Brazil and Covid-19’s Racial Divide

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Covid-19 first hit Brazil’s white upper classes, who brought it back from abroad. 
Now the virus is scything through the country’s poorer suburbs, favelas and low-income towns such as São João de Meriti – where 63% of the population self-declared as black or mixed race in Brazil’s last census in 2010, compared to 48% in nearby Rio de Janeiro. As of 8 June Brazil had almost 700,000 confirmed cases and 37,000 deaths.



The virus is not as democratic as it initially seemed.
UK statistics show it is more lethal for BAME people. 
US figures reveal a higher mortality rate for black Americans. 
And a new study added to evidence that the virus is killing proportionally more black Brazilians than whites, exposing, in sharp relief, the country’s staggering inequalities.

Dos Santos and his wife Élida  launched the Inclusion Project in 2014 to educate teenagers away from drugs and crime. It now helps to feed poorer families who lost jobs or income as shops and businesses across Rio state closed for quarantine. He explains,  he “really feels” racism in Brazil. “It’s hidden, not as loud as it used to be.”



 “In our country white people have the advantage in everything, in the pandemic or outside of it,” says Rosana de Souza, 43, a school bus driver whose son Fabricio takes part in the project. “People of colour are treated differently.”



Researchers, doctors and health specialists believe factors including poverty, poor access to health services, overcrowded housing and high rates of health issues such as hypertension are some of the reasons Covid-19 kills proportionally more black Brazilians.



“There is clearly a difference in lethality for whites and non-whites,” says Fernando Bozza, a researcher in infectious diseases at the government research institute Fiocruz, who co-authored the analysis of deaths by race published  by the Nucleus of Health Operations and Intelligence. 
The researchers studied health service data on 30,000 patients diagnosed with Covid-19, who had either recovered or died by 18 May. It found that 55% of the black and mixed-race patients died, compared to 38% of white patients. It noted that a black patient who could not read had nearly four times more chance of dying than a white university graduate, “confirming the enormous disparities in access and quality of treatment in Brazil”.
A report by the Pública investigative media outlet showed more Covid-19 deaths in neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo with majority black populations. 
According to health ministry figures reviewed by the Guardian, from 26 April to 23 May, the numbers of deaths of black and mixed-race Brazilians who died of Covid-19 after testing positive (where race was listed) increased 7.2 times, and white Brazilians 4.5 times.

“The majority of black people in our country are more vulnerable to contamination and more vulnerable in terms of access to treatment and health,” says Rita Borret, a black doctor working in Jacarezinho, one of Rio’s poorest favelas, who heads the black health study group at the Brazilian Society of Family and Community Medicine. “The pandemic has exposed these inequalities.”



 80% of black Brazilians do not have health plans according to health ministry research. They depend on Brazil’s overstretched public health system, which saw beds fill up quickly in the pandemic, rather than the private hospitals that middle-class, white Brazilians turn to – which in many places still have beds.



As of last year, 43% of Brazilians self-declared as white, 9% as black and 47% as mixed race – the latter two groups earned less than 60% of the salaries of white Brazilians in the first quarter of 2020. While white Brazilians isolate in apartment buildings in middle-class neighbourhoods, black Brazilians make deliveries, work in pharmacies and supermarkets, drive buses, and clean apartments – exposing them to more risk.

Another study suggested that poverty makes black Brazilians more at risk. The technical note by Brazil’s Institute of Health Policy Studies, a thinktank, found 12% more under-60s who hadn’t completed high school had a Covid-19 “risk factor” such as hypertension than those who finished school. Of those who didn’t complete school, 64% were non-white, says one of its authors, Letícia Nunes. In Brazil, 34% of the population live in housing that lacks basic sanitation – and 66% of people included in this figure are non-white. 



“That contributes to the dissemination of the virus and makes isolation more difficult,” says Nunes.

