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Venezuela’s
Coronavirus Response Might Surprise You
By Leonardo
Flores
March 27,
2020 "Information
Clearing House"
- Within
a few hours of being launched, over
800 Venezuelans in the U.S. registered
for an emergency flight
from Miami to Caracas through a website run by the
Venezuelan government. This flight, offered at no
cost, was proposed by President Nicolás Maduro when
he learned that 200 Venezuelans were stuck in the
United States following his government’s decision to
stop commercial flights as a preventative
coronavirus measure. The promise of one flight
expanded to two or more flights, as it became clear
that many Venezuelans in the U.S. wanted to go back
to Venezuela, yet the situation remains unresolved
due to the U.S. ban on flights to and from the
country.
Those
who rely solely on the mainstream media might wonder
who in their right mind would want to leave the
United States for Venezuela. Numerous
outlets—including
TIME magazine,
the
Washington Post,
The Hill,
the
Miami Herald,
and others—published opinions in the past week
describing Venezuela as a chaotic nightmare. These
media outlets painted a picture of a coronavirus
disaster, of government incompetence and of a nation
teetering on the brink of collapse. The reality of
Venezuela’s coronavirus response is not covered by
the mainstream media at all.
Furthermore, what each of these articles
shortchanges is the damage caused by the Trump
administration’s sanctions, which devastated the
economy and healthcare system long before the
coronavirus pandemic. These sanctions have
impoverished millions of Venezuelans and negatively
impact vital infrastructure, such as electricity
generation. Venezuela is impeded from importing
spare parts for its power plants and the resulting
blackouts interrupt water services that rely on
electric pumps. These, along with dozens of other
implications from the
hybrid war on Venezuela,
have caused a decline in health indicators across
the board, leading to
100,000 deaths as a
consequence of the sanctions.
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