Photo Above, 9 August 2021: Residents in the eastern Chinese city of Yangzhou undergo their fifth round of COVID testing after the Delta strain penetrated the city on July 28. In the previous 11 days, the entire city with a population nearly that of Melbourne’s had been tested four times for COVID! As a result the outbreak was quickly quashed with zero deaths and without the need for a lengthy, city-wide lockdown.Photo Credit: Li Bo/Xinhua
Learning from China’s Stunning Success
in Containing the Delta Strain:
The Measures Needed to
Stop a Surge in COVID Deaths
and to Win Secure Jobs for All
15 October 2021: People in Greater Sydney celebrated when the lockdown was partially eased for the fully vaccinated on Monday. For many it was their first chance in over three months to visit family members and to socialise with friends. For a large number of service industry and casual workers, the partial re-opening meant an opportunity to finally get some badly needed work. Given the inability of the authorities and their capitalist system to implement an effective COVID containment strategy that would have avoided the need for lengthy lockdowns, this lockdown was necessary. Without it, thousands more would have died. As it is, COVID has still killed 458 people in NSW since July 11. That means that in just over three months, more people have died from COVID in NSW than were killed in all road accidents, murders, drowning accidents and fires combined in all of last year.
The toughest lockdown conditions were imposed on Sydney’s working class areas in the city’s southwest and west. People in these areas are largely frontline workers and their families. Therefore, even after Delta first took hold in Sydney’s affluent Eastern suburbs, southwest and western Sydney were always going to suffer the most. This hit from COVID was made all the more severe by a second assault from the capitalist regime. As police helicopters hovered ominously over their heads, people in the heavily Asian, African and Middle Eastern working-class suburbs of Auburn, Campsie, Granville, Merrylands, Fairfield, Bankstown, Lakemba, Liverpool and Blacktown were slandered by the media and the NSW government and subjected to heavy-handed treatment from police and army personnel; all while the authorities were slow to provide adequate testing facilities. The working class, non-white masses of these areas will never forget the way that they were treated. This episode once again highlights what a class-divided society Australia is. At the top are a small class of rich capitalist business owners and below are wage workers, with working class people from people of colour background at the lowest levels and most of this country’s brutally subjugated Aboriginal first peoples at the very bottom.
The Serious Risk of a New Surge in COVID Deaths
The government has motivated easing lockdowns on the grounds that a high proportion of NSW is now vaccinated. Indeed, the vaccines have already saved hundreds of lives. However, a large number of people are still not vaccinated. Unlike the rest of the world, Australian governments report vaccination rates only for people over the age of 16. The current 78% rate of people in NSW over the age of 16 who have received both doses of a vaccine corresponds only to an overall vaccination rate of the entire NSW population of just 62%. What this means is that when cases surge with eased restrictions, a large number of people who have not been fully vaccinated will die.
There is a second problem. Although the vaccines significantly reduce the chance of death, they provide far from 100% protection. An independent analysis that we performed found that since the Delta outbreak hit NSW, vaccine recipients have died 56% less often from COVID than the unvaccinated population. Because of the current under-vaccination of younger, healthier people, this is an underestimate of true vaccine efficacy which we estimate to be between 60% and 80% in preventing deaths. Nevertheless, this means that many vaccinated people will still die if exposed to COVID. So far at least 62 fully vaccinated people in NSW have succumbed to Delta.
The NSW Liberal government knows all this. However, the Donald Trump-supporting NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, is not bothered by the fact that, due to the neglect of the ruling elite, Aboriginal people have currently low rates of vaccinations and are hence especially threatened by a COVID resurgence. Instead, the new premier is trying to minimise people talking about COVID deaths. In his first press conference, it was conspicuous how the number of deaths was not even reported when daily COVID numbers were detailed. When Perrottet and Morrison talk about “learning to live with COVID” what they really mean is people “learning to live” with a certain number of their friends and family members dying from COVID. However, the Liberal Party is hardly alone in this. After earlier warning against opening up when case numbers are high, the Victorian Labor premier has now unapologetically embraced an identical strategy to his right-wing counterparts. The fact is that all of Australia’s governments put the interests of capitalist business owners ahead of those of the masses. And these greedy capitalists, knowing that it is not them but frontline workers who will be most exposed to COVID, have been demanding reopening at all costs.
