Author: ajohnstone

The Neo-Nazis and COVID-19

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For many far-right hardliners, it’s a crisis to be welcomed. The hardest-core “accelerationists” – violent neo-Nazis who want civilisation to crumble, hope that COVID-19 will turn out to be their secret weapon.



“The situation is ripe for exploitation by the far right,” Cynthia Miller-Idriss, American University sociologist and expert on the far-right, told Al Jazeera.  Aside from feeding into “accelerationist and apocalytic ideas”, Miller-Idriss said “the uncertainty the pandemic creates creates fertile ground for claims about the need for change or the solutions the far right purports to offer.”



A leader of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), a neo-Nazi movement based in northern Europe, said that he welcomed the pandemic as a necessary step to help create the world that his group wants to see.



“COVID-19 might be precisely what we need in order to bring about a real national uprising and a strengthening of revolutionary political forces,” Simon Lindberg, the leader of NRM’s Swedish branch, wrote.  “We cannot build a society lasting thousands of years into the future on the rotten foundations of today,” Lindberg added, “but instead we must build it upon the ruins of their creation.”
Other far-right groups see the pandemic as an opportunity to further push xenophobic, racist messages. In Germany, members of the neo-Nazi group Die Rechte (The Right) claimed that German borders should have been sealed off weeks ago to all “non-Europeans”.

Another German neo-Nazi group, Der Dritte Weg (The Third Way), said that the virus was being exploited by German leaders as a “diversionary tactic” to distract from an apparent oncoming “flood” of refugees and migrants from the Middle East.



In Ukraine, a figure in the country’s far-right Azov movement took to messaging app Telegram to claim that the spread of COVID-19 “generally isn’t the fault of white people” and stated that ethnic minorities in Italy should alone be blamed for the spread of the virus there – where now more than 8,000 have died.



“Neo-Nazi accelerationist Telegram channels have increased their calls for destabilisation and violence related to COVID-19,” Joshua Fisher-Birch, a researcher from the United States-based Counter Extremism Project, which monitors international “extremist” movements, told Al Jazeera. “These channels are treating the current situation … as an opportunity to try to increase tension and advocate for violence.”
One popular neo-Nazi channel urged its members to cough on doorknobs at synagogues. Another urged followers infected with COVID-19 to spray their saliva on police officers.



And a further channel praised a man arrested in New Jersey in the US for coughing on a grocery store employee and claiming he had COVID-19.



“Exalted to sainthood,” the channel wrote. The term saint or sainthood is common praise for perpetrators of violence.



In recently leaked chat logs on Discord, an online chat application, members of Feuerkrieg Division discussed deliberately infecting Jews and others if one of the members caught the virus. Feuerkrieg Division is a small neo-Nazi group with a presence in the US and Europe.

Well-known far-right figure Timothy Wilson, 36, died on Tuesday after a shootout with FBI agents in Missouri in the US. Wilson had been planning to attack a hospital caring for patients suffering from COVID-19. According to reports, Wilson was an administrator of a neo-Nazi Telegram channel known for encouraging violence. Wilson promoted attacks and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 outbreak on the channel, claiming that the pandemic was an “excuse to destroy our people”. 



The Nukes Are Still There

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The US has stored nuclear bombs across Europe as a deterrent against Russia — And , they are here to stay — and set to be modernized. 



In Germany hidden deep below in underground vaults are American nuclear bombs that date back to the Cold War. The precise number of bombs stored in the underground vaults in the air base is unclear. Estimates range between 15 to 20, and their location is a state secret. The German government has never officially confirmed the existence of the nuclear bombs. The German government only admits to being part of what is officially termed a “nuclear sharing agreement.”



In the case of a nuclear strike, the American soldiers who guard the bombs located on the German air base — with an order to shoot at any intruders — would attach the bomb to German fighter jets and activate the code. Then German crews would embark upon what insiders refer to as a “strike mission” — delivering the American bombs to their destination. This agreement — American bombs guarded by American soldiers on a German base but flown by crews and planes of Germany’s military forces, the Bundeswehr — dates back to the Cold War and NATO’s nuclear deterrence strategy aimed at keeping the Soviet Union at bay. 



