Returning to work amid the pandemic will cause thousands of new deaths
By Gustavo Giménez
In the last days, with the argument that if the economy continues to stop, it will not be possible to start it up again, both in countries where the pandemic is in full swing such as the US and England, such as those in which the curve has begun to decline but still have hundreds of deaths per day, and even in those who under a tricky speech that you have to continue in quarantine while quickly abandoning it, as is the case of President Fernández of Argentina, capitalist governments push for "back to work", even at the cost of many new thousands of deaths.
Most governments promise to close the quarantine door again if the curve of infected and dead climbs again. they support each other unfortunately, in the despair of millions without permanent employment or precarious, to whom the scant government assistance, if they can access them, They do not even minimally cover the basic needs of families and urgently need to recover some income to survive. Once again this system forces them to choose between dying of the infection or starving to death..
Until recently, the need to maintain a strict quarantine prevailed in the discourse of the world bourgeoisie.. Trump, Bolsonaro or Boris Johnson were harshly criticized for facing or delaying the confinement measures. Today many voices are heard praising models like the Swedish, that never went into quarantine and today has more than ten times the number of deaths of similar countries in that region of the planet that did confinement.
This turn in the discourse occurs when the pandemic is far from being controlled, continues to rise worldwide, registering to date the figure of more than four million confirmed infected and 277.000 dead, and even in countries in which it seemed dominated, such as China or South Korea, new epidemic outbreaks arise (1). It shows starkly, as still at risk of a major political crisis if the number of dead and infected escalates exponentially, the need to recover capitalist profit pushes governments to slaughter millions of workers and poor sectors of the population, the most unprotected to face contagion.
The opening of quarantines in the midst of strong political crises
A change that occurs with strong contradictions. A few weeks ago, the fights between Trump and many governors who refused to lift their quarantines and faced the onslaught of the real estate magnate were public.. In the main imperialist power and center of the development of the pandemic, these tugs continue to occur, but leaders who until yesterday were reticent, They are gradually lifting the quarantines and trying to partially reactivate the capitalist economy.
how you describe itMike Davis in your article“reopening the economy sends us to hell” published inJacobin (2), under the pressure of an economy that can quickly reach a 30% unemployment (today exceeds 14%) and when the latinos have lost the 60% of their works, like half of the workers under the age of 30 years, sending millions of American workers to work without proper protection is decreeing the deaths of thousands, Taking into account that 34 million have more than 55 years and others 10 million more than 65. That among them there are millions of diabetics, with chronic respiratory problems, heart disease, etc. When the "essential workers" of both the health teams, as well as food distribution, transportation or essential services, They do not have adequate protection elements. When tests are insufficient and many are not safe, since there is a large business of laboratories that are authorized to distribute serological tests that are not certified by the FDA.
Davis's warnings take on greater relevance when the news breaks that 100 New York transportation workers, mainly buses and the subway, died from the coronavirus infection. In addition to 3.800 infected who already contracted Covid-19.
In England, the center of the European pandemic, after his Prime Minister Boris Johnson tried to apply the concept of“herd immunity”(3) and ended up hospitalized on the verge of death, after some journalistic information that tried to show him as reluctant to pressure from businessmen to prematurely open the quarantine, these days leftist posts (4) have titled: “The bosses press to lift the blockade, They only care about profits.", “We have to fight to stop the return to work”.
So in a country where "el 21 of April, the Financial Times calculated a true figure of 41.000 deaths" and in which in recent weeks "there has been an increase in 121% of families with children using food banks as poverty rises”, as these media reflect, the orientation of those who govern the British empire has clearly changed: “Tories have spent the last month telling us: ‘stay at home, protect the nhs, save lives’. Now they can also adopt a new mantra: 'Go back to work, protect the economy, save the bosses.’”
Even the leader of the opposition Labor party“Starmer has spent weeks echoing bosses by demanding an "exit strategy" at the shutdown. And the unions have been in talks with the Conservatives about how to calm people's safety fears enough to get them back to work."The disaster is such in England, that even scientists advising the government have strongly protested, since their reports and recommendations are censored and “redacted” again by officials.
In punished Spain, whose rulers claim to have flattened the curve, but where are they still produced 150 daily dead, entry in the next few days in "Phase 1", of relaxation of the quarantine to allow new work and social activities, unleashed a marathon of comings and goings and resistance of the autonomous governments with the central government, who had to go back partially in the openings. As a product of these push and pull, Carmen Yolanda Fuentes resigned, the director of Public Health of the Community of Madrid, in protest of the decision to implement this opening, about which, at least formally, then they had to back off.
Similar scenarios occur in Italy, where this week mortality cases rebounded or France, country of which comrade Wladimir Susanj leader of the Commune, told us in a recent interview on the program"International panorama" of the DSL (5) what, in the midst of the catastrophic crisis that means more than 30.000 dead, The government plans to end the confinement for the 11 of May when“nothing is ready”.