Unless other measures are taken, we could end up like the U.S. which, although it is more highly vaccinated than Australia currently is, averages 1,400 COVID deaths every day. Given her larger population, that U.S. death rate is equivalent to 108 people dying in Australia every day. That would be the same death toll as having five no-survivor crashes of Boeing’s faulty, 737 Max airliner every week! That is a “living with COVID” that we don’t want! Moreover, health experts – and even the AMA doctor’s federation – have warned that the hospital system could end up being overwhelmed with COVID patients. Already public hospitals are straining and their doctors – and even more so nurses – are overstressed and experiencing burnout. A new deluge in COVID patients would obstruct care for other patients, cause emergency waiting times to skyrocket and delay non-urgent surgeries by long periods. In the worst case the system would collapse. Indeed, the situation could end up so desperate that restrictions would end up being reimposed. That is what happened in Singapore, three weeks ago, despite the small nation being one of the most vaccinated countries in the entire world. Yet, daily COVID deaths there have continued to soar.
The Example of the Peoples Republic of China
So what alternative is there? Almost no one wants an extension of restrictions let alone new lockdowns. To see what needs to be done we need to turn to the example set by the world’s most populous country, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). The PRC is the only large country in the world that has been able to defeat the Delta strain. Indeed, so successfully has the PRC responded, that despite the variant getting into China several times since July, she has never had more than 105 cases in a day despite having a population 60 times that of Australia’s. There has not been one single person who has died in China from the Delta strain. Crucially, the PRC is now able to suppress the virus threat without using Sydney or Melbourne-style lengthy, city-wide lockdowns. Really? Yes! But did not China in a way invent the lockdown method? Yes, she did. But that was in January 2020 when she was dealing with a previously unknown disease that no one in the world had a handle on and which had spread rapidly in Wuhan in a short period of time. Since then, the PRC has greatly refined her methods. So much so that during her recent outbreaks, only small areas of a city would be fully locked down and then for periods much, much shorter than Sydney or Melbourne. Meanwhile, the rest of the country operates as per normal. Today, only one town of 80,000 people in all of China is under a lockdown in a country of 1.45 billion people! The rest of the country is able to operate as if there is no pandemic at all other than for mask wearing at crowded locations, limitations against extreme overcrowding at tourist spots and frequent testing of frontline workers. Moreover, international travel is freer than it is in Australia. Whereas only Australian citizens and residents have been able to enter here for the last 19 months, China has been allowing foreigners to enter for work, study and cultural and scientific exchanges.
So close to pre-COVID is life in China that during their recent seven day (!) public holiday, people there made 515 million tourist trips. Despite that, China now has the lowest number of per capita COVID deaths in the world for all countries with a population of more than one million. So how has the PRC achieved this? There are three key methods that she has used. Firstly, whenever China has a COVID case, regardless of how severe their symptoms, the person is moved into hospital. This ensures that COVID-positive people will not transmit the virus onto family members or other house mates. Part of the reason for the rapid spread of the Delta outbreak in NSW and Victoria is that each COVID-infected person is inevitably passing on the virus to all others in their household. Moreover, hospitalisation of all COVID cases in China enables the infected people to receive proper medical care as well as guaranteed supplies of basic necessities. One of the tragedies of the Delta outbreak in NSW is how many people have died at home without getting proper treatment. Just 9% of COVID cases in NSW during the recent outbreak have had the benefit of hospital care. However, to have all COVID cases in hospitals risks the virus being transmitted from COVID patients to health workers and from there then onto non-COVID patients. Tragically, by late August, one in five of the Delta strain deaths in NSW have been from people who were admitted into hospital for another reason and then picked up COVID at hospital. This then highlights the need for the second feature of China’s COVID response which is that medical staff and hospital janitors are equipped with virus-impenetrable, head-to-toe PPE. Take a look at photographs of the gear that Chinese hospital workers are decked in and then compare them with photographs of the PPE that their Australian counterparts have to make do with. It will then become obvious why COVID transmission within Chinese hospitals is very rare whereas at least fourteen of the Delta deaths in NSW picked up the virus during multiple outbreaks in just one hospital – Liverpool Hospital. Thirdly, once there is an outbreak in a city, China engages in a massive testing program in which literally every single person in the city (other than infants) is tested from three to five times in the space of seven to fifteen days. In that way cases can be detected before they spread the disease widely and can be moved quickly into quarantine in hospitals.
