Contrario al interés de EU, la OMS busca en la vacuna un bien global

Washington quiere las primeras 300 millones de dosis disponibles// El organismo priorizaría al personal de salud y otros esenciales

Afp, Ap, Europa Press, Reuters y Xinhua

https://www.jornada.com.mx/2020/05/22/politica/002n1pol 

Periódico La Jornada
Viernes 22 de mayo de 2020, p. 2

Washington. Dirigentes internacionales, como la canciller federal de Alemania, Angela Merkel; los presidentes de China, Xi Jinping, y de Francia, Emmanuel Macron, así como la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS), quieren que cualquier vacuna contra el nuevo coronavirus sea un bien público mundial, pero el mandatario de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, tiene otra prioridad: inmunizar a todos sus compatriotas.

La OMS, Europa y las organizaciones no gubernamentales involucradas en la lucha contra el Covid-19 quieren establecer un mecanismo sin precedente de distribución equitativa, que tenga como prioridad la vacunación prioritaria del personal sanitario de todos los países afectados, después de trabajadores esenciales (policías y transportistas), antes que el resto de la población.

Precio y distribución

Detrás del principio del bien público mundial subyacen en realidad dos problemas distintos: la propiedad intelectual y la distribución de las primeras dosis.

A Trump, urgido por volver a la normalidad, la solidaridad internacional no es algo que le quite el sueño: su gobierno tiene la meta –altamente hipotética, pues los ensayos clínicos apenas comienzan– de contar con 300 millones de dosis para vacunar en enero a todos los estadunidenses, refirió Afp.

Su mentalidad es muy insular, muy xenófoba; todo lo contrario de lo que se necesita para controlar una pandemia, estimó Sten Vermund, decano de la escuela de salud pública de Yale.

África reclama el fármaco sin patente, pero es poco probable que se aplique porque los laboratorios querrán recuperar sus multimillonarias inversiones.

La vacuna probablemente no será gratuita. En cuanto al precio, varios grupos se han comprometido a cubrir sólo sus costos de producción. La máxima garantía contra una eventual nacionalización de ese producto químico será construir fábricas en varios continentes. Farmacéuticas como Moderna y Sanofi comienzan a organizarse para producirlas en sus laboratorios internacionales.

En la carrera para encontrar un antídoto, las grandes farmacéuticas también compiten para hallar lo antes posible anticuerpos monoclonales, capaces de neutralizar al virus. Este método se utiliza desde hace 30 años para tratar el cáncer o enfermedades inflamatorias, y podrían servir también contra el Covid-19.

Hasta ayer la pandemia ha dejado 332 mil 425 muertos registrados, 5 millones 97 mil 994 contagiados y un millón 946 mil 312 pacientes recuperados en el mundo, de acuerdo con un reporte de la Universidad Johns Hopkins.

Europa, en tanto, debe prepararse para una segunda ola del coronavirus, advirtió la directora del Centro Europeo de Prevención y Control de Enfermedades, Andrea Ammon, en entrevista con el diario británico The Guardian, después de que varios países de esta región continúan con los desconfinamientos.

La cuestión no es saber si habrá una nueva ola de contagios, sino cuándo sucederá y cuál será su alcance, afirmó Ammon, cuando el patógeno ya dejó más de 170 mil muertos en Europa, tres cuartas partes de ellas en Reino Unido, Italia, Francia y España, según la agencia de noticias internacionales Afp.

El coronavirus causó, entre marzo y abril, 19 mil decesos más en Italia que los anunciados por las autoridades, reportó el Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social, que consideró poco fiable el balance oficial de 32 mil 486 fallecidos.

Por quinto día, la cifra de muertos en España se mantuvo por debajo de las 100, mientras el gobierno indicó que no se abrirá al turismo extranjero hasta julio, una vez que se pueda garantizar la seguridad tanto para la población local como para los visitantes.

El primer ministro de Líbano, Hasan Diab, advirtió de que el país está al borde de una emergencia alimentaria derivada de la crisis económica por los confinamientos y aseguró que muchas personas no podrán comprar artículos de primera necesidad.

La reunión anual de la Conferencia Consultiva Política Popular de China comenzó con la participación de 2 mil 57 delegados, tras el aplazamiento del encuentro por la pandemia del nuevo coronavirus.

