According to the study by researchers at Oxford University, at least half the population is already infected with COVID19. Given that each infected person infects 3 others, and, of these, each of them infects 3 more, and so on, then, as I set out in a previous post, once the virus had infected a large enough proportion of the population, it became impossible to contain it, by testing and tracing, a strategy that the government has not even yet provided the resources to achieve. The government having failed to contain the virus, via such testing and tracing, as South Korea did, then collapsed under pressure from the media, amid the moral panic whipped up over the virus, and instead adopted the idiotic policy of closing down the economy, rather than effectively isolating the 20% of the population at risk of serious illness from it. Today, we see the army standing around in the large sheds constructed as modern day leper colonies for COVID19 patients, sheds that continue to remain as empty as a Tory promise, and are likely to mostly remain so. The army would have been better used to provide essential supplies to the homes of people in the 20% actually at risk from the virus, starting a month ago, so that they could properly self-isolate for the duration. But, now, having shut down – or actually tried to shut down – the economy, even those vital supplies are disappearing from supermarket shelves and elsewhere, so that increasingly, there is nothing to distribute anyway. Britain is probably a fortnight away from the social unrest that Italy is experiencing, as families object to being starved to death.
Yesterday, it was learned that several electricity supply companies have written to their vulnerable customers telling them to stock up with candles, warm clothes, and torches etc, because they cannot guarantee electricity supply. That is not because the government is shutting them down, which would actually flow logically from the government's insistence that all workers stay home. Rather it is because, given all of the moral panic that has been engendered, some workers are themselves being panicked into staying home rather than contract a virus, which, for 80% of them poses no serious health risk. In addition, some of those workers, have fallen ill, so that the electricity supply companies are lacking the number of maintenance staff to undertake necessary repairs. But, in an economy based upon a high degree of social division of labour, which any economy capable of meeting our needs must be, its not just the electricity supply workers whose labour is crucial. They require tools, materials and so on to do the necessary work. If the workers in those industries are not working, none of those basic requirements get produced either.
Fortunately, the majority of workers have not stayed home, as the government demanded. If they had, the economy would already have collapsed, causing millions of deaths in its wake, not to mention a significant and permanent reduction in living standards, and the capital base of the economy that would lead to much higher deaths and ill health for decades to come. Of course, workers have also paid the price for that too, because, as millions of businesses continued to operate, they also pressured their employees to come into work in defiance of the government diktat, threatening them with not being paid at best, or the sack at worst, if they failed to comply. But, they have failed to also enable any of their own at risk workers to self-isolate, and failed to provide adequate PPE, and safe working. The destruction of effective trades unions over the last 40 years has meant that employers could get away with that behaviour, and, if Johnson and the Tories get their way, that behaviour will get much worse. That, after all, is one reason they wanted Brexit.
Workers have continued to go to work, they have continued to need to go to the shops, and so on, and as they come home to their families, the virus has necessarily continued to spread, which is why it has undoubtedly, now, already infected half the population, or about 30 million people. That figure, is, of course, many, many times higher than the 100,000 plus figure of reported cases given out by the government, but that figure is meaningless, because it is only a measure of the tiny number of people who have been tested for the virus, and its basically only those who have been ill enough to go to hospital who have been tested. Care workers in old folks homes, and nursing homes have no effective PPE, and so spread the virus amongst their elderly and sick residents. The same is true with many healthcare workers, and patients. Hospitals and care homes have become killing fields in which COVID19 can run riot amongst a vulnerable and confined population, as happened in Italy, and as happened here some years ago with MRSA and C-Dif. The number of deaths is bound to rise in the next week or so, as these vulnerable people, in these confined environments, succumb to it. Indeed, a look at the mortality rate in relation to reported cases, shows such a sharp increase already. But, given that many of those in these confined environments themselves have no doubt been infected by now, it would be expected that this increase in deaths should be close to a peak, as it takes around three weeks between infection and death.
