Government incompetence without consequences
We recently received terrible news. According to the Mexican government's official figures, in just nine months the country has recorded more than one million SARS-CoV-2 infections and over 100,000 deaths from COVID-19. These figures are tragic. Researchers continue to discover harmful health effects among people infected with the virus, meaning that tens of thousands will suffer consequences for weeks, months, years, or perhaps even for the rest of their lives. And yet the tragedy represented by more than 100,000 deaths is difficult to measure; its effects are impossible to weigh.
"One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." — Stalin.
Some will argue that the terrible consequences of a pandemic like this one cannot be attributed to the government. I disagree. I believe that the way both the federal and local governments have handled the pandemic has been ineffective at best and irresponsible at worst. For months, we have watched the government downplay the crisis and promote the narrative that the problem is under control. We have also seen it reject measures that saved lives in many countries, including widespread testing, mandatory mask use, restrictions on movement, and even curfews. This government has shown no regard whatsoever for science, which advances every day through new discoveries and improved life-saving practices. We already know all of this, but I want to make one specific observation about the disease's mortality rate in our country. The following chart from Johns Hopkins University, one of the world's most prestigious institutions in the field of medicine, shows the COVID-19 case fatality rate by country. The original data can be found here. It lists the countries with the highest rates, and Mexico is in first place. In other words, ours is the highest case fatality rate in the world, at nearly 10%, which is consistent with approximately 100,000 deaths among roughly one million recorded infections.
We are the worst country in the world at treating the victims of this disease because a greater proportion of people die here than anywhere else. There may be many causes: late diagnosis, inadequate infrastructure, and the limited capacity of our health system. It would be easy to attribute the high fatality rate to the fact that we are a developing country—as third-world countries are politely called nowadays—and not a developed one. My response would be that Iran, the country immediately below us with nearly half our rate, is not a developed country either. Nor is Colombia, whose rate is roughly a quarter of ours. The list goes on: many countries with a level of development comparable to Mexico's have lower fatality rates. This table, from the same source, shows that we currently rank fourth in total deaths. Above us are the United States (328 million inhabitants), Brazil (209 million), and India (1.366 billion). How can Mexico, with 126 million inhabitants, have almost as many deaths as India—a country with high population density, severe poverty, and much larger cities?
This leads me to the following thought experiment. Suppose the Mexican government had displayed only half the incompetence it has shown so far and, as a result, our case fatality rate were similar to Iran's—the second country in the chart. We would then have around 50,000 deaths rather than 100,000. Roughly half of those people—50,000 lives—would have been saved. Even if we are extremely generous to the government and say it is not responsible for all 100,000 deaths, it is responsible for at least 50,000. So I ask: if we took to the streets for months to demand President Peña Nieto's resignation over the deaths of 43 people, why are we not demanding López Obrador's resignation over the deaths of 50,000?