[HN Gopher] Brazil's mismanagement of Covid-19 threatens the world
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Brazil's mismanagement of Covid-19 threatens the world
Author : marcodiego
Score : 50 points
Date : 2021-03-27 22:14 UTC (46 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| jacob2484 wrote:
| How about we talk about the actual elephant in the room? China na
| and its denial of anything serious going on + not sharing
| information early on which could have prevented a majority of
| deaths.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Because It's not the actual elephant in the room.
|
| In any operational outage, you focus mitigation, then
| prevention.
|
| We are still in the midst of a global pandemic, and things can
| still get worse before they get better. Nothing China did or
| didn't do or lied or didn't lie about a year ago helps deal
| with OTHER authoritarian governments TODAY contributing to
| hundreds of thousands of other deaths and potential resurgence
| with P1.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Let the country that has not screwed up at one point during this
| pandemic cast the first stone.
|
| Seems like every country is trying to point the finger at every
| other country to cover their own flaws.
| dominotw wrote:
| I am still perplexed by the fact that no one is holding China
| accountable. How is this possible? Is it because we don't want to
| mess with the dope dealer that has us hooked on cheap junk.
| moralsupply wrote:
| Sweden doesn't "manage" Covid-19 according to the expectations of
| whoever wrote this article (no lockdowns, no masks, no "social
| distancing" rules, etc.).
|
| Is Sweden "threatening the world" as well?
|
| Or is this the usual political narrative the left-wing press uses
| to bash right-wing politicians?
| arez wrote:
| it's not, everyone can see that the current situation in brazil
| is far worse then in sweden. Sweden didn't had 200m people the
| last time I checked
| giacaglia wrote:
| Yet, Sao Paulo, the worst state in Brazil in covid cases and
| hospitalizations has the hardest lockdown
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Sweden isn't likely big enough to produce mutations.
|
| But sure, The Economist is left wing now.
|
| Almost the definition of whataboutism.
| bauerd wrote:
| Mutations are a matter of chance
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Yes, and for a fixed mutation chance, the bigger the
| population, the greater the likelihood that a mutation will
| happen. Say a mutation has a 1 in 1000 chance of happening.
| For a disease that infects 1000 people, you would expect 1
| person to end up with some mutation. If the same disease
| infects 1,000,000 people, you would expect 1000 mutations
| to occur.
| uniqueid wrote:
| It's a matter of chance if a cell has a cancerous mutation,
| but I still don't want to live near Chernobyl.
| christophilus wrote:
| My guess is they're saying if you have a population of 20,
| you have 20 chances of mutation. If you have a population
| of 200M, you have 200M chances of mutation. Size matters.
| tekstar wrote:
| Yes, and that chance is a diceroll on every infection, so
| the more infections, the more times you're rolling that
| die..
| JacobSuperslav wrote:
| I think it's fair to say that right wing politicians are
| inherently harmful to society in a global sense given that they
| primarily care about their own tribe.
| modularform123 wrote:
| Lenin, Stalin and Mao applaud from their graves, even as the
| leader of National Socialism looks down lovingly from the
| heavens at JacobSuperslav.
| giacaglia wrote:
| Lol, covid is been managed by the state level in Brazil. The
| worst states in covid cases and deaths are the ones that are
| left-leaning and have the hardest lockdowns. This is the
| worst take I've seen in this website by far
| krona wrote:
| Compared to what?
| unixhero wrote:
| Compared to non right wing non populist mad men who want to
| see existing society and institutions crash and burn.
|
| Such as Bolsonaro, such as Trump.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| That's not "fair to say". That's your opinion. You can argue
| that Texas is "right wing" and yet people keep flocking there
| - wanting less government ("aka California") in their is
| inherently harmful?
| pharmakom wrote:
| I don't think the fact that people are choosing Texas over
| California for themselves disproves OPs point.
| makomk wrote:
| There's definitely an element of truth to that. For example,
| Italy's mismanagement of Covid-19 probably did immense damage
| to the world - early on the European outbreaks were basically a
| gradient radiating outwards from there, there's some evidence
| that even the US's outbreak came from Italy, and it seems they
| somehow managed to report zero cases right up until the point a
| significant proportion of their population was infected which
| would require _really, spectacularly_ screwing up their testing
| program - but that narrative never made an appearance in the
| media because it 'd make it harder to blame right-wing
| politicians in countries like the UK and US which the media
| dislikes. Instead, the narrative around Italy is that actually,
| it was the _other_ countries like the UK and the US which
| screwed up worst because they should 've learned from Italy, as
| though there was something meaningful that could be learned
| from a country that collected so little useful data. On the
| other hand, Bolsonaro was really pally with Trump and gets the
| full blame for everything. I wouldn't even be surprised if
| there was some mutation during the first Italian outbreak which
| made Covid-19 more of a danger; there's not really any way we
| could tell.
|
| (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.)
| pharmakom wrote:
| There was so much to learn. When the hospitals in northern
| Italy were being overwhelmed the UK prime minister was
| telling us to wash our hands more but continue business as
| usual. This probably cost UK around 50k deaths.
| xchaotic wrote:
| We're screwed until covid becomes endemic like flu is now, where
| vaccines are optional. Brazil just accelerates the process.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| So we should believe your ramblings over experienced
| epidemiologists who say differently?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Can't read entire article due to paywall, but the title and
| preview are hard to disagree with.
|
| 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.
| ratsmack wrote:
| ARCHIVE: https://archive.ph/FR7HH
| phkahler wrote:
| OK. How does one country not handling a pandemic threaten the
| world?
|
| 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.
| marcodiego wrote:
| The country is big, with a big enough population, highly
| movable/mobile, slow vaccination and at least 3 native
| variants that are more dangerous than the original one. Very
| good conditions for the emergence of new resistant variants.
|
| 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.
| jmacd wrote:
| Breeding ground for variants. Much more likely to happen in
| such a high infection population. Then they spread to the
| world.
| endisneigh wrote:
| People travel, and mutations can be created from the non
| inoculated interacting with the inoculated
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| The more and the worse the infections, the more the infected
| serve as a bioreactor which not only generates viral mass but
| also serves as an evolutionary playing field for accelerated
| viral development. We are fast-forwarding the virus into the
| future.
| eecc wrote:
| Ok, Economist. So where's the Coup? Usually it follows the moment
| when certain establishments determine that a government is no
| longer desirable, or convenient. In this case it'll never be too
| early
| modularform123 wrote:
| Yet it is the South African variant which is much more dangerous
| and resistant to vaccines. The South African government is left-
| wing and has embraced reparations so you won't hear about how
| they mismanaged Covid.
| caiob wrote:
| So much racism here based on political opinions. Jeez, it really
| shows people here are living in a bubble in SF.
| grecy wrote:
| This is such a nonsense headline.
|
| 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.
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(page generated 2021-03-27 23:00 UTC)