A report released Monday by Oxford University and published in its International Journal of Epidemiology finds that the decrease in life expectancy for 29 countries, including the United States, Chile and 27 countries in Europe, is the greatest in modern history.
For Western Europe, the decrease in life expectancy is the worst since the years of the Second World War, 1939–1945, and its immediate aftermath.
For Eastern Europe, the decrease in life expectancy is the worst since the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989–1991, which led to the restoration of capitalism and the dismantling of public health care systems and other social support.
For the United States, the decrease in life expectancy is the worst since official records began to be kept, in 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression. In other words, COVID-19 is the worst calamity to befall American society in living memory.
The declines in life expectancy averaged more than a full year across the 29 countries studied. The biggest decrease, 2.2 years, was for men in the United States, double the average across the 29 countries.
This massive social retrogression is caused not by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but by the refusal of the ruling classes in these countries to conduct any serious struggle against it. Rather than seeking to suppress the pandemic and eliminate the virus, they have carried out a policy of “profits first,” maintaining capitalist production at all costs, including that of human life.
In some countries the slogan has been “herd immunity,” the brazenly pro-virus policy adopted in Sweden, Britain and elsewhere in Europe. In the United States, the Trump administration followed the same policy, under a different slogan: “The cure can’t be worse than the disease.”
The same policy is now being pursued almost everywhere, from Biden’s America to Macron’s France and Merkel’s Germany, under a slightly different refrain; it is necessary to “live with the virus.” This means in practice that countless people will die by the virus.
The study was carried out by scientists at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford, who created a database of life expectancy figures from all 29 countries which was then analyzed to determine trends from 2019 to mid-2020 based on sex and age. In only three Scandinavian countries was there any improvement. In all others, there were declines for both men and women, and for over and under 60 years of age.
According to the study, “The magnitude of these declines offset most gains in life expectancy in the 5 years prior to the pandemic. Out of 29 countries, females from 15 and males from 10 countries ended up with lower life expectancy at birth in 2020 than in 2015…”
There are significant differences between the two main regions covered by the report, Europe and the United States. In Europe, deaths among people aged over 60 were the main factor in reducing life expectancy. In the United States, however, “Notably increased midlife mortality (0–59 years) was the largest contributor to life-expectancy losses between 2019 and 2020 in the USA among males.”
This is only one of several findings that indicate that the working class in the United States, and particularly male workers, have suffered a disproportionate impact from the pandemic.
The report found: “Despite having a younger population, the USA also has higher co-morbidities in these age groups compared with European populations with greater vulnerability to COVID-19. Other factors, such as those linked to unevenness in healthcare access in the working-age population and structural racism, may also help to explain the increased mortality.”
These comorbidities include the higher rates of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, in many cases linked to stress in the workplace and overwork, the impact of alcoholism, opioid addiction and other forms of drug abuse brought on by similar causes.
There is also a crowding-out effect from the swamping of health care facilities by COVID patients, as those seeking care for heart disease, cancer and other conditions may not be able to gain access. The report notes, “Emerging evidence further indicates that non-COVID-19 excess mortality was concentrated in working ages.”
The Oxford report did not go further and examine the impact of economic inequality on life expectancy and COVID death rates. But recent data from a study in Ontario, Canada, found that those in the lowest income bracket had a five-times higher COVID infection rate in the highest income bracket.
While the virus which causes COVID-19 does not care whether its human target is rich or poor, the same cannot be said of the profit-based social order which determines which people will be exposed to the deadly virus and for how long, and how healthy and resistant to infection they will be. Nor is the profit-driven health care system indifferent to class and wealth when deciding what treatment a COVID-infected person will receive.
Working people in every country entered the coronavirus pandemic at a disadvantage compared to their capitalist exploiters, who had greater access to health resources and fewer comorbidities before the pandemic struck, and greater ability to isolate and protect themselves when millions were falling sick and dying.
In particular, once the pandemic hit, male workers were more likely to be working in industries deemed to be “essential,” (other than health care itself), such as meatpacking and other food production, warehousing and logistics, electricity and other utilities, and trucking and transportation.
