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As COVID-19 spread, central banks injected trillions into
economies worldwide, aiming to keep the world economy
afloat. Much of that stimulus has gone into financial markets,
and from there into the net worth of billionaires. Governments
have pumped $16 trillion into the global economy since the
start of the pandemic, and in large consequence, billionaires
have seen their wealth increase by $5 trillion, rising from $8.6
trillion to $13.8 trillion since March 2021, as government
intervention has driven up stock prices. KEVIN REED
While Hawley warns of the policy’s potential for danger, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has praised the lax vetting procedures as necessary for businesses to readily import foreign workers for blue-collar and white-collar American jobs.
New projections estimate that up to 304,000 in the US could die from COVID-19 by mid-March
This week the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, co-led by Professor Katriona Shea of Pennsylvania State University, projected that by March 12, 2022, the United States could see between 409,000 to 2,380,000 cumulative hospitalizations and 54,000 to 304,000 additional COVID-related deaths before the Omicron surge subsides. The Penn State modeling center utilizes multiple datasets to forecast their projections, which are then shared with the White House.
Such a grim prognosis demands the immediate mobilization of all public health measures to stem the tide of infections and prevent such a massive additional loss of life.
Instead, the Biden administration is offering the country hundreds of millions of adult non-surgical N95 respirators sourced from the government’s Strategic National Stockpile. According to White House officials, these will be made available at local pharmacies and health centers by early February. These will barely suffice for a day or two and come at a moment when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) forecasts suggest that the peak in infections will have passed.
Additionally, each US household is to be provided four free test kits, shipped in seven to 12 days once ordered through an online portal, covidtests.com, or they can be remimbursed for purchased tests by their insurance company after a three-page form is completed, printed, and mailed or faxed. Worse, some of these rapid antigen tests are temperature-sensitive and, if they are exposed to the cold for too long, the test results are affected.
Simply put, the latest steps taken by the White House—which has ruled out any action to stop of the spread of virus, including lockdowns and school closures—are largely performative and an insult to the population, demonstrating the Biden administration’s criminal indifference to mass suffering and death.
There are currently more than 156,000 people admitted to hospitals across the United States, a pandemic high, as the variant continues to surge, diving deeper into more rural regions. With staffing shortages and sickened staff, rising admissions are pushing hospitals to overcapacity, which inevitably means that even more may die.
Marc Lipsitch of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who is also scientific director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) forecasting center, explained to the Associated Press (AP), “In places with extremely short staffing and overloads of patients, as the medical professionals have been telling us, the quality of care begins to suffer. That may also lead to higher death rates, but that’s not in any of the models I’m aware of.”
As internationally renowned infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist, Dr. Raina MacIntyre, who heads the biosecurity program at Kirby Institute in Sydney, Australia, recently noted, Omicron might be half as severe as Delta. However, Delta was twice as severe as the ancestral variant.
Even if Omicron has a predisposition to the upper airways and predilection for less severe disease, the sheer exponential rise in cases is having untold consequences in the US. New COVID-19 cases continue to be reported at blistering rates of over 730,000 per day. It also puts more children into hospitals and kills more of them than any other previous strain. University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi, speaking with AP, warned that “a lot of people are still going to die because of how transmissible Omicron has been.”
According to Dr. Shea, for the period encompassing mid-December to mid-March, the central estimates predicted bythe model are that 1.5 million people will be admitted to hospitals and 191,000 will perish. The cumulative death toll for the pandemic has already surpassed 850,000, with the daily average in COVID-19 deaths over 1,800, as it continues its upward trend expected to overtake the Delta peak.
If the current projections hold, the US will record more than one million COVID deaths in the two years of the pandemic. And, as Biden celebrates his first year in office, it is noteworthy that there is hardly a distinction in the handling of this public health crisis by his administration compared to Trump’s. When one follows the cumulative trajectory of deaths, a seamless ascent underscores the malignant policy pursued by the ruling elite.
