Why Argentina can’t turn down cases says coronavirus ‘guru’

In March of last year, when the pandemic was something new that only shocked the world, Franco-Spanish engineer Tomás Pueyo He became famous for a text he wrote on Medium in which he proposed a theory to try to end the coronavirus without completely crippling the economy: the dance and the hammer. Since then, “guru” of the pandemic, he has just published a new text which, a year later, break down the 25 errors that were committed so as not to be able to control it. And inside he criticizes Argentina.

Slow reaction speed, vaccine handling failures, ineffective contact tracing, wanting to apply developed country recipes to poorer economies, downplaying the usefulness of rapid tests, rejecting aerosols as the primary means of transmission and not understanding exactly the scope of individual freedoms are some of these 25 points that Pueyo enumerates in his text and in which Western countries have generally failed.

Pueyo explains that the triad detection-monitoring-isolation has been at the heart of success (or failure) against Covid-19. “All of the countries that achieved low death levels were also excellent at tracking all cases, their contacts, and requiring and enforcing isolations and quarantines for those infected or suspected,” he said. And he remarks, “Some countries just haven’t been able to reduce cases enough, no matter what they’ve done. Argentina and Peru are good examples. So they didn’t even have the option of test-trace-isolate. But the richest countries have no excuse ”.

In October, in an interview with BuglePueyo had said Argentina could only alleviate the crisis. Today, with nearly 4 million positive cases and exceeding the 80,000 death mark, our country is in third place among the countries with the most patients in therapy per million inhabitants, out of 21 in number of deaths per million. million and of the 25 in number of positives per million. In the tests per million inhabitants, we are in position 99. By e-mail, Pueyo analyzes how some of these 25 global errors were reflected to reach this local scenario.

-What were Argentina’s main mistakes in failing to twist the arm of the virus?

-Argentina applied a hard hammer blow and failed to stop the cases. But we know it’s possible, because other poor countries like Vietnam or Thailand have been able to stop them. The key was not to let it stretch at first. When cases exploded in the poorest neighborhoods, in some they stopped a bit but not in the rest of the city and then the country. It was the point where something could have been done. Then it becomes very difficult because it is almost endemic in Argentina already, it is everywhere. During the summer there was an opportunity as the cases relaxed a bit and it was easier to control.

-After having had “the longest quarantine in the world”, we now speak of intermittent quarantines. How should this policy be applied to be effective?

-There is a question: if the initial hammer blow doesn’t work, is it worth having more? The idea of ​​the hammer and dance is that the hammer is very expensive but it is used for a short time, and then we dance that it is much cheaper. But if you are going to apply intermittent quarantines, it has a very different cost-benefit and is not as obvious as the hammer and the dance. I did not do this calculation. The calculation that should have been done is if we let the virus run by shutting down a bit where there are cases and where the health system is really collapsing, how many people are dying and what impact there is on it. economy and vice versa. But I haven’t seen such an analysis comparing these two factors.

– One of the most intense debates we have today in Argentina concerns education. At this point in the pandemic, should schools be open or not?

-Education is one of the most difficult subjects. What seems to hold true is that children are infected less, they infect others less, and when they are infected, they suffer less. This is more true when the children are younger. In addition, the education of young children has two functions: that of educating but also that of freeing the parents so that they can have their activity. When asked whether to open one, I don’t know. But if you have to open up, let them be the younger ones. My personal opinion is that there are many cheaper ways to reduce infections without impacting the economy. Kindergartens and elementary schools help the economy and children the most.

-In Argentina, vaccines are distributed to provinces by their total population, and not by the percentage of people at risk. And they are sent equally to everyone, not in larger quantities to those with more critical infection. Are these strategies correct?

-The most important thing is to inject as many people as possible. It makes sense to keep it simple at first. It seems logical to me that once the vaccination has started, optimize and send more to areas where there are older people or people at higher risk, and where there are more cases.

-A critical point is to test-trace-isolate. As you point out, we are not on an equal footing with the rich nations. But anyway, how can it be implemented in a country like ours?

-As other developing countries have done that have done so. I will give you again the examples of Thailand and Vietnam. If I had been in charge, the first thing I would have done would be give a million dollars to some person in charge of these systems to come and explain how to do it. The cost is much cheaper than trying to stop the virus in some other way. What would these experts have advised? Be much more aggressive in your actions.

-The government built a huge isolation center at Technopolis last year which was dismantled because it was not functioning. Were isolation centers effective in a country?

-Of course, people don’t want to go, people want to stay at home. The problem is, it’s not done by them alone, it’s done by society. If someone commits a crime obviously you don’t want to go to jail they send you because it’s a risk to others. It is similar, obviously it has the difference that you are not a criminal because you are infected, but infected people are risky for others and that is why action must be taken. And that’s what isolation and quarantine are for, since people don’t want to do them, they have to be forced. Taiwan and South Korea to make sure people respect them they tracked them with their cell phones or electronic devices and if they left the house there were massive fines of $ 10,000.

-And with the traces?

-With ensuring respect for the insulation it was a failure and in the tracing of contacts, the same. If we depend on what people mean, they won’t tell you everything. Because imagine that you are infected, they call you and if you say that I was in contact with my girlfriend, they will want to quarantine my girlfriend. So I’m not going to say it. If you have really big fines and you lie, you can dissuade people from doing so. I don’t know how well organized the contact tracing teams were in Argentina, it is very possible that they were not very well organized and did not call everyone in 24 hours. This is another potential point of failure.

-In Argentina, the positivity rate exceeds 30% but according to the health authorities this is not a variable to be considered as a reflection of better or less good management of the pandemic. What is your opinion on this?

-It is very big. To give you an example, in South Korea it’s between 2% and 3%. The question is why. If you are testing everyone because you want to isolate them, then yes you have to test a lot more. But if that’s not what you want, and in Argentina it clearly doesn’t seem like the goal, why are you testing? My guess is that you are testing because they arrive at the hospital and you want to know if you have the coronavirus. So ultimately that number reflects the percentage of people who arrive at the hospital with symptoms of Covid who are tested. The problem is that this percentage shows me first that we have no idea how many real cases there are because there are many more that are out of control by infecting others and of course these are also cases that cannot be traced when quarantined. It is yet another symptom of management unable to stop the pandemic.

-In the article, you also mention the importance for leaders to build trust. How do you assess the management of Argentina’s political leaders in this regard?

-I cannot comment on Argentina. I know it’s very politicized there. But what I would say is that it is happening all over Latin America and similar things have happened in the West. When you have a problem that only happens in one country, it is the country’s fault. But when that happens overall, it’s more of a system. Western systems have failed and you must be wondering why. There are factors that have influenced to help in Southeast Asian countries: they are more aware and have more experience in dealing with pandemics, many of them were islands, some were more authoritarian . We have to ask ourselves what we can do in our countries so that this does not happen again and I think it is a problem of social coordination. It is linked to culture by democratic systems where a vote every four years does not produce political systems capable of reacting quickly: if you vote for me now, what should I do so that in four years you will vote again for me. This is what a political system in Western democracy thinks and it is not fast enough to deal with a crisis as it is and, even worse, to resolve other crises that may arise in the years to come.

AS