“The BMJ”, a 170-year-old medical publication, the most important in England —and the fourth most prestigious in the world— closed the year with a devastating report (https://www.bmj.com/content/371/ bmj.m4952) on Mexico as one of the countries with the worst strategy against covid-19. And he advanced an estimate on the extent of this incompetence: we will have 161 thousand deaths before the end of April. More than 22 thousand only in the capital.
“It is not to show off” —to paraphrase President López Obrador— but his government has become a shameful model of how to turn its back on the emergency imposed by the pandemic. A deliberate position that will be supported or punished in the next elections, from which we are separated by less than six months.
On Monday night it was reported that the number of infected in the national territory is close to 1.5 million cases (1,455,000, with 127,757 deaths), but the aforementioned report includes expert estimates according to which the virus has already reached 30% of the population; that is, just over 36 million nationals, almost 30 times the official figure. The divergence is attributed to the declining number (even under a new spike in infections) of tests carried out in the country.
The aforementioned report establishes that Mexico faces one of the worst balances of victims of the virus, but despite this, it avoids imposing a new confinement of its population, unlike what happens in large regions of the world, particularly in Latin America.
It maintains that simple calls to restrict activities only work in the region in “more egalitarian societies and with greater respect for the authorities”, as is the case in Uruguay, “which is clearly not the case in Mexico.”
Indeed, all of Latin America seems to be turning towards new periods of quarantine, according to news collected by this space.
With the start of the year, Bogotá, the Colombian capital, returned almost three million people to absolute confinement. In Bolivia, the mayor of the capital, La Paz, was infected for the second time and said that he will have new restrictions. Peru quarantined travelers arriving from various countries, closed beaches and announced a staggered presence at polls during the presidential elections in April. Uruguay accumulated 10,000 positive cases in 20 days, the same number as in the first wave was added in nine months …
The publication of “The BMJ” – until 1988 called the British Medical Journal – rescues another black facet of the Mexican moment: more than 2,000 doctors, nurses and other health workers died during this crisis, the greatest sacrifice that the sector has had in the nation any.
The portrait offered in the report, dated December 30, on President López Obrador and his spokesman for pandemic issues, Hugo López Gatell is, it can be said, folkloric. Regarding the first, he rescues the episode in which he showed a religious image that protects him, his amulet. “Millions (of his compatriots) have not had the same luck”, sentence laconically.
De López Gatell Ramírez cites his statement after a director of the World Health Organization (WHO) called on Mexico, on November 30, to show “great seriousness” in handling the pandemic. “Let them send the message through diplomatic channels,” was the sad revire that the loquacious spokesperson tried. The same one that at the beginning of the pandemic enjoyed government lobbying in favor of the WHO announcing, in a forced way, that it was “studying” inviting the undersecretary to a “panel of experts”.
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