The Left and the Coronavirus

25-04-2020: The Coronavirus circus will go down as arguably the largest ruse ever perpetrated in history. Is Covid-19 highly infectious? Yes. Is Covid-19 highly dangerous? To a very small minority it might be, depending on a whole heap of variables. Does it justify a controlled implosion of the economy, the sacking of millions of workers, the shredding of constitutions, the elimination (perhaps permanent) of elementary democratic rights, house arrest, a police state and the deliberate creation of poverty and despair? Nothing can justify this. Not only is this a case of the “cure” being worse than the disease, but the “cure” – if allowed to continue – may well cause many, many more premature deaths than ANY virus has done since the time of Cro-Magnon man. As more and more evidence questioning the Covid-19 plot emerges, the working class must burn into their memory the extent to which the authorities, and all of their agents, lied and lied and lied.

Vaccine for Covid-19 may be impossible

Palpable evidence contradicting the politicians’ Covid-19 hysteria is now appearing directly in the mainstream corporate media. In a stunning interview with News.com, Immunologist Professor Ian Frazer outlined why it is extremely difficult to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, even though there are currently 100 attempts being made. Prof. Frazer stated that the coronavirus does not kill cells but makes them sick. Exactly how to eliminate a virus which does not itself eliminate other cells is the tricky part. The coronavirus, which is already very ineffective at making people sick, actually becomes less powerful as it moves from host to host.[1] In effect this means the intense propaganda about “stop the spread” is false even on its own terms. The most effective way to kill the virus, it would seem, is to allow it to spread. Prof. Frazer again reiterated what many other dissident doctors, who have been brave enough to tell the truth, have stated previously.  He said for “99 per cent of people who got coronavirus it was a trivial illness, but that was not the case for those in the vulnerable categories”.[2]

Despite this, almost all points of authority in the capitalist West trumpet long and hard about how the coronavirus is a plague of biblical proportions, which, if left unchecked, will decimate the global population. How true is this? Not at all. The Johns Hopkins (private) University is usually cited as an authoritative source on the coronavirus and its effects. Joshua Michael carried out a daily check of the figures of reported infections and death rates during the first four months of this year. Assuming the figures from Johns Hopkins University are all correct, he found that at least 99% of the population of China, Italy, the USA, Spain, Germany, Iran, France, Switzerland, the UK, South Korea, Sweden and Australia remain uninfected. Furthermore, assuming World Factbook’s figure of 152 000 deaths per day is correct, 98.99% of people who died since the beginning of the ‘outbreak’ did not die from Covid-19.[3] This coronavirus “pandemic” has become a re-run of the swine flu “pandemic” of 2009 – a complete fizzer. Of all of the frauds perpetrated against workers in the West, this one takes the cake.

Lockdowns are self-defeating

It is becoming self-evident, if it wasn’t already,  that the Covid-19 death toll per se is not really a Covid-19 death toll. What the coronavirus does is trigger organ and function failure in those with already existing morbidities. This includes, but is not limited to, advanced age, cancer, heart disease, obesity and so on. Data from New York, the supposed new epicentre of Covid-19, indicates that the mortality rate for those aged over 80 years is 222 times higher than for those under 50 years old.[4] No one is suggesting that there should not be some measures taken to protect, and maybe temporarily isolate, treat and assist the elderly and/or those with serious health conditions from Covid-19. But to lockdown entire societies, subject workers to effective house arrest, send police to raid children’s birthday parties and potentially kick-start the ruin of human civilisation over a relatively weak virus only makes sense once we realise that there is another agenda at play.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), which is constantly accused of high-level corruption, famously estimated the mortality rate of Covid-19 at 3.4%. Every study that has been done since then exposes this figure as pie-in-the-sky. Research from a group of blood donors in Denmark found 22 of the 1487 samples were positive for Covid-19. Extrapolating the estimated 127 000 Danes that have reportedly been infected with the known Covid-19 deaths in Denmark results in a mortality rate of only 0.16%.[5] In the US the MIT Tech Review covered the work of a recent Stanford University study which found that between 50 to 85 times more people are infected with the coronavirus than first thought. This means that the actual mortality rate of Covid-19 is astronomically lower than the WHO’s blustering. It is likely to be under 0.2% – about as “deadly” as the common flu.[6]

Dr John Lee, a recently retired professor of pathology, stated in an interview that the figures for Covid-19 themselves can be very unreliable, especially if they are from different countries and refer to deaths in isolation from other information. He said that as more and more data comes in, it actually strongly indicates that the coronavirus was not anywhere near as dangerous as first imagined. His opinion is that the case fatality rate could end up being as low as 0.1%. What is more, there is no scientific evidence that nation-wide lockdowns are actually doing anything that Western governments claim they are. The data from Sweden and other countries which are not carrying out full-scale lockdowns is roughly the same as those countries that are – such as the UK.[7]

