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Why ‘Keep Our NHS Public’ is launching a People’s Covid Inquiry

The Covid pandemic is ongoing and has already been a disaster that will have major long lasting adverse consequences


07/02/2021

 

Across the political divide there are few people who would even attempt to argue that the pandemic the UK has been handled well, other than a misguided and ignorant minority of lockdown sceptics. With nearly 120,000 deaths including 29,000 in care homes, almost 900 health and care staff, and many other frontline key workers, the UK stands near the top of the world league table for deaths in relation to population. It is worse than even the United States.

In addition, there has been a huge adverse impact on the psychological health of millions. This includes children, many of whom will see their life chances reduced by the chaos around education. An enormous burden of ill health has also been neglected by an overwhelmed NHS, that is forced to redeploy personnel and to suspend many non-covid related services.

The problems of ‘long Covid’ in survivors are likely to be considerable and require major investment in services to support these patients. Inequalities in society have been strikingly highlighted, with people from the Black, Asian, Minority and Ethnic (BAME) communities suffering disproportionately, together with those living in poverty or unable to work from home. The health and care workforce has made heroic efforts but will bear the mental scars for years to come.

Whether they will even be allowed time for respite once spread of infection is brought under control remains in doubt, and many are already considering finding alternative employment or taking early retirement. Huge numbers of people have lost jobs or seen their income fall dramatically. Families have been separated from their loved ones, barred from seeing them in hospital or care homes, prevented from being with them at the time of death or mourning them properly with a funeral.

There is no evidence so far of lessons have been learnt

We might have expected lessons to have been learnt during what is now called ‘the first wave’, during last spring. In fact, this has not been the case, with deaths during the second wave even now exceeding those in the first. Although an effective ‘test and trace’ system was initially set as a precondition for relaxing the first lockdown, this requirement was abandoned on the basis of a false dichotomy between health and the economy.

At the present time, a policy of virus suppression continues to be pursued in England despite evidence from countries such as New Zealand suggesting far better health and economic outcomes from a ,Covid elimination approach. Large amounts of public money are being wasted on an ineffective privatised test and trace system; mass testing despite a lack of evidence to suggest this is effective; and finally – contracting out to private companies that have failed to deliver, for example on Personal Protective Equipment.

While it became clear that crowding indoors, close proximity and poor ventilation all contributed towards spread of infection, ‘eat out to help out’, going to the pub, and mixing over Christmas were all encouraged with predictable and dire results.

Even now staff are being put at risk because PPE guidance has not been updated in the light of new insights into viral spread, to say nothing of needed workplace restrictions. The latter given outbreaks such as in the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency office with over 500 cases including one death.

Is there even an appetite to learn lessons?

Looking at the above, it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that there is an unwillingness to learn lessons in case this is taken as an admission of guilt. Just as the Prime Minister talked of health staff having to make impossible decisions about which patients should or should not receive intensive care when demand outstrips resources, and yet he rejected the notion of helping formulate ethical guidelines and providing legal protection for those put in this situation.

To have done this, while it was entirely the right course of action, would have been seen as an acknowledgement that government strategy had failed and that the NHS has been neither protected nor had coped. Notwithstanding, under pressure from many different sources the government has at least accepted that there is need for an inquiry. But at the same time it maintains the fiction that it has done all the right things at the right time.

In July, Johnson stated that ‘now was not the right time for an investigation but there would “certainly” be one “in the future” so lessons could be learned’. This was in direct response to pleas from the ‘Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice’ group, who presciently remarked: “We also believe that a part of any inquiry must begin now to take fast action in order to prevent further unnecessary deaths should we encounter a second wave”.

The Prime Minister went on to make it clear that there would be no inquiry until the pandemic was beaten, despite both MPs and scientists pleading for immediate action so the mistakes from the first wave were not repeated. In January 2021, after passing the official 100,000 deaths mark, he again reiterated that with NHS hospitals facing immense pressures, it would not be “sensible” to divert government resources away from the fight against Covid-19. The fact that an inquiry might assist that fight seems not to have been considered, perhaps because he has been transferring his failures onto the public at large.

