Latin America Risk Report - 9 April 2020
Bolsonaro feuds with his health minister; More comments on Covid-19 data
In this edition:
Brazil - Bolsonaro feuds with his health minister and loses
Region - More on flattening the curve and coronavirus data
On Monday I published an article on political disinformation that highlighted rumors from Nicaragua and Brazil. Since publishing, Daniel Ortega still hasn’t been seen and remains in a Schrödinger's Dictator situation.
Brazil - Bolsonaro feuds with his health minister and loses
A Datafolha poll at the beginning of the week showed Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta with 76% support for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, up from 55% in the previous poll. President Jair Bolsonaro only has 33% rating him positively. On his coronavirus response, 39% of Brazilians rate Bolsonaro as bad or awful and that number is rising.
Why? As Bolsonaro has denied reality related to coronavirus, Mandetta has publicly dissented from the president and issued realistic health recommendations. Brazilian citizens are supporting the person delivering the facts and rebuking the president.
At the beginning of the week, the president removed the minister from briefings and appeared ready to fire the health minister over his insubordination and growing popularity. Folha reports:
Members of the so-called moderate government nucleus, which includes the military, spoke on Monday (6) with Bolsonaro to change his mind about firing Mandetta in the short term.
Mandetta remains in his position. That is great news for Brazil. However, it’s a bad sign for political stability when a president lacks the political capital to fire his own cabinet minister.
Region - More on flattening the curve and coronavirus data
I received comments about my “Latin America is flattening the curve” article on Tuesday and am going to respond here.
Several people suggested that my title was incorrect. If you place most of the countries in Latin America on a linear instead of logarithmic scale, you can see very clearly that cases are growing in all countries and accelerating in most. See the graph below as an example of how countries do not appear to be “bending the curve” in terms of case growth once you move from log to linear.
To be clear, my title referred to flattening the curve contrasted with the situations in the US, Spain and Italy or contrasted with what would have occurred in Latin America if they had failed to take action two weeks ago to slow the growth of the virus.
While impossible to run hypotheticals, it’s fairly safe to assume several countries including Chile and Colombia would have 3-5 times as many confirmed cases had they not implemented quarantines. The growth would be much more difficult to slow. Hospital systems would have quickly run out of space and supplies.
Why didn’t you include Ecuador/Honduras/Macondo/etc on the graph?
I tried to include several large countries to make the map more readable. For those who want all the countries in Latin America on a log scale, here you go:
But what about Ecuador?
Given the large amount of recent media coverage related to Ecuador and the deaths from coronavirus in Guayaquil, many people asked about the situation there. Ecuador’s situation has only gotten worse after I wrote about it last week. Ecuador’s confirmed cases numbers tracks very closely with Chile, but it has tested far fewer people. The deaths per capita are significantly higher than any other country in the region. The reports of bodies in Guayaquil waiting to be collected have grown. Placing Ecuador on the graph does not capture the extent of the challenge at the moment.
Can we trust the data?
No. The data are wrong in every country. Some countries are doing their best to collect data while others are totally off the mark due to a lack of resources or outright lying by governments.
Every country needs to do more testing. Testing per capita varies greatly (as the contrast between Chile and Ecuador above demonstrates), making comparisons across countries more difficult.
Countries have different population sizes, and while cases per capita aren’t the correct measure in the early weeks of the virus spread, there is a lot more room to grow and many more people to defend in Brazil and Colombia than in Costa Rica or Paraguay.
All of that makes the data questionable. Yet, the best strategy is to work with the data we have and do our best to acknowledge how and where the data may be weak or lacking or misrepresented.
Here is the dark conclusion: Unlike many other issues, this is one where the data being wrong can’t be ignored for too long. If the number of confirmed cases is significantly wrong due to error or malfeasance, we’ll know soon enough. As has occurred in Ecuador, the hospital rooms will overflow and the bodies of the dead who never made it to the hospital will pile up in the streets.
Corruption Corner
Ecuador - Former President Rafael Correa and 19 other former officials were convicted of accepting bribes for government contracts. Correa, who is living in Belgium, was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison and banned from public office for 25 years.
Soccer - Prosecutors unsealed a new indictment related to corruption at FIFA that implicated three top officials from Latin America and one from the Caribbean. Jack Warner, a FIFA executive from Trinidad and Tobago, Rafael Salguero, the former Guatemalan soccer federation president, Nicolás Leoz, the former president of CONMEBOL from Paraguay, and Ricardo Teixeira, a former Brazilian soccer federation president, all received bribes related to the votes that awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.
Reading List
Economist - Latin America’s health systems brace for a battering
Bloomberg - Test Scarcity Means Latin America Is ‘Walking Blindly’ on Virus
NYT - In Scramble for Coronavirus Supplies, Rich Countries Push Poor Aside
The Dialogue - Covid-19 Pandemic Puts Populism Front and Center in Latin America
CSIS - Covid-19 Exposes Latin America’s Inequality
Foreign Policy - The Coronavirus Will Cause New Crises in Latin America
AP - Virus crisis cuts off billions sent to poor around the world
Bloomberg - Coronavirus Is Killing Lopez Obrador’s Big Plans for Mexico
Washington Post - Mexican factories boost production of medical supplies for U.S. hospitals while country struggles with its own coronavirus outbreak
Confidencial - Nicaragua: Ortega “Will Pay the Bill” for the Negligence with Covid-19
AP - Nicaragua inaction on virus raises fears of regional spread
LA Times - In El Salvador, gangs are enforcing the coronavirus lockdown with baseball bats
InSight Crime - The Invisible Drug Lord: Hunting ‘The Ghost’
Economist - Venezuela’s navy battles a cruise ship, and loses
AP - Sex. Drugs. Virus. Venezuela elites still party in pandemic
AP - Desperate hunt for food by Peru's poor amid virus quarantine
BBC - Coronavirus: Brazil's favela residents organise to stop the spread
Washington Post - Coronavirus chills protests from Chile to Hong Kong to Iraq, forcing activists to innovate
Politico - Now’s Not the Time for Isolationism
InSight Crime - Latin America Under Threat of Cyber Crime Amid Coronavirus
Thanks for reading
Day 21 of quarantine. I hope everyone is doing well and staying socially distant. In the next two weeks I hope to cover more on Mexico’s response to coronavirus and Argentina’s debt negotiations. Please continue to email me with comments, questions and requests for coverage.