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AMLO’s weak response to COVID-19 in Mexico

 


Like many other populist leaders around the world, including Donald Trump, Jair Bolsanaro in Brazil, and Imran Khan in Pakistan, Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador (commonly known as AMLO) has above all adopted a dangerously disdainful and downright irresponsible attitude toward the coronavirus.

At the end of March, it did not adopt any preparations necessary for the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of encouraging social distancing, it has encouraged the Mexicans go to holidays, eat in restaurants and go shopping. He continued to attend rallies, kissing people. Like Dr Beetroot, a former South African health minister who spat out criminally negligent lies that garlic, lemon and olive oil could cure AIDS, AMLO exposed photos of saints as protection against COVID-19.

A slow and spitting start

Some necessary response measures are finally underway in Mexico, but especially not thanks to AMLO. As in Brazil where some city and state officials, including those who were the closest allies of Bolsanaros, have started to break up with that the presidents have clearly answered COVID-19, some mayors and governors of Mexico are starting to act on their own, including against AMLO. On March 22, Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo canceled large rallies and closed schools and businesses.

Even more recently, when COVID-19 reached the community dissemination phase in the country, AMLO began to appear a little more cautious. On March 24 and 25, the Ministry of Health finally banned major events and the AMLO government suspended all non-essential activities, but with some details on its implementation and application. The Mexican government has also created a comic book superhero heroine, Susana Distancia, to motivate Mexicans to stay six feet apart.

Even though he campaigned as an anti-corruption candidate to end impunity, AMLO itself continues to violate all new regulations. Instead of focusing on strengthening his weak COVID-19 response and following his own travel restrictions, AMLO spent March 29 in Sinaloa to meet the mother of the notorious drug trafficker Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn. he shook her hand vigorously in front of television cameras, closely surrounded by local officials and representatives as he was patted on the back. Susana Distancia should perhaps face AMLO six feet apart, of course!

AMLO and its administration have already endangered the lives of many Mexicans. The number of infections in the country remains relatively low, but is increasing rapidly. March 26, 475 tested positive for coronavirus; on March 30, 993 tested positive and already 20 deaths have been recorded. In addition, these figures probably greatly underestimate the actual level of infection, because few tests take place in Mexico and test kits are sorely lacking.

The poorest Mexicans, whom the AMLO seeks to empower, are the most vulnerable. By wasting time and sending the wrong messages, AMLO missed an opportunity to contain the spread of the pandemic in Mexico when it was most contained.

The falling economy

His reluctance to recognize the seriousness of COVID-19 as he clung to a false hope that the pandemic would somehow bypass Mexico, despite its interconnection with the United States ravaged by COVID, resembles the tremor we have seen from Trump, Bolsanaro and Khan: It is a misguided attempt to save the faltering national economy of the country. Like other leaders, AMLO has traded human lives for the illusion that the Mexican economy can be immune to the pandemic.

For more than a year, the Mexican economy has barely hovered above a recession. It is very bad for any political leader. In the case of AMLO, the poor performance of the economy also gutted its ability to keep the immense redistribution promises it had made to voters. And the 2020 outlook for the Mexican economy is bleak. Many economic forecasting and credit agencies have just presented a devastating forecast for the Mexican economy: the most optimistic is Goldman Sachs, which forecasts a contraction of 1.6%; the most pessimistic predict a contraction of 5.8% to 7%. No predicts growth.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic and the necessary response measures are hitting the poor particularly hard. Like others in the Mexican informal sector (which represents around 60% of the workforce), they are very vulnerable to businesses forced to close and people who avoid the streets to buy their goods. Their ability to withstand economic contraction is limited.

Health care is drained

The Mexican medical sector as a whole is drained after years of spending cuts, including a 44% reduction by AMLO itself from a public health and wellness agency. Budget cuts have left hospitals and clinics short beds, medical supplies, test kits and staff. Approximately 10,000 health professionals were laid off in 2019, resulting in the cancellation or delay of many medical procedures, including surgeries for children. Mexico doesn’t 2000 fans and 1.4 medical beds per 1,000 people, and of course they are much more accessible to the rich than the poor.

