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Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

reuters.com

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Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#61

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

filleduchaos wrote: post #42
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they need to perform a lot of tests if their strategy isn't dependent on testing?

If you're not testing a sizeable enough sample of the population, then whatever number of cases you give has to be taken with a rather large helping of salt. For example, my country's CDC has the official number of confirmed cases in the low hundreds with a dozen deaths, but anyone wise enough knows that between the ridiculously low number of samples tested (less than ten thousand in a population of a couple hundred…

Completely agreed. Sweden is worth observing in terms of number of deaths and how overloaded their hospitals get. But their number of cases, like in a lot of countries, is essentially garbage data that can't possibly help our understanding of the situation to consume.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#62

Post by aphroz »

2019-nCoV wrote: post #40
aphroz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to compare year to year, mortality is higher in January - March any year.

It still exceeds average seasonal mortality rates, see https://www.euromomo.eu

But, is it significant compared to 2016 ?

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#63

Post by soneca »

It is hard to predict the future, but despite the former Health minister indeed have being fired for clashing with Bolsonaro views, there is not much indication that the policy will in fact change now.

It became a ego dispute in the last days, but original rumors that the role would be occupied by someone without health expertise that would follow Bolsonaro orders to the letter were wrong. The new minister is also a doctor who hinted that lockdown is necessary before.

I believe Bolsonaro leadership is a disaster and more people will die because of his actions and speeches. I just don't think today's announcement will change much. It will not get worse.

The governors here don't have that much autonomy as in the US, but they have enough to define what will indeed happen in the streets. This won't change with the new minister.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#64

Post by CydeWeys »

ashtonkem wrote: post #48
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely want to know. But it seems like Swedish public policy is that the current measures are the strictest sustainable ones, so they're going to maintain them until strict measures are no longer needed. It's not clear that early visibility of a spike would change that.

Given that mortality rate is closely tied to the availability of ventilators, it would be catastrophically short sighted to not react to a spike with strong, short term measures.

This turns out not to be the case. Ventilators don't actually help much with COVID-19. If you end up severe enough to not be able to breathe on your own you're likely to die, and the ventilator only prolongs it. So running out of ventilators won't actually cause many more deaths.

The way to prevent a lot of deaths is simply to prevent people from catching it at all.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#65

Post by LIV2 »

mchusma wrote: post #14
mikepurvis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already happening in Sweden: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-as-swedens-deat...

I don't understand the Sweden example. Their daily % increase in deaths is well below California. I don't know if there is a difference in counting deaths but Sweden seems to be doing ok relative to other countries. I have heard that they are effectively shut down voluntarily, so government action was not needed but the effect has been the same. Maybe a Swede can weigh in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavir…

Not a Swede but an Aussie living in Sweden here

Sweden is at 118 deaths per million vs 53 per million in Denmark or 94.5 in the US

Australia is at 2.52 per million

Sweden has a population of something like 10 million while the greater Sydney area alone has a population of 5.98 million so population density isn't the reason why Sweden has so many more deaths.

Voluntary lockdown means that some people still stand too close at the supermarkets, still plenty of people socialising around my area as normal & different companies apparently have different ideas when it comes to work from home policies

To be fair many countries are locked down as much as Australia and are also doing worse so I'm not sure what it is that is working so well there.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#66

Post by dsfyu404ed »

ashtonkem wrote: post #46
htk wrote: post #17

Bolsonaro has no negotiation skills, and is (frankly) bad at mostly everything, but he's got a good finance minister who's saying that the country just can't stop creating value, but what is the right balance? Mandetta, the previous health minister, had no flexibility in his views, he wanted to follow the WHO blindly, without weighing anything else. Maybe the new guy has the flexibility and the brains to find a bette…

It’s not the job of the health minister to consider the economy. If they’re thinking about that, they’re being an awful health minister. It’s the job of the executive to balance between the different paths recommended by different advisors, and chart a path that has the correct balance of trade offs.

It's the job of the health minister to give his boss useful policy options to choose from and that requires some level of understanding and accommodating the other variables that the boss has to consider. That means that the health minister has to consider the economy and the economy minister has to consider public health.

I don't know much about this guy but if he was as bad at balancing the variables he had to consider as the GP suggests then I can see why he was removed.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#67

Post by LIV2 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #39
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they need to perform a lot of tests if their strategy isn't dependent on testing?

Because if there’s a giant spike of currently asymptomatic carriers, you’d want to know.

If they at least did testing + contact tracing (like NZ) they probably could have saved a tonne of lives even without locking down

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#68

Post by rodolphoarruda »

skybrian wrote: post #23
redis_mlc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this b.s. would stop. Corona virus is so contagious and we're so unprepared that it will continue to spread in the US regardless of what we do. Yes, thousands will die regardless of what we do. But there is no way lockdown will continue until people starve. So end this timid lockdown before the total destruction of our economy. Start thinking about public policy instead of "my dear 80 year-old grandpa in the h…

What's your scenario for people starving? Congress refuses to give out more money? Workers in "essential" businesses (which includes everything food related) stop working? I would be more worried about rent and mortgages.

Rent in some Brazilian cities has been massively lifted, specially for the elderly.

Regarding starvation, I don’t see it happening because people is starting to steal, shoplift, local stores. I saw it in front of me last weekend. And they use minors to steal, so nobody goes to jail. I live in São Paulo.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#69

Post by tinus_hn »

spamizbad wrote: post #24
redis_mlc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this b.s. would stop. Corona virus is so contagious and we're so unprepared that it will continue to spread in the US regardless of what we do. Yes, thousands will die regardless of what we do. But there is no way lockdown will continue until people starve. So end this timid lockdown before the total destruction of our economy. Start thinking about public policy instead of "my dear 80 year-old grandpa in the h…

I love this kind of thinking. Earlier in the year it was this was a bad flu, no cause for alarm, no lockdown necessary. This has switched to the virus being too contagious to contain so you might as well do nothing major to address it and let it run its course. Truth is countries that took this seriously and acted swiftly controlled it. They’ll be reopening soon (Singapore already has, right?). I’m guessing the US wi…

Singapore got a 20% increase in cases today, they have not controlled it and they have not reopened.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#70

Post by rodolphoarruda »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #66
ashtonkem wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the job of the health minister to consider the economy. If they’re thinking about that, they’re being an awful health minister. It’s the job of the executive to balance between the different paths recommended by different advisors, and chart a path that has the correct balance of trade offs.

It's the job of the health minister to give his boss useful policy options to choose from and that requires some level of understanding and accommodating the other variables that the boss has to consider. That means that the health minister has to consider the economy and the economy minister has to consider public health. I don't know much about this guy but if he was as bad at balancing the variables he had to cons…

This is incredibly in alignment with the first speech of the new minister.
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