the form of programs and direct financial assistance can make a hugely positive difference in people’s lives.

The pain, suffering and deaths caused by SARS-Covid 19 in the United States shows the damage that racism and inequality wreak upon this nation. Brown, Indigenous and Black people have been disproportionately harmed, and this unequal burden is rooted in systemic racism. This represents a violation of human rights that affects millions of people in this nation, one that robs the world of the human potential that is lost to systemic racism and creates generational pain and suffering for people whose only “crime” is to have been born non-white.

It is an ironic and deadly twist of fate that this new increase in Covid infections and deaths among white conservatives, who are precisely the group most likely to deny that systemic racism exists or to support the elimination of racism, is an unintended effect of centuries of white supremacy and systemic racism that have turned upon people who would perpetuate racial inequality. It is a wasteful and tragic consequence of the deep divide in this nation.

The United States was born of racism and genocide. Without immediate action to end these conditions, it will continue to suffer unnecessarily.

References

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Bhutta, N., Chang, A., Dettling, L., & Hsu, J. (2020, September 28). Disparities in Wealth by Race and Ethnicity in the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances. Retrieved April 6, 2022, from https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/ ... 200928.htm

Bleiweis, R. (2020, March 24). Quick Facts About the Gender Wage Gap. Americanprogress.org. Retrieved April 6, 2022, from https://www.americanprogress.org/articl ... -wage-gap/

Broady, K., & Barr, A. (2022, January 11). December’s Jobs Report Reveals a Growing Racial Employment Gap, Especially for Black Women. Brookings.edu. Retrieved April 6, 2022, from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-aven ... ack-women/

Bump, P. (2021, July 6). A Third of White Conservatives Refuse to Get Vaccinated – a Refusal Shown in Polling and the Real World. Washingtonpost.com. Retrieved April 6, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... eal-world/

Castro, A., & Solomon, D. (2019, August 7). Systematic Inequality and Economic Opportunity. Americanprogress.org. Retrieved April 6, 2022, from https://www.americanprogress.org/articl ... portunity/

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Tue Apr 19, 2022 2:12 pm

Dynamic zero-COVID policy best option for saving lives
By Gerald Mbanda | China Daily Global | Updated: 2022-04-19 08:57

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A medical worker takes a swab sample from a resident for nucleic acid test at a COVID-19 testing site in East China's Shanghai, April 9, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

The latest outbreak of COVID-19's Omicron variant in Shanghai has increased the number of local infections, forcing authorities to once again impose lockdowns or partial lockdowns. Western critics have blamed China for imposing the dynamic zero-COVID policy, saying this has inconvenienced citizens, hampered economic activity and disrupted supply chains.

Although the number of recorded infections nationwide stands at more than 20,000 a day, the good news is that the vast majority of the infections in China and in Shanghai in particular are asymptomatic. It is also important to note that almost 90 percent of the Chinese population had been fully vaccinated by the end of February.

Few of those critics calling for a change in the dynamic zero-COVID policy seem interested in seeing the policy from China's perspective, with the policy often explained in political terms. The West projects motivations on China that reinforce their view of the country, and almost entirely dismisses China's clearly stated basis for the policy to combat COVID-19.

For a country with 1.4 billion people, it posed a great challenge to halt the transmission of the virus. Chinese epidemiologists learned quickly against all odds that lockdowns, isolation and mass testing would slow the spread of the virus. Science was followed without compromise, however inconvenient it looked to critics.

These stringent measures to fight COVID-19 paid off for China. As of mid-April, China's total number of confirmed cases was just above 170,000, while the number of deaths recorded was 4,638. In comparison to a country like the United States, whose population is one-fourth that of China, the latter is doing much better by far in the fight against COVID-19.

On the same date, the US had total cases of more than 80 million, while the number of recorded deaths reached nearly 1 million. Had it not been for the stringent dynamic zero-COVID policy, it has been estimated that China would have suffered more than 200 million infections and 3 million deaths by now, if it had attempted to "live with the virus" as most countries do.

The West, which at the beginning of the pandemic politicized China's approach, later adopted the same measures, but applied them in part and often halfheartedly, leading to the disastrous consequences of very high infection and death rates.

Chinese authorities do not take chances when it comes to the protection of people's lives. The Chinese philosophy of people-centered governance puts the lives of people first, before economic benefit.

China is sticking to the dynamic zero-COVID policy because it has paid dividends. The country still has one of the lowest infection and death rates, despite having a high population. In fact, other countries in the world could learn from China's experience in containing the virus.

According to available data, the Chinese economy grew by 2.3 percent in 2020, making China the first major economy to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, many other economies saw steep declines over the same period due to the pandemic.

Therefore, while Western critics are free to say what they want, the writing on the wall shows evidence that the policy is working to save lives. China's policy benefits outweigh the temporary inconveniences.

As China defeated the first waves of COVID-19 infections, there is much optimism that the current one will soon be defeated because of the effective measures.

The author is a Rwandan researcher and publisher on China and Africa.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 57b28.html

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Experts Warn About the Current Pandemic Situation

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The WHO recalled that the COVID-19 Pandemic has not ended. Apr. 18, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@WHO

Published 18 April 2022 (9 hours 49 minutes ago)

WHO adverted about the current pandemic situation across the globe as cases surpass the 500-million threshold.

Last Wednesday, the World Health Organization issued a statement warning that the COVID-19 pandemic remains a "public health emergency of international concern" as cases continue to rise worldwide. The day after, the cases globally reported were over the 500-million threshold.

The organization said that some countries have decided while facing such circumstances to lift their anti-COVID mandates due to gloomy economic outlooks, a deficient policy of implementation, and general fatigue to strike the virus. The WHO explained that the pandemic is far from its end as the COVID-19 remains to spread worldwide.

In November last year, the Omicron strain was first found. As a result, the double the cases worldwide in less than six months, causing more than 1 million deaths, representing an equivalent of a medium-sized city population. The WHO added that the COVID-19 virus "continues to cause high levels of morbidity and mortality, particularly among vulnerable human populations."

The U.S has registered a death toll of about one million, with close to 80 million cases during the pandemic. According to the WHO data collected from the pandemic, India and Brazil are the next on the list, with a record of more than 43 million and 30 million cases registered.

The recent updates of infected people have dropped a tendency to decrease in new cases and deaths, registering more than 7 million cases and 22 000 deaths in the period of April 4-10, causing unbearable losses to numerous families. The Global organization called to interpret the trends carefully, as many countries have started to reconcile their testing strategies, resulting in lower numbers of tests performed and cases detected.


Although the Omicron strain presents lower severity, the WHO authorities warned about the massive increases of cases that have led to a higher number of hospitalizations and more significant pressure on healthcare systems.

The organization said that there are comparable or even high numbers in the death toll than in previous wages of the Pandemic.

