The US now has almost a third of the world’s total confirmed Covid-19 cases (1.77 million), and more than a quarter of all deaths. At the time of writing, official fatalities are over 104,000. Anthony Fauci, prominent member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, claimed the real death toll is likely to be far higher. The crisis has sharpened the contradictions of US capitalism, which is incapable of dealing with this sustained crisis. Amidst lost profits and a historic economic downturn, the ruling class is gearing up to have workers shoulder the burden of the pandemic.
The Trump administration entered the pandemic claiming the virus was fake news, ‘a hoax’, attacking the Democrats for exaggerating any potential crisis. President Trump claimed ‘we have it totally under control’ in late January, when the first US case was confirmed. This bluster translated into an administration totally unprepared to coordinate a response to the disease: by March, having spent two months downplaying the seriousness of the virus, Trump described the pandemic as coming ‘out of nowhere’.
Forced to acknowledge the reality of the situation, the administration turned to attack China and the World Health Organisation (WHO), attempting to deflect attention from its own shambolic handling of the crisis. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly referred to the ‘Wuhan virus’ to blame the illness on China, while Trump has described the pandemic as an ‘attack’ and baselessly claimed with ‘a high degree of confidence’ that the virus originated from a Chinese laboratory. In an act of supreme irony, Trump has also announced a halt to all US funding to the WHO ($400-500m annually) and threatened to quit the organisation altogether after claiming it was too slow to react to the Covid-19 crisis, and for being ‘too pro-China’. As the administration postures over China, US hospitals are stacking the dead in refrigerated trucks, and mass graves are being used to dispose of bodies.
Record unemployment but handouts for big business
At least 40 million US people have so far lost their jobs as a result of the virus pandemic: 23% of the US workforce. The Federal Reserve suggests 40% of US households earning less than $40,000 have experienced unemployment due to the pandemic. Recent statistics indicate that for white workers, the unemployment rate sits at 14.7%. People from minority backgrounds have been hit harder: for black workers, the unemployment rate is 16.7%, and for Hispanic workers it is 18.8%. For a comparable crisis, one must look to the 1930s Great Depression. While many have ‘temporarily’ lost their employment, millions of low-waged service sector and retail employees have been cut completely adrift.
The administration has rushed out several stimulus bills, notably the Coronavirus Relief Bill, or CARES Act, on 27 March. This promised an unprecedented $2 trillion to alleviate the economic effects of the virus, but it has been used to sneak through unprecedented handouts to the rich in the form of loans and tax cuts. Included are tax breaks calculated at $135bn, allowing rich individuals to offset potential losses against tax, $510bn worth of bailouts to large businesses, and a $341bn ‘Paycheck Protection Programme’ aimed at small businesses. These handouts were funnelled through the banks, who took $10bn in fees and approved payments to their preferred customers. No surprise then that US billionaires increased their wealth by an estimated $434bn during the first four months of the pandemic.
Aware of the dangerous prospect of millions of desperate unemployed people, the administration was forced to provide financial support. Workers affected by the crisis were to receive an extra $600 a week in unemployment payments through to 30 June, but with new claims increasing by 3,554%, the country’s underfunded unemployment offices have been inundated. 40.8 million US workers have applied for unemployment benefit but only a fraction of these claims is likely to be processed in time to bring any support (never mind the additional $600) – even if the claims are approved. Similarly, the Act promised one-time ‘stimulus checks’ [sic] of $1,200 to workers with incomes under $99,000, but through a cavalcade of executive delays and errors (including Trump demanding his signature featured prominently on the payments before they could be released), millions of US workers waited weeks to receive these, and many still wait; meanwhile, the handouts for businesses were completed in two weeks. A second round of stimulus payments is currently being delayed by the Republican-controlled Senate. After months without work, the provisions for working people are akin to dousing a blaze with a water pistol.
US healthcare: no good for workers
Covid-19 has pushed the US healthcare system to breaking point, but for workers it was already woefully inadequate. The US spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world – yet the deep inequalities in the system mean that for the majority, falling ill is unaffordable. US healthcare providers are driven by profit, but more than 27 million US people lack any kind of health insurance, meaning they risk going into debt should they fall ill. 25% of US citizens avoid seeking medical care due to the cost. At the end of 2019, 137 million US people had some form of medical debt; this will rise steeply with unemployment. Lack of paid sick leave and the daunting costs associated with healthcare have exacerbated coronavirus’ effects on the US working class.
WHO guidelines advise that mass public testing and contact tracing can contain the virus’ spread. But despite Trump’s insistence that the US has the best Covid-19 screening systems in the world, mass testing in the US is a fiction; at the beginning of May less than 2% of the population had received a test. In Philadelphia those living in poorer areas are six times less likely to have received testing than those in more affluent areas. Many poor black and minority people are not tested, even when reporting Covid-19 symptoms. Roughly 33% of Covid-19 cases have affected black people, despite their constituting 13% of the population. Systemic racism means black and minority communities bear the brunt of the coronavirus, thanks to long-standing economic marginalisation.