“The poor can’t afford to pay for health plans so we run to the health centre, and it is very badly prepared to receive someone who’s sick. The staff work well, but they don’t have the structure,”  fast-food retailer Sandra Gonçalves says. “These hospitals are very precarious … They’re not ready for this.” Of the president Bolsonaro no lockdown policies she says, “He’s right. If we don’t work, we go hungry, if we get sick we don’t have money to buy medicine.” Bolsonaro’s message was reinforced by evangelical pastors – many of whom support the far-right populist,



Lívia Nogueira cleans a restaurant and thinks Bolsonaro’s rhetoric has been “totally wrong” and knows five people who have died. “I work with fear, scared all the time,” she says.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/09/enormous-disparities-coronavirus-death-rates-expose-brazils-deep-racial-inequalities

“They’re gonna kill us for their own greed”

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The Navajo and Puebloan lands of north-western New Mexico are no stranger to drilling. The first oil well in the area was reportedly drilled in 1911 with natural gas following soon after.  Fracking requires pumping sand, water and chemicals deep underground and then horizontally, breaking through rock formations to release oil or gas, making it more destructive than traditional, vertical wells.



Today, the US Bureau of Land Management is considering a plan, known as the Mancos-Gallup Amendment, which could lease land in the region for some 3,000 new wells – many of which would be for fracking oil and gas. The plan would expand drilling into some of northern New Mexico’s last available public lands, threatening the desecration of sacred Native artefacts near Chaco Canyon,  a network of historic archaeological sites that today hold Unesco world heritage status and are of spiritual importance to Navajo and Puebloan people in the region. Chaco park and other parts of the canyon are protected from drilling through a congressional funding bill. But there are some 250 outlying sites spread throughout north-west New Mexico, said Michelle Turner, an archaeologist studying the region. Many of those sites are connected by ancient roads, she said, which are gradually being erased by drilling-related development. Archaeologists estimate there are Native artefacts throughout much of the 7,500-sq-mile San Juan Basin, some of them probably buried underground and at risk from drilling.
Fighting the amendment is something of a last stand for Native and environmental activists who have seen the oil and gas industry proliferate in recent decades. They say at least 90% of public lands in northern New Mexico are already leased for oil and gas drilling. Under the Trump administration, the amount of US lands up for lease to oil and gas companies has soared – 461m acres across the country, as of earlier this year. To New Mexico environmentalists and indigenous activists, the new plan is just another instance of the administration’s energy dominance agenda threatening some of the country’s most pristine lands. 

The spectre of drilling’s dangers became real in 2016 when oil tanks owned by WPX Energy exploded near Nageezi, New Mexico, causing a huge fire that burned for many days.



Above the basin and throughout the Four Corners region is a vast cloud of methane – “the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane seen over the United States”, according to a 2016 Nasa study. Burning off the excess from natural gas wells, or flaring, is the primary cause of this pollution. But the gas also leaks from abandoned wells. Breathing in methane can cause headaches has been linked to health issues, including neurodevelopmental effects on children.  The Bureau of Land Management is often unclear about the health and environmental risks of drilling.  The Navajo Nation and surrounding areas have some of the highest per-capita infection rates  of COVID-19 in the world. Environmental organizers are concerned that air pollution in the region will exacerbate the death toll, pointing to a recent Harvard study showing that people living in areas with higher pollution have a significantly higher death rate. 



Mario Atencio, a Navajo organizer who works with the environmental group Diné Care and is an adviser for Daniel Tso, a Navajo Nation council member, said that when BLM representatives approach people about getting consent to lease their land for drilling, many residents walk away believing it’s going to be an older type of vertical drilling, “like the Beverly Hillbillies”. The assumption is that if they sign the agreement, their land will produce oil safely and they’ll get a big check, he said. It seemed as if BLM authorities try swaying Native people to favor drilling, leaving out certain facts, Atencio said. “That by the very definition is environmental racism and environmental injustice,” he added. 



