By W. T. Whitney Jr.

It didn’t seem to fit. The website of the Colombian Communist Party on October 5 published an article in which author Félix León Martínez MD recharacterizes a disease. Martínez quotes extensively from an editorial appearing in the famous British medical journal Lancet. There, editor Richard Horton MD claims that COVID 19 is a “syndemic” rather than a disease. 

A disease manifests signs and symptoms. Usually causation and treatment of a disease are familiar. COVID 19 has signs and symptoms too, but Martínez and Horton say that as a syndemic, COVID 19 has causes and treatment methods that are still unknown. In his article, Martínez draws from Horton’s editorial to study the COVID 19 situation in Colombia. The present report aspires to do likewise in regard to the United States. We explore how the insights of both authors apply to managing the disease.   

Martínez, who is an academic investigator specializing in social protection and public health, maintains that “the [COVID 19] pandemic, although in principle a phenomenon of biological origin, affects each nation differently, according to the political, economic and social organization it has established.” His article’s title is “From Pandemic to Syndemic: Poor Prognosis.”  

Horton, as quoted by Martínez, states that, “We have viewed the cause of this crisis as an infectious disease … But … the story of COVID-19 is not so simple. Two categories of disease are interacting within specific populations—infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and an array of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). These conditions are clustering within social groups according to patterns of inequality deeply embedded in our societies. The aggregation of these diseases on a background of social and economic disparity exacerbates the adverse effects of each separate disease.”

As described by Horton, “Syndemics are characterized by biological and social interactions between conditions and states, interactions that increase a person’s susceptibility to harm or worsen their health outcomes … The hallmark of a syndemic is the presence of two or more pathological states that interact adversely with each other, adversely affecting the mutual course of each disease trajectory.” COVID-19, is more than a pandemic.

Horton observes that, “For the world’s poorest billion people today, Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) account for more than one-third of their disease burden.” And, “The most important consequence of seeing COVID-19 as a syndemic is to highlight its social origins. The vulnerability of older citizens, black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, and key workers, who are commonly underpaid and have fewer social protections, points to a hitherto barely recognized truth, namely that no matter how effective a treatment or protective vaccine is, the search for a purely biomedical solution to COVID-19 will fail.”

In his article Martínez highlights Colombia’s extreme economic inequalities. For example, 10% of landholders own 82% of the productive land, and soon “three of every five persons in Colombia will be living in a state of precariousness or poverty,” and “24% of the vulnerable middle class will fall again into poverty.”  

He notes that even before COVID 19 appeared in Colombia, mortality was increasing from heart attacks, cerebrovascular illnesses, and hypertension – the three major causes of death – and from diabetes. And these conditions, plus obesity, had become more frequent. Too many Colombians were finding healthcare to be inaccessible and/or of poor quality. Martínez points out that on being infected with COVID 19, the chronically ill are highly susceptible to terrible sickness and even death.

At this writing, nearly 29,000 Colombians have died from COVID 19, The case fatality rate is 3.1%, the 10^th highest in the world. Martínez cites a recent poll indicating that 16% of people in Bogota lack food and that 65% of households there include at least one person who is unemployed due to COVID 19.

Similarly in the United States, societal dynamics determine the likelihood of dying from COVID 19.  According to the CDC, Blacks, Indians, and Latinxs face at least 2.6 times the risk of being infected by COVID 19 as do white people. And COVID 19 death rates for Indians and Blacks are 1.4% and 2.1% greater, respectively, than the rate for white people.

But according to epidemiologist Sharrelle Barber, writing in the Lancet, “Blacks comprise 13% of the US population but roughly one quarter of COVID-19 deaths and are nearly four times more likely to die from COVID-19 compared to whites … Blacks across all age groups are nearly three times more likely than white people to contract COVID-19.”

Prior to the arrival of the virus, Black people and Latinxs were already more likely than whites to die from cancer, diabetes, hypertension, chronic respiratory disease, and other noncommunicable diseases. Their life expectancy at age 50 is significantly reduced, compared to U.S. whites.  As with Colombians, their burden of chronic ill health becomes dangerous on being infected with COVID 19. Multiple studies highlight the racial discrimination and racist attitudes that often limit their access to healthcare or the quality of care they receive.

The average African American family income in 2018 was $41,361; for white families, $70,642. The poverty rate for African Americans that year was 20.8%, more than twice that of whites. Indeed, poverty alone predisposes Blacks and Latinxs to serious illness or death from COVID 19. Low income often translates into lack of insurance or inability to pay; African-Americans may have no regular healthcare provider. Their work and housing situations frequently allow for easy exposure to the virus. Nevertheless, effects of low income and racism often merge, and are not easily separated for study.

Ideally, healthcare practice is collaborative. Physicians regularly seek help from colleagues knowledgeable about unusual medical conditions or skilled in special treatment methods. They seek consultation. Editor Richard Horton was advising infectious disease specialists themselves to seek consultation as they deal with COVID 19. Specifically: “Limiting the harm caused by SARS-CoV-2 will demand far greater attention to NCDs and socioeconomic inequality than has hitherto been admitted [and] Unless governments design policies and programs to reverse the deep disparities, our societies will never be truly safe from COVID-19.”

