Eduardo Paladini
05/24/2020 - 18:03
- Clarín.com
- Politics
Within hours of the start of a new stage of quarantine due to the coronavirus, Axel Kicillof was blunt: " Public transport is only for essential activities because it is the place of greatest risk: you can get infected by touching a handle, you cannot keep the social distance and makes the virus travel. " The curious thing is that the phrase was not pronounced this weekend but at the beginning of May, when the previous phase of flexibilities began. So, if the restriction was in force, why did not only the governor but also Buenos Aires and national authorities repeat it in the face of the next chapter of Preventive and Compulsory Social Isolation (ASPO)? The answer: because more than a regulatory problem, what happened in recent weeks was arelaxation in compliance and controls of what had already been established.
In a City ministry, even while the restriction on public transport was announced from Olivos, they asked themselves "and what is new?" Neither Kicillof nor President Alberto Fernández nor the head of government Horacio Rodríguez Larreta did not explicitly say so at the press conference, butauthorities of those administrations did admit it to Clarín this Sunday: "They loosened the controls . "
Although the officials have been congratulating the Argentines in public for the isolation, there is an installed feeling: if the operations are reduced, the non-compliance increases. That explains the re-registration of more than 9 million driving permits. And now everyone who wants to go out with their vehicles or take public transport must go through that process, reducing exceptions to the maximum. Again the same logic : the rule already applied, but without exhaustive control it is presumed that there are many more certificates than is appropriate.
In the Buenosairean government they mention another example . Since tolls were replaced, on the one hand, the number of cars that circulate on the highways has decreased - about 20% -, presumably due to an economic issue. But on the other hand, orders to have a PASE card increased dramatically; They believe that motorists do it to avoid possible controls if they must stop in a cabin. These situations rekindle the debate on successful quarantine models: are we Argentines prepared to comply with voluntary restrictions as in Uruguay?
The other unspoken message left by the tripartite conference was the need to raise awareness of the latent risk of Covid 19 . Said in a more crude and explicit way: if the population does not feel a little fear of contagion and its consequences again, it will be very difficult (after two months) to continue serving the isolation.
Clarín told days ago about a new crack that the pandemic had imposed: health fear vs. economic fear. When the virus arrived in the country, the first one clearly won. As the contagions and local deaths were clearly lower compared to other countries, and the stoppage of the activity deepened, the lines began to draw closer. A survey known last week, by the consulting firm Synopsis , warned of the change in trend: "For the first time since the beginning of the crisis, the economy is more concerned (48.7%) than the coronavirus (46.6%)" . In March, the ratio was 79.5% coronavirus vs. 16.2% economy.
What is Coronavirus? How is it spread and what are its symptoms?
Watch the specialFrom Olivos, Fernández, Kicillof and Larreta insisted on the rise of cases. The most tangible example is still the City: with the 396 recorded on Saturday, the accumulated reached 6,146. The amount doubled in just 10 days . With the growing villa factor: cases in vulnerable neighborhoods once again set a record and already represent 37.6% of the total. At the beginning of the month, they barely passed 10%.
This explains that a good part of the announcements of the weekend were concentrated in the neglected sectors. In the Province the panorama is more diffuse . So far very few cases have been reported, despite there being some 1,800 villas in the district. In the municipalities they admit that, unlike the Capital, they began less time ago with the tests. Can there be many undetected cases there, mostly asymptomatic? This Sunday a more disturbing version came out: eight infections in the Central Market, located in La Matanza, where many residents of vulnerable neighborhoods in the area work as changarines. The data could not be confirmed by this newspaper.
What does seem clearer is that if the coronavirus spreads in the poorest and most crowded areas of the GBA, it will enter the most complicated stage of the pandemic.