Why further prevarication is dangerous

It is clear that the government aims to avoid scrutiny and the inevitable criticism that will come its way for the management of the pandemic. Ministers therefore wish to delay any inquiry until such time in the distant future, when this will have become both a largely academic exercise and pose no threat to them.

There are, however, powerful reasons why an inquiry should be a matter of urgency. Firstly, huge numbers of preventable deaths have already been shown to result from failing to learn lessons and change course. The pandemic is still raging, and who knows when it will end?

Meanwhile, the death toll increases. The success of vaccination is by no means guaranteed and requires sufficient numbers of the population to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity. Particular attention needs to be focused on vulnerable groups that show more evidence of vaccine hesitancy, yet currently there is not an inclusive approach that puts health inequalities at its heart.

A possible scenario remains of infection being controlled in much of the country while remaining endemic in poor Northern towns. How long vaccination will confer protection is unknown, and the threat of further viral mutations brings at least the possibility of a variant against which available vaccines will not be protective. All this dictates that a raft of measures to eliminate community transmission of infection (social distancing; find test, trace, isolate, support; work place safety, etc.) should be a main focus for government in addition to vaccine roll out.

Finally, more pandemics will come. The 21st century had already seen SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola and Zika virus before SARS-CoV-2 caused Covid-19. It is urgent that we plan for the next pandemic while getting out of this one. We must think out how we develop our health and care services in order to repair the damage, make them resilient in the future, and provide the care and protection to the population that is the first duty of government.

A People’s Covid Inquiry

‘Keep Our NHS Public’ is convinced that it is in the public interest to learn lessons now so that any necessary actions can be taken sooner rather than at some unspecified point in the future. This we believe will save lives. We stand together with bereaved families calling for justice; the Patients Association who insist on knowing the extent of damage caused to non-covid care, health and care workers; trade unions and other campaigning organisations demanding that government faces up to its responsibilities.

We also aim to give a voice to representatives from BAME communities, key workers and all those who have suffered and are calling for this to be recognised. To this end we are launching the People’s Covid Inquiry – to answer the questions the government lacks courage even to ask.

More information about the People’s Covid Inquiry:

The GameStop saga is no class war

How did an ailing strip mall video game retailer become headline news around the world? And what does this tell us about how capitalism works?


05/02/2021

Only a week after the stock price of US video game retailer GameStop (GME) skyrocketed to nearly $350 per share — up from roughly $40 the week before — its price settled back down to a more modest $60 as of midday Friday. GME’s wild ride over the past few weeks has earned a wide spectrum of labels, ranging from a “populist revolt” against Wall Street, an outrageous act of interference into financial markets, to a grim reminder of the financialization of all aspects of society.

While there may be an element of truth in each of these accounts, the reality is more mundane. In an era of increased atomization, the GameStop saga is just another stochastic outburst against a political and economic system that serves only a small sliver of the population. Changing it will require more than just the “democratization” of the tools of the already-powerful and wealthy.

How did an ailing strip mall video game retailer become headline news? Initially, users on the subreddit r/WallStreetBets, a group of small-time investors fond of risky options trading, became aware that a number of large hedge funds had an extremely high short exposure on GameStop. A short position is when an investor borrows a stock in order to sell it on immediately, betting that the price of that stock will fall. The investor then plans to buy it back at a lower price and return it to the borrower, cashing in on the difference between the old and new (theoretically) lower price in the process. However, if the price rises, short-sellers face potentially unlimited losses because a share’s value can theoretically rise infinitely. In this case, hedge funds and other investors had taken shorts positions equating to 138% of the total amount of GameStop stocks that actually exists. This was a huge bet that the price of the company’s stock would continue to fall in the context of store closures and the on-going effects of the pandemic.

Realizing this vulnerability, and determined to make both a profit and inflict pain on the Wall Street giants, retail investors (individual non-professional investors using mostly their own money) piled into GME, sending the price sharply upward. The goal was to force the funds into a “short squeeze,” a scenario where short-sellers are forced to buy back the shares they’ve borrowed at a higher value, incurring a huge loss for the shorter and further adding upward pressure to the share price. This tactic is not new, but is typically only used by larger investors. Yet, by coordinating online this group of individual investors managed to pull off the biggest of short squeezes. Last week, one of the most exposed hedge fund Melvin Capital was forced to close out of its short position, contributing to a multi-billion dollar monthly loss equal to 53% of the fund’s total value.