“They’re gonna kill us for their own greed,” Sam Sage, the administrator at the Counselor Chapter House, a Navajo local government center.

Mining Corporations and the Destruction of Cultural History

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Mining giant BHP Billiton is poised to destroy at least 40 – and possibly as many as 86 – significant Aboriginal sites in the central Pilbara to expand its $4.5bn South Flank iron ore mining operation.



A BHP archaeological survey identified rock shelters that were occupied between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago and noted that evidence in the broader area showed “occupation of the surrounding landscape has been ongoing for approximately 40,000 years”.
BHP’s report in September 2019 identified 22 sites of artefacts scatters, culturally modified trees, rock shelters with painted rock art, stone arrangements, and 40 “built structures … believed to be potential archaeological sites”.


Under section 18 of the Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act, the traditional owners – in this case the Banjima people – are unable to lodge objections or to prevent their sacred sites from being damaged. 



They are also unable to raise concerns publicly about the expansion, having signed comprehensive agreements with BHP as part of a native title settlement. BHP agreed to financial and other benefits for the Banjima people, while the Banjima made commitments to support the South Flank project.

But the Banjima native title holders told the WA government in April they did not want any of the 86 archaeological sites within the project area to be damaged, saying the “impending harm” to the area “is a further significant cumulative loss to the cultural values of the Banjima people”.
In a written appeal, the Banjima to the WA government in April this year say they “in no way support the continued destruction of this significant cultural landscape” but “are equally aware” they cannot formally object to the section 18 application. This letter in April followed one sent in December 2019 in which the native title holders said: “The significance of the sites impacted by the notice to Banjima people is such that Banjima people cannot and do not support the destruction of those sites as proposed by the Notice as to do so would be inconsistent with their cultural obligations to protect those sites.” They would “suffer spiritual and physical harm if they are destroyed”.
BHP decided it was “not reasonably practicable for BHP to avoid the eighty-six potential archaeological sites” at the South Flank mine development area.
This follows the apology last week by the chief executive of Rio Tinto iron ore, Chris Salisbury, for destroying the rock shelter in Juukan Gorge, which was blown up in mining works at the Brockman 4 iron ore mine near Tom Price in the Pilbara region on 24 May, saying there had been a “misunderstanding” with traditional owners the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people. 

Robert Eggington, a Noongar man, said Rio Tinto had exploited the weakness of WA’s 48-year-old Aboriginal heritage laws, which have been under review for two years.
“They used that against the people and then turned and blamed [it on] misunderstandings between the company and the custodians of that site,” Eggington said.
The Western Australian minister for Aboriginal affairs, Ben Wyatt, confirmed he approved the South Flank expansion three days after the destruction of Juukan Gorge made global headlines.

Inequality exacerbated by pandemic

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A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the Covid-19 pandemic threatened to make life worse for the most vulnerable groups.



The Covid-19 report – part of a five-year IFS project on inequality – found that:



1. Low earners were most likely to work in shut-down sectors, to have been furloughed or be at risk of unemployment. 
2. A gap in death rates between better-off and less affluent neighbourhoods, as well as between some ethnic minorities and the white majority, had widened further.
3. Some minority ethnic groups, especially those of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, were much more likely to work in shut-down sectors. Black groups were disproportionately represented in key worker occupations and had been contracting Covid-19 at far higher rates than the white majority.
4. Workers under 25 were twice as likely as those over 25 to work in a locked-down sector.
5. Mothers were more likely than fathers to take on the additional childcare and housework duties caused by the lockdown.
6. Private schools were almost twice as likely to be providing online teaching as the state schools attended by children from the fifth most deprived families. 

