Latin America Is the Next Epicenter of COVID-19

As expected, COVID-19 has moved out of Asia, North America, and Europe. The New York Times reports that Latin America is now experiencing a surge of coronavirus deaths similar to the early days of the outbreak in Europe but without the money and infrastructure Europe brought to bear against the virus. Official figures are iffy, but here they are anyway:

Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, and Mexico are high and climbing. All four look to be especially hard hit. The other countries look okay for the moment, but that’s likely to change over time. The Times describes the carnage:

Deaths doubled in Lima, rivaling the worst month of the pandemic in Paris. They tripled in Manaus, a metropolis tucked deep in Brazil’s Amazon — a surge similar to what London and Madrid endured. In Guayaquil, a port city in Ecuador, the sudden spike in fatalities in April was comparable to what New York City experienced during its worst month: more than five times the number of people died than in previous years.

….Brazilian cities are resorting to mass graves to bury rows of stacked coffins. Hundreds of Ecuadoreans are still searching for the bodies of family members who went to hospitals and never returned….Peruvian highways swelled with the biggest wave of internal migration in years as people fled to the countryside when jobs disappeared. Tens of thousands of Venezuelan refugees have been forced to walk back to their destroyed homeland because work in neighboring countries has become so scarce.

….Facing the pandemic in the wake of China, Europe and the United States brought an additional set of challenges. Exhausted local officials in Ecuador, Peru and Brazil pointed to global test shortages and explained they were being outbid by richer nations on scarce medical supplies.

This is a disaster that will likely make Europe and the United States look like pipsqueaks. And thanks to the COVID-19 outbreaks consuming everyone’s attention elsewhere, virtually no aid is flowing in to help out. Just the opposite, in fact.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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