As Coronvirus Grips the US, Americans Get a Taste of Life Under Sanctions

Crippling shortages, travel restrictions and overwhelmed medical services is what it's like for the millions under US sanctions

Across fifty states, Americans are collectively bracing for the incoming COVID-19 pandemic to hit. In the face of the virus, people are resorting to panic buying, stocking up on vital foods and goods, leading to pressing shortages of key products like hand sanitizer and toilet paper.

Perhaps more concerning, however, is that health experts all agree that the country is ill-equipped for the coming medical emergency. “We are not prepared, nor is any place prepared for a Wuhan-like outbreak,” said Dr. Eric Toner of Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “And we would see the same sort of bad outcomes that they saw in Wuhan – with a very high case fatality rate, due largely to people not being able to access the needed intensive care.” Chief among the problems is a lack of ventilators, a crucial machine to help critically ill patients breathe properly. New York City, for example, has barely one sixth of the ventilators it would need for a critical outbreak. If things get truly bad, the city has drafted laws to compel prisoners at Rikers Island jail to dig mass graves.

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One of the principal reasons why the U.S. is so unprepared is that it spends so little on public health in comparison with what it spends on war. The U.S. military’s projected budget is $934 billion per year, the Pentagon’s is $712 billion. In contrast, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) costs the taxpayer only $6.6 billion. At a time of crisis, many Americans are reassessing which organization they feel is truly protecting them from danger. While increasing the military budget, President Trump has consistently argued for cuts to the CDC. Amazingly, the Trump administration confirmed last week that it intends to slash funding from the body, even as the country begins reeling from the impact of COVID-19.

The crippling shortages, inability to move and the likely overwhelming of medical services will give Americans a taste of what it is like to live under sanctions that it imposes on a number of countries worldwide. U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, declared illegal and a “crime against humanity” by the United Nations, are conservatively estimated to have killed more than 40,000 people between 2017 and 2018 alone. Diabetics, for example, have been unable to get insulin because of the embargo, leading to mass deaths. The Cuban government estimates that the American embargo has cost it over $750 billion. Meanwhile, Iran, wracked by the virus that has caused more than 850 confirmed deaths, has been decimated by Trump’s increased sanctions.

The Iranian rial lost 80 percent of its value, food prices doubled, and rents and unemployment soared. Because of the sanctions, patients with conditions like leukemia and epilepsy have been unable to get treatment. After the coronavirus hit it, no country would sell the Islamic Republic basic medical supplies like masks, fearful of reprisals from the world’s only superpower. The shortages are so bad that doctors are being forced to share facemasks with other hospital staff. Eventually the World Health Organization stepped in and began supplying Iran directly. The Iranian government also invented an app to deal with COVID-19, hoping to share information with its citizens to help fight its spread but Google removed it from its app store citing the sanctions that prevent it from promoting anything Iranian-made. The effect of the sanctions in helping spread COVID-19 across Iran and beyond is immeasurable.

Despite the circumstances, countries under American pressure are trying their best to stem the outbreak. In Venezuela, doctors have begun going door-to-door with sanitation workers and medical students, checking temperatures and providing information and consultation to the population for free. Cuba, meanwhile, is actually exporting medical professionals, sending them both to less advantaged neighbors like Jamaica and to advanced countries like Italy.

The Cuban pharmaceutical industry is world-renowned, and a local antiviral drug, Interferon Alpha 2b, has proved crucial in limiting deaths in China. The Cubans were forced to develop their industry due to U.S. sanctions limiting what they could import. China, Cuba and Venezuela are working together with Italy to try to halt the virus’ spread.

Iran appears willing to do everything to slow the epidemic within its borders. Last week it announced it was even releasing 70,000 prisoners from its jails. In contrast, incarcerating more people seems to be a priority for American authorities. ICE recently launched a huge new crackdown, attempting to “flood the streets” with agents. Last night, it used the chaos caused by the pandemic to fly six detained children from Dallas to New York.

The Trump administration is also attempting to pressure a German pharmaceutical company to provide it with an exclusive coronavirus vaccine “only for the United States,” something that was met with utter disgust in Europe. “Germany is not for sale,” roared its economy minister, Peter Altmaier. Meanwhile, American pharmaceutical giant Gilead is trying to block China’s use of a potential coronavirus treatment, arguing that China would give it away free to the rest of the world, hurting the company’s profits. This is despite the fact Gilead used people in Wuhan as guinea pigs for research.

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Despite being praised by the World Health Organization for its response, Washington appears to be very angry at China. At the Democratic presidential debate last night Senator Bernie Sanders was asked, “What consequences should China face for its role in this global crisis?” – a question that suggested sanctions were in order for Beijing. Perhaps given they now have a taste of what the reality of sanctions entail, the American public may not be as supportive of them as they have been in the past.

Source: MintPress News

20 Comments
  1. StopIsraeliGenocideInPalestine says

    Dear Americans – a simple cataclysmic event and you are done. R. I. P.

  2. Jozo Magoc says

    Job of the satanic,zioNazi jews known as ashkeNazis,ash claiming to be ” 4 million alone in Auschwitz”,yet the only real Nazis in this world! 6 trillion holyhoax claims…

  3. David Chu says

    Returning bad karma is a bitch . . .

    And this is just the beginning. When those ICBMs start landing, that’s when ALL of the evil karma of the United States begins to descend upon the heads of its citizens. And THEY are responsible for the actions and lack-of-actions of their psychopathic and genocidal government including their military and CIA.

    1. Jozo Magoc says

      Genocidal government= satanic,zionist ashkeNazi jews,ash claiming to be in Auschwitz,but the only Nazis in this world!!!

      1. StopIsraeliGenocideInPalestine says

        Absolutely – Trump loves the good Jewish people and licks their asses.

  4. cechas vodobenikov says

    apparently only in the USA and Australia r people hoarding toilet paper—the angloshere has long been full of feces
    per capita hospital beds in the USA rank even worse than turkey—by ranking the most exist in Japan, s Korea, Russia, Germany, Austria (dprk is not ranked)

    1. Mary E says

      Truly, the US is a big fat loser – they just can’t compete!- sinister and greedy
      in their pursuit of this covid 19 drug which will hopefully end in China having it to share with the world….all this while the faux president of the US continues to deny the reality of the huge problem in the US where a US drug company is trying to get Germany’s recipe for a ‘cure’ for ONLY US people! Whaaaat?!?! They deserve the name Evil Empire…..the world’s enemy #1

    2. StopIsraeliGenocideInPalestine says

      Trump, Pence and the lover of the ‘chosen’ use their tongues.

  5. JustPassingThrough says

    yeah, when the bombs start falling,the drones start their killing and the morons start killing civilians then we can talk about the poor murikans . until then it’s all smoke and mirrors to cover up a cratering economy created in good part by their khazarian masters.

  6. Florian Crazzi says

    For what the Citizens are paying so much/many TAXES ? only for Bombs and Wars for Corporations Benefit ? ? ? How about something back to the People and country’s infrastructure ?

  7. Godfree Roberts says

    ‘The Cubans were forced to develop their industry due to U.S. sanctions’?

    In reality, The Cubans were forced to develop their industry due to U.S. biowarfare attacks as Ariel Alonso Pérez’s book, Biological Warfare Against Cuba, explains.

    The notorious terrorist and counterrevolutionary of Cuban descent Eduardo Arocena, leader of the terrorist group Omega-7 linked to the US Central Intelligence Agency, was charged [in 1984] with the 1980 murder of Cuban diplomat Felix Garcia Rodriguez, one of Cuba’s UN representatives, and with participation in a number of bomb blasts in America. In his court statement, before the New York Federal Court, he said that: “My group’s mission was to receive certain germs to introduce them in Cuba . . . to start the so-called “chemical war.”

    Cuban investigators determined that the dengue attack was launched in December of 1980. Arocena admitted in court that his boat and another boat participated in the attack. Mosquito vectors infected with dengue fever were brought ashore and released. The dengue attack was withering.

    As recognized by the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization, the hemorrhagic dengue epidemic in Cuba in 1981, had no precedent in the history of this disease. It was also the most serious and significant case recorded in the world, with a total number of 344,203 people affected; 10,312 of them developed serious conditions . . . 158 people died of which 101 were children.

    Pérez estimates losses to the Cuban economy from the epidemic at $103 million (1988) US dollars. The US-led international trade blockade against Cuba made purchasing pesticides and larvacides on the international market very expensive and difficult to acquire. Schools were converted into makeshift hospitals to provide care. The epidemic lasted for ten months.

    Pérez details two other US BW attacks against Cuba’s agriculture sector. In 1971 Swine flu broke out affecting the entirety of Cuba’s national swineherd. 400,000 pigs across the island were mass slaughtered and buried in pits to contain this epidemic. On October 21, 1996 at 10:08 am, the pilot and co-pilot of Cuban National Airlines flight 710 witnessed an American “fumigator” type airplane identified by its serial number, emitting spray clouds in bursts from its tanks as it flew across Cuban air space within the Giron international air corridor which bisects Cuba on a north-south axis. Cuban scientists quickly discovered the thrips palmi insect in downwind plumes beneath the airplane’s flight pattern. Thrips palmi lay their eggs within the fleshy part of a plant leaf making them highly resilient to many pesticides.

    1. Per says

      i could not find the book in any archives online(ex archive. org)
      Do you by chance have a link to the book online or must i purchase it?

    2. Séamus Ó Néill says

      Americans, most certainly the lowest and most demonic form of life on this planet and possibly in this galaxy !

      1. StopIsraeliGenocideInPalestine says

        America stands for: Murder as defense, theft for National interest and corruption as classified.

      2. cechas vodobenikov says

        “amerikans r not at all happy. they feel themselves lacking in something. it is as if all the sensitiveness has dried up in them. the crystallization of love is impossible in the United States. I admire their kind of happiness, but I do not envy it: it is the happiness of a different and inferior species”
        Stendhal

      3. ALTERNATE HISTORY says

        Maybe just after IsraHell.

        1. Séamus Ó Néill says

          When most people talk about “America” now, I think they automatically include Israel. Israel fully controls the government, the armed forces and the sheeple……America and Israel, have to fully and completely collapse, in unison, before there’s any chance in the future for America…..Israel can go to hell, nobody cares as long as it’s gone…..forever !

          1. ALTERNATE HISTORY says

            İ agree wholeheartedly, Seamus.

            1. Séamus Ó Néill says

              It’s probably silly saying Israel when we really mean the Jews, they’ve been behind the two world wars, the Russian “revolution” etc etc….they’re responsible for the extermination of billions of human beings…..an evil beyond comprehension, and they’re still at it, trying their best to start WW111 !

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