Every nation shares the same only objective referring to the pandemic situation, which is to reach the contention of the pandemic and a significant reduction in risks and spread.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Exp ... -0022.html

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U.S. Department of Defense Awarded a Contract for ‘COVID-19 Research’ in Ukraine 3 Months Before Covid Was Known to Exist
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 14, 2022

The Exposé

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The world first started to hear about a novel coronavirus in early January 2020, with reports of an alleged new pneumonia like illness spreading across Wuhan, China. However, the world did not actually know of Covid-19 until February 2020, because it was not until the 11th of that month that the World Health Organisation officially named the novel coronavirus disease as Covid-19.

So with this being the official truth, why does United States Government data show that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) awarded a contract on the 12th November 2019 to Labyrinth Global Health INC. for ‘COVID-19 Research’, at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?

The shocking findings however, do not end there. The contract awarded in November 2019 for ‘COVID-19 Research’ was not only instructed to take place in Ukraine, it was in fact part of a much larger contract for a ‘Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’.

Perhaps explaining why Labyrinth Global Health has been collaborating with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, and Ernest Wolfe’s Metabiota since its formation in 2017.

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The Government of the United States has a website called ‘USA Spending‘, an official open data source of federal spending information. According to the site as of 12th April 2021 the US Government has spent a mind-blowing $3.63 trillion “in response to COVID-19”. But that’s not the only information on Covid that can be found within the site.

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Hidden within the ‘Award Search’ are details on a contract awarded by the Department of Defense to a company named ‘Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp‘, which is allegedly “a global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company specialising in infrastructure development”.

The contact was awarded on September 20th, 2012 and is described as “Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services”. Obviously this is very vague and most likely of little interest to anyone who happens to stumble across it. But there is something contained deep within the details that should be of interest to anyone and everyone.

The ‘Award History’ for the contract contains a tab for ‘Sub-Awards’ detailing the recipients, action date, amount, and very brief description for 115 Sub-Award transactions. Most of the Sub-Awards are extremely mundane for things such as “laboratory equipment for Kyiv”, or “office furniture for Kyiv”.

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But there is one Sub-Award that stands out among the rest, and it is was awarded to Labyrinth Global Health INC for “SME Manuscript Documentation and COVID-19 Research”.

An award for Covid-19 research isn’t exactly shocking when the world is allegedly in the grip of a Covid-19 pandemic, but considering the fact the sub-contract was awarded 12th November 2019, at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19, the award for Covid-19 research should come as a shock to everyone.

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But the shock doesn’t end there, because the place the contact for Covid-19 research was instructed to take place was Ukraine, as was the entire contract awarded by the DOD to Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp.

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The contract details found on the ‘USA Spending’ site actually reveal that the specific DOD department that awarded the contact was the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The contract was awarded 20th September 2012, and concluded on 13th October 2020.

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Whilst the details are vague, the US Government site also reveals that $21.7 million of the $116.6 million contact was spent on a ‘Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’.

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Why did the Department of Defense pay a company that is allegedly “a global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company specialising in infrastructure development”, to help implement a “Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’?
And why did both the DOD and said company then pay Labyrinth Global Health INC to carry out COVID-19 research in Ukraine at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?


Founded in 2017, Labyrinth Global Health is allegedly a “women-owned small business with deep expertise and a proven track record supporting initiatives for scientific and medical advancement.”

They describe themselves as “a multicultural and international organization with offices in four countries and a team of experts with diverse backgrounds and competencies, including microbiology, virology, global health, emerging infectious disease nursing, medical anthropology, field epidemiology, clinical research, and health information systems.”

One of those offices just happens to be located in Kyiv, Ukraine, which the company dubs “a gateway to Eastern Europe”.

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The leadership team of Labyrinth Global consists of Karen Saylors, PHD who is the Chief Executive Officer; Mary Guttieri, PHS who is the Chief Science Officer; and Murat Tartan who is the Chief Financial Officer.

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Karen Saylors, PhD, who co-founded Labyrinth Global Health, has allegedly worked in the international public health field for over a decade and has spent many years living in Africa establishing global surveillance networks, “working with partners to improve Global Health policy on infectious disease detection, response, and control”.

At Labyrinth, Dr. Saylors specialises in studies that aim to understand and mitigate biological and behavioural risk of disease transmission. Dr. Saylors worked with Oxford University Clinical Trials Network in Vietnam on zoonotic disease surveillance research and continues to coordinate with regional partners on emerging outbreaks in animal and human populations.

But who are the partners that Dr Karen Saylors and Labyrinth Global Health choose to work with? They are none other than the ‘Eco Health Alliance’ and ‘Metabiota’.

Dr Karen Saylors, Eco Health Alliance and Metabiota worked together on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) ‘PREDICT’ program from 2009, while Labyrinth Global Health worked alongside EHA and Metabiota on the PREDICT program from 2017.

Launched in 2009 and funded by USAID, PREDICT was an early warning system for new and emerging diseases in 21 countries. It was led by the University of California’s (“UC”) Davis One Health Institute and core partners included EcoHealth Alliance (“EHA”), Metabiota, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Smithsonian Institution, and as we’ve just revealed; Labyrinth Global Health. PREDICT was a forerunner of the more ambitious Global Virome Project.

The USAID describes PREDICT as having made “significant contributions to strengthening global surveillance and laboratory diagnostic capabilities for both known and newly discovered viruses within several important virus groups, such as filoviruses (including ebolaviruses), influenza viruses, paramyxoviruses, and coronaviruses“.

Here’s one of the many studies published by Eco Health Alliance, Metabiota and Labyrinth Global Health proving the connection –

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PREDICT partnered with the non-profit Eco Health Alliance (EHA) to carry out its 9-year effort to catalogue hundreds of thousands of biological samples, “including over 10,000 bats.” A PREDICT-funded 2015 study on “diversity of coronavirus in bats” also included Peter Daszak, president of EHA, among its participants.

Eco Health Alliance is listed as a partner of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (“WIV”) on archived pages of its website and was mentioned as a one of the institute’s “strategic partners” by the WIV’s Deputy Director General in 2018.

Notably, the relationship between the WIV and the American Biodefence establishment was advanced by EHA policy advisor, David R. Franz, former commander at US bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick.

WIV’s Dr. Shi Zhengli, a.k.a. “Batwoman,” had also worked with EHA’s Daszak on bat-related studies. As far back as 2005, Daszak and Zhengli were conducting research on SARS-like coronaviruses in bats. Several PREDICT-funded studies on SARS-like coronaviruses and Swine Flu count with both Zhengli’s and Daszak’s contributions. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these is a 2015 PREDICT and NIH-funded study she co-authored entitled: ‘A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence’.

Meanwhile, Nathan Wolfe is the founder of Metabiota and non-profit Global Viral. He spent over eight years conducting biomedical research in both sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Unsurprisingly, Wolfe is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. More notably, since 2008 he had been a member of DARPA’s DSRC, Defence Science Research Council, until it was disbanded.

All of these people and organisations have been working for at least the last decade studying coronaviruses and helping to set up Biolabs in Ukraine. All using US Department of Defense funds to do so. You can read much more about this here, here and here.

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Putting the biolabs in Ukraine to one side for now, let’s return to the subject of Covid-19. If the US Government was funding Covid-19 research before Covid-19 was publicly known to exist then this suggests they either knew Covid-19 existed naturally, or they were involved in constructing this virus in a lab.

