Just a few thoughts. On my first awakening upon my return to Mexico, Alejandra informs me that our friends' uncle has been intubated with Covid. Earlier this year, and quite early in the pandemic I wrote a post titled '...Opportunities to be missed' and it seems we have already missed a big one, letting it slip through to the historians - that being that every government, everywhere has been faced with the same crisis in 2020 allowing us to somewhat objectively evaluate who performed well and who didn't. An opportunity to learn how to better scrutinize the quality of our domestic leadership wherever you are in the world.
Not all comparisons are fair, Australia, NZ, Taiwan etc. have very secure boarders from which to target an elimination strategy something that simply isn't available in the EU, Africa or throughout the Americas. But it's as near as we will probably get, barring an alien invasion, even climate change though global does not manifest as equally as the Covid pandemic.
Anyway, partitioning in my mind the world into Victoria, Australia, and Jalisco, Mexico, there's a stark disparity between the pandemics. The nation of Australia has apparently around 24 million people, in 2020 it has clocked 28k cases so 28,000/24,000,000 or 7/6,000 which translates to having to beat the odds to even know someone who tested positive.
And let's recall that Covid doesn't distribute randomly, if you happen to know somebody with Covid in Victoria, you probably know at least 4 people with covid, because you catch it through contacts.
I'm grateful to have had the grounding throughout the lockdown in Victoria of my connection to someone in a country where Covid has basically run as near to roughshod through the population as able.
An unfortunate symptom of the Global pandemic however is the reduced ability for ordinary citizens to go stick their head up the cow's arse, and actually ground their perceptions somehow. It is unfortunate that due to our isolation behind walls of media we take the least path of resistance to digest, we are of increased risk at failing to appreciate just how good or bad our governments are.
It has been annoying to see anti-lockdown advocates looking almost exclusively to Sweden, and ignoring Latin America wholesale. I'm fortuitously diverse enough in my connections to have been able to engage with some, though I could not get my most engaged liberterian friend to consider how exportable the Swedish model was - specifically to consider a multi-variable analysis of the cultures like education levels, population density, household size, housing affordability, social security, healthcare etc.
I engaged to the extent that I was satisfied I was not dealing with an honest interlocutor, their position was held for emotional reasons (as most positions are) and they were not sensitive to the variables they were leaning on. ie. if they were arguing that the mortality rate was lower than first feared, if asked what hypothetical mortality rate they would feel the Victorian lockdown measures were justified at they found the question unintelligible.
Here's a fairly early but nifty rundown of Latin America's states and their Covid responses and particular challenges:
The grounding I suspect goes both ways, it is hard for Mexicans to acknowledge the reality of Covid when there is little means to do anything. Throughout Latin America given the lack of the left wing answers to a pandemic (social security payments, UBI, universal healthcare, government spending stimulus) the right wing answers to a pandemic also become unfeasable (lockdowns, expanded police powers, border security) as these come at the expense of food insecurity and inevitably civil unrest.
My prejudiced assumption is that the anti-lockdown camp is financed by the people for whom decreased private consumption = decreased private income, the winners of the economic system that was and subscribed to by those who believe in them.
On my one internet bearing device that doesn't have an adblocker installed I was exposed to Youi ad campaigns telling the stories of Australian's who had lost their jobs in 2020 and adapted, aviators to bicycle mechanics, travel agent to dogfood manufacturer, some dude to Oyster delivery entrepreneur.
Though not exhaustive I'm sure these individuals are general exceptions, for the most part, 2020 didn't appear to impact white collar workers at all. At the other end of the spectrum, the poorest Victorians appeared to also have a good 2020 with the relaxing of Centrelink's antagonistic functions and increases to welfare reducing many of my friends in the non-asset owning classes stress levels.
In Mexico another thing I was immediately reminded of was the industriousness of Mexicans, the Youi campaign would not work here because the informal economy is so massive. The number of households that when faced with the loss of a core income opt to start a food business, selling tacos, tortas, burgers, hot dogs, churros, tamales, corn, sweet potato or whatever else.
There's a grim aspect to it, and I must plead ignorance as to how many of these new ventures in a resilient response to economic contractions are say, financed by loan sharks and what not. The most transparent is that these family businesses are literally so, with children of primary school age working in the business or at the lower end of the market trying to sell bags of fruit door to door.
I feel homesick, but perhaps irrationally so, I found this year in Australia stressful in being confronted with how much Blaise Pascal's "A mere trifle consoles us, for a mere trifle distresses us" applies to a wealthy nation like Australia.
The most important grounding I would share though, should not evoke shame that must be quickly bedded down, if indeed emotional competence is as low as Pascal suggests - that is of what to do about China, where Australia has actually lived up to a 'world leader' moniker in simply asking for an inquiry as to the source.
I know little, in large because we cannot as a global community investigate China, but the moral hazard is such and I look at the personal devastation Covid has wrought in Latin America and think of the following analogy.
I leave my iron on the ironing board when I am distracted by a dog outside. The iron sets my ironing board cover alight which in turn sets my drapes on fire which burn down my laundry room, costing me thousands of dollars in repairs. The fire also burns down my neighbors houses, and sure they must bare some of the responsibility for designing such flammable houses, no doubt there will be a complex blame game between their sovereign decisions, the advice and interference of builders and architects, council regulations etc.
But in the meantime, I find myself buying my neighbors land for a song, given their distress and I discover that accidently burning down my laundry is one of the most profitable things I've ever done.
That's a moral hazard for it provides me with 0 incentive to actually prevent future accidental fires. It motivates me somewhat to actually start them, particularly if I can block independent authorities from investigating whether the fire was accidental or deliberate.
China by my analogy is in much the same position as Australia is with climate change, and that is a bad position. Australia can operate a carbon excreting economy to it's own profit while the effects of those excretions are global and our neighbors are obliged by survival to bare the costs.
That's wrong, so is China's whatever lead to Covid jumping from bats or whatever to humans, but we can't even know what is wrong with what lead to Covid, or even if China is innocent and it was infact those bottle nosed Italians who sent it to Wuhan because the government won't let us find it guilty or innocent. Much like the US refuses to answer to the Hague.
