The policies of the Biden administration have been driven by the interests of Wall Street and the super-rich. This is why, despite occasional criticisms of Trump’s callous and anti-scientific response to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden has pursued the same policy of restoring corporate profit-making by forcing workers back to work and children back to school as quickly as possible, regardless of the dangers to their lives and health.
Six months of the Biden administration—A balance sheet
Six months ago, Joseph Biden was inaugurated president of the United States, under conditions of unprecedented crisis of US capitalism and the entire social and political order.
His predecessor, Donald Trump, did not attend the ceremony, signaling his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election. Only two weeks before, on January 6, Trump’s supporters had stormed the Capitol and temporarily halted the congressional certification of state electoral votes. The aim of the attempted coup was to stop the transfer of power and establish a personalist dictatorship. In the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, it was Trump’s “Reichstag moment.”
When Biden took office, 400,000 people were dead from the COVID-19 pandemic, while millions were unemployed. Just months earlier, every city, town, and village in America had seen protests in opposition to police violence.
Biden marked the six-month anniversary with brief remarks presenting American society in glowing terms. “For all those predictions of doom and gloom six months in, here’s where things stand,” he said. “Record growth, record job creation, workers getting hard-earned breaks.” He added, “Put simply: Our economy is on the move, and we have COVID-19 on the run.”
Summing up his prognosis, the US president proclaimed: “It turns out capitalism is alive and very well.” The truth is that the policies of the Biden administration have entirely failed to resolve the social crisis in America and they cannot, because they are based on the framework of American capitalism.
The pandemic, far from being “on the run,” is undergoing a new resurgence. Since Biden took office, an additional 225,000 people have died from the pandemic. All indications are that by the winter, with the new surge accompanying the spread of the Delta variant, the death toll under Biden will have exceeded that under Trump.
The policies of the Biden administration have been driven by the interests of Wall Street and the super-rich. This is why, despite occasional criticisms of Trump’s callous and anti-scientific response to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden has pursued the same policy of restoring corporate profit-making by forcing workers back to work and children back to school as quickly as possible, regardless of the dangers to their lives and health.
Trump’s response to the economic depression that accompanied the onset of the pandemic was to pour trillions into bolstering the banks, hedge funds and corporations, with bipartisan bills like the CARES Act. Biden pursues essentially the same policy, although with less support from the Republicans than the Democrats gave Trump. He boasts of success on the economic front, although seven million fewer workers have jobs today than before the pandemic began, and millions face wage cuts, poverty, eviction and foreclosure.
Only in foreign policy is there a significant shift from Trump to Biden, and this in tactics only, not strategy. Biden has placed more emphasis on the US utilization of NATO and the “Quad,” a de facto alliance with Japan, Australia and India. Significant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus backed Biden against Trump because they sought a more effective mobilization of US power against Russia and China.
And if Biden’s statement that “capitalism is alive and very well” were true, it begs the question: Why is there a mounting fascist threat to American democracy?
In the six months since Biden’s inauguration, the Republican Party has maintained its intransigent opposition to any serious investigation into the events of January 6. Half-hearted Democratic proposals, first for an “independent” bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, then for a bipartisan congressional investigation, have been blocked outright or endlessly delayed.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to emerge of the central role played by Trump and his allies in Congress in seeking to carry out a political coup d’état to overturn the results of the election and maintain himself in office. But neither Trump nor his accomplices have even been questioned, let alone tried, convicted and jailed.
Instead, Trump has renewed his agitation against the election, seeking to transform the Republican Party into an openly fascistic movement subordinated to his personal authority. And his supporters in the Republican Party are using their control of state legislatures to enact unprecedented and sweeping attacks on the right to vote.
Biden himself acknowledged something of the reality of the crisis of American capitalism in a speech last week in Philadelphia, when he declared “We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” But he offered no way forward, except to appeal to “my Republican friends in the Congress, states and cities and counties to stand up” against this assault—although they are the very ones carrying it out.
In an effort to prop up illusions in the Democratic Party, the representatives of its “left” wing, portray Biden’s policies in extravagant terms. Last week Senator Bernie Sanders claimed that Biden’s “reconciliation” bill on social spending amounted to “the most consequential piece of legislation for working families since the 1930s.” Or, like Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin, affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, they express disappointment in what has been achieved so far, but express the hope that “Biden has shown a willingness to think big,” and that additional pressure should be brought to bear on congressional Democrats.