Robert Joyce, the deputy director at IFS, and an author of the report, said: “The crisis has laid bare existing inequalities and risks exacerbating them…”



https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/11/inequality-will-worsen-unless-ministers-act-says-thinktank

Dividends come first

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Kohl’s, one of the US’s largest clothing retailers, cancelled orders of clothing worth approximately $100m from Korea and $50m from Bangaldeshi factories after the Covid-19 pandemic struck, and refused petitions from suppliers asking for the option to renegotiate payments. Kohl’s also furloughed 85,000 US staff and shuttered its 1,159 stores.



Then on 1 April, Kohl’s paid out $109m  (£85m) in dividends to shareholders. Between 2017 and 2019, Kohl’s paid dividends to its shareholders worth $1.2bn. 



“Brands like Kohl’s say they care about workers, and use their big name to talk about ethical sourcing. But it is a lie,” said Kalpona Akter, the founder of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity, a union organisation supporting garment workers. “They cancel orders and refuse to pay for orders produced. When we need them most, they turn their backs. They need to do the right thing. They need to pay their bills.”



Scott Nova from the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), said that Kohl’s actions were tantamount to exploitation and exposed the huge power imbalance in the global garment supply chain 
“Kohl’s puts a grossly one-sided cancellation clause in its purchase agreements, allowing it to cancel, and refuse to pay suppliers when it decides to,” he said.  “The company has refused to pay for apparel that it ordered and that workers have already made, but the company somehow found a $100m to reward shareholders. It’s hard not to think of these actions as nothing more than a form of robbery.”

As Hasina, who worked in a Bangladesh factory supplying Kohl’s, explains, “I have given all my energy making clothes for very low wages. Manufacturers and fashion brands can profit off the clothes, but nobody cares for us when we are suffering.”

Clamping down on class war in Mexico

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 Susana Prieto Terrazas, prominent labour lawyer in Mexico’s borderlands has been arrested on accusations of inciting violence – a move family members and colleagues denounced as retribution for advising wildcat strikers at US-owned factories. Prieto has made many enemies by representing workers fighting for higher salaries and trying to organise independent unions at maquiladoras – largely foreign-owned factories that manufacture products for export. She was arrested on charges of inciting riot, threats and coercion of public officials and  transported to the state capital, Ciudad Victoria – 320km south-east of Matamoros.



  Fernanda Peña Prieto, the lawyer’s daughter, explained,  “They’re trying to fabricate false evidence, saying that my mother was the mastermind of whatever violence workers may have committed.”



Prieto has also battled union bosses, who have a history of putting company interests ahead of workers’ wages and benefits. 
“They have always been the right arm of the companies’ human resources department,” she told the Guardian in 2019. “That’s why they don’t allow workers to join or register independent unions.”
Prieto’s arrest comes as more maquilas reopen following lockdowns prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. According to health officials, Mexico has not yet reached the peak of its outbreak and the number of Covid-19 deaths is still rising, but the country has come under intense pressure from the US to declare many manufacturing activities “essential” as they form part of continental supply chains. Prieto had campaigned against policies at maquiladora plants in Ciudad Juárez, which she said had put workers at risk of catching the new coronavirus. 
In 2015, Prieto advised workers at a Ciudad Juárez plant operated by the US printer and software company Lexmark, who were fired for demanding a wage increase of $0.35 per day.
During an unprecedented wave of wildcat strikes in 2019, Prieto described fierce resistance from maquila owners. “They’re fighting tooth and nail because these gringo bastards don’t want to set a precedent.”  Those strikes spread to other businesses.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president, has shown little enthusiasm for labour activism along the border, despite winning power on the promise of a better deal for workers and doubling the minimum wage.



“We’ve not been favoured by the federal government in any way,” Peña said. “Mexico is wearing itself out trying to please the United States.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/10/top-mexican-labour-lawyer-arrested-us-owned-factories



America’s Sick Health System

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Dr. Adam Gaffney, a critical care physician and lead author of the study, said the coronavirus pandemic “is laying bare the lethal inequality of American society and American healthcare.”