But if the contract evidence isn’t enough for you to come to this conclusion (it should be), then perhaps coupling it with evidence that the US National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID), and Moderna had a coronavirus candidate in December 2019 will be.

A confidentially agreement which can be viewed here, states that providers ‘Moderna’ alongside the ‘National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) agreed to transfer ‘mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates’ developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna to recipients ‘The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’ on the 12th December 2019.


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The material transfer agreement was signed the December 12th 2019 by Ralph Baric, PhD, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and then signed by Jacqueline Quay, Director of Licensing and Innovation Support at the University of North Carolina on December 16th 2019.

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The agreement was also signed by two representatives of the NIAID, one of whom was Amy F. Petrik PhD, a technology transfer specialist who signed the agreement on December 12th 2019 at 8:05 am. The other signatory was Barney Graham MD PhD, an investigator for the NIAID, however this signature was not dated.

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The final signatories on the agreement were Sunny Himansu, Moderna’s Investigator, and Shaun Ryan, Moderna’s Deputy General Counsel. Both signatures were made on December 17th 2019.

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All of these signatures were made prior to any knowledge of the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus.I t wasn’t until December 31st 2019 that the World Health Organisation (WHO) became aware of an alleged cluster of viral pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. But even at this point they had not determined that an alleged new coronavirus was to blame, instead stating the pneumonia was of “unknown cause”.

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All of this requires much further research to fit all of the pieces of the puzzle together, but here’s what we definitely know so far –

*A novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan in December 2019.
*The world did not get to hear about this novel coronavirus until early January 2020.
*The world did not know this novel coronavirus was called Covid-19 until February 2020, when the World Health Organization officially named it so.
*The US Department of Defense awarded a contract for Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services to Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp‘, which is allegedly “a global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company specialising in infrastructure development”.
*That contract involved a Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine.
*As part of this larger contract, another contract was awarded to Labyrinth Global Health for ‘COVID-19 Research’ on 12th November 2019.
*This was awarded at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19.
*Labyrinth Global Health works alongside the ‘Eco Health Alliance’, and ‘Metabiota’, and participated in the USAID PREDICT program. All of these people and organisations have been working for at least the past decade studying coronaviruses and helping to set up Biolabs in Ukraine. All using US Department of Defense funds to do so.
*Information found here points to Eco Health Alliance having a hand in creating the Covid-19 virus.
*Information found here points to Moderna having a hand in creating the Covid-19 virus.
*‘Moderna’, alongside the ‘National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) agreed to tranfer ‘mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates’ developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna, to recipients ‘The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’ on the 12th December 2019.

What does all this point to? That’s for you to ponder and decide. But we promise you there is much more to come on the above…

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/04/ ... -to-exist/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Sat May 07, 2022 2:18 pm

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Killed by capitalism: U.S. government shrugs shoulders as COVID death toll hits 1 million
Originally published: Liberation News on May 4, 2022 by Sunil Freeman (more by Liberation News) (Posted May 07, 2022)

he United States has just marked a horrific milestone as the official COVID-19 death count passes one million. At the same time, global COVID fatalities are over 6.2 million and rising. The United States, far and away the richest country on earth, with just 4.2% of the world’s population, has suffered over 16% of the deaths.

What does this say about the brutally dysfunctional system that allowed such a death wave to happen?

Political leaders have moved on, acting as if the pandemic is over, “mission accomplished,” as if one million deaths–and counting–are just the normal background hum of a system built to generate profits for the wealthy donors who matter most.

How did we get here? An honest analysis should not be expected from the U.S. corporate media. They are too busy beating the drums for war in a frenzied drive to boost ratings and profits.

Pandemic warnings not heeded where profit is king

While no one could know what the future held when first hearing about the virus at the start of the decade, scientists had been warning about the certainty of another health crisis such as the global influenza pandemic that began in 1918. The suffering of the people could have been reduced had society been built to meet human needs.

Some deaths were inevitable as scientists struggled to understand the threat and healthcare workers heroically treated patients at great personal risk. But one million deaths? Such a disaster can only happen in a country where profit is king.

Essential ventilators and protective equipment were in short supply across the country because the public health system has been dismantled and maintaining adequate reserves would have reduced profits. Tools to contain the pandemic such as testing have been limited at best, and widespread contact tracing was never seriously attempted.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose “leadership” was celebrated by the media in the early days, had previously reduced the number of hospital beds to cut costs. The state had already lost 20,000 hospital beds over the previous 20 years, and Cuomo had been governor for roughly half of that time.

Hospitals deliberately operate with dangerously low numbers of nurses in order to maximize profit. The 175,000 member National Nurses Union, the country’s largest nurses’ union, has protested for safe staffing levels and federal regulation to protect nurses and patients throughout the pandemic.

Politicians fail to act
In the United States, workers–often without basic protective equipment–stocked shelves, delivered goods and kept society from falling apart. While some people were able to work online, millions could not. The necessity of universal health care became even more critical as shutdowns forced many to lose their jobs and with it their health insurance.

The crucial need for universal housing was all the more obvious as the pandemic spread. And yet politicians from both parties still oppose universal healthcare and housing. Police still harass people living in tents near empty luxury apartments, and evictions are rising after desperately-needed protections were lifted.

Donald Trump downplayed the threat in a criminally reckless manner. At one press briefing he offered the deadly suggestion that injections of disinfectant could kill the virus.

The U.S. death count soared as embarrassed government health officials struggled to protect lives while not insulting Trump. Tens of thousands of people died as a result of his cynical denialism that encouraged his followers to be anti-mask and anti-science.

Joe Biden campaigned on promises to bring the pandemic to an end, but his administration has failed completely to fulfil this pledge. Instead, his administration is essentially organizing society’s surrender to the virus–rolling back mandated precautions and convincing people to “go back to normal.”

Upon taking office, the Biden administration could only restore public trust in a scientific approach to defeat the virus directed by the government’s health experts by vastly expanding social programs. Guaranteeing universal healthcare, cancelling the rents and mortgages, indefinitely banning utility shut-offs, and other similar relief measures would have drawn a clear line between their approach and the disaster under Trump, and given people good reason to adhere to the recommendations by public health officials. But none of this happened. Instead, the Biden administration carried out a disjointed vaccination campaign that framed the issue largely as one of personal responsibility.

Socialist healthcare

Also vitally important are the structural reasons the United States does not protect public health. Socialist countries, and even most capitalist ones with a functional public health system, have fared much better.

As people around the globe saw appalling photographs of hospital workers wearing plastic garbage bags for protection, Chinese authorities, working in a system that prioritized public health, moved quickly to shut down the viral threat.

Medical workers wore state-of-the-art protective equipment while treating patients. Food and basic necessities were provided to millions of people as huge cities shut down to isolate the virus. Chinese authorities quickly built hospitals to treat the initial wave of patients. China, whose population is about four times that of the United States, has suffered a death toll one-half of one percent of that of the United States.

The stark difference between these two approaches–and the deadly outcome–speaks volumes. And yet, perhaps to divert attention, political leaders here claimed China was responsible for the pandemic.