The nuclear sharing agreement provides for NATO member states of the military alliance without nuclear weapons to partake in planning and training for the use of nuclear weapons by NATO. While the precise number of American bombs stored in Europe is unknown, estimates put them at roughly 150. Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy are all part of the sharing agreement. With the exception of those on Italian soil, all of the bombs are located within a few hundred kilometers of each other.



In March 2010, Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, passed a cross-party resolution urging the government to “emphatically” work towards getting its American allies to withdraw all nuclear weapons from Germany. It followed then-US President Barack Obama’s call to create a world without nuclear weapons.  But, a decade on, that goal seems ever more elusive, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and investment in nuclear-capable medium-range missiles. Now, rather than working towards the bombs’ withdrawal, the US military is set to modernize and upgrade them. 
Germany is set to receive modernized bombs. The nukes stored are of a type — the B-61-3 or B-61-4 — that was introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s and they coming to the end of their cycle. The modernization program, which will see the old bombs being dismantled and new ones delivered to American military sites in the US and across the world. The new bomb — the B-61-12 — will have “significantly enhanced capabilities,” says Kristensen: It is equipped with a tail kit, which enables it to be delivered and hit its target much more accurately. Kristensen has modelled its accuracy at about 30 to 60 meters (98 to 196 feet). The current bombs are simply dropped from the plane, rather than like ones with tail kits, which guide themselves once released. Many experts worry that may make the bomb more attractive to deploy — as, rather than wiping out an entire region, it could be used to strike a precise target.

https://www.dw.com/en/us-set-to-upgrade-controversial-nukes-stationed-in-germany/a-52855886

The six horsemen of the Apocalypse

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The COVID-19 exposes the underlying weaknesses of the system. When the economic meltdown hit Europe in 2008, the European Union responded by instituting painful austerity measures that targeted things like health care. Over the past 10 years Italy has cut some 37 billion euros from its health system. The infrastructure that could have dealt with a health crisis like Covid-19 was hollowed out, so that when the disease hit, there simply weren’t enough troops or resources to resist it. What happened was that hospitals eliminated surplus beds and surplus personnel. Hospitals were under–staffed with massive nurse shortages. During this pandemic more important than doctors are nurses. Nursing could ease the strain of a patient, keep a patient hydrated, calm, provide the best nutrition, and cool the intense fevers. Nurses gave victims the best possible chance to survive.



Italy has the oldest population in Europe, and one of the oldest in the world. It did not get that way be accident. Right-wing parties have long targeted immigrants, even though the immigrant population—a little over 600,000—is not large by international standards. Immigrants as a “threat to European values” has been the rallying cry for the right in France, Germany, Hungry, Poland, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands and Britain as well.



Italy has the fourth largest economy in the European Union, and in terms of health care, it is certainly in a better place than the US. Per capita, Italy has more hospital beds—so-called “surge capacity”—more doctors and more ventilators. Italians have a longer life expectancy than Americans, not to mention British, French, Germans, Swedes and Finns. The virus has had an especially fatal impact on northern Italy, the country’s richest region.



Resistance to immigration plays a major role in “graying” the population. Italy has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, topped only by Japan. The demographic effects of this are “an apocalypse” according to former Italian Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin. “In five years, we have lost more than 66,000 births [per year]” equal to the population of the city of Siena. “If we link this to this increasingly old and chronically ill people, we have a picture of a moribund country.”



Resistance to immigration plays a major role in “graying” the population. Italy has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, topped only by Japan. The demographic effects of this are “an apocalypse” according to former Italian Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin. “In five years, we have lost more than 66,000 births [per year]” equal to the population of the city of Siena. “If we link this to this increasingly old and chronically ill people, we have a picture of a moribund country.”