Speaking with AP, Professor Shea warned, “Overall, you are going to see more sick people even if you as an individual have a lower chance of being sick.” Further, she made the point that “this is Omicron driven,” refuting the repeated claims that the current variant only causes mild illness.
The attempt to characterize the Omicron surge as benign and just another respiratory virus is part of the attempt to reopen schools and force workers back on the job. On Sunday, during a winter storm briefing, New York Governor Kathy Hochul reported that “the COVID clouds are parting.” This is in reference to the drop in positivity rates across New York state. “Overall, the prognosis, the forecast, for COVID is much brighter than it has been before,” she claimed.
Even as case numbers are trending downward, deaths in New York continue climbing, with the daily average matching those from last winter’s peak of 205 deaths per day. On January 18, 2022, New York state reported 404 deaths. The last time such a figure was seen was in mid-May 2020.
Interestingly, many on social media, including epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, have noted that COVID-19 deaths and excess deaths in South Africa continue to climb even though confirmed daily cases have declined and the country’s leadership has put the pandemic in its rearview mirror. Journalist Chris Turnbull noted on Twitter that COVID-19 deaths are up nearly ten-fold from November, with 130 dying per day. At least 7,700 are still admitted to hospitals, of whom 1,025 remain on oxygen and 1,169 are in intensive care.
The decline in new COVID cases in the country where Omicron was first reported is plateauing, and the seven-day moving average remains over 4,000 infections per day. Placing developments in context, schools in South Africa closed their doors on December 12, and a week later, cases across the country began to decline. On January 12, when schools across the country for primary and secondary grades resumed, the declines started to stall. The following week university students are expected back in class.
The developments in South Africa with schools are analogous to those in the US and every other country facing Omicron. The current revolt and resistance of both students and teachers are a response to the repeated infections that have devastated their communities. It is well established that schools are drivers of the pandemic. Workers in every industry must follow students and teachers and take action to bring an end to the pandemic. The political establishment that serves the financial markets cares not one iota for their well-being or safety.
As to claims that the pandemic will burn itself out after causing mass infection this winter, during Tuesday’s World Health Organization COVID press conference, Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the pandemic is far from over.
“Omicron may be less severe, on average of course. The narrative that it is mild disease is misleading. It hurts the overall response and costs more lives,” Dr. Tedros noted. “Make no mistake, Omicron is causing hospitalizations and deaths and even the less severe cases are inundating health facilities. The virus is circulating far too intensely with far too many still vulnerable. For many countries, the next few weeks remains critical for health workers and health systems … Now is not the time to give up and wave the white flag … This pandemic is nowhere near over and with the incredible growth of Omicron globally, new variants are likely to emerge.”
“Inequality kills”: Capitalism and the COVID-19 pandemic
On Monday, the British charity Oxfam published a report documenting the extreme growth of social inequality during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It found that while the incomes of the bottom 99 percent of society fell, the wealth of the top 10 wealthiest men in the world doubled, even as millions died needlessly from infectious disease.
The charity’s findings were summed up in the report’s title: “Inequality kills.”
The Oxfam report expresses an undeniable reality: The COVID-19 pandemic is a malignant byproduct of the capitalist social order and the domination of society by a financial oligarchy. The report connects the deaths suffered by millions internationally from government policies that have “allowed the conditions for the COVID-19 virus to dangerously mutate.”
At the same time, the report concludes, governments have “created the conditions for an entirely new variant of billionaire wealth. This variant, the billionaire variant, is profoundly dangerous for our world.”
Oxfam writes, “A new billionaire has been created every 26 hours since the pandemic began. The world’s 10 richest men have doubled their fortunes, while over 160 million people are projected to have been pushed into poverty. Meanwhile, an estimated 17 million people have died from COVID-19—a scale of loss not seen since the Second World War.”
It continues, “The world’s small elite of 2,755 billionaires has seen its fortunes grow more during COVID-19 than they have in the whole of the last fourteen years—fourteen years that themselves were a bonanza for billionaire wealth.”
