Venezuelan response to pandemic shames US

As of April 22nd, the US has 820,000 infections with 46,000 deaths. Venezuela has 300 infections with 10 deaths. That disparity is not due to higher US population which is 11 times that of Venezuela. Our infection rate is 2,700 times that of Venezuela and our death rate an even steeper 4,600 times. Yet, we continue to strangle Venezuela with economic sanctions to achieve regime change that have killed tens of thousands with no relief for the pandemic.

In a perverse irony, US sanctions have steeled Venezuelans against the virus. They have brought Venezuelans together to survive US cruelty, making it easier to forge a national will to stamp down the virus. They benefit from a national health care system which the US disdains as socialism; the scourge America is trying to overturn in Venezuela.

Venezuelans have a government that, unlike the US, mobilized promptly when the virus appeared, shutting down the entire nation in a unified fashion. It partnered with Cuba, Russia and China to supplement its own crash program to produce PPE. Help from the US? Zilch.

The Nicholas Maduro administration suspended rent payments, imposed a nationwide hiring freeze, provided worker bonuses, prevented the cut off of phone and internet services, arranged for thousands of bed space at hotel chains, increased availability of both food and healthcare. These measures enabled Venezuela to avoid the higher rates of infections and deaths in neighboring countries run by toady leaders supporting US regime change there.

US response to the pandemic is the worst in the industrialized world. It is so bad Venezuelan citizens in the US are begging the US to allow flights out of Miami to return to a homeland that knows how to control the virus. Venezuela, reeling under grotesque US cruelty against the 28,000,000 Venezuelans we’re hoping will topple the hated Maduro, has put the US to shame.