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Protests Erupt in Cuba

dudalb said:
A System modeled after that of the old Soviet Union fails badly. Whatta surprise.
But I though Cuba had such a great health care system?
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You thought right! Cuba does have such a great health care system! In spite of the U.S. blockade:
« 96,7 % der kubanischen Bevölkerung ist vollständig geimpft und 80,9% sind geboostert »
Kuba weltweit führend bei der Impfung gegen COVID-19 pro 100 Einwohner (Granma.cu, May 23, 2022)
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« 96.7% of the Cuban population is fully vaccinated (three jabs!) and 80.9% have received a booster shot »
Cuba is leading in the world in vaccinations against Covid-19 per capita

This Monday the last press conference of the Ministry of Public Health for the update of COVID-19 took place, a space that for more than two years captured the attention of Cubans and contributed decisively to the information of the population.
(...)
"The mask and distancing remain a necessity, due to COVID-19 and other diseases that are going around the world," he said.
(...)
In the last week, for example, there were no deaths and the number of confirmed cases and admitted patients also decreased.
Of the 34,025 samples studied, only 390 were positive, the lowest number ever reported in 2022, Durán said.
It was also the week with the fewest confirmed pediatric cases this year.
On the other hand, the positivity of the samples continued to drop and was 1.1% in the last week, lower than that reached in the previous one, which had been 1.7%.
Llegar a la última conferencia de prensa sobre la pandemia marca un triunfo (Granma.cu, May 23, 2022)
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The inauguration in Iran of an anti-COVID-19 vaccine production plant makes this country the first to industrially manufacture Cuba’s Soberana 02 abroad, in collaboration with the Finlay Vaccine Institute
Iran will be the first country to produce Cuban anti-Covid vaccine abroad (Granma.cu, May 23, 2022)
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El presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador respondió a una campaña mediática en contra de los convenios firmados con Cuba durante su visita reciente a la Isla caribeña, que incluye la contratación de médicos cubanos en México.
Defienden contratación de médicos cubanos en México (Granma.cu, May 17, 2022)
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President Andrés Manuel López Obrador responded to a media campaign against the agreements signed with Cuba during his recent visit to the Caribbean island, which includes the hiring of Cuban doctors in Mexico.
Defends Mexico's hiring of Cuban doctors

The Mexican presidents description of the deficit of the country's health care system is very interesting!
 
Let's talk about recent Biden Foreign Policy moves....
(Beau of the Fifth Column on YouTube, June 6, 2022 - 6:29 min)
 
Arcade22 said:
Yes how surprising that the only people allowed to "protest" unmolested in Cuba are the thugs who "protest" on behalf of the country's cruel ruling dictatorship that oppresses anyone who tries to assert their own freedom.
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Another difference between Cuba and (allegedly) freedom-loving Sweden:
If they want to mask up, students and teachers in Cuba have the freedom to do so! No authoritarian ban on face masks.

Google translation from Spanish:
Workers of the educational system and students who decide to maintain the use of the mask can continue to use it, although it is not mandatory (Granma.cu, June 2, 2022)
They recalled that students and workers with respiratory symptoms or symptoms related to COVID-19 will not be allowed to enter the centers, and morning meetings or other massive activities may be held as long as crowds are not generated in the areas.
The measures for schools also include complying with the capacities in rooms, classrooms and premises, in order to avoid overcrowding, as well as with the minimum distance of 60 centimeters between tables, and two meters from the first row to the blackboard. .
In day care centers and preschool grades located in primary schools, the sleeping cots will be placed alternating the location of the children's head and feet, between one and the other.
Adequate natural ventilation will be maintained in classrooms and premises of the institution, and follow-up will be given to workers and students who for different reasons have not been vaccinated or completed the schedule.
https://www.granma.cu/cuba/2022-06-...-nasobuco-en-las-escuelas-02-06-2022-01-06-09
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Adequate natural ventilation means that windows are never closed. :smile2: Morning meeting typically take place outside.

And for the people who claim that you can't see children smile if they are wearing a face mask:
https://www.granma.cu/cuba-covid-19...l-98-entre-ninos-y-adolescentes-cubanos-video
https://www.granma.cu/cuba-covid-19...-nino-cubano-ha-fallecido-25-01-2022-22-01-40
https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2022-06-0...d-girls-are-as-sacred-the-children-themselves
https://www.mep.gob.cu/es/noticia/en-cuba-se-esta-haciendo-historia-afirma-presidente

The numbers are still looking good. Zero deaths and the number of daily new confirmed infections still decreasing.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=13808681#post13808681
 
Cuba lifts mask mandate as vaccination rate soars and deaths plummet (Reuters, May 31, 2022)

Notice that Cubans don't stop masking up because they have learned to live with the virus! They do so because they don't have to 'learn to live with the virus'!


ETA: It is remarkable that Reuters reports this, and yet the mainstream media doesn't pick up the story and run with it: What is Cuba doing so much better than the rest of the world?
 
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It seems to be a pattern that Reuters news about Cuba's pandemic response is simply ignored by the mainstream media:

Cuba's widespread COVID-19 vaccination coverage and early move to inoculate its children proved pivotal in beating back the highly infectious Omicron variant before it ever took hold on the island, local and international experts say.
Omicron arrived in Cuba in December but fell far short of the pronounced spike in cases seen in many other places and infections have since fallen off by more than 80%, official data shows.
(...)
"It appears that Omicron is not going to have anywhere near the impact that Delta had in Cuba, or even the impact that it is having in other countries, nor will it exert the pressure on the hospital system as in other countries," Perez Riverol told Reuters.
Young children in particular have become vulnerable to the spread of Omicron in many countries as some vaccines, including those produced by Pfizer (PFE.N) , Moderna (MRNA.O) and Johnson and Johnson, have yet to be approved by global regulators for those under 5 years old.
Cuba's vaccine coverage and focus on children helped beat back Omicron, experts say (Reuters, Feb 17, 2022)
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But why confuse people with reports about countries where people aren't forced to 'learn to live (and die) with Covid'? There actually are still countries out there where 'getting an Omicron booster' is not a euphemism for getting infected! Where an Omicron booster means getting a booster shot of an actual vaccine! Where the lifting of a mask mandate is not an attempt to reach herd immunity by infection. Where even children are protected against a disease that may be milder for most of them than for their grandparents but nevertheless still kills and maims a small minority of them.
 
dudalb said:
Agreed, but blaming the embargo for Cuba's economic ills we just another way of denying that the Cuban ecnomic system,modeled after the Soviet System, has been a miserable falure.
One reason why I suport lifitng the embargos is that the Cuban Regime and it useful idiots will no longer be able to use that as an excuse.
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It will no doubt cheer you up to know how damaging the U.S. blockade is to Cuba, and how it has exacerbated the impact of the pandemic on Cubans of all ages:

The search for flights was rendered all the more enjoyable thanks to interference by the US – which, in addition to subjecting Cuba to a debilitating 60-year-long embargo for the crime of refusing to submit to capitalist tyranny, has also ensured that travellers wishing to peruse flights to Cuba on the website of the Mexican airline Aeroméxico cannot do so without being bombarded with warnings about US restrictions on travel to the country. Required to certify that I qualified for one of the permissible motives for visiting Cuba as a US citizen, I selected “support for the Cuban people” – as if this has ever been a real concern for the global superpower that has since the 1960s literally schemed to starve the nation into submission.

Unfortunately, the pandemic provided the US with the opportunity for even more sadistic treatment of Cuba – and, rather than lift sanctions as per the urgent encouragement of United Nations human rights experts, the administrations of Donald Trump and his successor Joe Biden instead intensified them.

The embargo’s obstruction of medical imports to Cuba – a lethal business if there ever was one – means that Cuba has had to contend with an acute shortage of, inter alia, syringes and ventilators. In an August 2021 dispatch for NBC News, Havana-based journalist Ed Augustin specified that “two Swiss companies that had previously sold Cuba ventilators said they could no longer continue trading with the island after they were bought out by Vyaire Medical, an Illinois company” – such being the nature of US efforts to isolate an already isolated island.

And in a May 2021 article for the Guardian, Augustin reported that the various Cuban research teams working on the COVID-19 vaccines had to “share just one spectrometer – a machine essential for quality control – powerful enough to analyse a vaccine’s chemical structure”. As the machine’s British manufacturer had been bought out by a US firm – go capitalism! – the Cubans were no longer able to buy spare parts directly.
How to get a Cuban COVID jab in 1,000 easy steps (AlJazeera, March 26, 2022)
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"... to use that as an excuse." Yeah, right! Do you want photos of dead children and octogenarians, too?!
And by the way, "support for the Cuban people" no longer seems to be an option.

Others may be interested in reading about how to get the Cuban Covid-19 vaccines if you are a foreigner. I have considered getting the Cuban jabs myself. And according to the article it is possible to get them, but unlike the Cubans, you have to pay. The price is $(US) 45, but it is not entirely clear if that is for one jab or for all three, two Soberana 2 and one Soberana plus.
 
I see we have a blockade fan here, pretending to "suport lifitng the embargos" because the people harmed by those embargos would then "no longer be able to use that as an excuse." He wants to have it both ways:
1) He supports politicians who maintain and exacerbate a blockade whose purpose it is by “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of [the] government."
2) While at the same time claiming that the hunger and desperation should be blamed on those that he wants the people who are harmed by the blockade to overthrow.
The level of dishonesty and hypocrisy of some Biden fanboys is grotesque.

Other Biden supporters are a little more honest. They know both what the blockade is intended to do and what it actually does:
It hurts the Cuban people, impeding their ability to obtain medical supplies as basic as syringes and masks to fight COVID, and preventing small businesses from accessing U.S. products.
60 Years On, The Economic Embargo On Cuba Is An Abject Failure (Patrick Leahy, Vermont, Feb. 7, 2022)
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It's that time of the month again, and Cuba still seems to be holding out against Omicron. The surge that I feared might come as a result of the May 1st celebrations never materialized, and the recent suspension of the mask mandate also doesn't seem to have led to a rise in the numbers. Not only that, Cuba hasn't reached ZeroCovid, but for a month Cuba has now had Zero Covid-19 deaths, a remarkable victory over the virus!
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in Cuba since March 30, 2022.
As mentioned last month, it probably helps that most Cuban celebrations usually take place outdoors this time of the year. The U.S. number of daily new infections is considerably higher than last year in mid-June.

The SARS-CoV-2 numbers from Our World in Data, Nov 16, 2021, and today:
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people. 7-day rolling average. Cuba 33, USA 251. --> Cuba 2, USA 297.
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people. 7-day rolling average. Cuba 0.23, USA 3.49. --> Cuba 0.0, USA 0.78.
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people Cuba 753.61, USA 3,042.76. Cuba's 753.61 is the same number as last month!

Vaccinations:
Share of people vaccinated against COVID-19 Cuba: fully 73.41, total 89.07; USA: fully 57.58, total 67.38. --> Cuba: fully 88.09, total 94.33; USA: fully 66.84, total 77.92.
Since it takes three jabs to be considered fully vaccinated in Cuba, the difference is even bigger if we look at:
COVID-19 vaccine doses administered per 100 people Cuba 238.92, USA 130.99. --> Cuba 334.85, USA 178.39.
Daily COVID-19 vaccine doses administered per 100 people. Rolling 7-day average. Cuba 0.98, USA 0.30. --> Cuba 0.51, USA 0.06.
CNN's Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide

The numbers from this thread for Dec 17, 2021, Jan 17, 2022, Feb 17, 2022, Mar 16, 2022, April 17, 2022 and May 17, 2022.
 
Vaccines - in spite of the blockade

Maybe the mainstream media is beginning to take notice - at long last:

Today, as the United States finally rolls out coronavirus vaccines for small children, Vérez is celebrating an unlikely achievement: Most of Cuba’s youngsters got their shots months ago.
(...)
The Cuban vaccines have not yet been approved by the World Health Organization, although they’ve gotten the green light from regulators in Mexico, Iran and Vietnam. Scientists say their development might become a case study of how poorer countries can invent their own shots.
“They were not privy to the gazillion dollars some of these companies received,” said Maria Elena Bottazzi, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, referring to multinationals like Pfizer and Moderna. “Sometimes, with very little, you can get very far.”
A coronavirus vaccine was a moonshot, even for the world’s most sophisticated laboratories. For Cuba, the obstacles were titanic. It faced U.S. sanctions, a snarled global supply chain and a domestic economy in free fall. Cuba had such a shortage of syringes it had to beg for international donations. A New York-based charity, Global Health Partners, sent 6 million.
(...)
Between the pandemic, U.S. sanctions and the inefficiencies of state planning, Cuba’s economy withered. A lack of medication was one factor spurring last July’s nationwide protests.
How Cuba became a pioneer in covid-19 vaccines for kids (WP, June 18, 2022)
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dann said:
It's that time of the month again, and Cuba still seems to be holding out against Omicron. The surge that I feared might come as a result of the May 1st celebrations never materialized, and the recent suspension of the mask mandate also doesn't seem to have led to a rise in the numbers. Not only that, Cuba hasn't reached ZeroCovid, but for a month Cuba has now had Zero Covid-19 deaths, a remarkable victory over the virus!
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Yes, Cuba has achieved a remarkable victory against the virus. But only because they have a functioning government healthcare system, and were able to enforce mask mandates and crack down hard on dissent while 'persuading' the population to vaccinate. IOW, they were only able to do it because Cuba is a communist hellhole.

And how has Cuba managed to maintain their repressive one party state for all these years? Why, American sanctions of course! Yes, Cuba has us to thank for their fantastic Covid response. ;)
 
Even Cain might have been poe'd by that one.
Before I went to Cuba more than 20 years ago, even I had the suspicion that the stories I heard about oppression in Cuba in the media couldn't just be made up, could they? 'No smoke without fire' and all that.
So I can't blame people who come to believe what they do about the country. However, I do blame them when they just repeat those lies without having any actual knowledge at all.
A one-minute video (yes, 1 min!) with a short comparison of the U.S. response to protests in Cuba and Colombia in 2021:
How Biden Reacts to Cuban Protests (Belly of the Beast on YouTube, Aug 1, 2021)


ETA: But maybe the preferential treatment of Colombia is over. I'm not sure.
Colombian Presidential Election, June 2022
 
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Cuba is the country with the largest number of booster doses against COVID-19 applied to its population, to date, in the world, reported the Finlay Institute of Vaccines, on its Twitter account.
Behind the Island are nations such as China, Italy, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Brazil, the United States, India, Russia and South Africa, among others.
The source also regrets that more than 220 million people in Latin America still do not have a single dose of an immunogen against the disease caused by SARS-COV-2.
Cuba es el país con mayor cantidad de dosis de refuerzo aplicadas contra la COVID-19 (Granma.cu, July 4, 2022)
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Cuba is the country that has administered the highest number of booster doses against COVID-19 (per capita, it should have added! :) )

No version in English yet.
A German translation: Kuba ist das Land mit der höchsten Anzahl von Booster-Dosen gegen COVID-19 (Granma.cu, July 5, 2022)
 
No Cuban child has died of Covid-19 after the vaccination campaign
Google translation from Spanish:
Prior to it, unfortunately, 18 infants (between two and 18) lost their lives as a result of this terrible disease. This is the most relevant result of the Cuban Soberana vaccine, an immunogen from the Finlay Institute of Vaccines.
(...)
... the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing the symptomatic disease COVID-19 in children between two and five years of age, during the wave of Omicron in Cuba, was 90.1%.
Meanwhile, the effectiveness of vaccination with Soberana in the prevention of severe COVID-19 disease, in children between the ages of two and 18, was 95.8%.
(...)
... more than 63,000 children and young people were prevented from transmitting the disease, which undoubtedly determined the control of the coronavirus epidemic in the country.
On this highly sensitive issue for the Cuban family, the President of the Republic considered the campaign decisive, also, for the restart of the school year and, therefore, return to normality in the lives of children. Schools have not been complicated for us, no doubt due to vaccination, the Head of State appreciated.
Ningún niño cubano murió de COVID-19 luego de la campaña de vacunación (Granma.cu, July 12, 2022)
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The numbers of daily new cases rose since last month in both Cuba and the USA, but Cuba still has Zero daily Covid-19 deaths.
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in Cuba since March 30, 2022. A rise from 1.65 on June 17 to 4.63 on July 16.
The U.S. number of daily new infections is four times higher than this time last year. By the way, this time last year was when the thread was started.

The SARS-CoV-2 numbers from Our World in Data, Nov 16, 2021, and today:
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people. 7-day rolling average. Cuba 33, USA 251. --> Cuba 4.63, USA 398.16.
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people. 7-day rolling average. Cuba 0.23, USA 3.49. --> Cuba 0.0, USA 1.23.
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people Cuba 757.70, USA 3,037.97. Cuba has had the same number since May 11. However, the numbers at Our World of Data for both Cuba and the USA seem to have be adjusted slightly since last month.

Vaccinations:
Share of people vaccinated against COVID-19 Cuba: fully 73.41, total 89.07; USA: fully 57.58, total 67.38. --> Cuba: fully 88.63, total 94.90; USA: fully 67.07, total 78.38.
Since it takes three jabs to be considered fully vaccinated in Cuba, the difference is even bigger if we look at:
COVID-19 vaccine doses administered per 100 people Cuba 238.92, USA 130.99. --> Cuba 346.5, USA 180.5.
Daily COVID-19 vaccine doses administered per 100 people. Rolling 7-day average. Cuba 0.98, USA 0.30. --> Cuba 0.17, USA 0.05.
CNN's Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide

The numbers from this thread for Dec 17, 2021, Jan 17, 2022, Feb 17, 2022, Mar 16, 2022, April 17, 2022, May 17, 2022 and June 17, 2022.
 
Cuba reintroduces face-mask mandates on public transport and in children's daycare centers:
COVID-19: Anuncian primer refuerzo de vacuna en niños y uso del nasobuco en transporte y círculos infantiles (Granma.cu, July 19, 2022)

The country has had ZeroCovid deaths for a little more than two months, but a slight rise in the number of positive cases per million, from 1.65 on June 17 to 5.58 on July 19, has made Cuba decide to pull the brakes early instead of waiting till the numbers get out of hand and require more drastic measures.
Almost quadrupling the number of new daily cases may appear to be a huge difference, but the number is still insignificant in comparison to most other countries, in particular those that are letting it rip and encouraging people to 'learn to live with the virus'. See post from July 17 above.
 
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