Eduardo Paladini
05/31/2020 - 14:54
- Clarín.com
- Politics
Before the criticism of sectors that ask to relax the quarantine for Covid 19, the head of the National Cabinet, Santiago Cafiero, sought this Sunday to justify the reason for the rigidity of the Government. He did it from an ideological place: he said that "the coronavirus is democratic to become infected, to expand, but classist when you have to count the dead , who are mostly workers in popular neighborhoods." He used Brazil, the United States and the European Union as examples. The problem, as in so many other comparisons, is that the realities in those countries have different shades than what happens here. Fake local news.
With the two deaths confirmed this Sunday, there are already 530 deaths from the pandemic across the country. They are two women, 43 and 72 years old. The first case is almost a statistical rarity, since the average mortality is 75 years . The data was given by Alejandro Costa, Undersecretary of Health Strategies of the Nation. On paper, a subordinate of Cafiero.
The two new cases occurred in the City, the district most proportionally punished by the pandemic. A clear example that in Argentina the coronavirus kills more by age than social class . Until this Saturday, of the 221 deceased registered in Capital, only 28 lived in vulnerable neighborhoods. 12.7%. More data from Buenos Aires: 85.4% of those infected are between 0 and 59 years old, but 83% of the deceased occurred in people over 60%.
To highlight the alleged lethality of the virus in "vulnerable neighborhood workers", Cafiero had started from another hypothesis: that in order to "become infected with the virus, it is democratic." Half truth: For the spread, the Covid itself is more dangerous when it enters vulnerable neighborhoods . For a basic question. If people live in overcrowding, they cannot meet preventive isolation.
Other numbers of the City. Once the virus got into the villas, the proportion grew there day by day . In a month, it went from just over 10% to 41.6% accumulated until this Saturday: 3,905 cases in vulnerable neighborhoods over 9,392 in the entire Capital.
What is Coronavirus? How is it spread and what are its symptoms?
Watch the specialIn short: the virus is more contagious in the villas but is more lethal outside them. Mortality in vulnerable neighborhoods does not reach 1% when in the rest it is more than double. Again the age factor : in vulnerable neighborhoods the infected are younger and many were detected with few or no symptoms. So they die less.
One place to see with particular attention is Villa 31 de Retiro, the most affected in CABA. Some 40,000 people live there. When looking at the age pyramid, the disproportion is noticeable. Almost 70% of its population is under 35 years old . About 40%, it does not even reach 20.
This statistic, however, does alert to a class problem: in vulnerable neighborhoods, mortality in general is higher. Largely due to violent deaths. Thus, many of its inhabitants die before becoming a risk group for the coronavirus.
