Wall Street banks go to the front of the line for H1N1 shots

By Tom Eley

7 November 2009

With millions who need the the H1N1 vaccine unable to get it, major financial firms in New York, among them Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, have received larger distributions of the inoculation than many hospitals.

As of late October, Citigroup had been given 1,200 doses, more than half of its request, and Goldman Sachs had received 200 doses of the 5,400 it requested, about 4 percent.

By contrast, a major New York City hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has been given only 200 of 27,400 doses, less than 1 percent of what it asked for its doctors, nurses, and staff, who will be responsible for caring for the sick in the event of a major outbreak.

Nationwide, hospitals, clinics, and pediatricians have received only a small fraction of what they need, a result of the failure of major pharmaceutical corporations to produce an adequate supply as promised.

Just over 35 million doses of the vaccine are now available, but there are nearly 160 million Americans defined as “high risk” who should be inoculated. According to a survey by the Harvard School of Public Health, only about one third of those who have tried to get the vaccine have been able to do so.

All over the country, the dearth of the vaccine has resulted in long lines at hospitals and clinics, school closures, and a rising number of deaths. H1N1 has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 in the US and 5,000 globally.

The distribution to Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and 13 other New York City-based organizations—including JP Morgan Chase, Time Warner, and the Federal Reserve Board of New York—was ordered by local health officials and approved by the Obama administration’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Spokesmen for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs claim that the vaccines have only been administered to employees in high-risk categories, including pregnant women. “Like other responsible employers, [Goldman Sachs] has requested vaccine and will supply it only to employees who qualify,” a company representative said.

These assurances mean little. Having been given the vaccine dosages, the banks distribute them without supervision. More to the point, why should wealthy executives and traders—even those with compromised immune systems—be given precedence over health care workers, children, and pregnant women in the public at large? Why can’t the bankers and traders at the Wall Street firms go wait in line like everyone else?

Aware that the spectacle of flu vaccine hoarding by the same big Wall Street firms that received hundreds of billions in taxpayer bailout money could trigger a public backlash, the Obama administration has shifted to damage control.

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the CDC, wrote a letter to health officers warning them that policies “that appear to direct the vaccine to people outside the identified priority groups have the potential to undermine the credibility of the program.”

The Obama administration and public health officials in New York have alternately claimed the decision to put the big banks at the front of the line was a mistake, and defended the policy as “a great avenue for vaccinating people at risk,” as Jessica Scaperotti of New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene put it.

Such protestations are absurd. From both a medical and organizational standpoint, hospitals, elementary schools and nursing homes are much better candidates for the distribution of immunizations.

This is confirmed by the CDC’s own list of at-risk populations, which includes children and health care workers, teenagers, people caring for infants under the age of six months, pregnant women, and those with respiratory health problems. These categories hardly call to mind the well-heeled executives and traders at Wall Street banks.

What underlays the decision to distribute immunizations to major private entities ahead of hospitals and schools is neither a mistake nor an objective assessment of the medical value of such distributions.

The episode demonstrates the supremacy of America’s financial elite, which increasingly dictates every policy decision and every facet of social life, and more and more takes on the trappings of an aristocracy. Any government response to a disaster of nature, disease, or, soon enough, social revolt, will take as its first order of business the preservation of this narrow layer.

The inescapable essence of the matter is this: it is taken for granted in government that the lives and health of the rich are worth more than those of the working class. The vaccine distribution to Goldman Sachs and Citigroup was not “caught” precisely because the banks’ privileged position is assumed.

Yet the arrogance and presumptuousness of the financial aristocracy is itself becoming an explosive factor in the political life of the nation.

This has been reflected in the public reaction to the revelations about the vaccine distribution to Wall Street, and the phony denunciations by the likes of Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, who has been for many years among the most favored recipients of the finance industry’s campaign contributions.

The allocation of scarce vaccines to the big banks is in fact entirely in keeping with the Obama administration’s response to the economic crisis. The US government has given over trillions to the banking industry to help it profit from the financial collapse of its own making. Meanwhile, the Obama administration refuses any jobs program that would counter mass unemployment, as the official jobless rate surges over 10 percent.

The revelation that Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and others have cornered for themselves a share of the vaccine supply is yet another example of destructive impact of the capitalist market on public health.

Last spring, the Obama administration turned over the production of the vaccine to a handful of large pharmaceutical firms. Because the industry finds vaccines unprofitable, it relies on outdated production methods. This explains the shortage of the vaccine.

But even were there an adequate supply, it would have to be distributed through an American public health system that has been the victim of decades of cuts and layoffs—a trend accelerated in the current economic crisis. The situation is such that President Obama declared a national emergency on October 23, relaxing rules so special distribution centers might be put in place.

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Student protests in Austria

By Markus Salzmann and Johannes Stern

7 November 2009

Student protests in Austria reached a new high point on Thursday with a nationwide day of action. Large demonstrations were held in several cities. In Vienna, the capital, thousands of students took to the streets, resulting in massive traffic jams.

Last week, more than 40,000 university and school students marched through Vienna with the slogan: “More money for education, not the banks and corporations.” Now, thousands have again taken to the streets to protest against the horrible conditions at Austria’s universities and against further cuts to the educational system.

