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      in US Politics

      US logs a record 3,157 coronavirus deaths in one day

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      The US recorded its highest daily number of coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, as the number of people admitted to hospital with Covid exceeded 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.
      According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, 3,157 new deaths were recorded on Wednesday, more than the number of people killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The previous high was the 2,607 deaths recorded on 15 April, at the beginning of the pandemic.

      There were 200,070 new cases on Wednesday, only the second time that new cases had exceeded 200,000. With the total caseload now standing at 13,911,728, the US is expected to record its 14-millionth case on Thursday, and experts predict the death toll could reach nearly 450,000 by the end of February.
      The deaths, cases and hospitalizations showed a country slipping deeper into crisis, with perhaps the worst yet to come, in part because of the delayed effects from Thanksgiving last week, when millions of Americans disregarded warnings to stay home and celebrate only with members of their household.
      Across the US, the surge has swamped hospitals and left nurses and other healthcare workers shorthanded and burned out.
      “The reality is December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they are going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation,” Dr Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Wednesday.
      Redfield said that about 90% of hospitals in the country were at stretched capacity.
      “We are at a very critical time right now about being able to maintain the resilience of our healthcare system,” he said.
      The grave total came as Joe Biden, the president-elect, threw his weight behind a bipartisan $908bn coronavirus relief effort in Congress which would provide $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits and direct $160bn to states and cities.
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      Hospital admissions grew over the course of November, setting new records nearly every day. The American Ambulance Association referred to a 911 emergency call system “at a breaking point”.
      Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas said there were no staffed ICU beds in the south-west of the state, while in New Mexico, coronavirus patients were using 27% of hospital beds, which has left the state with just 16 intensive care beds left to spare.
      In California alone, more than 8,000 people were being treated for coronavirus on Wednesday, after the state saw a record number of hospitalizations for the fourth day in a row.
      Health authorities had warned that the numbers could fluctuate strongly before and after Thanksgiving, as they often do around holidays and weekends, when because of reporting delays, figures often drop, then rise sharply a few days later as state and local agencies catch up with the backlog.
      The White House coronavirus taskforce coordinator, Dr Deborah Birx, urged Americans who had travelled over the recent holiday weekend to behave as though they had the virus.
      “If you are under 40, you need to assume you became infected during the Thanksgiving period if you gathered beyond your immediate household. Most likely, you will not have symptoms; however, you are dangerous to others.”
      April’s peak of cases and deaths was concentrated mostly in New York and New England, but the current spread of the virus is across the whole country, and shows no sign of slowing down. Over 1.1m new cases have been recorded in the last seven days alone, and 273,621 people have died in total.
      Donald Trump’s few public appearances recently have been dedicated to efforts to overturn the results of the election rather than deal with coronavirus. Before the election, Trump said that the country was rounding the corner, and the media would no longer talk about Covid after the election.
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      The mayor of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the US, with a population of 3.9 million, warned it was nearing a “devastating tipping point” this week, as officials introduced new guidance prohibiting mingling of households.
      “It’s time to hunker down,” Eric Garcetti said. “It’s time to cancel everything. And if it isn’t essential, don’t do it.”
      Los Angeles’s restrictions are far from a blanket ban on activity, however, with retail businesses allowed to remain open if they implement a set of protocols, and golf courses, tennis courts and outdoor gyms allowed to remain open. Film and TV production are also allowed to continue.
      Los Angeles county, which includes Los Angeles and surrounding areas, is home to 10 million people and has recorded 414,185 infections so far. So far 7,740 people have died.
      Some coronavirus relief programs passed by Congress are due to expire at the end of the year. Twelve million people are due to lose unemployment benefits as Democrats and Republicans remain at an impasse over the size of a new relief package.
      The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a stimulus bill worth $3tn in May and has pushed for a more than $2tn measure in recent weeks, but have dropped their demands to a $908bn bill, which Biden said on Wednesday he would support.
      Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, supported a $1tn bill in the summer but abandoned that after criticism from conservatives. McConnell has since been fixed on a $550bn bill, which has twice failed in the Senate.
      The vice-president, Mike Pence, who has been leading the Trump administration response to the pandemic, will participate in a coronavirus response roundtable in Memphis on Thursday. More