The Oxford report concludes with this warning about the long-term implications of the pandemic: “Although COVID-19 might be seen as a transient shock to life expectancy, the evidence of potential long-term morbidity due to long COVID and impacts of delayed care for other illnesses as well as health effects and widening inequalities stemming from the social and economic disruption of the pandemic suggest that the scars of the COVID-19 pandemic on population health may be longer-lasting.”
The Oxford report is based on analysis of data collected before the production of vaccines and the onset of mass vaccination. But the vaccination of less than half of the world’s population, and that very unevenly, ranging from more than 70 percent in China and parts of the industrial West, to 5 percent or less in Africa, has not halted the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and the virus continues to mutate.
The study noted that 1.8 million died worldwide of COVID-19 in 2020, without making the obvious warning that the death toll is far higher in 2021—2.9 million so far, for a global total of 4.7 million—so the decline in life expectancy is likely to be even greater this year.
The United States, for example, hit 342,000 total deaths by the end of 2020. Another 365,000 have died so far in 2021, with more than a quarter of the year remaining. At the current pace, the death toll in 2021 would approach 500,000. If it accelerates, as widely expected, due to school reopenings and the onset of cold weather, which drives people inside where they are more easily exposed to infection, the death toll could easily go far higher, with a corresponding impact on life expectancy.
The science is clear that COVID-19 can be eliminated in regions and eradicated worldwide, but only if the political will exists to carry out a program of maximum social struggle against the pandemic: the closure of schools and workplaces except those genuinely necessary to sustain life—not corporate profits—and a full-scale public health policy including masking, social distancing, testing and tracing.
No section of the ruling class will carry out such a program, which would be paid for through the expropriation of the wealth the capitalists have extracted from the labor of working people over countless decades. This policy will only be carried out through the political mobilization of the working class as an independent social power, fighting for its own interests and the interests of all those who wish to put an end to this deadly threat to humanity.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Thursday, conservative radio legend Michael Savage warned the Biden administration is seeking to “dissolve” the country as it passes the “inflection point,” while highlighting key contributing factors including the rapid flooding of the nation with illegal immigrants in order to “overwhelm the system” and destroy what he terms the three pillars that define a nation: borders, language, and culture.
The interview began with Savage addressing President Joe Biden’s recent declaration that our nation and the world stands at an “inflection point in history” during his first address before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.
“Who put us here?” asked Savage, who was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2016.
Michael Savage
Borders, Language, and Culture
Asked about the border situation, of which Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was recently accused of lying about as well as hiding data related to the ongoing border crisis due to surging numbers of migrants, Savage had harsh words.
“Where did that creep come from? Where did they get him from? Isn’t he a former Obama guy?” he asked. “How does he get away with openly lying that they’re deporting Haitians when everyone knows they’re dispersing them throughout America — which is destroying the nation?”
Homeland Security Security Alejandro Mayorkas listens to a question as he testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on unaccompanied minors at the southern border, Thursday, May 13, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP)
He also expressed his belief that America lacks hope of recovery from the assault on the nation’s border.
“[The U.S.] will never recover from this, by the way, ever,” he said, “and I don’t want to hear that they’re just like the European Americans who came in here and their ancestors. I’m not going to listen to this garbage anymore.”
Savage recalled his long-stated view that borders, language, and culture define a nation.
“I’ve been using the tagline ‘borders, language and culture’ since 1994 because we all know that borders define a nation, language defines a nation, and culture defines a nation,” he said. “Everything stems from these three concepts.”
He then accused the Biden administration of seeking to “dissolve” the country through an all-out assault against those pillars that define a nation.
“Now everyone knows this except the administration, which does not believe in borders, language and culture,” he said.
“They want to melt us down; they want to dissolve America into a part of the new world order, which sounds conspiratorial — right-wing conspiratorial — but you and I both know it’s true,” he added.
Blaming the “radical left” for the nation’s “ruin” and melting it “down into a cesspool” in a matter of months, Savage highlighted the role of the media and Democrat politicians.
“The fact of the matter is the media is complicit, as you well know,” he stated. “We keep hearing ‘the 11 million illegals need to be normalized.’ That number has been the same for 25 years.”
“I would guesstimate that 60 million illegals are already in this country,” he added, “which explains how totally corrupt Democrat politicians can remain in office for so many years while taxpayers scratch their heads and say, ‘but I voted against that person.’”
He also accused the media of pushing false narratives such as “collusion between [former President] Trump and Russia” which “we all know now” is false.
