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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

#101

Post by mikepurvis »

seppin wrote: post #72
mchusma wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They aren't testing. I have 3 friends bedridden right now with COVID19 symptoms in Stockholm, all of which were denied a test after they asked for one. They were told to stay home and get over it. Their numbers aren't reflective of reality.

To be fair, that's a lot of places right now. I have a neighbour (Kitchener, Canada) who had all the symptoms and wasn't tested— all they wanted to hear is that her house had an area with a separate bathroom where she'd be able to isolate from the rest of her family. She recovered on her own without medical intervention.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#102

Post by quersive »

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…

Normalizing daily deaths to population, Sweden is doing worse than California. Both are doing much better that Lombardy or NY. Somewhat encouraging, the # of daily deaths is decreasing across the board. Possibly a mix between [voluntary] lockdown effects and better palliative treatments.

https://covid19.quersive.com/chart?c=M&e=SE&e=US-CA&e=US-NY&...

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#103

Post by sudoaza »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #83
rodolphoarruda wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this moment, full recovery is expected to happen no sooner than December 2022. Small business already bled out. If governors extend the lockout for another month, it will make it pointless to go back to work, as there will be no work to go back to. People will stay home until something else happens.

"Something else" being not necessarily external, much less staying passive. Example: post-WWII Germany. People rebuild everything from scratch by goverment just not being an obstacle to them.

And some billions from the Marshall Program

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#104

Post by grolimpio »

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…

The former health minister was considering the economy and had speaked public a few times about it. He recommendations were based in the fact that the government couldn't simply switch from a horizontal isolation to a non planned vertical isolation. He main responsibility (at least the short term one) was to not overload the hospitals and put the health professionals in risk, and at least that he has achieved.

On the other hand, the president wants a "vertical" isolation without a plan, he simply wants to "reopen the economy" (whatever it means). Remembering that he has largely underplayed the issue, calling it "just a little flu" (probably it would be better translated to: "just a cold").

Brazil doesn't have enough tests to make good decisions about which areas should be in a horizontal isolation or to be instead in a vertical one.

The former health minister was clear that all the information coming from his office should be backed by science (and this alone was bugging the president a lot for some reason). This also meant that he, as the health minister, couldn't go public and say that a specific medication was effective to treat the covid-19 just because some tests worked in vitro (any doctor or scientist knows that this alone doesn't mean that it'll work efficiently in vivo).

The president behaviour was the opposite, many times he went public to say that a drug tested in vitro was enough to have the horizontal isolation lifted out. And as a consequence or his irresponsible pronouncements, many of his followers ran to the drug stores to buy certain medications, leaving people that really need them for other diseases without medication.

So the main issue turned out to be the fact that the former health minister was becoming popular because of his common sense, and everyone knows that in the eyes of a populist, "there can be only one".

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#105

Post by anewvillager »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #90
soneca wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of worst Brazilian states is one of the hottest (Ceará).

You affirmation does not umake the reality of thermal sensitivity in this virus [1]. There are other factors involved in producing a higher mortality, like comorbidity and demographics. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25855727

COVID-19 isn't caused by this virus (Influenza A), it's caused by SARS-CoV-2.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#106

Post by grolimpio »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #77
ashtonkem wrote: post #37

Bolsonaro believes that he’s personally immune because he’s an “athlete”. Wish I was kidding.

Isn't that recover of viral diseases which we don't have vaccines for are a function of immune system's response?

It's not that simple in cases where our immune system can also act as the villain [1][2].

We sure can act like irrational animals and play the natural selection card (and leave people to die an excruciating death), but I personally prefer to slow down the almost inevitable [3], so our health system has more time to cope with the situation as well as they can.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/07/8280914...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/11/science/how-c...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-13/coronavir...

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#107

Post by q92z8oeif »

cosmodisk wrote: post #16
romwell wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish the effects were limited to the politicians making the decisions. Perhaps Boris Johnson's attitude will change a little bit now, for example.

It will be quite the opposite,I think. The Brazilian president had it as well and here's the article about his actions.

he did not have it. he claimed he had it, not his doctor.

One of the running twitter jokes, started by a famous comedian over there, is asking for the health minister, now that he was fired, to release the real result for the president's covid19 test.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#108

Post by belltaco »

virtualritz wrote: post #10

That reminds me of another headline from last month that was right up the Monty Python alley too: ”Turkmenistan Has Banned Use Of The Word ‘Coronavirus’” As a friend who’s a standup comedian said in response to reading that: “Brilliant, why didn’t our government think of this? We wouldn’t have all these problems.” [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

That's literally the case with 'climate change' being banned from government discussions and reports in the federal govt in the US and in various states.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/08/trump-...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/03/09/florida-bans...

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#109

Post by EForEndeavour »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #90
soneca wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of worst Brazilian states is one of the hottest (Ceará).

You affirmation does not umake the reality of thermal sensitivity in this virus [1]. There are other factors involved in producing a higher mortality, like comorbidity and demographics. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25855727

Your link is irrelevant to SARS-CoV-2. Did you mean to post a different one?

The paper you link to discusses attenuation of influenza A at 39.5 ºC, which is pretty far above useful environmental temperatures (you'd just trade off viral deaths with heatwave-associated deaths), not to mention it's an entirely different virus.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#110

Post by belltaco »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #90
soneca wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of worst Brazilian states is one of the hottest (Ceará).

You affirmation does not umake the reality of thermal sensitivity in this virus [1]. There are other factors involved in producing a higher mortality, like comorbidity and demographics. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25855727

Influenza A isn't a coronavirus.
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