Iran is one of the hardest hit countries, with more than 38,000 confirmed cases (as of March 29) and more than 2,600 deaths. Some Iranian researchers believe the epidemic “will peak around late May and could result in 3.5 million deaths.”

In addition, as many as 480 people died from drinking methanol (wood alcohol) after rumors spread on social media that it could cure COVID-19.¹ Thousands more were injured: a five-year-old boy on a breathing apparatus was given methanol by his desperate parents and was blinded by it.

Though it had a fairly good health care system, Iran has almost six times as many confirmed COVID-19 cases as any other Middle Eastern country, and a high death rate. Why?

One reason is that Iran’s theocratic, oppressive government downplayed or suppressed news of the outbreak for political reasons until it was already widespread (much as Trump did in the U.S.).

Another driving reason is the impact of sanctions imposed by the U.S., which for years sought to make the Iranian regime “compliant” with U.S. interests—or push for its overthrow—by bankrupting the Iranian economy. Sanctions contributed to an ongoing economic crisis and shortage of medical supplies, even before the COVID-19 epidemic.

Now sanctions are strangling efforts to combat COVID-19.² According to two Iran scholars:

Iran needs financial and medical resources—from food and medicine to cash transfers—to carry out an effective nationwide quarantine and other measures to curb the outbreak.... Pirouz Hanachi, the mayor of Tehran, explained that a quarantine was nearly impossible to enforce because the government would be unable to financially support people unable to work.

...a majority of the population would be devastated by a long period of not being able to earn a living. Compounding this is a shortage of medicine and medical equipment including ventilators, testing kits and general respiratory equipment to combat the contagion.

On March 20, the U.S. announced it would not relax sanctions, even in the midst of the epidemic, and even while major voices in the Trump/Pence regime like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien fight for ratcheting up aggression against Iran, sensing particular opportunities and vulnerabilities of the Iranian regime at this moment.

Thousands of beds await the next surge of COVID-19 patients in Iran; already the disease has infected at least 38,000 people and killed over 2,600. Photo: AP

1. The source of the rumor was a British tabloid that claimed COVID-19 could be cured with whiskey and honey. Under the Islamic theocratic government, alcoholic beverages are illegal in Iran, so bootleg alcohol, some containing methanol, was peddled instead.  [back]

2. For more on the devastating impact of U.S. sanctions, see Common Dreams, March 11, 2020, and Slate, March 18, 2020.  [back]

The government of Mexico’s “progressive” president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) has echoed fascist leaders like Bolsonaro in first denying or downplaying the coronavirus threat and opposing necessary measures to slow its spread. “We don’t want to have a cure that is costlier in social terms than the actual illness,” said the country’s sub-secretary of health. The governor of Puebla claimed that the poor “are immune” from coronavirus. And according to the New York Times, March 25:

[AMLO] has continued to wade into crowds and kiss babies. Ruling out travel restrictions, business closings or quarantine orders, last week Mr. López Obrador suggested Mexico would be spared by divine intervention as he held up two amulets he called “my bodyguards.”

“Do not panic, and please do not stop going out,” he said in a video Sunday night. “If you have the economic capacity, keep taking your families to restaurants, because that means strengthening the family and popular economy.”

Part of the government’s justification is that Mexico appears to have few infections—only 717 confirmed cases as of March 28. But the reality is that hardly anyone has been tested—the Los Angeles Times reports that as of March 25, the government had tested only 3,000 people, and that private hospitals were waiting a week or more for test results. But Mexican health officials who have studied the situation estimate that 250,000 Mexicans could contract COVID-19 and 10,000 would require intensive care in hospitals.

According to the Los Angeles Times, health care workers who will be on the front lines have already begun to protest the lack of preparedness, holding strikes and walkouts around the country. “‘We can’t work without equipment,’ implored a nurse in Tabasco state in a widely viewed video on Twitter. ‘We also have families—children and parents.’”

A particularly grave danger is that the disease will spread among the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who were turned back by the U.S., and are now living in squalid conditions along the border.

Healthcare workers in Mexico protest lack of protective gear against COVID-19. Photo: Aurora Rojas.blogspot

Western Europe is one of the wealthiest regions in the world, having reaped the gains of centuries of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism-imperialism. It has state-of-the-art medical technology, relatively extensive health care systems, and many scientists and scientific institutions that have a fairly deep understanding of how pandemics start... and how to stop or slow them.