Critics who grudgingly acknowledged the Chinese success in containing the virus wondered, “At what cost?” Donald Trump spoke of “the China virus” and racist attacks on Chinese and other Asians rose across the country.

As the U.S. death count climbed, Cuba’s renowned international health missions sprang into action, bringing thousands of doctors to more than 20 countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.

Cuba has also developed its own COVID vaccines, vaccinated more than 90% of the country, and made them available to Venezuela and Iran in spite of the U.S. blockade. In contrast, the United States has maintained deadly sanctions, essentially weaponizing the virus against countries it opposes.

Vaccine apartheid

U.S. vaccines, based on publicly-funded research, have led to soaring profits for pharmaceutical companies. In February, Pfizer projected revenues of $32 billion in 2022.

Its CEO Albert Bourla received total compensation of $24.3 million in 2021, a year in which the company’s profits more than doubled that of the previous year.

Pharmaceutical companies, with the bipartisan support of U.S. and other political leaders, have successfully used patent protection laws to block the possibility of mass vaccination in poor countries around the world.

Such racist and homicidal devotion to corporate profits directly undercuts public health efforts. The more the virus spreads, the greater its potential to evolve into deadlier variants. Vaccination rates in Africa vary in different countries, but across the continent only about 15% of the adult population has been fully vaccinated.

The homicidal impact of this medical apartheid calls to mind the millions of preventable deaths in Africa and Asia as patent protections blocked access to life saving treatment for HIV/AIDS.

Pharmaceutical company executives were not the only people to profit from the pandemic. The pandemic has been rife with opportunity for money making by the whole billionaire class. Data collected from Forbes magazine indicated that the combined wealth of the world’s 2,690 billionaires rose from $8 trillion on March 20, 2020 to $13.5 trillion as of July 31, 2021.

An explosion of protests

Although the government responded with temporary, limited financial support and moratoria on evictions and utility shutoffs, it failed to address the systemic injustices that have led to 1 million deaths.

As months of unpaid back rent accumulated for people who lost their jobs during the pandemic, a series of Cancel the Rents car caravans drew support in more than 60 cities across the country.

Many protests were held outside prisons in solidarity with inmates who face particularly deadly conditions.

Militancy grew among workers, who had been forced to work in unsafe conditions and had shown that they–not the bosses–are the essential force that keeps society from collapsing. Waves of strikes and walkouts increased, and the wave continues today.

The pandemic could not stop huge numbers of outraged people from protesting in the streets after the racist police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black people brutally gunned down by cops and vigilantes.

A total of 35 million people joined protests in cities and small towns across the country that lasted for months in the summer of 2020. Many of them, outraged by the killings and also by the inept government response to the pandemic, had never protested before. Brutal police attacks against demonstrators only fueled people’s determination to resist.

What future?

The pandemic taught that it’s difficult to predict the future.

The pandemic relief programs and protections against eviction are ending as the capitalist class attack intensifies on debt-burdened workers who now face increasing inflation.

The more transmissible BA.2 omicron subvariant is rapidly spreading even as politicians pretend the pandemic is ending. A federal program for uninsured people to receive free COVID testing has been shut down for lack of funds, even as additional billions of dollars go to the Pentagon and war in Ukraine.

The future would appear grim if just these things are considered. But there are other players on the scene. Workers have showed their power as they shut down businesses, not only in the powerful month of “Striketober.” Those workers and others are organizing and joining unions at Amazon, Starbucks stores, the New York Times, and elsewhere.

Local mutual aid groups will not fold simply because politicians say to forget the pandemic and move on. People will receive food and assistance but will also learn from each other to better organize against the system that allowed one million people to die.

It’s time to take the lessons learned, organize, and fight for a new system.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/07/killed-by-capitalism/
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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Thu May 12, 2022 2:46 pm

Coronavirus in North Korea
May 12, 9:38 am

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No matter how hard North Korea tried to avoid a coronavirus epidemic, even draconian measures with closed borders and strict travel regulation were not enough.
In North Korea, the first case of infection was detected after the closure of the country's borders. Kim Jong-un instructed to sort it out by introducing various restrictions.

Coronavirus in North Korea

To this day, the DPRK authorities have stated that there was no COVID-19 in the country.

According to the North Korean Central Telegraph Agency (KCNA), on May 12, a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of the DPRK was convened in the country, it was attended by the leader of the republic, Kim Jong-un.

“In our country, which from February 2020 to this day for two years and three months was guarded by an emergency anti-epidemic front <…> an emergency situation has arisen,” the message says.

The North Korean news agency added that Kim Jong-un called the emergency "sudden".

“In all counties and cities of the country, each lock down your region and <…> perfectly close the paths for the spread of a malicious virus. <…> We will overcome the sudden crisis and will certainly win the emergency fight against the virus,” he ordered.

It is noted that according to the results of tests taken on May 8 from patients with a fever in Pyongyang, they stated a variant of the BA.2 coronavirus, that is, the Omicron strain. The country's authorities announced the introduction of a virus control system for a "maximum emergency".

https://news.mail.ru/incident/51262272/?frommail=1 - zinc


It is worth noting that the DPRK was the last of the major countries to be infected. More than two years pulled, but did not escape.
Of course, now they are trying to avoid what is happening in China after a new outbreak of coronavirus and subsequent restrictive measures.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7610966.html

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This image is an 2021 representation of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and is representative of all current variants. (Photo: NJ Spotlight News)

Our COVID blunder: Some learn from experience. Some don’t
Originally published: Our COVID blunder: Some learn from experience. Some don't on May 8, 2022 by Godfree Roberts (more by Our COVID blunder: Some learn from experience. Some don't) (Posted May 12, 2022)

Popular culture, competence, justice, values, and the dream of betterment may have been the pillars on which the USA’s soft power was based, build upon the ground of success. Success made the others attractive; success is the most powerful attraction. Now the West is losing its aura of success, through endless wars, divisive politics, COVID failure, financial crises, debt. And ever more desperate attempts to hold power against ever bolder dissent. It’s just beginning. And not just the USA, the West doesn’t present well any more: protests in Amsterdam, London, Berlin; a year of gilets jaunes in France. The world is watching. Not efficient, not attractive, not law-based. Not successful. – Patrick Armstrong

A story of two civilizations: one learns from history, the other doesn’t.
Coronaviruses have been with us for as long as conspiracies, so it’s natural to link them. But the history of epidemics provide better explanations than any conspiracy theory and useful advice to those who learn from it.

Our First Covid Blunder

When a Swine Flu scare struck during the 1976 presidential campaign, Gerald Ford endorsed mass immunization. The astonished WHO (which had not been consulted) announced, “No other countries have plans for mass inoculations”. But U.S. officials pressured the WHO to endorse Ford’s decision and lo! “The following day’s headlines read, ‘WHO endorses President Ford’s plan for massive inoculation against swine flu virus’”.

46 million obediently took the shot, and 500 of them came down with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes full-body paralysis and for which no cure exists. 4000 Americans claimed $3.5 billion in damages from Uncle Sam. “By far the greatest number of the claims, two-thirds, are for neurological damage or even death, allegedly triggered by the flu shot,” said Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes. The fiasco contributed to Jimmy Carter’s win.

