Disaster Relief
Neither the Chinese nor the Myanmar junta are going to allow an unrestricted flow of relief supplies and disaster workers into their countries. Presently, the Chinese have the infrastructure (military, police, worker base) to deal with catastrophe on the ground. They will take money and supplies but will not allow foreign bodies on site.
In Myanmar the junta is so paranoiac it doesn’t even know how to accept delivery of material and hasn’t the physical means to disseminate any substantive relief. The population of Burma is used to being on their own and the corrupt system will adapt to see that material eventually reaches the masses. The military will eventually sell donated supplies into the black market system for a small profit and the underground market will see that supplies are distributed at inflated pricing. Therefore the sick and dying need an influx of cash far more than ships and planes full of material that will take weeks or months to enter the corrupt chain of supply.
The natural progression of disaster has time as a multiplier. The initial cyclone takes 100,000, compromised water supplies take double that from dysentery, flooding encourages mosquito born diseases like dengue fever and malaria that takes even more of the weakened population, the unburied dead promote an epidemic of cholera and crop loss makes starvation inevitable. All told, one bad storm could take 2 million or more human lives.
FEMA and the bad politics and policies of the Bush administration cost him some votes but this cyclone will signal the end of the Myanmar junta. The Chinese will scramble to restore order but eventually will have to answer for the shoddy un-reinforced concrete construction that caused so much initial loss of life.
Send dollars and leave the can of soup on your shelf.
