As Lyndon LaRouche warned would happen, the last 50 years of the takedown of the U.S. economy now shows the grim consequences of the lack of infrastructure and general development of the physical economy, in the U.S. and worldwide. Not only is there a shortage of hospital beds, but by applying the principle of LaRouche’s famous “worldwide cup of coffee,” we can see that the required infrastructure for competent health care — fresh water supplies, reliable electricity, a transportation grid, and so forth — is also in a state of decay.
Over the weekend, several U.S. states posted all-time highs in new COVID cases, and the national total is now over 12 million. On Nov. 19, Nevada reported a new high of 2,416 new cases in a single day. AP reports that, “The Nevada Hospital Association reports 80% of hospital beds in the state are occupied and said in a bulletin this week that ‘current strategies are not successfully minimizing the spread of serious disease.’”
In Reno, one hospital has begun moving some coronavirus patients into its parking garage. Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) has an insane policy in which he has urged Nevadans to have groceries delivered and restrict their travel, but he welcomes tourists to visit, eat in restaurants (with social distancing and precautions), and freely spend their money to help Nevada’s ailing gaming and hospitality venues (and then, drop dead).
Kaiser Family Foundation [kkf.org] reports that the U.S. has fewer hospital beds and physicians per capita than Italy or Spain. The U.S. has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1000 — slightly more than half of the number of hospital beds mandated by the Hill-Burton Act of 1946 (4.6 beds per 1000 population). Italy has 3.2 beds per 1000, while South Korea has 12 beds per 1000, an example of the superior health care systems in East Asia (including China and Japan), which helps explain their far more successful containment of the pandemic.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the head of the U.S. government’s effort to develop a vaccine against COVID-19, appeared on CNN “State of the Union” today to answer questions. He stated that he hopes to begin distributing the vaccine to the most vulnerable within 48 hours of its approval by the FDA. The FDA vaccine advisory committee is expected to meet on Dec. 10. Dr. Slaoui expects that children and infants could be immunized on an expedited basis beginning around May or June of 2021. He emphasized that the timeline of Operation Warp Speed is driven by the health concerns, not by political pressure.