For his part, Biden uses every possible occasion to make clear he has no intention of implementing any measures that challenge the interests of the financial oligarchy, declaring last weekend, “Communism is a failed system, universally failed system. I don’t see socialism as a very useful substitute.”
The truth is that the Biden administration is based on Wall Street and the military, mobilizing behind it sections of the upper middle class through the utilization of identity politics. Well aware of the explosive social conditions developing in America, moreover, the administration supports the union “organization” campaign at Amazon and the PRO Act, to make it easier to install unions at work locations where they otherwise would have difficulty convincing workers to pay dues for the privilege of having their wages and benefits cut.
It is telling that when workers engage in genuine anti-corporate struggles, like the strikes waged by autoworkers against Volvo Trucks in Dublin, Virginia, the supposedly “pro-labor” president falls completely silent. Biden is for the unions, not for the workers, because he correctly sees the unions as an instrument of the US ruling class in policing the working class.
Workers must draw the lessons of six months of the Biden administration. None of the problems confronting the working class, from the disastrous pandemic response to unparalleled levels of social inequality, to the danger of imperialist world war and fascist dictatorship, can be addressed without breaking the grip of the financial oligarchy over every aspect of society.
AP FACT CHECK: Biden goes too far in assurances on vaccines
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden offered an absolute guarantee Wednesday that people who get their COVID-19 vaccines are completely protected from infection, sickness and death from the coronavirus. The reality is not that cut and dried.
The vaccines are extremely effective but “breakthrough” infections do occur and the delta variant driving cases among the unvaccinated in the U.S. is not fully understood.
Also Biden inflated the impact of his policies on U.S. jobs created in his first half-year in office, misleadingly stating his administration had done more than any other president. He neglects to mention he had population growth on his side in his comparison.
A look at his remarks in a CNN town hall:
PANDEMIC
BIDEN: “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die.” — town hall.
THE FACTS: His remark accurately captures the strong protection the COVID-19 vaccines provide as cases spike among people who have resisted the shots. But it overlooks the rare exceptions.
As of July 12, the government had tallied 5,492 vaccinated people who tested positive for coronavirus and were hospitalized or died. That’s out of more than 159 million fully vaccinated Americans. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said “99.5% of all deaths from COVID-19 are in the unvaccinated.”
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BIDEN: “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” — town hall.
THE FACTS: Again, he painted with too broad a brush as he described in stark terms the disparity between those who got their shots and those who haven’t. The disparity is real, but a small number of breakthrough infections happen and health officials say they are not a cause for alarm.
No vaccines are perfect, and the government is keeping a close eye on whether new coronavirus mutants start to outsmart the COVID-19 shots. But for now, federal health officials say even when breakthrough infections occur, they tend to be mild — the vaccines so far remain strongly protective against serious illness.
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BIDEN, asked about vaccinated people who get infected: “It may be possible, I know of none where they’re hospitalized, in ICU and or have passed away so at a minimum I can say even if they did contract it, which I’m sorry they did, it’s such a tiny percentage and it’s not life threatening.” — remarks to reporters after the event.
THE FACTS: Once again, too far. That is evident from the CDC's finding that 5,492 vaccinated people who tested positive for coronavirus were hospitalized or died as of July 12. That's not “none.” But he is correct that it is a small percentage of the more than 159 million fully vaccinated Americans.
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JOBS
BIDEN: “We’ve created more jobs in the first six months of our administration than any time in American history. No president, no administration, has ever created as many jobs.” — town hall.
THE FACTS: His claim is misleading.
While Biden’s administration in the first half year as president has seen more jobs created than any other president — just over 3 million in the five months tracked by jobs reports — that’s partly because the U.S. population is larger than in the past.
When calculated as a percentage of the workforce, job growth under President Jimmy Carter increased more quickly from February through June 1977 than the same five months this year: 2.2% for Carter, compared with 2.1% for Biden.
Since the late 1970s, the U.S. population has grown by more than 100 million people.
It’s true, though, that the economy is growing rapidly — it expanded at a 6.4% annual rate in the first three months of the year — and is expected to grow this year at the fastest pace since 1984.
Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue package contributed to the vigorous growth, but much of the expansion also reflects a broader bounce-back from the unusually sharp pandemic recession, the deepest downturn since the 1930s. Even before Biden’s package, for example, the International Monetary Fund was projecting U.S. growth of over 5% for this year.
Biden is also leaving out the fact that the U.S. economy remains 6.8 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic level, and the unemployment rate is an elevated 5.9%, up from a five-decade low of 3.5% before the pandemic.