With about half the population also already infected, that is close to the 60% of the population required for herd immunity to develop. The government's attempts to slow the spread of the virus by closing down the economy, will have failed on both counts. Firstly, they failed to actually close down the economy, something they could never have really wanted, because the consequences would be immediately catastrophic, but, as a result, they also failed to stop the spread of the virus. They may have slowed it, slightly, but that has only acted to slow the development of the herd immunity required to kill it off, in the absence of a vaccine. Moreover, as the various studies show, even if you do manage to slow the spread of the virus, the consequence is to simply cause new infections to start up again as soon as you relax the lockdown, because there is no effective herd immunity to stop it spreading. Its like a few burning embers after a forest fire, that once again engulf all of the trees that are still unprotected against it.
The governments halfhearted attempt to close down the economy has simply resulted in the economy grinding to a halt more slowly, as the evidence from the electricity supply companies, and the emptying supermarket shelves indicate. A report out today says that 800,000 businesses are on the brink of bankruptcy. In the US, its now estimated that, in addition to a 9% drop in GDP in the first quarter, it is on track to have fallen by a staggering 34% in the second quarter. US unemployed rose by 10 million last week! The sclerotic, inefficient British economy, also being undermined by Brexit, is certain to do much, much worse. Its not just a matter of a drop in GDP and output, as I wrote recently. If 800,000 businesses go bust, that is approximately 20% of the total number of businesses in Britain. They will no doubt be predominantly the smaller businesses, many of them people who are basically self-employed, and these will be people who have little in the way of savings, and large amounts of debt. This will be a process of concentration and centralisation of capital with a vengeance, and the millions of those people cast out will be in a very precarious situation for years to come.
The number of deaths from COVID19 in the hospitals and care homes, is probably near a peak. The vast majority of deaths is among the elderly congregated in such locations, as well as among those suffering underlying medical conditions. The media continues to publicise the isolated case of this or that younger person without known conditions who has died, but the reality is that for every such person who dies, several hundred people in the over 70's group, or amongst those with underlying conditions dies. Yet, the media ignores this vast majority of deaths, because it contradicts the hysterical, headline grabbing narrative it has promoted from the beginning.
But, if half the population is already infected then we would expect that the peak of deaths from the general population should also be close. If, as Sir Patrick Vallance said, last week, the mortality rate is actually 0.1% of those infected, we would expect that total deaths from amongst the 30 million would be around 30,000. However, total UK deaths, so far, are only 1,800, and that is overwhelmingly from those over 70, and undoubtedly skewed to all those in that cohort who were already in some form of home, or in hospital, where the spread of the virus amongst them would have been pretty much unconstrained. On the basis of this 1800 deaths so far, it would appear that the actual mortality rate is probably much lower than the estimated 0.1%.
The 1800 COVID19 deaths is only a quarter of the 8,000 deaths from flu on average each year. It is only about 10% of the 17,000 deaths from flu in 2018. Indeed, in all of the tests done in hospitals for COVID19, only 10% came back positive, with the other 90%, therefore, presumably suffering from some other flu like virus. COVID19, therefore, appears to have been fortuitous for the Tory government in providing it with cover for the collapse of the NHS in the face of what is really a traditional seasonal flu pandemic. Indeed, some doctors have admitted that many of those over 80 who have died would probably have did from some other cause anyway. The failure of the NHS, even compared with the performance of other socialised health care systems across Europe, particularly in Germany, is the real lesson here. It is not just another illustration of how such a state capitalist health care system is not geared to protect the health of the working-class, as Stafford Hospital, MRSA and other instances demonstrated, but how, in particular, ten years of Tory and Liberal austerity further made it unfit for purpose, as anyone who has visited A&E, or tried to get a GP appointment, over recent years is well aware. The Tories talk about the NHS as being “Our NHS”, but of course, it is no such thing. If it was, we should be thoroughly ashamed of “ourselves” for its totally inadequate nature. But, it is not “our” NHS it is “their” NHS. It is the health system of the ruling capitalist class managed on their behalf by the ultimate capitalist, the capitalist state. It is run for their benefit not ours, and when a Tory or Liberal-Tory government is in office, it is even more likely to be sacrificed on the altar of austerity than when a Labour government is in office. But, Labour government's too run the NHS for the benefits of capital, not of workers, because they too start from the fundamental principle that the needs of capital are paramount, and only by catering for the needs of capital can the needs of workers be addressed as a consequence.
If more than half the population are already infected by COVID19, then we should expect that the peak in deaths should arise within the next two to three weeks. Even if deaths double each week, that is probably no more than around 16,000 deaths, which is no doubt why the official figures coming from advisors has dropped from the earlier hysterical numbers of half a million to less than 20,000.
