A BALANCE FROM VENEZUELA
COVID AS A SYSTEMIC SHOCK
Dec 17 2020 , 9:21 am .
The year 2020 will bear the global impact of covid-19 as a historical mark. Some experts have shown that the SARS CoV-2 virus, the origin of this disease, is the product of the practices of intensive production and concentration of goods typical of capitalism.
In factories and mega-farms that produce food, this and many other highly contagious viruses are incubated, the so-called "new coronavirus"; In particular, he traveled rapidly across borders increasingly permeated by incessant world trade, transferred between tourists and businessmen from the Global North.
As if his problems were few, he broke into the lower and working classes who cannot evade social contact in dozens of countries due to overcrowding in cities.
What the global pandemic, declared last March, did make clear is that the systemic crisis of capitalism already warned of its consequences, and that, as a result of it, the global state of exception that has sought to restore its broken metabolism deepened. The impositions of the transnational elites have normalized the collateral damage that impacts large social layers.
That Thatcherian thesis that "there is no alternative" to capitalism ( There is not alternative or "TINA") is questioned, its logic of individualism and free market born in the West and imposed on the rest of the world has not served to face the pandemic.
WE CALL IT A "PANDEMIC" BUT IT IS A SYSTEMIC SHOCK
In the midst of the shaking of the stock markets, the unprecedented destruction of the level of employment, the oil prices trading negative, the increase in inequality, collapsed health centers and speeches that justify the death of hundreds of thousands in the name of the market, the common here and there have witnessed the contradictions of a system that was sold as "civilized", but in which only war is the code to remain.
In the framework of the pandemic, the world economy, which has been designed as a globalized infrastructure of free market economies, has seen its turbulence accelerated, the picture of inequality and a massive loss of jobs, goods and services and financial assets, components essential elements of the material base that keeps the machinery of capitalism running.
If the covid-19 has served anything, it is to show in detail and specifically the changes in the balance of geopolitical power balance, the large-scale economic transition from the West to Asia, the effectiveness of its social and political model to contain the disaster and also the drift of the Global North.
It is the western superiority distorted before the clear evidence that the path of the disappearance of the nation-states and the corporatocracy, offered as redemption, has nothing to do with human aspirations.
The illusion of individual progress and of the global market as a mechanism for the "fair" allocation of resources and rewards disappeared, leaving clear the main doubts that the shocking crisis of 2008-2009 had left about the functioning of the current civilizational model.
A good part of the world's population suffers the economic consequences caused by the covid-19 pandemic, however, the fortune of American billionaires grew by 282 billion dollars (almost 10%), according to estimates by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) from the United States.
The management of the pandemic in Venezuela during 2020 has helped the population, subjected to the blockade and siege by the United States and the European Union, to reconfigure the exercise of politics in the territory (Photo: Cristian Hernández / AFP)
Meanwhile, hospital collapses and waves of mass deaths from the absence of properly funded care plans collapse the promise of material progress that privatization mechanisms have led to believe.
In August, the United States Government Office of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced an annualized drop of 32.9% in the GDP of the world's largest economy between the months of April and June, around -9% in quarterly terms, and the Office Federal Statistical Office of Germany certified the largest drop in GDP in the entire historical series, dating back to 1970, with a contraction of 10.1% in the second quarter.
The seclusion caused by the pandemic has resulted in the collapse in the second quarter of the year of the GDP of the United States and Germany, the first and fourth economies in the world respectively, which has exacerbated the collapse suffered by the whole of the eurozone, leaving thus to China, which recorded the most intense impact of the crisis in the first quarter of 2020, as the only major economy that has already begun its recovery.
GLOBAL REARRANGEMENT AND CONTRAST OF FIGURES
The United States continues to lead the world statistics of covid-19 with more than 16 million 500 thousand cases reported in mid-December (half of them since mid-October) and more than 300 thousand deaths.