In Latin America, Bolsonaro's quarantine evasion policies have already produced 10.000 deaths. A similar policy of the center leftist López Obrador, with the excuse that more than half of the population that lives from precarious jobs could work, now has 3.000 registered deaths and more than 30.000 infected, It has the health systems totally overwhelmed by the lack of respirators, camas, n95 masks, personal protection elements and the necessary supplies to face the outbreak. in another situation, Argentina, where despite the significant abandonment of its public health system, the pandemic situation is still less when compared to Brazil or other hard-hit countries, now Fernández develops a double discourse that says he privileges health over the economy, when in reality it is opening important sectors of the economy and work, without the means to protect and test the millions of workers who are going to get out of quarantine, At a time when the infection has taken a new leap as a result of massive contagion in precarious and deprived neighborhoods and the impact on geriatrics.
“Managed quarantine” and “controlled contagion”
Hand in hand with this premature and dangerous return to work, determined by the needs of large companies to compensate their losses and reactivate the capitalist economy, various new blurbs are developed to justify this. The theory that seemed discarded returns“herd immunity”, with the excuse that he must be infected, in the absence of vaccines, more than 60% population, so that the antibodies generated by those recovered act as a natural barrier, and what must be taken care of is the speed, so that the infection curve does not overwhelm the health system. They argue that in countries like Argentina, the process should be accelerated, since the curve is very flattened and the infectious peak is delayed. In others, where the infection continues to wreak havoc, although the curve has already descended somewhat, It is intended that the economy can be opened partially and gradually and continue with the downward control of infections and deaths achieved.
These campaigns take place at a time when uncertainties about the behavior of the virus still prevail.. It is not known for sure how long the antibodies generated by your infection will last in recovered people and if a second or third infection could occur.. further, unlike countries like South Korea, New Zealand or Finland, in which the magnitude of the tests could corner the infected patients and their contacts, the low quantity and inefficiency of tests carried out in most countries, make it very difficult to detect the real circulation of this invisible virus, that due to its characteristic of developing the symptoms several days after the infection, generates an explosive number of infected through asymptomatic, larger the more vulnerable the population, by age, previous pathologies or deplorable living or working conditions that allow them real social isolation, as happens in shantytowns or health centers where workers do not have proper protection against Covid-19.
By last, Medical and scientific entities have come to the crossroads of Angela Merkel's quarantine relaxation policy, the ruler who has been held up as a model in the administration of the crisis given her low number of deaths in relation to neighboring countries. In a document they sign "the presidents of the Frauenhofer Society, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers, the Max Planck Society for the Promotion of Science and Leibniz Association”, it is pointed out that the number of infections had to be further restricted until effective tracking of new infections is possible, before entering a new phase, without abandoning hygiene measures, test and trace capacity and restrictions on social contact.
Hufert, the director of the Institute for Microbiology and Virology of the Brandenburg Medical School, he pointed: “What is being done in Germany is a big mistake. They are wanting to relax the measures everywhere. I think relaxation will not work, Why does it take time to see the effects?, incubation time is fourteen days, it takes two weeks to see what happens, and then things can speed up a lot with the virus”. (6)
These claims, Besides, doubt the effectiveness of the supposed reversal, to a more rigid quarantine, if the contagion curve shot up.
Capitalist voracity worsens with the crisis
The world is going through a serious economic crisis and a brutal recession that far exceeds that caused in the 2008 or in 1930. Economists who forecast that, if the pandemic could be stopped by a vaccine or a control of the spread of the virus, the economy would quickly rebound to levels similar to those prior to the crisis, blatantly lie. The Covid-19 pandemic only accelerated a severe global recession, product of a new crisis caused by the distortions of the capitalist economy to try to compensate for the sustained drop in the rate of profit.
There are many speculations and projections about what the world will be like in the post-pandemic stage.. Some propagandists for capitalism envision a world where the welfare state will return over the savage neoliberal policies that got us here..
The criminal policies of big business and capitalist governments, that by destroying the ecological balance of the planet they created the conditions for the new pandemics, who privatized and liquidated the public health systems and are now trying to hastily lift the quarantines, They are sending millions to the infection and the slaughterhouse with the excuse of "recovering the economy" and the verse of controlled contagion, is showing us the ferocity of capital.
Trust that capitalist governments will carry out a correct administration and confront the ongoing pandemic, respecting the dictates of science, is to entrust the sheep to the wolf. Only the workers and the peoples, working as a team with health workers and scientific staff they can solve the tasks necessary to stop the virus, until a vaccine can be produced. Around the quarantine, only they will be able to regulate their times and moments without putting the lives of millions at risk. Together with them we will fight for a single health system that we need so much. A central campaign that the LIS invites you to join and disseminate.
(1) were reported 34 new cases in a Seoul entertainment area and 12 new cases in china, most in Jilin province.
(2) Posted in Jacobin's 27/04/2020
(3) It's called herd immunity., when the virus infection in a large part of the population generates antibodies that act as a natural barrier to its spread.
(4) He refers to the website of the Socialist Party of the 6 May 2020 y al Socialist Worker, SWP organ, of the 5 May 2020.
(5) Program International panorama of the 7 May 2020.
(6) Article "The dangers of regrowth of Angela Merkel's puzzle to return to normality" published in The Spanish of the 3 May 2020.
