What is the cost of lifting the quarantine?

As in others continents, in South America there are face to face "costs" and "benefits" of lifting the quarantine imposed on COVID 19, which is actually a crisis forged in 50 years of abandonment of development policies (see also post ). The Minister of Economy of Peru, María Antonieta Alva, the country with the most infected by COVID per million inhabitants of the world, has said that the economy (read the budget agreed with the IMF) does not tolerate another extension of the quarantine, which has already from March 16 in Peru 65 days, to date.

Indeed, the O.M.S. An anti-COVID strategy indicated three concrete steps:

• Social isolation (quarantine)

• Testing for massive COVIDs;

• Monitoring the infected and their social circle.

In our countries, only the first recommendation has been met, with serious deficiencies in the health system for the following two; and even so, in economies with 70% informal employment, with people who earn a living day by day, and with serious housing deficiencies, such as Peru, the quarantine was lifted by itself, with the massive non-compliance of the population desperate.

The objective of buying time to improve health coverage failed along the whole line: how to overcome a 50-year health infrastructure gap of US $ 19 billion in 2 months in one country (Peru)? Horrible images abound resulting from the lack of both mechanical respirators and oxygen balloons and specialists for the Intensive Care Unitsin collapsed hospitals.

The graphics released by the Argentine website INFOBAE are eloquent regarding hospital beds per 10,000 inhabitants and public spending on health in proportion to GDP, for the entire continent.

Even so, liberal sectors demand to end the quarantine.

As we have already presented in this blog, a total change of paradigms is required, to establish, as proposed by the Schiller Institute, a worldwide health system, and a program to generate 1.5 billion new jobs, with a global infrastructure program

20/05/20