Joan Twelves – Page 2

The Tory government is trying to gaslight us into thinking that Covid is over!

The Tory government is trying to gaslight us into thinking that Covid is over despite infections being at record levels and rising.

According to the Office of National Statistics just under 5 million people in England – 7.5% of the population – have Covid this week. This is 1 in 13, up from the previous week’s 1 in 16, which itself was a rise of 1 million from the week before.

The figures in the UK’s devolved nations are no better – 1 in 12 in Scotland, 1 in 14 in Wales and 1 in 15 in Northern Ireland.

This level of infection is the highest recorded by the ONS Survey since it began looking at the situation in April 2020, and surpasses the previous high at the start of 2022, when 1 in 15 people in England were estimated to have Covid.

Hospitalisations and deaths – while less than during previous peaks – are rising; and disruption to education, the health service, business and the economy as a whole is having a significant effect as staff (and pupil) absences rise. The pressure on an NHS under orders to deal with waiting lists is becoming unsustainable.

And yet the Secretary of State for Health says the rise is ‘not a concern’ and ‘is to be expected’. His advice just a few days before Tory MPs gathered for a slap-up dinner? ‘Socialise a bit less’.

The latest variant, Omicron BA.2, is even more transmissible than the original Omicron, BA.1, which caused the December surge; reinfection is possible and vaccine protection is waning. Just the moment, then, for all measures to protect us from continuing infection to be scrapped!

The UK is not alone in trying to brush the rising tide of Omicron BA.2 aside; the USA and most European countries are similarly removing all precautions and protections, and moving to a policy of ‘living with the virus’ (or rather ‘let’s just ignore the virus’) as BA.2 surges.

This policy is based on the belief – one without any scientific evidence – that each variant of the SARS-CoV2 will become milder. But as Christina Pagel wrote in the Guardian on 30 March:

“It is … simply not true that viruses always evolve to become milder. What drives evolution is transmission: variants that infect more people will thrive. Because most Covid transmission happens while people have no or few symptoms, severity is not a driver of evolution but instead a by-product of whichever mutations improve transmission and how they interact with existing levels of immunity. For Alpha and Delta, this led to greater severity and for Omicron (somewhat) less severity, but this was an evolutionary accident. The next variant could easily be more severe again.”

And for many people BA.2 is not that mild, especially if they are immunosuppressed or it leads to Long Covid. The most infected cohorts at the moment are unvaccinated primary aged children and the over 70s. Despite a high level of vaccination, the latter group in particular are at risk from a bout of Covid leading to all sorts of complications.

I have to wonder whether the people who tell us that Covid is ‘just like the flu’ have ever had any kind of influenza more serious than ‘man flu’? Do they even understand that flu is also a killer, albeit a much lesser one than Covid? The World Health Organization estimates that 290,000 to 650,000 people die of flu-related causes every year worldwide. 6,168,174 have died from Covid-19 so far.

I also have to wonder whether they understand what Long Covid can involve. Months if not years of incapacity, pain, fatigue, frustration, depression. ‘Brain fog’ may not sound very serious if you’ve never experienced it. But just try driving, handling machinery (even a power tool or an iron), trying to read a book, let alone write anything, when your concentration has gone out the window.

While we are exhorted to get vaccinated, or to get another booster (the fifth for some of us), the fact that the latest variant has breached the vaccine’s defences should be of much more concern than we are witnessing. As Prof Danny Altmann argues, instead of relying on frequent boosters of the same vaccines, we must develop better and longer lasting ones. But instead of investing in the necessary research this government is rewarding the UK’s scientists by selling off the £200 million Oxford Vaccine Centre.

I fully support the vaccination programme but depending solely on it – this government’s only ‘strategy’ – is surely being undermined by the virus’ ability to evade our immune systems. Other protections are essential – the ones which they call restrictions and I call freedom. Mask wearing in public places, ventilation, social distancing, self-isolation are all essential mitigations which we must demand are restored.

So it is in the context of the government’s gaslighting strategy that we have to understand not just the removal of all mandatory mitigations but in particular the withdrawal of free testing and the cuts in funding for academic research and surveillance.

At £2 for a single lateral flow test, a family pack of five is a tenner most people can’t afford on top of all the other price rises this week. And don’t even think about getting a PCR test!

The introduction of charges for a vital medical test in the same week national insurance goes up to, we are told, “help the NHS” is not just a sick joke but a dangerous precedent. What other NHS diagnostic tests will we be charged for next? HIV tests? Mammograms?

The list of those eligible for free tests is extremely restricted and only includes a few of those who were previously advised to shield – many of whom continue to do so to this day. As Frances Ryan so eloquently wrote in the Guardian on 31 March,

“Some high-risk people who need to have Covid treatments, such as antivirals, will be granted free tests, but government guidelines say they are only to be used once they are ill and already showing symptoms. It’s the public health equivalent of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. This fundamentally misses what has been so valuable about large-scale testing over the past two years: it’s not that high-risk people can see if they have Covid, but that those they’re due to come into contact with can.”

This last point is one I have been making. I don’t need to know whether I have Covid – I need to know whether you have and are therefore likely to infect me. It’s a similar message to that for mask-wearing – a message this government has doggedly failed to get across – ‘Your mask protects me; my mask protects you’.

So where is the data going to come from if only a few people are doing tests? Will the numbers drop dramatically next week? After pressure the ONS survey will continue but with a reduced sample of participants. Other surveys will lose funding. Without testing the government’s data dashboard will quickly become meaningless. And without contact tracing the virus will keep infecting and mutating.

However many times I write that this government’s approach to the pandemic has been callous and corrupt, I still find I am taken aback by their approach. Are they really trying to pretend Covid has gone away? Are they really saying that it is legal to infect others?

But this is a government who has shelled out over £700m, with the Department Of Health and Social Care continuing to spend £7m a month, storing useless PPE, much of which came through that Tory- chums VIP channel; who are cutting benefits and pensions while the cost of living and inflation soars and think a loan is the way to help with fuel prices; who issue orders to drown refugees then talk big about saving Ukrainians lives but don’t deliver visa waivers. So why am I surprised at their continuing cruelty and contempt for others? Why are we all not so much more angry?

Republished from Labour Outlook and zerocovid.uk

Can one arrogant, privileged egotist fighting to save his job wish this global pandemic away?

Remember when the Prime Minister repeatedly told us he was ‘following the science’? Remember those televised press conferences when he was flanked by the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Adviser providing the expert advice on what we all needed to know and do to protect ourselves and our loved ones from the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus?

There was no press conference, no updates on the gov.uk website, no sign of Chris Whitty or Patrick Vallance, when the Prime Minister announced in Parliament on 9 February 2022 that he was planning to bring forward an end to England’s rules on self-isolation later this month.

‘Following the science’? But the scientists and medical experts of SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) didn’t meet until the day after this announcement. And by that time the press was reporting that it wouldn’t just be self-isolation that would end – the days of free testing and even the ‘gold standard’ ONS Coronavirus Infection Survey are limited.

Everyone around the world wants this pandemic to end, to be able to live without restrictions and to meet, love and touch without fear. That doesn’t necessarily mean a return to normal; for millions that normal isn’t something they have any desire to return to. But does that mean we abolish all measures? Is the pandemic over? Can 200 people dying every day in the UK just be written off? Or the over 2 million people currently sick with Covid?

Can one arrogant, privileged egotist fighting to save his job wish this global pandemic away?

Covid is no respecter of borders or British exceptionalism.

Nor is it now a ‘mild’ disease like a cold or the flu. For some fortunate people it’s not too bad. But others can end up facing months, years, even a lifetime of debilitating and chronic illness.

Testing is more than the inconvenience of sticking a swab up your nose to see whether you have Covid. As Professor Christina Pagel of Independent SAGE has said: ‘Without data we are blind’.

And that blindness could include no longer being able to determine whether the virus has mutated yet again, and what effect any new variants are having.

SAGE warned at that meeting the day after Johnson’s announcement that ‘new SARS-CoV-2 variants will continue to emerge … including variants that are less susceptible to current vaccines, resistant to antivirals, or are associated with altered disease severity. … There is no reason why future dominant variants should be similarly or less severe than Omicron, which may be an exception in having lower severity. The next dominant variant in the UK (and internationally) could have similar pathogenicity to previous variants, such as Delta.’

Not being able to identify new variants is just one of the problems associated with Johnson’s plans to declare the pandemic over next week.

Allowing – indeed, encouraging – infectious people, many of whom will think they just have a cold, to mingle freely is a recipe for disaster. It takes us back to the early days of the pandemic when we had few tools to protect ourselves and others against infection, when key workers and those who could not afford to do otherwise were travelling to work in close contact with each other in poorly ventilated workplaces.

Remember Belly Mujinga, who died in April 2020 after being coughed and spat on at work in Victoria Station? Remember the deaths in care homes? Shopworkers already report problems with abusive, unmasked customers; they and other public-facing workers, especially those with unsympathetic employers or on low pay, will be at even greater risk once more if the legislation on self-isolation is abandoned.

The key difference between now and two years ago is of course the vaccines, of which I am a great fan and advocate. But Omicron has exposed the fact that vaccination on its own is not enough to protect us and stop community transmission. And SAGE is warning that ‘there is significant potential for transmission to increase if behaviours revert rapidly to pre-pandemic norms and mitigations are removed’.

Vaccine-Plus

A strategy of Vaccine-Plus, as advocated by Independent SAGE and campaigns such as Zero Covid, is essential. Protecting each other from infection through mask-wearing, good ventilation and effective contact tracing is hardly the restriction to our freedoms the right-wing like to make out, especially not when only 65.6% of the UK population aged 12 and over have had the currently needed three doses, and the highly infectious BA.2 subvariant of Omicron is breaking through to push up case numbers again.

Official figures say one in 19 people are currently infectious. Go on the bus or to the pub or cinema and you’re likely to be alongside several people who may be unintentionally spreading the virus.

This is especially dangerous for those most at risk from infection, those millions of us designated ‘vulnerable’ and those who live with us. Most at risk are those with weak or compromised immune systems who could become seriously ill or die if they catch Covid.

It is a commonly held misconception that those who are at risk are less likely to be in work or education, but this is most certainly not the case. Many will be key workers in retail, hospitality, transport, delivery, education, care homes and the NHS. Many will be children or parents, the groups with the highest infection rates at the moment. And those who can stay at home will be locking themselves down yet again, unable to enjoy any kind of fake freedom.

Not that the government seems to care about that. It stopped all support for shielders many months ago. Appeasing the Covid Recovery Group to keep the Prime Minister in power is the top priority, closely followed by the Tories’ ideological favourites, shrink the state support systems, blame everyone else, and make the poor pay.

It’s not over yet

The pandemic is not over, not in England, not in the UK, and not across the world. While the scientists work on new and better vaccines, the existing ones are saving lives and protecting against some of the worst illness. But there is still a long way to go.

61.8% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, but only 10.6% of people in low-income countries have. This means the virus could continue to rampage through communities, mutating as it does so, and spreading rapidly across the world yet again.

The Prime Minister’s plan to declare an end to the pandemic has been met with outrage in many quarters. SAGE scientists can no longer be relied on to be onboard to back him up. Within minutes of the announcement, the Daily Mirror had called it out as the ‘dead cat’ it so obviously is. But it is a dangerous disease-carrying defunct feline which has to be stopped. At the very least, we must demand our MPs ensure self-isolation, testing and mask-wearing continue for as long as they are necessary protections. You can write to your MP here.

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/defend-self-isolation

Published in Labour Hub, 15 February 2022 and on the Zero Covid UK website

Save lives now, then we can all live well!

