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The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates used the terms endemic and epidemic to distinguish between diseases that were always present in a population and diseases that only occurred during certain parts of a year or at yearly or even greater intervals.

In epidemiological terms, endemic means the constant presence and prevalence of a disease within a population in a certain geographic area. It refers to a state when a disease reaches a level that most of the population has developed immunity. They can develop secondary infections though these are often mild. Children usually become the primary cases because they are nave (not previously exposed) to the virus.

Certain influenzas and viruses that cause the common cold are thought to be endemic. Some endemic viruses have been eradicated by vaccines and public health measures. Two historical examples are smallpox and rinderpest.

However, the recent use of the term endemicity by the ruling class and bourgeois scientists has little to do with its epidemiological understanding and everything to do with a fatalistic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In much the same way that repeated lockdowns and reopenings have inured some people to accept the permanence of the virus, the talk of the virus becoming endemic is employed against any further mitigation efforts which impinge on profit accumulation.

Regardless of such defeatist conceptions, the pandemic remains in its early and acute phase, with significant potential to infect a vast portion of the globes population that has not yet been exposed to the coronavirus. A cohesive international strategy employing the public health tools that are within our grasp could bring the contagion under control before it becomes endemic, at the cost of millions of lives.

These nihilistic conceptions being promoted by the bourgeois press and some scientists to justify dispensing with all mitigation efforts and allowing the pandemic free rein are dangerous to the working class. They would use the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines to anaesthetize the public against the impending catastrophe, although this is only possible in a handful of wealthy countries where vaccine supplies are ample.

At the World Health Organizations March 22 COVID-19 press briefing, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned, The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage, its also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating. Some countries are racing to vaccinate their entire populations while other countries have nothing. This may buy short-term security, but it is a false sense of security.

Executive Director of WHOs Health Emergencies Programme Dr. Mike Ryan reaffirmed the director-generals warnings, stating, The formula for this may be boring, it may not be attractive; there are no silver bullets, but we have got to get back to strong, comprehensive, strategic approaches to the control of COVID that include vaccination as one of those strategies. Im afraid were all trying to grasp at straws. Were trying to find the golden solutions and we just get enough vaccine, and we push enough vaccine into people and thats going to take care of it. Im sorry: its not! There arent enough vaccines in the world, and theyre distributed terribly iniquitously. In fact, we have missed a huge opportunity to bring vaccines on board as a comprehensive measure. Its not being implemented in a systematic way. Its a failed opportunity and, as the D-G says, is not only a catastrophic moral failure, but its an epidemiologic failure and its a failure in public health practice.

The lack of any significant measures to eradicate the virus, combined with the economic devastation for much of the working class, encourages a pessimistic outlook to which even principled scientists are not immune. As the virus ravages the world population, with its seven-day infection rates increasing by 400 percent from February 28 through March 5, the ruling class utilizes the fatigue felt by the population through repeated shutdowns and reopenings to establish a rationale for living with the virus. This has been willful.

Still, the response of some cities and nations in the course of the pandemic has proven that the SARS-CoV-2 can be eradicated. When the contagion first struck Italy in February of 2020, causing a massive health care crisis and inundating their health systems, the town of Vo, a commune in the Province of Padua in the Italian Veneto region, an hour west of Venice, was placed in a strict 14-day lockdown, with all 3,270 people being tested for the virus multiple times. Positive cases were quarantined and treated. In a matter of a few weeks the virus was eradicated from the town.

Testing, contact tracing and quarantiningprecisely the methods used in Vowere employed in all nations that have managed to rein in the virus. As of March 22, 2021, Taiwan, a country of 24 million people, has had 1,006 reported infections and 10 deaths. In Singapore, home to five million people, new cases have remained in the single or low double digits since October 2020.

The science of public health and the tools for eradicating the virus have always been available, but the decision to allow the virus to spread unchecked with nothing more than vaccines made available to a tiny percentage of the developed world is part of a conscious decision which, without the revolutionary intervention by the international working class, can lead to the virus becoming endemic.

