EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2020
Pandemic Threat Is Growing: Democratic Republics Must Take Serious Action
Dec. 21, 2020 (EIRNS)—Nations which are democratic republics rise to meet great challenges by the mobilization of their citizens in a crisis, each as a creative individual, moved by the patriotic desire to act for the general welfare of the nation and all its citizens. Their exemplary model for 230 years has been the United States of America. Whatever great goals leaders can set—as U.S. President John F. Kennedy did, for example, during his brief Presidency—the citizens of a great republic can achieve.
The COVID-19 pandemic has become a very serious crisis, especially in a year of troubles in which it has helped to trigger famine in some large areas of the world, mass unemployment all over the world, and been used completely to distort an election crucial to the United States and all those countries affected by its policies. Just during Dec. 21, the first day of this winter, nearly 800,000 people were confirmed infected with this coronavirus and nearly 14,000 died; and nearly two-thirds of both the cases and the deaths were in the republics of North and South America. True, about 30,000 people every day are dying from famine—starvation—in the African Sahel nations and Southwest Asia. But not only is COVID catching up to that toll; it is triggering it by provoking border closures and shutdowns of transportation and processing of food. In a normal year, about 75 million people die from all causes around the world—COVID and famine alone look to claim 20-25 million in 2021. President Donald Trump’s friend David Beasley, director of the World Food Program, says it could be many more than that. And unemployment? About 500 million people around the world, who were working informal types of jobs, have lost all work during 2020. Where are the U.S. and European economies heading? Downward.
And yet, the citizens of the greatest democratic republics of North and South America and Europe are not mobilizing in this crisis to stop the pandemic—let alone, to restart their economies, break up their giant speculative banks and companies, rally support for their scientists and their space programs. The United States is not stopping its COVID epidemic the way Vietnam did many months ago! Germany is not matching Thailand in beating COVID, let alone South Korea or China. Britain and France can’t hold a candle to Belarus, not to mention the Czech Republic. Hospitals in Peru, Chile, Ecuador, even Brazil are beyond full while those of Japan, Australia, New Zealand have plenty of beds.
Where is the fighting spirit of citizens of the great democratic republics of the world, including the United States? Where is the national unity celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, just 18 months ago? The “floodwaters don’t discriminate” mobilization spirit of the “Cajun Navy” to save the general welfare in hurricane floods just a few years ago? The upsurge of citizens against the Wall Street bailout in 2008?
The people of most Asian and some Eastern European countries are not fearing or bickering with each other over COVID—they’ve put it behind them. Basic, long-known measures of public health practice for highly communicable diseases have worked for them—because they were willing to say, “I’ll do this for everybody else, I’ll do it for the country.”
We have large areas of the world to recover economically, including building ourselves modern economic infrastructure and much better public health systems and workforces domestically and in developing countries. Lyndon LaRouche’s movement has said since 2014: Break the Wall Street and London banks up; replace their speculations with a national credit institution. Build high-technology new infrastructure. Launch the human missions to the Moon and Mars, and a crash program for fusion energy and new industrial technologies using lasers and plasmas. LaRouche promised to give you a job rebuilding the world.
We have to save people—all people—to do it.