When the AIDS epidemic struck in 1981 Ronald Reagan ignored it–old people and homosexuals were dispensable but political careers were not–and was reelected in a landslide.

Since then, governments have treated epidemics as the acts of capricious Gods, mumbled about ‘bad ‘flu seasons’ and let herd immunity to work its magic, and rid us of our elderly, infirm, and vulnerable.

Nowhere was this policy more evident than in Britain, says UK Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn,

I remember distinctly going to a meeting at the Cabinet Office, where we got lecture on herd immunity. The last time I discussed herd immunity was when I worked on a pig farm 40 years ago. It was absurd that actually [you] would build up herd immunity by allowing people to die. And so, while the government was going into eugenic formulas and discussing all this stuff, they were not making adequate preparations.

Lacking Britain’s National Health Service, how the U.S. could have made ‘adequate preparations’? Americans rightly distrust their medical industry, their media, and their government and, increasingly, each other.

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Capability

The CDC (born in 1946 as the U.S. Army Communicable Disease Center and still headed by an Army officer) has only ever provided surveillance, research, and advice, leaving execution to the Army’s chain-of-command. The national health department of Swaziland has more public health field staff than the CDC.

To complicate matters, expert opinion was divided when Covid arrived in America. Mainstream epidemiologists and public health entities doubted–some rejected–lockdowns and mass quarantines as ineffectual and impracticable.

They made their laissez faire obvious in 2014. The outbreak of Ebola, with its 40% case fatality rate, triggered alarm about the disease spreading across America, and state governors demanded mandatory quarantines for healthcare workers returning to the U.S. from afflicted regions.

But Dr. Tony Fauci did not want his colleagues subjected to quarantine, and went on mass media to blast New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia and Florida, declaring their quarantines ‘unscientific’ and ‘draconian’. Again, Ebola’s case fatality rate is 40%.

So it was no surprise that, in March, 2020, Dr. Fauci told reporters,

I can’t imagine shutting down New York or Los Angeles. But the judgement of the Chinese health authorities is that, since it’s spreading throughout the provinces… it’s in fact going to help them contain it. Whether or not it does or does not is open to question because historically when you shut things down it doesn’t have a major effect.

The Chinese probably have more experience dealing with epidemics than the rest of the world combined. And more success. They never allowed the Black Death to gain a foothold, for example. After WWII, they needed only two years to eliminate diseases that had been endemic for a century. The U.S. National Institutes of Health said,

Life expectancy under Mao ranks among the most rapid, sustained increases in documented global history.

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Following the 2003 SARS outbreak, China assigned three teams to prepare for the next epidemic:

1.Prevention and Detection, led by George Gao, head of the CCDC. Dr. Gao established a coronavirus detection system to give a 70,000 physicians one-click access to his Beijing headquarters.
2.Response, led by the Party, whose 94 million members took responsibility for logistics during shutdowns.
3.Implications, led by Liu He (shaking hands, below). His report concluded that, historically, pandemics often shift the balance of global power. He focused on preparing the economy to exit lockdowns at full throttle. He used a supercomputer and a thousand PhDs to model the scenario Beijing is currently executing.

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Storm Warnings

Despite repeated warnings, when the WHO announced the outbreak in January, 2020, Dr. Fauci announced, “The American public shouldn’t worry about the coronavirus outbreak in China. It’s a very, very low risk to the United States.. And we have ways of responding–like we did with this one case in Seattle, Washington, who had traveled to China and brought back the infection.” President Trump repeated his assurances.

While politicians ignored the virus (already widespread here), the spectacle of a huge country like China shutting down its cherished economy convinced our media insisted that the virus must be an existential threat–while simultaneously predicting that the shutdown would wreck China’s economy. Nancy Pelosi cheered the effects of virus on China’s economy and the State Department circulated ‘Blame China!’ memos to embassies. As always, official acknowledgement drew even more attention to the outbreak.

The first domestic deaths in the West triggered demands that government Do Something, and Britain abandoned its ‘herd immunity’ policy as ‘insensitive’ and fired the man who proposed it. But the CDC hung tough. Covid discussions were moved to secure facilities, classified, and released only on a need to know basis. Covid testing was banned and local health officials who insisted on testing were served cease and desist orders. Media fixation on the epidemic finally forced the CDC to lift its testing ban in mid-March.

A European epidemiologist then in China suspected that China had a deeper agenda and wrote me at the time:

I find the Chinese government’s response extremely interesting, as though it deliberately exaggerated C-19. It seems the PRC is fanning fears on purpose, using maps filled with dark areas and shutting down everything everywhere–on a staggering scale. Few people realize just how big Wuhan is, and how significant Chinese New Year is in terms of people moving around and going in and out of those wet markets every day: literally hundreds of thousands of people leaving them, taking public transport, going home, exposing family and visiting relatives who in turn go to crowded areas and use public transport themselves. Comparing the paucity of cases to the population and the relatively low death rate, I suspect Wuhan was practicing for a really serious outbreak, like Ebola. And, just as they did with SARS, the government has taken copious notes on how to improve their response–while showing us how China will respond.

As we are beginning to realize, China benefited greatly from testing its civil defense, management, and social cohesion. For scope, speed, agility, sophistication, and geopolitical impact, nothing in history compares to it. For effectiveness, it is unparalleled, as this chart reminds us:

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Some societies learn from experience. Some repeat it.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/12/our-covid-blunder/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Fri May 13, 2022 2:36 pm

North Korea confirms more than 350,000 cases of Covid-19

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited the state epidemic prevention headquarters to assess the epidemiological situation. | Photo: rodong.rep.kp
Posted May 13, 2022 (2 hours 21 minutes ago)

The authorities reported six deaths and one of the people had the BA2 subvariant of Ómicron.

North Korean authorities confirmed this Thursday that there are more than 350,000 cases of Covid-19 in the country, so that the disease has community circulation.

The Secretary General of the Workers' Party of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, visited the state epidemic prevention headquarters on this day, accompanied by members of the Presidency of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party, Jo Yong Won and Pak Jong Cho.

The also president of State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) toured the rooms of the headquarters and examined the preventive situation of the epidemic. This comes just one day after the state epidemic prevention work was changed to the maximum emergency epidemic prevention system to deal with the persistent epidemic prevention crisis and investigate the spread of Covid-19 throughout the country. the nation.


According to the authorities, a fever with no identified causes "explosively spread in the country since the end of April and more than 350,000 people suffered from the fever in a short period of time." In addition, they specified that about 162,200 people were completely cured.

Only this May 12, 18,000 people with the fever were registered and about 187,800 are under isolation and with medical assistance. Official sources report six people dead after this wave of infections, one of them tested positive for the BA2 subvariant of Ómicron.


Kim Jong Un criticized that the simultaneous spread of the fever with the capital area as the center shows that there is a vulnerable point in the epidemic prevention system that has already been established.

He reiterated the importance of working in the country's provinces, cities and cantons to take isolation measures in each work, productive or residence unit, closing areas and providing inhabitants with all the comforts to stop the transmission of the disease.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/corea-no ... -0003.html

Google Translator

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Francisca Lita Sáez (Spain), An Unequal Fight, 2020.

