Brazil’s mismanagement of Covid-19 threatens the world
economist.com
economist.com
It seems like China handled the best this pandemic so we all should ask them how they did it. We should send our health experts to China so they can learn something.
I doubt it.
For example this information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
"Most commonly, the criteria for evaluating the degree of economic development are gross domestic product (GDP)."
US has the most highest GDP in the world but of course there are other 99 economic metrics and criteria where US is not first but looking at productivity and innovation they are number 1.
"By 1890 the United States had overtaken the British Empire as the world's most productive economy." From my link.
This is simply not true. I spent 2019's vacation in Florianopolis where it is very common for people to have relatives in the US. I asked some of them "What do you do when you get sick?" and unanimous answer was: "We come back to brazil". Brazil's public health has been continually improving since early 2000's and had a world-class respected vaccination program, generic medicines and free treatment for HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
Bolsonaro's encouraging crowding, ineffective medication, downplaying the disease, the pandemic and looking for vaccines too late (even discouraging it) combined with his supporters who argued that the pandemic was a fraud, are surely to blame for a part of such a high number of deaths.
I don't think the middle class can afford that. The majority of the 300k dead were treated in the public system.
I lost a younger brother to that national healthcare system 10 years ago. Maybe this might be the case for the more developed regions (like the south & southeast), go to the north/northeast and you'll see the abyss.
How can Peter Daszak be on who commission given his deep ties with the wuhan lab. Why does no one care. what am i missing here.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/14/who-investigat...
How is this not a big deal.
The latest move is to de-list Chinese firms from American exchanges, which is going to severely damage Chinese tech firms ability to raise capital.
If you ask me how to to prevent future pandemics idk ask experts but something has to be done. Get global public health standards or something.
The Spanish Flu most likely originated in the US.
You're likely right about covid, though.
Black Death originated near China in Asia and was brought to Europe by Silk Road traders. None of this pandemics originated either in Europe or US(North America).
I suspect people in media are afraid of speaking out against China. For example, there may be consequences to speaking out if China ever invades and occupies other countries - at that point dissidents will be in danger, especially those that spoke against them in the media.
could it be because that might cause more anti-asian hate crimes?
Also, Taiwanese people are every bit as much true Chinese as anyone from mainland China.
Media articles could easily point these things out.
I can think of only a few scenario's where China messed up and the West remains silent. One would be where personal interests or blackmail would cause the decision makers to change their tune. A plausible one is where the West does not want to step on any toes, to safeguard that little data coming from China, while it is silently gathering international support for when the pandemic is under control. Another where SARS-2 developed from SARS-1 when it recombined in Wuhan in a HIV-patient (perhaps after a failed vaccine trial). If you are interested in protecting the health of the population, it is more important to shield possible victims of panic and hate, than to have a million negative mentions of HIV, China, and vaccines in the news.
I suspect Peter Daszak will face accountability due to the Streisand effect of his PR campaign against "conspiracies". You can't write a paper condemning scientists for even suggesting it was a lab leak of a human-intervented virus, and then field an objective origins investigation. A lot happened in 2020, but I doubt we forget that blatant mess.
Even if this turns out zoonotic (I hope it does), Daszak will scream he was right suppressing any investigation into opposing hypothesis. No scientist should live that down.
There are better sources, but here's one to get started if you need: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/Whathappensif/how...
People that know Brazil, know that covid is being managed by each state and that the left-leaning states that have the hardest lockdowns. The number of covid deaths have "declined" significantly now that a new State of Health requires that the reported deaths have an identity attached to each death
Adding to that, the worst state in covid cases and deaths, São Paulo, is lead by a left leaning politician that is leading the country with the hardest lockdown
Sweden has been one of the countries that has the least amount of covid cases in the world and has no lockdown.
This article is utter nonsense and pure propaganda. The economist should be ashamed of publishing this
Isn't São Paulo the biggest state in Brazil by far? How is it surprising it has the worst numbers?
> Sweden has been one of the countries that has the least amount of covid cases in the world and has no lockdown.
Now compare Sweden with the other nordic countries
Vietnam had 2500 cases with 96 million population.
Or let's compare with something closer, Norway which is right next to Sweden: 91k cases (5 million population).
It is immensely clear that most (all?) countries in the world are soon going to require proof of covid vaccine before they'll even consider letting a person travel to their country.
If you find this hard to believe, this system already works today, very well. It's already the case for many, many countries in Africa - you can't get a visa, and the airlines won't let you on a plane unless you have proof of Yellow Fever vaccine. You also can't cross land borders. It even goes a step further - when entering a country like Australia they specifically ask if you've been to <given African countries> in the last 90 days, and they won't even let you into Australia if you have not had the Yellow Fever Vaccine.