Initially, this saga seemed to lend itself to a typical “David and Goliath” story: plucky underdog investors against the Wall Street titans, a populist tale for the 21st century. While we have every right to cheer when large hedge funds lose immense sums of money (as some of them did, up to $3.3 billion in total), the battle lines cannot be drawn so easily. Both sides of the GameStop saga represent different sides of a flawed system.

It should go without saying, but trading equities is not an effective way to battle Wall Street. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is one of the largest shareholders in GameStop, and one of the biggest beneficiaries of the price spike. The trading app used by many of the Redditors, Robinhood, is backed by several large Wall Street firms and was able to raise over $1 billion in new funding in the aftermath of the crisis. Meanwhile Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm, was able to cash out its holdings in theatre-chain AMC Entertainment after Redditors helped drive its shares up tenfold.

While the Redditors underlying analysis — that Wall Street is corrupt, self-serving, and rigged against the “little guy” — is essentially correct, some of their outrage has been misplaced. For example, Robinhood’s reason for temporarily suspending trading of GME at the high of the bubble was likely more banal than initial accounts suggested. After an initial uproar, it was later revealed that the trading platform chose to suspend trading and close positions as a result of a potential liquidity crisis. Because most Robinhood users use margin accounts — owning a claim to a share, rather than the share itself — the platform itself assumes some of the risk of users’ positions. Pausing selling, and later raising additional capital, stemmed more from this arrangement than from a nefarious backroom conspiracy.

What does this bizarre episode tell us about our current political economy, and the role of financial markets within it? Certainly, it is another chink in the ideological armor of capitalism. While the divergence between asset values and the real economy has been a long-term trend — exacerbated by large-scale central bank asset purchases over the past decade — the GameStop episode put a finer point on that reality.

Based on typical “fundamentals,” Gamestop is clearly not worth hundreds of dollars per share. Still, people kept investing, hoping to get rich speculating on an asset with a price almost totally divorced from the firm’s physical business. This is certainly not a new phenomenon, but the scale of the divergence, as well as the people driving it, was unusual. To update Keynes’ famous beauty contest analogy, perhaps the best stocks to invest in won’t be the ones that seem memeable to the investor, but the ones investors think that other market players will find most memeable.

Wall Street will not be successfully challenged by using its own tools against it. Rather than an uprising against capitalism, GameStop’s rise and fall is a sign of the hegemony of our current system. For the most part, the Redditors did not seek to upend our financial structures, just to use newly distributed tools to make room for themselves within it.

The class backgrounds of the majority of those involved are relevant to help understand their motives. While hardly elite, the fact the Redditors had both enough capital and time to engage in the stock market indicates their relatively fortunate economic position. For all the talk of #eattherich and the mutual desire to give Wall Street a bloody-nose, many more hoped to become wealthy themselves. Ultimately, they lacked a coherent political agenda or plan beyond the immediate moment. As a result, this will be a flash in the pan rather than a long-term threat to our economic system.

True opposition to financialized capitalism won’t come from within it. A real alternative will only arise from the less immediate, but ultimately much more enduring and significant work of organizing in workplaces and on the streets. The only way out of our current mess is to dismantle the tools of Wall Street, not democratize them.

More voting rights for Spaniards living abroad

The removal of the “voto rogado” proposed by Unidas Podemos “will put an end to a historical democratic deficit suffered by emigrants”


04/02/2021

by Izquierda Unida Exterior

 

The federation of Izquierda Unida Exterior (IU Exterior) celebrates the registration in Congress, by Unidas Podemos, of a law proposal to eliminate the “voto rogado”, a system implemented in 2011 by the PP, PSOE, CiU and PNV that reduced the electoral participation abroad to a minimum of up to 5%. The proposal, included in the Government agreement, will be debated, presumably, during the last week of February.

“The law proposal of Unidas Podemos will put an end to a historical democratic scourge towards the Spanish emigration”, emphasized the co-speaker of IU Exterior Nerea Fernández. “Despite the fact that this is good news, from IU we will remain vigilant so that none of the political groups reduces the proposal during the amendment process and the final text manages to completely put an end to this injustice”.

