On November 26, the World Health Organization identified “Omicron” as a new variant of the coronavirus, and designated it a “variant of concern.” Omicron is a great concern to people worldwide (see “The Omicron Variant of COVID-19: A New and Potentially Major Threat”)—because it is a new, and potentially dangerous, variant of a virus that has caused a pandemic that has already led to at least 5,250,000 deaths worldwide… and because, in a world in the death grip of the capitalist-imperialist system, the devastation caused by this virus has not only revealed but intensified the chasms of inequality between spectacular wealth and power possessed by a handful, and bitter impoverishment and suffering for billions worldwide.

Some of what this has meant:

• Crisis intensified by the pandemic has increased global poverty and heightened inequality. Incomes for people in the bottom 40% of global income distribution are 6.7% lower than in pre-pandemic predictions; this decline has contributed to a sharp increase in global poverty. About 97 million more people are living on less than $1.90 a day because of the pandemic.
• The number of refugees worldwide has grown dramatically in the two pandemic years. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported that “the coronavirus emergency has been unlike any seen throughout UNHCR’s 70-year history. Never has every UNHCR office and operation faced a crisis of this magnitude—all at the same time.” It projects that in 2021, 97.3 million people worldwide need its assistance, including over 26 million refugees and almost 50 million displaced people.
• Millions of children worldwide are suffering greatly because COVID-related school closures are amplifying the “global learning crisis that already existed.” An additional 72 million primary school-age children are being pushed into “learning poverty”—meaning they are unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10.
• Increasing numbers of children are becoming orphans, as their parents or primary caregivers die from COVID. A study by the medical journal The Lancet estimated that 1,134,000 children experienced the death of primary caregivers because of COVID from March 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021.
• The number of people who have died from COVID-19 almost certainly exceeds the official count. A South African study by a collaboration of scientists indicates that between May 2020 and September 2021, “over a quarter of a million more people have died from natural causes than was predicted for that time period”; it estimated that “...between 85% and 95% of the excess natural deaths [nonviolent deaths above the daily average] in the country are related to COVID-19. ... But we do not know for certain. That’s one of the great tragedies of vital registration systems in sub-Saharan Africa and the developing world generally. ... The excess deaths shows that the effects of COVID-19 are far more severe than that reflected in the national data.”

Systemic Vaccine Inequality

A pandemic is a disease that spreads globally. Vaccination is the single most important measure to limit the spread of the coronavirus, and to reduce the likelihood of serious illness or death. The coronavirus is much more likely to mutate and develop new variants, like Omicron, among large sections of unvaccinated people. It is in the interest of all humanity to have as many people as possible, everywhere, vaccinated, to keep the contagion from spreading. As Dr. Michael Saag of the University of Alabama said, “Unvaccinated people are basically the cannon fodder of the virus. The virus needs people to infect in order to replicate and the more people it has that are vulnerable or susceptible to infection, the more likely it will mutate.”

Yet there are gaping inequities globally in vaccine availability and the number of unvaccinated people. In Portugal, 87% of people were fully vaccinated as of December 3; in Canada, 77%; in the U.S., where Christian fundamentalists and other fascists have been mobilizing ignorant and deceitful opposition to the vaccine, 59% are fully vaccinated. In contrast, in the east African country of Sudan, the figure is 1.4%; in Haiti, 0.6%; and in Burundi, a land-locked country in southern Africa, less than one tenth of one percent of the people are fully vaccinated!

Several immediate causes are driving this disparity. One is that imperialist countries are hoarding the vaccine. A spokeswoman from Doctors Without Borders said in October, “Despite its claim to be a global leader on COVID-19, the U.S. is hoarding nearly 500 million excess COVID-19 vaccine doses—more than any other country. It’s reckless and dangerous for the U.S. and other high-income countries to be sitting on excessive stocks of COVID-19 vaccine. ... The longer people everywhere remain unprotected, the more lives will be lost and the more likely it is that new and potentially deadlier variants will take hold. The U.S. must immediately make public and concrete commitments to redistribute excess COVID-19 vaccines globally if it truly wants to end this pandemic.”

COVAX, a global program for purchasing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines, aimed to distribute two billion doses worldwide by the end of 2021. But by December 4, only 606.2 million doses had actually been shipped. Also, the U.S. and other imperialist and high-income countries appropriated more than half of the first 7.5 billion doses “developed through pre-purchase agreements, leaving only crumbs for COVAX,” according to associate professor of public health Deborah Gleeson, writing on Australia's ABC News site. These wealthy countries also pledged to deliver more doses worldwide, but by late October only about 10% of the doses pledged had been delivered.

Monstrous Calculations

In 2020, India and South Africa proposed a three-year “waiver” on international pacts that hinder the manufacture of vaccines in countries like theirs. The waiver is intended to increase people’s access to COVID-19 medical products.

The U.S. and other powerful and rich nations, and pharmaceutical companies based in them, have opposed and prevented the waivers, in the name of “protecting intellectual property.” U.S. business leaders and political leaders from both major capitalist parties are concerned that “rival nations such as China and Russia are eager to learn the secrets of the technology behind vaccines supported by billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds.” In the 14 months since the waiver was proposed, more than 4 million people have died from COVID. One prominent Republican laid out the nakedly capitalist and Amerikkkan chauvinist thinking behind opposition to the waiver: it would be “disastrous for innovation. It would be very bad for the United States in the long term and short term.” As if there can be no “innovation” not motivated by self-interest! As if the growing toll of millions dead is of no concern when weighed against U.S. interests!

But deeper causes are at work also.

Unbearable, Unnecessary Suffering

Billions of vaccines have been produced. Ships, planes, trucks can carry the vaccines to the most remote corners of the globe. Scientists across the world have been working feverishly for almost two years to understand and prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Medical personnel everywhere have selflessly plunged into non-stop efforts to provide care for people suffering from the disease, sometimes catching the virus, and suffering and dying from it.

Yet, the virus spreads and mutates; the corpses accumulate.

This criminality is all the more unbearable because it is unnecessary. As Bob Avakian wrote in his article “Why The World Is So Messed Up, And What Can Be Done to Radically Change This—A Basic Scientific Understanding”:

What is crucially important to understand is that the basis now exists to enable the billions of people on this planet to have the means for a decent life, worthy of human beings—a life that is continually being enriched, not just materially but socially, intellectually and culturally. But, at the same time, the way human society has developed under the domination of this system of capitalism-imperialism has led to a highly “lopsided” world, where billions of people in the world live in horrific conditions of oppression and misery, with millions of children in the Third World dying each year from starvation and preventable diseases. Quiet as its kept:

All this is the basis on which a relatively small part of the people within this country, and a very small part of humanity as a whole, has the conditions and the “freedom” to develop and apply their initiative and creativity—only to have this serve, under this system, to reinforce the “lopsided,” highly unequal and profoundly oppressive conditions in the world as a whole and for the masses of people in the world.

And all this is completely unnecessary.

It is the productive forces that have been developed under the capitalist-imperialist system that actually provide the material basis to move beyond all this. But, at the same time, it is this system, with its mode of production based on exploitative relations of production, that is the direct barrier to making this a reality—is a chain on the masses of people throughout the world, and on humanity overall.