U.S. Versus China Covid
Deaths – A Symptom of Diseased Capitalism
By Finian Cunningham
November 21, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "Strategic
Culture Foundation
"The death toll
from the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States
is now well over 1.1 million. New mass
infections and the proliferation of
immune-resistant virus variants indicate the
death toll will continue to rise as the third
winter of the pandemic hits.
Europe faces a similarly bleak outlook of
mounting sickness and deaths from the novel
coronavirus known as SARS-Cov-2, which has
undergone numerous mutations since the world
pandemic was declared in early 2020. This is
while Western governments pretend that the
pandemic is over and adopt a policy of their
populations “living with Covid”.
Let’s put these figures in perspective. The
worldwide total deaths from the disease are
estimated at 6.6 million,
according to the authoritative Johns Hopkins
University. The U.S. death toll of 1.1 million
(and counting) represents over 16 percent of the
world’s total even though its national
population is only about 4.2 percent of the
globe.
China’s deaths from Covid-19 are around
5,200, according to the same database. That is
an astounding three orders of magnitude smaller.
Even though China has a population nearly four
times that of the United States, its mortality
figure is less than 0.5 percent of the U.S.
China’s population of 1.4 billion people is
about 18.5 percent of the globe. That means its
death toll from Covid-19 is approximately
0.00006 percent of the global deaths from the
disease. Again, the U.S. Covid death toll is
nearly 16 percent of the world.
Surely, any rational-thinking person would
want to explore the reasons for such a vast
disparity. But not, it seems, in the West where
the corporate media’s function is to stifle
critical thinking.
The stark and shocking contrast in these U.S.
and China figures is down to the difference
between capitalism and socialism.
The United States as with its capitalist
European allies has prioritized the imperative
of private profit over public health – by a long
shot.
Western governments have rushed to contrive a
return to “normal” business as usual. They have
relied on a vaccine-only solution which is shown
to be futile as the pandemic rebounds across
their populations.
An aggravating factor in the West has been
the denialism about the realities of the
Covid-19 disease. Many Americans in the ilk of
former President Donald Trump disparage the
virus as a hoax and view the wearing of face
masks and getting vaccinated as an infringement
on their “rights to individual freedom”.
The headlong rush to restore capitalist
profits as well as divisive politics in the West
have conspired to militate against implementing
a coherent and effective public health
management strategy to eradicate the
coronavirus.
By contrast, China has consistently
implemented a zero-Covid policy. China’s
socialist government has allocated financial and
human resources to pursue a comprehensive
strategy for eradicating the disease. This has
involved engaging in lockdowns of cities where
outbreaks occur, mass tracking and tracing using
hi-tech telecommunications and widely available
public testing for the disease. Chinese people
have also shown commendable rational and ethical
thinking about protecting others and working
collectively for the common good to defeat a
lethal disease.
Quarantine practices in China certainly can
be inconvenient for normal daily life and
travel. (I spent 10 days in quarantine during a
recent trip to China.) But the upshot is that it
works to contain and mitigate the disease. The
minor death toll from the pandemic relative to
the United States and Europe demonstrates the
success of China’s protection of public health.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that
the cornerstone of his country’s zero-Covid
policy is the protection of public health.
Short-term commercial considerations are
secondary. On a social and long-term economic
timeline, the Chinese policy is more viable as
well as ethical. As the Western ongoing death
and suffering from the pandemic illustrate, the
priority of capitalist profit-making is
self-defeating at the social level.
There are sound scientific reasons why
capitalism is failing over the pandemic. The
so-called “living with Covid” attitude of
Western governments is allowing the virus to
persist and thereby mutate into more lethal
variants. What is even more disturbing, the
newer sub-variants such as Omicron BA.5 are
showing a high level of immune-resistance. After
spending billions of dollars and euros to
benefit private pharmaceutical companies to
develop Covid vaccines these vaccines may well
become redundant.
New research
published earlier this month also shows that
reinfection with Covid-19 is leading to greater
long-term illness and mortality from other
diseases of the heart, lungs, and other organs.
Reinfections appear to be increasing across the
United States and Europe as the pandemic
persists.
A Reuters report on the study said:
“Reinfected patients had a more than doubled
risk of death and a more than tripled risk of
hospitalization compared with those who were
infected with Covid just once. They also had
elevated risks for problems with lungs, heart,
blood, kidneys, diabetes, mental health, bones
and muscles, and neurological disorders,
according to a report published in Nature
Medicine.”
China has succeeded spectacularly in
controlling Covid-19 and protecting its
population precisely because its government has
adhered to socialist policies. It is rather
absurd, if not obscene, that Western media have
tended to
deprecate China over its “zero-Covid policy”
because purportedly this is not emulating
Western capitalism.
The horrendous, unnecessary death toll in the
United States and Europe has been caused not so
much by a virus but by an underlying disease of
capitalist psychopathy. The callous, deliberate
killing of people from dereliction of duty to
conduct a humane and ethical health policy is
the despicable, criminal result.
Don’t blame the virus. Blame capitalism and
its political minions who willingly sacrifice
their people on the altar of private profit. The
system is anti-human and irrational from any
basic moral point of view. It is a failure as a
social organizing principle more than ever at
this moment in history.
This diseased political system is also why
the United States and its European “partners”
would rather fund a bloody war in Ukraine
against Russia or over Taiwan against China –
rather than actually feed, house and care for
their own increasingly desperate people.
Finian Cunningham
has written extensively on international
affairs, with articles published in several
languages. He is a Master’s graduate in
Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a
scientific editor for the Royal Society of
Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a
career in newspaper journalism. He is also a
musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he
worked as an editor and writer in major news
media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish
Times and Independent.
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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