However, this is not merely rhetorical. There is a sea of death between the two terms, eradication and endemicity. Reaching endemicity means that the majority of the worlds population will contract the virus, which at its present lethality means tens of millions more lives lost. The arithmetic is inexorable: If billions contract COVID-19, with a death rate approximating two percent, then 20 million people will die for every billion people infected.

This does not even begin to take into consideration the numerous and more deadly variants. The present horrors in Brazil are demonstrating that prior infections with previous strains of SARS-COV-2 do not necessarily protect the population from the new and more virulent variants.

The drive to label the pandemic as inevitable has been a bipartisan effort. The media is flooded with articles to misguide readers that public health and science itself are helpless to prevent the disease. A few examples include a February 17 piece in USA Today, which utilized model data from Emory University and Penn State University scientists to suggest that if the novel coronavirus continues to circulate in the general population and most people are exposed to it from childhood, it could be added to the list of common colds.

The researchers who completed the Emory/Penn State study lament: One year after its emergence, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become so widespread that there is little hope of elimination.

On February 16, Nature printed a survey it conducted, where 89 percent of scientists polled expressed their concerns that COVID-19 is likely to be endemic in pockets of the global population. Disregarding the persistent efforts of Dr. Michael Osterholm to inform the Biden administration on a correct policy to eradicate COVID-19, the magazine highlighted one of Osterholms quotes: Eradicating this virus right now from the world is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon. Its unrealistic.

It should be of no surprise to anyone that a significant section of scientists has become resigned to accepting COVID-19 as an ineradicable disease. It points to nothing more than their disillusion with the inaction of world governments, as schools and businesses throughout the world have essentially opened their doors.

Fundamentally, it expresses the inevitability of the virus reaching a state of endemicity under capitalism and rules out the possibility of a working class movement and socialist revolution that could halt the virus in a matter of weeks with coordinated global action, as part of a larger struggle in the fight for socialism, where the lives and interests of the working masses around the globe are prioritized.

One year of the COVID-19 pandemic: A disaster caused by capitalism

The COVID-19 pandemic is a turning point in world history, an event comparable in scale and impact to the Great Depression and the two world wars.

What is invariably left out of these press releases is the criminal policy of the ruling class across the globe, that has ignored the warnings of epidemiologists and scientists as it interfered with their priority for profit accumulation.

With remarkable foresight, in late spring of last year, as countries were prematurely reopening commerce, Dr. Mike Ryan lambasted the world governments for lifting restrictions under conditions of persistent and rampant transmission of the virus, without systems in place to even detect it, let alone trace and quarantine the infected, warning this would produce a vicious cycle of public health disaster followed by economic disaster followed by public health disaster.

There is, however, a growing chorus of scientists who are putting forward a call to eradicate the coronavirus. The Zero COVID policy, first articulated by Independent SAGE, a group that rivals the British governments official Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), argues for the proven public health measures that can halt the spread of COVID-19. They call for lockdowns, with compensation for those economically affected, improved testing and contact tracing, and argue that the pandemic can be suppressed with public health measures.

A leading advocate is Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, an epidemiologist who is a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. She has spoken out scathingly on the UK plans to come out of lockdown so quickly. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, after implementing the strictest lockdown measures on January 4 to stem the disastrous tide of infections and deaths during the winter surge, was in no time demanding again for school reopenings by early March. Dr. Gurdasani called it a shockingly negligent strategy and very clearly a policy of tolerable deaths, while speaking to Channel 5 News on February 22.

Gurdasani cited predictions forecasted by the Imperial College that even under the best conditions of three to four million doses of the vaccine rolled out a week, opening schools on March 4 would increase the Effective Reproduction Rate (Rt) to above 1, resulting in 30,000 to 60,000 more deaths. She warned of the dangers of the virus mutating to threaten vaccine effectiveness, under a high rate of transmission, as has already happened with the South African variant.

Aoife McLysaght, of the Molecular Evolution Lab in Dublin, Ireland, spoke on a pinned Tweet, of the need to fight for Zero COVID, which would allow us to go about our lives in a normal way. Commenting on the danger of relying solely on vaccines as new variants emerge, McLysaght warned of a whole new pandemic arriving at our shores.