To this end, IU Exterior points out that the derogation of the “voto rogado” must be accompanied by other measures such as the extension of the deadlines for sending ballots, facilitating registration in the census and the carrying out of consular procedures by telematic means, or putting an end to the existing irregularities in the censuses. “For all this to work, it is also necessary to increase the technical and human resources in the consulates, especially in those where the number of residents has increased the most, and improve the working conditions of foreign service staff,” says the co-spokesman of the federation Eduardo Velázquez.

“Today’s good news has been possible thanks to the constant and determined struggle of the emigration collectives, and particularly Marea Granate, which has done an incredible work for more than 10 years”, adds Velázquez.

IU Exterior regrets that the derogation of the vote comes too late for the Catalan elections, despite having led to anomalies such as the Catalan electorate abroad had only one day to request the documentation to vote, although later the deadline to do so was extended.

This text was originally published in Spanish on the IU Exterior website

Ten Years of Arab Spring in Egypt – Revolution and Back Again

LINKE MP Christine Buchholz recalls her visit to Egypt in 2012. She argues that the Days of Hope have been crushed by the Sisi régime – which has been backed to the hilt by the German government


03/02/2021

Ten years ago, revolutions drove long-term dictators like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Ben Ali out of office. When I travelled to Egypt in September 2012, I felt that the experience of the revolution gave people new hope and energy. Trade unionists, women’s rights activists, human rights activists as well as street vendors and other workers I talked to felt invigorated.

Egyptian activist Hossam El-Hamalawy describes the days of the Egyptian revolution:

“For years people have dreamed of overthrowing Mubarak (…). Now millions of people took control of their lives and their neighbourhoods. They barricaded the streets and drove out the police forces (…). The so-called ‘Friday of Anger on 28 January was one of the most glorious days in Egypt’s history.”

Defeat of the revolution

However, to this day the demands of the revolutionaries have not been met. The military coup and the seizure of power by former defence minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in 2013 marked a temporary defeat for the revolution. The counterrevolutionary forces around the military and el-Sisi’s supporting elites were able to expand their power and stabilise the regime. The German government also played a role in this: already under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt was an important partner of the German government in migration deterrence and the fight against “international terrorism”; military and police reconstruction aid was provided in the name of “stability”. With the Sisi regime, this course is continues unabated.

Unprecedented repression

There are now believed to be more than 60,000 political prisoners in detention. Torture is widespread, hundreds of people have “disappeared”. Intolerable conditions in prisons have worsened with the COVID-19 pandemic. Human Rights Watch speaks of 14 prisoners who have died from COVID-19.

Internationally renowned organisations are targets of arbitrary attacks by the state. At the end of 2020, the scientists Gasser Abdel-Razek, Mohamed Basheer and Karim Ennarah from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights were arrested and detained for three weeks. Previously, they had met with representatives of European embassies, including the German embassy, for a briefing on the human rights situation in Egypt. In February 2016, the corpse of Italian student Giulio Regeni was found with severe torture marks on a road on the outskirts of Cairo. These are two of the more prominent cases that have caused an outcry in the international me and demanded explanations from government spokespersons across Europe. But the fates of Regeni, Abdel-Razek, Basheer and Ennarah are shared by countless Egyptians whose names will remain unknown.

Based on increasing cyber-surveillance, prison sentences are regularly handed down for violating “public morals”. Women and members of the LGBTQ community are particularly affected. Sexual violence, abuse and torture are commonplace in police stations. Civilian security forces regularly infiltrate communities they have been declared immoral. After rainbow flags were waved at a concert of the Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila in 2017, there was a huge wave of arrests, with security forces detaining 75 people. In 2019, the NGO Bedayaa documented more than 90 arrests.

Together with other members of the Bundestag and the European Parliament, I have issued an appeal in solidarity to draw attention to the fate of six socialists who are in Egyptian prisons and to demand their release and the release of all political prisoners.

