From opening without controls to closing without gray, how to stop Covid deaths

On Monday, it was commented in various media that the weekend had been a relaxation: exploited bars and uncontrolled underground parties, as if the news that, a) the coronavirus cases were slowly starting to decrease and, b) that Governor Axel Kicillof would reopen the schools, they would have generated a “unblocking effect“. The dichotomous scenarios they seem to be the Argentine comfort zone: all or nothing, opening or closing, freedom or confinement, presence or virtuality. Is there a place for grays?

Bugle He spoke about it with three intellectuals from very different fields. The idea was to understand if this equation which only contemplates the extremes, in the end, makes us sink.

The people consulted were Luca Sartorio, graduate in economics and associate researcher at the Center for Evidence-Based Policy Evaluation (CEPE-Universidad Torcuato Di Tella); Jorge aliaga, physicist, former Dean of Exactas at UBA and current Secretary of Planning at Hurlingham University; Yes Daniel Feierstein, sociologist, professor at UBA and UNTREF and researcher at Conicet (author of “The construction of the fascist dwarf. The uses of hatred as a political strategy in Argentina“).

Bugle asked them this: How is it possible that by looking at the site Our world in data, countries like Peru, Canada, Italy or Germany bind us in terms of “restrictions” (the “severity index”Es una variable construida por ese sitio, muy interesante aunque no inescrutable), pero Argentina, con el pico del 23 de mayo de 734 cases per million inhabitants (average, últimos 7 días), haya superado los máximos históricos de contagios en esos the countries?

Feierstein raised – with an air of disappointment – two issues. The first is that “not enough clarity, in particular informing the population, both the public and the media, on the most and least dangerous activities. As the type of activity that can be done is not clear, the all-or-nothing logic”.

“Besides, I don’t think there is a conviction about controls to be applied at different times, depending on the restrictions that are generated. This makes it difficult to know clearly where we are in the pandemic, ”he assessed.

It is obvious: the measures taken in the quarantines of the various jurisdictions were not accompanied, in many cases, by appropriate controls. As if, in that sense, taking Feierstein’s words, there had been no “conviction” or consensus on what to do.

But do we have to be checked to follow the rules?

disobedient

Aliaga preferred to focus on Compliance with standards and beyond their control: “There is an attempt by the authorities to generate objective parameters, but many are not accepted and, therefore, are not fulfilled. Today we have a situation in which everyone does what they want ”.

The physicist is convinced that everything should have been different from the start: “If you tell me, from a humanitarian point of view, what should I have done, I will tell you what he says (the Franco-Spanish engineer) Tomás Pueyo: close, lower the cash registers, and from there very strictly control the income of the area, then live normally, without cash registers. This is the case of South Korea, Australia … predominantly eastern countries. “

Now, he admits, “those in the West couldn’t. They lived with it. many cases and many deaths”.

Aliaga at this point is hard: “What makes no sense is to pretend to have a normal life and not to have deaths. Do you want to have few deaths? Well, there is a way to do it. The economy and society are unwilling to do it. Okay, so you live with the dead. The only aspiration here was that the health care system would not collapse”.

One of the most obvious conclusions (because it is happening before our eyes), but at the same time surprising, to which Luca Sartori and Eduardo Levy Yeyati arrived after studying the legal rigor and the levels of mobility of the populations of one hundred countries is that the harder and longer a quarantine, the more it is violated.

“The starting point is that we come from 2020, a year with an intense and long quarantine, which, beyond the fact that it loosened at a certain point, was quite accomplished in terms of mobility”, introduced Sartori .

The analysis they made revealed four variables: “The most incomplete quarantines were the most rigid. The passage of time has accelerated the non-compliance. In addition, poorer countries, with lower incomes and greater informality of work, where many people are completely shut down if the economy stops moving, had higher levels of non-compliance ”.

“So far, nothing seems revealing: we have had a strict quarantine, usury was generated by its size, the country is not rich and has high levels of informality. In all dimensions, Argentina finds it increasingly difficult to enforce its measures“, he summed up.

Cause and effect

Sartori added a fifth paradoxical element (not to say worrying): “Another study showed us that although there is a reduction in infections due to minors mobility, the effect tends to diminish over time ”.

This, he clarified, “means nothing other than today it is possible to live with higher levels of mobility because there are other strategies working: better protocols for screening, isolating and treating infected people. Reduced mobility always reduces infections, but this effect was stronger before than today. “

What is the use of analyzing all this? For Sartori, “any proposal must see all this context. You cannot set an agenda based on what happened in a certain country without taking into account the year we have come from. Not only because of the consequences of the 2020 closure but also because of the problem of ability to apply measures”.

With these counterpoints (opening vs closing) to come, what can you expect over the next few weeks?

Aliaga was very clear: “If the traffic we had before the last strict nine-day closure returns, cases should go up. However, it may be less sensitive than before. There have been many infections and many people are getting vaccinated. There could be fewer people at risk of contracting Covid“

This, he concluded, could offset the increase in cases due to greater mobility: finished fireplace, delicate. Whether it will work or not, I don’t know. If I think it’s for the best, no. Better not to have 500 deaths per day. But are we as a society prepared not to kill 500 people a day? I do not think so”.

PS