New Epicenter for Coronavirus Is South America

Alex Ward, reporter at Vox and co host of The Worldly podcast, joins us for how South America's numbers are going up. Thanks for joining us, Alex. Happy to be here. I wanted to talk about where the current coronavirus epicenter seems to be. Obviously, the United States has the most cases in the world, but South America is quickly rising with a number of cases they have. Brazil, as a matter of fact, is number two in the world with the largest number of confirmed cases currently. And there's what

happened in China, what happened in America, Pica. Everybody suspects that it's actually worse than it is because lack of testing, the health care systems are being overloaded. So Alex tell us a little bit about how South America has become

this new coronavirus epicenter. While the story somewhat begins and ends with Brazil, their president, Jeribolsnaro, has refused to take on the crisis, calling it in a little flu himself, going outside and hanging out with supporters who are protesting lockdowns and promoting hydroxy chloroquine is some sort of cure for the disease, although there's no evidence to support that. In fact, there's a lot to say that it could

be dangerous. So while some regional leaders, governors, etcetera. Are trying to fight the disease, that's just not happening, in part because the president is unwilling to put the nation's resources behind solving it. So most of South America's cases are in Brazil, which is part of the reason, if not the reason, why South America has just exploded and having the who even say it is now one of the world's epicenters. That said, there are other cases happening elsewhere.

But when we're really talking about South America's growth as a coronavirus hotspot, it really is because of Brazil, Peru, and Chile are other big countries in South America that are starting to see a lot of cases. But let's focus on Brazil a little bit more. First, have they implemented any type of social distancing measures nationwide or is that a lot of this stuff just being done on the state and local level. It's really mostly done at the state and local level. I mean, Bolsonaro himself is

not really willing to do a national program. Let's say, part of the political crisis that he has started in Brazil is that governors and mayors want to impose lockdowns, and they are imposing lockdowns in some of the biggest places in the country were De Genniro, Paolo. But Bilsonar doesn't want to do that. So this is leading him to fight with his own political leaders, some of which

are in his own party. And for some and these are experts saying this, there's some experts claiming that bolson is doing this in part to claim more political power for himself, that he's trying to use the coronavirus to gain more influence in the executive to minimize the power of other leaders. And that seems to be backfiring because hundreds of thousands are getting infected, tens of thousands of dying, and it's just no end in sight for that crisis.

As this virus has moved throughout the world, we've had different epicenters at different times. Obviously Italy was one of the hardest hit, and you would just think that some of these other countries would have taken some clues from how they operated. Obviously the United States tried to do that. Testing was one of our big failures early on, So you know, you have to kind of learn as you go, and some of these countries just haven't been able to

do that. I know, there's different cases all over the place. In particular, some of these South American countries are very poor, and they're very food poor. There's not enough to go around, so Brazil, Peru, Chila, a lot of people are having to break their quarantines or get out into the public markets, crowded public markets because they need to buy food. I think it's undoubtedly true that lockdowns and testing and tracing, you know, these are the things that are prescribed and

are the best practices you have. But the more we're looking at cases in South America and even parts of Africa, what we're finding is that lockdowns are kind of a rich nations game. It's really hard for countries that have a high levels of poverty, high levels of people in the informal sector. These are folks that really aren't on tax roles. They are musicians, are artists, or street chets,

whoever may be. These kinds of folks aren't able to purchase food and store it for long periods of time, and they need to go outside for work, They need to go outside to get food to consume day of And you are seeing example and after example in places like Peru and Chile wherever it could be. I mean heartbreaking testimony from people where they're saying, I basically have to choose between social distancing or getting food from my family.

And some have even said explicitly, like by go outside, getting the coronavirus is a possibility, but if I don't go outside and get food, starving as a certainty. And so this is the kind of choice now that people have to make in areas like South America, and it's part of the reason why social distancing and lockdowns and all these other kinds of measures which have worked with varying degrees of success, elsewhere are just not really working

in that part of the world. Interesting statistic from the seventeen census out of Peru. Peruving homes don't own a freezer basically, so you mentioned people having to go out and have to purchase day of food. They have to get their food every day at these local markets, and yeah,

they're braving the large crowds to do so. In that case, what do we know about the health care systems in the South American countries, because obviously that is one of the big things, getting overloaded, too many patients, not enough support to go around there. What do we know about their health care systems? It differs depending on the country,

but by and large it's just not great. You know, there aren't that many icing you beds, testing and tracing capabilities are minimal, The amount of doctors available for patients are low, and you know, there are tons of people as they were. Poverty is quite widespread in South America. It's hard for people to pay for services, and so there's great inequality in terms of hospitals or medical centers

and impoverished areas as they are. While there are some better ones and more urban centers and in richer areas, and so this is part of the other problem is that as more people get sick, the ability for people to go get care is just gonna be really hard, or even good care is going to be hard. And the other issue here is that South America is now entering it's winter. Right here in the United States, we are heading into summer, but the southern hemisphere is heading

into winter, and that gets to flu season. And this adds to the bunch of problems that the region already has with certain disease like den Gach, conglula, etcetera. Add flu and then of course the coronavirus. It's only going to overwhelm already taxed and underfunded and under resourced medical centers down the line. It just is not looking like a good situation, to the point I've experts telling me they're expecting a major collapse of South America's healthcare systems

over the next two months. I mean, obviously we wish them the best and they can get a handle on it, but as you mentioned, some of the experts are saying it looks pretty bad, and I'm assuming they're gonna start looking for help from other countries as well, so we'll have to see how it pans out there is the virus just continues to make its way throughout the world. Alex Ward, reporter at Vox and co host of The Worldly podcast, thank you very much for joining us. Glad

to be here. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us and I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.