The science put forward is an indictment of world governments inaction, including the Johnson administration in Britain, which allowed the unchecked spread of the emergence in southeast England of a more virulent form of the virus, lineage B.1.1.7 which spreads 30-80 percent faster than the wild strain. In Brazil, the policies of the fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro have allowed the dominance of the P.1 strain of the coronavirus, which is up to 2.5 times more transmissible and has a potential to reinfect up to 63 percent. The health care systems in Brazil are buckling under the gravity of so much severe disease and death. Already, spillovers into neighboring countries like Peru, Chile and Uruguay are causing new surges in these regions.

While the growing group of principled scientists who call for the Zero COVID strategy have laid out the salient policies and make a case for mitigation efforts, what is lacking entirely is a socialist perspective. Fundamentally, Zero COVID accepts the current mode of production. It argues for a more humane capitalism, for improved public health measures under the current framework of a system which itself has produced the pandemic. The profit motive has reigned supreme and the indifference to human lives is the logical outcome of a class policy in the interests of the worlds elite. The Zero COVID policy is correct on a scientific basis but lacks a political strategy to achieve these necessary aims. Inevitably, these scientists have become auxiliary consultants to capitalist agencies.

The only social force that is capable of preventing SARS-CoV-2 from becoming endemic is the international working class, which must organize itself and build its leadership in order to carry out a fight for socialism and against the homicidal policies carried out by the ruling elites around the globe. Armed with a socialist perspective and program, the global working class can not only eradicate SARS-CoV-2 but many more viruses and horrors which have been allowed by the ruling class to persistfrom measles to hepatitis, to hunger and homelessness.

Saturday, April 3

150 years since the Paris Commune

Join us for a discussion of the first time in history that the working class took power. Streamed at wsws.org/live.

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The antiscientific campaign to promote living with the virus - WSWS

The colossal implications of one of the largest container ships in the world, the Ever Given, running aground and blocking Egypts Suez Canal have been felt internationally.

The huge container ship, wedged across the canal since last Tuesday during a seasonal sandstorm, was finally freed from the shoreline in the early hours of this morning by tugboats. Efforts to fully refloat it are ongoing at the time of writing.

The blockage of a vital artery of the world economy by a single shipan accident waiting to happenreveals fundamental aspects of modern society.

The ship is owned by the Japanese company Shoei Kisen Kaisha, operated by the Taiwanese company Evergreen Marine Corporation, flagged in Panama and carrying goods worth $89 million.

Production and economic activity have become internationally integrated to an unprecedented extent, linking the working class in every country into a powerful interconnected network, such that the disruption of a single major transit hub quickly makes itself felt throughout the globe.

Almost 50 percent of the vessels that transit the Suez Canal are container ships carrying car components, appliances, apparel and consumer electronics to and from continents. Goods heading for Europe will themselves be integrated into components to be shipped to the Americas and the rest of the world, often for final assembly elsewhere.

However, under the irrational, anarchic capitalist social order, with the world divided into rival nation states, there has been virtually no serious preparations for an event like the Suez Canal jam, which has long been predicted, given the huge expansion in the number and size of container mega-ships.

With more than 450 vessels now waiting at either end of the canal, analysts believe that the insurance industry could be facing claims in excess of $100 million. However, the final bill, including compensation for delays, loss of revenue for the Suez Canal Authority (SCA), potential damage to cargo and the cost of refloating the ship, could include sums even higher.

While the precise causes of the Ever Given accident have yet to be determined, it points to the incompetence and corruption endemic in the Egyptian state apparatus. The SCA, the state-owned and largely military-run corporation responsible for the operation and maintenance of the Suez Canal, including its computerized traffic management system, pilots and dredging, has sought to downplay the severity of the incident and is unable to say how long it will take to unblock the canal. The chief of the SCA, Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, has already announced that the agency is discussing compensation for the waiting ships, implying negligence on the SCAs part.

