The Class Struggle Against the Pandemic
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- Published on Tuesday, 19 January 2021 04:30
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The Class Struggle Against the Pandemic
Anti*Capitalist Resistance
Kevin Courtney, joint General Secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), summed it up when he said, the best response to the Tory pandemic disaster is to join a union and join the Zero Covid campaign.
Talking at a 400-strong online conference, he paid tribute to NEU and Unison members who had followed union advice and sent Section 44 letters to their heads saying they would not be going into schools because they were not safe. “It was not a victory,” Courtney stressed, “but it was the right thing to do.”
It was the right thing not just for health reasons, but economic... ones too. It is the greatest health crisis in our lifetimes, explained Labour’s Diane Abbott, but also a massive economic crisis – one made much more protracted and severe by government failure to pursue a Zero Covid strategy. Many participants stressed the false dichotomy ‘health or wealth’ peddled by the Tory Right, while others emphasised the link with environmental destruction.
From the outset, instead of pursuing an ‘elimination’ strategy (like the way in which measles or polio were dealt with in the past), the Tories went for limited measures, too little, too late, in cack-handed efforts to ‘control’ the pandemic. Michael Baker, the leading New Zealand epidemiologist who opened the conference, spelled out the consequences.
New Zealand imposed a tough lockdown and is now in the clear. Britain did not and now has a higher death toll than ever. Total British fatalities are 260 times those of New Zealand, and still rising. They are a staggering 3,250 times higher than Vietnam’s, 4,300 times higher than Thailand’s, and 6,500 times higher than Hong Kong’s. These latter are among the countries that adopted a Zero Covid elimination strategy, a point stressed by Labour Campaign Group MP Richard Burgon. They have proved it works. And that way you minimise the economic damage and get society working again.
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