The angels unleash hell
It’s clear who the good guys are – the ones taking food from the poor
The Covid-19 story has disappeared from the headlines. Thank God. We were getting tired of it. Now we have a new crisis, a new betê noire – Russia. Once again the influencers have decided who’s on the side of the angels and urge us to do battle against the devilish Russkies. But there’s more to this story too, just as there was to the pandemic narrative.
Two full years have passed since Covid-19 first made landfall in the US. As more of the story comes out, we see that the effect was largely to transfer from the poor to the rich. Wasn’t it strange that some countries – even those with very low standards of public health, in Asia and Africa, for example – had very low rates of Covid-19? Why? About a year ago, CNN reported that the risk of death from Covid-19 is about ten times higher in countries where most of the population is overweight.
In the US, the average person consumes 3,800 calories per day. And the US suffered one of the highest death tolls from Covid-19 in the world – nearly 3,000 per million. In Bangladesh, where “plus-size” clothes are missing from the fashion racks, the disease was barely noticed, with only 175 per million. But while shutting down the world economy in 2020 may or may not have reduced the death toll for well-fed people, it almost certainly increased the number of poor people who died of starvation.
And now, here’s more bad news for hungry people. Goya Foods’ CEO Bob Unanue has warned on Fox News that the war between Russia and Ukraine is having a “devastating effect” on food supply as shortages are expected to contribute to higher inflation. US president Joe Biden said last month that food shortages are “gonna be real” following the sanctions that were placed on Russia by the US.
The price of wheat has shot up from $7.50 a bushel in January to more than $10 today. A poor person in Bangladesh may have been able to afford 1,500 calories per day last year… and stayed alive, barely. With the cost per calorie up by a third, his daily allotment may now fall to only 1,000 calories per day – not enough to survive.
In Iraq, before the US invasion, an estimated 500,000 children were said to have died because of US sanctions. Then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright thought that a fair price to pay for the benefits of the sanctions, whatever they were. Half a million deaths were “worth it”, she told a US news programme in 1996.
And now, the fat countries congratulate themselves on their tough sanctions against Russia. Foreign-policy “experts” explain what a great and glorious war it is. America’s defence industry bosses are now looking for lavish new holiday homes in Aspen. Politicians are looking forward to more campaign contributions. And skinny people tighten their belts.
“Lockdowns in 2020 increased deaths from starvation among the poor”