But, as Italy shows us in advance, whilst deaths from COVID19 are about to peak, deaths from other causes are about to surge. In Italy food is running short, causing riots and organised violence. Britain is not far behind. If electricity supply does go down, then thousands will die in short order, not least those requiring ventilators, but also anyone requiring dialysis and so on. Elderly and vulnerable people living in homes with only electric heaters will start to go down with hypothermia, and even if you have gas central heating, it will not work without electricity for the pump. Without electricity, the Internet becomes useless, and so all of the things that now depend on its use come to a stop. The same applies to TV, and other means of communication. Petrol pumps stop working, so motor transport ceases, and so on.
The economic consequences already means that millions will lose their jobs, and will do so at a time when inflation is set to soar as governments have turned their currencies into confetti by money printing. That will cause a huge drop in living standards, and a consequent rise in ill-health and death. This deliberate destruction of physical capital on a large scale is not like anything seen before in a developed economy, even in wartime. In World War I, Germany suffered a large destruction of its capital, exacerbated by the Treaty of Versailles, and it ended in the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic. But, around it other developed capitalist economies had their productive capacity more or less left intact. Indeed, it was that fact, that meant that the destruction of the value of that capital, in the 1920's, and 30's created the basis for a rise in the rate of profit, and a new uptrend. As Marx puts it,
“A large part of the nominal capital of the society, i.e., of the exchange-value of the existing capital, is once for all destroyed, although this very destruction, since it does not affect the use-value, may very much expedite the new reproduction.”
(TOSV2 p 496)
But, what governments are doing currently, is the opposite. They are destroying the use values that comprise capital, whilst at the same time, by causing a significant drop in productivity, they are causing the exchange value of that capital to rise, which thus leads to a drop in the rate of profit, and tie up of capital. If you think of a farmer, their seed comprises their capital. But, if, in desperation to be able to eat, they eat that seed, they have no capital to be able to grow grain in the following year. Businesses that are liquidating their assets, currently, to obtain money, are in a similar position. Buildings left empty, machines and equipment left to rust, material left in warehouses that deteriorates, is all a physical destruction of the physical elements of capital that can no longer be used for production. So, when this crisis does end, a large proportion of output will simply have to be set aside to cover the replacement of all this physical destruction of capital. That is what makes all of the proposals for large scale government policies for economic expansion Utopian and dangerous.
Some of the capital abandoned will be taken up by other producers, but large parts of it will simply be laid waste. The wear and tear of such capital is reproduced in the value of output, so long as production is taking place, but that is not the case with depreciation. It represents an outright capital loss. If the government continues with its commitment to make good all businesses for any losses they incur then this implies a huge commitment that the government simply cannot fulfil. Or, at least, it can fulfil it by printing money, but that will simply result in a massive hyperinflation that will cause further economic and social dislocation. The economic and social consequences of the policy of closing down the economy will cause far more deaths and ill-health than COVID19, and those consequences will continue for years to come.
We know that tens of thousands died from the effects of austerity after 2010 alone. But the economic and social disaster that is being created, as a result of deliberately closing down the economy, will be much, much worse than the effects of austerity. Austerity could be reversed, and its effect was simply to reduce GDP. The current policy is destroying the actual capital base of the economy. We can expect a sharp rise in homelessness as the rise in unemployment causes millions to default on mortgages, and rent payments. The same ten years of austerity means that we have inadequate social housing to accommodate those thrown out of their homes. So, there will be a consequent rise in rough sleeping, with all of the health problems and deaths that comes with it.
The devastated economy will have far fewer revenues to finance the expenditure that will be required for the health service, which itself will find an increased burden due to the consequences of the poverty caused by closing down the economy, and also from all of the other healthcare requirements that have been put on hold. With lower revenues, and increased requirements for social security benefits as unemployment soars, the government will be forced to reduce benefit levels, even as it borrows hundreds of billion to bridge that gap, causing interest rates to soar.
COVID19 deaths are about to peak, but the rise in deaths caused by the idiotic policy of closing down the economy, are about to start to rise sharply, and if the policy of closing down the economy continues that trajectory will accelerate.
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