Corporate media and both big business parties press to reopen schools in California
The Los Angeles Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee is meeting this Thursday to organize the opposition to school reopenings throughout LA County. Register and invite your coworkers to attend the meeting!
In California, there is a concerted push by the corporate media and both big business parties to reopen schools statewide. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom aims to resume in-person instruction by April, in line with the Biden administration’s timeline and as part of a broader effort to completely reopen nonessential workplaces across the state.
The mainstream media is fabricating the false narrative that the overwhelming majority of parents demand that schools reopen. Headlines in the Los Angeles Times and other papers have highlighted the position of a right-wing minority of parents calling for reopening, while exploiting the mental health crisis facing students as a battering ram for this campaign. Other columns have questioned the need for vaccinating teachers and downplayed the new and more infectious COVID-19 variants spreading throughout the country.
The mainstream media has given amplified coverage to the so-called #ReOpen movement, which advocates for an immediate return to in-person instruction through protests, media circuses, and performative legal action. Contrary to the narrative that this campaign is being led by disgruntled parents, in reality it is led by the Republican Party and prominent conservative personalities.
Not coincidentally, state Republicans have gathered an estimated 1.7 million signatures in favor of a recall vote for Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, which they have fueled in part through demands for reopening schools.
Over the winter, California became the epicenter of the global pandemic, averaging more than 40,000 new cases each day from December through January. By the end of this week, the state will hit the grim milestone of more than 50,000 deaths, with more than 3.54 million cases reported in the state—a case total larger than Germany, Canada, and Japan combined.
Los Angeles, the most populated county in the state with roughly 10 million residents, has reached more than 1.18 million cases alone, and 19,904 deaths as of today. Following the betrayal by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) earlier this month, which resulted in school reopenings beginning last week, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has emerged as the most significant battleground in the fight to reopen schools.
Other major cities on the West Coast led by Democrats that are pressing to reopen schools include Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Portland and Seattle, each of which would set a precedent and lead to further reopenings throughout the surrounding regions.
On the legal front, the right-wing Center for American Liberty attempted last month to revive a lawsuit against Newsom in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which presses for school reopenings. The suit and the appeal were filed by the Center’s CEO and Founder, Attorney Harmeet Dhillion, who also happens to be a well-known Republican National Committee (RNC) Committeewoman and a regular guest on Fox News.
The suit, Brach v. Newsom, was first launched last August and argues that Newsom breached constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection by issuing a school closure order last July. The case, closed in December 2020, is being revived to bring further media attention to the manufactured GOP fiction that there exists massive anger against distance learning during the pandemic.
The Republican Party believes that the issue of school reopenings could be their ticket to regaining seats in Congress that they lost in 2020 and 2018. Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, stated in a recent press conference, “I made a big deal out of the fact that messaging has to be about schools as we go forward.” The GOP is also funding advertisements denouncing Democrats for being insufficiently aggressive in reopening schools.
The Los Angeles Times reported heavily on a poorly attended protest staged in front of the West LA Federal Building last week, which claimed to represent at least 20 different LAUSD schools, as well as schools in the more affluent Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. According to video and photo documentation, the crowd numbered no more than one hundred attendees. This was followed by a protest by a few dozen parents who conducted a “Zoom blackout” in which they did not allow their children to participate in their virtual classes for the day.
It is no coincidence that the kind of attendees at these events are largely from affluent areas that have been able to mostly avoid the devastation of the pandemic. Parents from the wealthiest zip codes in the United States, such as Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Malibu, and the Pacific Palisades, were in attendance at these events and are the most frequently cited in articles claiming parents want in-person instruction.
More common, though receiving significantly less media coverage, are protest events opposing reopening, such as a recent car caravan rally in Los Angeles on February 20 called “Not My Child, Schools Aren’t Safe.” The event, whose organizers falsely framed school reopenings as a racial issue, was supported by more than 200 students, teachers, and parents. One teacher interviewed by local news at the event expressed the sentiment of many teachers, stating, “We miss our kids, we want to return to work. We just want to wait until it’s safe for everybody.”
While there have been difficulties in adapting to online education, parents have expressed overwhelming support for teachers and most are carrying through with online education knowing that this prioritizes the health of their families, school workers and educators.
