Karma:
Bombing hospitals, clinics and other health facilities has been a standard tactic for the Syrian government in order to drive pro-rebel Syrians out of the country. It worked but now there is a serious health crises, because of the covid19 virus, that the country is unprepared for. Not only are most of the health facilities gone but so are the medical personnel. Even many of those loyal to the government have left, usually for economic reasons. The virus may never reach many of the more remote parts of the country but in the major towns and cities there is enough traffic coming in to bring infected travelers. Most of those who get infected and require a ventilator (a machine costing several thousand dollars that assists breathing) won’t have access to one and that will increase the death toll. Currently all of Syria has fewer than 400 ICU (Intensive Care Unit) beds, which usually means access to a ventilator. It is estimated Syria will have ten to twenty times as many covid19 patients needing ICU care. As a result a thousand or more Syrians will die over the next few months because of the virus and lack of medical facilities. Syria is still at war. The monthly deaths are way down because the war is winding down but there are still several hundred war-related deaths a month. Civilian deaths have been way down with less than 300 in February and about a hundred in March.
Mind you, the virus will be a footnote in the casualty list from the protest movement/rebellion/civil war/multi-war that broke out and evolved. And not that Assad will mind if the Wuhan Flu kills off a lot of his prisoners.
But the epidemic adds to the misery and uncertainty. And the addition is a particularly terrifying threat. Unlike bombs and bullets that you can at least hear or see coming and which you can at least pretend you are protecting yourself against until the threat misses or passes by, germs--like poison gas--are particularly terrifying for being invisible and coming out of nowhere, with the threat always there.
Who knows what his long-suffering (and dying) supporters will say about his tenure with this event after they thought they saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
Just when Assad thought he'd won the war by destroying Syria, some damned foolish thing in
