As opposition to mandates and the so-called “green passports” grows around the world, are we seeing a new assault to break the resistance?
US:
Joe Biden’s plummeting approval ratings and the potential recall of Gavin Newsom are the first salvos to be fired by an electorate that is sick and tired of being treated like an errant toddler by a duplicitous and entitled elite.
“I will use my power as president to get them out of the way.”
The follow up question from the press should be “Excuse me, how will you get ‘them’ out of the way?” This phrase uttered by America’s increasingly authoritarian POTUS perfectly describes the current administration’s approach. The neoliberal power set see themselves as the gatekeepers of the moral high ground.
Opinions regarding the president’s authority or lack thereof were strongly split along party lines, with 54.9% of Democrats agreeing Biden did in fact have the power to order private businesses to demand their employees be vaccinated. Among Republicans, however, 83.5% believed the president was overstepping his authority, and more than two thirds of independents and those with no party affiliation (68.2%) agreed Biden lacked the ability to make such demands.
Similarly, the vast majority of Republicans – 79.5% – believed the vaccine mandate set a dangerous precedent that “could be abused by future presidents on other issues,” an opinion shared by 58% of non-affiliated voters and even 30.4% of Democrats. The majority of those hailing from Biden’s party, however (54.4%), did not believe the mandate would be abused by future leaders.
Biden’s announcement on Thursday regarding the pending vaccine mandate has polarized the nation, with even many fully vaccinated Americans balking at using government muscle to force a controversial medical treatment on unwilling individuals. Several Republican governors have vowed not to enforce the mandate, a show of defiance which won support from 55.1% of the poll’s respondents. Some 40.1% opposed the governors’ efforts to block Biden’s mandates, however. Party affiliation heavily predicted whether one supported or opposed the dissident governors, with the majority of unaffiliated voters (62.3%) also supporting the governors who had vowed to block the mandate.
China:
The Chinese authorities have said that Covid-19 infections in the southeastern province of Fujian have more than doubled in the previous 24 hours. Preliminary tests suggest the Delta variant is responsible for some of the cases.
On Tuesday the Chinese National Health Commission said that 59 new locally transmitted cases had been identified on Monday. The figure is nearly a threefold increase over Sunday, when only 22 infections were registered.
The cases were all found in southeastern Fujian province, which is bordered by Zhejiang to the north and Guangdong to the south. A total of 102 local infections have been registered in the past four days, including in the transport hub of Xiamen, which is home to some five million people.
The outbreak has already engendered a quick reaction from the local authorities, with Fujian province sent into lockdown on Monday night. Residents in the city of Xiamen were put under “closed-loop” management – which means people are banned from leaving their local area and all entertainment venues are shut down.
According to the South China Morning Post, more than 1,000 people have been sent into quarantine, including schoolchildren, and the mid-autumn festival has been cancelled.
An earlier outbreak in July and August saw the state impose strict measures, citywide testing campaigns and harsh lockdowns. This time the outbreak comes ahead of the week-long National Day holiday starting on October 1.
The repetitive outbreaks are despite China’s considerable progress in vaccinating against Covid-19. To date, the country has administered 2.15 billion vaccines.
Russia:
Russian President Vladimir Putin will go into self-isolation as a result of at least one person around him testing positive for coronavirus, the Kremlin has announced. He is still expected to appear at meetings via video-link.
Russia has seen a third wave of infections in recent weeks, with 17,837 positive tests for the virus recorded in the past 24 hours. A further 781 patients were said to have died from Covid-19, bringing the total death toll since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 to 194,249.
Israel:
A prominent Israeli vaccine skeptic, who earlier accused the Jerusalem police of trying to poison him, telling his followers that “if anything happens” to him they should assume he was “assassinated,” has died of Covid-19.
Hai Shaulian, an anti-vaxxer with a significant social media following and an organizer of protests against facemasks and vaccination, died at the age of 57 on Monday morning from complications linked to Covid-19, according to the Jerusalem Post and other local outlets.
In a video he published on social media from his hospital bed several days before his passing, Shaulian claimed he had been mistreated by the police after his arrest in early September. The activist was detained at a protest against the Green Pass system – which limits access to venues and events for unvaccinated Israelis – in Jerusalem and brought before the judge the next day. Shortly after that, he started feeling unwell and was placed in Edith Wolfson Medical Center in Holon where his tests returned positive for Covid-19. Shaulian was, obviously, not vaccinated against the virus.
In the clip, he said that after his arrest, an officer put his leg on his neck and went as far as suggesting that “the Jerusalem police tried to poison” him because of his campaigning.
Israel has carried out one of the world’s largest immunization drives, fully vaccinating more than 60% of its population with Pfizer jab and already delivering a third – booster – shot to some 2.8 million people. However, a major proportion of the public, including many Arabs and Orthodox Jews, still refrain from getting inoculated, with anti-vaxxers holding regular protests and actively using social media to question the government’s policies.
Czech Republic:
The president of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman, has been hospitalized, although no information on his condition has been provided. He is known to oppose current mandated vaccination and the Western vaccines; supported Sputnik V and Sinopharm instead.
Former President Václav Klaus, who served between 2003-2013, is also currently in the military hospital, having been admitted over the weekend.