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      in US Politics

      Obama, Clinton and Bush pledge to take Covid vaccine on TV to show its safety

      by

      Former US presidents Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton have pledged to get vaccinated for coronavirus on television to promote the safety of the vaccine.The trio’s effort comes as the Food and Drug Administration prepares to meet next week to decide whether to authorize a Covid-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech.More than 3,100 people died from the coronavirus in America on Wednesday, a record single-day high and more than the number of people killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.Obama, Bush and Clinton’s willingness to address the seriousness of the pandemic is markedly different from the attitude of Donald Trump, who remained silent as the US passed 250,000 coronavirus deaths in November.In an interview with SiriusXM host Joe Madison, Obama said that he would trust Anthony Fauci if the infectious disease expert declares a coronavirus vaccine to be safe.“People like Anthony Fauci, who I know, and I’ve worked with, I trust completely,” Obama said. “So, if Anthony Fauci tells me this vaccine is safe, and can vaccinate, you know, immunize you from getting Covid, absolutely, I’m going to take it.”Many Americans say they will not agree to be vaccinated against Covid-19. A poll by Gallup, released in mid-November, showed that 42% of the country would not take the vaccine even if it was “available right now at no cost”.Obama said he would take the vaccine once it was available for people “who are less at risk”. The 44th president is 59 and is not known to suffer from any serious health problems.“I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science, and what I don’t trust is getting Covid,” he added.Freddy Ford, Bush’s chief of staff, told CNN the former president is also willing to receive the vaccine on camera.“A few weeks ago, President Bush asked me to let Dr Fauci and Dr Birx know that, when the time is right, he wants to do what he can to help encourage his fellow citizens to get vaccinated,” Ford told CNN.“First, the vaccines need to be deemed safe and administered to the priority populations. Then, President Bush will get in line for his, and will gladly do so on camera.”Clinton’s press secretary told CNN that he too is prepared to be filmed as he takes the vaccine.“President Clinton will definitely take a vaccine as soon as available to him, based on the priorities determined by public health officials,” Angel Urena said. “And he will do it in a public setting if it will help urge all Americans to do the same.”The three presidents, along with Jimmy Carter and George H Bush, who died in 2018, previously teamed up to raise money for relief efforts for Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. More

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      in World Politics

      Agriculture Is India’s Ray of Hope in Time of Crisis

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      As India completes 73 years of independence, agriculture has emerged as a mainstay of the economy. Despite the COVID-19 crisis, Indian agriculture is poised to grow by an estimated 3% in 2020-21. Shaktikanta Das, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has acknowledged that agriculture remains a “beacon of hope” at a time the economy is shrinking.

      The government has announced a new agricultural policy that has drawn both supporters and detractors. Farmer protests have broken out in parts of the country. About 50,000 have marched to New Delhi from the agrarian state of Punjab, objecting to the loosening of price, storage and sales regulations that have traditionally shielded India’s farmers from the free market forces.

      Land Reform Can Transform India’s Economy

      READ MORE in this 360˚ Series

      As of August 25, the International Monetary Fund projected India’s real GDP growth to be 4.5% in 2020. This shrinking of the economy in a country with a growing population could lead to a major crisis. Already, jobs are scarce, industrial production has declined, services have suffered and demand has plummeted. Even after decades of independence, agriculture remains “the largest source of livelihoods in India.” As India gears up to celebrate Mahatma Gandhi’s 151st birthday, there is no better time than now to achieve the Gandhian vision of rural self-reliance.

      Blessing in Disguise

      COVID-19 has made rural areas more important than ever. On March 25, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown. It took the country by surprise. Millions of urban migrant workers were left with little choice but to walk home to their villages. Carrying their meager household possessions and with their small children in tow, many walked hundreds of kilometers, suffering thirst, hunger and pain. Some died en route.

