'You can't recover from death': Argentina's Covid-19 response the opposite of Brazil's
Argentina closed swiftly, while Brazil downplayed the crisis. The difference is reflected in their pandemic figures
Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires and Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Sun 10 May 2020 05.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 10 May 2020 17.12 EDT
When Alberto Fernández took office as Argentina’s president in December, his inauguration was boycotted by Brazil’s hard-right leader, who dismissed Fernández and his vice-president, the two-time former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, as “leftwing bandits”.
For Jair Bolsonaro, Argentina’s new Peronist government represented a throwback to the “pink tide” of Latin American leaders which coincided with Fernández de Kirchner’s time in office from 2007 to 2015. “Argentina is starting to head in the direction of Venezuela,” Bolsonaro predicted.
Five months on, it is Brazil that is heading in the direction of a humanitarian emergency, amid a devastating coronavirus outbreak propelled by Bolsonaro’s dismissive attitude towards the pandemic.
The Brazilian president has downplayed the crisis as media “hysteria” and repeatedly rejected his own government’s social distancing recommendations, even as the death toll has soared.
In contrast, Argentina swiftly imposed a national lockdown, and appears to have successfully flattened the curve of contagion.
“You can recover from a drop in the GDP,” Fernández has said about his decision to implement an early lockdown. “But you can’t recover from death.”
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/10/argentina-covid19-brazil-response-bolsonaro-fernandez