Amidst historic social upheaval, the US is also experiencing a nationwide surge in Covid-19 cases following the decision to push millions of working class people back into work. The ruling class’ directive to reopen the economy at the end of April has led to an unmitigated disaster for workers. On 12 July, the state of Florida reported the nation’s highest single leap in cases: over 15,000 confirmed in a single day. This has not stopped profit-hungry executives reopening Disneyland resorts in the state. 15 July saw more than 71,000 cases reported across the US, with a total of 3.8 million confirmed cases since the crisis began, and 1.9 million active cases. 1 in 100 Americans has now been infected and the official death toll currently stands at 143,000. Each of these deaths is a tragedy, and in the richest country on Earth, could have been avoided. This act of class warfare cannot be considered the result of incompetence, but rather a concerted effort to put profits ahead of the lives of the working class. A deadly gamble by the capitalist state now threatens to buckle the nation.
Five months into the pandemic, the former head of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report produced in collaboration with leading US health organisations, including the John Hopkins Centre for Health Security and the American Public Health Association (The Guardian 21 July 2020). The report states that more than half the critical information needed for effective decision making in tackling Covid-19 goes unreported. ‘Life-and-death information’ on testing, contact tracing, new cases and deaths is either not collected or is inadequately recorded. There are a lack of common standards, definitions and accountability across the US reflecting ‘the absence of national strategy, plan, leadership, communication or organisation and results in a cacophony of confusing data’. The Trump administration smeared the US’ top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, refused to implement a nationwide strategy, preferring to leave it individual states, who could then take the blame. A third of states are still not reporting data of Covid-19 outbreaks in places such as nursing homes, homeless shelters and prisons. Data is reported on demographic factors, notably race and ethnicity. Black Americans are estimated to be dying at almost three times the rate of white Americans. Trump has tried to block new funding for the CDC.
The epicentre of the disease has now shifted firmly South and West, to the ‘sun belt’. In the hardest-hit states, Covid-19 countermeasures are being hurriedly reintroduced. Louisiana has re-closed non-essential businesses, and the three most populous US states, California, Texas and Florida, are considering a second lockdown. Medical infrastructure in these states cannot cope – in Texas, where lockdown restrictions were lifted faster than much of the rest of the US, ambulances have been turned away from hospitals and basic medical supplies are unavailable.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration has announced its intention to press forward with the reopening of the economy. Trump has blamed the surge of new cases on increased levels of testing – a ridiculous fiction. Trump has pretended the virus is harmless, to justify opening the economy.
Part of the government’s strategy for getting people back into work relies on reopening schools and universities, despite the danger this poses to children, students and teachers. Trump threatened to cancel visas for overseas students if institutions do not reopen full time, yet the government has offered no plans for testing or implementing distancing and safety measures. ‘The moms [sic] want it. The dads want it. The kids want it,’ Trump said, but he didn’t mention that bosses want it most.
Secretary of Labour, Eugene Scalia, hinted that the administration was not in favour of renewing the $600-per-week emergency federal benefit brought in with the coronavirus ‘stimulus’, and is considering slashing federal benefits to $25 per week to force more people back into deadly workplaces. That same week, 1.3 million US workers filed for unemployment. The government’s suggestion to them: ‘find something new’. At least 17.8 million people are still unemployed. The crisis has plunged even relatively better-off layers of US workers into uncertainty, some 5.4 million of whom have lost their health insurance since the crisis began.
For the ruling class, the pandemic crisis has presented an opportunity. The government has used emergency legislation to give tax-breaks and record-breaking bailouts – over $3 trillion worth – directly to businesses as economic stimulus, and the administration (backed by the Democratic opposition) appears to be gearing up for more. This blank cheque, handed by the state to the financial markets, is staving off a catastrophic crash. US billionaires have become $600bn richer since March, while the New York Times reports nearly 66,000 small businesses have closed permanently since then. It is the very richest who are benefiting from the Trump administration’s attack on the working class.
In some of the worst-affected businesses, there has been significant resistance. On 10 July, meatpacking workers in Colorado held a wildcat strike over wages and Covid-19 deaths, against the wishes of their union. They had previously struck at the beginning of the lockdown – before being forced back to work by the government. Meatpacking workers have been some of the worst affected by the virus, with some 30,000 confirmed cases nationally. There has also been a resurgence of strikes in the auto industry, notably in Detroit’s Chrysler factories. In Illinois, on 4 July, nurses struck for better conditions during the pandemic. As healthcare corporations have taken on losses over the course of the pandemic, they have sought to squeeze extra profits out of their workers, which has led to many working unsafe hours, with no PPE.
Where workers are most exposed to the obvious inhumanity of the government’s response to Covid-19, and the back-to-work crusade, they are also proving the most militant in standing against it, although the bosses will do what they can to isolate and destroy any resistance. What is needed, as the Black Lives Matter protests have shown, is an organised, sustained and united movement. As the situation worsens, it is clearer and clearer that the choice is between socialism or capitalist barbarism.
Joe Tyler