According to data gathered this month, the vast majority of parents currently believe that their children are receiving the kind of education they prefer during the pandemic. In a national poll by the University of Southern California, called the Understanding America Study, the data revealed that 75 percent of parents are satisfied with the type of instruction their child is receiving at present, with almost 90 percent satisfaction among parents whose children are in fully online instruction.
According to another poll, the National Parents Union Survey, 42 percent of parents list “no new cases of Covid-19 being reported in [their] area” as an absolute necessity in order for them to feel safe sending their student to school. Forty-two percent of parents also would choose online-only education as their preferred method of instruction for the rest of the school year. The poll found that 71 percent of parents also believe that the quality of their child’s education is currently “excellent or good.” It is of note that 54 percent of parents polled also regularly worry about “being able to make ends meet” during the present crisis.
The real push to reopen schools is not coming from parents, but from pro-corporate agenda of both big business parties, supported by the trade unions at the local, state and national officials. The ruling class and the political stooges of the financial elite choose not to follow science-based policies to stop the pandemic. Instead, they do everything they can to reopen the economy before the pandemic is contained, sacrificing the lives of workers and their families in the process.
In California, the Democratic Party is relying on the manufactured opposition of the Republicans and the media as a pretext to implement school reopening policies that the Democrats fully support. Governor Newsom announced this week that the state would put aside 10 percent of vaccine doses for teachers, as a performative measure to meet the calls by teachers unions for school staff to be fully vaccinated before students return to campus.
Newsom recently hailed thousands of campuses that have reopened for “not waiting around,” cynically stating that this homicidal policy would “support working women and single moms in particular.” The Democratic Party elite has its cross-hairs set on LAUSD, the second largest district in the country with 665,000 students. While LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner recently stated schools would reopen “no later than April 9,” Newsom has urged, “we can do this now.” Newsom also asserts that “perfect” safety in schools should not be used as an “excuse” to remain closed in the middle of a pandemic.
Teachers must come to understand that in their efforts to prevent deadly school reopenings, they are in a fight against the entire capitalist system. Every arm of the ruling class and its state apparatus, as well as the media and the trade unions, are being deployed as a bulwark to get teachers to accept the “reasonable risk” of death.
We urge California educators, parents, and other sections of workers to join and help build independent rank-and-file committees throughout the state, as part of an expanding network of such committees across the US and globally. These democratic organizations fight to put the lives of teachers, students and families first. They are preparing for general strike action to close all schools and nonessential workplace, while providing full economic security for all workers affected, until the pandemic is contained. Register and invite your coworkers to attend the next meeting of the Los Angeles Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee this Thursday
Half a million dead in the US from coronavirus pandemic: Catastrophe, crime and historical turning point
The official death toll in the United States from the coronavirus pandemic, as reported by the main sources cited in the media, surpassed 500,000 on Monday—a staggering loss of life that is almost impossible to comprehend.
The number of people killed in just one year from the coronavirus is more than the number of US soldiers killed on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and Vietnam combined. It is greater than the entire population of Miami, Florida (454,000); Raleigh, North Carolina (464,000) or Kansas City, Missouri (486,000).
One out of every 670 people in the United States died from COVID-19 over the past year. Among those over the age of 65, disproportionately the victims of the disease, one out of every 100 has died. Beyond those who have died, more than 28 million people have been infected, and the long-term health effects are still unknown. Millions of people have been directly impacted by the loss of loved ones—parents and spouses, co-workers and children.
The pandemic has profoundly affected every part of the country, from the major urban centers to small towns and rural areas. One in 295 people has died in New York City, and one in 500 people in Los Angeles County, both well above the national average. And as the New York Times noted, “In Lamb County, Texas, where 13,000 people live scattered on a sprawling expanse of 1,000 square miles, one in 163 people has died of the virus.”
Life expectancy has plummeted in the United States at a rate not seen since the Second World War. Life expectancy for men is now 75.1 years, a decline of 1.2 years from 2019. For women it is 80.5 years, a decline of almost one year. And this just takes into account the first half of 2020—that is, before the massive surge of cases and deaths in November, December and January.