In the Sinai, the Egyptian army has been brutally targeting alleged insurgents for years in the name of a “war on terror”. Videos show the Egyptian military executing unarmed men. In the city of Rafah, the government is blowing up houses along the border with Gaza to more effectively seal off the Palestinian territory. Over 1000 families were left homeless. The local people see themselves at the mercy of a “war against civilians”.

The German Federal Government – Partner in Crime

Despite this, the German government is backing the Sisi regime – militarily, economically and even with the Federal Cross of Merit. In November 2020, the representative of the Egyptian military dictatorship and former Egyptian ambassador in Berlin, Badr Abdelatty, was awarded the German state’s medal of honour for his “efforts”.

Germany is Egypt’s second largest economic partner after China. Of particular importance for the German export-oriented economy is the Suez Canal. After the military coup in 2013, the Egyptian military dictatorship received billions in support from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Huge investments in the energy sector and in construction projects were on the horizon, and German companies hoped to participate. The German government played a mediating role here: in 2015, at an international investors’ conference, Sigmar Gabriel, the Minister for Economic Affairs, paved the way for Siemens to secure a contract with the Egyptian military dictatorship. It is said to be the the largest contract in the company’s history. The deal was finalised during further state visits.

The German arms industry earns millions every year from weapons and armaments exported to the military dictatorship – approved by the German government “after intensive examination”. In terms of individual export licences, i.e. all arms exports including weapons for war, Egypt was in first place, buying 751.5 million euros worth of weapons from Germany in 2020. The German government was not swayed from its course by the brutal war in Yemen, which el-Sisi supports as part of the Saudi-led coalition. Nor is it worried by the civil war in neighbouring Libya, where the Egyptian military has already intervened.

Last year, the last of a total of four Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems submarines was delivered to Egypt. In November, the German government added ten more submarines to the Egyptian coast guard. These were originally to go to Saudi Arabia. However, due to Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the Yemen war, the German government imposed a temporary ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia. Now it has given the green light for the export to Egypt. The current Egyptian ambassador in Berlin, Khaled Galal Abdelhamid, sees this as a “vote of confidence”.

In order to build Egypt as an “outpost of a European security policy”, the Bundestag ratified the bilateral “Agreement on Security Cooperation” in 2017. It follows the central logic of preventing migration by strengthening the security services: for example, in order to “combat smuggling of migrants”, border police cooperation is strengthened by, for example, the Federal Police stationing a liaison officer in Cairo and conducting workshops on document security. The Bundeskriminalamt (BKA, federal criminal police office) works with the notorious National Security Service (NSS) and trains Egyptian officers.

In September and October 2020, security forces brutally cracked down on informal settlements in poor areas, destroying numerous homes. The massive social and economic impact of the Corona crisis and austerity measures is also feeding resentment. Although the state violently suppresses any expression of dissenting opinion and resistance, nationwide protests have taken place.

Activist Hossam is counting on those who continue the resistance and keep fighting for social justice:

“The scale of the defeats in the first wave of the revolution was bloody and forced activists to organise underground. (…) They are in the process of rebuilding networks that were destroyed. (…) It will take time to revive the uprisings, but revolutions are inevitable!”

For “bread, freedom and social justice” to become a reality for all Egyptians, the German government must end its support for el-Sisi.

This article first appeared in German on the freiheitsliebe Website. Translation: Ava Matheis

Hossam el-Hamalawy will be speaking about the North African revolutions in an online meeting organised by the LINKE Berlin Internationals on Tuesday, 9th February

For the Right to Desire

Abortion is now legal in Argentina, as the result of a long struggle. The debate was never about Abortion: Yes or No, but about Abortion: legal or clandestine. A contribution from an Argentinian feminist


02/02/2021

The decriminalization and legalization of the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (VIP) is a debt that democracy owes to people with the capacity to gestate (it must be remembered that, for example, transgender men can also abort). After years without a quorum to debate the bill, in 2018 it was finally debated. On June 8 of that year, in a marathonic day as we are accustomed to, the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of the Argentine National Congress) gave it the long-awaited half-sanction. However, two months later, the Upper House turned its back on “the green tide”: that huge and unstoppable group of women and dissident identities that fought (and still fights) for the recognition of their rights.

