Ah, That Island Paradise

I was innocently basking in the wonderful sight of Cuba’s UN delegation flouncing out of the room because Bush said some mean wotten things about Pappa Fidel, when Reason brings this nonsense to my attention. It’s a long scientific paper (and behind a firewall in any case) but the abstract is something that will make Michael Moore drool. We’ll be sure to see him crowing about this soon.

Cuba’s economic crisis of 1989–2000…

Whoa whoa whoa! Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Economic crisis of 1989-2000? An eleven year economic crisis?! That’s impossible on the Island Paradise. Note the year it started. 1989. The year communism fell and Fidel stopping getting handouts from the Commies. So, in a very real sense, they have been in an economic crisis since 1959.

Anyway, resuming our discussion:

Cuba’s economic crisis of 1989–2000 resulted in reduced energy intake, increased physical activity, and sustained population-wide weight loss.

Most people call that “starvation”, but I’ll let them stick to the technical terms.

The crisis reduced per capita daily energy intake from 2,899 calories to 1,863 calories. During the crisis period, the proportion of physically active adults increased from 30% to 67%, and a 1.5-unit shift in the body mass index distribution was observed, along with a change in the distribution of body mass index categories. The prevalence of obesity declined from 14% to 7%, the prevalence of overweight increased 1%, and the prevalence of normal weight increased 4%.

Add the numbers to see what they’ve left out—the population of underweight people increased at least 2%. As a commenter at Reason pointed out, the Jews lost a lot of weight during the Holocaust, too. I would add that so did the Ukranians during Stalin, the Irish during the Potato Famine, Africans during various civil wars, Cambodians under Pol Pot and . . . Christ, I can’t go on with this. You get the idea.

During 1997–2002, there were declines in deaths attributed to diabetes (51%), coronary heart disease (35%), stroke (20%), and all causes (18%).

Of course, we always believe numbers that come out of Communist countries. Like the way the Soviets used to claim they had suburbs. Granted, some of those suburbs consisted of log cabins and mud huts, but ... they were suburbs! Those people were below the urb. In many cases, six feet below it.

Not reported? How much of an increase there was in death by suicide and starvation. Note carefully that the overall death rate dropped less than the death rate from stroke, heart disease and cancer - so something must have increased. For most people, you’ve got to live a while before you get a stroke, heart disease or cancer. I have no doubt that the millions of Africans murdered during the Congo War had decreased rates of stroke, heart disease and cancer as well.

An outbreak of neuropathy and a modest increase in the all-cause death rate among the elderly were also observed.

Hmm. So just one decade of this back-breaking-labor-and-starvation plan has already shorted and worsened the lives of Cuba’s seniors. That’s nice.

These results suggest that population-wide measures designed to reduce energy stores, without affecting nutritional sufficiency [!!], may lead to declines in diabetes and cardiovascular disease prevalence and mortality.

So there you have it. Michael Moore was right. Cuba has pointed the way! All we need to do is reduce ourselves to such abject total poverty that our 15-year-old daughters are prostitutes. We need to all quit our computer jobs and go to manual labor (all except Mikey of course. Every Golgafrinchan paradise needs documentary film makers). We need to all get the food literally ripped out of our hands ... and we’ll all be healthier!

I think Michael, for opening the discussion of how wonderful Cuba’s healthcare system is, deserves, at minimum, a Nobel Prize. I’ll see if they have a category for fatuous self-importance.

I’m going to go off on a tangent here, but one I think is critical to how we think about socialized medicine. If we get MikeyMooreCare, forced diets will be coming, one way or another.