 According to the World Health Organization, the ideal birth-death replacement ratio in advanced countries is 2.1. Italy’s is 1.32., which means not only an older population, but also fewer working age people to pay the taxes that fund the social infrastructure, including health care. The EU-wide replacement ratio is a tepid 1.58, with only France and Ireland approaching—but not reaching—2.1. While the US replacement ratio is higher than the EU’s, it still falls under 2.



 Some 60 percent of Italians are over 40, and 23 percent are over 65. It is demographics like these that make Covid-19 so lethal. From age 10 to 39, the virus has a death rate of 0.2 percent, more deadly than influenza, but not overly so. But starting at age 40, the death rate starts to rise, reaching 8 percent for adults age 70 to 79, and then jumping to 14.8 percent over 80. The average age of coronavirus deaths in Italy is 81.



 Spain also has a bleeding population, particularly in small towns, some 1500 of which have been abandoned. Spain has weathered a decade and a half of austerity, which damaged the country’s health care infrastructure. After Italy, Spain is the European country hardest hit by Covid-19.



 As populations age, immigrants become a necessity. Not only are new-comers needed to fill in the work needs of economies, broadening the tax base that pays for infrastructure, but, too, old people need cared for.



 If Germany does not increase the number of migrants it takes, the population will decline from 81 million to 67 million by 2060, reducing the workforce to 54 percent of the population, not enough to keep up with current levels of social spending. The Berlin Institute for Population and Development estimates that Germany will need 500,000 immigrants a year for the next 35 years to keep pensions and social services at current levels.



 To the Bible’s four horsemen of the Apocalypse we can add two more – profits and austerity.

From here:




The War in Yemen Goes On

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Nearly a third of all Gulf coalition air raids on Yemen have hit civilian targets including hospitals, schools and food stores, new data has revealed.

According to the Yemen Data Project, more than 18,400 civilians have been killed or injured by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies since they launched a bombing campaign in 2015 to oust the Iran-backed Houthis and restore the government.





Over 8,600, a quarter of them women and children, were killed across tens of thousands of raids, marking 70 per cent of the total civilian death toll documented by rights groups.
The same report said over the last five years coalition aircraft have bombed medical facilities including hospitals and clinics 83 times, killing 95 civilians and injuring a further 116. 
Over 60 food stores have also been hit, alongside 134 water and electricity facilities.
“The data clearly shows that over the five years [the coalition] has been consistently hitting civilian targets. That’s indisputable,” said the Yemen Data Project’s Iona Craig, adding that on average the alliance causes 10 civilian casualties a day.  “It’s not just hospitals and medical facilities you have to take into account. It’s the bombing of water and electricity infrastructure, the impact on food supply lines with food storage facilities and crucial road bridges being hit too,” she added.
According to Oxfam, 17 million people – more than half the population – have no access to clean water.



Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Yemeni human rights group Mwatana released an extensive report last week  saying in total between 2015 and 2018 there were 120  attacks on the health care sector committed by all sides of the conflict.



It said the Gulf coalition, its affiliated forces, the Houthis and their allies have all damaged or destroyed health facilities through airstrikes and shelling, occupying medical facilities and excluding civilian use as well as assaulting medical professionals.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Yemeni human rights group Mwatana released an extensive report last week  saying in total between 2015 and 2018 there were 120  attacks on the health care sector committed by all sides of the conflict.

Mwatana spokesperson Osamah al-Fakih said it was not just bombing campaigns and artillery fire which had destroyed the country.

“All sides have committed violations including enforced disappearances, torture, as well as child recruitment,” he told The Independent. “The Gulf coalition has also restricted humanitarian access to Yemen through a blockade and closure of Sanaa international airport. It has also established arms groups in different parts of the country, a huge long-term problem, undermining the future of Yemen. “

Human Rights Watch warned the training of proxy groups was behind a new crisis brewing in the east of the country, Mahra, a province which until now has escaped most of the conflict. In a report on Wednesday it said Saudi military and Yemeni forces it was affiliated to, have carried serious abuses arbitrary arrests, torture, enforced disappearances, and illegal transfer of detainees to Saudi Arabia. 