But the global implications are far greater. Analysts are warning that the blockage threatens a severe disruption to global trade supplies, with massive repercussions on global supply chains that now rely on minimal levels of stocks commensurate with just-in-time production techniques, and consequences for workers jobs and consumer prices. It is likely to further fuel national antagonisms.

The Suez Canal is one of the worlds busiest waterways, linking the Indian Ocean, the Red and Mediterranean Seas. The canal is traversed by 19,000 vessels a year, carrying $10 billion of goods every day, or an estimated 13 percent of global trade by volume, and around 10 percent of the worlds oil, mostly between Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

As sea trade has grown, the size of container ships has also grown, driven by the need to lower shipping costs and achieve economies of scale. The average size of container ships is now five times larger than just 20 years ago, paving the way for both fewer ships and enormous cost reductions, to the extent vessels capable of carrying 20,000 20-foot equivalent containers are operated with a crew of just 20. But such ships are too deep and large to transit some shipping routes, such as the Panama Canal, or dock at some port quays, requiring significant investment to accommodate the ships, handle their loading and unloading and manage the scheduling to avoid port congestion.

With the Suez Canal blocked, some ships began to divert around the southern tip of Africa, a much more hazardous route, adding up to two weeks to the journey and with higher labour and fuel costs. This in turn will exacerbate the shortage of containers and container ships and create delays, shortages of goods and higher prices, with oil prices rising 7 percent in response to the news of the blockage. A report published by the German insurer Allianz Global estimated the bottleneck could cost global trade $6 billion to $10 billion a week.

Smaller tankers and oil products, like naphtha (a liquid fuel) and fuel oil exports from Europe to Asiaabout 20 percent of Asias naphtha is supplied by the Mediterranean and Black Sea via the Suez Canalwill also be affected if the canal remains blocked for several weeks.

The traffic jam in the Suez, when eventually freed up, will in turn lead to further congestion and disorganization as ships flood into ports which are already overstretched due to the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Suez Canal event also emerges amid severely hampered supply chains, including widespread shortages of semiconductors, a key component in cars, smartphones, PCs, tablets and TVs, the brutal winter storm in Texas last month, slowing production of plastic goods, and a major backlog of container ships in Southern California ports.

The blockage of the Suez Canal threatens a further intensification of geopolitical tensions under conditions in which numerous flashpoints exist and have been multiplying. Ships forced to reroute from the Red Sea towards South Africas Cape of Good Hope face the threat of piracy off the coasts of East Africa and West Africa, which have seen an increase in pirate kidnappings in recent months, leading several shipping companies to call on the US Navy to provide escorts.

Russian Foreign Ministry official Nikolai Korchunov argued the need for the development of new shipping routes, including a northern sea route through the Arctic Ocean, which has itself become the focus of increasing geopolitical conflicts as the adjacent countries seek to assert their territorial claims to secure access to the vast energy reserves and rare materials that are believed to be in the Arctic region.

Today, the global nature of capitalism is beyond dispute, as is the reactionary nation-state system that is driving the worlds major capitalist powers ever closer to global war and increasing social inequality at home, while preparing dictatorial forms of rule.

Capitalism has demonstrated over and over again that it is impervious to science and reason, criminally irrational and utterly opposed to addressing any social problems even as it demands ever fatter profits. Coming amid the pandemic, which has already killed 2.7 million people worldwide, it only confirms the necessity of abolishing the capitalist system and replacing it with an internationally coordinated, rationally and scientifically directed system of economic planning, based on equality and the satisfaction of human need: socialism.

Saturday, April 3

150 years since the Paris Commune

Join us for a discussion of the first time in history that the working class took power. Streamed at wsws.org/live.

Link:
The Suez Canal blockage and the globalization of production - WSWS

Women's History Month is a perfect opportunity to celebrate the women who paved the way for our current women leaders who have found socialist principles in their religious traditions, including U.S. Congresswomen and Democratic Socialists of America members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Roman Catholic; Rashida Tlaib, a Muslim; and ordained Christian pastor Cori Bush.

The Religion and Socialism Working Group is led by former DSA national director Maxine Phillips, with several other activist women helping to guidethe groupthat publishes weekly articles, produces monthly podcasts, and hosts webinar discussions featuring socialists of diverse faith backgrounds.