“Our ICU has been flooded with poor and minority patients; having Covid-19 is scary enough without worrying that you’ll be bankrupted by medical bills,” said Gaffney, who works at the Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School and serves as president Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP).



 More than 18 million U.S. adults at severe risk of Covid-19 infection due to age and existing medical conditions either lacked adequate health insurance or were completely uninsured when the pandemic hit, spotlighting the extent to which America’s fragmented for-profit healthcare system may have exacerbated the deadliness of the virus.



According to a new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine Wednesday by researchers from Harvard and the City University of New York’s Hunter School. The study found that among U.S. adults over the age of 65 and non-elderly adults with conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and heart disease, at least 18.2 million were uninsured or underinsured at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.



“Among this increased risk group, those with low incomes, residing in a rural area, and of non-white race had higher rates of inadequate insurance,” the research found. “High-risk persons living in Medicaid non-expansion states had 52% higher odds of being inadequately insured relative to those in expansion states, and high-risk individuals residing in states that had not issued stay-at-home orders had 23% higher odds of inadequate insurance relative to those in other states.”




The number of at-risk Americans with inadequate insurance coverage has likely grown significantly since the pandemic hit the U.S., the researchers note, given that tens of millions of people have lost their jobs—and, as a result, their employer-provided health insurance—since mid-March. A Gallup survey released in late April found that tens of millions of Americans would avoid seeking treatment for Covid-19 symptoms due to concerns about the cost.




“Our estimates of uninsurance and underinsurance are likely underestimates,” the study says.



“These promises of new protections for patients with Covid-19 are full of holes,” said Dr. Danny McCormick, a primary care physician and senior author of the study. “Covid-19 threatens the health of people everywhere, but only in the U.S. will it also ruin patients financially. When people avoid testing and care because they fear the costs, it fuels the epidemic’s spread.”



“It’s not just Covid care that’s unaffordable,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, distinguished professor of Public Health at CUNY’s Hunter College and another of the study’s authors co-founder of PNHP. “Patients with heart disease, asthma, and diabetes need protection too. 



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/10/lethal-inequality-new-study-shows-millions-high-risk-covid-19-us-lack-adequate

America’s Garbage Economy

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Trump has called himself a “big believer in the environment” and insisted he wants “the cleanest water, the cleanest air”.



The US is far behind other industrialized nations on environmental performance and now ranks 24th in the world, according to a new analysis by Yale and Columbia universities. The US did better on air quality, ranking 16th, but the authors warned those rankings could fall as Trump officials have rescinded protections or declined to tighten them based on new research.



 Denmark came in first place, followed by Luxembourg and Switzerland. The United Kingdom ranked fourth. The US is near the back of the pack for developed nations. 



 “If you look at Denmark, they’re doing great but they’re a tiny fraction of overall carbon emissions or greenhouse gas emissions broadly,” said Zach Wendling, lead researcher on the index. “The US is one of the top five players in every greenhouse gas, so we need to do better than just OK if we’re going to generate the best practices.”



The USA,  ranked 15th on climate, is currently the second-biggest contributor to the climate crisis, after China. Over time, it has put more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere than any other nation.  In particular, the US scored poorly on protecting water resources and managing its waste.





On wastewater, the analysis considers how much of wastewater is treated before it is released into the environment and how much of the population is connected to a sewage system. The US is doing poorly on both counts.

About half of trash generated in the US is unaccounted for. Thousands of different entities handle trash collection, and the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the resources to gather data about what is being recycled, incinerated or sent to landfills. Colombia, by comparison, has centralized collection and tracks all of its waste. 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/04/us-ranks-24th-in-the-world-on-environmental-performance

Polio Returns

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Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries in the world where polio is still endemic. Some people don’t take polio seriously because there is no direct death involved in it, but it does have a huge human cost. Pakistan was very close to becoming  polio free, with only 12 cases in 2018, but last year the number of cases rose to 147. In the same year, Pakistan was  accused of covering up the resurgence of the P2 strain of the virus, which was thought to have been eradicated in 2014. So far this year 47 cases have been reported. The  virus spreads easily in summer and this year could see more than 200 cases. Experts fear that Pakistan is back to 2014 levels, the worst year in recent records.



