To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
July 24, 2020
Re: As the COVID-19 crisis deepens
by Pete Brown, Detroit Workers' Voice
There’s an upsurge in new cases in the U.S. Contrary to what Trump recently said, that “we’re getting out of it,” the virus is actually spreading fast, and new cases are reported at an increasing rate.
There is no question, now, that early reopening had a very bad effect. Lack of hospital space in Arizona and Texas. Contact tracing in these states is overwhelmed. Numerous atrocities are reported, for instance in California the state prison at San Quentin was completely free of the virus for five months until prison officials transferred a few prisoners from Chinook to San Quentin. The virus had been raging at Chinook. Result: rapid spread of the virus in San Quentin. Virus outbreak among immigrants in ICE detention centers. Trump’s Tulsa rally and Mt. Rushmore 4th of July celebration now blamed for local outbreaks.
It’s important to say “upsurge … in the U.S.” This is not true everywhere. A number of countries, including those with large and dense populations, were able to get control of the virus and its spread. But the lack of national leadership in the U.S. meant that states not hit at first did not learn the lessons from those first hit. This is a massive failure of the Trump administration and shows it as a reincarnation of the Hoover administration during the Depression. Trump has a hands-off, no-care attitude toward the pandemic. This means different states, localities and hospitals are scrambling for PPEs, hospital staff and equipment, while bidding for these items goes sky-high. Recommendations from the CDC (undermined by Trump) are regularly ignored by states and localities in southern states, with expected results.
Tens of thousands of people have died as a result of the Trump administration’s laissez-faire attitude. Trump’s policy reflects the attitude of a good section of the ruling monopolist bourgeoisie: when it comes to military matters, they support strict centralization, more and more spending, more fat military contracts, and more military and police intervention in civilian life. But when it comes to health care for the masses or protecting their safety, they could not care less.
While different countries have responded to the virus in different ways, some of them disastrous (the U.S., Brazil, Chile), different states in the U.S. have also responded differently, and this is reflected in present-day infection and death rates. New York, where the virus first raged, has learned lessons and managed to “bend the curve.” Michigan is another example; from a positivity rate of 40% (40% of those newly tested being positive for the virus) in March and April, it’s come down to 3% in July. Some sunbelt states, on the other hand, have learned nothing from New York’s experience, and have stubbornly resisted preventive measures. The result is the virus is raging in those states. Positivity rates in July there are double-digit (Arizona 25%, Florida 19%, Texas 16%).
Has the spread of the virus led to a change in attitude toward wearing masks? I think it has, to some extent; it’s become normal, it seems to me, for people in Michigan to go into stores with masks on. The store clerks and cashiers are all wearing masks and so are some people working outside on road construction and other tasks. On the other hand, it seems that in some cases the mandate to wear masks has actually hardened opposition to it. There have been demonstrations against it and individual protests, such as when one man in a store pulled a gun when told he had to have a mask. The mask wearers themselves are sometimes angry towards people not wearing masks, since they know not wearing is helping spread the virus. And so attitudes get hardened on both sides, and mask-wearing becomes a sharp political issue. This reflects a divide in the Trump administration, as the CDC and other scientific bodies advise mask-wearing, but Trump has encouraged the movement against masks. Even now, while finally saying masks are good, he still thinks masks violate freedom. Meanwhile some people gather for big beach parties, and some fraternities are having “COVID parties.” The opposition uses arguments against national guidelines by talking about “local control”, except when local leaders mandate masks; then they revert to “individual freedom.”
Bridge magazine on July 18 reported two fatalities so far in confrontations over mask-wearing. In one, a security guard at a store was killed by a customer told by the guard he could not enter without a mask. In the other, one man with mask in a store parking lot confronted another without a mask, and the latter stabbed him; later, a state policeman caught the stabber and shot him.
Comparing the U.S. to other countries, Florida is now the world’s no. 1 hotspot. Meanwhile there’s been a significant decline in Europe, and East Asian countries remain at low levels of infections and deaths. On the other hand, Mexico now has surpassed France and Italy in number of cases and deaths. Brazil is just behind the U.S.
Latin America got hit later than the U.S., but it’s getting quite bad now. The U.S. has by far the worst total deaths, but Chile is by far the worst if you consider deaths relative to population. Peru and Brazil are also quite bad, taking third and fourth place after Chile and the U.S. Brazil is also no. 2 is total deaths. So the virus is clearly surging in Latin America.
Right now the virus is spreading rapidly in South Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. India has now surpassed Russia in total deaths, but its rate of deaths is not too bad so far, due in part to its large population and also to lack of testing and underreporting. India has had rapid growth accelerating since mid-June. There are different ways to do statistics – new cases; deaths; rate of deaths relative to population; etc. But as a rule, on any way of counting, U.S. is the worst. This is after years of bourgeois bragging about the U.S. having the world’s best health service.
