Amid the terror of Covid-19 in August 2020, following decades of government mismanagement and corruption, the entire shipping port and over half the city of Beirut was devastated by one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.
More than 200 people died needlessly when a huge stockpile of chemicals stored unsafely at the Lebanese port detonated. Four years later, many Lebanese remain furious that no one has been held to account for the disaster and they accuse the political elite of systemic corruption, government gridlock, and economic meltdown.
Mountains of evidence indicate that multiple Lebanese politicians were liable for the crimes of homicide with probable intent, and/or unintentional homicide under local law. Almost certainly, the actions and omissions of Lebanese government agents created an unreasonable risk to life regarding their incompetent handling of the dangerous conditions at the Beirut port.
To put things in a global perspective, under international human rights law, a government’s failure to prevent foreseeable risks to life violates the basic human right to life. The same holds for Guam's politicians and their ongoing, pre-meditated public health failures.
The people of Guam came upon the morbid revelation that the island’s healthcare system had been explosively mismanaged by GovGuam officials. Eventually, local villages were devastated by more than 400 pandemic-related deaths and thousands of people who were sickened and hospitalized with serious diseases.
Early in the Covid-10 outbreak as the deadly virus burst out of China, Guam became known as one of the worst affected American communities with the U.S. federal government recognizing the failure of the island’s weak and poorly-managed public healthcare system.
While local politicians incompetently attempted to reopen Guam to international tourism in May 2021, the Centers for Disease Control issued a stark level 4 rating warning that all "travelers should avoid all travel to Guam."
Four years later, many Guamanians remain furious that no one has been held accountable for Guam’s COVID-19 Pandemic disaster and they accuse the island’s political elite of systemic corruption, government gridlock, and economic malfeasance.
GovGuam’s emergency transport system had been blessed with millions of federal dollars to purchase and operate more than 15 ambulance units for the civilian people of Guam.
From Yigo to Humatac to the rivers in between, the 150,000 nonmilitant, not-in-the-Armed-Forces civilians who live on this island thought they had 10 or at least 8 reliable ambulances to help them outrun Covid-19 or anything else that was trying to kill them.
But, the people of Guam were wrong. There weren’t enough ambulances. And now, a lot of people are dead. In fact, at the height of the Covid pandemic during the Autumn of 2021, more than 62 percent of patients arriving by ambulance to the Guam Memorial Hospital were dead on arrival. In plain English, the ambulances arrived too late to save their lives.
There weren’t 15 functional ambulances to serve the 19 beautiful villages of Guam. There weren’t even 10 functional units. No boys and girls, even as recently as this Halloween, all over God’s green 212 square miles of Guam from the Pacific Ocean to the Philippine Sea, the nonmilitant people of Guam are lucky to have even 4 ambulances humping it over our bumpy island roads.
Meanwhile, behind the fence at Naval Station and Anderson Air Force base, the 15,000 or so militant people of Guam have six functional ambulances and maybe a couple extra to spare. Guam's military doesn't seem to be defeated by the same administrative, logistical, and procurement problems that GovGuam seems to have.
I wonder how many military personnel wound up dead on arrival during our last Covid fiasco?
The Guam legislature recently held an emergency session to address the critical shortage of ambulances affecting civilian and nonmilitant people of Guam. An overwhelming, bipartisan majority of senators, doctors, and ambulance mechanics supported legislative efforts to expedite funding and procurement of reliable ambulances in light of an already demanding Christmas Holiday season quickly coming upon us.
Prudently, the consensus opinion amongst rational and politically agnostic people present was that Guam was living in dangerous times and the usual violence and slaughter of the island's New Year’s celebrations was likely to require more ambulances in Guam’s villages.
The only two people who disagreed were the acting fire chief and Sen. Will Parkinson. Apparently, the fire chief thought that Guam didn’t need more than 4 or 5 ambulances at this time and that no one was complaining to him about delayed emergency transit times. According to the fire chief, the current ambulance situation was hunky dory and he would get back to everyone if there was a problem.
Sen. Will Parkinson took a much darker perspective. He thought that having 4 out 15 operating ambulances for Guam for the past nine months was not an “Emergency” but rather a political game, which he accused his colleagues of playing for ulterior motives. Senator Parkinson said “No” to helping get Guam more ambulances this Christmas. He said "No" to GFD and he said “no" to Guam. Sen. Will Parkinson just earned himself a new nickname:
Grinch.
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