What is to Be Done?
It is easier said than done to pull off the kind of COVID response that China has. For one, Sydney and Melbourne’s hospital system is already under great stress. How could they then admit every single COVID case into hospital care? What would be required is the building of new hospitals as well as the rapid conversion of gymnasiums, stadiums and other buildings into makeshift hospitals. That is precisely what the PRC has been doing. To do so she brings the dominance of social ownership in her economy to bear. With the biggest developers, equipment manufacturers, communication firms and power companies under public ownership, it has been these socialistic state-owned enterprises who have done the heavy lifting in building China’s hospitals at lightning speed when needed. In Wuhan, during the height of the pandemic there, these socialistic enterprises even built and equipped two massive, brand new, infectious disease hospitals in less than two weeks. In Australia, in that time, capitalist developers and other private contractors would still be busy scheming with their mates in government over how much money they could get away with being paid for such an urgent contract. Moreover, the developers would be reluctant to disrupt any existing contract that was more profitable.
Similarly, a mobilisation to supply PPE is very difficult in capitalist countries because the private enterprises that dominate the economy are totally driven by profit. They will only agree to such a hugely expensive switch in production if they can be sure that they can make big bucks out of it and if they are given guarantees that the demand for PPE will continue for the long term. By contrast, once COVID hit China, her state-owned industrial enterprises, whose ultimate goal is to serve the public rather than wealthy shareholders, quickly turned their operations into factories making PPE, disinfectants, non-contact thermometers, testing kits, masks and ventilators. Meanwhile, the existence of a workers regime in the PRC has compelled even the privately owned of China’s manufacturers of COVID testing kits to provide adequate supply of these kits at low prices.
It is apparent that it is not possible to pull off the measures needed to beat down COVID as effectively as socialistic China has done as long as Australia remains under capitalist rule. However, that does not mean we are helpless. Just as industrial action by 200 cleaners at Westmead Hospital in July won them the adequate PPE supplies needed to protect them from COVID, a powerful mobilisation by the broad working class can force the capitalist rulers, against their will, to impinge on their own “economic freedoms” and profits and implement some of the economic control and planning measures needed to suppress the COVID threat. What we urgently need to fight for is:
- For selected compatible manufacturers and pharmaceutical-biotech firms to be ordered to immediately supply at a low price, variously, PPE, COVID testing kits and other pandemic relief items.
- For developers and equipment suppliers to be ordered to undertake the low cost, high-speed conversion of designated buildings into make-shift hospitals to enable the hospitalisation of all COVID cases. If they refuse or delay, the enterprises should be immediately confiscated and brought into public ownership.
- For the immediate placing of all banks under state control. This is essential to directing the capital needed for manufacturers, pharma-biotech firms and developers to be able to quickly switch over their operations to the delivery of PPE, COVID testing kits, makeshift hospitals etc. For the nationalised banks to be put under people’s supervision such that major bank operations are inspected by committees of unionised bank employees’ representatives alongside representatives of other unions and mass organisations.
- For the confiscation of private aged-care homes from profit-making companies and their placing into public ownership and control. The greedy, profit-driven operators have all too often neglected to provide adequate PPE for staff, failed to follow pandemic safety protocols and have denied their staff the job and income security that would allow them to feel at ease taking sick leave while having symptoms. We need to put a stop to this immediately! Dozens have already died during the recent NSW outbreak from COVID acquired at these private nursing homes – including twelve people at the homes in Guildford and Summer Hill owned by the wealthy Hardi family dynasty, a further eight at the Revesby’s Allity Beechwood facility owned by private equity firm, Archer Capital, and many more at other aged care homes.