In a world of great disorder and extravagant lies, we look for compassion: The Nineteenth Newsletter (2022)
Posted May 13, 2022 by Vijay Prashad

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

These are deeply upsetting times. The COVID-19 global pandemic had the potential to bring people together, to strengthen global institutions such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), and to galvanise new faith in public action. Our vast social wealth could have been pledged to improve public health systems, including both the surveillance of outbreaks of illness and the development of medical systems to treat people during these outbreaks. Not so.

Studies by the WHO have shown us that health care spending by governments in poorer nations has been relatively flat during the pandemic, while out-of-pocket private expenditure on health care continues to rise. Since the pandemic was declared in March 2020, many governments have responded with exceptional budget allocations; however, across the board from richer to the poorer nations, the health sector received only ‘a fairly small portion’ while the bulk of the spending was used to bail out multinational corporations and banks and provide social relief for the population.

In 2020, the pandemic cost the global gross domestic product an estimated $4 trillion. Meanwhile, according to the WHO, the ‘needed funding … to ensure epidemic preparedness is estimated to be approximately U.S.$150 billion per year’. In other words, an annual expenditure of $150 billion could likely prevent the next pandemic along with its multi-trillion-dollar economic bill and incalculable suffering. But this kind of social investment is simply not in the cards these days. That’s part of what makes our times so upsetting.

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S. H. Raza (India), Monsoon in Bombay, 1947–49.

On 5 May, the WHO released its findings on the excess deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the 24-month period of 2020 and 2021, the WHO estimated the pandemic’s death toll to be 14.9 million. A third of these deaths (4.7 million) are said to have been in India; this is ten times the official figure released by the Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has disputed the WHO’s figures. One would have thought that these staggering numbers–nearly 15 million dead globally in the two-year period–would be sufficient to strengthen the will to rebuild depleted public health systems. Not so.

According to a study on global health financing, development assistance for health (DAH) increased by 35.7 percent between 2019 and 2020. This amounts to $13.7 billion in DAH, far short of the projected $33 billion to $62 billion required to address the pandemic. In line with the global pattern, while DAH funding during the pandemic went towards COVID-19 projects, various key health sectors saw their funds decrease (malaria by 2.2 percent, HIV/AIDS by 3.4 percent, tuberculosis by 5.5 percent, reproductive and maternal health by 6.8 percent). The expenditure on COVID-19 also had some striking geographical disparities, with the Caribbean and Latin America receiving only 5.2 percent of DAH funding despite experiencing 28.7 percent of reported global COVID-19 deaths.

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Sajitha R. Shankar (India), Alterbody, 2008.

While the Indian government is preoccupied with disputing the COVID-19 death toll with the WHO, the government of Kerala–led by the Left Democratic Front–has focused on using any and every means to enhance the public health sector. Kerala, with a population of almost 35 million, regularly leads in the country’s health indicators among India’s twenty-eight states. Kerala’s Left Democratic Front government has been able to handle the pandemic because of its robust public investment in health care facilities, the public action led by vibrant social movements that are connected to the government, and its policies of social inclusion that have minimised the hierarchies of caste and patriarchy that otherwise isolate social minorities from public institutions.

In 2016, when the Left Democratic Front took over state leadership, it began to enhance the depleted public health system. Mission Aardram (‘Compassion’), started in 2017, was intended to improve public health care, including emergency departments and trauma units, and draw more people away from the expensive private health sector to public systems. The government rooted Mission Aardram in the structures of local self-government so that the entire health care system could be decentralised and more closely attuned to the needs of communities. For example, the mission developed a close relationship with the various cooperatives, such as Kudumbashree, a 4.5-million-member women’s anti-poverty programme. Due to the revitalised public health care system, Kerala’s population has begun to turn away from the private sector in favour of these government facilities, whose use increased from 28 percent in the 1980s to 70 percent in 2021 as a result.

As part of Mission Aardram, the Left Democratic Front government in Kerala created Family Health Centres across the state. The government has now established Post-COVID Clinics at these centres to diagnose and treat people who are suffering from long-term COVID-19-related health problems. These clinics have been created despite little support from the central government in New Delhi. A number of Kerala’s public health and research institutes have provided breakthroughs in our understanding of communicable diseases and helped develop new medicines to treat them, including the Institute for Advanced Virology, the International Ayurveda Research Institute, and the research centres in biotechnology and pharmaceutical medicines at the Bio360 Life Sciences Park. All of this is precisely the agenda of compassion that gives us hope in the possibilities of a world that is not rooted in private profit but in social good.

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Nguyễn tư Nghiêm (Vietnam), The Dance, 1968.

In November 2021, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research worked alongside twenty-six research institutes to develop A Plan to Save the Planet. The plan has many sections, each of which emerged out of deep study and analysis. One of the key sections is on health, with thirteen clear policy proposals:

1. Advance the cause of a people’s vaccine for COVID-19 and for future diseases.
2. Remove patent controls on essential medicines and facilitate the transfer of both medical science and technology to developing countries.
3. De-commodify, develop, and increase investment in robust public health systems.
4. Develop the public sector’s pharmaceutical production, particularly in developing countries.
5. Form a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Health Threats.
6. Support and strengthen the role health workers’ unions play at the workplace and in the economy.
7. Ensure that people from underprivileged backgrounds and rural areas are trained as doctors.
8. Broaden medical solidarity, including through the World Health Organisation and health platforms associated with regional bodies.
9. Mobilise campaigns and actions that protect and expand reproductive and sexual rights.
10. Levy a health tax on large corporations that produce beverages and foods that are widely recognised by international health organisations to be harmful to children and to public health in general (such as those that lead to obesity or other chronic diseases).
11. Curb the promotional activities and advertising expenditures of pharmaceutical corporations.
12. Build a network of accessible, publicly funded diagnostic centres and strictly regulate the prescription and prices of diagnostic tests.
13. Provide psychological therapy as part of public health systems.

If even half of these policy proposals were to be enacted, the world would be less dangerous and more compassionate. Take point no. 6 as a reference. During the early months of the pandemic, it became normal to talk about the need to support ‘essential workers’, including health care workers (our dossier from June 2020, Health Is a Political Choice, made the case for these workers). All those banged pots went silent soon thereafter and health care workers found themselves with low pay and poor working conditions. When these health care workers went on strike–from the United States to Kenya–that support simply did not materialise. If health care workers had a say in their own workplaces and in the formation of health policy, our societies would be less prone to repeated healthcare calamities.

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Roque Dalton

There’s an old Roque Dalton poem from 1968 about headaches and socialism that gives us a taste of what it will take to save the planet:

It is beautiful to be a communist,
even if it gives you many headaches.

The communists’ headache
is presumed to be historical; that is to say,
that it does not yield to painkillers,
but only to the realisation of paradise on earth.
That’s the way it is.

Under capitalism, we get a headache
and our heads are torn off.
In the revolution’s struggle, the head is a time-bomb.

