2024-04-06 03:14:44
The recent controversy over the insufficient response of the current Minister of Health to the dengue outbreak, although incomparable, brought to mind the controversies produced in the fight against the covid pandemic. And just four years after the government ordered social, preventive and mandatory isolation (ASPO), on March 20, 2020, the most prestigious magazine in the world of health, The Lancet published a report where “it collected more than 22 thousand data sources to present updated estimates of the 2021 Global Burden of Disease Study for 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations between 1950 and 2021.”
And “concluded that in the first two years of the pandemic there were 15.9 million deaths worldwide attributable to both SARS-CoV-2 infection and its indirect effects, for example, delay in seeking medical care.” “, while “at a global level, life expectancy at birth declined in 84% of countries and territories during the first two years of the pandemic and subtracted a total of 1.6 years (read in this link).
“In Uruguay, excess mortality in 2020 and 2021 was only 0.49 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants, almost ten times less than Peru. They are followed by Costa Rica (0.74), Panama (0.81), Argentina (0.85) and Chile (1.03). For comparison, the rate in Brazil was 1.36, in Colombia it was 1.70, and in Guatemala it was 1.78. Outside the region the rate was: Israel (0.29), Germany (0.60), Canada (0.95), United Kingdom (1.02), Spain (1.03), India (1.29) , United States (1.59)”.
“Regarding the falls in life expectancy, in Argentina it fell from 76.9 years in 2019 to 76.1 in 2021 (-0.8), in Uruguay from 77.1 to 75.7 years (-1.4 ), in Panama from 79.9 to 78.3 years (-1.6), in Chile from 80.6 to 79 years (-1.6) and in Costa Rica from 80.1 to 77.7 years (- 2,4). In Brazil, in states such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, the decline was between 3 and 4 years. Amazonas, whose capital, Manaus, was particularly hit by the pandemic in mid-2020 and at the beginning of 2021, life expectancy plummeted from 76.4 years in 2019 to 71 in 2021.”
In other words, Argentina had a lower rate of deaths per thousand inhabitants from covid than the United States, Spain, England, Canada and Chile, a country that was praised for having started vaccinating earlier, and, at the same time, it had the smallest drop of life expectancy in the region, surpassing even Uruguay, the star country for being the first to have managed to apply the desired Pfizer vaccine.
This does not imply that it is entirely a merit of the Alberto Fernández government, beyond the resources allocated to vaccines, masks and respirator reinforcements; that no one died on the guard floor without attention, as happened in Italy and Spain, or bodies were accumulated in refrigerated trucks as in the United States, and that no one was left without a bed, intensive care unit or respirator, is the result of decades of State investment in public health and training of medical professionals that, although always insufficient, is above many countries with the same level of economic development.
Nor does it mean that Alberto Fernández’s government has not made mistakes in the fight against covid, but what Javier Milei repeated several times in interviews both during the campaign and after assuming the presidency is not true: “If we had done things the way “A mediocre country, we would have had 30 thousand deaths, while we had 130 thousand.” Javier Milei was probably the biggest beneficiary of the covid because the perception of an excessive extension of confinement generated – especially in the youngest, naturally more outgoing and sociable – who suffered the quarantines as an excess of State intervention in the lives of their people. citizens. What was proposed as a mandatory act of responsibility of the young people, whom the covid would not kill, with the older ones, who could be accidentally infected by the younger ones, was clearly reflected in the result of the last elections, where mostly the oldest Young people voted for La Libertad Avanza while the older people voted for the other alternatives.
Another aspect to consider is the economic cost of the lower mortality and lower reduction in life expectancy, by maintaining a more extensive confinement that with its different degrees lasted almost a year and caused the Gross Domestic Product to fall by 10%, the same drop. than in 2002 with the social outbreak of the collapse of Convertibility.
Mauricio Macri’s intimates say that a rabbi world famous for his ability to correctly predict future events had predicted him in 2019 that he would win the elections and be re-elected. This was not the case, Macri forgot the rabbi until mid-2020 when he received a call from outside the rabbi, who told him: “Did you see? You won”. To Macri’s response: “What if I won, I lost the elections?”, the rabbi replied: “You won, imagine what his life would have been like if he had been president in the midst of the covid pandemic.”
Beyond the irony, it is true that the vast majority of heads of state during the covid could not be re-elected and paid the cost of being associated for one reason or another with the negative memories of the pandemic. And not even the majority of local governors: from that famous photo of the confinement announcement in March 2020, where Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, Gerardo Morales, Omar Perotti and Axel Kicillof were next to the president, the first four lost their elections.
The description of infection was disproportionate but what society did not forgive Alberto Fernández and tarnished any possible achievement in the fight against covid was the so-called VIP vaccination for close friends and the celebration of the first lady’s birthday at the Quinta de Olivos when they were social gatherings prohibited.
Returning to the comparison with dengue, it is difficult to imagine what number of deaths would have occurred in Argentina if the person who had been president during the pandemic had been someone with the ideas of a little present State like Javier Milei.
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