Vinicius Torres Freire: What the end of the epidemic in Denmark says about Brazil

Denmark released general. On February 1, it was the first European country to officially end the requirement for a mask in closed places and public transport, with an immunity passport, with a limit of agglomeration, with everything. The Covid epidemic is no longer a “socially critical threat”. This conversation will soon arrive here, avacalhada, as usual.

Despite the end of the emergency situation, both in Denmark and in Brazil are dying of Covid these days, in relative terms. There are just over 3 daily deaths per million inhabitants. The slaughter for now is just no greater than that of January 2021. The number of cases of the disease has never been so high. What happens in the kingdom of Denmark?

Denmark is different, brother, it’s much more than a dream, as the singer would say. It has the size of the state of Rio de Janeiro and 5.8 million inhabitants, half the population of the city of São Paulo.

It is an exotic country: one of the ten richest, the second happiest and one of the 15 most egalitarian in the world.
The head of government is a woman, Social Democrat Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, 44.

In “Borgen”, the Danish TV series, the prime minister of fiction washes dishes when she gets home from work — if that’s not true, it’s very likely.

Here, we have an imbecile monster that spreads farofa, blows up the government’s credit card, is an enemy of the vaccine and rides a watercraft laughing at the dead.

It is easier to manage a health crisis in a small and civilized country than in the immensity of revolting miseries in Brazil. But there is more.

The evolution of the relative number of deaths does not say everything about the situation and fate of the epidemic, of course. At the beginning of February, there were 30 people hospitalized in Danish ICUs. In the city of São Paulo, 375. The dynamics of the virus is different because social, health and education conditions are different.

The vaccination rate is high there: more than 81% with two doses, more than 61% with booster. The state of São Paulo is not that far away: almost 80% with dose 2, 36% with booster. But the death rate per million inhabitants in São Paulo is high, at 5.4 and those admitted to the ICU are 4,000.

In addition to the relative control of the disease, now “soft”, the Danish liberation was motivated by a reconsideration of the pros and cons of restrictions: effects on the economy, on general well-being, including psychological, and on rights and freedoms.

Government advisers also say that the strategy for dealing with the epidemic depends on the general willingness to support restrictions. This disposition has been falling; it was higher when hospitals were full, according to surveys (in Brazil it is similar, in an impressionistic assessment).

Eventually, opinions for and against restrictions more and more cease to be reasonable, become entrenched, and become political or cultural war causes. Fatigue also poisons debate, the willingness to follow rules and trust the government. “He gave”.

In the USA, much richer, but large and almost as unequal as Brazil, there is no central administration of the epidemic, which is still a massacre, with more than 7 deaths per million. The political-cultural conflict is acute. The American vaccination rate is lower than the Brazilian one.

More European countries are on the verge of general release. This is the case in Ireland and the Netherlands, with a low number of deaths, and in the United Kingdom, France and Finland (with death rates similar to those of Brazil and with similar two-dose vaccination, but with more than twice the number of doses). of reinforcement).

With more or less foundation, probably much less, the talk of liberation day will reach Brazil, which is not Denmark, but a miserable United States.