Over the past couple of months there has been a debate over Senator Bernie Sanders statements on "achievements" of the Castro regime in Cuba in education and healthcare. The Sanders campaign, and their apologists, responded to criticisms by pointing out that President Obama had repeated many of the same claims.
Both Senator Sanders and President Obama were repeating Cuban communist propaganda that does not accord with reality. Sanders also doubled down citing how China had lifted more people out of poverty than any other country. This is Chinese communist propaganda, and ignores the tens of millions killed and starved by the regime.
However, they are not the only ones who have fallen for communist propaganda. Adam Serwer, of The Atlantic wrote in the article, "China’s Coronavirus Disinformation Ensnared Its Chief Target" of how President Trump believed the Chinese communist propaganda and disinformation relayed by China’s President Xi Jingping, ignoring US intelligence's assessment that they were covering up the true scale of the outbreak.
Administration officials directly warned Trump of the danger posed by the virus, but “Trump’s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China’s President Xi Jingping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China,” The Washington Post reported, “despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.”Taiwan and South Korea, both who never fell for the Chinese communist lies, responded quickly in late December 2019 and were able to effectively contain the spread of the Wuhan virus, and avoided to have to lock down their societies. Europe and the United States restricted flights from China later than the two Asian countries, and now face both a humanitarian and economic disaster. Taiwan and South Korea performed more extensive screening and testing of persons arriving setting up an effective quarantine. The United States had not done that.
However, there is another area of great concern and that is travel from Cuba to the United States is not being screened. Cuba has repeatedly covered up epidemics (dengue, cholera, and zika) endangering many, but continues to get a free pass in the press as a "medical super power" with positive press. At the same time the media ignores that while the Wuhan Virus spread across Cuba, the Castro regime was claiming, as recently as last week, that the virus was killed by sun and tropical temperatures advertising in European social media in countries that were being impacted.
How many tourists took the Castro regime up on its tourism invitation? What does that mean for Cubans" What does it mean for the tourists who are sick in a country without enough soap and toiletries for Cuban nationals, much less respirators? (Another bit of communist propaganda is that the embargo is the reason for food and medicine shortages, but the US does not restrict agricultural or medical products). Below is a partial list of eligible items form the Treasury Department.
Eligible items. For all destinations, eligible items are food (including vitamins); medicines, medical supplies and devices (including hospital supplies and equipment and equipment for the handicapped); receive-only radio equipment for reception of commercial/civil AM/FM and short wave publicly available frequency bands, and batteries for such equipment; clothing; personal hygiene items; seeds; veterinary medicines and supplies; fishing equipment and supplies; soap-making equipment;
What does it mean for the United States when flights are arriving from Cuba on a daily basis and their are still question about passengers being suitably screened?
Is this one of the reasons that South Florida is a coronavirus hot spot?
There are tragic consequences to believing communist propaganda, and we are suffering through them today with this pandemic.
