The government’s ‘Autumn and Winter Plan’ for the pandemic continues its policy of social murder. The Plan is for tens of thousands of working class people to die in the months to come. The government does not intend to eliminate the virus but wants us to buy into the myth that it can be managed through a vaccination-only strategy. This will not prevent millions of predominantly working-class people from getting infected. Between ‘Freedom Day’ on 19 July 2021, and mid-September there were over 1.7 million new infections and over 5,500 deaths in the UK. As we go to press, almost 1,000 people are dying each week, with 1,000 people being hospitalised daily. The government’s priority remains protecting the interests of the ruling class and the profits of big business.
From 4 October, what remained of Britain’s leaky international travel restrictions will be removed to allow the travel and airline industry to get back to profitability. The International Air Transport Association has forecast net airline industry losses of $47.7bn in 2021, and its director Willie Walsh wants the entire system of testing fully vaccinated travellers to be scrapped. Between 17 March and 31 May 2021 more than a million people arrived in England and Northern Ireland from amber list countries. It is estimated that over 300,000 of them failed to quarantine and had to be referred to investigators to check whether they were really self-isolating.
Government’s Winter Plan
Plan A is an enhanced vaccination programme whereby 30 million people – health care workers, those over 50 years old and the clinically vulnerable – will be offered a third ‘booster’ dose. A single vaccine dose will also be offered to 12 to 15-year-olds. If Plan A is ‘not sufficient to prevent unsustainable pressure on the NHS’, then Plan B would see the reintroduction of mandatory mask-wearing in shops and on public transport; advice to work from home and the introduction of ‘vaccine passports’ at nightclubs, indoor crowded settings, all outdoor settings with 4,000 or more people and any venue with 10,000 plus. This is window-dressing. The real priority is protecting the economy and, for political purposes alone, the NHS. Talk of a ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown has been all but dismissed. It is clear the government will only implement a future lockdown if it is politically impossible to avoid.
Vaccination strategy
28% of the population (18.6 million people) are still unvaccinated, including six million eligible for the vaccine now. A strategy of living with the virus exposes these people to infection; the daily rate of positive tests was over 30,000 in late September, and asymptomatic cases probably double that. The virus has recently been shown to cause structural brain damage. Allowing mass infection is reckless in storing up potential degenerative disease in the population. The emergence of new variants such as Delta, which has some vaccine escape, means that ‘breakthrough infections’, where already fully-vaccinated people get infected, are increasing.
More dangerous variants will inevitably emerge due to rampant transmission and negligible quarantining of travellers, and a strategy of booster vaccinations will be unable to keep up with virus adaptation. Whilst the UK has fully vaccinated 66% of its population (82% of those eligible over the age of 16) and the US 54%, African nations are on 3%. According to Airfinity, the US, UK, EU, Canada and Japan were sitting on a stockpile of 500 million Covid-19 vaccine doses in September 2021, rising to 1.2 billion by the end of 2021, despite their respective booster vaccination programmes. Vaccine doses are being destroyed in imperialist nations. The US has binned at least 15.1 million doses since 1 March 2021, and thousands of doses have been destroyed in the EU, together with 12 million earmarked for ‘donation’ to African countries, Afghanistan, Syria and Uzbekistan.
Britain, Canada and Germany are at the forefront of blocking patent waivers which would transfer technology and local manufacturing to the countries that need vaccines. The imperialists prefer charity to sovereignty. Vaccines manufactured in South Africa by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) are still being exported to the EU despite the fact that the company has delivered only 14% of the 31 million doses South Africa has ordered and paid for. This is due to a stipulation in J&J’s contract blocking South Africa from restricting exports of the vaccine. Such clauses are absent from contracts within EU countries and are the main impediments to global vaccine distribution. The imperialists are protecting the profits of Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
Vaccinating children
Socialist Cuba has begun vaccinating children as young as two with its homemade Soberana vaccine (see p16), and China is vaccinating three-year-olds. The US and Germany will begin vaccinating five to 11-year-olds from October, yet the British government has yet to make a similar decision. The Medicines Healthcare Products and Regulatory Authority approved the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine as ‘safe and effective’ for 16- and 17-year-olds in December 2020, and for 12-15-year olds in June 2021. Over 10 million 12-17 year-olds in the US have already been fully vaccinated. As the British government dithers, thousands of children have become infected and 7-8% will go on to develop long-term illness.
There is no satisfactory explanation as to why the Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation (JCVI) has declined to recommend vaccination for younger children. Some JCVI members have implied that it is not clear if there are significant benefits – a view dismissed by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky: ‘If we vaccinate one million 12-17 year olds, we could see 30-40 mild cases of myocarditis. In this same one million, through vaccination, we avoid: 8,000 cases of Covid-19, 200 hospitalisations, 50 ICU stays and one death. The benefits far outweigh the risks.’
Throughout the pandemic the Labour Party has refused to challenge the Tories’ appalling strategy. Its inaction has enabled the ruling class to treat the deaths of tens of thousands of working class people as unavoidable collateral damage. Labour has done nothing to protect working class interests because it agrees with the priorities of the ruling class. Key elements of a serious strategy to deal with the pandemic, one which has been argued for by the likes of Deepti Gurdasani, would include:
- Improved financial and practical support for self-isolation.
- Immediate reinstatement of mandatory wearing of high-grade masks in schools, shops, public transport, and all indoor settings.
- Full vaccination of all children, accompanied by a public education campaign to tackle disinformation and vaccine hesitancy.
- Urgent investment in building ventilation and provision of air-filtration devices as needed.
- Implementation of a locally-run, public health centred test, trace and isolate system.
- Reinstatement of contact tracing by schools with a strict policy on mandatory isolation and PCR testing of all contacts of cases to prevent onward spread.
To this list we can add reinstatement of mandatory quarantining of all travellers regardless of vaccination status, and free testing of all travellers using the more accurate PCR rather than
lateral flow tests. The priority should be tracking and preventing the inward or outward spread of dangerous Covid-19 variants, not restoring airline industry profits.
Charles Chinweizu
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 284, October/November 2021
