CHINA’S Wuhan province reported a zero increase in new coronavirus infections last week. China has beaten the virus and with no new cases, their method is one to emulate.
The method of the deformed workers’ state has scientifically been proven a success. Enforcing total lockdown, with the full support of the working class, and with trained professionals in hazmat suits systematically moving from community to community, vigorously and methodically testing everyone, removing and isolating the infected, and treating them in specially built state hospitals, has won the war.
In stark contrast, in this country PM Johnson’s Tory government has employed the polar opposite method. Frontline NHS staff are not in hazmat suits and are even short of gloves, sanitiser and even surgical masks!
Rather than attempt to test everyone in the community, the government has refused to test even frontline NHS staff. This is while private health companies are making a mint out of selling thousands of testing kits for up to £295 each.
Instead of the Chinese model, the government has opted for what they call ‘herd immunity’, to allow at least 60% of the population to get infected. This callous policy will result in tens of thousands of deaths. Rather than building new hospitals, like China, the government is busy making makeshift morgues and makeshift crematoriums.
Johnson has had the audacity to tell the general population to expect their loved ones to die. Even by their own figures, Public Health England suggested that anything under 20,000 deaths would be considered a ‘successful outcome’. They have no intention of stopping the curve of infection, just of ‘slowing it down’. Using their cattle analogy, such action can only be considered a ‘cull’!
Their policy is to let the virus spread through the communities, and if it kills the weak, sick and elderly, as far as they are concerned, so be it. Their policy is ‘let nature do its worst,’ and the survivors will be stronger for it. Those in the Treasury must be rubbing their hands together with glee, dreaming of the billions they will save on pensions payouts!
If China had adopted Johnson’s policy and 60 per cent of the Chinese population were allowed to be infected that would amount to 800 million people. Instead, in China only 80,000 were infected or 0.006 per cent of their population. It is a testament to the nationalised economy of China that they have achieved what no capitalist country can or has even attempted to do.
The world watched while China built a 1,000-bed hospital in Wuhan in a week, while simultaneously building a second hospital in ten days. The second, called ‘Leishenshan Hospital’, was an 80,000-square-metre medical facility with a capacity of 1,600 beds.
There have been 3,245 deaths from coronavirus in China, a country of 1.38 billion. In Italy, a country of just 60 million people, coronavirus deaths now stand at 3,405 overtaking China.
Capitalism by its very nature has a ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality, or more to the point, survival of the richest. There is no profit in saving the elderly or sick.
Only those who have the ability to work, who can sell their labour power and make profits for the capitalists are of interest to them. The rest, as far as they are concerned, are a burden on the capitalist economy. They do not add value as they no longer work, but have to be paid benefits and pensions.
But even if the government in the UK had wanted to attempt to eradicate the virus as China has done, under capitalism, they have not got the planned nationalised economy to enable them to do so.
The NHS has been cut to the bone. There are only 5,000 ventilators for the entire country. A&Es have been closed, and doctors and nurses driven out of the profession because of overwork and underpay. Meanwhile, UK capitalism itself is totally bankrupt. Production and industry are being shut down, while services are stripped back and the economy is drowning in debt.
The way forward is clear! The trade unions must immediately demand that the ‘herd immunity’ policy is put to an end today. All hospitals and A&Es that have been closed by the Tories must be reopened. All private hospital wards must be put under the ownership of the NHS. Hundreds of thousands of ventilators should be bought from China and everyone in the community must be systematically tested; and those who test positive must be isolated and treated in hospital. This is the way to take on and beat the virus.
Capitalism cannot provide even the most rudimentary requirements of the working class. It must be overthrown. A socialist revolution is the only way forward!
