Le vrai virus

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Vietnam: 35 covid19 casualties throughout the duration of the pandemic.¹ Other countries such as New Zealand, Samoa, and Tonga, are doing, well, pretty fine. The latter two are presumably covid free having reported no cases of the virus. 

Looking at those countries, one would likely assume that total isolation and draconian restrictions on movement are the best way to contain the contagion.

Maybe, and no.

Argentina, once one of the wealthiest nations on earth, and with a per capita GDP higher than that of a Japanese empire in the process of implementing the Meiji restoration, now has poverty rate of close to 47%.² Now Argentina is a country which seems as addicted to the pain of crises like it's some sort of sexual fetish. This time though, the country has been subject to what may now be termed as the "world's longest quarantine." 

This has devastated an economy that's already devastated. Axalta Coating Systems, BASF, and French auto parts maker Saint-Gobain Sekurit have all announced in recent weeks that they intend to shift production to neighboring Brazil, even though the virus outbreak there has been much worse. It actually is likely that Brazil, despite suffering as it is in the present, has not seen the worst of the pandemic.

Brazil is a country whose president christened the virus a "little flu," and has repeatedly rubbished masking. Yet, for businesses, it seems a better bet than the perennially in crises Argentina. While the aggressive quarantine measures implemented by Argentina may have likely saved the country from getting her hospitals blitzed, Argentinos are also suffering "quarantine fatigue," and are going back to business as usual.

This, predictably, has led to the virus wreaking havoc on the population. This is one country which went all in on a single aspect of pandemic management, rather than including an aggressive tracking and testing regimen to identify emergent virus clusters.

It might seem obvious that pandemic management includes contact tracing, but not to Argentina. On the other spectrum is Canada which has implemented movement restrictions that are so draconian, they seem like a dictator's wet dream. There is another side to this, of course, and sharing the world's longest border with the worst covid19 petridish in the world is one of those.

We will revisit the Argentina's faults later, starting with the regressive madness of Peronist policy. For now, do stay safe.







¹https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/viet-nam/

²https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1241704#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16148967555920&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com

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