Former detainees said that they were accused of supporting Saudi Arabia’s opponents and had been interrogated, and tortured at an informal detention facility at the city’s airport.



“Saudi forces and their Yemeni allies’ serious abuses against local-Mahra residents is another horror to add to the list of the Saudi-led coalition’s unlawful conduct in Yemen,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Saudi Arabia is severely harming its reputation with Yemenis when it carries out these abusive practices and holds no one accountable for them.”

Workers At Risk

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Around the world, workers in what have been deemed “essential services” are tirelessly trying to keep the coronavirus pandemic in check and to keep us all going in the meantime. These are the nurses, farmworkers, grocery clerks, truck drivers and teachers, whose backs many of us stand on so that we can engage in our “social distancing”.



And guess what – an eight or, perhaps, 10-hour shift in a grocery store, stocking shelves was not a particularly pleasant experience before the coronavirus shocked the world into realising that these essential workers exist.
The definition of essential services varies by country but, typically, the same occupations tend to make the list.



In California – Monterey county specifically – farmworkers have been told that they are exempt from the shelter-in-place order and are expected to continue working in the fields.

This means there is no social distancing for farmworkers. 
The message is clear – if you are labouring in the fields in California, where most of the US’s fruits and vegetables originate, then you have to go to work, no matter if a virus infects thousands, daily. To make matters worse, some estimate that between 50 percent and 75 percent of the close-to-three-million people who work in the fields are undocumented immigrants, which makes them subject to detention and possible deportation. Their labour is also poorly paid, with an average salary between $15,000 and $18,000 a year. Remember the Braceros, the farmworkers of Mexican origin who were recruited during World War II to labour in the US. This programme was initially crafted as an emergency measure, which began in 1942, to ensure the supply of food to the American population during wartime. Wages were set prior to the workers’ arrival, as was their lodging and labour conditions, essentially ensuring that they had no representation and no way to voice complaints.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron declared those who work in the food industry – grocery store workers included – to be essential. Were these workers similarly appreciated by the government before the coronavirus came to France? Not really – Macron orchestrated a labour reform that took a knife to the industry, leading stores such as the supermarket chain, Carrefour, to lay off thousands of people just a couple of years ago. Those still working, because they are expected to do so, are doing so for longer periods of time than before because, during his tenure, their president has given companies greater powers to dismiss workers and to set the payments in cases of unfair dismissal.

In the United Kingdom. There, it is the workers in the “key industries” who keep the economy going. Looking at healthcare especially, the country’s already understaffed National Health Service – as a result of 10 years of government austerity policies – is being forced by the coronavirus outbreak to take on thousands of unexpected patients. And in the UK, more than 13 percent of people working in healthcare are foreign nationals. To add insult to injury, these are people who have had to endure arguably racist remarks by the country’s prime minister which have mocked darker-skinned, foreign-born, working people.

While in Italy Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said that his government was going to toughen the existing measures to tackle the coronavirus epidemic ravaging the country. As a result, everything would need to shut down. “The government’s decision is to close down — on the whole national territory — every industrial activity that isn’t strictly necessary and crucial to grant us essential services,” said Conte.
A list of about 80 industries that would be exempt from the rule was circulated by the government the next day, and it was later expanded to 97 sectors, including aerospace, defense and the production of agricultural machinery. All companies were allowed to appeal to their local prefect to be granted authorization to continue their activities. To many workers and trade unions, this sounded dangerous. 
Massimo Dicanosa, a worker at TE Connectivity in Collegno, a small town on the outskirts of Turin, said that tension started mounting among his colleagues as the nation enacted strict containment measures to tackle the epidemic but workers still needed to show up at the factory.
“We are bombarded with messages telling us to stay home, our families are home, children are home, and those who need to leave the house are not safe,” he said. The creeping fear is to infect your family at home, said Dicanosa, who works in the moulding department at the factory. And that fear mounts regardless of health and safety measures that companies might implement. “There can be asymptomatic people who have no way to know if they are infected with the coronavirus. At the factory we have our temperature checked, but if I have no symptoms then we’ve got a problem and the issue becomes too big, it goes beyond the single company,” he told DW.
Maria Cristina Terrenati from the secretariat at Fim-Cisl, the trade union representing Italian metalworkers, said she has been receiving calls from workers in smaller factories who said they were not protected from exposure to the virus on their factory floors. “They say distancing is not respected, that they don’t have hand sanitizer. But then, when we tried to ask where they were calling from, they wouldn’t dare tell us,” said Terrenati.