Republican Mitt Romney criticised his own administration, claiming it ‘treaded water’ for two months instead of taking an approach which might have allowed hotspots to be effectively quarantined. Trump downplayed the need for testing, although all White House staff are tested each day. Testing facilities are slowly growing, but even the current rate of about 250,000 tests a day would need to be exponentially increased to hope to head off the virus’ spread. There is no concrete federal plan for achieving anything like the required numbers; no support for the masses of uninsured workers; no central organisation of materials needed to carry out tests. The Trump administration blames local state governors for the failures.
The profit motive has left healthcare institutions unable to deal with the pandemic. With most hospitals in the US cancelling non-urgent elective surgeries, a major source of their income has dried up. It is the poorest who suffer for this: due to falling hospital revenues in some of the hardest-hit low-income areas of the country they are being forced to furlough frontline workers when they are needed most. In Seattle, the state’s largest healthcare provider UW Medicine furloughed over 1,500 medical staff on 18 May due to a $500m deficit. Healthcare workers still working have totally inadequate supplies of vital medical equipment. Staff who speak up about shortages risk being sacked by company managements which prioritise profits over adequate preparation and safeguarding. Hospitals have been forced to beg for donations of PPE from salons, construction companies and the general public. Doctors have worn industrial jumpsuits instead of protective equipment.
Return to work
While the crisis deepens, the Trump administration has focused on calling for the reopening of the economy. On 30 April, Trump allowed federal guidelines on social distancing to expire, paving the way for states to relax lockdown rules. Businesses have jumped on the chance to resume profit-making. Notably, union-busting gangster Elon Musk reopened Tesla’s California automotive plant on 11 May, against state public health directives; Musk has personally made over $12bn since the start of the year and called business closures ‘fascistic’. One week into May, 23 states had issued return-to-work orders for non-essential businesses. By 20 May, all states had begun to loosen the lockdown.
Meanwhile, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the US agency of workplace safety, which is meant to act in the workers’ interests, has surrendered its role entirely to business-owners, advising that as long as businesses are operating in ‘good faith’, they will leave them to organise their own virus response. Bosses will be allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and decide for themselves whether they are doing enough to protect workers.
There has been resistance to this brazen attack on the working class. Workers at meatpacking factories across the US found themselves on the frontlines as one of the hardest-hit industries, with over 12,000 workers, largely from poor minority backgrounds, contracting the virus nationwide. Workers in these factories often stand shoulder-to-shoulder for long hours with no protective equipment. Several plants were targeted by walkouts and strikes in opposition to pushes for a return to work in late April. It took an executive order from Trump commanding the plants to open ‘under any circumstances’ to force workers back. Union capitulation has helped stifle workers’ capacity to fight back. In Detroit, wildcat strikes and walkouts forced the closure of automotive plants at the start of the lockdown, but the United Auto Workers union (UAW) gave the thumbs-up to these reopening on 6 May, forcing workers back into deadly factories. UAW officials received mandatory coronavirus tests before returning to their own offices – they made no such demands for the workers they represent.
The reopening of US businesses is not based on declining cases, or any kind of breakthrough in controlling the virus. Indeed, the week beginning 27 April, when states began to announce they would lift lockdown restrictions, an average of 1,831 people died every day, and the total number of confirmed cases passed one million. The drive to reopen the economy is based on desperation to restore business profits and to stave off inevitable resistance from workers left with nothing; this is social murder, plain and simple.
It has been left up to individuals at a state level to organise extensions to quarantine efforts. The Trump administration has made use of the situation to give tacit approval to small groups of pro-Trump right-wing protestors, who have invaded state legislatures in states such as Michigan, armed with assault rifles and threatened officials seeking to stop businesses reopening. The administration has proved that it will not take steps at a federal level to ensure workers are financially able to self-isolate, opting to send them back into their workplaces. States reopening have threatened workers that if they don’t return to work, whether or not it is safe, they will lose their unemployment benefits; in Iowa, state officials have requested companies to inform on workers refusing to return to work. For working class people, who must still pay rent and support themselves and their families, returning to work becomes the only option.
The US government actions dealing with the Covid-19 crisis betray its absolute lack of interest in the welfare of working people. Its chief concern has been exploiting the crisis to hand record bailouts to capitalists, pass legislation to shield businesses from being held legally responsible if their workers are in unsafe conditions, and to cut into workers’ rights. They sacrifice the working class in dangerous workplaces, so the rich can continue to profit.
Joe Tyler
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 276 June/July 2020
