“Our society is sick:” The Lancet condemns American capitalism

PROFOUNDLY

[wsws.org]

{The report is, appropriately, dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet found the Trump administration directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people during the pandemic, and that over 200,000 people would still be alive if the United States had a COVID-19 mortality rate similar to that of other developed countries.}

I find that 200,000 is quite generous taken from 500,000. Considering the US has a population of only approximately 330 million people compared to China's 1.7 billion that WHO reports haven't even reached 5000 yet. Who are these developed countries used for comparison?

{It argues that the nearly half million dead in the US from COVID-19 should be added to the toll of the “missing Americans” whose deaths were attributable to the rise of social inequality over the course of the past four decades.}

{President Jimmy Carter (in office from 1977–81) pushed to reduce government deficits through spending cuts.”

Democratic President Bill Clinton “embraced key aspects of the neoliberal, pro-corporate agenda.”

The health care programs of Barack Obama “reinforced decades of market-oriented reforms that made profitability the fundamental measure of performance

“The Trump administration represents the culmination of more than three decades of neoliberal policies seeking to privatise many public services and deregulate corporations to maximise profits.}

{The Lancet report, like a skilled physician, expertly lists the symptoms of America’s social disease. But if American society is sick, as Dr. Steffie Woolhandler insists it is, the appropriate medicine is not the Biden administration, any more than it was the Clinton or Obama administration. The disease they have identified is terminal. The solution is to be found in a fundamentally new and different political movement—one based on the struggle of the working class for socialism.}