If you're wondering why the airlines enforce this, it's the same reason they enforce visas. The governments cleverly decided to make airlines foot the bill for anyone that must be sent back, therefore airlines are strict about not allowing anyone to board who they know would be denied entry. It works very well, and has done for decades.
From my experience travelling the world, it's immensely clear this will soon be the requirement to fly essentially anywhere in the world - proof of Covid vaccine and possibly a recent negative test and possibly a short quarantine on arrival and even another test in a few days. (like Iceland now).
This will be an interesting way to "force" citizens to get a vaccine. Your own government probably won't be able to (human rights and all), but foreign governments will force you to, if you desire to ever leave your own country.
Your own government probably won't be able
to (human rights and all)
Australia have tried for years, and the best they can do is tax breaks if you do get vaccinated, and barring kids from school and daycare if they're not.
(NOTE: I am NOT anti-vaccine, and I will be getting it as soon as I'm able. I just don't think it's possible for a country to physically force citizens to get a needle against their will. I've certainly never heard of it)
Given the nature of viral disease spread only a few people slipping through the cracks are enough, which is of course why the more dangerous Brazilian strain was already in dozens of countries before we even knew about it. So yes, countries failing to contain the pandemic are absolutely a threat to the world, and no control mechanism is enough to contain variants of rapidly transmittable diseases because one mistake is all that it takes. The only solution is to globally quell the pandemic and this is particular important in large, highly populated countries because they're statistically the biggest source for the generation of the variants.
Partisan mentality is a logical fallacy. It's divide and conquer. Keep people distracted in an infinite tug-of-war while some people collude and benefit.
It's not left vs right, it's up vs down.
Is Sweden "threatening the world" as well?
Or is this the usual political narrative the left-wing press uses to bash right-wing politicians?
Your argument is so bad. If that is the case, then alcohol prohibition was successful only if people complied to it. The same with the war on drugs
But sure, The Economist is left wing now.
Almost the definition of whataboutism.
India is indeed struggling. They had the good fortune of being hit later than other countries,but they will likely be hit worse.
Of course, when articles critical of India will appear, you'll probably again complain that they are left-wing propaganda against Modi.
(This also basically completely doomed contact tracing in every other western country, because they had no reason to be looking for cases related to people who'd travelled from Italy until it was far too late to start. It's probably not a coincidence that all the countries which made it vaguely work were ones that were close to China rather than Europe.)
Brazil is a huge country in every sense of the word, with a much poorer population, a much worse hospital system, a much kore important role in the world economy, and so it is perfectly poised to become a breeding ground and reservoir for many new strains of Covid19.
And you must be laughably far right to call The Economist left wing. Marine Le Pen would call it a right wing paper.
Did you read the article? It doesn't follow a "right wing" tone.
It reads like a completely business-like, dispassionate take on the situation in Brazil, appearing in one of the most respected and well-known right-wing newspapers in the US.
I'd consider The Economist neoliberal rather than right-wing, as they have a pretty clear editorial bias in favor of free trade and globalization, but also tend to lean left on social issues. That puts the magazine opposite Le Pen on most issues, given her nationalist positions. Trying to lump them together as "right-wing" is incredibly reductionist.
You can go back and read The Economist's opinion of Le Pen if you'd like, and it's distinctly not charitable.
https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/03/02/marine-le-pen-letr...
Sure, there are specific social issues, mainly related to personal liberties, where they would disahree (and Le Pen's populism is always unpleasant to business interests). But the broader topics of interest to the Economist, the improtance of business interests and using the state to further them internationally, are quite aligned. Perhaps Le Pen really believes and would have put her populist promises in action, but I think its far more likely that she would have done just like Trump - spout populist promises but govern with business interests at the forefront.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: since this account has been repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, including using this site primarily for flamewars and ideological battle, I've banned it. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. It will eventually get your main account banned as well.
Brazil is a huge country and any large country having an outbreak is obviously bad for the world. This much is clearly self evident from the initial outbreak.
It's certainly bad for the people there, but how is it bad for the rest of us? It's a pandemic, it's not like failing to contain the initial outbreak.
I'm not saying this would be a good idea, but Brazil is unlikely to be able to adequately vaccinate its population in the next year. This should be a consideration, as it was in March 2020 in several European countries before they adopted the chinese strategy.
Herd immunity is applicable to immunity and susceptibility in a population. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077
That's obviously false, given that we are observing many meaningful variants without anything close to herd immunity.
Each person infected is an additional chance of a variant with antigenic escape, let alone vaccine escape.
What is scaring the world the most now is the possibility of a new brazilian variant that can escape current vaccines. That would move the whole world to the beginning of the pandemic again.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
Seems like every country is trying to point the finger at every other country to cover their own flaws.