On that rainy night in August, it was demonstrated once again that desire is still a problem. Despite this result, the recently deceased senator, Fernando “Pino” Solanas said in his speech that day: “Today is not a defeat, I tell the girls who are outside. It is a monumental triumph. We have managed to place the issue in the national debate.”

Two years later, the scene has changed: this time, the bill was entered by the Executive Branch, whose representative confirmed on more than one occasion that abortion should be legal, and that he would do everything in his power to make it so. He said it in the campaign, he repeated it at the opening of legislative sessions this year, and he reflected it by presenting a bill that would finally stop criminalizing the right of a pregnant person to decide about their body. As simple as that.

It is really necessary to make it clear that what is being debated these days in Congress is not only manifested in a transversal way and does not know partisan ideology, but also is far from being a personal choice: here the question is not “Abortion: yes or no?”. It is something much deeper: “Abortion: legal or clandestine?”

Everyday, and for reasons that exceed any type of analysis, people with the ability to gestate make the decision to end unwanted pregnancies. In the best case scenario, they pay very high fees to access an abortion performed by health personnel who do nothing but accuse them with one finger while receiving the money with the other hand. What happens in the worst cases? They die.

Why do they die? Because despair, poverty and helplessness do not know laws, and the methods are as diverse as dangerous: parsley, hanger, knitting needles, and more. You can google it, the information is just one click away. But not so the protection of those who cannot afford a safe way to do it. So yes: they die. Alone and in the dark. Underground.

This is why the problem of clandestine abortions is nothing else than a public health issue. Beyond personal decisions, it is essential that the government is present. If it becomes legal, will there be more abortions? The numbers will go up, of course; but because they can begin to be counted, and deaths will cease to be invisible. But something more important will happen: those who decide to abort will not give up their lives in the attempt.

What does the bill propose? Some essential points:

  • The right of pregnant people to decide is enshrined: this includes access to information and comprehensive health coverage of the procedure (both in the public and private sphere) in case they decide to do so, which must be carried out within a maximum period of 10 days from their request. The Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy, eventually, will be included in the minimum plan of medical benefits that must be covered by the health system.
  • VIP is allowed up to the 14th week of gestation inclusive; after that moment, it will be enabled in cases of rape or in those that affect the health of the pregnant person.
  • Regarding conscientious objection, it will be allowed as long as this decision is sustained in all areas in which the person who manifests it exercises their profession. As for health institutions, if they do not have professionals who carry out this procedure, they must immediately refer to another provider who does it, maintaining 100% economic coverage. This conscientious objection may not be used in order not to intervene in post-abortion health care.
  • The government, in addition, has the obligation to promote compliance with Law number 26,150 on Comprehensive Sexual Education (sanctioned in 2006 and which has not yet been complied with in some provinces), establishing promotion policies that make it possible to strengthen the sexual and reproductive health of the population.

That said, I allow myself to reveal a little secret: I decided to only write the paragraph “of defeat” before the historic days of December 29 and 30, 2020. I didn’t want to feed illusions. The voting was too close to think of a different result than that of two years ago. From 4PM, speakers from different political parties presented their arguments in favor and against the voluntary interruption of pregnancy and the “law of 1000 days”; a successful initiative to accompany the desired pregnancies in vulnerable situations (because for your information, the VIP won’t force anyone to abort).

At 4AM, and with the speech of the anti-rights senator for the province of Formosa, José Mayans, the debate ended. Outside, the streets were divided between “light blue” and “green” scarves (the first one identifying those against the bill and the second for those who were in favor of it), who waited expectantly. Thousands of people also followed the process through the internet, social media and even through comrades who somehow transmitted what was happening.

The president of the Senate, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, remained neutral and stoic (although it was known that she had supported the bill since 2018). The vote was closed and the numbers were surprising: 38 in favor, 29 against, and 1 abstention. The streets exploded in shouts and music: it is law.

The fight continues, and there is still much to do. For their part, the sectors in favor of clandestine abortion promise to challenge the law, and it is to be expected. They will not give up. But it’s 4 in the morning and as I hug my son, I celebrate that our country today is a little fairer.

Luciana Vidal is a feminist activist, lawyer, member of Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales and Izquierda Unida Provincia de Buenos Aires.