ERIC ZUESSE -- U.S. Lies About ‘COVID-19 Risk’

 U.S. Lies About ‘COVID-19 Risk’

Eric Zuesse - September 10,2020

The U.S. Government (and its propaganda-media) don’t lie only about such things as “WMD in Iraq” and saying that Alexei Navalny, who is favorably viewed by only 2% of Russians, is instead the “Russian opposition leader … and most … durable opposition figure”.

The U.S. Government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is consistently overstating (sometimes by more than a thousandfold) the coronavirus dangerousness in foreign countries that the U.S. aristocracy (America’s billionaires) want to take over (conquer).

For examples:

In Cambodia, there are only 16 coronavirus-19 (Covid-19) cases per million inhabitants, and there has been only 1 (one) coronavirus-19 death out of the country’s 16,756,551 population, but the CDC rates Cambodia as being in its most coronavirus-dangerous category, “Level 3.” The CDC’s rating of the country as a place for Americans to travel to is “Warning — Level 3, COVID-19 risk.” (There is no “Level 4” category.)

However, in the most up-to-date and comprehensive global coronavirus-19 database, which is at www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries and which covers 213 countries and provides all of the data, including the crucial ratings of Covid-19 cases per million inhabitants, and of Covid-19 deaths per million inhabitants, for each country, Cambodia shows as being actually one of the world’s coronavirus-safest countries. At the present moment while I am researching this, on August 31st, a person who goes to that global coronavirus-data site, Cambodia is #183 (not on dangerousness, but on the list), at only 274 coronavirus cases for the entire nation. If one then clicks at the top of the column “Tot Cases/1M pop” Cambodia is #209 (that’s an actual dangerousness-rating, which is based upon the number of cases per million inhabitants) — only Myanmar, Vietnam, Tanzania, and Laos are safer than that.

Cambodia’s 16 (sixteen) coronavirus-19 (Covid-19) cases per million inhabitants compares to America’s own 18,644 cases per million. Only 9 countries are ranked worse than America. 18,644/16 (18,644 divided by 16) is 1,165, which is how many times safer Cambodians are, from Covid-19, than Americans are, from catching this disease. The U.S., right now, is 1,165 times more coronavirus-dangerous a place to be than Cambodia is. But the U.S. regime rates Cambodia instead as being far more coronavirus-dangerous than the U.S. itself is, by posting this warning, against travel to Cambodia, “Warning — Level 3, COVID-19 risk,” which is the worst category, and therefore gives readers the rabidly false impression that when they will be in Cambodia — if they go there — they will be far more in danger of becoming infected by Covid-19 than if they spend that time instead in their home-country, the United States. But, actually, if Cambodia is a “Level 3,” then America is a “Level 3,495” (1,165 times worse) and should be rated as such, right there, on that same Web page, so that the reader will be able to get, from it, a fair and honest picture — not the deception, which the U.S. Government now provides by rating one of the world’s coronavirus-safest countries as being instead among the most coronavirus-dangerous countries.

Obviously, the U.S. Government doesn’t care about the safety — or health — of U.S. citizens; because, if it did, then it wouldn’t deceive them so blatantly, about something so important to the safetly of any of them who are considering to visit Cambodia.

Why is America lying so flagrantly, against Cambodia?

On August 17th, Joseph Thomas headlined “EU Cries ‘Human Rights’ as Cambodia Turns to China”, and he opened:

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What should the world make of the West’s attempts to pressure the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia on humanitarian grounds when the West is guilty of the worst (and still ongoing) abuses of the 21st century?

Wikipedia provides a quick and simple definition of the psychological concept of projection, stating: a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves, while attributing them to others.

A recent “op-ed” [NO, IT’S INSTEAD AN “EDITORIAL” and it says, at its very end: “These editorials represent Bangkok Post thoughts about current issues”: it is not the view merely of a columnist; it is the view of the newspaper’s owner] in the Bangkok Post which reads more like a paid-placement for the US and European-funded front, Human Rights Watch, and its sponsors, was clearly an extreme exercise in projection.