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Associated Press writers Lauran Neergaard and Christopher Rugaber in Washington and David Klepper in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.
Pandemic slashed US life expectancy by 1.5 years in 2020
Life expectancy in the US plummeted by 1.5 years in 2020, according to a report released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), marking the largest one-year drop since 1943, when young men were dying every day on the battlefields of World War II. The precipitous decline is a continuation and acceleration of a downward trend in US mortality since 2015.
Life expectancy is defined as an estimate of the average number of years a person born in a given year may expect to live. The metric does not precisely predict actual life span, instead being a measure of a society’s general health. The drastic fall in 2020 reflects the accelerating decay of American society under the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been allowed to run rampant under a bipartisan “herd immunity” policy, resulting in more than 35 million infections and over 625,000 deaths so far.
According to the report, if an American child were born today and lived his or her entire life under the conditions of 2020, the child would be expected to live 77.3 years, down from 78.8 in 2019. Life expectancy for American males declined 1.8 years from 2019 to 2020, while life expectancy for American women dropped by 1.2 years from 2019. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, US life expectancy has not been so low since 2003.
The report estimated COVID-19 deaths contributed to approximately 74 percent of the decline in life expectancy. Researchers discovered disparities among racial groups, with the virus being responsible for 90 percent of the decline in life expectancy among Latinos, 68 percent among the non-Hispanic white population and about 59 percent among the non-Hispanic black population. There was no data on Asian Americans or other racial groups in the report.
According to CDC data, black Americans are hospitalized with COVID-19 at 2.9 times the rate of white Americans and die at two times the rate. Nonwhite Hispanics are hospitalized at 2.8 times the rate and die at 2.3 times the rate of white Americans. Federal data indicates life expectancy for black Americans has not fallen so much since the mid-1930s amid the Great Depression. While health officials have not recorded Hispanic life expectancy as far back, the 2020 decline was the largest recorded year-to-year drop.
The report’s authors and bourgeois publications, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, were quick to attribute the discrepancy among racial groups to “systemic racism” inherent in American society. In reality, these differences reflect the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on the working class and poor. Minorities are more likely to be employed in jobs deemed “essential” by the ruling class and forced to expose themselves to the deadly disease.
Poor workers more commonly depend on public transportation, risking exposure with every outing, or live in multigenerational homes in cramped conditions more conducive to spreading the virus. Experts say it is also possible Hispanics are disproportionately affected because many are undocumented and ineligible for federal pandemic relief or unemployment benefits. Additionally, there are obstacles related to accessing coronavirus tests, treatments and vaccines for the undocumented.
The overall decline in life expectancy reflects the pandemic’s massive toll on American society and its broader impacts on social health, including a record-high number of deaths from drug overdoses and other so-called deaths of despair. In 2020, more than 93,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. This staggering figure is more than 10 times the estimated 9,000 overdose deaths recorded by the CDC in 1988, around the height of the crack epidemic.
Experts state approximately 11 percent of last year’s decline stems from accidents or unintentional injuries. Drug overdose deaths, which spiked 30 percent during the pandemic, made up about one-third of unintentional injuries in 2020. The report also noted an increase in homicides and diabetes, which together accounted for about 5.5 percent of the decrease in life expectancy. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, which suggest growing alcohol abuse, accounted for nearly 2.5 percent of the decrease.
These “deaths of despair” cannot be separated from the broader impact of the pandemic. With hospitals overwhelmed with coronavirus patients, addiction treatment and other mental health programs have been cut when they are needed most, due to the social isolation and financially insecurity spawned by the pandemic. The stress and depression caused by job loss, housing insecurity, and the pandemic itself have exacerbated issues with substance abuse. According to the American Medical Association, more than 40 states have recorded increases in opioid-related deaths since the pandemic began.
Researchers noted even if COVID-19 deaths decline in 2021, the socio-economic effects of the pandemic will linger for years. A study last month from the Virginia Commonwealth University found the pandemic widened the life expectancy gap between the US and 16 other high-income countries. Researchers found the gap increased from 3.05 years in 2018 to 4.69 years in 2020.
More than 225,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus so far this year—a number expected to increase significantly as deadly variants continue to spread among the population. This massive loss in life is not simply a result of the deadly disease but the consequence of a deliberate policy pursued by capitalist governments across the globe.