El primer ministro de Japón, Shinzo Abe, levantó los estados de urgencia en las prefecturas de Osaka, Hyogo y Kioto por la reducción de los casos de coronavirus, aunque lo mantendrá en Hokkaido, Tokio y regiones aledañas, considerados los principales focos de infección.

El Covid-19 ha infectado a más de 10 mil trabajadores de la salud en Irán.

America, Kissinger, And The Overexpansion Trap

As a general rule, the more that hawk's harp on the need to preserve U.S. “credibility,” the weaker their argument for armed aggression.

MAY 14, 2020

dANIEL LARISON

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/america-kissinger-and-the-overexpansion-trap/

            “We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America,” George W. Bush said in a 2007 speech to the American Legion, in a labored defense of his disastrous foreign policy record.

This is one of the better-known and more ridiculous rationalizations for both the endless “war on terror” and for the Iraq war. The Bush administration conflated these two very different conflicts and pretended that an aggressive, illegal invasion of Iraq had something to do with defending the United States. There is absolutely no reason to think that having U.S. forces fighting in Iraq in 2003 or 2007 or 2020 has made Americans the least bit more secure, but this is the official line that we are still being fed today. Many of us could see long ago that this was false, but the toxic legacy of the myth that aggression brings security remains with us even now.

This myth that aggression brings security is certainly not unique to the U.S., but over the last several decades our government has been one of its most prominent promoters. It is the myth that has distorted our counterterrorism and counterproliferation policies for most of my lifetime, and it continues to provide fodder to advocates of preventive war against Iran, North Korea, and any other adversary that they think might possibly pose a threat in the distant future.

The practical consequences of believing this myth is overexpansion and overreach. Once you accept that your security is contingent on going on the offensive against potential threats, you begin to lose the ability to calculate costs and benefits rationally. Instead, you begin to see every nuisance as an intolerable menace. That encourages increasingly reckless and destructive policies as you lash out against anything and everything that you think might be a danger to you. As a result, you exhaust yourself, alienate your allies, and drive other states to band together to protect themselves from you. The U.S. has not quite reached that last stage, but it is heading in that direction.

Great powers fall into the trap of overexpansion again and again. These states make this costly error because they embrace myths that encourage them to fight in places that don’t matter and to make commitments that they don’t have to make. Even though expansion inflicts significant damage on the state that engages in it, advocates of aggressive policies never stop insisting that expansion brings security. The U.S. has been going through a period of overexpansion for almost twenty years, and the costs of continuing to mount. At the same time, there is tremendous resistance in Washington to anything even resembling retrenchment.

Jack Snyder wrote the classic study of the myths behind great power overexpansion, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition, thirty years ago. When he concluded his book, the Soviet Union still existed and he had some reason to believe that the United States had learned from its disastrous intervention in Vietnam. Snyder’s work is arguably more relevant now than it was then. However, the last thirty years of U.S. foreign policy show that he was far too optimistic about the U.S. government’s ability to learn from its past excesses and failures.

Snyder argued that “American intervention in the Vietnam War was a clear case of strategic overextension.” He added that it is “difficult to explain in terms of any Realist criteria, judging either from hindsight or from information available at the time.”

U.S. intervention in Vietnam was fueled by ideology and the misguided belief that U.S. “credibility” elsewhere would be jeopardized if the U.S. did not keep fighting there. This argument made no sense when it was made, and our allies at the time rejected it. As Snyder puts it, “American allies denied that American credibility was at stake in Vietnam, but American decision-makers insisted that it was.” As usual, the people invoking “credibility” then were just looking for an excuse to legitimize their reckless policy. It is a common claim put forward by promoters of the empire, and it usually doesn’t have the slightest connection to the real world.

That is why it is discouraging but also very revealing that a new study of Henry Kissinger by Barry Gewen essentially endorses Kissinger’s preposterous rationalizations for continued U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the escalation of the war into neighboring Cambodia. According to John Farrell’s review of The Inevitability of Tragedy, Gwen accepts the standard Cold War-era arguments for some of the worst policies of the Nixon administration:

He takes on the “war crimes” arraignments in chapters on Chile and Southeast Asia, concluding that the threat posed by Chilean socialism to hemispheric tranquillity generally absolved the United States for helping to foster a bloody coup and that the Cold War necessity of preserving U.S. “credibility” and “prestige” justified Nixon’s callous choice of four more years of war in Southeast Asia.

As a general rule, the more that hawks harp on the “need” to preserve “credibility,” the weaker the argument for the U.S. involvement in a conflict is. It is only when there are no obvious vital interests at stake that hawks are reduced to summoning the mystical spirits of reputation and resolve in a séance, and they do this because they have no other arguments left. The sad thing is that this mumbo-jumbo continues to hold sway in our foreign policy debates. It is used to override correct assessments of costs and benefits by pretending that the U.S. risks suffering an enormous loss if it “fails” to intervene in some strategic backwater. Yesterday, it was Vietnam, and today we hear much the same thing about Afghanistan.

There is no worse reason to fight a war than the preservation of supposed “credibility.” For one thing, fighting an unnecessary war always does more damage to a nation’s reputation and strength than avoiding it. Even if the U.S. managed to “win” such a war in a limited fashion, it would not be worth the losses incurred. There is virtually nothing more debilitating to a great power than an inability to extricate itself from a mistaken commitment. There is nothing more foolish than persisting in such a commitment when there is an opportunity to get out.

One of the themes of the new study of Kissinger is that tragedy is unavoidable in this world. That may be true as a general observation, but the terrible thing about continued U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was that it was entirely avoidable. Unfortunately, because of the ideological blinders of our leaders and the flaws of our political culture, the war continued and expanded even further for many more years under Nixon. The U.S. was merely prolonging the inevitable by refusing to leave a war that it had no business fighting, and there was nothing realistic or wise about this.

When Snyder wrote Myths of Empire, he could plausibly argue that “America’s ‘imperial overstretch’ has been moderate and self-correcting,” but after almost two decades of continuous desultory warfare in Afghanistan and almost three decades of being engaged in hostilities in Iraq, that verdict is no longer credible. Snyder was interested to explain both “America’s Cold War penchant for limited overexpansion and also its ability to learn from its mistakes,” but thirty years on there is no need to explain America’s ability to learn from mistakes because it has almost completely atrophied.

If we were to update Myths of Empire today, we would have to say that the elements of democratic government that were supposed to protect the United States against the failings of other systems have been waning. The “more open debate on foreign policy issues” that Snyder found in the post-Vietnam era turned out to be narrower and more closed than he supposed. He concluded that “the use of myths of the empire to justify the Gulf War shows that democratic scrutiny of strategic assertions is still needed.”

What we have learned over the last thirty years is that Congress has mostly functioned as a willing rubber stamp for whatever the executive wants to do, and its scrutiny of presidential assertions about foreign threats is woefully lacking. It turns out that Snyder’s judgment that “there was no overexpansion, no disproportion between strategic costs and benefits” after the Gulf War was premature. It was not evident in 1991, but we can see now that the costs of that intervention were much higher than they seemed at the time. The U.S. embarked then on what would prove to be a three-decade entanglement in the affairs of Iraq, and each time that there was a chance of extricating ourselves from it one president after another used the myths of the empire to keep our forces there indefinitely.

Fuerzas armadas y seguridad pública

Carlos Fazio

https://www.jornada.com.mx/2020/05/18/opinion/019a2pol

El 11 de mayo de 2020 se publicó en el Diario Oficial de la Federación el Acuerdo por el que se dispone de la fuerza armada permanente (sic) para llevar a cabo tareas de seguridad pública de manera extraordinaria, regularizada, fiscalizada, subordinada y complementaria, con vigencia hasta el 27 de marzo de 2024. Ese día, en un pronunciamiento, la Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos recordó que, conforme a lo que ha determinado la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) y la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, la seguridad pública corresponde a las autoridades civiles en los tres órdenes de gobierno, aunque es posible el uso de las fuerzas armadas (FFAA) para atender problemas de seguridad ciudadana, siempre y cuando siga una lógica de última razón y se encuentre limitada dentro de parámetros específicos.

Según la CNDH, el acuerdo gubernamental es insuficiente respecto a la determinación del contenido de los términos: extraordinaria, fiscalizada, subordinada y complementaria, por lo que se falta al principio de certeza jurídica, pues no se tiene claridad sobre los supuestos en los cuales cabría la actuación de las FFAA, lo que podría configurar una indefinición jurídica con graves riesgos para el respeto y la garantía de los derechos humanos. En su carácter de organismo constitucional autónomo, la CNDH insistió en que la participación de las fuerzas castrenses en la seguridad pública debe ser extraordinaria, de manera que toda intervención resulte excepcional, temporal y restringida a lo estrictamente necesario ante las circunstancias que justifiquen dicha intervención. Y según el organismo, el acuerdo no brinda elementos para respetar y garantizar dicha condición.

Además, esa participación debe ser subordinada y complementaria a las labores civiles de seguridad pública, y estar regulada mediante mecanismos legales y protocolos de uso de la fuerza conforme a estrictos criterios de excepcionalidad, proporcionalidad y absoluta necesidad.

A la luz de los abusos, las violaciones flagrantes y la impunidad de miembros de las FFAA por actos de desaparición forzada de personas, asesinatos y ejecuciones extrajudiciales, violaciones físicas, sicológicas y sexuales, detenciones ilegales y tortura, el acuerdo adolece de elementos concretos que garanticen el indispensable uso de la fuerza conforme al respeto y garantía de los derechos humanos. Por lo que resulta indispensable asegurar una estricta fiscalización de la intervención castrense en tareas de seguridad pública por el Congreso de la Unión y la sociedad mexicana, incluida la propia CNDH como órgano civil competente y autónomo.

La Oficina en México del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos, coincidió en que la participación de las FFAA en seguridad pública debe ajustarse a criterios de estricta excepcionalidad y ser el último recurso. Y añadió que la sola mención al carácter extraordinario de la participación de las fuerzas militares sin la información sobre las condiciones, modalidades y análisis que permita concluir que se cumple con un principio de estricta necesidad y excepcionalidad de la medida, es insuficiente. Destacó, asimismo, que contrario a la obligación de que el papel de las FFAA se supedite a las autoridades civiles, el acuerdo establece una relación de coordinación entre las autoridades civiles y militares.

La Oficina del Alto Comisionado recordó la sentencia del caso Alvarado de la CIDH (2018), que estableció que la supervisión de la participación de las FFAA en seguridad deberá realizarse por órganos civiles independientes, competentes y técnicamente capaces; sin embargo, adujo, el acuerdo fija que esa supervisión será realizada por el órgano interno de control de la dependencia de la fuerza armada que corresponda (Ejército o Marina), lo que resulta insuficiente (además de situarse fuera del marco fijado por la CIDH); contradice los elementos de control civil de la seguridad pública establecidos en la reforma constitucional que creó la Guardia Nacional y no honra los principios de transparencia y rendición de cuentas que debe regir el actuar de todas las corporaciones de seguridad, incluidas las FFAA.

Bajo asesoría del Pentágono, a partir del régimen de Ernesto Zedillo −responsable de la matanza de Acteal, en Chiapas, con participación directa de Ejército− la militarización de la seguridad pública resultó cada vez más contraria a las atribuciones constitucionales de las FFAA: la defensa de la integración territorial, la independencia y la soberanía del país, derivó en crímenes de Estado que podrían tipificarse de lesa humanidad.

Con Felipe Calderón, de la mano de la Iniciativa Mérida manufacturada en Washington, como primera autoridad en llegar al lugar de los hechos (primeros respondientes), el Ejército y otras autoridades federales manipularon la escena del crimen e inventaron verdades históricas en casos como el de los niños Almanza y los estudiantes del Tec de Monterrey; Tlatlaya; Iguala/Ayotzinapa, Tanhuato…

Esos son los riesgos que derivan de la aprobación por unanimidad en el Congreso de la Unión, a comienzos de 2019, de las reformas constitucionales impulsadas por el Ejecutivo federal, mediante las cuales se creó la Guardia Nacional y se refrendó el uso de las FFAA en tareas de seguridad pública, ajenas a su formación y profesionalización, que es la guerra contra un enemigo. Riesgos que podrían potenciarse a corto o mediano plazos, en las áreas de los dos megaproyectos del sexenio: el Tren Maya y el Corredor Transístmico.

China readies the biggest counterattack against the US

By GT staff reporters Source: Global Times Published: 2020/5/15 20:07:49 Last Updated: 2020/5/16 

China is ready to take a series of countermeasures against a US plan to block shipments of semiconductors to Chinese telecom firm Huawei, including putting US companies on an "unreliable entity list," launching investigations and imposing restrictions on US companies such as Apple, and halting purchase of Boeing airplanes, a source close to the Chinese government told the Global Times.

The potential move, the second time within two days that China has released a message of hitting back against the US, also the very first time government source noted to target specific US companies, is a result of Washington's recent malicious attacks on China, which ignited a tsunami of anger among Chinese officials and in the business circle. China is mulling punitive countermeasures against US individuals and entities over COVID-19 lawsuits due to the abuse of litigation by the US side, sources close to the matter told the Global Times previously.

China's latest moves indicate a toe-to-toe strategy between the world's two largest economies, from political to economic ends, being in full play, experts said.

The Trump administration on Friday moved to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei from global chipmakers. The US Commerce Department said it was amending an export rule and the Entity List to "strategically target Huawei's acquisition of semiconductors that are the direct product of certain US software and technology," according to a statement on its website.

"China will take forceful countermeasures to protect its own legitimate rights," if the US moves forward with the plan to change its rules and bar essential suppliers of chips, including Taiwan-based TSMC, from selling chips to Huawei, the source told the Global Times in an exclusive interview.

The measures include adding related US companies to China's "unreliable entity list," imposing restrictions on or launching investigations into US companies like Qualcomm, Cisco, and Apple according to Chinese laws like Cybersecurity Review Measures and Anti-monopoly Law, and suspending the purchases of Boeing airplanes, according to the source.

The US companies mentioned, such as Apple, Qualcomm, Cisco and Boeing, are all highly dependent on the Chinese market.

"China should implement these countermeasures to the extent that the US dare not ask for a mile after being given an inch," He Weiwen, a former senior trade official and an executive council member of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies told the Global Times. 

He advised China to carry out "thorough investigations into relevant US companies and "let them feel the pain." 

Punitive measures targeting large-sized US companies like Qualcomm, Cisco, and Apple are the "nuke bomb," according to analysts. 

China will launch rounds of endless investigations on those firms, just like swords hanging over their head. It will dampen investors' confidence and squeeze their income in the Chinese market," said an insider, who preferred to remain anonymous. 

In the first quarter of 2020, China's revenue made up 14.8 percent of Apple's total revenue.

Analysts also noted that if chips made by those firms cannot be sold to the Chinese market, one of their most important sources of revenue, it would be extremely difficult for US tech companies to recoup the investment. Some may be mired in a loss.

The chip industry is one of the top US exporters and one of the few sectors that still generates a trade surplus, largely driven by sales growth in China, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, noting that a potential chip sales ban could cost US chipmakers about $36 billion in revenue. 

"It will also inflict a chain reaction on various upstream and downstream players in US chip production," the insider said.

As for Boeing, China could possibly scrap all the current Boeing orders if the US steps on China's bottom line, even if it means some Chinese firms have to pay for the liquidated damages, an aviation industry insider told the Global Times.

If Boeing lost orders from China, the firm, which is already on the verge of bankruptcy, could only resort to the US government for help in the end, the insider said, adding that China, the world's largest buyer for planes, could order more than 100 planes from the US firm that could worth 30 billion yuan every year.

While the pain, according to experts close to the government, is expected to be felt not only by big names mentioned above such as Qualcomm, Cisco and Apple, but also by smaller US firms that are more vulnerable to uncertainties.  

Most US companies included in the list may be the small-sized US firms that are highly dependent on Chinese companies, such as US trading agencies, Gao Lingyun, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing who is close to the Chinese government told the Global Times.

"They are vulnerable to restrictive measures. Once Chinese authorities impose sanctions on them, the cost is ill-afforded. Most small firms will be pushed to the brink of collapsing," Gao said. He noted that such countermeasures could serve as a "first-level" warning to the US side.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced in May 2019 that China would release its own list targeting foreign entities that seriously undermine the legitimate interests of Chinese companies.

The unreliable entity list will include foreign organizations, individuals and companies that block or shut supply chains, or take discriminatory measures for non-commercial reasons, whose actions endanger the business of Chinese companies as well as global consumers and companies, according to MOFCOM, noting that once a company is listed, it will face necessary legal and administrative measures and the Chinese public will also be warned against it to reduce risks.

Insiders said that the administrative procedures for carrying out those countermeasures are as such: Chinese firms issuing litigation to relevant authorities on US companies' unfair market behaviors. Then regulators accept, investigate, and obtain evidence. After a reference to laws and regulations, they will decide accordingly whether to revoke US firms' licenses in China or impose other penalties. 

The new restrictions on Huawei are a firm reminder that Taiwan cannot trust the US as a reliable business or economic partner, Tom Fowdy, a British political and international relations analyst told the Global Times, noting that the White House pushed TSMC to invest in America, and then within hours of getting that are slapping restrictions on their business with Huawei.

"That is extraordinarily dishonest business," he said. 

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, or TSMC - the world's third-largest chip maker - announced on Friday that it plans to build a $12 billion semiconductor factory in Arizona, with construction to start next year, CNN reported. And the latest US export controls would require foreign firms like TSMC that use US chip equipment to apply for a license before shipping components to Huawei.

"What the administration is effectively doing is forcing TMSC to rely more on the US while undercutting its business in Asia. That is extremely treacherous and sleazy," Fowdy noted. 

While in all, China is only acting passively and defending its legitimate interests, given the US President Donald Trump is spreading anti-China conspiracy that aims to cover-up his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Wednesday, Trump extended for another year an executive order signed in May 2019 declaring a national emergency and barring US companies from using telecommunications equipment made by firms posing a national security risk, Reuters reported.

The order was considered aiming squarely at Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE Corp.

The US Department of Commerce is also expected to extend again a license, set to expire on Friday, allowing US companies to keep doing business with Huawei.

The US has failed to kill Huawei with a ban that has lasted over a year, while it's also fully aware that the longer the ban lasts, the higher cost US firms have to pay, and now it's on the verge of backfiring, said analysts.

The US Department of Commerce is close to signing off on a new rule that would allow US-based companies to work with Huawei on setting standards for next-generation 5G networks, Reuters reported on May 7.

Rather than interpreting the move as a goodwill gesture, Chinese analysts said it only shows the US has realized the cost of refusing to cooperate with the world's largest patent contributor to next-generation technology. US companies are falling far behind Huawei on 5G patents.

China has "well documented" Washington's usual threats and tactics of a crackdown on Chinese firms including Huawei after previous rounds of confrontation, and also has ample countermeasures in hands that could precisely strike US economy, Gao said, adding that China will surely strike back without hesitation if the US continues to go its own way.

"China adopting countermeasures will eventually benefit China-US relations, as only by defeating the small portion of US politicians that harm bilateral relations can the two countries' relations and trade return to normal," He said.

An economic tsunami could soon thrust half a billion people into extreme poverty

By KATE LINTHICUM, NABIH BULOS and ANA IONOVA

Los Angeles Times

Published: 5/12/2020 

https://www.concordmonitor.com/An-economic-tsunami-could-soon-thrust-half-a-billion-people-into-extreme-poverty-34301209

RIO DE JANEIRO — It seemed like Silvanah Lima was finally getting ahead.

Born and raised in Brazil’s drought-ridden northeast, she moved with her partner to Rio de Janeiro in 2018, in search of work. He was hired as a janitor; she began selling meals on the street, and soon they were bringing in $280 a month — enough to start saving to one day build a house back home.

The novel coronavirus pushed that dream out of reach. Lima, who has diabetes and heart problems, putting her at higher risk of dying if she contracts the virus, stopped working once the pandemic took hold in her sprawling slum, known as the City of God.

Now it seems that if the coronavirus doesn’t kill her, hunger may.

“We have to pay the rent, and we don’t have the money,” said Lima, 48. “I haven’t even been able to buy beans.”

The economic devastation the pandemic wreaks on the ultra-poor could ultimately kill more people than the virus itself.

The United Nations predicts that a global recession will reverse a three-decade trend in rising living standards and plunge as many as 420 million people into extreme poverty, defined as earning less than $2 a day.

As for the 734 million people already there, the economic tsunami will make it harder for them to ever climb out.

“I feel like we’re watching a slow-motion train wreck as it moves through the world’s most fragile countries,” said Nancy Lindborg, president of the nonprofit U.S. Institute of Peace and former head of the Ebola task force at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Hunger is already rising in the poorest parts of the world, where lockdowns and social distancing measures have erased incomes and put even basic food items out of reach.

In Guatemala, villagers are begging for food along highways by waving pieces of white cloth at passing drivers. In Colombia, the hungriest hang red flags from their homes in hope of donations.

The U.N. predicts the coronavirus could push an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. World Vision, an international Christian aid organization, warns that 30 million children are at risk of dying.

“I want to stress that we are not only facing a global health pandemic but also a global humanitarian catastrophe,” said David Beasley, executive director of the U.N.’s World Food Program.

While the virus has already hammered many developed nations, which are now taking cautious steps to reopen their economies, it has yet to peak in many of the world’s poorest countries, meaning the economic devastation there could drag on longer.

The pandemic, which began in an industrial Chinese city but has since spread to even the remotest corners of the Amazon rainforest, has exposed the radical interdependence of the modern world — causing disruptions in everything from manufacturing to the global narcotics trade.

In Mexico, where an estimated 1.6 million households survive on money sent from relatives working in the United States, many are beginning to feel the secondary impact of the closures of restaurants, hotels and the construction industry north of the border.

“Families are not receiving their remittances,” said Abel Barrera Hernandez, an anthropologist in Mexico’s impoverished Guerrero state.

The decline in dollars has in recent weeks forced some subsistence farmers to migrate to northern Mexico in search of work, because they lack resources to cultivate food on their own land.

“It takes money to plant seeds, to buy fertilizer and to pay somebody to help you pick,” Barrera said. “But there is no money. Nobody has any money.”

In many of the world’s poorest places, the lockdowns have proved more destructive than the virus itself.

Take Shatila camp, a warren of sewage-slicked alleyways in Beirut that is home to 20,000 Palestinian refugees.

Clean water is scarce, and families live 10 to a room in moldy cinder-block shacks. The recommended separation for social distancing — six feet — is the length of some apartments.

Surprisingly, there have been no confirmed COVID-19 cases in the camp. But the people living there — mostly menial laborers who buy food one day at a time — are being driven deeper into hardship.

“People are hungry,” said an official who oversees health management at the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees. “Hunger has more victims now than corona.”

Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle East politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said many countries in the region faced financial difficulties before the pandemic, and he worries about the potential for political unrest.

“You already had collapsed economies,” Gerges said. “The majority of people were already in abject poverty and had declining standards of living.”

Experts say the pandemic will only exacerbate global inequality, which has risen in recent decades as top earners pull away from everybody else. Among other things, the gap between the haves and the have-nots is being reinforced by a growing digital divide as the pandemic drives more jobs online.

“I’ve entered houses where the people have no bread, no cans of food, no sugar, no cooking gas,” said Mohammad S Al-Zawahreh, a Jordanian civil society activist. “It’s not going to work to tell these people to develop yourself — learn Skype or Zoom — while their children are starving.”

The U.N. and private aid groups have raised the alarm in recent weeks, saying a concerted international strategy is needed.

Last week U.N. officials increased the size of their coronavirus aid appeal from $2 billion to $6.7 billion, cautioning that “the specter of multiple famines” looms on the horizon.

“Unless we take action now, we should be prepared for a significant rise in conflict, hunger and poverty,” said Mark Lowcock, who heads the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

But there are growing fears that the United States and other wealthy nations — which are dealing with the pandemic on their own turf — will fail to heed the call to action.

“My big concern is that folks will lose their appetite for this kind of work, and there won’t be the political will necessary,” said Joy Portella, a U.S.-based health and development consultant.

At risk is three decades of progress. Since 1990, more than 1 billion people — 13% of the world’s population — have risen out of extreme poverty, according to the World Bank.

The gains were driven by China and India, where rapid industrialization has fueled major economic growth and lifted living standards.

Economists say those places are likely to recover more quickly than less-developed countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, which depend on foreign aid and lack the economic engines to rally back. Citizens there will suffer the effects of reduced spending on education, health care and anti-poverty programs.

“People who were living in poverty and vulnerable before COVID-19 will be living in more poverty and will be more vulnerable after,” said Portella. “The less you have, the longer it takes to recover. The climb back … is just really steep and hard.”

But she and others said there is the potential for positive change. Longtime debates in the development world over the importance of hiring local foreign aid workers and the usefulness of cash transfers — as opposed to the donation of goods — may be settled by new travel restrictions.

Lindborg said she hopes the global nature of the pandemic will spark a new sense of empathy.

“My hope is that this is a giant reset moment,” she said. “This isn’t going to be the last pandemic. … There are other things we will face together.”

But in the poorest parts of the world, optimism is scant.

In Venezuela, which for years has been roiled by food scarcities, soaring inflation and street protests calling for the removal of President Nicolas Maduro, life was miserable for many before the pandemic, and it has only gotten worse.

In Caracas, Yelegnis Coromoto Andrade and her husband once earned about $30 a month cobbling together multiple jobs.

Since the restaurant where he worked closed and her gigs cleaning houses and caring for elderly clients dried up, their monthly income has fallen to just $3.

“We have lost a lot this year, and my question is, how will we get it back?” she said. “I try to keep putting the bread on the table, but all I see around me is hunger and need.”