Much in Labour’s 10-point plan for living with Covid is welcome, but it ignores the immediate crisis – we have to stop people dying from the virus before we can live with it.

More than 350 deaths per day, over 100,000 daily positive cases and nearly 20,000 covid hospital patients is neither acceptable nor normal.

The Tories’ narrative that the pandemic is over, their removal of even the weak Plan B protections (mask-wearing, working from home and the limited use of covid passes), and – even more worryingly – their plans to shortly end self-isolation for those testing positive for Covid, have to be challenged by Labour.

Johnson and Javid’s rejection of infection control measures in order to assuage their right wing backbenchers, is reckless to the extreme, and is based on eugenicist theories rather than any regard for science or the public’s health and wellbeing.

The brilliant NHS vaccination programme has reduced our risk of death dramatically. But there are no guarantees that Omicron’s inevitable successor variants or mutations will not be more vaccine resistant and deadly.

Not only do we need to keep promoting vaccination – including by calling for employers to give staff paid time-off to get jabbed and recover – we need the protective and mitigation measures of a Vaccines Plus strategy.

These include continuing personal protection measures such as:

social distancing and wearing masks in indoor public places, including schools, colleges and workplaces;
setting indoor air quality standards, with CO2 monitors and HEPA filters being installed in all classrooms and indoor public venues;
all NHS, social care, teachers and those deemed at high risk being issued with free FFP2/3 masks;
financial support for all those required to self-isolate or shield, and for businesses and self-employed who are taking a hit from the economic damage caused by the continuing unpredictable high levels of employee and customer absences.

Labour rightly says the test and trace system needs fixing. The first step there must be to dismantle the current discredited outsourced system and hand it (along with the necessary funding) over to the public health professionals in local authorities and the NHS who should always have been in charge of it.

It should go without saying that both LFD and PCR tests must remain free and readily available to all UK residents.

The right to work from home or flexibly has been a long-term demand by many, especially parents and carers, and the experience of the past two years means that now is the time for it to be legislatively enforced.

Adding these immediate essential measures to Labour’s longer-term plans and opposing the UK government’s lethal approach means we can stamp down hard on the virus and make it possible for us all to live our lives without the constant threat of chronic disease or death hanging over us.

But unless and until this deadly virus is suppressed to the lowest levels possible both in the UK and globally, we won’t be able to say we are living with it.

Omicron – Time for a Circuit Breaker

Eighteen months ago, we were applauding our NHS heroes and celebrating a renewed sense of community as neighbours and volunteers went out of their way to help each other.

But today the UK bears a horrific resemblance to countries like Brazil and those red states in the USA where the virus is being allowed to let rip in the name of ‘living with it’, and conspiracy theorists and fascists spread their lies and fantasies through social media to influence those who are fed up with restrictions or nervous about vaccination. This corrupt, contemptuous and callous Tory Government ignores the science, puts profit before people, lurches from one inadequate and tardy lockdown to another, and is now more concerned with placating its hard-line right-wingers and making sure its seasonal piss-ups go ahead than doing everything necessary to protect people from illness and death.

Although it is clear that the majority of the population have more trust in the scientists than the politicians – as can be witnessed by the immediate queues for boosters and the majority who say there should be a Christmas lockdown (Savanta ComRes poll) – without clear, urgent leadership, as well as substantial financial and practical support, the current societal chaos will continue. Shortages, sudden closures and company collapses will get worse as Covid surges yet again.

I have lost count of the number of times I have written or said ‘this government has blood on its hands’. But I will say it again.

It is hard to overstate the scale of the Omicron crisis. Recorded cases are hitting new records every day. Omicron is extremely transmissible and more able to evade existing immune responses. Despite all the talk of Omicron being ‘milder’, there is no evidence of this thus far. And even if hospitalisations and deaths are less than resulted from previous waves, the effect on the NHS and other emergency services is just as dire. Those at work are being stretched beyond exhausted breaking point by the absence of co-workers, and resources are being diverted from trying to catch up on that six million-long waiting list as well as the 7-9 million ‘missing’ patients who have not sought treatment during the pandemic. Omicron will result in yet more avoidable sickness, hospitalisations and deaths.

Before Omicron took off, the UK was already running at about 50,000 new Covid cases a day. Today that has doubled to around 100,000. Lambeth, where I live, has the highest rate in London, itself the Omicron epicentre of the UK, and there has been a 90% increase in the past week. The Mayor of London has been forced to declare a Major Incident to help ease the pressure on the capital’s hospitals. My local hospital, Guys and St Thomas’, where there was a seven-hour vaccination queue last week, has cancelled non-essential services and redeployed staff. GPs, nurses, and community health workers have either been diverted to vaccination centres or are volunteering out-of-hours.

Despite Johnson’s claim that ‘we are throwing everything at it’, the move to Plan B is far too little too late, and most of its measures are ineffective. While the boosters are a real advantage, they will take time to have an effect, and we urgently need to drive down transmission of the virus now. The Tories are refusing to face up to this because any action has a price tag.

The Zero Covid campaign has repeatedly called for sensible mitigation measures – improved ventilation (especially in schools, colleges and workplaces), mandatory mask-wearing in all public places, social distancing, the right to work and study from home where possible with all necessary practical, psychological and financial support, including increased sick pay and the restoration of the Universal Credit cut, for those required to self-isolate or shield. We also need an effective publicly-run Test & Trace system.

The campaign is backing Independent SAGE’s call for an immediate circuit breaker. No one wants to cancel Christmas. But equally no one wants to risk infecting their family. We need everyone to be able to cut down their contacts now. Advice to limit contacts is meaningless for many of us if it isn’t backed up by financial support, and companies compelled to allow workers to stay home. That means grants, VAT relief and the return of furlough so that businesses which lose custom or have to close can afford to keep staff on the books.