The pandemic has had a staggering impact on every aspect of society. The arts and culture have been devastated. Tens of millions of people have lost their jobs, with millions falling into the ranks of the long-term and permanently unemployed. Workers have accumulated enormous levels of debt, which far exceed the pittance in government assistance. A generation of young people has seen its future decimated. The psychological trauma from economic and social dislocation is incalculable.
The horrific impact of the pandemic is more than a tragedy. It is a monumental social crime that has exposed the comprehensive social, political, economic and intellectual failure of capitalist society.
On Monday evening, President Joe Biden delivered a perfunctory ten-minute speech marking the milestone of half a million people dead. In remarks characterized by verbal pabulum and empty sanctimony, Biden acknowledged a striking fact: The death toll in the US is “more than any other nation on earth.”
Yet Biden did not even attempt to explain the policies and actions that produced this reality. China’s ability to contain the disease through a stringent program of testing, contact tracing and lockdowns demonstrates that the uncontrolled spread of the virus was not inevitable. Mass death was the outcome of conscious decisions made by the ruling class and its political representatives to prioritize profit over lives.
There were a number of critical nodal points in the spread of the pandemic when decisive action could have been taken. The first known death in the US occurred in February. The Trump administration—with the collaboration of the Democratic Party and the media—deliberately downplayed the scale of the threat and refused to take emergency measures to prevent it from spreading throughout the country.
In March, when the death toll was still under 1,000 but growing rapidly in major urban centers, particularly New York City, the ruling class utilized the crisis to organize a massive transfer of wealth to the rich, sanctioned through the near unanimous bipartisan passage of the so-called CARES Act by the US Congress.
This was followed by a coordinated campaign of the entire political establishment to force workers back to work. It was Thomas Friedman of the New York Times who introduced the phrase, “The cure can’t be worse than the disease,” a slogan taken up by Trump. In practice, this meant that the necessary measures to save lives had to be subordinated to the profit interests of the ruling class and the endless rise of the stock markets.
The Trump administration spearheaded the “herd immunity” policy, inciting fascistic organizations to demand an end to all restrictions on business activity. But states throughout the country, run by both Democrats and Republicans, implemented the measures that spread the infection. As a consequence, the death toll surged, reaching 100,000 by the third week of May; 200,000 by the middle of September; and 300,000 by early December.
As this catastrophe was unfolding, the entire political establishment responded with a staggering level of indifference. At no time in the course of the past year was there a single congressional hearing to address how this happened and what had to be done. The endless toll of death was treated by the media as something that the population had to accept as a fact of life.
Even in the second half of 2020, the scale of the disaster could have been curtailed through emergency measures, including the shutdown of all nonessential workplaces, the closing of schools, and the emergency provision of the financial support necessary to sustain the population until the crisis was overcome.
The political establishment, however, rejected these necessary steps to save lives. Throughout the 2020 elections and after, Biden insisted that there would be “no national lockdown” under a Democratic Party administration. Following Trump’s January 6 coup attempt—involving the same forces mobilized to enforce the back-to-work campaign—the watchword of the Democratic Party has been “unity” and “bipartisanship.”
On Monday evening, Biden declared that it was necessary not only to remember the dead but also “to act. To remain vigilant. To stay socially distant.” His words, however, are contradicted by the policy of his administration, which has centered on the effort to reopen schools and keep non-essential businesses operating. Last week, Biden reiterated his demand that schools be opened “five days a week” by April 1.
Even as the death toll surpasses half a million, the pandemic is far from over. While new reported cases and deaths have fallen from their most recent peak of five weeks ago, both remain far above the average for most of 2020. The spread of new, more infectious variants of the virus means a likely surge of new cases before a vaccine is widely available.
In the final analysis, two interrelated factors blocked any rational, scientific and humane response to the COVID-19 virus. The first was the prioritization of personal wealth and profit over social need. The only consideration of the ruling class and its political representatives was to safeguard the financial markets and the wealth of the oligarchy.
Indeed, the ruling elite, operating under the principle, “never let a good crisis go to waste,” used the pandemic to engineer a transfer of wealth unparalleled in American history. Even under conditions of mass death and increasing poverty, the rich got richer. The wealth of US billionaires has increased by $1.1 trillion since March 2020. The process of wealth accumulation, epitomized by the rise of the stock market, was made possible by the same policies that made mass death inevitable.