Officials say the disease has spread beyond the three core areas of Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar, and is now present in central Pakistan. There is now also a fear among Pakistani officials that the virus could spread to other parts of the world. It would not take it a long time to spread.



 “Nothing can be worse than this situation. We have positive samples everywhere. It is strengthening and spreading,” a scientific expert in the programme told the Guardian.



Trump’s freeze on US funding for the WHO, along with the focus on Covid-19,  has also made  it hard to fund the polio programme. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of the founding members of the GPEI, and also provides assistance and funds for the polio programme. “CDC-supported programmes and activities will be put at risk the longer a funding halt continues,” Benjamin Haynes, deputy branch chief of the CDC, told the Guardian.



Pakistan spends less than 1% of GDP on health services, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s 2019 report, while the WHO recommends an allocation of 6%.  Pakistan needs to invest in public health not in weaponry. 



https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jun/02/pakistan-polio-fears-as-millions-of-children-miss-out-on-vaccinations-due-to-covid-19

Bolivia and the Road to Democracy?

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At Easter, in locked-down Bolivia, priests, wielding religious statues of the apostles, sprinkled holy water and blessings over four cities from air force helicopters. It reflected the religious zeal of the caretaker president and giant Bible flourishing Jeanine Áñez who had been a little-known evangelical politician from Bolivia’s tropical lowlands, Áñez was catapulted to power last November with one job: to hold new elections as soon as possible and to “rebuild democracy”.



Even critics of Evo Morales argue that Anez has instead deepened divisions in the multi-ethnic nation of 11 million people – and is using the coronavirus pandemic to further her own political ambitions. In January, Áñez declared her own candidacy for president in the forthcoming elections – a U-turn on her previous promises. She is no longer the neutral referee but has entered the electoral game with the advantage of holding the whistle. She has since postponed the polls originally scheduled for the 3rd of May, explaining that elections should wait until the worse of the COVID-19 pandemic was over. But with lockdown measures easing dramatically from 1 June, some question the rationale for postponing the electoral rerun until September or beyond. The move has fuelled denunciations of a power grab.



Last month, generals in combat uniforms barged into the senate, demanding that the MAS-majority body approve promotions awarded by the Áñez administration. Arturo Murillo, her hardline interior minister, has threatened to deploy fighter jets to the Chapare – a coca-growing region and Mas stronghold – to take on alleged narcotraffickers. A new law threatening those who “misinform or cause uncertainty” over coronavirus with up to 10 years in jail – with Murillo warning the MAS presidential candidate, Luis Arce, by name – was dropped earlier in May following international outcry.  Her administration has leaned on prosecutors to bring corruption, sedition and terrorism charges against dozens of former Morales supporters. Left-wing journalists have been harassed and detained. The Áñez administration kicked out Cuban doctors, re-established ties with Israel, abandoned regional forums, and courted Donald Trump. Her policies appear to be to restore neoliberalism under the paradigm of Latin America as the backyard of the United States.  



Áñez has been “a disappointment”, according to Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé, a Bolivian judge and former diplomat. 



 “Instead of establishing a tolerant environment that guarantees free and fair elections, she decides to become a candidate, make a show of persecuting and dismantling the MAS, and govern in an opaque, abusive and openly ideological way,” he argued.



So far Bolivia has seen more than 8,000 coronavirus cases in Bolivia and 293 confirmed deaths. In the past few months, medical officials have allegedly used the pandemic to line their pockets. The health minister was arrested and fired in May after Bolivia imported 179 ventilators – which doctors later found were incompatible with intensive care units – for almost $5m, nearly three times their market price.



https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jun/01/bolivia-president-jeanine-anez-coronavirus-elections

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