The coronavirus pandemic is a “trigger event” in world history, one which has laid bare all the contradictions of capitalism. Every aspect of the social crisis that had developed over the past several decades—the growth of social inequality, the assault on democratic rights, the drive toward militarism and war—were all accelerated by the onset of the pandemic which was foreseen and preventable. Nearly 35 million people have been infected by the deadly disease and more than one million men, women and children have lost their lives with no end in sight.
As workers now understand more sharply than ever, the real orientation of the bourgeoisie—including both the Republicans and Democrats in the United States and their counterparts throughout the world—has been to use the pandemic to transfer trillions of dollars to the major banks and corporations while letting the deadly disease rampage through the population as politicians advocate for “herd immunity.”
This page provides the opposing perspective—for the working class to solve the pandemic crisis itself. The giant banks and corporations must be placed under public ownership and democratic control. The vast fortunes of the rich must be expropriated to make funds available to ensure universal access to health care, housing, utilities and other social needs. All of economic life must be reorganized on the basis of a global, planned economy, removing the obstacle of private property and the profit motive. Workers must be clear that the pandemic is only a symptom of a much greater disease: capitalism. The cure is socialism.
Every day that emergency action is not taken to stop the pandemic means thousands of more deaths.
The Pandemic of 2020 has revealed before the entire world the irreconcilable economic, social and moral chasm that divides the capitalist drive for profit from the most essential needs of the overwhelming majority of mankind.
This resolution was adopted unanimously by the Sixth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party in the US, held July 19–24, 2020.
With hospitals already overwhelmed throughout the world, scientists are sounding the alarm about a new, more transmissible variant of COVID-19 that has emerged in Britain and is leading to a major surge in infections.
The massive spread of COVID-19 in the United States is the result of a deliberate policy of sacrificing lives to protect the profit interests of major corporations.
Sweden’s response to the pandemic, which involved allowing schools and businesses to stay open while most of the world enacted lockdowns, was hailed as a model by all sections of the US and European political establishment.
The pandemic is a “trigger event” that manifests in a highly concentrated form the contradictions of the global capitalist system and is unleashing long-suppressed forces of social transformation.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread out of control throughout the European continent, the program of vaccination organized by the European Union is already widely recognized to be a debacle.
The most critical situation in the country is in the Amazonian capital of Manaus.
Workers and the poor continue to be the primary victims of the pandemic, while India’s media focuses on vaccinations.
The race to procure vaccines against a fast-spreading virus that travels unimpeded by border controls has set in motion a ferocious national competition that threatens to prolong and intensify the pandemic.
With the death toll from COVID-19 projected to accelerate over the next several weeks, some governments are attempting to compensate for problems in the production and distribution of vaccines by delaying the second dose, despite a lack of data proving the efficacy of a prolonged dose regimen.
Governor Ricketts said during a press conference that undocumented immigrants in the meat processing industry will not receive the COVID-19 vaccine and his spokesman said its distribution will be prioritized by citizenship status.
The situation in South Africa is replicated in a second wave of the pandemic that is sweeping across much of the continent, which has seen a steady rise in infections since November
The new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the UK highlights the importance of bringing the pandemic under strict control.
The post-viral syndrome associated with COVID-19 infection has been recognized in the SARS and MERS pandemic. The scope of this disease will have lasting impact on health care systems.
An examination of the historical record demonstrates that infectious diseases like COVID-19 can be eliminated.
Several recent studies suggest that survivors of the coronavirus can come down with a second case after recovering from a first infection.
The symptoms reported most frequently by the young adults were impaired concentration, headaches, rhinitis, exercise intolerance, dyspnea, sleep impairment, brain fog, appetite loss, fatigue, and chest pain.
The ruling elites and their legion of state and local officials are furiously pushing to open schools and universities. However, recent published studies have provided ample evidence that school openings will drive the pandemic towards a second potentially larger wave.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a once in a century event, a trigger event, that has exposed the deep contradictions and terminal decay in the capitalist organization of world resources.
A third lockdown is now underway and the Conservative government has committed no more funding to deal with the homeless crisis and consigned its Everyone In scheme to the scrapheap.
One year after the first cases of COVID-19 were identified in China, December was the deadliest month of the pandemic both in the United States and the world.
While the government spends money like water to prop up big business and the Federal Reserve funnels trillions into the stock market, nothing is being done to spare the working class.