Oxfam then places the unprecedented scale and scope of billionaire wealth accumulation in historical context: “This is the biggest annual increase in billionaire wealth since records began. It is taking place on every continent. It is enabled by skyrocketing stock market prices, a boom in unregulated entities, a surge in monopoly power, and privatization, alongside the erosion of individual corporate tax rates and regulations, and workers’ rights and wages.”
The report continues:
New figures and analysis released in December 2021 by the World Inequality Lab reveal that since 1995, the top 1% have captured 19 times more of global wealth growth than the whole of the bottom 50% of humanity. Inequality is now as great as it was at the pinnacle of Western imperialism in the early 20th century. The Gilded Age of the late 19th Century has been surpassed.
The pandemic has led to a sharp increase in poverty worldwide, Oxfam reports.
There are now 163 million more people projected to be living on less than $5.50 a day than there were when the pandemic began. The crisis has shown that, for most of humanity, there has been no permanent exit from poverty and insecurity.
Oxfam reports that projections from the World Bank, IMF and Credit Suisse show that
poverty levels will not return to their pre-crisis levels even by 2030. Poverty does not only create immense suffering. Poverty kills. It is very much a form of economic violence, perpetrated against billions of ordinary people all over the world each day. In every country, the poorest people live shorter lives and face an earlier death than those who are not poor.
Once again, the report says that the present catastrophe facing masses of people on a world scale is no accident but the product of conscious government policy. “Huge amounts of public money, poured into our economies, have inflated stock prices dramatically and in turn boosted the bank accounts of billionaires more than ever before.”
Referring to the unequal distribution of the vaccine on a world scale as a “stain upon the history of our species,” the Oxfam report states, “The coronavirus pandemic has been actively made deadlier, more prolonged, and more damaging to livelihoods because of inequality. Inequality of income is a stronger indicator of whether you will die from COVID-19 than age.”
The report also reveals the mechanism by which the financial elite have leveraged the pandemic into the greatest surge in billionaire wealth in history.
As COVID-19 spread, central banks injected trillions into economies worldwide, aiming to keep the world economy afloat. Much of that stimulus has gone into financial markets, and from there into the net worth of billionaires. Governments have pumped $16 trillion into the global economy since the start of the pandemic, and in large consequence, billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $5 trillion, rising from $8.6 trillion to $13.8 trillion since March 2021, as government intervention has driven up stock prices.
In July 2020, called COVID-19 the “inequality pandemic.” This analysis is now undeniable. The mass death from COVID-19 has been, in the words of Oxfam, “death by inequality.”
The pandemic is a “ trigger event ” in history, embodying all of the underlying processes while massively intensifying them. The indifference to mass death on the part of governments and ruling elites is the outcome of decades of spiraling social inequality and the increasingly oligarchic character of society.
From the very beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, the response of governments throughout the world, led by the US, has consistently prioritized private profit over life. In early 2020 the Trump administration, together with both political parties, covered up the danger posed by the pandemic.
Once the reality became impossible to conceal and markets fell sharply, the Trump administration and Federal Reserve implemented a $6 trillion bailout program, the overwhelming majority of which was funneled into corporate profits and the stock market.
On an entirely bipartisan basis, states reopened schools and businesses, leading to wave after wave of the disease, culminating in the most massive wave to date caused by the Omicron variant.
While Biden won the 2020 election by pledging to “follow the science,” his administration has abandoned any pretext of containing, let alone eliminating, the virus, allowing it to infect nearly one million people day after day.
All of these decisions were guided by the single-minded effort to enrich the financial oligarchy at the expense of the working class. The Oxfam report makes clear that the pandemic has been massively profitable for the ruling elite. And this, above all, is why they have no intention of stopping it.
At the gathering of billionaires known as the World Economic Forum, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Advisor to US President Biden, was asked if 2022 was “actually the year that we go from pandemic to endemic” given the ability of the virus “to spread and offer immunity through infection?”
