It is impossible not to worry about the expansion of the coronavirus in the world. With a total of 2,236 people killed and more than 75,400 carriers of the disease, it is restless that the tools for its effective treatment and for cutting expansion are not yet available.
Outside of the scientific and medical aspects - the fundamental ones - there are three issues that are particularly relevant. I do not mention, here, the impact that it has already had - and will have - on the international economy and trade as it is a separate chapter.
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First, the fragmented analysis of the health problem in the world. The encouraging data for Latin America is repeated that evil, as far as it is known, has not reached the region. But, meanwhile, the health of the population is already hit by dengue, another viral disease. In serious dimensions that go unnoticed and far exceed the coronavirus.
More than three million cases in 2019, with 1,501 people dead. In the current year it would have already exceeded 125,000 cases of affected people. I do not claim for the attention he has been receiving, rightly, the coronavirus, only for the serious indifference to dengue.
Second, for the coronavirus as well as for dengue, or any epidemic, information transparency is essential. Indifference - more than censorship - in the case of dengue and initial attempt to hide the coronavirus, but the effect is similar. In China the authoritarian management was manifested and obtuse by the authorities of the Hubei province. When in January the doctor Li Wenliang discreetly warned his colleagues through WeChat (the Chinese WhatsApp) of what was coming, he was silenced. Only after Li died - and it was obvious that he was right - is he being revindicated by the central authorities.
Third, institutional decisions to prevent its spread and respond to the disease. It is another crucial area. This has to do with a health policy that is capable of acting timely and efficiently and that has minimally adequate institutional resources and capacities. That, with lights and shadow, is present in China.
Evil expands in China, right. But if there were not - with all its lacks - a system of acting health and political decisions to regulate contacts between people, the situation would in fact be much more serious. More than 150 million people this week in China have severe restrictions on their freedom of transit as a means to prevent its spread.
Given the limitations already seen with dengue, I wonder what would happen if some Latin American country were subjected overnight to the attack of the coronavirus. We would probably not be in an institutional condition to be reasonably effective in a short time. And, again, the issue of health inequality, one of the problems that people protest in the streets, would jump.
Two obvious conclusions.
The first: it is not acceptable to censor or sanction information that has to do with possible threats to public health. Doing so affects fundamental rights and can end up costing many lives. The dissemination and access to information must be guaranteed.
The second: the serious and constant structural demands to deal with public health, not as another issue but as a fundamental right, must be translated into serious and effective public policies. Today we do not have them in most Latin American countries. This is, therefore, an occasion in which priorities must be reformulated in public health policies.
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