The second factor was the subordination of the response to a global pandemic to nationalist geopolitics. At a meeting held on February 24, 2020, almost exactly a year ago, at a point when the pandemic was just beginning to spread in the US, World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North pointed to its global character:
As the national states prepare to fight over markets and pieces of territory, the coronavirus takes no notice of borders and spreads across the globe. The virus, traveling without a passport and without bothering to apply for a visa, is utterly indifferent to the nationality, ethnicity, racial background and religion of its potential victims.
The nationalist politics of all capitalist governments—and the policy pursued in the US has been implemented throughout the world—blocked the necessary global coordination of resources and scientific expertise to stop the virus.
The pandemic is a catastrophe and a crime. It is also a historical turning point. American capitalism has been irretrievable discredited. For those who have passed through this experience, particularly an entire generation of young people, it will frame their life experience and the way they see the world.
The pandemic is, as the World Socialist Web Site has explained, a trigger event. In a manner similar to World War I, it has exposed the bankruptcy of the entire social and economic order—not only the political parties, but also the pseudo-intelligentsia and its obsession with racial and gender identity, the corrupt media and the lying mouthpieces of the ruling class, and the corporatist trade unions that function as instruments of the corporations and the state.
It is proving to masses of workers and youth, in the United States and throughout the world, that a solution to the crisis produced by capitalism can be found only through a program of socialist internationalism and the struggle of the working class for power.
California's coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous: 'The devil is already here'
A coronavirus variant that probably emerged in May and surged to become the dominant strain in California not only spreads more readily than its predecessors but also evades antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccines or prior infection and is associated with severe illness and death, researchers said.
In a study that helps explain the state’s dramatic holiday surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths — and portends further trouble ahead — scientists at UC San Francisco said the cluster of mutations that characterizes the homegrown strain should mark it as a “variant of concern” on par with those from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil.
Californians, along with the rest of the country, have been bracing for an onslaught of the more transmissible strain from the U.K. known as B.1.1.7. But they should know that a rival strain that is probably just as worrisome has already settled in, and will probably account for 90% of the state’s infections by the end of next month, said Dr. Charles Chiu, an infectious diseases researcher and physician at UCSF.
“The devil is already here,” said Chiu, who led a team of geneticists, epidemiologists, statisticians and other scientists in a wide-ranging analysis of the new variant, which they call B.1.427/B.1.429. “I wish it were different. But the science is the science.”
The U.K. and California variants are each armed with enhanced capabilities, and the likelihood that they could circulate in the same population raises the specter of a return to spiking infections and deaths, Chiu said. It also opens the door to a “nightmare scenario”: That the two viruses will meet in a single person, swap their mutations and create an even more dangerous strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The new evidence that the California variant could make people sicker, and vaccines less effective, should spur more intensive efforts to drive down infections, Chiu said. Those should include both public health measures, such as masking and limits on public activities, and a campaign of rapid vaccinations, he added.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert, raised a further concern in an interview with The Times. A survival-of-the-fittest contest between the U.K. and California variants could accelerate the spread of the strain that's best able to elude the effects of COVID-19 vaccines, he said. The best way to prevent this, he added, is to stop the spread of either variant by getting vaccinated, wearing masks and limiting exposure to others.
The new analysis is currently under review by the public health departments of San Francisco County and the state, which collaborated in the new research. It is expected to post late this week to MedRxiv, a website that allows new research to be shared before its formal publication.
The new findings do not show that the homegrown strain was the principal driver of California's dramatic run-up in infections and deaths during the fall and early winter, Chiu cautioned. In some counties, case rates began to surge before the new variant had muscled into the picture; in others, both the variant and new infections rose together.
But scientists said B.1.427/B.1.429 certainly wasn't blameless.
"It's hard to disentangle all the different factors that contribute to spread," including travel, holiday gatherings and restaurant dining, said Dr. Bruce Walker, an immunologist and founding director of the Ragon Institute in Boston. Still, it's fair to conclude that "they all contribute to some extent," he added.
Over five months starting on Sept. 1, the California strain, which is sometimes referred to as 20C/L452R, rose from complete obscurity to account for more than 50% of all coronavirus samples that were subjected to genetic analysis in the state. Compared with strains that were most prominent here in early fall, the new strain seems to have an enhanced ability to spread, Chiu said.