COVID-19 – Alright for some

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The hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has claimed his firm made $2.6bn (£2.2bn) betting that the coronavirus outbreak would cause a market crash, barely a week after warning that “hell is coming” for US companies.



Ackman took advantage of bond market turmoil to make almost 100 times his original outlay of $27m on bets on market movements, he said
The returns were made by buying “credit protection on various global investment grade and high-yield credit indices”, protecting his fund from steep stock market falls that were happening at the time. Ackman wrote: “On 23 March, we completed the exit of our hedges generating proceeds of $2.6bn for the Pershing Square funds, compared with premiums paid and commissions totaling $27m.”
On 18 March Ackman tweeted that Trump should “shut down the country for the next 30 days and close the borders”. In an interview with CNBC that day he said that US companies should halt share buybacks to preserve cash because “hell is coming” – although he also said that he was buying some stocks. “The hotel industry and the restaurant industry will go bankrupt first, Boeing is on the brink, Boeing will not survive without a government bailout,” Ackman said.  Ackman’s opinions appeared to change rapidly, after the US government started to move towards its $2tn stimulus deal. Pershing Square started to unwind its bets on the market falling on 23 March, only five days after he gave his warnings.
The fund used the money earned to buy shares in companies such as the Hilton hotel chain and coffee chain Starbucks, as well as in Warren Buffett’s investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway.
 Ackman said: “We became increasingly positive on equity and credit markets last week, and began the process of unwinding our hedges and redeploying our capital in companies we love at bargain prices that are built to withstand this crisis, and which we believe will flourish long term.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/25/bill-ackman-claims-firm-made-26bn-betting-on-coronavirus-outbreak

For the greater good

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The COVID-19 pandemic is now moving at a speed that the world had not anticipated. It is difficult to predict the likely course of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a completely new virus. This crisis has illustrated, so clearly and painfully, some of the weaknesses  in the fabric of our capitalist society that the Socialist Party has passionately trying to focus our fellow-workers’ attention on. To many socialist ideas do not look so bad now.



Wartime profiteering is has been as common as war itself. Merchants and traders line their pockets by controlling the supply and jacking up the prices of various goods. We now have a new breed of parasites, the pandemic profiteers. Corporate CEOs are shoving aside millions of workers, small businesses, poor people, students, the non–profits, farmers, cities and all other devastated victims of the COVID-19 crisis, for a massive government bailout rescue. Boeing, already disgraced for putting its profits before peoples safety, has its lobbyists pleading for $60 billion.



Republican lawmakers claim there’s a portion of the bill that incentivizes Americans not to work since the relief package could potentially give them more money than their normal incomes. No such worries when it comes to Big Business lodging their claims for compensation. One reporter remarked “I apologize — I don’t know how to ask this without sounding like I’m being a smart ass, and I’m not. But do you understand how bad the optics are to have probably the wealthiest person in the Senate potentially holding up this bill for a couple hundreds bucks for some of the poorest people in this country?”



Wall Street and employers are crippled by employees’ staying home, so now their rallying call is “We have to get back to work” despite the medical advice of the experts. Let us risk and sacrifice our lives for the health of the stock-market and the well-being of the industrial barons and billionaires.



It has been reported that some companies are now charging $7 for protective masks that typically cost less than $1. None of this should be surprising coming from executives who question whether curing disease is a “sustainable business model,” nor should it be surprising within a system that continually seeks profit maximisation despite deadly circumstances. 