- For frequent rapid antigen testing for COVID at all concentrations of frontline workers including transport depots, warehouses, supermarkets, factories and utilities. Such testing is what bus drivers at western Sydney’s Smithfield depot went on strike for last month and that is what we need!
- For union safety committees at each workplace. These will struggle to ensure that each workplace has proper pandemic deterrence procedures and that workers are provided with adequate PPE. If any site is found to be dangerous, workers should walk off the job until the site is made safe.
- All workers to get unlimited, employer-paid, pandemic leave for treatment and quarantine.
Fight for Secure, Permanent Jobs for All Workers!
The coming period is not only one full of threats to workers’ lives but one where working class people’s livelihoods will remain precarious. The official unemployment rate numbers are a joke. They hide the true picture of massive job losses because so many people have dropped out of the labour force – more than 330,000 in the last three months. The majority of those forced out of the labour force have been women. And women and young workers also make up a majority of the millions of workers with far less weekly working hours than they want or who are forced to toil in positions with little job security. In contrast, many filthy rich capitalists have actually increased their profits during the pandemic after business owners not meeting the criteria – including port operator Qube Holdings and whitegoods retailer Harvey Norman (owned by its billionaire chairman Gerry Harvey) – were thrown huge amounts of Jobkeeper payments by the federal government. Many of these bosses also used the threat of pandemic unemployment to pressure workers into accepting cuts to their working conditions – especially to shift penalties. However, from the largely victorious, three-weeks strike in June by western Sydney workers at food products manufacturer, General Mills, to the strike by Sydney rail workers two weeks ago, workers are beginning to resist. Such struggles by workers for decent wages and conditions at individual work sites must be combined with actions uniting all employed and unemployed workers to protect our livelihoods and demand secure, permanent jobs for all workers. Let us fight for:
- The immediate conversion of all casual workers into permanent employees with all the rights of permanency.
- A doubling of unemployment payments while we fight for permanent jobs for all.
- A massive increase in low-rent public housing. Stop low-paid workers and the unemployed from being driven into homelessness or to the extreme stress of always being on the brink of homelessness!
- The defence of the socialistic PRC. Despite her bureaucratically deformed structures, the fact that she is a workers state dominated by public ownership of her key economic sectors means that any strengthening of the PRC can only enhance the struggle for workers rights and public ownership here. So let us oppose the U.S./Australia Cold War drive against the PRC that is not only against workers’ political interests but threatens the massive trade with China that so many workers’ livelihoods depend on.
- The scrapping of the estimated $150 billion purchase of nuclear submarines. For the cancellation of the planned purchase of long-range missiles and the associated $270 billion increase in defence spending. Force the owners of profitable businesses to return the $27 billion in Jobkeeper wrongly given to them! For the saved money from all this to be used for public housing, increased welfare payments, urgently needed new public hospitals, increased wages for nurses, free public childcare and aged care and better-funded TAFE.
- The granting of the rights of citizenship to all guest workers, international students and refugees. Stand with these often super-exploited workers! Don’t let their exploitation be used to drive down wages for all workers!
- A ban on all job cuts by any firm making a profit, however small.
- A ban on all job cuts by any company whose CEO has an annual package in excess of $1 million.
- The forcing of any company still making a profit to increase its number of full-time paid employees by at least twenty-five workers for every one million dollars of quarterly profit.
Unfortunately, the current leaders of the workers movement, the ALP and the ACTU tops, do not fight for such a class-struggle program. They bow before the “right” of capitalists to hire and fire at will in accordance with the “need” to maximise profits. They accept the capitalist class’ insistence that a class-struggle program for jobs is “impractical.” To that we say, if it is “impractical” for the current system to do the obviously rational and humane thing by utilising every available labour resource and providing those who labour both job security and decent working conditions, then this system needs to be swept away. After all in this country and most other capitalist countries, the rule of capital has failed to adequately protect the masses from COVID. In contrast, the PRC, the biggest socialistic country – for all the incompleteness of her transition to socialism – has protected her people from both the pandemic and economic chaos more successfully than any other country in the world. And she has done so without vilifying and discriminating against those living in the working class suburbs of her big cities … unlike the capitalist regime here! Let’s fight for socialism!