Covid-19

The global pandemic in 2020.

Videos: Socialist commentary on the Covid-19 crisis

Watch videos giving socialist commentary on the Covid-19 crisis below. Many are subtitled. Click in the top right of the video, for the contents of the playlist, and to watch other ones. See Workers' Liberty's channel for other playlists and videos.

Will the Covid inquiry deliver political accountability?

“Leading world authority” in oncology Professor Karol Sikora, writing recently about the Covid Inquiry (in the Daily Telegraph and on Twitter/X), has called it “pro-lockdown” and a gigantic waste of money. Sikora is a vocal opponent of blanket pandemic lockdowns, arguing these are more harmful than the effects of Covid itself.

Covid: isolation pay, ventilation, PPE, testing still needed!

Under the guise of “Living with Covid”, and at a time when a new variant (how consequential, no-one knows) is spreading, NHS England has watered down its already inadequate infection prevention and control (IPC) advice. This puts both NHS workers and patients at unnecessary risk of harm and undermines the public health effort. Far from learning the lessons of the pandemic, NHS managers are reverting to the pre-Covid status quo. For the first few years of the pandemic, NHS England advised that Trusts should ensure that all workers, including bank and subcontracted workers, could isolate on full...

John Keenan and the 1974 Pinochet boycott

John Keenan, best known for his role in organising a boycott of work on jet engines destined for Chile after the Pinochet coup of 1973, passed away in the early hours of 8 September 2023. John was a lifelong trade unionist, initially a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union and finally, as a result of a succession of mergers over the decades, a member of Unite the Union. Being a trade unionist can be a pretty mundane affair. You attend meetings. You keep your branch functioning. You attend conferences now and again. You go on the odd demonstration. Sometimes, you go out on strike. But...

China has new Covid surge

New Covid surges in China and New Zealand are now easing off. New Zealand’s, running over the first half of 2023, has cost about 30% of NZ’s total Covid deaths over the last three and a half years. Most of the rest were in mid-2022, when NZ finally decided that “zero Covid” via lockdown was unworkable, and reopened social life after a big vaccination effort. NZ’s total toll has been much smaller than other countries’, because NZ’s island status help the government slow the entry of the virus. China’s figures are much less reliable, but a Chinese doctor has estimated 40 million cases a week in...

How the NHS failed on Covid control

In November 2022 the government’s Industrial Injury Advisory Panel found that there is a “large body of consistent supporting evidence” that health and social care workers “have been exposed to significantly increased risk” of infection, illness and death due to Covid-19. Nobody has counted, but it is thought that over 1,500 NHS and social care staff died of Covid-19. Many of these lives might have been saved by simple infection control measures. NHS’s Covid safety measures were and still remain astonishingly inadequate. Although some individuals won safety improvements in their work areas and...

Action on Covid

The World Health Organization says that Covid is at a “transition point” — probably moving into being a “background” disease, always there, with occasional flare-ups (and a continuing large burden of “post-Covid” conditions). We’re ending this special column, for now anyway, because the measures needed on the Covid danger now tend to merge into public health measures for infectious disease more generally. They are still urgent: • a sustained public health testing-and-surveillance system • good sick pay for all • restore NHS funding and repeal privatisation • requisition private hospitals to...

Action on Covid-19

On 1 February, the World Health Organization said that Covid is still "a public health emergency of international concern" (the WHO does not officially declare or un-declare "pandemics"), but the virus and consequent disease are "at an inflection point". High levels of immunity to the virus, resulting from vaccinations or previous infections or both, are curbing its impact. Some experts think really the "emergency" label should be removed now; some that, since we don't know whether the big Covid surge in China following the end of its so-called "zero-Covid" policy has settled, or may be...

Action on Covid-19

Almost all countries with more-or-less reliable statistics now show a falling or stable Covid death-rate. But Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Austria, Australia and others show “excess” deaths in late 2022 greatly above numbers attributable to Covid. In Britain, cumulative NHS cuts will have played a big part; but there are probably other factors, common to this range of countries: a “backlog” of medical issues neglected during lockdowns, and a revival of older infectious diseases suppressed during lockdowns. Lockdowns did slow the Covid surge at critical points, but with a cost. We need...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.