Capitalists’ consistent push for profits is now coming home to roost, as manifesting in staff shortages during this crisis caused by earlier austerity cuts. 



 Much concern has been shown about the shortage of ventilators to assist  patients breathing. Industry is organised to benefit a wealthy minority of capitalists and previously has been unable to respond to the needs of people. Yet it is now being demonstrated that manufacturers can re-tool their machinery and produce the necessary equipment.



The COVID-19 pandemic is magnifying capitalism’s complete inability to foster overall health and well being. We don’t just need a new healthcare system, but a new economic system altogether.We simply cannot accept these for-profit parasites producing the vaccines, surgical masks, ventilators, and disinfectants needed to battle this pandemic for any longer. We have an economic  system based on profits, but right now, we need to mobilize all of production and healthcare for the purposes of saving people’s lives. Even though it can achieve this capitalism has shown itself incapable of doing that. We need a healthcare system run democratically by doctors, nurses, employees, and patients. This would be drastically different from the current system in which wealthy capitalists make the major decisions in hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment manufacturing firms, and insurance companies. We need a system where healthcare is not a means to make money. 

 

We  need an economic system that puts health and survival over profit maximisation. Socialism would allow for all production to be organized in a planned economy under workers’ control, so that resources could be better allocated and the creative and scientific energy of people could be used productively for the benefit of all of us. Our healthcare system has revealed its failings. Capitalism will never give us what we need. We not only need a new healthcare system, but a new economic system that values life over profit. Let’s have courage, work together, and help each other get through this the best we can. But, when we are able, let us change our society and the way we are expected to live. We are experiencing a growing awareness of what it means to be a citizen of the world and at a little closer to home, being part of a community with our family, our friends, our neighbours and our co-workers. We are learning how to better conserve, to be more self-sufficient, to share. We are re–evaluating what really matters in our life. We have an opportunity to adopt new behaviours and learn and practice new skills, nurturing them. It can be argued that we better understand the urgency of what we are facing regarding the climate crisis.



Do we want our children, or our children’s children and beyond, to look back at this point in history and wonder why we all didn’t change our priorities and choose to act more responsibly. We need to dis-empower the looting class; stop their incessant propaganda, PR and advertising.



Health Insurers don’t do healthcare

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Augie Lindmark, a resident physician at Yale University prepared for an onslaught of Covid-19 patients last week, he noticed something at his hospital: there were still patients without the virus, completely stable, in the beds.



These patients, many of whom should have been moved to a rehab facility or released, were stuck waiting until their private health insurance company authorized the next steps, which can take days.

“Any sort of slowing in the health system has dire consequences,” Lindmark said.



But with a history of restrictive and confusing policies, private health insurance companies have lagged behind: making incremental changes to plans even as health providers seek to change course. 
“They’re doing healthcare to make money, not to take care of people,” said Dr Judd Hollander, an emergency medicine physician and associate dean at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “Insurance companies are not beholden to the patient, they are beholden to the shareholder,” Hollander said.
 Riddhi Shah, the director of operations at a mental health clinic in Michigan, said insurance companies are hard to contact right now, and while the plans have dropped the prior authorization restrictions, the clinic still has to navigate new billing codes and financial loss. 
Many private doctors, meanwhile, are burdened by the restrictions that insurance companies have placed in the past, said Shabana Khan, a child psychiatrist at NYU Langone.
With the bureaucracy standing in their way, some doctors are trying to work around private insurance altogether. 



The pandemic hasn’t stopped insurers from charging patients for other Covid-related charges. AHIP confirmed that out-of-pocket expenses for the treatment would not be waived, and could cost patients thousands of dollars. The average amount for someone admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, a respiratory condition that many coronavirus patients are facing, was $20,000 in 2018 for patients covered by private insurance, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Peterson. 

That could leave many people falling back on the age-old American dilemma: get healthcare or lose all financial security. And it could leave physicians finding loopholes and workarounds to stay afloat.







Help the vulnerable

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 United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said, “COVID-19 is threatening the whole of humanity – and the whole of humanity must fight back. Global action and solidarity are crucial. Individual country responses are not going to be enough.”



In a Monday letter to the G20 group of leading economic powers, he pushed for a “war-time” stimulus bill “in the trillions of dollars” to help poor countries. The plan “aims to enable us to fight the virus in the world’s poorest countries, and address the needs of the most vulnerable people, especially women and children, older people, and those with disabilities or chronic illness. 



If fully funded, “it will save many lives and arm humanitarian agencies and NGOs with laboratory supplies for testing, and with medical equipment to treat the sick while protecting health care workers”, he added. 

The UN plan is designed to last from April to December – suggesting the world body does not see the health crisis abating any time soon. The plan foresees two general scenarios as to how the pandemic might evolve. Under the first, the pandemic is brought under control relatively quickly as its rate of spread slows over the course of three or four months. This, the UN said, would allow for a relatively swift recovery in terms of public health and the economy. But under the second model, the pandemic spreads quickly in countries that are poor or developing, mainly in Africa, Asia and parts of the Americas.
“This leads to longer periods of closed borders and limited freedom of movement, further contributing to a global slowdown that is already under way,” said the UN.

Money will be used for a variety of purposes: to set up handwashing facilities in refugee camps, launch public awareness campaigns, and establish humanitarian air shuttles with Africa, Asia and Latin America, the UN said. 
The plan names 20 or so nations as deserving top priority for aid, including some enduring war or some degree of conflict, including Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Yemen, Venezuela and Ukraine. But countries such as Iran and North Korea are also analysed. 

In parallel, humanitarian aid provided yearly by member states to help 100 million people around the world must continue. Otherwise, he said, the coronavirus pandemic could lead to rampant outbreaks of other diseases such as cholera and measles, as well as higher levels of malnutrition.
“This is the moment to step up for the vulnerable,” Guterres said.





Lockdown also means locked out

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With schools across the UK closed to all students apart from those from families of key workers, parents are suddenly having to provide extra food for their youngsters who are now at home all day. The prospect of facing weeks, possibly months, with children off school due to the coronavirus outbreak is daunting for most parents. But for those struggling financially, the future looks particularly stark. Before the outbreak of Covid-19, figures showed almost one in every three children in the UK to be living in poverty, but the escalating situation is forcing desperate families to choose between feeding their children and paying their bills. 
Single mum Hannah Graham was “staggered” by how much food her children managed to consume while being off school.
“I have already discovered how hard it is going to be to provide food for my children during lockdown.” she told HuffPost UK. “I knew we would get through a lot more food as there would be an extra 10 meals to provide during the week. But the sheer volume of what they had eaten by Tuesday was staggering. They emptied the cupboards and there was nothing left as they had eaten all the snacks and food.”  She says it made her realise how hard it would be to stay financially afloat during the outbreak. “I am also very worried about how I will afford to feed them. I am planning each week at a time and trying not to think beyond that as it is too overwhelming. When you are a single parent and struggling for money, you cannot afford to stockpile and buy a couple of weeks of food at a time.”

Helen Baker, 49, is a full-time carer for her seven-year-old son Sam who is autistic. She is concerned about their financial predicament and how they will afford to put food on the table as her husband Chris is a self employed taxi driver and the impact of coronavirus is already hitting their income hard.

“Now we are on lockdown, my husband is getting no taxi work at all,” she told HuffPost UK. “The measures in place for self employed people at the moment are abysmal as all they can access is Universal Credit. My husband is trying to look for other ways of earning but we live in an economically deprived area and everyone is in the same position. I am worried about buying food and putting gas and electricity on the meter. We’re literally living hand-to-mouth and I am worried about running out of money and not being able to put food on the table or how long it will be before we get Universal Credit. I am struggling mentally and trying not to panic. But it’s difficult when you get up in the morning and worry about whether we’ll be able to buy bread or milk.” 

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