10/20/2020 21:31
Clarín.com
Opinion
Updated 10/20/2020 9:45 PM
In order not to further dramatize what is already dramatic, and in the case of issues involving medicine, the situation could be depicted with a popular and forceful image: taking the arm out of the syringe.
Yes, it is not the arm, but we better get there.
What are we talking about?
Out of her quarantine, with so many proud parents at the beginning of her extended life, and so orphaned these days.
Now that the country has passed one million coronavirus infections, it surpassed Sweden (the wrong model according to the President) in the number of deaths per million inhabitants, it adds more than 27 thousand deaths and the successful story that I try to impose is definitely diluted,
¿¿¿ Who is in charge of the health strategy that brought us here?
Far was the triumphalism of March when Alberto Fernandez announced the continuation of compulsory isolation:
"You know that we are being very innovative, unique in the world, the country to establish full quarantine only the beginning of the pandemic was known"
, he would say, adjective by positive what he would later deny existed.
It wasn't all.
Inadvertent, he ventured:
"The plan is working out as we set out to do it ... If we continue to comply with it, the results will be very favorable."
It differed from
"the countries that belatedly quarantined"
, and claimed that
"the only remedy that all infectologists suggest is isolation."
A month later, on May 8, a new extension of the isolation found the president accompanied in the announcement by the infectious disease specialist Pedro Cahn, one of the medical voices that gave scientific support to the Government's decisions, with its continuous, assertive and even challenging (with criticism) radio and television appearances.
Furthermore, Cahn was paraphrased by the President in the idea that
"we are the ones who go out to look for the virus, and not the other way around ...".
No one doubted at the time of claiming paternity for the plan and its benefits.
Neither did Cahn.
"During all this time it has been possible to strengthen the health system, respirators have been incorporated, intensive therapy beds, Technopolis-type isolation places ...", he
assured (interview on Crónica TV on May 23), making his own the official argument, in an unexpected role of parallel Minister of Health and uncritical spokesman for the government.
Interviewed by
Clarín, he
was encouraged even more:
"If something wrong was done, tomorrow, retrospectively, I will assume my part of the error, because I was part of the elaboration of those policies."
Tomorrow
is today, with more than 27,000 dead and millions of citizens overwhelmed by an economic crisis that seems not to touch the bottom of the well (by the way, getting there is never good news).
And what does Cahn say now?
From what you hear, he seems to have forgotten about taking his part.
“At all times, and you can review my statements since the beginning of the pandemic, I have stated that we function as external, unpaid advisers to the Ministry of Health.
We issue opinions, we do not make decisions.
We did not take them in March and we do not take them now either "
, tried the long dribble interviewed on Radio con Vos.
To top it off:
"... we recommend some actions that were not always carried out."
In line with a government and a president who first glorified the quarantine, extended it in the quest to sustain an unprecedented popularity, then refused to mention it and finally assured that it did not exist in the very act in which it prolonged it.
And that as the only way out of failure, he decided to reduce his voice about the pandemic to a daily health report.
Today
the bad news is accumulating
, the world doubts the quality of the official data (the Our World database, from the University of Oxford, decided not to use the information from Argentina because it is not reliable), and the expert committee does not He was even consulted by the President before his last announcement and almost disappeared from TV shows.
They agree, each on their own, in a final analysis: something went wrong.
They are not wrong.
Look also
Coronavirus in Argentina: Pedro Cahn takes off from how the government handled the pandemic
Coronavirus: Argentina reached seven months of quarantine with more than 27,000 deaths
