THREAD: Coronavirus and Uruguay. A country teeters on the edge.

Until yesterday, what was the only country in the world with over 1000 daily cases per million of population? The one I live in.

A country which, last year, was being hailed for its record. Since when...

It's early October 2020. Everyone had stopped talking about Covid; Uruguay had virtually no cases at all. The naivete was extraordinary.

I wandered outside and noticed that unlike me, no-one else was wearing a mask. Nor was there any social distancing in cafes, restaurants, bars

Instantly, I thought "uh oh". I'm preternaturally cautious by nature. If only everyone else had been.

Not at all to my surprise, cases began to rise. So later that month, up popped the President for a press conference: his first in ages.

There, the seeds of disaster were sown

At the same time as telling his audience that they should start taking the virus seriously again - wear a mask, socially distance, wash their hands - Luis Lacalle Pou made a point of highlighting that Uruguay was nowhere near any danger. A million miles from it, apparently.

From the President's own mouth, the people were being told that if they didn't change their behaviour, there wouldn't be any serious consequences. Utterly ridiculous.

So surprise surprise: people didn't change their behaviour.

By December, quite unbelievably, Uruguay found itself in Harvard's red zone - having not even been in yellow in early October. All that hard work of March to September completely thrown away.

Things stabilised somewhat during the summer. More Uruguayans than expected stayed at home and didn't take the virus with them to the coasts. The President hailed this - but again, his tone was all wrong. So reassuring, it bordered on outright complacency, even arrogance.

This same President's government had fallen asleep at the wheel so completely that it hadn't bothered to seek a vaccine... assuming that the WHO's Covax program was all that was required.

Which of course, it wasn't. So Uruguay began a vaccine hunt many months after most others.

Still, not to worry. The government, we were told, was looking for the 'best vaccine', not the cheapest. It would leave no stone unturned in its heroic quest.

What did it deliver? Sinovac: whose results are inferior to the vaccines being used in the West. Especially so in Brazil

Which brings me to the individual most responsible for the situation facing not just this country, but the entirety of this continent. Jair Bolsonaro.

If he hadn't been elected, Uruguay would not be in this situation. Nor, I dare suggest, would Argentina or Chile.

My heart goes out to Brazilians suffering under this monster... but I can't pretend I sympathise with anyone who voted him in. Condemning heaven only knows how many to a grisly end.

In Uruguay's case, it has a land border with Brazil. And here, it blundered. Repeatedly.

First, it failed to close the many duty free shops on the border: reasoning that these were economically vital to local people. Yet these shops aren't allowed to be used by Uruguayans; only foreigners can. So Brazilians kept coming... and spread the virus.

Given the government's economic worries, it is quite absurd that it didn't enable online shopping, and give Uruguayans the right to buy from these stores. That could've sorted the situation without allowing Brazilians over the border. But unfathomably, it did nothing.

Second: the constitution states that those from other countries with residency in Uruguay have an automatic right to be here.

But this is an emergency; a unique situation. The government hid behind the constitution instead of doing something about it.

The point is this. Despite all the hard work and sacrifices of Uruguayans everywhere, the government's inaction over free shops and residency rights made the virus' spread inevitable. Absolutely inevitable. It as good as invited the Brazilian variant in: with hellish results.

What's the explanation for these blunders? It's simple. Again and again, when push comes to shove, this government ALWAYS prioritises the economy over public health, to quite ludicrous proportions.

Below, two graphs which should shame this country and its leader.

Uruguay has spent, by far, the least of all Latin American countries on protecting its people during the pandemic. And it's got away with that by brainwashing the public: convincing them against the evidence that this is a poor country, whose money was all spent by the left.

Now, don't get me wrong. Uruguay isn't rich and only has a small population. But its PPP per head is upper middle income. Individually, Uruguayans are richer on average than anyone other than Chileans in this continent.

It is nothing like as hard up as the right insist.

But the people, brainwashed by a pliant right wing media, think it's somehow all Jose Mujica and Danilo Astori's fault. Said public simply does not think for itself. In practice, the only thing keeping Lacalle afloat is that Astori bequeathed him an economy in good working order.

The President made the profoundly political choice to overturn the 2016 financial inclusion law which forced businesses to pay their employees electronically.

"Not fair! Let us pay with cash!", wailed Lacalle - when what he meant was "vote for me, and I'll help you dodge tax".

Repealing financial inclusion attacked this country's own tax base... yet the public thanked him for it!

Almost every choice this government has made during the pandemic has been a political one. It has systematically ignored its health advisors throughout the last few months.

All the while, case numbers have skyrocketed, deaths are running at 50 a day (hideously high in a nation of only 3.5m), and intensive care units are at 80% capacity. And rising still further.

The situation with ICUs has astonished me. Absolutely astonished me.

3 or 4 months ago, I was 100% convinced that if ICUs even passed 50% capacity, the government would start taking much more stringent measures. Instead, it's as good as watched - despite the frantic imprecations of those pleading with it to avert disaster.

"We are not a police state", said the President when ruling out lockdown. Despite leading health officials demanding that the country shield through April. Those officials now how pivotal this month is - but incomprehensibly, there isn't even a midnight to 6am curfew.

Everyone knows that the virus is spreading more easily at night in bars and restaurants. It's quite unfathomable that the government won't even do this barest of minimums - but yet again, the reason is cost. It will not spend money on helping the people get through this.

The tourism sector, which has been wrecked almost totally by the pandemic? It's had disgustingly little help. Loans, announced excitedly by the government in November, have been denied anyone unable to 'prove' they can pay them back... yet how can they prove it?!

The reason they can't prove it is that the government as good as closed their sector down!

So it goes for other sectors too. Left to fend for themselves: which is then used as an excuse by Lacalle for why the country can't lock down. Because these people need to eat.

It is absolutely inconceivable that had it still been in power, the left would have handled things in this way. Very likely, there'd have been a minimum income in place. Very likely, taxes on the richest would've gone up to pay for it.

These, as I say, are all political choices

Comically, El Presidente still enjoys such absurdly high approval ratings, it's practically a personality cult. His latest trick has been to convince the Uruguayan public that it's all THEIR fault. The message is that government policies are perfect; but the people have been bad.

You wouldn't believe the number of Uruguayans who've said to me things like "it's our own fault. We are stupid". I've tried to explain that no, it's not; that's it's all a result of lethally complacent, weak messaging, but it generally falls on deaf ears.

Vaccination, meanwhile, continues at a fair old pace - but alarming numbers of health personnel and teachers have refused it. They just don't trust the Chinese vaccine.

And in the end, all this country's eggs are in one basket. It's gambling that vaccines will fix everything.

Will it? For one thing, no-one knows how long immunity will last from the Sinovac jab. And how effective will it prove against the Brazilian variant?

In the government's defence, there's chaos throughout the continent - most of which is stuck with either Sinovac or Sputnik.

But if you consider that in October, a government minister actually told Pfizer that Uruguay wasn't interested in their vaccine... Pfizer's actually being used here now for the elderly - but if it had got its arse into gear earlier, the country wouldn't be in this situation.

Mujica, by the way, was one of the first to warn that things were slipping out of control. He was promptly pilloried by morons on social media and in newspaper comment sections; morons who are still in chronic denial even now.

Bottom line? For all its initial success, Uruguay is yet another country which has paid the price for the right being in charge at the time of a massive health emergency.

And we still don't know how steep that price might yet be. /END

#CoronavirusUY #Uruguay #COVID19