In socialist construction,
we plan for the headache
which does not make it scarce, but quite the contrary.
Communism will be, among other things,
an aspirin the size of the sun.


Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... ic-health/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 08, 2022 2:27 pm

Shanghai is reopening after suppressing the covid outbreak. The triumph of science and health
biological threat

June 8, 9:54 am

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Shanghai is reopening after suppressing the covid outbreak. The triumph of science and health

China's largest city, Shanghai, largely reopened on June 1 in the morning after a two-month shutdown that successfully warded off an outbreak of the highly contagious Omicron B.2 covid sub-variant. It was a triumph for Chinese health mobilization, as the outbreak, when the number of infections reached nearly 30,000 a day in mid-April, killed fewer than 600 people, mostly elderly and unvaccinated.

During these two months, most offices, factories and other jobs were closed, although work continued in some key industries, workers lived in enterprises and rarely left them in a closed loop system. Schools switched to online classes, there were almost no passengers on public transport, and the few open shops could trade only with the delivery of purchased goods outside. The city itself was closed off from the rest of the country, and visitors were only allowed entry after a two-week quarantine.

For the most part, residents stayed at home, the Internet being their main connection to the outside world. The delivery of food and other necessary items was organized by a well-developed network of house and district committees in the PRC, later they were replaced by state institutions.

Nearly a million commuters rode the subway to work on Wednesday, and shops and malls were thriving. Nearly a third of a million cars drove through the streets. Shanghai's famous Yuyuan Garden shopping mall was open as usual. Supermarkets are open to shoppers. Even Shanghai's largest automaker SAIC Motor operated at 80% of its production capacity.

More than twenty-two and a half million people - 90% of Shanghai's population - now live in low-risk areas, that is, where there have been no infections for more than two weeks. Thorough twice-weekly checks continue and health authorities remain on the alert. As one Shanghai resident told the South China Morning Post, "Beeps and traffic noise are back to pre-close levels, but this is the Shanghai we know, for better or worse."

The political significance of this successful battle against covid in Shanghai cannot be overstated. There can be no more debate about what policy should be followed to protect the population of the Earth from a deadly infection.

The second of the well-deservedly famous “Theses on Feuerbach” by Marx reads: “The question of whether human thinking has objective truth is not at all a question of theory, but a practical question. In practice, a person must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, this-worldliness of his thinking.

The example of China proves that the zero covid policy is effective, even against the most contagious variant. The outbreak in Shanghai likely had two causes: an infection brought in from abroad, which was inevitable given the city's role in the global economy, and the city's lack of strict adherence to the zero covid policy, which changed under direct leadership from Beijing when the number of infected began to rise sharply.

And still, even on the worst day of the pandemic in China, in mid-April, the average number of infections per week was 26,109. In the same period, the US had a drop to 27,000 new infections per day, after the warning of the Omicron outbreak and before the emergence of a new one. waves of sub-option B.2. Now the number of infections per day is again approaching 110,000, and in all of China yesterday 68 people were infected, in Shanghai only 11. The last death from covid was six days ago.

Overall, during the pandemic, life expectancy in China exceeded that in the United States for the first time. Although the US is much richer and US medicine is better equipped, inequalities in the availability of medical care, a deepening social crisis, expressed in “deaths of despair” (death from drugs, including opiates, alcohol and suicide) and, above all, the loss of a million lives in a pandemic, which could well have been prevented, led to an unprecedented decline in life expectancy - one of the important indicators of the viability of any society.

China, on the other hand, has only 5,226 deaths. And according to a recent WHO report on excess deaths, there were 52,000 “negative” deaths in China, meaning efforts to fight the pandemic in China have resulted in saving the lives of those who otherwise died. from other diseases.

Given the public health success in the case of a densely populated city with 26 million residents living closely together with the extreme contagiousness of airborne Omicron, this is a remarkable achievement of the goal of eradicating the disease in the metropolis.

It is also a stark rebuttal to the endless bourgeois media claims that the population must come to terms with a life of virus and endless recurring illnesses, and the long-term effects of covid if they are lucky enough to survive.

Indeed, these efforts in Shanghai deserve both praise and scientific research and implementation. Given globalization and climate change, the potential for animal viruses to crossover to humans is clearly increasing dramatically. Not only is international preparedness for a pandemic critical, but understanding how to apply these sophisticated measures to contain pathogens, as in the Shanghai experience, is critical. The zero covid policy is a necessary lesson in the fight against any disease that threatens humanity.

However, instead of applauding China's success, the reaction of the US corporate media has been negative, if not openly hostile. The New York Times, after months of portraying the shutdown as a futile effort by the Chinese authorities to achieve the impossible - to defeat the Omicron outbreak through repressive and anti-democratic means - is not going to admit that the policy of the authorities in Shanghai was correct.

The New York Times describes the people of Shanghai as if they had just survived an earthquake or a hurricane or a months-long bombing, and are breathing a sigh of relief after mass suffering, rather than celebrating victory over a deadly virus.

New York Times reporters even found a student in Shanghai who told them, "I think the damage from the pandemic measures is worse than the damage from the virus itself." These reporters were apparently tasked with finding at least one in a billion Chinese at any cost to echo the words of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who launched the US campaign against lockdown measures two years ago with a warning: “The cure couldn’t be worse.” disease."

Not once has the mainstream Wall Street media discussed the likely economic catastrophe for the world if China were to allow the preachers of the sect to "learn to live with the virus" to dictate policy to it. During the Omicron wave last winter, deaths soared outside of China, as did worker absenteeism. Within six months, 1.6 million would have died in China, the healthcare system would have been undermined, and society would have been seriously destabilized.

The reaction of the corporate media is dictated solely by the interests of Wall Street and US imperialism. They wanted Omicron to destroy China, both to end the zero covid policy, which was a graphic rebuke for the indifference of imperialist states to the mass death of their citizens, and to strike decisively at China, which Washington considers the biggest strategic threat.

Decent people, in response to the opening in Shanghai, should both congratulate the Chinese people on such a colossal achievement and ask why the US, UK, Germany and other countries are unable to carry out such life-saving measures?

Hong Kong does not pursue a zero covid policy and therefore a new wave of covid is rolling into it - an even more contagious and deadly BA.4/5. In South Africa, the fifth wave is underway, despite almost 100% immunity in the population. The White House warns that 100 million people in the US could fall ill again this fall and winter as deaths rise.

We have written many times about the need for the complete destruction of covid. China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has shown that with will and perseverance, even such a highly contagious virus can be contained and eradicated. However, with the rest of the world oblivious to the long-term threats of covid, there will be even more pressure on China to cancel its zero covid policy.

This is a deep political lesson: one country can fight against covid, but cannot completely eradicate it, because the countries of the world are closely connected.

(c) Patrick Martin, Benjamin Matthews

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/0 ... d-j02.html - original in English

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7664366.html

This is WSWS? No vilification of Stalin or capitalist China? What is the world coming to? Does Boris know that they are Trots? Despite it all a very good article.

