COVID-19 pandemic

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A woman working at Champ Mask Factory in Taoyuan City, Taiwan. Mask production increased in East Asia, especially the PRC, during 2020–2021 in order to cover the needs of countries which lacked stockpiles of their own.

The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic or simply COVID, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a respiratory syndrome caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The Chinese government first identified the virus in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, quickly recognizing its potential for a global outbreak and moving to contain it. However, the virus spread throughout China and eventually across the world. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern from January 2020 until May 2023, and still continues to refer to the outbreak as a pandemic. As of 12 July 2023, the pandemic had caused around 700 million reported cases and over 6 million deaths.[1]

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered varied responses from world governments, including mask mandates, lockdowns, quarantines, testing, and restrictions on travel. States such as China, Australia, and Taiwan responded effectively to the pandemic with a comprehensive set of policies, whereas heads of state like Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil actively blocked local and state anti-COVID measures.[2][3][4] However, the virus triggered a global economic shock regardless of local policy, partly due to the failure of the indecisive policy of the United States, as well as the "supply shock" engendered by travel and work restrictions. A correlation has been demonstrated between prior COVID infection and a variety of long-lasting symptoms, including breathing issues, diminished sense of smell, or even non-respiratory issues such as brain fog, a syndrome known colloquially as "long COVID".

The global spread of the COVID pandemic in early 2020 was the trigger for a worldwide social, economic, and political crisis which intensified the secular contradictions of late neoliberalism. In the United States, the crisis played a major role in the 2020 George Floyd protests, the election of Joe Biden, and the January 6th riot. The US government's poor handling of the pandemic resulted in the deaths of over one million Americans. In addition, the virus triggered an explosion of reactionary conspiracy theories in Western countries concerning vaccines, the Chinese government, and the virus itself. Western governments and politicians took advantage of the outbreak to fuel anti-China sentiment, variously claiming that the Chinese government had poorly handled the outbreak or even caused it deliberately.[citation needed] Chinese citizens, on the contrary, showed high support for their government's COVID policies in a 2020 poll.[5] Even after revising its zero-COVID policy, China remains the country with the least COVID cases per capita and has a death rate far lower than any other industrial nation.[1]

Nature and origin

Most scientists believe that the COVID-19 virus originated naturally, possibly from bats in Wuhan, China, although this is not a consensus. However, some members of the US and Chinese[citation needed] public instead argue that the virus may have originated from an artificial source such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Opponents of China, including right-wing reactionaries and imperialists in the West, hold that the leak was a deliberate or accidental act on China's part, whereas leftists and others who subscribe to the theory argue that the United States is responsible, pointing out that the Institute of Virology is owned and funded primarily not by China but by the US.[citation needed] Theories which hold the US responsible typically involve the US's history of bioweapons experimentation at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Impact by country

United States

Refrigerated trucks used to store bodies of COVID victims en masse in New York City, April 2020.

By 2023, the US had over one million COVID deaths, making it the country with the highest death count by a margin of over 400,000. The United States accounts for over 17% of global COVID deaths but only 4% of the world's population.[1][6]

In May 2020, data analyst Rebekah Jones was fired by the Florida Department of Health after attempting to make changes to the state's online COVID dashboard[7] which she claimed would better represent the data. Her changes revised infection counts upward and indicated that most counties were not ready for lockdown to be relaxed, contradicting Governor Ron Desantis's optimistic rhetoric about the state's COVID situation.[8]

Police searched Jones's home in December 2020, ostensibly in response to her unauthorized attempts to contact state employees about her firing.[9] After an investigation, the Florida inspector general stated in 2022 that Jones's removal did not constitute a violation of state policy, but that her claims about the circumstances of her removal had been accurate.[9] Florida was and remains one of the US states with the highest infection and death rates.

Labor struggle in the United States has gone through a major shift in the three years since the outbreak. Interest in labor organizing is on the rise across the country.[citation needed] In addition, conflict over "work from home" (WFH) policies continues.

Responses

Leftist reactions

Responding to the COVID crisis and its fallout has been a controversial issue on the left. Leftists took various positions on COVID restrictions, with some believing they are necessary and effective in order to save lives and protect the vulnerable, while others held them to be overreaching, authoritarian, anti-worker or, rarely, part of a premeditated bourgeois conspiracy.

In many countries, especially in the West, COVID quickly became a part of the culture war in which liberals supported the policies and rhetoric of neoliberal governments and reactionaries opposed anti-COVID measures such as lockdowns, mask mandates, and in the United States, vaccination. Many leftists became reluctant to criticize liberal government responses in the face of reactionary attacks, instead mostly holding right-wingers and reactionaries responsible for continued COVID deaths rather than attacking their own governments for their own botched and incomplete implementation of lockdowns and mass vaccinations. In addition, anti-China radlibs assimilated Western establishment talking points which decried the oppressive lockdown policies of the Chinese government, even though many Western nations had implemented comparable policies.

Some leftists, on the contrary, adopted anti-vaccine or anti-lockdown positions; for example, anti-establishment investigative journalist Max Blumenthal held the laissez-faire herd immunity policy of states like Sweden to be superior to Western lockdowns and vaccines, which he viewed to be unjust to the point of constituting elite class war and "a mass science experiment".[citation needed] Blumenthal expressed support for the liberalizing "Great Barrington Declaration".[10][11] Other leftists with similar positions include Christian Parenti.[instances needed]

Reactions by party

The following communist parties strongly criticized their government's policy from a pro-vaccine, pro-lockdown perspective:

Some communist parties expressed more ambivalent positions:

Effects

Impact on trade and investment

International shipping faced a severe shock in the early months of the pandemic which triggered an economic crisis worldwide.

Signals of an impending economic and financial crisis had already appeared before the first COVID cases in December 2019. The well-known inverted yield curve, for example, indicated the crash several months in advance.[citation needed] The huge impact of the economic crash was therefore a result of long-term factors that were only triggered and exacerbated by the so-called "black swan event" in 2020.

Income level and inequality

Poster promoting the non-payment of rent, or a rent strike, in NYC, July 2020. Protests against payment of rent broke out across the country.

Social tension

Political instability

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "COVID - Coronavirus Statistics". Worldometer. 12 Jul 2023. Retrieved 12 Jul 2023.
  2. ↑ Hu, Caitlin (21 Sep 2021). "'Isolated' but defiant, Brazil's Bolsonaro defends handling of Covid and climate at UN". CNN. Retrieved 12 Jul 2023.
  3. ↑ "The Toll of Bolsonaro's Disastrous Covid-19 Response". Human Rights Watch. 27 Oct 2021. Retrieved 12 Jul 2023.
  4. ↑ "Covid: Bolsonaro tells Brazilians to 'stop whining' as deaths spike". BBC News. 5 Mar 2021. Retrieved 12 Jul 2023.
  5. ↑ Yang, Young (30 June 2020). "Pandemic Sees Increase in Chinese Support for Regime, Decrease in Views Towards the U.S." China Data Lab. Retrieved 6 July 2023.
  6. ↑ "Population Clock". Census.gov. 1 Jul 2023. Retrieved 12 Jul 2023.
  7. ↑ "Florida Governor Defends Firing Of Top Data Scientist". NPR. 20 May 2020. Retrieved 12 Jul 2023.
  8. ↑ "Fired Florida Data Scientist Launches A Coronavirus Dashboard Of Her Own". NPR. 14 Jun 2020. Retrieved 12 Jul 2023.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Steve Contorno, Elizabeth Wolfe (27 May 2022). "Fired data scientist's claims of Covid-19 data manipulation 'unsubstantiated,' Florida IG report finds". CNN. Retrieved 12 Jul 2023. The report found Jones' allegation was correct, citing interviews with the officials who said the data was temporarily removed for review over concerns it may have contained patients' publicly accessible personal information connected to reported Covid-19 cases. However, the report concluded the officials' actions did not violate any policy since the 'data hub' was not required to be made available to the public.
  10. ↑ Pabst, Stavroula; Blumenthal, Max (3 Dec 2021). "Flattening the curve or flattening the global poor? How Covid lockdowns obliterate human rights and crush the most vulnerable". The Grayzone - News and investigative journalism on empire. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
  11. ↑ "Former Trump officials, fascists, Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal headline anti-vaxxer rally in LA". World Socialist Web Site. 14 Apr 2022. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
  12. ↑ Freeman, Sunil (4 May 2022). "Killed by capitalism: U.S. government shrugs shoulders as COVID..." Liberation News. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
  13. ↑ Astra, Rosa; Zinevich, Benjamin (7 Jan 2022). "Yes, there really were only two COVID deaths in mainland China in 2021. Here's how they did it". Liberation News. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
  14. ↑ Chak, Tings (17 Jan 2023). "A look back on three years of China's anti-Covid-19 fight". Liberation News. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
  15. ↑ The site was relentless in its criticism on this issue, and examples are easily found. Just for one example, see "COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic". World Socialist Web Site. 20 Sep 2022. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
  16. ↑ "COVID-19 crisis: Immediate demands of the labor movement". Freedom Road Socialist Organization. 16 Mar 2020. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
  17. ↑ "Labor to the front in the battle against COVID-19". Freedom Road Socialist Organization. 9 Dec 2020. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
  18. ↑ "Millions face homelessness as eviction ban expires". Freedom Road Socialist Organization. 2 Aug 2021. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
  19. ↑ "CPUSA Program". Communist Party USA. 13 Apr 2020. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023. The ultimate results of the pandemic, in lives lost, in economic devastation for billions of workers, in massive political repercussions for the ineptitude and criminality of the Trump administration’s response, will not be understood for some time. We don’t yet know enough to adequately address the crisis and its effects in this program. We will amend the program to account for those changes as both the total impact of the problems and the struggles to address and solve them become clear. Dated to April 2020, during the Trump administration. The program has not been updated in the years since.
  20. ↑ Critique of Biden's international vaccine policy: "Biden's export ban costs lives". Communist Party USA. 30 Apr 2021. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
  21. ↑ Porcu, Sebastiano (14 Sep 2021). "The vaccine: Misinformation and mandates". Communist Party USA. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
    Article largely dedicated to analyzing opposition to vaccination, with one paragraph about the Biden administration: "A comprehensive and preventative public health strategy is possible. The Biden administration’s recent extension of vaccine mandates is a welcome first step. But vaccine mandates are just one part of the larger collective action we need to take. An effective pandemic response includes mask mandates and free high-quality masks provided to everyone, universal and accessible testing, contact tracing, and access to affordable healthcare. An effective pandemic response is also broader in scope than just medical interventions. It must include decent wages for workers, safe working conditions, stable housing, paid leave for those who need to be quarantined, investments in local school districts so children’s education can continue safely, and meaningful improvements to the training and working conditions of healthcare workers."
  22. ↑ Weaver, Rena (20 Sep 2021). "Exposing vaccine misinformation on social media". Communist Party USA. Retrieved 19 Oct 2023.
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