U.S. Has 940 Times As High Death-Rate From Covid As China Does.

by Eric Zuesse

America has had 2,819 covid-19 deaths per million residents, versus China’s 3 covid-19 deaths per million residents. That’s 940 times higher.

America has had 237,119 covid-19 cases (diagnosed instances of the active disease), versus China’s 74 covid-19 cases (diagnosed instances of the active disease). That’s 3,204 times higher.

Although America has been more than 3 times as successful at treating the disease as China has been (3,204/940), China has been 3,204 times as successful at preventing the disease as America has been.

China has done this while almost consistently having a lower unemployment-rate than America has had; and, so, China’s “zero tolerance” policies on covid have not come at the expense of having a higher unemployment-rate (due to quarantines etc.), than America’s, such as many libertarians (opponents of all government-regulation) have been alleging would happen (and such as the many anti-regulation protesters around the world believe). The ONLY people that America’s covid-19 policies have actually been benefiting, as opposed to China’s policies, is that America’s billionaires have doubled their wealth during the first two years of the covid-19 epidemic, whereas virtually everybody else has lost wealth during those same two years. Whereas America’s policies have transferred trillions of dollars “from the masses to the classes,” China’s have instead benefited the masses (saving their lives, and reducing their sickness), not the classes — China has been the true democracy, while America has been the true aristocracy. Whereas the aristocrats who control the U.S. government (and control Raytheon and other arms-sellers to the government, and control the media that fool the public to vote for the billionaires’ chosen political candidates) have been hit far less-hard by the epidemic than the poor have been hit by it, those aristocrats’ wealth has soared from it, and the U.S. Government represents its aristocracy, no democracy.

On February 1st, the New York Times bannered “U.S. Has Far Higher Covid Death Rate Than Other Wealthy Countries”, and actually called the public’s attention to America’s scandalously bad performance against covid, but America’s declining life-expectancies (average annual longevities) had begun to be reported in the year 2014, which was six years prior to the start of the epidemic, and it has continued to decline every year since then. America’s aristocrats control the privatized American ‘health-care’ (which are actually only sickness-care) industries; and, so, this has long been a major engine of America’s extreme wealth-inequality: profiting from sicknesses and deaths runs counter to ANY democracy’s policies.

Whereas in China, public health is recognized to be the Government’s responsibility, and private health is recognized to be an individual’s responsibility, America pays little attention to public health and has therefore the most-privatized of all industrialized nations’ healthcare systems: it is the most subservient to investors’ desires, and the least subservient to the public’s needs (such as especially public health), and the least subservient to any authentically democratic government and to regulation on behalf of the citizenry. In America, a person’s worth is therefore treated as being that person’s net worth, the sum total of all of his/her net wealth, so that a billionaire is viewed as being a thousand times better or more important than a millionaire, and anyone who has more debts than assets is worth less than nothing (has a negative net worth) and can’t become worthwhile unless he/she can somehow get out of that financial hole. The basic American ‘morality’ is thus zero-sum games — winning and losing — nothing that is positive-sum, or cooperative without being at someone else’s expense, it is fundamentally dog-eat-dog, or a Herbert-Spencerian (pure win-lose) interpretation of Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” and ignoring the superiority that societies have which acknowledge the benefits of cooperative “games” over zero-sum ones. Darwin himself never endorsed Spencer’s interpretation, but at least post-WW-II America is built upon it, so that “Greed is good.” (After all: if a billionaire is 1,000 times better than a millionaire, then the millionaire ‘should’ be greedier than he/she is, in order to become as ‘good’ as the billionaire is.) But it’s not good; it is bad, because needs are vastly more important than desires are, and this distinction would be recognized in any scientific theory of economics (which is a field that doesn’t yet have any scientific theory). Unfortunately, Darwin never said that Spencer’s interpretation of Darwinism was false, and therefore Darwin’s silence on the matter created a negative public impression upon Darwin’s empirically based theory of evolution. Unlike post-WW-II America, which is based upon Spencer’s “social Darwinism,” China is not. And THAT is why China’s covid-19 performance is somewhere between 940 and 2,819 times better than America’s is. Today’s America has a profoundly sick ideology, and it is actually killing millions of Americans (not to mention killing millions of people in the countries that America invades and occupies in order for it to increase its global hegemony. Here’s an example of this Spencerism:

Barack Obama, 28 May 2014, addressing West Point’s graduating class:

The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.

He was telling America’s military that America’s economic competition, against the BRICS nations, is a key matter for America’s military, and not only for America’s private corporations; that U.S. taxpayers fund America’s military at least partially in order to impose the wills and extend the wealth of the stockholders in America’s corporations; and that the countries against which America is in economic competition are “dispensable,” but America “is and remains the one indispensable nation.”

That is very much a Spencerian view: it is intrinsically supremacist, and resolutely opposed to positive-sum games, except among ‘us’, against (the billionaires’ designations of) ‘them’. It accepts cooperation only if it’s within ‘our team’, against ‘their team’. This is today the U.S. Government’s attitude toward Russia, China, Iran, and any country that isn’t with ‘us’, against ‘them’. It is dangerous for the entire world.

Because America’s media are likewise controlled by the billionaires, the U.S. public are extremely supportive of this neoconservative, war-mongering, Government. For example, on February 12th, the Washington Post bannered (for the umpteenth time since November 2021) “New intelligence suggests Russia plans a ‘false flag’ operation to trigger an invasion of Ukraine”, and, though it reported merely the Government’s allegations, and zero evidence (just like had been done regarding “Saddam’s WMD” in 2002), here are typical reader-comments (just as trusting of the Government’s lies as had been the case back in 2002 against Iraq):

FailedTrumpCoup2
LOL Trump tried this false flag stuff .. but was too stupid to make it work.
Womp Womp
DONT-BLAME-ME
I feel bad for the Russian people. They are great.
But they have been cowed and cornered by Putin and his oligarchs. Can’t have free press, speech, gatherings, rallies, etc.
All because Putin is actually afraid of his countryman. Just like Xi ….
Lady Annabelle Lee
Hitler’s playbook for invading Poland in 1939.
UWDawg
And. . . That idiot former president was going to pull us out of NATO, had he been able to circumvent the 2020 election. Terrifying.
UBsure
It is absolutely astounding that the ego of one person the planet, Putin, has the power to start a wildly unnecessary world war that could quickly escalate beyond control . All because he pines to restore his backward, corrupt, pathetic country to its former USSR “glory days”. This is why authoritarian regimes are so dangerous. Putin is accountable to no one.
BRBurns
Gleiwitz

America’s public are thereby trapped in their Government’s and media’s constant lies regarding international matters, and this is what’s behind America’s constant wars, wars for conquest — NOT for national defense. Americans are brainwashed by their MIC (Military-Industrial Complex).

PS: a reader of this article asked in a reader-comment, “You really believe CCP’s numbers?” I answered: “Yes, because I have constantly doubted it until I saw so much evidence that I no longer do. And, so far as I am aware, other people who have critically examined the matter have likewise concluded that this extraordinary success is genuine, NOT a figment of cooked-up numbers. It is amazing, but it is the result of a “zero-tolerance” policy that REALLY IS zero tolerance, and that is guided ONLY by the empirical evidence on what works and what doesn’t. It is fundamentally different from covid policies in The West. It really does seem to be guided 100% by the science. I came to this conclusion only gradually, because China’s covid numbers are SO low. But increasingly many countries now have come to consider China’s covid policies to be the model that ALL countries ought to follow, if they can.”