After a recent protests through medical staff, the AMLO government has pledged to spend $ 150 million to hire 40,000 health professionals and purchase additional supplies. But filling vacancies and obtaining tests and other supplies will take time. These measures are hardly a drop in the bucket as Mexico confronts COVID-19 with one of the the thinnest public health budgets in the history of $ 5.4 billion, or 2.5% of GDP. Even before COVID-19, Mexican medical experts believed that $ 341 million per month were needed to keep the medical system afloat.

AMLO has exacerbated their vulnerabilities by closing Seguro Popular, an insurance contract for people in the informal sector, which covered 60 million people. He complained that Seguro Popular was too costly for its beneficiaries, perniciously neoliberal and full of corruption. This decision is an integral part of its provisional liquidation of the policies and institutions established by the previous administrations. He considers the programs of his predecessors as accomplices in the perpetuation of a mafia of power and an obstacle to the fourth revolution which he claims to implement.

Instead of Seguro Popular, AMLO announced in January 2020 the creation of INSABI, a medical care program supposed to be free. But, as was the case for other programs announced by a leader who is not interested in the details of the policy and who does not heed the warnings about the drawbacks, INSABI, a highly centralized version of Seguro Popular, so far mainly exists on paper. In addition, despite AMLO’s contrary promises, INSABI made some more expensive procedures, while eliminating coverage for some. And the cost of drugs has climbed, hitting the poorest the hardest again. The poor in Mexico, who make up almost half of the country’s population, have no safety net. It was not until the end of March that the AMLO government at least accelerated transfer of resources which had previously been attributed to INSABI.

Learn from the Mexican past

AMLO’s contemptuous attitude towards COVID-19 will not protect him from the effects of the disease. If large segments of the Mexican population fall ill, the country’s economy will remain suffocated for much longer than necessary. If the epidemic continues, manufacturing centers and other key businesses risk losing far more activity and laying off many more workers. And tourists will not want to visit an infected country.

The response of the AMLO administrations to COVID-19 contrasts sharply with the response of the Felipe Caldern administration to the H1N1 swine flu in 2009. As I detailed in a recent chronicle in Mexico Today, the Caldern administration responded with quick, resolute and effective measures, even if they were costly. The Caldern administration quickly banned all public gatherings, closed schools and in Mexico City, also all non-essential services, maintained transparency on the spread of the epidemic and cooperated closely with the United States and Canada.

Unfortunately, AMLO has not learned from world-renowned Mexican leaders to respond to H1N1. The poor will be affected as much by COVID-19 as by the poorly controlled political response of the AMLOs. Many poor elderly people continue to be breadwinners in the informal sector. For a poor family, losing grandparents in Mexico has other socio-economic consequences: with lower-class parents who often commute between two and three hours each way to work, it is often the older ones -parents who see the children go to school or watch them afterwards. Without the grandparents, the recruitment of gangs of children left alone on the street could increase.

And how will social distancing be maintained when COVID-19 arrives in the large, overcrowded slums of Mexico City or in the poor rural communities of Guerrero or Chiapas, with very weak police and health care systems? Perhaps some Mexican criminal groups can act as those responsible for social distancing and caregivers, such as already happening in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Their power will therefore grow.

Mexico must and can do even better. AMLO must wake up from its illusions and start adopting and implementing serious measures to stop the spread of COVID-19, by setting an example. But if AMLO persists in spending its political capital and its time visiting the mothers of detainees narcos and by violating government regulations, Mexican governors and mayors must begin to act on their own. They must place restrictions on gatherings and work with their health care professionals to prepare to isolate those who contract the virus. And they must not ignore the poor, helping to provide food and water so that people can minimize their departure from their homes while avoiding starvation.

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