They all stand on the shoulders of women who built the religious socialism movement in past generations, including:

Vida Dutton Scudder(1861-1954).Historian Gary Scott Smith concluded that Scudder was the principal female leader of the Episcopal Church during the early 20thcentury. Scudder was active in the Socialist Party of America, a supporter of striking textile workers, and an activist for women's suffrage. Her view of the Gospel message was unequivocal: "Woe is proclaimed to rich people. Possessions are described as subject to theft and corruption... We are distinctly bidden not to seek or accumulate them and are told it is all but impossible for a rich man to enter that social utopia, the Kingdom of heaven."

Fulfilling Jesus' mandate could not be achieved by mere charity, Scudder insisted, pushing back against some congregations' go-to response to poverty. Saying that philanthropy is "a sedative to the public conscience," Scudder pointed out that fundraising efforts only "squeezed a little more reluctant money from comfortable classes, who groaned and gave but changed not one iota." Instead, she worked for a full restructuring of society around socialist principles. For more, read "Vida Scudder: A Voice from the Past Speaks to the Present,"a 2009 profile of Scudder by Norm Faramelli, an Episcopal priest and Religion and Socialism activist within DSA.

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Frances Willard (1839-1898).The longtime president of the 200,000-person strong Women's Christian Temperance Union told delegates to the WCTU convention in 1893 that, "In every Christian, there exists a socialist, and in every socialist a Christian." Willard is considered by some historians to be the most influential American woman of the 19thcentury, leading DSA Religion and Socialism group founder John Cort to conclude in his bookChristian Socialismthat she did more than anyone to introduce the idea of socialism to Middle America. For more on Willardand other women socialists of her era, check out Mari Jo Buhle'sWomen and American Socialism, 1870-1920(Chicago: U. of Illinois Press, 1983).

Mary White Ovington (1865-1951). Like Scudder, Ovington was a leader in the U.S. settlement house movement and was moved to join the Socialist Party after witnessing the struggles of the working poor who lived in the settlements. Active in the women's suffrage movement and the opposition to World War I, Ovington, a Unitarian, would go on to write the bookSocialism and the Feminist Movementand become one of the founders of the NAACP. The NAACP has a nice bio of Ovington on their sitehere.

Pauli Murray (1910-1985).Murray was a lawyer, professor, priest, and activist with a remarkably varied and deep career of activism and service. Murray worked alongside socialist civil rights and labor leader A. Philip Randolph in his organizing campaigns, helped devise the constitutional argument to overturn the doctrine of "separate but equal," became the first African American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest, and co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW). Thurgood Marshall called Murray's 1951 book,State's Laws on Race and Color,the Bible for civil rights lawyers.A recentNew Yorkerprofile of Murray is available onlinehere.

There are many more women who have led the U.S. religious socialist movement in recent years, including the Catholic theologian and feminist scholarRosemary Radford Ruetherand the German liberation theologianDorothee Solle, who helped build the RS Working Group in its earliest days. The movement to connect the socialist cause with religious beliefs in the human right to shelter, healthcare, and necessities owes them a great debt.

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Celebrating Women Leaders of the Religious Socialism Movement - Common Dreams

On the heels of Congress voting to spend another $1.9 trillion on an assortment of relief programs related to the Covid pandemic, I thought it might be a good time to mention the dirtiest word in American politics: socialism. Before you race to the sink to wash your mouth out with soap, its time for a closer look.

While the word may conjure images of bread lines, cultural revolutions and the dour military parades of an authoritarian state, the truth is that socialism cant be summed up in one simple anti-capitalist declaration. The globally regarded Scandinavian model is proof positive that democratic socialism, where benefits like education and health care coexist with free enterprise, can be highly successful.

Here at home, Republicans have been able to cast socialism as a dark and sinister ideology on par with Stalins gulags. Most every progressive policy with a goal to offer a modest boost to someones quality of life is roundly attacked and denigrated by conservatives as wasteful spending or just another handout to lazy welfare queens. Never mind that these same politicos would never turn away an extra dollar earmarked for their states, and theyre certainly guilty of big spendingtheirs on the relentless growth of the military industrial complex and a raft of other corporate welfare projects.