Left parties chime in

The ramping up of racist attacks on Chinese/Asian citizens, the intense political repression, house arrest, the abolition of even a pretence of the right to free speech or freedom of association or freedom of assembly, mass unemployment for workers – all of this is the result of the actions of Western governments using Covid-19 as an excuse for a vicious assault on working people.  This has been inflicted on the masses with blatant fearmongering and junk science. Again, this is not to discount the fact that some rational safety measures MAY be justified. However, one would expect that the first section of society that would stand up and speak out would be the left, you know, those militant revolutionaries who swear adherence to “Marxism”. If you thought this, unfortunately you would be wrong. The majority of Australian left parties have not only NOT defended workers from an indescribable attack on their lives, they have in fact served as ideological gendarmes of the capitalist state. Incredibly, some have even demanded MORE lockdowns and MORE shutdowns than even the corporate elite have managed to inflict so far.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) have been the most enthusiastic about OPPOSING a return to work[8] – something millions of unemployed and employed workers are desperate to do. The SEP, who trumpet their bland internationalism, funnel their resources into an international campaign…. to shutdown all non-essential services.  It’s as if they were employed by Western governments to act as wingmen to agitate for a position more outrageous than their own. The Socialist Alliance eclipses the SEP in the hysteria stakes, demanding a shutdown of schools in addition to non-essential industries, and a “regime” of tracing and quarantine.[9] As usual, it supplies a laundry list of reformist demands, topped by a radical call……for a parliamentary oversight committee![10]

To their credit, Solidarity do highlight the extreme attacks on workers and Unions that have been unleashed, using the coronavirus as a cover. They point out that the Retail Association has called for a 12-month wage freeze on the minimum wage, which is yet another real pay cut. They mention that the Australian Mines and Metals Association has written to the Federal Government demanding a suspension of all awards and enterprise agreements for six months – removing wages and conditions altogether.[11] At the same time, Solidarity in practice accept the premise for all of these attacks – that the world is facing a dire threat in the form of a coronavirus “pandemic”. Talk about fighting with one hand tied behind your back.

Socialist Alternative are perceptive enough to sense that the police state measures inflicted on working people are “going a bit far”, to say the least. They write that there is no proof that lockdowns and travel bans stop the spread of viruses and diseases, and that there is huge skepticism within the medical community about authoritarian quarantine measures.[12] While they correctly warn against accepting “inhumane authoritarian controls” as a sole means to deal with a crisis, they also fuel the panic-mongering initiated by the very governments they are criticising. For example, they even claim that 2000 people are dying daily from Covid-19.[13] If this was true, we might actually have a pandemic.

Socialist Action recognise that the vast majority (try something like 99.9999999%) will survive the coronavirus, but also claim that it is a catastrophe “ravaging the planet”. One cannot have it both ways. Like others on the left, they end up wistfully imploring the government and businesses to do a better job than they currently are.[14] The Trotskyist Platform correctly highlight the fact that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has reduced the number of community transmission of Covid-19 to almost zero. Undoubtedly, the PRC’s largely collectively owned and planned economy played a key role in this huge achievement. However, they also propel coronavirus paranoia by declaring the current period to be one of a “public health emergency”,[15] despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary.

The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) play into the contrived “pandemic” by condemning “neoliberalism”.[16] In other words, the CPA uses the opportunity to once again plead for minor reforms to the capitalist system. They appear oblivious that the Anglo/US Empire has used the coronavirus as cover for huge attacks on the working class. They see the “pandemic” as something separate from the government, which dovetails with the government’s ideological drive. That is, blame everything on a “virus”, so that anything will be accepted without question – even a police state.

The Australian Communist Party (ACP), an anti-China split from the CPA, do note that the government is using Covid-19 as a cover for mass surveillance, suspension of basic rights, and even proposing bans on protests and boycotts. However, their anti-socialist red baiting of the PRC is never far from the surface,[17] placing them in the company of the government they condemn. The Communist Party of Australia Marxist-Leninist (CPA-ML), through their ICOR international of “Marxist-Leninist” parties, also demand the shutdown of non-essential industries, combined with wage compensation for those who lose their jobs.[18] Like others on the left, they don’t seem to notice the irony of the demand – we want workers sacked with compensation!