The op-ed [actually, editorial] would claim [NO, IT DOES CLAIM; HE HERE IS QUOTING THAT EDITORIAL, word-for-word, as follows]:

“The European Union should add this outrage to the long list of rights abuses that need to be resolved in negotiations over ‘Everything But Arms’ (EBA) trade preferences,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of HRW.

Under the EBA scheme, Cambodian exports get tariff-free access to the EU market. In February, the EU announced plans to suspend access for about 20% of Cambodian goods, citing democratic and human rights setbacks in recent years. The EU is implementing a “phased approach”, which could see the EBA status fully revoked if Phnom Penh fails to restore democratic rights.

The op-ed concludes by claiming:

However, Cambodia is seemingly already looking for ways to offset financial losses caused by a potential full EBA withdrawal. The country is looking to partner with China on a free trade agreement (FTA). “This very huge [Chinese] market access enables Cambodia to diversify its products and markets and reduce over-reliance on a few trading partners, ie, Europe, US and Canada, who traditionally trade with Cambodia on a concessional basis such as EBA,” Commerce Minister Pan Sorasak said.

Apparently, the CPP [the ruling Cambodia People’s Party] is willing to risk a full EBA withdrawal as long as it has options. Or maybe Mr Hun Sen and the CPP simply can’t be bothered to uphold Western standards of human rights.

Western standards of human rights?

Are these the same standards that enable the United States and United Kingdom to provide weapons, intelligence and other forms of military support for the Saudi government in its ongoing war with neighbouring Yemen? The UN has stated that this conflict is in fact the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. And it is a crisis that is possible only with the US and Europe’s complicity.

How about the Western standards of human rights that allow, unopposed, the continued military presence of the United States in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan?

Iraq’s elected representatives went as far as voting to demand US forces withdraw, demands that were blatantly ignored by Washington who, among other lies, insisted its involvement in Iraq was to foster democracy. …

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That editorial is against Cambodia’s decision “looking to partner with China on a free trade agreement,” instead of looking to partner with the EU — which is part of the U.S. empire.

In short: Cambodia is on the U.S. aristocracy’s regime-change list; and this is the reason why that nation, Cambodia, which is 1,165 times as coronavirus-safe as America is, receives a “Level 3” coronavirus-safety rating from the U.S. Government. Let’s explore this a bit further:

It’s true (as Joseph Thomas was saying) that the Bangkok Post was publishing there something “like a paid-placement for the US and European-funded front, Human Rights Watch and its sponsors.” That’s referring, actually, to mainly American billionaires, whose donations created, and have kept going, HRW and hundreds of other ‘charitable’ fronts that parade their pro-invasion propaganda to the populace in U.S.-and-allied countries, via those billionaires’ media, as ‘humanitarians’. Thailand’s aristocracy is a vassal-aristocracy to America’s aristocracy (just like the EU’s aristocracies are).

Wikipedia says of the Bangkok Post, “The Bangkok Post was founded by Alexander MacDonald, a former OSS officer, and his Thai associate, Prasit Lulitanond.” The OSS was the predecessor of the CIA; and here is some of the relevant history in Thailand, at that time:

The anti-imperialist U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) had just died on 12 April 1945, and Harry S. Truman became President. Though Truman was well-intentioned, he was surrounded by agents of America’s billionaires, and they were intensely pro-imperialist. The naive Truman was unfortunately an extremely effective agent of America’s billionaires in advancing them first to continue, after WW II, their Military-Industrial Complex or “MIC” (or, actually, the weapons-making firms), so that the billionaires who controlled them would have no reason to fear that there would be a breakout of peace in the post-War era — America right away started its world-record-shattering number of coups and invasions, virtually as soon as Truman took over. First, was the coup in Thailand in 1948 — right at the CIA’s very start — in order to grab hold of Asia’s narcotics traffic so that the needed off-the-books funding for that totalitarian and legally unconstrained new spy-agency could be instituted. This was the beginning of the U.S. dictatorship, via secret gangland-funding of America’s “secret service” (and thereby funding that did not require any democratic accountability). The existence of this off-the-books funding-system for the CIA didn’t become public until the great investigative journalist Gary Webb uncovered its operations in Nicaragua during President Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal, which entailed illegal funding — from cocaine-sales — of Reagan's war against Nicaragua, a Soviet-friendly country. The heroic Gary Webb became blackballed from America’s ’news’-(actually propaganda)-media and plunged into poverty so that he (according to the government) committed suicide and “wasn’t murdered,” but (either way, via either a hit-operation or a suicide) his death was another of the CIA’s secret victories.

The Bangkok Post is today part of the Bangkok Post Group. Its Chairman of the Board and head of the Executive Committee is Suthikiati Chirathivat, who is “a prominent member of the Chirathivat family, owners of the Central Group, and the second richest family in Thailand.” The newspaper’s editorials reflect his views.

Regarding Human Rights Watch (HRW): On 7 September 2010, that ‘charitable’ organization headlined “George Soros to Give $100 million to Human Rights Watch”. George Soros is the founder of one of America’s leading aristocratic families. On 17 January 2019, Alexander Rubinstein bannered “Amnesty International’s Troubling Collaboration with UK & US Intelligence”, and he reported that HRW “publishes a steady flow of indictments against countries that don’t play ball with Washington — countries like Iran, China, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea and more. Those reports amplify the drumbeat for a ‘humanitarian’ intervention in those nations.” One of HRW’s two co-founders “had deep ties to the British Foreign Office and Colonial Office while another [the only other] co-founder” worked with the FBI. Churchill and the imperialists won out, while FDR and the anti-imperialists were defeated, in the post-WW-II U.S.-dominated world. HRW has always been a leading proponent, on the liberal side, for America to impose sanctions (economic blockades) against, and ultimately to invade and “regime-change,” governments that America’s aristocracy has on its yet-to-be-conquered list. These people are liberal neoconservatives, and therefore are just as war-mongering as the conservative ones are, but they are more hypocritical (‘humanitarian’) about it, and that’s the only real difference. No type of imperialist is authentically progressive (pro-democracy); they all are working for a dictatorship by the aristocracy — that’s what they actually want: a dictatorship by their particular aristocratic group. A dictatorship, in any event, against the public. Only the hypocrisy separates one of these two aristocratic groups from the other. An imperialist is an imperialist, regardless of whether conservative or liberal.

As I had earlier reported:

Subsequently, I checked a few of the other nations that are among the best on coronavirus-performance. For example, there’s China. It has 59 coronavirus-19 cases per million population, and the U.S. has 298 times as many cases per million, but the U.S. Government rates China also in the highest-risk category, “Level 3,” for Americans to visit, on account of its supposedly higher-than-U.S. danger of becoming infected with that virus.

Then, there’s Vietnam, which the U.S. Government had tried to conquer but couldn’t. Vietnam has only 10 coronavirus cases per million inhabitants. America has 17,587 per million; so, obviously, that’s 1,759 times as many. Vietnam also is rated “Level 3” — the worst, most coronavirus-dangerous, category. The Government of Americans is warning Americans to avoid visiting Vietnam because it’s just too dangerous a coronavirus-risk for an American, whose country has 17,587 cases per million. Obviously, no intelligent person trusts a government such as this. (No more than such a person would trust the Government that had promised it was certain that WMD existed in Iraq in 2002, or that Syria had gassed people on 7 April 2018, or that the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President in 2014 was a ‘democratic revolution’ instead of a U.S. coup — or on, and on, such as about “Russiagate”.)

