Soon after the emergence of COVID-19, the International Committee of the Fourth International made the correct analysis that the pandemic had to be understood as a trigger event in world history. It did not create a crisis in public health, but rather exposed and accelerated longstanding processes: the erosion of life expectancy, the dismantling of scientific institutions, and the subordination of human life to the profit requirements and military-strategic interests of the financial oligarchy.
The world has now entered the seventh year of the COVID pandemic, with the United States facing the 12th major wave of infections. Conservative estimates place cumulative COVID deaths in the United States at over 1.2 million, while excess-mortality analyses indicate a substantially higher toll. Globally, excess-mortality…