[D66] On coronavirus, Merkel tells Europe: “Drop dead”

[A.OUT]

WSWS.ORG:

On coronavirus, Merkel tells Europe: “Drop dead”
By Johannes Stern and Alex Lantier
12 March 2020

Yesterday, in a statement of staggering indifference to the fate of 
millions, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared in a press conference 
that her government expects 60 to 70 percent of the population to become 
infected with Covid-19.

She stated: “If the virus is present, the population has no immunity to 
the virus, and there are no vaccines or cures, then a high percentage of 
the population—experts say 60 to 70 percent—will become infected as long 
as this situation remains.”

With basic facts about the virus still not widely known, Merkel chose 
not to spell out the chilling implications of her statement. Five to 20 
percent of coronavirus patients develop acute pneumonia, requiring 
intensive care and artificial ventilation to survive. If 48 to 56 
million Germans contracted Covid-19, up to 11 million would require 
intensive care. With fewer than 500,000 hospital beds and one million 
nurses, Germany’s medical system would be overwhelmed, and millions of 
desperately sick patients left untreated to die. Across Europe and the 
world, the death toll would rise into the tens of millions.

Medical experts have repeatedly stressed that estimates that up to 70 
percent of humanity might catch the disease is not a prediction, but a 
scientific warning of the dangers of a situation if prompt and 
aggressive action is not taken to prevent such massive loss of life.

Thus, after warning that 50 to 70 percent of humanity could contract the 
disease, coronavirus expert Dr Richard Hatchett told Britain’s Channel 
Four: “I don’t like to make predictions. Talking about the potential of 
the virus is important so you can understand how dangerous the threat 
is. It’s up to societies how they will respond to the virus.”

Pointing to the fall in the number of new cases in China, Singapore and 
Hong Kong—after strict testing, monitoring and quarantine procedures 
halted the spread of the disease by isolating and treating the 
sick—Hatchett stressed it was possible to fight coronavirus: “The virus 
is here, it has tremendous potential to be disruptive, to cause high 
rates of illness and even high rates of death. But that is not a future 
that is locked in.”

Directly contradicting such expert advice, however, Merkel called for 
accepting the certainty of a continued, uncontrolled and devastating 
spread of the virus. Significantly, she did not call for a massive, 
international infusion of resources, industrial capacity and trained 
personnel into a global fight against the pandemic. Rather, she said, 
Germany should avoid “overloading” its medical system with coronavirus 
patients.

She stated: “We know there are special groups in the population—the 
elderly and those with pre-existing conditions—who suffer more severely 
from the virus, so our policy must be determined by the goal of not 
overloading our health system.”

Merkel did not say how this would be done. In France, however, hospitals 
turn away younger coronavirus patients to focus on at-risk elderly 
patients. In Italy, hospitals now only use ventilators on younger 
patients, leaving seriously ill patients over 80 to die. If 70 percent 
of humanity were infected, a policy of not “overloading” hospitals would 
mean denying care to tens of millions in Germany alone.

The alarm must be sounded in the working class. Only the implementation 
of quarantines and pouring massive financial resources into the health 
sector can prevent a disastrous pandemic. This requires the independent 
political mobilization of the working class in struggle. Currently, it 
is not being done largely because it would cut across the financial and 
political interests of the ruling class, which over decades have amassed 
vast wealth and built up a military-police machine based on relentless 
austerity that has particularly targeted health care and other key 
social services.

These reactionary policies are Merkel’s essential “priorities,” which 
she listed later in the press conference. She stated: “It is important 
that all levels of government can work. This applies to the police, the 
Bundeswehr (armed forces), critical infrastructure, political decisions, 
so medical possibilities can be used… Then, it’s a matter of maintaining 
economic life, to some extent.”

What such statements reveal is not incompetence, but political 
criminality. Seventy-five years after the downfall of the Nazi Third 
Reich, a fascistic attitude towards the working class prevails in the 
financial aristocracy, mirroring that of Ancient Rome to its galley 
slaves: work until you die.

Having organized economic life since the 2008 Wall Street crash around 
austerity and trillion-euro bailouts of their own bloated stock 
portfolios, the corporate oligarchy is prepared to let countless 
millions of workers die so long as their own lives and vast paper wealth 
are preserved. In the article headlined “Super-rich jet off to disaster 
bunkers amid coronavirus outbreak,” the Guardian reported that the 
wealthy are chartering “private jets” to “holiday homes or 
specially-prepared disaster bunkers,” fleeing Europe to evade the 
“introduction of nationwide quarantine measures following Italy’s lead.”

No doubt, significant sections of the ruling class consider the 
coronavirus to be a gift from God. The deaths of millions of the old and 
sick would allow new cuts to social spending, flushing billions more 
into their pockets. This underlay financial commentator Rick Santelli’s 
fascistic outburst that “we should just give everyone the new 
coronavirus” because prolonged market uncertainty over how widely it 
will spread is “wreaking havoc on global and domestic economies.”

Workers in Europe and internationally cannot leave their fate in the 
hands of a ruling class that is historically bankrupt. They need a 
program on which to fight to prevent a pandemic catastrophe. Critical 
demands include:

*Free and equal, high-quality treatment for all! Resources must be made 
available to provide the most advanced medical care for all, regardless 
of their income or insurance coverage. The elderly, prisoners, refugees 
trapped in unsanitary camps, and the homeless need urgent special 
protection.

*Quarantines to contain the spread of the virus! To prevent millions 
from becoming infected and possibly dying in the coming weeks and 
months, all necessary quarantines must be enforced, while respecting 
democratic rights and the personal dignity of all. Workers, small 
businessmen and their families staying at home due to quarantines must 
receive social support, food and all necessities.

*Build independent factory and neighbourhood committees! Workers must 
organize themselves independently to coordinate and mobilize their 
collective strength to ensure the necessary measures are taken. The fate 
of humanity cannot be left to the police-state machine of the financial 
aristocracy, whose only goal is to protect the stock markets and its wealth.

A social system that not only fails to ensure public health but also 
coolly calculates the deaths of millions must go. The capitalist ruling 
class is beyond reform. For the working class, the socialist 
transformation of society is now a matter of life and death.