Then, there’s Burundi, with 36 cases per million, and it’s likewise a “Level 3” country — 488 times safer on coronavirus than U.S. is, but rated by the U.S. Government as being instead too coronavirus-dangerous for Americans to travel to. 

Then, there’s Myanmar, which has only 8 cases per million inhabitants — 1 divided by 2,198 times as many cases-per-million as the U.S. does — and the U.S. Government refuses even to call that nation “Myanmar,” but instead calls it by what the British did when they had it as a colony, which is “Burma,” and the U.S. regime’s travel-advisory rating of “Burma,” for ‘Burma’s would-be now U.S. imperial masters, is likewise exactly the same as they rate Uganda: “Warning — Level 3”. The U.S. regime is telling its citizens that a country which is 2,198 times safer on the coronavirus danger than the U.S. itself is, is instead too unsafe on coronavirus for Americans to travel to. They care so much about the safety of their own citizens, as to warn them against visiting a country that’s thousands of times safer. How sincere is that? But some people still respect the lie, and the liars (serial-liars), as if they weren’t. 

The extent of sheer lying by the U.S. regime is comparable to that of the worst regimes in history. Evidently — for Americans, at least — regime-change is needed, but it needs to begin at home, not abroad. We Americans need it, in order to win our own freedom, from America’s billionaires, who control our Government.

Incidentally: where does Thailand stand on these matters — its coronavirus-performance? It has 49 cases per million, and 0.8 deaths per million. On cases, it is the 12th-safest country; and, on deaths, it is the 10th-safest. So, given the strong tendency for the coronavirus-safest countries to be on the U.S. aristocracy’s yet-to-be-conquered list, instead of on its has-been-conquered list (already part of the U.S. empire), one would expect it to be yet another “Level 3” country. But it isn’t — Thailand is instead rated as “Level 1” — the coronavirus-safest category. Now, what could possibly explain that apparent anomaly? Thailand — as was documented above — was conquered in 1948. And it has stayed conquered. That might be the reason why it’s a “Level 1” country. There aren’t many “Level 1” countries. However, New Zealand is one of them. (It’s the only other one.) It has only 347 cases per million, and 4 deaths per million. On cases, there are just 34 countries that have 5M or more population that are coronavirus-safer; and, on deaths, there are only 23. Perhaps N.Z.’s extreme physical isolation on the globe is a reason for that outstanding performance. And perhaps N.Z. wins a Level 1 designation because of its outstanding performance combined with that country’s being part of the Cecil-Rhodes-initiated “Five Eyes” of the combined U.S.-UK empire (along with UK, U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand). The only “Level 2” Country (nonetheless tagged by the CDC’s warning “Practice Enhanced Precautions”) is Malaysia. That country has 288 cases and 4 deaths; so, it’s comparable to N.Z., just a tad better, and it probably got knocked down from being a “Level 1”(the top category) because it is in the same general region as N.Z. but isn’t U.S.-allied, and yet it is extremely careful to avoid offending America’s aristocracy. It also happens to border Thailand; and, therefore, maybe the raters decided to categorize Malaysia as “Level 2” in order not to offend Thailand’s aristocracy by rating them as having done no better a job than Malaysia’s aristocracy (a “neutral” country) has done. On August 11th, Joseph Thomas headlined “US Meddling in Thai Politics Continues” and he reported some of the tactics the U.S. regime is using in order to make sure that Thailand’s Government will continue serving not only Thailand’s billionaires but also America’s. Apparently, the U.S. regime is very concerned to keep Thailand’s billionaires on the side of America’s billionaires — an allied nation, against China.

Trying to find reasons behind decisions by the U.S. Government becomes more like psychoanalysis than psychological science, in such cases as this. But, clearly, the U.S. regime is extremely dishonest: what it says is not to be trusted by any intelligent person.     

For the latest Covid-19 numbers, click on www.worldometers.info/coronavirus.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity