By Roger Stoll, Task Force member

Chinese doctors in Hubei Province,  Photo: str/afp

COVID-19 has reached every country in the world, and we now know that whether or not the disease kills in great numbers does not depend on GDP. With some exceptions, poorer, socialist-oriented nations have protected their citizens, while rich capitalist nations have not.

The starkest comparison is China, at 4,634 deaths, and the US, with 100,000 and rapidly rising. This is a paradox, if national wealth matters. China has one-eighth the wealth per capita and four times the population of the US. And China faced a wholly new disease, while the US had weeks to expect COVID-19, its symptoms and infectiousness already known.

But China is building socialism, while the US is decidedly capitalist, as are Belgium, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and Netherlands. Like the US, these countries have among the world’s highest rates of deaths per capita. (Two capitalist exceptions, South Korea and New Zealand, followed China’s lead and beat the virus.)

China’s discovery, announcement and suppression of the disease is celebrated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and worldwide. Government financial support for the population made economic shutdown possible; hundreds of thousands of volunteers and medical personnel were mobilized; massive transports of food and supplies went to the outbreak in Hubei Province.

US failure to fight the disease was perhaps inevitable. Decades of bi-partisan austerity had produced extreme inequality, poverty, homelessness, mass incarceration in crowded, inhumane facilities, inaccessible health care, and little medical preparedness. The shutdown was belated and haphazard, cruelly forcing people out of work without replacing incomes. Nor did the US initiate mass-testing, contact-tracing, and other measures WHO’s experts recommended. Adding insult to injury, the multi-trillion dollar CARES Act has little to do with COVID-19 or helping people, much less “essential workers” (low-wage, undocumented, of color, most at risk). Greatly exacerbating US inequality, the House passed CARES on a voice vote without Democratic objection.

In Latin America, Ecuador, Bolivia and Honduras, poorer capitalist countries with governments largely imposed by the US, followed the leader in acting late and ineffectually. In Ecuador, Bolivia and Honduras, death statistics are low but far less reliable than elsewhere. Bodies line the streets of Guayaquil, Ecuador, testifying to the disaster. Bolivia performs the least COVID-19 testing in all Latin America, while exploiting the quarantine to arrest members of the coup-ousted party of Evo Morales (MAS). In Honduras, COVID-19 deaths mount and healthcare services are limited. Government corruption defeats procurement of COVID-19 equipment.

The WHO now designates the entire Americas as the disease epicenter. Brazil’s healthcare system is overwhelmed and the dead are placed in mass graves; the indigenous die at twice the national rate. Among wealthier countries of the region, Chile’s healthcare system is reaching its limit, and Colombia, Argentina and Peru have failed to flatten the curve.

Along with China, states with the lowest rates of deaths per capita include Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Vietnam, and India’s Kerala state. All but Venezuela and Kerala inherited socialist revolutions; Venezuela pursues a socialist project, and Kerala’s government is led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Cuba’s exemplary healthcare system has produced longevity and infant mortality statistics superior to many rich countries. It uses immune-system-boosting treatments and nationwide disease monitoring to fight the virus. Sandinista Nicaragua’s health system acted early, organizing 250,000 volunteers to monitor the disease across the country. Venezuela’s Bolivarian “Barrio Adentro” healthcare system used house-to-house screening for the disease, a model studied by the UN.

In global solidarity, Cuba’s COVID-19 medical brigades are in twenty-four countries; China uses Cuba’s anti-viral drug, and its disease experts are in Iran, Europe and elsewhere; Russia, Iran and Vietnam directly and indirectly aid the international effort.

Perversely, the US works against solidarity, blaming China and the WHO for US failure and rejecting the WHO’s multi-national efforts. Previously, the US unsuccessfully pressured a German pharmaceutical for future vaccine rights. Indeed, the US expressed fear China would find a vaccine and give it to the world, which China’s President Xi Jinping has just pledged to do, making any vaccine it discovers a “global public good…ensuring vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” And crassly, the US blocked 20 ventilators bound for Barbados, 60 million masks bound for France, and outbid Massachusetts and New Mexico for medical supplies, while Maryland’s governor hid masks and ventilators to keep the federal government from seizing them.

China, Russia, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are under crushing US sanctions or blockades. US-backed wars continue, including in Syria and Yemen (with the worst cholera outbreak in modern history). US coup attempts on Venezuela continue. The virus only increases this US-authored suffering.

The US itself is a disease vector. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has carried out hundreds of deportations, including people infected or exposed, to Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Colombia and Jamaica. The US military conceals or denies outbreaks in its ranks, yet moves personnel to and from its 800-1000 close-quartered military bases worldwide.

None of this should surprise. If the US cared about human life, including at home, it could end hunger and bring potable water to the world. Over half the world’s annual 60 million deaths result from malnutrition and contaminated drinking water, both remediable for about $40 billion a year.

In the fight against the pandemic, popular mobilizations within nations and solidarity between them is being led not by the richest nations in the world but by socialist countries and governments. Humanity must follow.

Source: Task Force on the Americas