Omicron—the latest dominant variant of the SARS-CoV2 virus, but almost surely not the last—is so infectious that it recently penetrated a research station in Antarctica. Playing it safe, the world’s billionaires—who nearly doubled their share of global household income in 2020 (World Inequality Report 2022)—postponed their annual celebration of greed and profit in Davos, Switzerland. But the Beijing Winter Olympics is still on track to endanger masses of spectators and preserve its $7 billion television contract. As subway lines closed and urgent care centers shut down for a lack of healthy workers, New York City still held its super-spreader New Year’s Eve party in Times Square. In Mexico, work still goes full steam ahead in the maquiladoras, the factories that produce super-profits for U.S. and European imperialists. One study found that low-income workers were five times more likely to die from Covid than those with higher incomes (sciencedirect.com, February 2022).
While millions are sickened daily, it’s business as usual for the parasitic, mass-murdering capitalist ruling class. Though the bosses and bought-and-paid-f0r scientists like Anthony Fauci stress that the new variant is relatively “mild,” there’s no way to be sure how bad omicron will get as it spreads from mostly younger to older and immunocompromised workers. As a WHO official noted: “How it behaves in the elderly population, the vulnerable—we don’t know yet” (fortune.com, 12/30/21). Since hospitalizations and deaths lag behind case counts, they appear likely to rise—perhaps explosively—over the next several weeks, even in places with high vaccination rates. On January 4, the governor of Maryland declared a state of emergency after Covid hospital admissions soared more than 500 percent since November (sfgate.com, 1/4).
On top of the 5.4 million reported global pandemic-linked deaths to date, workers are now dying from Covid at a rate of more than 2 million per year—close to 500,000 in the U.S. alone. The bosses tell us that Covid is “endemic,” that it’s time to return to business as usual, that we’ll just “have to live with it”—or die with it! The normalization of mass slaughter is a hallmark of capitalism in crisis, of a run-up to inter-imperialist war—and of rising fascism.
CDC sells out—again
On December 27, in a move “to minimize rising disruptions to the economy” (NYT, 12/27/21), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control cut its recommended isolation time for infected Covid patients from ten days to five (see page 5). Per Rochelle Walensky, the latest Nazi doctor to serve as the CDC’s director, there was no need for these people to test negative before they returned to work—a convenient omission, since Covid tests are either unaffordable or unavailable one year into the bungling Biden administration. According to the CDC, it was even okay if these infected workers—teachers, nurses, flight attendants—were symptomatic, as long as their symptoms were “resolving.”
The new guidelines were immediately hailed by the airlines and retail associations, whose revenues are jeopardized by so many workers staying home sick. On January 4, with U.S. hospitalizations up 51 percent over the previous two weeks, the CDC doubled down and reaffirmed that no testing was needed. “These updates ensure people can safely continue their daily lives,” Walensky said. But one day later, after getting slammed by the American Medical Association for putting patients “at risk” and potentially overwhelming the health care system (yahoo!news, 1/5), the agency tweaked its guidelines yet again to suggest that infected people could take a test if they “have access” and “want to.”
In a country poisoned by rotten capitalist ideas about “personal freedom,” where mask mandates are unevenly imposed and rarely enforced, the new federal policy amounts to mass murder. In the richest country on earth, the bosses are so driven by short-term profits that they won’t invest to keep their own workers safe. Under capitalism, Covid tests are strictly optional. So is decent health care. Only the rulers’ profits are mandatory—no matter what the cost to the working class.
Vaccine Apartheid
In Spain, 81 percent of the population is considered fully vaccinated (not counting boosters); in China, it’s 86 percent. Even in the fraying and decaying U.S., where a split in the ruling class and a long history of medical racism has given rise to a mass anti-vaccination movement, the number stands at 62 percent (NYT, 1/5).
But in Africa, in a horrific illustration of racist inequality, only 9 percent are fully vaccinated. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, the figure is 2 percent. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, torn apart by rival capitalist gangs, it’s 0.1 percent. How can this be? To begin with, the big U.S. drug companies seized their opportunity for a vaccine revenue bonanza. In 2021, Pfizer, Moderna, and BioNTech were projected to rake in combined pre-tax profits of $34 billion—more than $93 million a day, or $1,000 a second (medicalxpress.com, 11/16/21). China and Russia, meanwhile, used their vaccines to force smaller capitalists to do business on their terms and gain an advantage on their U.S. imperialist rival. Poorer regions like Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe were mostly abandoned to their fate.
This racist crime begins with a simple lack of supply. As bosses in the U.S. and Western Europe hoard enough vaccine for two or more times their population, all of Africa—home to 1.4 billion people—has received less than 500 million doses, barely enough to fully vaccinate even 20 percent of the continent’s population. In many cases, vaccines donated by wealthier countries had almost no remaining shelf life (Africa Press, 1/1). Africa also suffers from a lack of distribution infrastructure, a shortage of trained medical personnel, and widespread and justified distrust of the corrupt bosses in charge.
Whatever the factors, this racist inequality presents a grave danger for the entire international working class. “The longer the virus continues to spread unchecked,” said Benjamin Schreiber, deputy chief of UNICEF’s global immunization program, “the higher the risk of more deadly or contagious variants emerging. Vaccine equity is not charity; it is an epidemiological necessity” (NYT, 12/9/21).
According to scientists in South Africa, where omicron invaded early on, one added peril is that any Covid-positive patient with a depressed immune system is an ideal host for new mutations of the virus. In sub-Saharan Africa, eight million people living with HIV are not receiving effective antiretroviral treatment. It’s the capitalist rulers’ formula for a genocide of the workers of the world.
The communist alternative
In a communist world, the responsibility for responding to a pandemic would be collective. Society would be organized around one overriding priority: workers’ health and well-being. One shining model is the Chinese communists’ “barefoot doctors” program, which brought accessible medical care to the previously neglected countryside.
Under capitalism, individuals are left to fend for themselves and encouraged to put their own interests above others’. Under communism, we would work together to anticipate and solve public health issues as they arose, in the interests of the entire working class. In a world free of racism, sexism, money, and national borders, we would share equally in the advances of uncorrupted science. Fight for a healthier communist world! Join PLP!