“Now they have several new false narratives: [illegal immigrants] all come in to work, the Border Patrol is racist, etc.,” he said.
He then pointed to the “overwhelming” costs of allowing a surge of illegal immigrants as well as the destructive cultural effects of an open border policy.
“It’s probably 60 million illegals [and] probably thirty million of them vote. The cost is overwhelming to our schools, to our hospitals, to our police,” he said. “The tab is almost — you can’t calculate it.”
“How much are we spending per year on students of whom many are illegal immigrants who don’t even speak English?” he asked. “How much of our educational system is being spent on ‘English as a second language’ to cater to these illegal alien children at the cost of our own children not learning the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic?”
Highlighting the damage being done to taxpayers, Savage also noted the complicity of others.
“This is one of the cruelest jokes being played on the American taxpayers, and it’s being done with the complicity of the Wolf Blitzers…” he said, “and the fact of the matter is it just got to the point now — not the inflection point — [where] we can never come back from what [Biden] just did to us with the Haitians.”
He then described the “large-scale invasion” of Central Americans from the southern border as “the most lawless abuse of power I’ve ever seen in my entire life, both in and out of politics.”
“The Biden criminal gang is not following any law, they’re just flooding the nation as quickly as they can to overwhelm the system and get as many illegal aliens into this nation as fast as possible,” he said.
“Ask the police in South Florida about the Haitians who have come to that part of the nation,” he added. “Ask them about the shootouts, the drug gangs.”
He also described the hypocrisy of constantly attacking law enforcement while ignoring immigration crimes.
“‘Don’t look into the flood of illegals, look into the Border Patrol — overwhelmed, outnumbered and overrun,’” he said, mocking those who seek to investigate Border Patrol agents simply doing their job.
“[It’s a] false narrative used to stoke fear, which leads to dependence on a Democrat party,” he added.
Savage also pondered what citizens could possibly do “when the country is being ruled by almost a Gestapo of liars.”
“I hate to use the word ‘Gestapo’ because right away they say ‘you’re overemphasizing the analogy to the Third Reich,’” he said. “Well, what is this like when you have a lying, criminal government with zero truth [and] truth means nothing to them?”
“It’s lie, lie, lie; deny, deny, deny; delay, delay, delay,” he added. “This is a fever of liars and criminals running this country.”
Savage went on to claim he was not aware of anyone, neither those struggling to make a living nor the wealthy, who are not “in agony” over the “relentless mass flooding of immigrants into the United States.”
“Where will we house and clothe and feed these economic refugees from all corners of the globe who are setting up their camp around the nation? Where’s the money gonna come from?” he asked. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
He also noted the matter is compounded by existent issues in major cities:
How do we take care [of] all these illegal aliens when we have armies of bums in the streets of America right now? We have the night of the living dead walking around San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, and now we’re bringing in more illegal aliens? Who’s going to pay for it? Where’s the finance for this? They’re all going to work amongst this horde of uneducated, unvaccinated, unvetted army?
“First from Afghanistan — we forgot about that already — 100,000, at least, Afghans are being brought into this country, dispersed throughout America, mainly in Republican voting districts,” he added. “Now the Haitians.”
“Where does this end?” he asked.
Democrats
Calling life under “the notorious” President Biden “the night of the living dead,” Savage expressed little confidence in the president’s ability to serve out his term.
“We all know that Biden is not going to finish his term,” he said.
“We’re wishing him the best but the fact of the matter is we know he’s in serious mental decline,” he added. “Everyone can see that he’s being covered for by the Gestapo around him.”
Despite the narrative that “he’s in charge” and “he knows what he’s doing,” according to Savage “everyone knows the king has no clothes.”
“The king is a senile mess and waiting in the wings is the [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi wing of the ‘demon cat’ party and that’s in the form of [Vice President] Kamala Harris who is perhaps the most incompetent, corrupt, despised person in American politics, I would say, next to Nancy Pelosi,” he said.
WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 24: U.S. President Joe Biden takes off his face mask as he arrives to deliver remarks on his administration’s COVID-19 response and vaccination program from the State Dining Room of the White House on September 24, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden announced that Americans 65 and older and frontline workers who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine over six months ago will be eligible for booster shots. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“That is who will be running this nation. So as bad as things are now, once Biden is taken out of office because he could no longer even stand on his own,” he added. “I believe that it will be Pelosi running the world if she’s not already running it behind the scenes.”
