I search, without success, for a bottle of detergent to wash the glasses smeared with grease and fingerprints, which don't yield to water and the dishcloth. Looking for the soapy liquid, I have walked part of Havana today, as the television announcers call on us to strengthen our hygiene before the advance of H1N1. The alert occasioned by the epidemic, however, has not caused the shops to lower the price of cleaning products, not even the cost of simple soap which is the equivalent of the wages for a full day's work. Instead, the opposite has happened. The collapse in imports has been most notable in those that are used to bathe and disinfect.
The voice of the announcer calls on us to wash our hands often, use handkerchiefs when we sneeze and maintain good personal hygiene, but the reality forces us into filth. We lack face masks, running water in many houses, the simple possession of vitamin C to strengthen the organism, and cleanliness in public places. Thus, the so-called "swine flu" has fertile ground to reproduce. While it advances through our neighborhoods, the official media maintain their reserve and don't mention the closed schools, the quarantined sites and the full hospitals.
(italics, ours)
Ah, life in the socialist paradise of Cuba.
The real shocker here is that the Castro regime has resisted one of the first impulses of a statist when confronted with a crisis: price controls. Price controls that have the mysterious ability to make those controlled items vaporize like water on asphalt in the middle of August. This is a disturbing situation for which we do not have a ready explanation.
Read more here including HuffPo commenter apologist whining
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