07/14/2021 6:45 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 07/14/2021 6:45 PM
It was April 2020. The first weeks of quarantine due to the coronavirus were passing.
The deaths from covid in Argentina
did not yet reach 100
.
The first complaints about the handling of the pandemic were already being heard.
And then it was that Alberto Fernández pronounced a phrase that today takes on another dimension:
"I prefer to have 10% more poor and not 100,000 dead."
Fifteen months later, many of them in isolation at home and feared the death toll crossed, the President stood as
staff failed a misleading comparison
.
"I prefer to have 10 percent more poor and not 100,000 dead," said the President in an interview, released on April 11, 2020, after the first weeks of social, preventive and mandatory isolation.
Hours earlier, the Ministry of Health had reported 167 new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of positives to 2,142.
The report registered six new deaths from Covid.
The country
had 89 deaths
from the pandemic.
This Wednesday,
459 days later
, Argentina already exceeded the number that Fernández, involuntarily or not, set himself - and everyone - as an evaluation measure: with 614 new deaths, the total number of deaths from the disease reached 100,250.
In addition, 4,702,657 cases of infections accumulate.
Alberto Fernández in an act in tribute to the victims of the coronavirus, at the end of June.
Presidency photo
Comparison with other countries puts Argentina in
third place in South America
according to deaths per million inhabitants.
Only Peru and Brazil surpass it.
It is
13th worldwide
and 11th in absolute number of deaths.
It is estimated that Argentina has four times more deaths
than it should for its population
.
The other part of the dilemma
In April 2020, also, the first complaints were heard
about the progress of the economy
, given the restrictions on circulation and the closure of shops.
Fernández, however, objected to the criticism.
"Those who raise
the dilemma between the economy and health
are saying something false. I know that I have to preserve small and medium-sized companies and large ones as well," Fernández added in dialogue that time with
Net TV
.
According to INDEC, in those days Argentina was registering the
worst
historical
collapse
of economic activity: a
fall of 26.4%
, a consequence of the beginning of the restrictions and the comparison with April 2019, when there was still an "old normality".
Although a year later, activity showed a rebound between April 2020 and April 2021,
the economy once again felt the blow
of new restrictions and depressed by 1.2% compared to March 2021.
Argentina, one of the countries with the most deaths per million inhabitants in South America.
AP Photo
Pockets are affected by
rising prices
.
The latest official statistical report for the month of May 2021 indicates that inflation reached
21.5% in the first five months
of 2021.
Thus, the guideline of 29% that had been foreseen in the Budget for the whole year remains increasingly distant.
"You
do not return from death
, but
you return
from the economy," was another of the phrases that the president pronounced on April 11, 2020.
The comparative phrase of the President is cited by the opposition before the arrival of the figures that he had pronounced.
Fernández paid tribute to the victims -who numbered 92,000 at the time- but has not yet commented on the figure of 100,000 dead.
Neither did they so far referents of the ruling party.
DS
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