The hypocrisy has been around for decades. In 1977, it encouraged New Yorks Senator Patrick Moynihan to begin reporting annually on a calculation called the balance of payments. His work consistently showed that New York sent more money to the federal government than it received in return. Moynihan spurred a national reckoning around each states balance of payments that continues to this day. Worst off is New Jersey, which receives only 74 cents back from every dollar it sends to Washington. Mississippi, on the other hand, receives $2.13 for every dollar it sends east. It doesnt make much sense based on what you hear from Republicans on the steps of the Capitol building, but trust that the states giving the most vote blue. Those that get the most vote red.

Just last year, during the height of the Covid crisis, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed his reluctance to fund coronavirus relief for hard-hit cities and states. He called them blue state bailouts. To that, New Yorks governor reminded the Kentuckian that, in the past four years, New York put $116 billion more into the federal pot than it received. Meanwhile, Kentucky took out $148 billion more than it put in. The governor asked, Senator McConnell, whos getting bailed out here?" By one measure, of the initial money that was earmarked in the spring of 2020 for Covid relief, New York received about $12,000 per positive case. Nebraska received $379,000 per positive case.

The balance of payments is a good gauge to see which states rely more heavily on government, but its not the only one. Industry subsidies are another way to see where welfare is flowing. You may not have been aware the last time you slathered your hot dog that mustard seed subsidies totaled $13.7 million over the last 25 years, with Montana and North Dakota the biggest winners. Over that same period, Riceland Foods and their farmer members in Arkansas and Missouri reaped a whopping $554 million windfall in U.S.D.A. subsidies. Including money from Covid relief, direct government payments in 2020 to the farming industry were forecast at over $51 billion, making these handouts an astounding 43 percent of net national farm income.

If socialism is going to be defined as production, distribution and exchange owned or regulated by a community as a whole, should we be concerned that red states are routinely relying on socialist entities to the benefit of their residents? Nebraskas electric grid and utilities are publicly owned. There are no stockholders, and thus no profit motive, the Nebraska Power Association says proudly. Our customers, not big investors in New York and Chicago, own Nebraskas utilities.

The federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority is another example. When asked about the future of their socialist enterprise in such a deeply red part of the country, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said, This loony idea of selling T.V.A.s transmission lines seems to keep popping up. It has zero chance of becoming law.

Tennessee also has the honor of being the first state to offer two years of free college tuition to its high school graduates regardless of family income. Thats not criticism youre reading. Its jealousy.

When talk turns to a universal basic income, Republicans quickly cry foul. But what about Alaska? Since 1982, the Alaska Permanent Fund, a state-owned investment corporation funded by oil revenues, has paid out an annual dividend to every man, woman and child in Alaska. Ive yet to see any Republicans in that state tearing up their annual checksor their Covid relief checks, for that matteron principle.

If you look closely, its not hard to find a wealth of successful socialist programs in this, our cradle of capitalism. Whats interesting isnt what you find, its where you find it.

Amos Klausner lives in San Geronimo and serves on the local school board.

View original post here:
Will the real socialist please stand up? - Point Reyes Light

To the editor:

Re: The letter to the editor entitled Biden is Destroying our Country by Karen Ostrom-Kelly. (Voice of the public, March 24)

Dear Karen, it might be useful to look up the word socialism before using it. Thats a good idea with any word you dont understand. Its not the scary buzz-word you want it to be. If youve ever driven on a road, youve got socialism to thank. As an actual socialist, I would be overjoyed if Biden or any Dem were one. They are not.

Madam, I want you and other readers to understand that no person is illegal. Immigrants to this country pay their taxes the same as you; they just use a Tax ID Number instead of a Social Security Number.

In fact, by your argument theyre owed even more, since we happily tax them without directly representing them.

Charity, madam, begins in the heart, so try to have one.

Jean Sanson

Attleboro

Excerpt from:
Letter to the editor: Socialism is not a bad word - The Sun Chronicle