COVID
While just 10 countries have used 75 percent of jabs so far, around 130 countries have not seen a single vaccination, according to the UN. Of 175 million vaccines administered, only about eight million have gone to South America’s 430 million population and two million to Africa’s 1.3 billion population.
https://socialistrevolution.org/permanent-pandemic-mutations-market-failures-and-zero-covid/ March 3, 2021
About $100bn of public money has gone towards coronavirus vaccine development, there is no good reason why private companies should make a killing from these medicines. Rather, these vaccines should be distributed to the entire world, free of charge, and quickly—before even more virulent variants develop, so that some normality can truly, finally, resume.
The profiteering, vaccine nationalism, and hoarding that pose the biggest obstacles to ending this pandemic flow directly from the rotten capitalist system.
The experience of this public health disaster will lead more and more people to draw the conclusion that this system is incompatible with a safe and healthy future for humanity. These lessons will weigh heavily on the minds of the working class during the stormy period we are entering.
We Marxists must be ready with a revolutionary program and party to chart a new course.
Reflections on Naomi Klein’s Pandemic Shock Doctrine
Daniel Møller Ølgaard https://www.e-ir.info/2020/09/15/reflections-on-naomi-kleins-pandemic-shock-doctrine/
It should also be analysed as a symptom of a necropolitical turn in the social-, political-, and economic organisation of our world, the aim of which defines and divides populations in order to decide who must be protected and, more importantly, who can be sacrificed in the process.
it becomes obvious that digital capitalism and its associated mode of production relies on the physical, cultural and social division between consumers of digital commodities, and the countless couriers, moderators, miners and assembly line workers which produce our technological devices and digital commodities.
power embodied by surveillance capitalism is partly exercised through the biopolitical governance of individual consumers in affluent countries, surveillance capitalism relies just as much on the exercise of a necropolitical form of power that reduces people (or workers) to precarious conditions of life in places such as the Congolese lithium mine or the Chinese assembly line.
Put differently, the Pandemic Shock Doctrine – and digital capitalism more widely – does not simply substitute measures of violence and oppression with a biopolitics whose technologies of control aims at ensuring the health of populations. Rather, the emergence of digital capitalism represents the relocation of violence and oppression away from the centre of Western knowledge-based economies and towards its (postcolonial) frontiers.
The Inequality Virus—India Supplement 2021 of the Oxfam Report By Savvy Soumya Misra & Tejas Patel https://www.oxfamindia.org/press-release/inequality-virus-india-supplement-2021
India’s 100 billionaires have seen their fortunes increase by Rs 12,97,822 crores since March 2020, enough to give every one of the 138 million poorest Indian people a cheque for Rs 94,045 each. Ambani earned during the pandemic would keep the 40 crore informal workers that are at risk of falling into poverty due to COVID-19 above the poverty line for at least 5 months.
Out of a total 122 million who lost their jobs 75 percent, which accounts for 92 million jobs, were lost in the informal sector.
Health Inequalities: Only 6 percent of the poorest 20 percent has access to non-shared sources of improved sanitation, compared to 93.4 percent of the top 20 percent. 59.6 percent of India’s population lives in a room or less. India has the world’s fourth lowest health budget in terms of its share of government expenditure. If India’s top 11 billionaires are taxed at just 1% on the increase in their wealth during the pandemic, it will be enough to increase the allocation of Jan Aushadi Scheme by 140 times, which provides affordable medicines to the poor and marginalized.
Health Expenses Pushed 55 Million Indians Into Poverty In 2011-12 https://www.indiaspend.com/health-expenses-pushed-55-million-indians-into-poverty-in-2017-2017/
90% Of India’s Poorest Have No Health Insurance https://www.health-check.in/90-of-indias-poorest-have-no-health-insurance/ Indians, especially those in rural India, have limited access to healthcare services such as doctors and hospitals, they are less likely to buy health insurance. the pool of people who are able and willing to pay for insurance is low, and insurance premiums are high, said Amir Ullah Khan, a health economist.
the poor are less likely to avail of hospitalisation. since they can’t afford to pay for healthcare, the poor postpone seeking treatment which, in case of diseases like tuberculosis, cancer, etc. turn serious and more expensive to treat,”
For earlier documentation and Conversations on COVID, see http://emeets.lnwr.in/index.php/covid
Unlike many developed and some developing economies, the report said 52 percent of urban Indian workers went without work or pay and received no financial assistance to tide over the crisis. "On average, earnings fell by 48 percent in April and May, compared to pre-COVID months of January and February. Financial assistance from the government or employers was available to less than a quarter of the workforce," - Shania Bhalotia Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli - 'City of dreams no more: The impact of COVID-19 on urban workers in India', https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/business/1193253-covid-19-exacerbated-pre-existing-inequities-in-urban-india-report
Second Wave
Migrant labourers leave Mumbai in packed trains fearing lockdown https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/migrant-labourers-leave-mumbai-in-packed-trains-fearing-lockdown-101617932836476-amp.html
Speaking to ANI, a migrant worker who was travelling in an Uttar Pradesh bound train said, "This train will go to Gorakhpur. We're leaving the city because Covid-19 cases are rising here."