The protest began on October 20 with a press conference at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Students and teachers are demanding “Re-democratization instead of neo-liberal policies” and the “ending of the Bologna process” to standardise higher education throughout the European Union. In particular they oppose the introduction of bachelor’s degree studies at the academy.

These demands were quickly taken up and expanded. In a demonstration on October 22, called by the academy, hundreds of students took part, expressing dissatisfaction with their living and studying conditions.

At the University of Vienna, university students have occupied the Audimax central lecture hall for the last two weeks. There have also been protest actions at universities in Linz, Klagenfurt, Salzburg, Innsbruck and Graz. In Germany, the universities at Heidelberg and Münster have also been occupied.

Since then, the Audimax has served as the centre for the protest movement, which developed spontaneously and independently of the establishment parties and their student organizations. Students discuss their demands at a daily plenum and it is possible to follow these discussions and participate in various forums via live streaming on the Internet.

The students’ demands include the abolition of tuition fees, the lifting of entrance restrictions at universities and colleges of further education, more rights for students to influence what happens in higher education, better equipment in all educational establishments, as well as the provision of sufficient and well-paid teaching staff.

The students’ anger is mainly directed against the parties in the grand coalition government, the Austrian Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP). Science Minister Johannes Hahn (ÖVP) is demanding further entrance restrictions be introduced at the universities.

The previous right-wing coalition government of the ÖVP and the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) pushed through substantial cuts in education. Through introducing tuition fees, the government sought to reduce the state budget, on the one hand, while “raising” the level of the universities, i.e., by making them more selective. Tuition fees were introduced in 2001, which led to a noticeable and rapid decline in the number of students.

In the 2006 election campaign, the SPÖ promised to abolish tuition fees. But they remained in place after it won the election. In 2008, new legislation was supposed to make it easier for poor students to avoid paying the fees. However, this cosmetic measure has had little benefit for those from less well-off families, and for the most part they are still obligated to pay.

Science Minister Hahn has called the occupation “illegal,” and made clear that the government will not listen to the students’ demands. At a meeting with university student representatives he opposed making any concessions. Chancellor Werner Faymann (SPÖ), who for a long time has made no statement about the protests, is maintaining the government line.

Only the mayor of Vienna, Michael Häupl (SPÖ), has said the demonstrators have raised “justified demands.” Since he supports the retention of tuition fees, however, his stance is hypocritical. His feigned support for the students is bound up with next year’s elections for the state legislature in Vienna. Following the continuous defeats for the SPÖ in recent months, Häupl is afraid the party will also lose its majority in the capital.

All parties—from the right-wing extremist FPÖ, to SPÖ and the Greens—share responsibility for the cuts and the imposition of market-politics in education. In conjunction with the introduction of tuition fees, university funding is also being cut. It is estimated today that at least 50 percent of students are compelled to work as well as study.

Hahn and other government representatives try to lay the blame on the students themselves. Hahn has already unleashed a debate about “numerus clausus refugees” from the quota restrictions in Germany, who are allegedly driving up university costs in Austria, and whose numbers can only be curbed by imposing entrance restrictions.

Right-wing student groups on the fringes of the FPÖ, with the energetic support of some in the media, deride the “utopian demands” of the “lazy” students.

However, the official student representatives are also unable to offer the protesters any far-reaching perspective. The university student representative body is dominated by the student organizations of the SPÖ, the ÖVP and the Greens. The demonstrations in Vienna were organised by the SPÖ’s Socialist Youth organisation, from which it has recruited its leading cadres for decades.

If the protests for a comprehensive and solidarity-based educational system are to be successful they must be directed against these political forces. The transformation of education into a commodity and its subordination to the immediate interests of the market are directly linked to the capitalist crisis.

The attacks on education in recent years cannot be seen separately from the attacks on the working and living conditions of the general population. According to the latest forecasts, the Austrian economy will continue to decline, with unemployment growing well into 2010, in particular among young people. At the same time, the SPÖ and ÖVP are working on new “reforms,” which will further weaken what remains of the welfare state.

In this situation, the Austrian government and all the parliamentary parties regard the student protests as a great danger. Under no circumstances should they be allowed to link up with the labour disputes that are inevitable in view of the economic crisis. Therefore the student organizations of the SPÖ (Socialist Youth) and the Greens (GAJ) are seeking to influence the protest movement—with the aim of keeping it under control.

If the protests are to be successful and implement their demands, such attempts at influence and control by the established parties and organizations must be sharply rejected. It is necessary to discuss and develop a political perspective that wages a struggle against the capitalist social order. It is necessary to do the very thing that the ruling class fears most: to orient the protests to the working class.

Broad sections of working people support the students’ protests because they are confronted with the same economic and social problems. A poll by the Klagenfurt Humanininstitut found that 42 percent of those surveyed support the student protests, while only 28 percent oppose them.

The aim must be the construction of an independent political movement that redistributes the existing social wealth and places the economy under the democratic control of the population. Such a struggle can only be led successfully on the basis of an international, socialist programme.

The International Students for Social Equality (ISSE) calls on university and school students to study our programme and actively take part in this struggle.