A significant development is the occurrence of organized strikes
against unsafe working conditions during the pandemic. They aren’t
large, and there aren’t many at this point; but they’re more than just
sickouts or people staying at home. These are organized,
union-affiliated strikes that last for a week or more, reported by Mike
Elk in Payday Reports:
Payday Reports says that AFT teachers union has sent out a pamphlet to all its locals instructing them how to use legal means such as laws on medical leave and disabilities to oppose being forced to work under unsafe conditions.
Trump is demanding reopening everywhere, but is the federal government giving guidance to states on how to do so? Is it providing financial assistance to states and local school districts? Not at all. Schools require about 20% more funding in order to deal with online learning and sanitizing, but instead Trump threatens to cut off all funding if they don’t open in-person learning for everyone, full time. He’s also pressuring colleges to do the same, and until stopped by legal proceedings, he threatened foreign students who don’t take in-person classes with deportation.
July 9: New York City has announced staggered reopening, students attending school only once or twice a week. Arizona has declared a delayed reopening of schools. In Michigan, Gov. Whitmer on July 1 announced plans to reopen schools on time, but then on July 9 she announced this may be delayed because of rising virus numbers in early July.
Bridge magazine reports vaccination for children in Michigan is down 46% so far this year! This is because parents don’t want to take their kids to a doctor’s office, and because doctors are not as readily available. But state law requires children to be vaccinated in order to attend school, so this is another roadblock for the schools.
7/14: LA and San Diego schools will reopen in fall with online learning only. In Orange County, schools will open completely in-person with no face masks required and no social distancing.
In Detroit there were protests against summer school in-person classes;
protests were organized by BAMN.
Summer programs in Iowa and Connecticut have been forced to close because of the virus. Three teachers in Arizona who were doing summer school, grouped together for online learning, all came down with the virus, and one died. Many summer camps have closed.
The Michigan School Aid Fund has been cut because of the economic crisis; the result will be a cut of $650 per student, and this is expected to be cut again in October. The virus will worsen racial disparity between school districts because of lack of internet access by poor blacks and parents working outside the home in frontline jobs.
A number of states, including Michigan, are suing Education Secretary Betsy Devos for giving excess federal funds to private schools. Aid is supposed to go to schools according to how many poor children the school has. Devos says aid will go to schools by how many students there are, regardless of wealth.
Los Angeles is going completely online, at least to start. Chicago will have a hybrid system of online learning and attendance in school in small classes two days a week. Lansing is going completely online.
A July 9 article on Yahoo news quotes from Skift, a newsletter for the travel industry: “The recovery is falling apart completely.” In mid-June things were on an upswing, with airlines adding back routes they had cut back. Florida and Las Vegas reopened, which added a lot of travel. But since then there’s a big decline. In the old days, the number of fliers was about 2.5 million per day. In early April this fell to 93,000 per day (a decline of over 96%). It came back in early June, but now it’s fallen again, and now it’s 632,000 per day. So it’s declined 75% from 2019 and previous years. United says it plans to lay off 36,000 in coming months. Delta is asking employees to voluntarily resign, to avoid laying off many.
Financial problems exacerbated by the virus crisis: problems with large retail chains like Kmart, Penneys, etc. Transition to a digital economy. Amazon is booming, with Jeff Bezos worth another $25 billion. Small businesses –restaurants, bars, barber shops, etc. – are decimated. Those getting help are those that are part of a large chain. Any credit problem bars a small business from getting PPP money. This will hurt the economy for years. Unemployment still growing.
There was a nationwide semi-shutdown in March and April, then protests against that in May, followed by reopening in June, followed by resurgence in July. That’s a rough sketch. The new cases rose from mid-March to early April, then slowly declined until late May, then held steady until mid-June, when a rise in new cases began again. The peak reached in early April was reached and surpassed in early July and is now still rising. New York has been quite steady since late May, when it dipped below 5% positivity (5% positive for virus of those newly tested), and it’s now about 1%. Michigan is at 3% positivity but has been increasing lately. The striking thing about Michigan is the high mortality rate, especially for Detroit and Wayne County – 11.5% for the county, over 12% for the city. This is far above the mortality rate generally ascribed to coronavirus.
Scientists now say the virus lingers in the air longer, micro-droplets in addition to droplets. There’s mounting evidence that it’s a vascular disease whose symptoms can include just about anything, like a sore toe or a stroke. Autopsies reveal blood clots in many places, not only the lungs. Herd immunity is unlikely. There’s some question whether antibodies, and hence immunity, is permanent or only lasts a few months; but others insist it’s permanent. There are many optimistic news items about development of vaccines and faster-acting tests, but so far these have not materialized.
The World Health Organization recommends that a state not reopen if it
has a positivity rate of 5% or more. Michigan is about 3%, New York
about 1%. Presently 18 states meet the 5% criterion, mainly
concentrated in the Northeast. Midwest states are mostly at or near the
5% criterion. States not meeting the criterion are concentrated in the
Sunbelt and South.
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