We have repeatedly said that we do not favour lockdowns to prevent community transmission of the virus other than as a last resort. The Tory Government’s failure – yet again – to follow scientific advice and to mandate the implementation of the most basic public health protections means that they will be guilty of leaving no other option than to impose one – yet again – in the days, weeks and months ahead.

The Covid-19 Pandemic Isn’t Over Yet

Reckless?

The polite description of a strategy which is currently averaging over 1,000 deaths a week, over 7,000 hospitalisations, and the highest number of Covid-19 infections in Europe with over 35,000 daily cases.

Murderous is my non-polite description.

A return to normality?

Only if you think those 1,000+ deaths are normal.

Labour has an absolute duty to the people of this country to call out the Tories for their deadly, eugenicist policies; and Conference is the perfect opportunity for the Leadership and Shadow Health Team to put forward a robust alternative to the government’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

To date, Labour’s approach has been marked by timidity and mealy-mouthed, piecemeal criticisms. The Tories’ scandalous strategy of ‘living with the virus’ has barely been challenged – and no alternative has been put forward.

The Tory government has ended shielding, furlough, and business rates’ holidays. It refuses to provide adequate ventilation in schools. It has failed to increase the absolutely miserly levels of statutory sick pay and is cutting universal credit. It cannot even bring itself to mandate masks in crowded places. Johnson, Sunak and Javid are acting as if the pandemic is over.

The idea that that we must learn to live with high levels of Covid-19 has to be challenged. It is unprecedented in the modern era for government policy to allow preventable deaths of its own citizens on a mass scale. We do not live with cholera, we do not live with polio, we do not live with tuberculosis, and we do not live with typhoid. Like all these diseases, Covid-19 can be managed, and community transmission eliminated.

Medical science and technology have progressed rapidly in the past decades; the speed at which the Covid-19 vaccines were developed is testament to that, so why on earth should we accepting a strategy which does not just allow, but encourages, people to continue to spread a virulent and deadly disease?

I am a great fan of vaccination – and as socialists we should all be supporting it as a collective societal good. But we must not forget that 20% of adults have not had even one jab – one in five of us; breakthrough infections occur even after two jabs; over 100,000 children missed school last week (a figure undoubtedly heightened by the Government’s delay in authorising teenager jabs); and business and industry are facing unpredictable staff shortages as those thousands sick or isolating can’t work.

Vaccine-Plus

But vaccination on its own is not enough. It must be backed up by a range of mandatory mitigation measures, which focus on protection and support rather than restrictions on activities. They include an effective, local and fully-funded Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support operation run by the NHS and local authorities; all workplaces, including schools, colleges and hospitality venues, being made Covid-safe; and continuing precautionary measures including self-isolation, social distancing, handwashing, mask-wearing and good ventilation.

As Independent Sage scientists say in their recent Covid Winter Protection Plan (https://www.independentsage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Winter-Plan-final.pdf)

“Unless such protections are implemented immediately there is a serious danger that more intrusive and wide-ranging restrictions will become necessary later”.

When we talk about vaccination we mustn’t just talk about the UK – a global pandemic requires global vaccination.

No one is safe until everyone is safe

Many on the left have questioned whether the UK should be giving boosters and teenager jabs when poorer countries are crying out for vaccines. But the ‘beggar my neighbour’ approach of the rich capitalist countries isn’t really a supply issue. It is political.

Countries like the UK are turning their backs on the poorer parts of the world; countries they have not hesitated to plunder and wage war in for centuries. Vaccine apartheid and cuts in overseas aid go hand in hand. It’s no surprise that a government which refuses to ensure British children are safe when they go to school, hoards vaccines and refuses to support patent waivers, profit restrictions, prices at cost, or sharing technology, science and know-how.

So rather than engaging in a factional civil war, the Labour leadership should be talking about issues that really affect millions at home and abroad. Conference should be showcasing a different approach to dealing with the pandemic that has dominated all our lives for over 18 months, and that has not gone away – however much we all wish it had.

This is an edited version of my article in the Morning Star on 27 September 2021 during the Labour Party Conference.

Has the government gone down the pub?

The replacement of the philandering Matt Hancock by hard man Sajid Javid has opened the way for eugenics to take over the UK’s pandemic policy.

No longer in the land of on-off delayed lockdowns, faulty PPE, dodgy contracts and helping your chums get rich; we are now on Plague Island where the living-with-the-virus, individualistic tough guys survive and the poor, unfit and weak cower and die.

Society has become increasingly polarised – and much nastier – in the past decade.. For me, the way the assassination of Jo Cox by a far-right terrorist in the run up to the Brexit referendum was quickly swept under the carpet was as much a marker of a societal shift as the referendum itself. Instead of our political classes and media seeing that wholly exceptional event as one over which we needed to pause and reflect, the only changes have been an increase in lies, corruption, undemocratic practices, and the denigration of political opponents.

In the early months of the pandemic, while the government’s ineptitude and failures led to the disaster of care home deaths, lack of PPE, increased inequality, and the world beating mortality records, at least (under pressure from the unions) they provided business grants, furlough pay and support for shielders. Civil society demonstrated an unexpected but most welcome neighbourliness and community spirit. NHS and key workers were valued, young mutual aiders helped with shopping, and most people understood we were ‘all in it together’.

But now, 16 months later, that spirit has dissipated as the government has washed its hands of any responsibility for the lives and livelihoods of its citizens. It is as though, just as we are all fed up with the pandemic, they’ve got bored of dealing with it and have decided to move on to all the other stuff they want to do like privatise the NHS, attack asylum seekers and migrants, restrict voting rights and the right to protest. If the pandemic can be depicted as a war with the virus, the government has raised the white flag and gone down the pub.

