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Mar 31, 2020 Letters
DEAR EDITOR,
Viruses are older than human existence. In 1918, we had the Spanish flu which infected 500 million and killed 20 million to 50 million people. We had the SARS outbreak of 2002 to 2004. It infected 8,098 and killed 774 people from China, other Asian countries, the UK (4) and Toronto, Canada.
In 2014, the Ebola outbreak killed 11,315 in 5 African countries and the US. So why wasn’t the world prepared? Maybe because it is not profitable, because they occurred over a decade apart; but that can change.
For Caribbean countries, it’s like a hurricane. Its time of impact is uncertain but unpreparedness means death.
All countries capitalist, socialist and communists are unprepared. The US has more cases of Covid-19 than China, which has about 4 times its population. The worst prepared country in the world is the United States, because its health care system is profit-driven and the most expensive in the world. It is the only advanced nation that has such a system – Europe, UK, Russia, China, Canada, Japan, have a Healthcare system that’s government-driven.
I think that the shutting down of the economy will not stop the spread of the pandemic. Many people are poor and cannot self-isolate. They must hustle food or they will die. I use South Korea as the model. They are at work. We need to test everyone and then quarantine the infected. Everyone wears masks to work and practices proper hygiene. Take in a lot of vitamin C from oranges etc.
Let’s be sensible. Every mouth must be fed. This current method will lead to social upheaval like what is starting to occur in Italy or worse.
Yours truly,
Brian E Plummer
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