He also blamed Democrats for “looting the nation” for over a year.
“They had paid hooligans in the streets, most notably in Portland and in Seattle,” he said.
“They paid these hooligans: the Antifa barbarians, the BLM [Black Lives Matter] criminals,” he added. “They were paid for — lock, stock and barrel — behind the scenes.”
Calling it a “war on America’s middle class,” he claimed the country’s deterioration began long ago.
“It most visibly was seen with the tearing down of statues by Antifa and BLM, the criminal organizations,” he said, “and now they’re tearing the nation itself down where the enemy without has become the enemy within.”
Mass hysteria of the left
Savage compared the “mass hysteria” in the country to a phenomenon in dogs whereby an external stimulus that excites one then spreads to others.
“There is a thing called mass hysteria and I would say that the liberals in this country — if you want to call them that — the progressives, are simply like dogs who are suffering from a phenomenon in the pet world called ‘terrier frenzy,’” he said.
“In time, this frenzy burns itself off but if there are two terriers, the action of the first will trigger a similar response in the second [and] the frenzy of the second dog will reignite the first and typically send that dog into an even greater frenzy,” he continued.
“And so it goes until the two dogs have completely lost control. God help you if there are three terriers,” he added. “But God help us when there are hundreds of them in Congress.”
He then described current events as a manifestation of such mass hysteria.
“This mass hysteria, by the way, is what we are seeing,” he said.
“We are seeing mass hysteria where no matter what happens to the nation that is destroying it, they scream the typical words, ‘racism, racism, racism,’” he added.
Quoting his 2018 book Stop Mass Hysteria, Savage blamed “mass hysterics” for the “flooding of America with totally unabsorbable masses of illegal aliens” which he claimed was in order to destroy the U.S. and the middle class.
Having forewarned that “the entire system” is at risk while urging for the “mass hysteria” to be “identified as the partisan, anti-American force it is” and stopped “if our republic is to survive,” Savage lamented, “unfortunately, no one heeded the warning.”
“Now I think that I have to agree with [President] Joe Biden on something: we have crossed the inflection point,” he said.
“He has done it, which is the classic big lie: first, you commit the crime and say there’s a big crime, and [then] point the fingers at others,” he added.
Calling the hysteria “a form of PTSD,” Savage blamed “the entire left” for perpetuating it.
“The Democrats, most particularly ‘the squad,’ are purveyors of [Nazi Germany propaganda minister] Goebbels-level lies,” he said. “But the voters in America sadly rejected [former President] Donald Trump for a second term.”
WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 15: (L-R) “Squad” members U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) listen during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on July 15, 2019 in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump stepped up attacks on the four progressive Democratic congresswomen, saying that if they’re not happy in the U.S., “they can leave.” (Photo by Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images)
“Let’s not go into the election fraud or any of that,” he added.
Referring to his 2012 book Trickle Down Tyranny, he claimed to have written a script for a “president who could save our nation.”
“That person was Donald Trump, as flawed as he is,” he said. “When we elected him, I said if we get 10% of what he promises, it will be 110% more than what we will get with Hillary Clinton.”
“Was I wrong? No, I was 100% right,” he added.
Noting that people are prone to “put down” Donald Trump, Savage claimed the former president was the country’s only hope.
“The fact of the matter is he was the only firewall that we had between us and what is happening right now,” he said. “And we now have exactly what I predicted with Biden.”
“We have unpatriotic generals [and] we have lying health officials,” he added.
He also argued that with Biden in power, “white trash” is running America.
“I know those are strong words but a definition of trash in the human being is no principles, no honor, [and] out only for themselves and their grifter families,” he said.
He also pondered how one deals with “irrational” people.
“How do you deal with people who are irrational? How do you deal with a [Rep.] Maxine Waters who is a total jackass liar?” he asked.
“She gets up and gives a speech about the Haitians who have overrun the country and says that we are now a Gestapo and it’s worse than slavery,” he added. “How do you deal with that when you have vermin in the media like [anchors] Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, and Jake Tapper and the others who typify to me the worst people in the history of the nation?”
He then lamented the situation whereby the “hysterical” people believe them and their lies.