Fauci replied, “I would hope that that’s the case...”
In other words, according to the leading US public health official, the “best case” is for COVID-19 to become “endemic” in the population, killing hundreds of thousands of people in perpetuity.
The inescapable conclusion is that the fundamental problem is that the capitalist social order is intrinsically hostile to the needs of society. What is necessary is a movement of the international working class in opposition to the social order, based on a fight to eliminate and eradicate the virus in every country through a Zero-COVID policy.
Del Rio Sector Becoming Busiest for Illegal Border Crossings, Says Chief
A massive migrant surge in the Del Rio Sector is threatening to make this the busiest of the nine southwest Border Patrol sectors, according to Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens. With approximately 4,000 apprehended over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend and nearly 1,000 more on Tuesday, the Del Rio Sector is leading the Rio Grande Valley Sector for January apprehensions.
A source operating under the umbrella of U.S. Customs and Border Protection revealed to Breitbart Texas that Del Rio Sector agents apprehended more than 16,000 migrants so far this month. This compares to the approximately 13,000 apprehended during the same period in the Rio Grande Valley sector. If this trend holds through the end of the month, Del Rio will overtake Rio Grande Valley as the busiest sector along the southwest border with Mexico.
Chief Owens tweeted images of more large migrant groups who surrendered to Border Patrol agents immediately after crossing the border from Mexico into Texas. The chief reported five groups crossed the border overwhelming the limited resources available in the sector. One group alone consisted of more than 265 migrants.
By the following morning, the agents apprehended more large migrant groups. One of these apprehended during the cover of darkness consisted of more than 400 in a single group.
The Del Rio Sector appears to be overtaking the Rio Grande Valley Sector as the busiest in the nation. Breitbart Texas’s Randy Clark reported agents in this sector apprehended more than 4,000 migrants during the first six days of the new year. Another 4,000 were apprehended over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. As of Wednesday morning, the number of apprehensions is estimated to exceed 16,000.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face
Randy Clark contributed to this article.
EXCLUSIVE: West Texas Border Sector Now Epicenter of Migrant Crisis
DEL RIO, Texas — A source within U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) explains the Del Rio Sector is holding the lead in migrant apprehensions throughout the southwest. In January thus far, there are nearly 16,000 apprehensions, averaging almost 1,000 daily.
Established CBP statistics show lead changes are not common. The Rio Grande Valley Sector held the top position in migrant apprehensions since 2013. Large migrant groups crossing through the Del Rio Sector, particularly in Eagle Pass, are now the norm.
Five such large groups were apprehended within the sector over the last four days. In one instance, according to the Border Patrol, one group near Eagle Pass numbered more than 265.
The lead change may have more to do with a a reduction of migrant crossings in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, rather than an increase in in Del Rio. In November 2021, the RGV apprehended an average of 1,590 migrants per day. That daily average dropped to 700 in January.
The source believes recent international law enforcement efforts may have contributed to a reduction in the Rio Grande Valley. In a recent report by Breitbart Texas, 359 migrants were arrested in Mexico.
In another instance, 120 kidnapped migrants were rescued by law enforcement officials from a cartel safe-house in Ciudad Victoria. The source says although the efforts of foreign entities may be benefiting south Texas, the effects are not felt further west along the border.
The migrant crossings in Del Rio have resulted in facility overcrowding and a reduction in routine patrols. The source says the Del Rio Sector is overwhelmed by the level of crossings and is averaging more than 800 apprehensions per day since the start of January.
Since the fiscal year started in October 2021, the source says some 271,000 migrants have been apprehended along the southwest border — eclipsing the 30,000 apprehended during the same time frame last year.
The relative reductions seen in the Rio Grande Valley are dependent on Mexico’s enforcement actions. The U.S. source says Mexico’s resources are stretched as thin and any curtailed efforts will immediately be felt in south Texas.
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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