The Print Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwTKNKLXBKI Despite the surge in Covid-19 cases, the Dadar Vegetable Market in Mumbai witnessed a huge crowd on 9 April, and people could be seen flouting all social distancing norms. Many were also seen without a mask, or not wearing it the right way. Meanwhile, a UP-bound train packed with migrant workers was seen leaving the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in Mumbai after new restrictions were imposed due to the rising cases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtuagIOpYmE 9th April News Nation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlcS9n07aw0 9th April ABP News
Post by S Sen: Last time, as per the Union Government, more than a crore had to trek back home - maybe hundreds of miles away, braving the scorching sun. While Indians stuck in foreign lands were brought back free by chartered planes. The template for "Atmanirbhar Bharat".
The "New India".
In India's capital, pubs, malls, gyms have reopened, but govt creches have not. @radhikabordia found growing hunger, malnutrition & death in five slums, as workers lose jobs & their already at-risk children get lesser food than before the #pandemic. https://www.article-14.com/post/hunger-threatens-india-malls-open-but-anganwadis-stay-shut
The anganwadi was established under the central government’s Integrated Child Development Scheme nearly 45 years ago and is now one of the world’s largest early childhood development programmes, providing supplementary nutrition to children under six and pregnant and lactating women, apart from other services, such as early education, immunization, monitoring of health parameters. Those delivering these services–the anganwadi workers–are trained women from the community. More than a million anganwadis across the country are among India’s frontline health workers, serving over 80 million children younger than 6 years and over 19 million pregnant women and lactating mothers.
PIL in the Supreme Court, accusing the government of “gross mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic in India” and asking the apex court to use its power under Article 32 and appoint an independent inquiry commission headed by a retired judge of the court, Prashant Bhushan has, in fact, stepped-up and sharpened his criticism of the government. Discussion with Prashant Bhushan with Wire
https://scroll.in/article/992067/covid-19-imagine-the-headlines-if-any-other-religion-had-been-responsible-for-kumbh-like-gathering the Tablighi Jamaat congregation began before the novel coronavirus had been declared a health emergency in the country, some believe that the actions of the Jamaat were condemnable. Court cases filed against members have led to numerous acquittals. ..
In the Tablighi Jamaat incident, it was clear that the government had failed to dissipate a gathering that eventually became a hotpsot and then proceeded to make things worse by stigmatising the disease and making Indians afraid about getting tested.
In the case of the Kumbh, the dangers are much more obvious. As new variants are ripping through states around the country, with patients filling up hospitals and crematoriums struggling to handle the numbers of dead, the Uttarakhand government did not just fail to take action limiting numbers at the Hindu festival – it actively encouraged people to come and told them not to worry about Covid-19 restrictions.
This links to video modules of various presentations by NGO & Organisation People on what is changing in our work...
Webinars Reimagining the future. All videos
https://www.facebook.com/pg/centerforfinancialaccountability/videos/?ref=page_internal
Thinking about the origins of COVID-19, there’s no doubt that the twentieth-century development model—land clearing, dam construction, transcontinental supply chains, global warming and threatened species—has scrambled planetary ecologies, opening up spaces for viral mobility. Suggestions that COVID-19 was an accidental by-product of genetic-engineering experimentation for medicinal purposes, or even
particulate escape from a biological-weapons lab, can be read in the light of anxieties caused by such large-scale system breakdown. Some people claim that the outbreak has been an elite ploy to put in place profitable new Silicon Valley technologies for public surveillance and social control, but we do not have to go down that track to know, per Naomi Klein’s ‘shock doctrine’, that capitalism amorally exploits any disaster, as it most certainly has this pandemic.- Re-Worlding—with a Pluriversal New Deal by Ariel Salleh
Ashish Kothari: https://youtu.be/7rID4YSV9pQ?t=3177
About $100bn of public money has gone towards coronavirus vaccine development.
The profiteering, vaccine nationalism, and hoarding that pose the biggest obstacles to ending this pandemic flow directly from the rotten capitalist system...The experience of this public health disaster will lead more and more people to draw the conclusion that this system is incompatible with a safe and healthy future for humanity. These lessons will weigh heavily on the minds of the working class during the stormy period we are entering. We Marxists must be ready with a revolutionary program and party to chart a new course.
https://socialistrevolution.org/permanent-pandemic-mutations-market-failures-and-zero-covid/
the pandemic.. has shown to millions of workers who have been treated as most disposable, whose work had been most degraded, who were told that they were unskilled, that they were so easily replaceable, that they are, in fact, the most essential workers in our economy. They were labelled essential workers.
...now Amazon workers know how important they are to keeping people fed and keeping people clothed...It’s being organized online and in-person, but these are new tools that are being organized...Whether it’s nurses sent to care for patients with COVID-19, without what they needed to keep themselves and their family safe, there are so many enraged workers out there right now, rightfully and righteously enraged. And there is power in that if we can mobilize it. - How to Rebuild from the Disaster of Neoliberalism. Naomi Klein interviewed by Grace Blakeley Janata Weekly
Anupam Guha We need to examples out of those who are directly profiteering from implementing NPR or Aadhaar. Perhaps targeting them on social media. Anupam Guha: The way you hit the company where it hurts, is by getting their employees unionised. There is a Trade Union called FITE. There are multiple trade Unions - some are affiliated with political parties. We need to expand the scope of Trade Unions in IT sector. As Civil Society people are excellent organisers, you have the resources. you have the means to amplify such efforts. As a society if you have to police these companies, you have to get to their employees. . Of course there are other ways also. You can malign them, expose them, get people to avoid buying their products and other market based action etc. But nothing is more effective than direct action with their employees. These companies have laws and rules that you can't join a trade union, and all sorts of internal propaganda and nonsense precisely to prevent Unionisation. .https://youtu.be/KyK07mj8hIM