Since the onset of the pandemic, governments around the world responded to the greatest public health emergency in a century by pumping trillions into the stock markets and corporations to prop up world capitalism. Determined to extract this money from the working-class, governments have forced workers into unsafe plants and factories to continue production. The ruling classes of the world allowed the virus to spread and have even welcomed its deadly rampage in pursuit of the disastrous “herd immunity” policy.
The entire response to the pandemic has been guided by the prerogatives of the wealthiest sections of society. The world’s billionaires added more than $4 trillion to their collective wealth in the first year of the pandemic. Over the same period, nearly 3 million people succumbed to the virus. The victims include both the young and old and are disproportionately working class and poor.
The pandemic has laid bare the grim reality of capitalism, which subordinates all aspects of social life to the pursuit of profit. Furthermore, it demonstrates the inability of the capitalist system to deal with a global crisis.
The working class must counter the capitalist policy of misery and mass death with socialist program that places the interests of the vast majority of the population at its center. The only way forward requires the independent political intervention of the working class, mobilized as an international social force to bring a pandemic to an end and save millions of lives.
Study finds close to 185,000 unrecognized COVID-related deaths in the United States
A study published in the Lancet last week found that the number of unrecognized COVID-related deaths in the US is an astronomical 185,000.
The scale of death the coronavirus pandemic has wrought in the United States since last year has been unprecedented in its modern history. COVID-19 and the social mayhem the pandemic has perpetuated, with drug overdoses, rising homicides, worsening chronic diseases, has cut down the population’s lifespan by an astounding 1.5 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The last such decline occurred in 1943 at the height of World War II.
However, the actual COVID-19 death toll remains elusive and may take several years to make a thorough accounting. Nonetheless, future pandemic prevention efforts need to know how these deaths occurred. It has been noted that declines in overall life expectancy directly correlate to the population’s well-being and prosperity.
The disruption of social and health services, delayed treatments for chronic diseases, the stress caused by isolation, compounded by the tens of millions of the population infected with COVID-19, have contributed to the grim figure of over 625,000 reported deaths thus far. As the Delta variant continues to spread unchecked, these numbers will continue their upward trajectory.
Recently, a team of experts from the COVID-19 Emergency Response at the US CDC published their findings on the estimate of unrecognized COVID-19 deaths across the country from March 2020 to May 2021, 15 months. They estimated that the total COVID-19 deaths in the US at 766,611, with 184,477 (24 percent) not documented on death certificates.
The study was published in the Lancet just last week, but there has been barely a whisper in any media outlet. The scale of this death in the US from COVID-19 is unprecedented, placing it even above the death toll from the 1918 Influenza pandemic that killed 675,000 Americans. The silence is deliberate.
Deaths caused by COVID-19 are nationally notifiable in the United States. States and territories utilize the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS) to report the number of cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections and deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
As of May 29, 2021, the ending date for data collection in the Lancet study, the CDC COVID Data Tracker had reported 589,526 COVID-19 deaths. On the same date, the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) had aggregated a slightly lower figure of 582,135 COVID-19 deaths, accounting for some lag time with filing death certificates.
Estimates of excess deaths allow assessment of the “burden of mortality potentially related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” either directly from COVID-19 or with the disease as a contributing factor. It is typically calculated by calculating the difference between the observed number of deaths in a specific time and the expected number of deaths for the same period compared to recent historical trends.
However, as the authors of the study note, excess deaths cannot distinguish COVID-19 deaths that were “misclassified” from deaths that occurred because of avoiding emergency care due to fear of accessing health care systems, hospital overcrowding, interruption, and disruption of treatments, or even from a drug overdose, for that matter.
When deaths are reported to the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), a death certificate is issued, providing information on the deceased’s demographics, place and date of death, events leading to the individual’s death from which a single underlying cause of death is selected. If additional contributing factors are deemed pertinent, these may be included if due diligence is taken.
However, to classify these cause-specific deaths based on standardized codes can take several weeks, if not months. Additionally, many COVID-19 related deaths may be underestimated because infected individuals may not have sought medical care. Or when they did, the virus was no longer detectable. Other factors include lack of testing availability or improper specimen collections that may have led to a missed diagnosis of COVID-19 related fatality.
Even if a patient is diagnosed with COVID-19 and is hospitalized, often they linger for weeks before they succumb, leading to an incorrect attribution “to a cause other than COVID-19 because of the time between identification and death.” In many cases, SARS-CoV-2 infections can exacerbate chronic medical conditions or cause massive infections, heart or kidney failure, and the death certificate incorrectly omits COVID-19 as a causative factor. Ultimately what is or is not written on the death certificate is final.