Both Horton and Martínez were inviting political practitioners – politicians and the people’s movement – to participate in fashioning all-encompassing programs of prevention and treatment. Also, in publishing Martínez’s article, the editors of the Colombian Communist Party website were, in effect, calling upon healthcare workers to attend to a sick society and, doing so, know who their consultants would be. These would include Communists and socialists who have advanced skills in this area.

Luis Arce, center, Bolivian presidential candidate for the Movement Towards Socialism Party, MAS, and running mate David Choquehuanca, second right, celebrate during a press conference where they claim victory after general elections in La Paz, Bolivia, Monday, Oct. 19, 2020. Early results indicate Bolivian voters massively rejected the right-wing policies of the government that took power after former President Evo Morales was overthrown in a coup last year.| Juan Karita / AP

Luis Arce and David Choquehuanca, presidential and vice-presidential candidates, respectively, for Bolivia’s Movement Toward Socialism Party (MAS), scored an overwhelming first-round election victory on Oct. 18. They won 53% of the vote, showing strength in cities and rural areas alike. MAS was formerly headed by deposed President Evo Morales.

The Supreme Election Tribunal certified the voting results based on exit polls. Right-wing presidential candidate Carlos Mesa, president of Bolivia from 2003 to 2005, garnered only 31.2% of the vote. Right-wing nationalist Luis Fernando Camacho accounted for another 14.1% of the total. Some 7.3 million Bolivians cast ballots.

From Buenos Aires, where he lives in exile, former President Morales proclaimed, “We have recovered democracy.” MAS gained control of both houses of parliament. At a Monday morning press conference, Morales said the ending of his exile was imminent. “Sooner or later we are going to return to Bolivia, that is not in debate.”

Morales, in power from 2006 until being overthrown in 2019, was Bolivia’s first Indigenous president. On his watch, Bolivia’s poor and mostly Indigenous majority secured rights and economic gains. Nationalization of oil and natural gas production turned into a revenue bonanza for social programs. Bolivia’s government was put on a secure financial footing. Morales gained worldwide attention for espousing Indigenous rights and for bringing attention to the global environmental crisis.

A military coup backed by the United States and the Organization of American States brought down Morales’s government on Nov. 10, 2019. In the process, Luis Fernando Camacho, a lead plotter and a recent presidential candidate, displayed fascist-like ideology and own brand of Protestant fundamentalism. Jeanine Añez, the coup government’s interim president, did not run in the recently completed elections.

Late on election day, the Supreme Election Tribunal and government officials for several hours delayed the release of early election results. A spokesperson for MAS  leveled the accusation that they sought a period of uncertainty that “might yield a climate of violence leading to the elections being nullified.”

Following the coup of 2019, the government of Añez canceled presidential elections set for May and for September. Her pretext was danger from COVID-19; though many viewed it as an effort to stall a bad outcome for the right wing. An observer suggested the delays actually gave time to Bolivians, allowing them to experience “[White] supremacist, racist, fascist-like politics [and] to make comparisons with what had been a revolutionary process that over 14 years changed the face and whole nature of this Bolivia.”

Indeed, unemployment moved from 3.9% in mid-2019 to 11.8% a year later; poverty increased markedly in 2020, and the rate of economic growth fell almost 6%.

Luis Arce served as economics minister under Morales from 2006 until the November 2019 coup. He arranged for nationalization of hydrocarbon extraction and the financing of social programs. He was chiefly responsible for Bolivia achieving the highest rate of GDP growth for Latin America and accumulating great amounts of foreign cash reserves.

Arce has proposed new taxation on Bolivia’s very wealthy. He recently claimed that MAS was “the only political party that guarantees that natural resources, including lithium, will not be privatized and handed over to transnationals.”

Many technology companies, including those that manufacture batteries for electric cars and mobile phones, have an interest in controlling the country’s lithium reserves, believed to be among the world’s largest.

Bolivia’s incoming vice president, David Choquehuanca, whose heritage is Indigenous and who is experienced in union organizing among rural workers, served as President Morales’s foreign minister from 2006 until January 2017.

Bolivian journalist and educator Mario Rodríguez saluted, “a victory in enemy territory, in a conservative enclave where the most fascist politics that can be are concentrated. [It’s] … a triumph over money, media power, and the dominant powers.”

In his own remarks, Luis Arce said nothing about inevitable speculation among democratic forces worldwide that his victory might strengthen resistance against recently installed neoliberal, U.S.–aligned governments in Latin America.

“We are recovering hope,” he declared, plus “the certainty that small, medium-sized, and big businesses will benefit, as will the public sectors and Bolivian families. I will govern for all Bolivians and, above all, with work to revamp efforts at achieving economic stability for the country.”

By W. T. Whitney Jr. 

Source: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/remembering-claudia-jones-communist-leader-who-spoke-for-black-women/

December 24 marks the death in 1964 of Claudia Jones. A member of the U.S. Communist Party’s National Committee and executive secretary for its Women’s Commission, Jones died in England, nine years after her deportation there. We recall her life and contributions. Her analysis of black women’s oppression and her vision of black women as political activists are meaningful today.