End the insanity

“Staying at home saves lives….social-distancing….flatten the curve” – all of this is crystallised bourgeois propaganda. Yet much of the so-called left have imbibed the corporate media Kool-Aid, and thus play a simple role of finger wagging towards the capitalist robber barons they claim to oppose. “You should have done a better job with the (false) pandemic….you should fund health care….you should have made preparations”: and so on ad nauseam. This base liberalism contains not a skerrick of Marxism, which seeks to organise workers to establish their own state, administered by their own government. One can’t be the first in line to buy the “pandemic” fraud, and then claim to oppose the lockdowns, the police state, the house arrest, the abolition of democratic rights, the millions of job losses, the consequent poverty and more. Nor will you be armed to oppose the fascism or imperialist war that may very well follow in its path. For the “pandemic” is the pretext for all of this and more.

This “left” would have us believe, all of a sudden, that all politicians of Western governments, billionaire employers, the billionaire vaccinator-in-chief Bill Gates, the totally compromised WHO, NATO, the police, the capitalist state itself is – just this once – supremely concerned about the health and welfare of working people who at all other times they repress, hold in contempt, ruin, and drive into homelessness. Is this remotely plausible? To ask the question is to answer it. This “left” has swallowed the Covid-19 deception hook, line and sinker.

In August 1914, Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia were stunned to discover that almost every single social-democratic party at that time openly sided with the “Fatherland” instead of the workers, and signed on to the catastrophe of the inter-imperialist World War I. From that moment, on the basis of a final split with social-democrats and implacable opposition to the war, Leninism was born. It proceeded to lead the Russian proletariat in establishing the first workers’ state in history, beginning with the October Revolution in 1917. Today, the ostensible left repeat the crimes of the social democrats in August 1914. Not only do they not question the “pandemic”, they openly and willingly aid and assist “their own” capitalists in the process of installing a police state against workers. They even demand lockdowns spread further or remain in place for longer. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Lenin’s co-leader of the October Revolution, L. Trotsky, once wrote that the essence of Menshevism (the Mensheviks were the mortal “left” opponents of the Bolsheviks) was total submission to the political leadership of the bourgeoisie, combined with open hostility and restraint towards the impulsive revolutionary acts of the working class. For the “Menshevism” of that time, we can today substitute the arrant reformism of the “we are all going to die if we don’t self-isolate” left. One wonders how this “left” would fare today against the the famously acerbic polemics of Lenin and Trotsky towards left pretenders.

What is now required is the organising of defiant demonstrations demanding the lifting of all lockdowns, the abolition of all anti-democratic Covid-19 legislation, the overturning of anti-worker Covid-19 provisions in workplace collective agreements, and the dropping of all charges and waiving of all fines of all those apprehended under draconian social-distancing and stay-at-home orders. There will be a revolt against the lockdowns – they have already started. If the left does not lead them, the right certainly will. To fill the vacuum, there is a dire need for a vanguard party based on genuine Leninism, which can lead the oppressed masses against the Covid-19 swindle and on to the urgent struggle for an internationally planned and collectivised economy – where truth, and not lies, will reign.

 

WORKERS  LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

PO  Box  66  NUNDAH  QLD  4012

 

[1] https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/no-vaccine-for-coronavirus-a-possibility/news-story/34e678ae205b50ea983cc64ab2943608 (21-04-2020)

[2] Ibid, 1.

[3] https://www.sott.net/article/432806-Global-Madness-The-Official-Numbers-Prove-COVID-19-is-Benign (21-04-2020)

[4] www.informationclearinghouse.info/55069.htm (21-04-2020)

[5] https://www.rt.com/news/486017-denmark-covid19-mortality-study/ (21-04-2020)

[6] https://www.globalresearch.ca/mit-tech-review-smears-study-proving-covid-19-overhyped/5710088 (21-04-2020)

[7] https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/17/theres-no-direct-evidence-that-the-lockdowns-are-working/ (21-04-2020)

[8] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/18/stri-a18.html (22-04-2020)

[9] https://socialist-alliance.org/news/suppressing-spread-covid-19 (22-04-2020)

[10] https://socialist-alliance.org/news/covid-19-action-plan-confront-crisis (22-04-2020)

[11] https://www.solidarity.net.au/highlights/coronavirus-all-in-it-together/ (22-04-2020)

[12] https://redflag.org.au/node/7017 (22-04-2020)

[13] https://redflag.org.au/node/7140 (22-04-2020)

[14] https://thesocialist.org.au/capitalisms-covid-19-catastrophe/ (22-04-2020)

[15] https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/socialistic-china-is-overcoming-the-corona-virus-threat/ (22-04-2020)

[16] https://cpa.org.au/guardian/2020/1910/01-neoliberalism.html (22-04-2020)

[17] https://www.auscp.org.au/militant-monthly/2020/4/18/covid19-sledgehammer-attack-on-right-to-organise (22-04-2020)

[18] https://www.cpaml.org/post4.php?id=1585962975&catitem1=International&catid1=21 (22-04-2020)