Nonetheless, three full months after China reported the dangerous new coronavirus to the World Health Organization, and 10 weeks after the full-blown epidemic there that ultimately killed at least 3,000 people, COVID-19 is still tearing through these countries in a wave-like pattern, killing over 20,000 people already, and apparently still accelerating. This is putting a glaring spotlight on the deep systemic problems of health care even in wealthy capitalist-imperialist countries, and, in many cases, the added problem of most of these governments ignoring the warnings of scientists until the virus was out of control.

In Italy, the first COVID-19 case was confirmed on January 29, but the government did not begin to take serious measures to slow its spread until February 22, and did not declare a national lockdown until March 9. At this writing, there are almost 100,000 confirmed cases, and nearly 11,000 deaths. Hospitals have been completely overwhelmed for weeks, with doctors describing “war-time conditions,” having to make decisions as to which patients to try and save and which to abandon to death.

Spain and France were next.

In spite of what was happening in Italy, the Spanish government took few steps to prevent an outbreak there and scoffed at the danger. In mid-February, while discussing whether to cancel a massive tech conference, Spain’s Minister of Health declared, “There is no need to take any other measure than those that have been taken.” Another official reportedly asked, “Do you think it [coronavirus] really even exists?” As of March 29, the government’s website guidance for “protecting yourself and others” does not even mention social distancing—in a country where a kiss on the cheek is the customary greeting. Only on March 13 was a “state of alarm” declared and limited rules for social distancing imposed. As of this writing, there are more than 80,000 confirmed cases and 6,800 deaths.

On March 10, when France had about 1,000 confirmed cases, at that time the second highest total in Europe, the attitude of French president Macron was to not “panic” people, to insist on a “region-by-region approach,” and to insist on a “proportional” response to the epidemic. Nineteen days later, France has more than 40,000 confirmed cases, and more than 2,600 people have died.

In Britain too, the government, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a close Trump ally, trivialized the danger, sometimes in truly disgusting ways. In one phone conversation, Johnson reportedly referred to plans to ramp up production of life-saving ventilators as “Operation Last Gasp.” Even in mid-March, Johnson batted about the idea of letting the virus run its course so that British people would develop “herd immunity” (which happens after the majority of people have contracted an infection and, hopefully, developed ongoing immunity to it). He refused to shut down schools, organize widespread testing, or take seriously the problem of lack of personal protective equipment for health care providers—much less order a national lockdown.

Only in late March, when coronavirus deaths hit 335, did the government finally act. On March 23, Johnson ordered all Britons to stay at home and ordered all nonessential businesses closed. Two days later, Prince Charles (heir to the British throne) tested positive. On March 27, Johnson himself tested positive, and a few hours later, so did his top health minister and chief medical advisor. As of March 29, Britain has almost 20,000 cases and more than 1,200 people have died.

Doctors work on COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit of San Matteo Hospital, in Pavia, northern Italy, Thursday, March 26. Photo: AP

Health services staff members protest outside the Txagorritxu hospital demanding more protection equipment in a hospital, in Vitoria, Spain, March 20. Photo: AP

Some people have pointed to Germany as a “better-case scenario.” Though Germany has more than 62,000 confirmed cases as of March 29, only 541 people have died. (Compare this to France with far fewer cases—40,000+—but far more deaths—more than 2,600.) This may be related to the fact that Germany has the richest economy in Europe, and also that its leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, seemed to treat the pandemic more seriously from early on, including organizing testing on a wide scale, which is important in containing or slowing the spread of the disease, and also in making sure people who need treatment get treatment. But it is really too soon to draw conclusions about the trajectory of the disease in different countries in Europe, because the virus took root in different countries at different times, and because the level of testing varies widely from country to country. (In fact, deaths in Germany, too, are now accelerating at a fairly brisk clip.)

However, it is not too soon to say that these bourgeois governments were criminally negligent in failing to act on the almost universal understanding of epidemiologists and public health officials, going back to early January, that without major intervention and preparation by all the world’s governments, COVID-19 had the potential to become the worst public health crisis in a century. For reasons having largely to do with the fundamental nature and functioning of the underlying system of capitalism-imperialism, and the conscious policies of its rulers, these governments disregarded this and were virtually completely unprepared, tens of thousands have already died, tens of thousands more (at least) will die unnecessarily, and a level of unprecedented economic suffering is being imposed on the people of the world because of these failures.