Her 16 – page article titled “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women” appeared in the June 1949 issue of “Political Affairs.” (1) There, Jones describes the origins and varieties of oppression against black women. What with continuing subjugation of black women, her message is relevant now. The ripple effect of what happens to women adds to the staying power of Jones’ ideas: children’s education, health, and even survival depend on women flourishing. Men who no longer dominate women may themselves gain a measure of liberation.

Jones begins: “Negro women – as workers, as Negros, and as women – are the most oppressed stratum of the whole society.”   There is “growth in the militant participation of Negro women in all aspects of the struggle for peace, civil rights, and economic security.” In fact, “the capitalists know, far better than most progressives seem to know, that once Negro women take action, the militancy of the whole Negro people, and thus of the anti-imperialist coalition, is greatly enhanced.” 

Jones identifies black women’s special capabilities. “From the days of the slave traders down to the present,” they’ve been the guardians, protectors, and advocates for their children and families. Thus, “it is not accidental that the American bourgeoisie has intensified its oppression, not only of the Negro people in general, but of Negro women in particular.” She observes black women organizing their own mass organizations; they “are the real active forces – the organizers and workers – in all the institutions of the Negro people.” 

Claudia Jones sees “a developing consciousness on the women question today.”  Therefore, “the Negro woman who combines in her status the worker, the Negro, and the woman, is the vital link to this heightened political consciousness.”  But “the Negro question is prior to and not equal to the woman question,” she states. 

Jones points to economic abuse of black people.  She examines the plight of domestic workers and organized labor’s exclusion of black workers. But she finds the line separating race – based oppression from oppression as workers to be blurred. That’s natural, because black women “far out of proportion to other women workers, are the main breadwinners in their families.” She calls upon unions to take in black women and for domestic workers to be organized. 

Employed white women, she notes, were receiving twice the hourly wage granted to black women workers. The median family income of whites in northern cities exceeded that of black families by 60 percent. (In 2015, the average hourly income for white and black women workers was $17 and $13, respectively; white families’ median income that year was 70 percent higher than black families’ income.)

Jones laments that, “The maternity death rate for Negro women is triple that of white women.”  She points to high death rates for black children. (Death rates for black mothers in our own era – in 2012 – are almost four times that of white mothers. Yes, death rates for black infants and older children in Jones’ era were twice those for white children, and that hasn’t changed.) 

Jones castigates white chauvinism.  She objects to the label “girl” applied to older black women, to progressives’ and even Communists’ hesitation at socializing with black women associates, and to Communists’ reluctance to recruit black women, alleging they are “too backward.” She denounces “bourgeoisie ideologists” for relegating all women to “kitchen, church, and home,” but also for ignoring the presence of black domestic workers “in other people’s homes.”  She thinks black men have “a special responsibility in rooting out attitudes of male superiority as regards women in general.”  

Included in Jones’ survey are emblematic news stories of assaults on black women and snippets of dialogue highlighting regressive attitudes. She identifies individual black women who resisted and/or organized labor actions. Jones argues for black women – the “most exploited” women – joining progressive organizations and the Communist Party. 

Through “active participation” as workers in the “national liberation movement,” black women will “contribute to the entire American working class, whose historic mission is the achievement of a Socialist America – the final and full guarantee of women’s emancipation.” 

Her essay concludes: “The strong capacities, militancy, and organizational talents of Negro women can … be a powerful lever for bringing forth Negro workers – men and women – as the leading forces of the Negro people’s liberation movement, for cementing Negro and white unity in the struggle against Wall Street imperialism.”  

Claudia Jones wrote and acted by the light of her own life experience. Extreme poverty forced her family’s emigration from Trinidad to New York. Her over-worked mother died there, and living conditions for Claudia and her sisters deteriorated. Jones spent a year recuperating in a tuberculosis sanatorium. She was a superior high – school student, but instead of college, she worked in laundries and factories to support her family.  

Soon – in 1936 – she was organizing for the Young Communist League and working for the Communist Party’s “Daily Worker” newspaper. She moved to writing and editorial assignments with other Party publications and to the Party’s “Negro Commission.” Her “Half the World” column – meaning women – appeared regularly in the Daily Worker. 

Claudia Jones’ life took a tragic turn.  Tried and imprisoned under the anti-communist Smith Act, she was deported to England in 1955. She died prematurely at age 49. Elements of Caribbean culture and politics, and of black people’s nationalism, had informed Claudia Jones’ activism and writings in the United States.  In London, she founded and edited the West Indian Gazette. To counter “white racists,” she organized the Notting Hill Caribbean Carnival, which continues. 

(1) Jones’ 1949 article “An end to the neglect…” may be read at: https://palmm.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/ucf%3A4865  On December 2, 2016, Rebelion.org featured a version in Spanish of Jones’ article. It had appeared on the Basque Communist Party platform (Boltxe Kolektiboa) at: https://www.boltxe.eus/acabar-abandono-los-problemas-las-mujeres-negras/