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Most workers who died of COVID in 2020 had something essential in common, study finds
BY DANIEL CHANG UPDATED JUNE 06, 2022 9:49 AM

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In this stock photo, a pedestrian wearing a protective mask as a precaution against the spread of the coronavirus walks in Philadelphia, Friday, April 22, 2022. MATT ROURKE AP

Most working-age Americans who died of COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic were so-called essential workers in labor, service and retail jobs that required on-site attendance and prolonged contact with others, according to a recently published study led by a University of South Florida epidemiologist.

The study looks back on COVID-19 deaths in 2020 and affirms what many had already known or suspected — that Americans who could not work from home and who labored in low-paying jobs with few or no benefits, such as paid sick leave and health insurance coverage, bore the brunt of deaths during the pandemic’s first year, said Jason Salemi, an associate professor in USF’s College of Public Health and co-author of the study.

Salemi said the finding, while perhaps expected, left him with two takeaways: That essential workers need more protections during an infectious disease pandemic, and that society’s desire to “return to normal” will mean different things for different people — with inequitable consequences.

“If I say I want things to return to normal, I’m in a position of advantage,” Salemi said. “I can work from home most days. I have access to a primary care physician, and paid sick leave. There are people in this study for whom that may not be the case.”

To conduct the study, Salemi and his colleagues analyzed nearly 70,000 death certificates for people ages 25 to 64 years old and who had died of COVID-19 in 2020, nearly all of which occurred before the first vaccine was authorized in December of that year.

But death certificates do not always include a decedent’s occupation, Salemi said. Instead, researchers used education attainment level, which is listed on all death certificates, as a proxy for an individual’s socioeconomic position. No education beyond high school was “low” while some college education was “intermediate” and anyone with at least a bachelor’s degree was “high.”

Researchers then used U.S. Census data on occupations held by adults in 2020 to calculate the possibility of remote work for the different groups, which were further divided by race, ethnicity, gender and age.

*The death rate of low socioeconomic position adults — those whose education attainment level did not go beyond a high school diploma — was five times higher when compared to high socioeconomic position adults, and the mortality rate of intermediate socioeconomic position adults was two times higher.

▪ White women made up the largest population group considered high socioeconomic position. By comparison, nearly 60% of Hispanic men were in a low socioeconomic position.

▪ The death rate of low socioeconomic position Hispanic men was 27 times higher than high socioeconomic position white women. Salemi said the finding that stood out for him was that among all 25- to 64-year-old adults in 2020, people in a low socioeconomic position made up about one-third of the working-age population but accounted for two-thirds of COVID-19 deaths for the same age group.

ANALYZING THE COVID DEATHS OF WORKING-AGE AMERICANS

Since 2020, nearly 250,000 working-age Americans have died of COVID-19, Salemi said, though he does not know if the same mortality pattern has persisted in 2021 and 2022. Researchers intend to analyze those deaths, too, to help public health officials and lawmakers develop strategies to better protect service and retail workers.

But with new cases surging again, and three in four Florida counties now at a “high” community level of COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Salemi said this research could help motivate federal agencies, such as the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, to make recommendations to reduce infectious diseases from spreading among workers.

“We need really strong worksite protections against airborne pathogens,” he said. “It’s got to go beyond, ‘In certain situations, wear a well-fitting mask.’ .... Employers can do a lot to help keep people safe. But even members of the community, and those of us lucky to be working from home, the more we can reduce community spread of the virus the more we can protect people in these positions that are in the line of fire.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/corona ... rylink=cpy
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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 15, 2022 3:50 pm

Universal Health Care Could Have Saved More Than 330,000 U.S. Lives during COVID
The numbers of lives lost and dollars spent would have been significantly lower if coverage had been extended to everyone, a new study says

By Rachel Nuwer on June 13, 2022

Universal Health Care Could Have Saved More Than 330,000 U.S. Lives during COVID

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A woman walks among a field of some 660,000 white flags representing the number of U.S. lives lost to COVID-19 at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on September 16, 2021. Credit: Rod Lamkey/CNP/Sipa USA/Alamy Stock Photo

Americans spend more on health care than people in any other nation. Yet in any given year, the piecemeal nature of the American medical insurance system causes many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs. Not surprisingly, COVID-19 only exacerbated this already dire public health issue, as evidenced by the U.S.’s elevated mortality, compared with that of other high-income countries.

A new study quantifies the severity of the impact of the pandemic on Americans who did not have access to health insurance. According to findings published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, from the pandemic’s beginning until mid-March 2022, universal health care could have saved more than 338,000 lives from COVID-19 alone. The U.S. also could have saved $105.6 billion in health care costs associated with hospitalizations from the disease—on top of the estimated $438 billion that could be saved in a nonpandemic year.

“Health care reform is long overdue in the U.S.,” says the study’s lead author Alison Galvani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at the Yale School of Public Health. “Americans are needlessly losing lives and money.”

People who do not have insurance usually do not have a primary care doctor, which means they are more likely to suffer from preventable diseases such as type 2 diabetes. They also tend to wait longer to see a doctor when they fall ill. These two factors already contribute to higher mortality rates in nonpandemic years, and they compounded the impacts of COVID-19. Comorbidities exacerbate the risk of the disease, and waiting to seek care increases the likelihood of transmission to other people.

Prior to the pandemic, 28 million American adults were uninsured, and nine million more lost their insurance as a result of unemployment because of COVID-19. “Many Americans feel secure in having good health insurance from their employer, but employer-based insurance can be cut off when it is needed most,” Galvani points out.

In the new study, Galvani’s team compared the mortality risks of COVID-19 among people with and without insurance, as well as their risks of all other causes of death. The researchers compiled population characteristics of all uninsured Americans during the pandemic, taking into account things such as age-specific life expectancy and the elevation in mortality associated with a lack of insurance. They calculated that 131,438 people in total could have been saved from dying of COVID in 2020 alone. And more than 200,000 additional deaths from COVID-19 could have been averted since then, bringing the total through March 12, 2022, to more than 338,000.

The researchers also estimated the cost to insure the entire American population—and the savings that measure would produce. They found that a single-payer health care system would generate savings in three ways: more efficient investment in preventative care, lowered administrative costs and increased negotiating power for pharmaceuticals, equipment and fees. This would ultimately produce a net savings of $459 billion in 2020 and $438 billion in a nonpandemic year, the authors found. “Medicare for All would be both an economic stimulus and life-saving transformation of our health care system,” Galvani says. “It will cost people far less than the status quo.”

Galvani and her colleagues’ findings are “very convincing,” and “the methodology strikes me as exactly right,” says Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the work. “The savings estimates are consistent with every other estimate I’ve seen.”

Ann Keller, an associate professor of health policy and management also at U.C. Berkeley, suspects, however, that the new study likely underestimates the deaths that could have been avoided through universal health care because it does not consider the lower rates of chronic disease that often accompany single-payer systems. “Having consistent access to care can prevent chronic disease from occurring and can ensure that patients who develop chronic disease have it better managed,” says Keller, who was also not involved with the research. “I would think that, if one took that into account, the estimates of avoided deaths would be greater than the numbers reported here.”

Whatever the exact figures, Galvani says the message that comes out of the new study is clear: “Universal single-payer health care is both economically responsible and morally imperative.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ing-covid/
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