On December 20, in suburban Indiana, Dr. Susan Moore, a Black woman, died of racism after doctors dismissed and refused to treat her Covid-19 symptoms and severe pain. Meanwhile, in South Africa, a factory is producing millions of doses of lifesaving vaccines for the U.S. and other wealthy nations in Europe, but none for the poor Black people who work and live there—and who have been hit harder by the pandemic than in any other country on the continent. With racism and exploitation as its lifeblood, this capitalist profit system infects and sickens everything it touches. Progressive Labor Party calls for workers to vaccinate our class against the contagion of capitalism with the only medicine that really works: communist revolution (see box below). Build the fight to build a need-based and collective system! Join Progressive Labor Party!
Capitali$t healthcare: pay or die
Because big pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer are driven by their need for maximum profit, they won’t suspend “intellectual property rights” to their vaccine. As a result, “most people in low-income countries will be waiting until 2024 for Covid-19 vaccinations if high-income countries keep engaging in what some are calling “vaccinationalism” (Duke Global Health Institute, 11/9/20).
After centuries of looting workers in Africa, Asia, and South America, the imperialist countries have cleared the shelves. “Over half (51%) of the doses reserved will go to high-income countries, despite the fact those countries only represent 14% of the world’s population” (Forbes, 12/15/20).
In falling-in-a-frenzy powers like the U.S., vaccines have been trapped in a muck of anti-scientific skepticism, money-mad competition, and individualism. The bosses’ allergy to science reflects broader capitalist decay. Finance capital, the dominant wing of the U.S. ruling class, is using the vaccine to attempt to buy back workers’ trust in its failing institutions—a must as they prepare for global war against China and perhaps Russia.
Medical apartheid, global scale
The international working class is justifiably mistrustful of medical science. There is a long racist history of Black, Latin, and Asian workers being forced or coerced into dangerous mistreatment. White workers are also hurt because racism weakens the health of the entire working class:
• Jamaica, 1760s: British doctor John Quier experimented with smallpox inoculations (a precursor to vaccines) on 850 enslaved people, including pregnant women and sick infants.
• Alabama, U.S., 1830s: Enslaver J. Marion Sims, “father of gynecology,” operated on enslaved women without anesthesia. He shared the racist belief that Black people didn’t experience pain like white people, a myth that infects doctors to this day (The Washington Post, 7/11/2020)—as Susan Moore attested before they killed her.
• Namibia, 1900s: In line with his call to ban “mixed marriages,” Eugen Fischer sterilized the descendants of European-born fathers and Black mothers. He later joined the German Nazi party and performed medical atrocities in the fascist death camps.
• Alabama, U.S., 1930-1970s: In the infamous Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis, 600 Black men were left to sicken and die, even after a cure was found.
• Puerto Rico and Massachusetts, 1950s:During a period of eugenicist legislation and forced sterilization, two Harvard professors tested a birth control pill in the slums of Puerto Rico and asylums in Massachusetts. Women’s uteruses were sliced to “understand the drug’s effect on ovulation” (The Crimson, 9/28/17).
• Côte d’Ivoire and Thailand, 1990s: HIV treatment was withheld from men, women, and newborns.
• India, 2005-2017: Nearly 5,000 mainly low-caste workers died in drug trials and research (The National, 9/17/18).
Covid-19 has once again exposed medical racism. It’s no accident that deaths are highest among Black, Latin, Asian, indigenous, undocumented, imprisoned, indigenous, and poor workers. They are the most vulnerable to exposure and infection from racist inequalities in healthcare, jobs, housing, and food quality. Because of capitalism, they are the most likely to have underlying conditions like diabetes and heart disease.
Ruling-class chaos breeds skepticism
Under outgoing Racist-in-Chief Donald Trump, anti-scientists seized control of nearly every corner of U.S. policy, from the environment to public health. But the main wing finance capitalists also bear responsibility for many workers’ lack of confidence in the new vaccines. Chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci initially cautioned against wearing masks—an outright lie to cover for the bosses’ shortage of protective equipment—before calling for their mass use. Before endorsing the vaccine, President-elect Joe Biden initially sounded warnings against it as politically motivated and rushed to benefit Trump (NYT, 9/16/20).
The latest polls say that more than a quarter of the U.S. population remains hesitant to get the vaccine. Skepticism is highest among Republicans at 42 percent, followed by Black adults at 35 percent (KFF.org), though these numbers may be decreasing as more people get vaccinated. From the data we have so far (see box below), it seems clear that the vaccine is safe and effective—if only because the capitalist bosses need a healthy working class to stem their economy’s hemorrhaging of billions of dollars. Ultimately, the U.S. empire is at stake.
Collectivity over individualism, science over subjectivity
The Kaiser Family Foundation poll also monitored workers’ attitudes toward collectivity. Half of those questioned believe that getting vaccinated is “part of everyone’s responsibility to protect the health of others.” But the other half believe it is “a personal choice.” This is the virus of individualism, the mythology of capitalist “freedom” that acts against workers’ own interests. The collective comes first. Our decisions must be based on the needs of the entire working class.
For communists and their friends and comrades, it is necessary to educate ourselves on how vaccines work and why they are crucial to the well-being of our class. Just as we approach strikes and reform struggles as schools for communism, we must fight for the health of our working-class brothers and sisters while exposing the rulers’ racism and profiteering.
As long as we live in a capitalist system, pandemics are inevitable. But herd immunity is a step toward communism. Workers must be healthy and fit to battle against the racist and sexist atrocities to come. We must fight for a communist revolution that will make workers’ collective health primary.
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The mRNA Covid-19 vaccine explained
The Progressive Labor Party hails the development of vaccines and urges workers to take what is demonstrating to be a safe and effective shot against Covid-19.
Unfortunately, the racist, profit-driven capitalist medical system heightens our fears and mistrust even when scientists get it right. In fact, research on mRNA (short for messenger RNA) vaccines began in the early 1990s. Scientists have tested these vaccines in both animals and people for SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika, and rabies (Harvard Health Publishing, 12/10/2020). The Covid-19 vaccine is not the result of speedy experiments.
In a nutshell, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines mimic a part of the surface of the Covid-19 virus called the spike. A harmless fragment of viral spike proteins primes our immune system to attack and ward off the disease in the event of exposure. There is no virus in the vaccine. Together, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines tested nearly 30,000 people. They’ve demonstrated 95 percent efficacy in preventing Covid-19, with virtually no serious side effects aside from a few cases of rare and treatable allergies. For a video explaining how the vaccine works, go to www.tinyurl.com/asapsciencecovid
The subjects in clinical trials have been mainly white men; only 5 percent are Black (Healthline, 8/9/20). In fact, community outreach groups have reached out to Black volunteers to make the study more inclusive and representative of the population. Fighting for equitable research is part of the antiracist fight.
Since Covid-19 has had a disproportionate impact on Black and Latin workers, from death rates to unemployment, they should have priority for vaccination. Fighting for equitable distribution is also part of the antiracist fight.
Judging from the long history of vaccines, long-term ill effects are unlikely. Local reactions at the injection site are common. Fatigue and fever are more common after the second dose. Most people experience sore arms and little or nothing more.
No medication is 100 percent safe. But with 82 million Covid-19 cases and over 1.8 million confirmed deaths worldwide (Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, 12/30/20), the vaccines’ benefits far outweigh their risks.