In conducting their study, the authors explained, “To better quantify and estimate the number of excess deaths [due to COVID-19] that were not captured as COVID-19 deaths or unrecognized on death certificates, we developed a regression model, using 2020-2021 all-cause mortality data reported to NVSS and SARS-CoV-2 viral surveillance data for six age groups across 50 states, New York City, and the District of Columbia.”
To estimate “COVID-19-attributable unrecognized deaths” among all the excess deaths that did not have COVID-19 listed as a cause of death, all death certificates that annotated COVID-19 as contributing to or causing death were subtracted from the excess deaths before conducting their regression analysis. This avoids double counting and reducing the potential underestimation.
Their analysis found 184,477 unrecognized deaths between March 8, 2020, and May 29, 2021, a period of almost 15 months, with a range estimate between 172,810 to 196,035 deaths. When these figures are then added back to the COVID-19 deaths reported through death certificates, the authors estimated the actual death toll from COVID-19 through the end of May 2021 at 766,611, with a range of 754,944 to 778,170. In simple terms, more than three-quarters of a million people who did not have to die.
More unrecognized deaths had occurred early in the pandemic. Not surprisingly, April 2020 had the most significant figure with 36,850 deaths (20 percent) when the first wave of infections crashed into the United States, establishing the country as the epicenter of the pandemic for almost an entire year. December 2020 and January 2021 were the next highest, with the devastating winter surge coinciding with the holidays. Also, 151,592 deaths (82 percent) occurred in individuals 65 years and older. Though people over 65 make up only 18 percent of the population, they represent more than 80 percent of all deaths from COVID-19.
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) divides the country into ten regions. Region Four includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and had the most significant number of unrecognized deaths, with just over 44,000 accounting for almost 24 percent of all such deaths. Regions Five and Six secured second and third place, which includes the upper Midwest and South/Southwest. However, the most considerable per capita rate of unrecognized deaths fell on Region Seven, which includes Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.
The study also analyzed the data according to reported COVID-19 deaths and total COVID-19 attributable deaths, and the reader is encouraged to review these data. What it demonstrates concretely is the massive loss of life that the ruling elite have allowed to befall the population in the hopes of staving off any economic repercussions. The enormous rise in the Wall Street financial indices and the accumulation of obscene wealth in the hands of the financial aristocrats correspond to the misery and death that has befallen the population.
Every means to stave off a human catastrophe from the ravages of the virus exists on a social scale. In no uncertain terms, given the advancement in technology, in medical expertise, in resources, and capacity to distribute them to the population, that the pandemic has been allowed to create the singularly most deadly event in the United States’ modern history is a damning indictment of the capitalist system.
U.S. Extends COVID Tourism Ban at Mexican, Canadian Ports into 17th Month
The Department of Homeland Security announced an extension to the travel limitations at land border crossings along the U.S.-Mexican and Canadian borders. The Trump era action has been in place since March 2020 and applies to non-essential travel such as day tourism and shopping.
In a statement released Wednesday, DHS noted, “To decrease the spread of COVID-19, including the Delta variant, the United States is extending restrictions on non-essential travel at our land and ferry crossings with Canada and Mexico through August 21, while ensuring the continued flow of essential trade and travel.”
Many hoped the ban would expire this week due to an increase in vaccinations in Mexico and Canada. Mexico received more than 1.3 million Johnson & Johnson doses from the United States in June. The vaccines are administered in 39 municipalities in Mexico along the border.
The ban was set to expire on July 21, 2021, but is extended until August, well past its one-year anniversary. Many border cities are financially affected by the ban as they rely on daily shopper crossings to support local business.
In Eagle Pass, Texas, Mayor Rolando Salinas issued a statement estimating a loss in revenue of $350,000 to $450,000 that would have been collected at the city’s International Bridge over the course of this latest extension. Many border cities will lose revenue generated through hotel and sales taxes.
In larger border communities, the revenue gaps are staggering. In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas signed by five mayors in the San Diego area, an estimated $7.5 million a week was lost during the period.
The San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce estimates 200 business closed permanently due to the lingering ban.
One Texas border merchant told Breitbart many businesses have not survived. He says his daily sales are down 90 percent, compared to pre-ban figures.
“We can’t survive like this–we are barely making enough to pay the rent.” In Spanish he adds, “It makes no sense, people are crossing the river illegally and we won’t let people with documents come over” and return [to Mexico] after shopping.
The ban on documented crossers will remain in effect for now as illegal border crossings continue to soar.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
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