In Europe, Spain has reported 1,700,000 cases and about 50,210 deaths. Italy, with more than 1 million 800 thousand positive cases and 65 thousand deaths, was the initial epicenter of the pandemic in Europe, and is now the second European country with the most deaths from coronavirus and the sixth in the world. The UK has the highest number of deaths and ranks fifth in the world. More than 64 thousand 500 deaths have been registered and according to the Ministry of Health and Social Care, more than one million 800 thousand infected. They are followed by France, the third country with the most deaths in the region and the eighth in the world, registering more than 33,000 deaths and 930,000 confirmed cases.
Entering the autumn, Spain and France returned to massive confinements, while in the United Kingdom the health authorities declared that there were more hospitalizations in October than in March. The dramatic increase in cases from March to May 2020, then their decline at the expense of restrictions, encouraged authorities in several countries to de-escalate control measures into the boreal summer and with it the economic reopening and the August tourist season.
The result was the second major wave in force since mid-October.
Number of confirmed cases per million inhabitants of some of the main economies of the world, is contrasted between countries that opted for early control in Asia and those that prioritized "the economy" in the West (Photo: Our world in data)
China was the initial epicenter of the pandemic, accumulating some 94,000 cases and 4,700 deaths from covid-19. Meanwhile, Japan accumulates just over 184 thousand cases and 2 thousand 581 deaths. South Korea adds about 44,364 cases and 612 deaths. In general figures, these are countries that distanced themselves from any possibility of a governance crisis due to early control of the pandemic and the continuity of their vigilant policies.
Sanitary control measures were strict in China, they were made up of large-scale deep social distancing actions, state coverage of families (food and medical care in homes) and the accompaniment of the ruling Communist Party in social and community action in the various dimensions of the crisis.
The State action also addressed the propping up of the Chinese health system to the circumstances of a new type of crisis, through the massive attention to cases (including non-asymptomatic ones) and a strict policy of detection and epidemiological siege on a large scale.
VENEZUELA DOES NOT SUCCUMB TO THE IMPOSED "HUMANITARIAN TRAGEDY"
The effective method implemented, outside the neoliberal axis of the West, has consisted precisely in the decisive presence of the exercise of politics and institutions of strong governments and nation-states to manage the health crisis.
Within the framework of a culture of recognition of government directives, social discipline, the use of new technologies and participatory and territorial forms of management of the health system.
The Venezuelan situation, marked by the economic blockade imposed by the Global North and subordinate peripheries against the country, has brought with it exceptional political and economic elements that have disfigured the State that has historically been an oil rentier. The Venezuelan Executive has maneuvered in new scenarios for national life.
The already difficult economic reality was complicated by the measures that the serious global health crisis has forced to take. Government action based on police and military forces, social support and the territorialized social forces of Chavismo have functioned as the main vectors of management in the communities. This has facilitated the application of the social restrictions imposed by the pandemic and reduced the deviations or common contempt in these cases.
While the economic siege has forced the disintegration of the socio-political fabric through the dispute over goods and services that are increasingly scarce and deficient, the forces deployed in CLAP, UBCH, Community Councils and other actors, have redefined their role as political vanguard , displacing the paternal and traditional forms of public management. While the style of government is politically remodeled, political participation networks have also been forced to do so.
During the pandemic and the economic siege, the formation of the new socio-political fabric has not been stopped by forces such as CLAP, which direct solutions to the lack of access to goods and services (Photo: Archive)
The necessary health containment policies in the country have resulted in new pressures on the public service system itself, which had already been declining as a result of the systemic chaos triggered by the lack of resources that have been withheld in foreign banks or robbed by States. United.
The decrease in access to domestic gas, the electricity supply in vast areas, especially in western Venezuela, the inaccessibility, and in many cases inopportune availability of drinking water have forced a state of perpetual contingency that demands an additional deployment of financial resources and logistics that have put even more weight on the operational capacities and institutional muscle of the country, which has forced the abandonment of other spaces of governance.
Given the obvious shortcomings, the organizational balance of the networks that give life to Chavismo in the territories has made it possible to satisfy a significant number of demands, at least to put their solutions on track, which has reoriented the priorities of traditional public management towards daily.
The 7x7 scheme implemented in Venezuela has been consolidated in the evolution of the pandemic and is positioned as " the Venezuelan method " for managing the health crisis.
The result in figures of the health crisis, the absence of widespread popular shocks, as well as social expectations pointing to recoveries, endorse a strategy that is successful, despite the complexity of the adverse framework. The balance is all relevant, seen what is seen in the global panorama.
Hence, Venezuela, as of December 16, barely exceeds 108 thousand cases and does not reach a thousand deaths, due to the government effort and the cooperation of allied countries such as China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Cuba, among others.
THERE IS ONLY ONE PANDEMIC WAVE IN LATIN AMERICA: NEOLIBERALISM
The figures for both Cuba, with 9,423 cases and 137 deaths, and Nicaragua, with 5,887 cases and 164 deaths, are also eloquent, countries that also resist the attacks of the US elite and its operators installed inside and outside of its borders. Their numbers of cases and deaths are relatively low and have not involved critical situations beyond preventive ones.
Neither of the two countries are governed by States subordinate to neoliberal relations and others inherent to the exercise of economic power over the relations of life in society. They are countries with strong and consistent states, with historical and social foundations built from their political revolutions.
It is worth considering the possibility that in both there are also broad levels of cohesion and social discipline. The importance of State policies to sustain health systems and employment protection, which we know are key factors in the face of the pandemic.
In Brazil, the erratic management of the entire axis of governments aligned with global capitalism in Latin America takes place, where structural violence against the poor, state abandonment and the fragility of the health and economic response configure its main features.
Colombia, Argentina and Peru follow the same pattern of results due to similar handling of the crisis.
Contrast between countries that opted for measures that favored public health care such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela and those aligned with global capitalism (Photo: Our world in data)
NORMAL (NOT SO NEW) WILL REMAIN THE GLOBAL DISPUTE
Venezuela is heading towards a "new normal" imposed by the pandemic and the state of exceptionality that starts from the new realities and disfigurements that have emerged since the US blockade.
The triumph of Chavismo in the parliamentary elections of last December 6 opens the way to a new political cycle in which it is vital to adapt to the notion of a country under siege in order to create new ways to advance political dialogue and the reconfiguration of the economy.
The imaginary of returning to a previous certainty of supposed stability and prosperity collides with a material reality imposed by the pandemic: the reduction of public budgets, a narrower labor market and a high increase in income and wealth inequality does not augur a future promising in the post-pandemic stage.
While in the rest of the world a " technological fix " to the current health crisis is imposed as an ideology of denial, capitalism cooks the next epidemics in its complex network of industrial production, globalized trade and frenzied consumerism, globalization it continues to reduce states, austericide does the same with health systems, and the geopolitical crisis becomes increasingly unmanageable.
The dispute will be normality, as old as new, in which even vaccines against the new coronavirus are part of that race we call "geopolitics."
China and Russia took the lead in the race for the vaccine against covid-19 while the West does the same, helped by the corporate media that, pretending to narrate, are part of the fair, generating distrust towards some and leaving that myth far in the past of impartiality.
Contrasts and tensions are also evident in this field, the usual "sanctions" of the Trump administration could not be absent. The Office of Industry and Security of the US Department of Commerce sanctioned the 48th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense for participating in the vaccine investigations, desperately alleging that "they are acting against the interests of security. national or foreign policy of the United States. "
For its part, Russia is making progress in cooperating with various actors involved in developing solutions to eradicate or control the virus, and Chinese President Xi Jinping called for closer international cooperation to achieve this.
It came as no surprise that the so-called "rich countries", which represent only 14% of the world's population, have purchased up to 53% of the most promising vaccines to date, jeopardizing the viability of universal access for other countries. Even if some of these governments say that they are going to give a part of what they have bought to low-income countries, it is difficult to trust their good will and that of the pharmaceutical companies.
In the midst of this panorama, Venezuela continues to consolidate its achievements while the challenges are amplifying with the tensions. Reversing the impact of the blockade and the global pandemic is beyond vaccines, but without them it will be difficult to move forward.
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