      Embed from Getty Images

      India’s Economic Survey 2016-17 estimated the “annual inter-state migration [to be] about 5-6.5 million between 2001 and 2011.” In 2020, this migration has been reversed. People who fled rural areas for urban jobs have returned home. Chinmay Tumbe, a professor of economics at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and an expert on migration, estimates that 30 million migrants might have returned to their villages since the lockdown began. The number could be as high as 70-80 million if reverse intrastate migration is accounted for.

      The reverse migration from urban to rural areas might be a blessing in disguise. Over the last few decades, urban migration has led to overcrowding of cities, the proliferation of slums and much misery for poor migrants. In cities, they have lacked community, cultural moorings and social safety nets. The massive migration to India’s cities was a result of failed economic policies that focused on megacities while neglecting villages. Several studies have found that at least 60% to 70% of the migrant workers who returned to their native places are unlikely to return back to the cities, at least not in the near future. The millions of migrant workers, whom I refer to as agricultural refugees, flocked to cities because the government’s economic policies kept them impoverished.

      A recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in collaboration with ICRIER, a New Delhi-based think tank, concluded that Indian farmers suffered a cumulative loss of Rs. 45 lakh crore (over $600 billion) between 2000 and 2016-17 because of such policies. Subsequently, the NITI Aayog, a policy think tank of the government of India, admitted that, between 2011-12 and 2015-16, the growth in real farm incomes was less than 0.5% every year. It was 0.44% to be exact.

      Since then, the growth in real farm incomes has been near zero. With farm incomes growing painfully slowly and then stagnating, what else could be expected from the rural workforce but migration to cities where menial jobs as daily wage workers give many the only shot at survival?

      Despite the Hardships

      Despite these hardships, Indian farmers have toiled hard to produce a bumper harvest year after year. This has led to overflowing food stocks. Reports show that this abundance of food grains has come in handy. The government has been able to provide subsidized rations to over 720 million people during the four months of the post-COVID-19 lockdown. In addition, the government has been able to provide free rations to the needy.

      A buoyant agricultural output has hidden a severe agrarian crisis. Farmers get little money for their produce. With less money available in their hands, rural demand has dipped. This had led to a slowdown in the Indian economy even prior to the lockdown. In a country where the agricultural workforce accounts for nearly 50% of the population, the surest way to bolster the economy is to create more rural demand. This involves providing farmers with decent incomes.   

      The lockdown has increased downward pressure on farm incomes. It coincided with the rabi (winter crop) harvest season and resulted in a crash in demand for winter produce. Farmers suffered huge losses in the case of perishables such as vegetables, fruits, flowers, poultry, dairy and fish. Not all news is grim though. On May 15, the United States Department of Agriculture estimated that India is on course to produce “a record 295.7 million metric tons, with estimated record rice, wheat and corn production.”

      For the next kharif (monsoon crop) season, the sowing area coverage of summer crops has increased by 13.92% as compared to last year. With rains expected to be normal, and with a much higher area under cultivation, the kharif harvest will be bountiful just like the rabi one. It seems that in these times of crisis, agriculture alone provides a ray of hope in India.

      Aim for an Economic New Normal

      The coronavirus pandemic has come as a timely reminder of the limitations of dominant economic thinking. Its inherent bias and blind spots stand exposed. For the last two centuries and more, economics has sacrificed agriculture on the altar of industry. The dominant assumption is that industry drives productivity and growth.

      India has never quite managed to industrialize like, for example, the US or China. Still, it has kept farm incomes low and neglected public investment in agriculture for many decades. As per the RBI, this investment hovered around 0.4% of the GDP between 2011-12 and 2017-18. It is little surprise that agriculture has floundered in India.

      The time has come to change outdated economic thinking. Agriculture matters to India because it employs a majority of the country’s population. It provides food security to 1.3 billion people whose ancestors suffered repeated famines until a few decades ago. COVID-19 gives the country the opportunity to return not to normal, but to a new normal.

