More than two years after the start of the covid-19 pandemic and, beyond discussions with overtones of propaganda about differences in the quality of vaccines or the health measures promoted by the governments of the different countries, the clearest and most conclusive of the results of the management of the pandemic is the number of deaths per million inhabitants. At least it is the hardest and most verifiable indicator. And that data shows a huge difference with the stories of supposed successes or failures. Fact kills story, they say.
Two models were opposed to the letter, at least in our parts, as antagonists: the use of “responsible freedom” (even when we are not all as free as we would like and believe we are), and the measures to control community mobility by delimited periods of time, in determined places with greater circulation of the disease. This last model was and is applied quite radically by China and other Asian countries, but not only by them.
The permanent criticism of the supposedly “repressive” Chinese model of “zero covid” hides that it has been one of the countries with the best results in terms of deaths per million inhabitants: four per million. Even though Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization (WHO), has described it as an unsustainable policy.
If China had had the Uruguayan covid mortality rates, about three million people would have died instead of the 5,223 deaths reported in that country as of May 26. Anyone could imagine the headlines in the Uruguayan press if such a tragedy had occurred. If we are to believe some accounts of how Chinese society works, surely its Minister of Health would have been shot.
However, both Uruguay and the United States consider their health policy against covid to be successful. The curious thing is that, if Uruguay had achieved the Chinese mortality rates, it would have had 13 deaths in total (instead of 7,227) and the United States, 1,207 (instead of 1,030,415).
One of the arguments used in Uruguay (and in the United States) to oppose the “zero covid” policy applied by China has been that the economy would not resist. However, the evolution of the gross domestic product in the three countries has had similar behaviors, although China applied that policy and the other two did not.
The permanent criticism of the supposedly “repressive” Chinese model of “zero covid” hides that it has been one of the countries with the best results in terms of deaths per million inhabitants.
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Asian countries (with restrictive mobility policies that are not as strict as the Chinese ones, but earlier and much larger than the Uruguayan and Western ones) have generally had much better results (Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, etc.) than the Westerners and Latin Americans in general in terms of death rates from covid. Even India, which once made headlines for the number of deaths, had one-sixth the number of deaths per million that Uruguay had, and one-eighth that of the United States.
Although the vaccines had an impact on the drastic decrease in cases and deaths caused by the pandemic, it is quite likely that there is not much difference in the “quality” of one or the other. Unfortunately, the tests carried out by the laboratories or producing countries themselves are not a guarantee of impartiality to evaluate or compare results. The lack of “independent” studies that allow objective comparisons in this regard is a must of the WHO and the international system.
We also do not know, although we can imagine it, what would have happened if instead of a “war” scenario due to the appropriation of vaccine doses by the central countries (those with the greatest purchasing power), we had had another in which all the countries in the world would have accessed equitably and proportionally to the health risk they ran to the number of doses needed (of any vaccine, of any type of platform against covid). Surely the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants would have been less. And the pandemic could have been managed better globally.
It is possible, on the other hand, that the generally more collective behavior of Asian societies and more individualistic behavior in Western and Latin American societies has also influenced the notable differences in deaths. But that would also merit further “independent” study.
Adriana Peveroni is a pediatrician. Gustavo Scaron was president of the Special Commission for National Defense of the Broad Front.
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