“The big[gest] lie is [that] we’re a nation of immigrants, the next big lie is that there are only 11 million illegal aliens, [and] the next big lie is they all come here to work,” he said.
“But they’re not alone,” he added. “There are people in the media who call themselves conservatives who actually agree with it. They’re ecstatic about this mass immigration to the United States.”
Republicans
Savage continued by noting the lack of serious Republican leadership in the fight over these critical issues.
“The question is where is the Republican leadership?” he asked. “When has [Senate minority leader] Mitch McConnell last stood up and said something about all of this?”
He also accused Republicans of sharing identical interests with Democrats.
“You know and I know that the Republicans want the flood of illegal aliens because they have the same exact interests against the working middle-class Americans that the Democrats do,” he said. “That’s a given.”
“Mitch McConnell is exactly part of the problem, as are the fake conservatives in the media [who are] saying nothing about it other than ‘we have to be nice to the illegal aliens,’” he added. “Why not deport all of them?”
Asked about former President George W. Bush appearing to use his speech commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11 to compare January 6 Capitol protesters to the Islamic terrorists who viciously attacked America, killing nearly three thousand innocents and wounding more than double that number, Savage reserved harsh words for what he termed the “Bush dynasty.”
“George Bush is part of the Bush dynasty and the Bush dynasty, as you well know, is an open borders internationalist dynasty,” he said, “and they’re no different than the Republican National Committee, the RNC.”
“The nation is now seeing clearly what I truthfully said while Bush was in power, when he tripled the national debt and I called him a ‘fiscal socialist’ at the time, and this was a long time ago,” he added. “So there’s nothing new under the sun with Bush, nothing at all.”
However, according to Savage, the Bushes are far from alone.
“The real issue here is that they are not alone,” he said. “As I say, it’s a Republican corporate media that is on the same side.”
“And what they’re doing is basically demolishing the United States as we know it and nobody knows how this ends,” he added.
Claiming the U.S. has gone “from a melting pot to a chamber pot in nine short months under the most senile and willfully criminal presidency in American history,” he again accused Republicans of cooperation.
“Where are the Republicans?” he asked. “They’re agreeing with him.”
“The fact of the matter is we have no opposition party whatsoever,” he added. “It’s a one-party system, ‘Democans-Republicrats,’ as I’ve said since 1994.”
The future
Stating that the country and economy are “already built on sand,” Savage shared his views on what the future holds if things persist.
“We’re living through an age of gilded speculation, not unlike the 1920s before the crash,” he said, “and they’re just keeping it going through sheer willpower and deceit.”
“It will crash,” he continued, “and when it crashes and everything falls down around all of us, who is going to pay for all of this is the question.”
“What is going to happen in this country when the country collapses?” he asked. “When the nation’s economy finally reflects the reality, who’s going to pay for all of this?”
He also reiterated that the nation’s very survival is at stake.
“I don’t think we can ever survive this,” he said. “The dam has been broken [and] I’m standing there watching the water flooding the country and overrunning [and] riding over me.”
Savage claimed that sharing the truth through his “podcast [and] tweets” was all that’s left to do.
“Every day when I get up and I say, ‘What difference does it make?’ the answer to me is — and those of us listening to the podcast or in the media or working to stop this insanity: think of it this way, it’s one small step for humanity,” he said.
“In other words, my tweets, my podcast, how I see it, they’re small steps for humanity. That’s all we can do,” he added.
Calling on humanity to “take small steps,” he admitted that he wasn’t aware of what more could be done.
“I don’t know what else to tell people [other than] they have to speak about it. They can’t just shrug and say, ‘I can’t do anything about it,’” he said.
“Everything begins with the people,” he added. “We might just be able to get the country back. How? I don’t know, it’s so long out.”
Calling “ridicule” the “last refuge that we have,” he urged the people to “ridicule that senile bastard in the White House, ridicule the scum around him, [and] ridicule the Gestapo around him.
Savage admitted he was personally troubled by America’s current state, though his love for country remains.
“I actually love this nation,” he said.
He then suggested only “divine intervention” could prevent the country’s demise.
“I don’t know how in the world it happened so fast other than the government media complex and purely evil forces of greed,” he said. “We literally need a divine intervention to stop what’s happening.”
“By the grace of God we shall survive,” he added.
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