      The return of migrant labor to villages gives India the opportunity to reinvigorate its rural economy. The country must tap the socioeconomic wealth of rural enterprise, its diversity, and the traditional knowledge base. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat — a self-reliant India — can only be achieved through a focus on agriculture. A sharp focus, sensible policies and public investment can unleash growth not only in the sector but also in the country.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in Elections

      Joe Biden warns of 250,000 further Covid deaths 'between now and January' – video

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      President-elect Joe Biden has warned there may be 250,000 further deaths due to Covid-19 between ‘now and January’. The warning came in a virtual event on the economic impact of Covid-19, with Biden stressing the importance of remaining vigilant during the holidays. ‘We’re likely to lose another 250,000 people dead between now and January,’ Biden said. ‘You hear me? Because people aren’t paying attention’
      Covid deaths at highest level since April as Biden pledges to ‘fight like hell’ for US investment – live
      Coronavirus live news: former French president dies of Covid complications; global deaths near 1.5m More

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      in US Politics

      Bipartisan group pitches $908bn Covid-19 relief to break deadlock in Congress

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      [embedded content]
      A bipartisan group of US lawmakers on Tuesday unveiled a $908bn Covid-19 relief bill aimed at breaking a months-long deadlock between Democrats and Republicans over new emergency assistance for small businesses, unemployed people, airlines and other industries.
      The measure has not been written into legislation. Nor has it been embraced by the Trump administration, President-elect Joe Biden or leaders in the Senate or House of Representatives, all of whom would be needed for passage.
      But it comes with the backing of a group of conservatives and moderates who claim it will appeal to a broad swath of Congress. Economists and senior government figures, including the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, have warned the US economy is at risk unless Congress acts.
      Lawmakers are hoping to wrap up their work for the year by mid-December but they still have a massive government-funding bill to approve or else risk agency shutdowns starting on 12 December. If the bipartisan coronavirus aid bill gains traction, it could either be attached to the spending bill or advance on a separate track.
      “It would be stupidity on steroids if Congress left for Christmas without doing an interim package,” said Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat.
      Earlier this year, more than $3tn in coronavirus aid was enacted, which included economic stimulus measures and money for medical supplies. But since then negotiations about more aid have stalled in Congress.
      On Tuesday Powell told Congress that the outlook for the US economy was “extraordinarily uncertain” as the rise in Covid-19 cases continues to take an economic toll on the country. The latest monthly jobs report, released on Friday, is expected to show that the pace of recovery in the jobs market is continuing to slow.
      The plan was unveiled at a Capitol Hill news conference, amid a surge in coronavirus cases, with significant increases in deaths and hospital resources at a breaking point.
      The Republican senator Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, urged quick action on the bipartisan plan as she ticked off business closures mushrooming in her state “during a pretty dark and cold time of year”, with many suffering job losses and “food insecurity”.
      The proposal would provide emergency aid through 31 March, including $228bn in paycheck protection program funds for hotels, restaurants and other small businesses. State and local governments would receive direct aid, the lawmakers said.
      The Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican, appealed for help from Congress, noting in an interview on CBS that his state has more than 5,000 coronavirus patients in hospitals and not enough money to distribute the much-awaited Covid vaccines that are expected to be available beginning this winter.
      US airlines would receive $17bn for four months of payroll support as part of $45bn for the transportation sector that also includes airports, buses and Amtrak passenger rail, according to two people familiar with the plan.
      Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a Republican, said the bill contained $560bn in “repurposed” funding from the Cares Act enacted in March, with the remaining $348bn in new money.
      The measure includes provisions Republicans have been pressing for, including liability protections for businesses and schools. But it is far more expensive than the $500bn that the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has been advocating.
      The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and her fellow Democrats would win a central demand with the aid to state and local governments, which face layoffs of frontline workers.
      A compromise $300 a week for four months in additional unemployment benefits is in the package, according to the lawmakers. Democrats had been seeking $600.
      Separately, a group of Democratic senators introduced legislation on Tuesday that would extend until October 2021 the $600 a week in jobless benefits for workers who lost their jobs due to Covid-19.
      While it is significantly below the $2.2tn Pelosi sought in her last offer to the White House before the 3 November elections, the $908bn is for a relatively short period, potentially opening the door to additional requests for money once the Biden administration is in place.
      Pelosi and the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, were expected to discuss coronavirus aid and the must-pass government funding bill later on Tuesday. More