Government messages are powerful. Personal responsibility is now the watchword. The kind of personal responsibility that can lead to an asthmatic self-employed single mum not being entitled to any sick pay or welfare payments when she catches covid; allow mask-less drunks to spit on transport staff; and encourage a speaker at an anti-vaxx rally to compare doctors and nurses with those who were hung after standing trial at Nuremberg.

Javid is such an admirer of the right-wing US philosopher Ayn Rand that he reads her work twice a year. So the man now in charge of the NHS, the lynchpin of our welfare state, is someone who believes that the only proper functions of a government are the police, the army, and the courts.

Which brings me to ‘Freedom Day’. The past week has been full of news about how the Track and Trace system is forcing workers to quarantine. In other words, it’s doing what it is meant to do. With mitigation measures such as mask wearing, social distancing and handwashing now our personal responsibility, it is the only defence we have against the virus. Despite all its faults – not least SERCO, Baroness Dido and that £37 billion – a functioning FTTIS system is the essential partner to vaccination.

But the failure of government and the press to explain that the avalanche of pings are a direct and predictable result of letting the virus rip through the community, where the delta variant is particularly hitting the young, means that trust in the system has collapsed – more and more people have switched it off and are not bothering to test themselves or their children. No wonder the official statistics in respect of case numbers are being questioned.

I speak to so many people who are in despair. They don’t know who to believe or what to do for the best. The hope the vaccines offered is being undermined by doubt and confusion. Most vulnerable and disabled people are locking themselves down again. This is not cowering; this is common sense.

Last weekend the London Labour conference overwhelmingly backed the alternative strategy of the Zero Covid campaign; based on public health not free market principles. Mitigation measures need to be reinstated; workplaces made safe; practical and financial support provided for self-isolators, and super-spreader events put on hold for a few weeks. Conference also supported an immediate independent public enquiry and the speedy international deployment of vaccines. Delegates called on the Labour leadership to support this strategy.

Ayn Rand said: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” There is no doubt that Javid and Johnson have to be stopped, and that we, the labour movement, have to be the answer.

Joan Twelves

Published by Labour Outlook, 28 July 2021

The awful truth confirmed

Dominic Cummings is not a reliable witness but much of what he has said to the select committees about this Government’s catastrophic and criminal handling of the Coronavirus pandemic rings more than true to those who were on the front line or closely following the Government’s actions, reactions and inactions from January 2020 onwards.

Disregard

A contemptuous disregard for the lives and wellbeing of elderly, disabled, at risk, poor, black and brown people, as well as low-paid key workers whether in the health or social care services, schools, supermarkets, delivery or public transport sectors, has characterised the Government’s approach throughout. A decade of Tory austerity, cuts and privatisations mean that the public services we need and expect to support and protect us have been either non-existent or woefully inadequate.

Ignored

130,000 deaths and thousands condemned to a life of chronic illness have been the result: many of them our friends, workmates and relatives. For the past 18 months we have endured delay and prevarication, lies, corrupt procurement practices, a now-denied herd immunity policy, the economy being prioritised over public health, sick and infectious people being shunted between care homes and hospitals, many forced to work and learn in unsafe, unventilated environments, insufficient help and support being provided to those needing to self-isolate, the experience and knowledge of other countries, let alone the UK’s own scientists and experts, being repeatedly ignored. Cummings has confirmed what we have been saying for months.

Responsibility

Dominic Cummings bears as much responsibility for the social murder he has exposed as those he now castigates. His catalogue of errors, while extensive, omits much that he was responsible for – most significantly the £37 billion failed Test and Trace system, purposely set up as an outsourced, centralised system to bypass local public sector expertise.

Roadmap

Nothing Cummings has said will stop a third wave of the virus engulfing us unless the Government is prepared to change its approach from one of mitigation to one of elimination. This requires it to delay lifting the existing restrictions until all four steps in the roadmap have been fully met; to take effective action to fix the test and trace system to stop the spread of the B.1.617.2 and other variants, by handing it over to local public health experts; to make all workplaces and schools Covid-safe; to retain measures such as face coverings and social distancing; and to take effective measures to manage international travel – including free testing and quarantine – based on public health requirements not immigration control.

Inquiry

The Government is hiding behind Cummings’ lack of credibility with the public. The truth has to come out and come out now. Without truth there can be no justice. This means an immediate start to the promised statutory public inquiry, with a short, sharp interim review so that its findings are not delayed for years. The families of the tens of thousands of people who died deserve no less.

Zero Covid statement

No death is acceptable if it is preventable

Covid-19 has dominated all our lives for the past year, and it’s not going away. 130,000 have died and hundreds of thousands are facing grief, loss and long-term illness. Unless there is a change of strategy, tens of thousands more will die.

Most of the Covid deaths in the UK could have been prevented if Johnson’s government had adopted a different approach – an approach based on elimination rather than containment – the Zero Covid approach.

We cannot and must not accept ‘living with the virus’ any longer. Government advisers admit that such a strategy is likely to involve a further 30,000 to 80,000 deaths.

That’s 200,000 acceptable deaths – 200,000 preventable deaths.

No death is acceptable if it is preventable

Johnson likes to say the government has done everything it could. But if it were serious about preventing deaths, it would at the very least –

properly fund the NHS and its staff,
provide the highest quality PPE,
scrap Serco’s test and failing-to-trace system,
provide full financial and practical support to those required to self-isolate, quarantine or shield,
fund local authorities for the crucial work they are doing,
ventilate classrooms and workplaces and make whatever structural changes are necessary to enable safe social distancing,
provide kids with laptops and broadband,
enforce health and safety laws,
deal with cramped and overcrowded living conditions which allow the virus to keep spreading amongst our poorest communities.

Instead it has boasted of world-beating this and world-beating that, when the only thing world-beating about its approach has been the death toll and crashing economy. It has squandered billions enriching private companies who have failed to deliver – billions which could have been spent addressing the class, racial and gender inequalities, as well as the dire discrimination faced by disabled people, exposed by their response to the pandemic.

The Zero Covid approach is one which values human lives before profit, which values the health of us all before the wealth of the few.

There are many misconceptions about Zero Covid. For starters, it does not mean endless lockdowns. The reverse – it means an end to this cycle of half-hearted on-off lockdowns. It is based on the strategy humanity across the world has learnt to pursue when faced with a pandemic: trace, isolate and support to stop the spread; vaccinate if you can. Why is that so difficult this time around? Climate change means more, not fewer, pandemics in the future. We need to learn the lessons and get it right next time.

Critics say that zero Covid is a fantasy. But it is living with a deadly virus which is the fantasy. No country is ‘livingwith the virus’. But a number have charted a way through the pandemic by pursuing an elimination strategy – driving down community transmission and using local test and trace systems to stop new outbreaks. The UK’s vaccine rollout is vital, but will not end the pandemic on its own, not when the pandemic is global, prone to variants and mutations, and vaccine nationalism is on the rise.

Of course, we can’t totally eradicate the Covid-19 virus – but reducing and aiming to eliminate community transmission is possible – as we can see from New Zealand’s five deaths per one million population and Vietnam’s 0.4 per million, compared to the UK ‘s 1,828 deaths per million, which even beats Brazil and the USA.

Critics like to point out that New Zealand is small. So it is worth noting that Vietnam’s population is 98 million compared to the UK’s 68 million.

In the past week the BBC has reported how Iceland is now virtually Covid-free, with just 20 active cases and 29 deaths. The Guardian in the Tale of Two Islands concluded its report on Taiwan (22 million people, ten deaths, 1,000 documented cases, 0.4 per million) with:

“It all comes down to government clarity and transparency,” said Chen. “You have to let the people know what the government is trying to do.”

But while the lived experience of Sars gave an urgency to Taiwan’s planning, the conclusions drawn were researched and published extensively.

There was nothing stopping the British government, or others, from learning from them in the intervening years. But perhaps because of British exceptionalism, perhaps because other coronavirus epidemics – Sars, Mers – had been contained far from Europe, the UK chose to follow its own deadly path instead.”

It’s never too late to save lives

It’s not too late to urge both Labour and the Government to change their strategy from containment, from living with the virus, to suppression and elimination. Both SAGE and Indie SAGE scientists are already talking about a fourth surge in the autumn hitting the young and unvaccinated if we don’t start getting it right.

Professor Michael Baker, the New Zealand epidemiologist, says – ‘Reaching zero cases doesn’t depend on a country’s size but on strong leadership’.

Real opposition means strong leadership

Labour’s Conference in September may seem a long time away. And it would be great if Labour’s leadership showed strong leadership now by challenging the basis of the Tories’ containment approach to the pandemic by advocating the real alternative.

There have been so many times during the last twelve months where the Johnson government left open goals in its treatment of the pandemic. Labour could have championed education workers and parents fighting for safe schools, could have pressed for the benefit uplift to be extended to all claimants, could have demanded an end to handing out contracts to Serco and other leeches on our NHS, could have demanded a change of approach and strategy.

Instead it is seen as complicit with the Tories’ incompetence and corruption. How else can the Tories’ poll lead and Labour’s ever-sinking popularity be explained? The success of the NHS-led vaccine programmemay be giving a temporary boost to Johnson, but those thousands who have lost family members and friends, who have worked night and day in the most fraught and stressful of circumstances, whose kids have lost their hopes of a future, who have lost jobs, businesses, livelihoods and dreams, they won’t forget. Nor will they forgive either Government or Opposition for their leadership failures.

Covid is the number one priority

Momentum is currently organising a Policy Primary to determine which motions to Conference it should back. It would be unconscionable if this year of all years Labour did not discuss the Covid Pandemic. It has to be the number one priority. And it has to be a discussion based not just on criticising the Tories for doing too little too late or lining their chums’ pockets, but on a real alternative approach based on social solidarity. Anything else is endorsing social murder.

Zero Covid’s Conference motion is below. It not only calls for a change of strategy but also links that to how ecological destruction will undoubtedly result in more lethal and uncontrollable pandemics, which is why a green recovery plan has to go hand in hand with a Zero Covid approach.

Word limits mean much has had to be omitted and the politics of the pandemic are fast moving. We anticipate topical amendments and want CLPs to put similar motions closer to the Labour Party’s closing date of 13th September.

The campaign to beat the pandemic

Voting in the Momentum Policy Primary is not the only way you can support Zero Covid. We are a grassroots activist campaign of individual supporters and affiliated organisations. Our supporters come from a range of political parties or none. Our aim is to build a movement to force UK policy makers to adopt an elimination strategy. Our structure allows for local groups to establish themselves and have a say in the running of the campaign. Coordinating our work centrally are teams of volunteers that cover areas such as social media, science and health advisory, press relations and mobilisation. We are part of the Zero Covid Coalition.

We are currently campaigning on workplace safety, for Serco to be sacked and for local authority public health experts to be funded to run local Track and Trace programmes. We support campaigns such as the People’s Covid Enquiry, the call for an official statutory investigation into the UK government’s response to the pandemic, and the international Call for a People’s Vaccine for patents on the intellectual property rights of vaccines to be waived.

*****

Zero Covid’s Labour Party Conference motion

Title: Covid-19 pandemic

Conference notes:

The appalling loss of lives and livelihoods due to the Tory government’s incompetence, corruption and refusal to adopt and implement effective measures to drive down community transmission and eliminate the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
That this has been exacerbated by a decade of austerity, privatisation and cuts to public services, especially the NHS and local authorities.
That the expensive failure of the outsourced Serco Test and Trace system has contributed to this disaster.
That individuals have been consistently blamed for systemic and policy failures and not provided with sufficient support through decent sick pay, grants, loans, benefits and other wide-ranging assistance in order to be able to self-isolate, shield, work from home and/or home-school.
That climate change and ecological destruction make future pandemics more likely and that the pandemic is a global issue that demands international solidarity.

Conference applauds:

The commitment of the millions of workers and volunteers, in the UK and globally, who have supported their communities, provided dedicated healthcare, and demonstrated scientific and medical brilliance.
The UK’s vaccine programme, rolled out and administered by the NHS and local volunteers.

Conference calls for:

Labour to adopt now and in the event of any future similar pandemics policies aimed at the elimination, rather than the containment, of the spread of the disease, working with trade unions and public health experts.
A forward-looking recovery plan based on the Green New Deal.

This article was published by Labour Hub on 26-03-2021

https://labourhub.org.uk/2021/03/26/real-opposition-means-a-strategy-to-eliminate-covid/

Covid’s ideological breeding ground

covid death graph — https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Battered and depressed by the tragic details of the daily news updates and the frustrations of lockdown, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture – and to forget that the Tory response to the Covid-19 crisis is governed by an extreme right-wing ideology which, when combined with the arrogance and greed of the British upper class, means that their decisions have little to do with saving lives, let alone the NHS.

But there are three key elements of Tory ideology we must not forget as we recoil in horror at what is happening:

Lansley ‘reforms’ (aka as the 2012 Health and Social Care Act), which institutionalised competition within the NHS
Austerity, which didn’t just starve the NHS of resources but led to follies such as the failure to replenish stockpiles of essential equipment despite the recommendations of Exercise Cygnus
Privatisation at every level of the economy, shrinking the state and putting profit before people.

Add to these the poisonous concept of British exceptionalism, cultivated during and by Brexit and given free rein now Boris Johnson and his ‘advisers’ are in Downing Street –the appalling and avoidable result of which is that the UK tops the European death league – and we can begin to understand why we have had to experience:

The herd immunity policy pushed by Downing Street’s eugenicists – more appropriately called the ‘cull the herd’ policy.
The strategy of mitigation rather than suppression; the failure to comply with WHO guidance to test, trace and isolate; and the refusal to lockdown and close borders at a time when it may have prevented thousands of deaths.
Boris’s Nightingale Hospitals – white elephants which diverted resources from existing hospitals and care homes. The questions about who profited from building these have yet to be asked.
The disregard and indifference towards social care and care home residents and workers. Why should we be surprised by this when the Tories have repeatedly failed to come up with any social care policy for years, let alone one which would integrate a sector dominated by private companies with the public NHS?
The refusal to work with Europe, not just on research and procurement, but now on data collection, with the Vote Leave data harvesters deeply involved in Downing Street’s preferred contact tracing App.
Private companies involved at every level – for example Deloitte, G4S, Serco and Capita are all involved in one way or another with procurement and contact testing, with data harvesting a binary choice between the US tech giants and AI firms linked to the Tories’ cronies.
The exposure of the health, wealth and race divides in our society, inequalities which have worsened over the past decade and which are now resulting in increased deaths in poor and multi-racial communities.

Now we must add messaging on easing the lockdown so muddled – as economic libertarianism comes into conflict with the public’s health – that key members of the Government have been unable to explain what we are all being advised to do.

Labour has a historically poor record of confronting the Tories on an ideological level, often letting them get away with pretending they haven’t really got one. Labour failed to challenge austerity until 2015. It tended to treat Brexit as a technical issue to do with trade and EU institutions rather than internationalism and solidarity, and was reluctant to call out its motivating mixture of deeply entrenched xenophobic bigotry, Atlanticism and the demands of a faction of capital. Labour’s response to the coronavirus crisis has similarly focussed on immediate issues rather than challenging the ideological reasons underlying the Tories’ failure to protect the health and lives of all their citizens.

This is to a large extent understandable whilst we are in the midst of the pandemic. Indeed, as one of those tagged with that horrible expression ‘extremely vulnerable’, my most frequently voiced criticism is why aren’t we all shouting louder and louder about the government’s catastrophic mismanagement of almost every single aspect of the crisis. But just as we mustn’t lose sight of the bigger picture in the now, we also need to be looking at it for the future.

One of the most depressing features of the global response to the pandemic has been the lack of international solidarity. Britain has not been alone in pursuing its own beggar thy neighbour policies. Trump’s xenophobia threatens the whole world.

The devastation being wrought by Covid-19 is massive. The global economy is in freefall, and because globalisation and technology have linked the world’s populations like never before, the coming depression will hit everyone. By the time the pandemic is under control, millions of working people across the world will have lost not just their lives or their loved ones, but their homes and their livelihoods. Hunger and destitution will make many desperate. Add the climate crisis to the pandemic crisis and humanity’s future is bleak if the most powerful countries continue to pursue what their strong men leaders perceive as their own national interests and fail to learn the importance of international solidarity and what could be the real meaning and strength of globalisation.

In this country, if it is left to the Tories, their new normal will be a return, with a few tweaks here and there – and with a lot of failed companies and thousands of unemployed workers – to the same old system of profit first people last. To this will be added the spice of a no deal Brexit at the end of the year. As many of us would love much of our lives to return to the way they were just a few weeks ago, it is going to be hard to challenge the ‘Britain will bounce back’ concept.

But we must. Labour has to seize the opportunity to articulate our values, challenge the Tories on an ideological level, and develop a new programme that really grasps the existential challenges the world faces. Our immediate demand has to be that workers neither in the developed north nor the global south pay for the pandemic through unemployment, tax rises and poorer public services. But we then need to go much further than that.

Our last manifesto was written for a different time and for a different economic situation. Some of its policies have shown themselves to be the most vital in the current situation – the much-mocked free broadband, nationalised railways, NHS investment; other policies such as a universal basic income and a national care service are now on the agenda. But our vision has to be even greater than any of those.

Experience during lockdown has shown both the vital role of the state and which aspects of our society and economy are valuable and essential, which are desirable, and which are unnecessary. If we are serious about tackling the climate crisis then that information must be used to inform a new transformative and radical economic and industrial strategy, which goes beyond the Green New Deal and addresses new ways of working, new ways of living, a shift in the balance between the public and private sectors, and the pressing need to alter the whole basis of income and wealth distribution.

The world changed after the 1919 flu epidemic, and again following World War Two. VE Day was not just about an end to the fighting in Europe and the Allies’ collective defeat of fascism. It was a day of celebration and comradeship which paved the way for one of the most transformative periods in this country’s history. That did not happen by accident. We came together and restructured our society and economy to fight the war and rebuild after it, just as we are doing now in a smaller way to cope with the Covid pandemic. ‘No going back to the way things were’ applies just as much today as it did in 1945.

Keir Starmer rightly says we can’t go back to business as usual and that we must go forward with a vision of a better society. But what does that mean? And how do we turn the rhetoric into reality? Across the world most communities have responded to the crisis with kindness, neighbourliness, sympathy and collectivity. We must all, across the Labour movement, now make use of whatever downtime we have, and the way we can now use technology to talk to each other, to brainstorm new, imaginative and progressive ways of living and organising society. We must be ready to #BuildBackBetter; for a future based on our movement’s collective ideas, understanding and experiences; for a future which rejects the Tories’ right-wing virus breeding ground of fragmented public services, greed and survival of the fittest, and is founded on genuine solidarity and socialism.

Covid can’t wait – Brexit can

Labour must demand a Brexit pause while we tackle Covid-19

Covid-19 has exposed the dysfunction at the heart of the British state after a decade of austerity. That dysfunction has been combined with an extreme right-wing ideology, meaning that we have a government utterly incapable of carrying out its primary function – protecting its citizens. This combination has already led to a litany of failures: the foot-dragging initial response; the refusal to follow World Health Organisation guidelines; the failure to requisition adequate and timely supplies and equipment; the adherence to the immoral ‘herd immunity’ policy favoured by eugenicists and elitists; and the current fetish with non-existent antibody tests to identify an immunity that, without a vaccine, has not been evidenced to exist.

Many have been duped by the Tories’ sudden embrace of public expenditure, but the small print shows that it is all smoke and mirrors. Loans and deferred VAT payments mean SMEs and the self-employed gain little other than a bit of time to pay. Waiting on the phone for hour to then wait another five weeks for a Universal Credit payment is no substitute for the immediacy and simplicity of universal basic income or helicopter payments. Statutory sick pay is not a living wage. Utility and rent bills have not been frozen. Thousands are still going to work in non-essential jobs because they have no choice. Mutual aid volunteers are being asked to pay for groceries as people run out of money.

At the end of the day, as with Donald Trump, Tory policies will always be determined by the bottom line – by stock market rather than fatality numbers. We know which side the Conservatives are really on in those ‘economy vs. people’s lives’ debates. We know that by ‘economy’, they mean profit – not our livelihoods, jobs and household bills. The UK’s departure from the EU’s Early Warning and Response System and European Medicines Agency, and the Tories’ refusal to be part of a 28-country purchasing block for ventilators are not just shameful; they exhibit a pig-headed anti-Europeanism and dangerous British exceptionalism that puts ideology before saving lives.

In these circumstances, Labour must be bold. In recent years, Labour was at its best and most popular when Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell showed clear and firm leadership. Their anti-austerity policies and the 2017 manifesto are prime examples of that. But Labour has also been at its weakest and least popular when clear leadership has not been forthcoming. The 2019 manifesto was as radical as that of 2017, but was always going to get swamped and ridiculed in an election dominated by Brexit. And here, instead of boldness and clarity, Corbyn’s triangulation and failure to challenge the nationalist and populist nature of the Brexit project was a major contributory factor to our defeat.

Keir Starmer has already demonstrated a moving empathy and understanding of the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on the poor and working class. Now he must also be bold on Brexit. The economic and social fallout from coronavirus will be more than most people can cope with, without adding the unnecessary and human-made disaster that the Tories’ preferred hard Brexit constitutes. Brexit and fighting Covid are now inextricably linked.

The UK will, by default, be trading on World Trade Organisation rules come 2021 if Labour does not demand the virtual reopening of parliament immediately after Easter to agree an extension to the transition arrangements. If it doesn’t, then this Brexiteer government – that just a couple of months ago thought Brexit bongs more important than confronting the deadly threat that they knew we faced – will be more than happy to allow the July deadline to pass unnoticed, just as it has already ensured that the important Windrush Report was buried by Covid-19. Whatever their position on Brexit, every Labour member should now be demanding the government press pause on Brexit and concentrates on saving lives. You can sign Labour for a Socialist Europe’s petition to that effect here.

The majority’s reaction to the crisis has demonstrated the power of community, of working together, of solidarity, of support for our key workers and the NHS. Where the government has failed to act, cash-strapped Labour councils have stepped into the breach magnificently, working with all sections of their local communities to feed and support everyone. Pop-up mutual aid groups have linked up with established voluntary organisations, small businesses have used their imaginations to find ways to help, online entertainment and education has transformed many people’s lives and enabled them to live in isolation.

Thousands of migrants, refugees and EU citizens whose lives have been turned upside down by the Tory Brexiteers have instinctively and generously worked with their neighbours to build community support networks. These are the very same migrants who have been subjected to the Tories’ hostile environment, threatened with deportation, banned from receiving healthcare because of the ‘no recourse to public funds’ rules, and who have been the first UK health workers to lose their lives to coronavirus.

We must not let this profoundly ideological Tory government continue to put lives at risk, nor to use this crisis as their opportunity to further right-wing projects. Labour needs to be offering a future in line with the community strengths and power of collective action that a new generation is discovering. More immediately, we must demand a pause to Brexit so that all of our collective efforts can be concentrated on fighting the pandemic. And once this is over, let’s make sure that we don’t go back to normal.