The Vermont senator has watered down his supposed “political revolution” to a slightly larger pittance for working people.
As the social crisis worsens and eviction orders proceed in the new year, local and state Democratic officials respond to the homeless population in Seattle and surrounding area with police repression and criminally inadequate resources.
Anyone wanting to gauge the criminal character of European governments and the European Union (EU) must look to Kara Tepe, the temporary camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.
While big business rakes in billions in profits during the pandemic, the Erdoğan government has slashed living standards, with millions left unemployed.
Transport for London’s response has revealed the extent of COVID-19 exposure across the capital’s transport network.
New cases of COVID-19 have been accelerating in recent weeks at the Indianapolis, Indiana plant, according to data shared by workers.
Workers have reported 13 deaths at the GM Silao Complex in Mexico to the WSWS since the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador allowed production to resume in May
At least 127 workers have been infected in a COVID-19 outbreak at a plant owned by Seara in Rio Grande do Sul.
Gebbers Farms persistently and openly violated basic COVID-19 safety precautions even after regular government inspections and three worker deaths in July.
The reopening of schools across Texas, enforced by Republican Governor Greg Abbott has been a major factor behind the surge of the pandemic in El Paso and throughout the state since August.
Arnold Herrera had just recently been certified as a brakes and electrics specialist before succumbing suddenly to the coronavirus last weekend.
Urgent and far-reaching action is needed to prevent the reopening of schools and stop the spread of the pandemic across California this winter. Join our committee now!
Hospital management pretended that they could look after Covid and non-Covid patients along with other elective patients, without adequate staff and resources. This has failed miserably, with severe consequences.
Workers’ struggles erupted in Spain in December, anticipating an intensification of the class struggle across Europe as a winter of death opens in the new year.
Faced with death tolls unseen in Europe since World War II, the Network of Action Committees for Safe Education in Germany convened an emergency meeting on Tuesday to advance the fight for school closures and discuss prospects for a general strike against the politics of mass infection with the coronavirus.
At least 750 Phoenix-area teachers are expected to participate in sickouts Tuesday in opposition to schools reopening to in-person instruction this week amid record surges in COVID-19 cases throughout Arizona.
Tens of thousands of students are returning to schools in New York City, Palm Beach, Florida, and many other districts today, provoking widespread concern and opposition from teachers, support staff and parents.
Schools have been a major vector for the spread of COVID-19, worsened by a new and more contagious variant of the disease.
The criminality with which the campaign to open schools has been conducted was recently demonstrated by the deliberate suppression of a study from Hamburg showing massive outbreaks were taking place within schools in Germany.
With hospitals in the Mexican capital expected to collapse in January, the López Obrador administration is determined to keep the economy open and safeguard profits.
A recent study exposes the inadequacy of the testing system the Macron government introduced after the first lock-down, leading to thousands of preventable deaths.
Deemed “essential” workers, but denied legal recognition and financial or medical resources, the undocumented work in high-risk industries where COVID-19 spreads at unrivaled rates.
While Podemos officials downplayed the dangers from COVID-19, the Spanish Ministry of Defence was buying up personal protective equipment in anticipation of a pandemic.
The reckless back-to-work drive mounted by Canada’s federal and provincial governments has led to a surge in workplace COVID-19 infections and deaths, especially among low income, highly-exploited industrial and logistics workers.
The SEP condemns the fascistic police raid on Jones’ home, meant to suppress her work exposing the spread of COVID-19 in Florida and in schools across the US.
The manager of Hamool Hospital in Kafr Al-Sheikh, in the Nile Delta, made an appeal on Facebook for oxygen cylinders, only to be referred for investigation by the authorities.
As COVID-19 cases and deaths break records, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state will provide cash-strapped districts with extra funding if they resume unsafe in-person learning.
Nurses in Hamburg went public to speak about working conditions shortly before Christmas.
Canada’s health and senior’s care systems are buckling under a second wave of the pandemic for which the entire political establishment is responsible.
The situation in southern California remains especially dire, with Los Angeles County emerging as a global epicenter of the virus.
With coronavirus infections and deaths rising to astronomical heights, frontline health care workers are experiencing acute mental and emotional distress.
A new report by the Guardian and Kaiser Health News published last week estimates that over 2,900 health care workers have died in the United States due to COVID-19.