Exactly how much more transmissible the California strain is remains an open question, he added. But the evidence that it's more contagious comes from several sources.
Samples collected from a range of counties, and using a variety of collection methods, suggest the variant is 19% to 24% more transmissible. But in some circumstances, its advantage was much greater: In one nursing home outbreak, B.1.427/B.1.429 spread at a rate that was six times higher than that of its predecessors.
Researchers also discerned uniform patterns of the variant's expansion in counties across the state. When infection rates rose, they typically did so in tandem with growing evidence of the California strain’s presence.
That probably made the new viral variant a contributor — albeit one among many — to the surge that dogged the state through the fall and early winter. In Northern California, at least, new infections had already begun to rise dramatically by the time the new variant had announced its presence, Chiu said. Across Southern California, the overlap was closer.
The variant’s enhanced propensity for spread was also evident in laboratory results. An analysis of viral samples from around the state showed that compared with people infected with other strains of SARS-CoV-2, those who were infected with the California strain had viral loads in the nasopharynx that were twice as high.
That, in turn, made it highly likely that each person infected with the new strain would go on to infect more people.
B.1.427/B.1.429's genome includes three mutations that affect the crucial spike protein, which the virus uses to sneak into human cells and convert them into factories for its own production. One of those three mutations, dubbed L452R, affects the so-called receptor binding domain, helping the virus attach more firmly to target cells.
That adaptation has not been seen in coronavirus variants that have caused worry elsewhere.
In a UCSF lab, scientists found that the L452R mutation alone made the California strain more damaging as well. A coronavirus engineered to have only that mutation was able to infect human lung tissue at least 40% more readily than were circulating variants that lacked the mutation. Compared with those so-called wild-type strains, the engineered virus was more than three times more infectious.
In the lab, the California strain also revealed itself to be more resistant to neutralizing antibodies generated in response to COVID-19 vaccines as well as by a previous coronavirus infection.
Compared with existing variants, the reduction in protection was "moderate ... but significant," the researchers said.
When the neutralizing antibodies went up against the homegrown strain, their effectiveness was cut in half. By comparison, when these antibodies encountered the coronavirus strain that's now dominant in South Africa, their effectiveness was reduced to one-sixth of their usual levels.
“I do anticipate over time it is going to have an effect on vaccination,” Chiu said. Though the magnitude of the effect varied from sample to sample and was less pronounced than with the South Africa strain, “it still is concerning,” he said.
Walker, who was not involved in the new analysis, said that while viruses often mutate in ways that make them stronger, such genetic changes often impose a new Achilles' heel. For instance, a strain that spreads more easily often loses some of its virulence.
The worrisome thing about the California variant, Walker said, is that no apparent weakness has been introduced alongside mutations that confer added strength.
That's a reminder that, if given the continued opportunity to spread, SARS-CoV-2 will keep looking for ways to thwart our effort to suppress it, he said. As long as infections are rampant, the imperative to adapt will result in new variants.
"If viruses don't replicate, they don't mutate," Fauci said.
Ominously, the new study also suggested the California variant could have the added impact of greater virulence.
That observation is based on the medical charts of 324 patients hospitalized at UCSF, a relatively small sample. Still, the researchers found that the 21% of these patients who contracted B.1.427/B.1.429 were more likely than their counterparts to have been admitted to the ICU, and they were 11 times more likely to die. That finding held up even after researchers adjusted for differences in the patients' age, gender and ethnicity.
The number of deaths in both groups was very small, however, so this finding will need to be checked against larger data sets as those become available.
Chiu also cautioned that this increased risk of death may not be a sign that the variant is inherently more lethal. Rather, it might simply be a reflection that its greater transmissibility caused hospitals to become so overwhelmed and healthcare resources to be stretched so thin that more deaths were the result — especially in Southern California.
Dr. Marc Suchard, an expert on infectious disease tracking at UCLA, said that some of the team’s findings would probably be refined as more virus samples were genetically sequenced and more data came to light.
“It remains critically important that we actively sequence the virus as cases are diagnosed in our state,” said Suchard, who was not involved in the UCSF work. “I am glad to see such a collaboration between academics and public health departments in California to identify the emergence of a previously unidentified lineage.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment