Corona Daily 492: Guns Vs Butter

United States of America is the most secure nation in the world. Americans are best protected against any nuclear threat. America has the best missile defence system. It can destroy an incoming a-bomb before it lands. Not only that, USA has the highest number of state-of-the-art warheads, a total of 6800.

But they are terribly short of ventilators.

A ventilator costs between 16,000-40,000 USD. A hospital can get a really top-end ventilator for USD 50,000. USA has less than one ventilator per 2000 Americans. The New York governor urgently needs 30,000 ventilators, hoping to save hundreds of thousands of lives. But he has only 4000 ventilators.

In 2019, USA spent 33.6 billion USD on nuclear weapons. (=672,000 ventilators). Even when unused, bombs need to be regularly refurbished, and that is expensive. Refurbishing the B61 nuclear bomb will cost them 9 billion USD. America’s nuclear budget for the next ten years is 500 billion USD. (=10 million ventilators). Ten million ventilators would take care not only of the USA, but the entire world.

The nuclear club (USA, Russia, China, France and UK) rules the world with its all-powerful nuclear arsenal and veto power in the United Nations. They can attack any country with impunity, and defend themselves against any weapons. But as of 2 April; a tiny, invisible virus has infected more than half a million and killed 18,000 of their citizens.

The citizens of India and Pakistan are very proud of their nuclear tag. Both nations have ambitious nuclear programmes and budgets to develop and acquire sophisticated technology and arms. India has 40,000 ventilators for 1.37 billion and Pakistan 2200 ventilators for 220 million.

Corona virus will deserve our big thanks if it can take us towards a nuclear-free and health-secure world.

Ravi