 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hi, and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we are joined by Manuel Fonseca, who is a general internist from Argentina. He is a militant of the health movement Irma Carica, and he's also a militant of the Frente Patriar Grande. He will be joining us today to discuss the COVID crisis in Argentina. How is this playing out, what measures the government is taking? And without further ado, thank you. Thank you very much Manuel. First of all, how is the general situation in Argentina? With the COVID crisis, number of cases, all that, you can count on us. Well, on the day of the date, in the total of the territory of the country, we present a few more than 2,500 confirmed cases of coronavirus, 2,571, to be specific, there are 115 deaths, and in total confirmed cases, the majority continues to be reported cases or cases of close contacts of those, first reported cases. The community contact is growing, but it is still minor in comparison with those who have come from abroad. The rate of reproduction, let's say, or the speed of contact is still within the most optimistic scenarios that the government has raised since the moment of the strongest measures, which, well, we have been almost a month of social isolation, preventive and mandatory, which was the first most difficult measure, the so-called social quarantine, which since March 20, it has us all a little bit in our homes. Well, I have to be a doctor and work in the health system of the province of Buenos Aires, which is the largest province in our country. We, the balance we make as workers, of these first weeks of this situation so complicated in the country is that, evidently, the measures of the national government have been very effective in a first parameter, which is the speed of the contacts and having been able to so far fulfill the objective that they have mentioned of flattening the curve, and also in a second very important aspect, which is preparing the health system in the best way for the weeks that come, which will surely be the most difficult when, for different reasons that have to do with local circulation, with the climate and the superposition with other diseases, and with the fact that still, as we all know, there is no effective treatment for this virus, well, that the situation catches us in the best way. We also value very positively the fact that these quarantine measures have been accompanied with other types of measures of the social order. You know that it is not the same to do a social flattening in cases like, for example, Metocamy, or many people who work in the public sphere, which is having a fixed salary and every month charging our salary, which is more than 40% of the population in Argentina who does not receive a fixed salary and who lives, but which produces every day. The government has taken measures to reinforce the minimum payments, which are the payments that less money receives per month, and it has also taken measures to reinforce the universal payments for children, which is a measure, just as its word says, universal in our country, which applies to all the families that have small children, and it has also taken a second measure, which is to grant an extraordinary economic benefit to all the people who are registered, or in a formal job, or in another state's benefit, like the ones I just mentioned, which are more or less about eight million people. That is to say, that with politics and with an economic injection, it is trying to contain what would be, in another way, a recording of the economic and social situation in Argentina, which was already recorded before the pandemic began, and which we have been lucky enough to inherit from the last years of the neoliberal government, from the president and from the previous governor's alliance. I wanted to ask there a little, because Argentina has been like the strategy it has taken, it does not seem like another government, we have the example of its neighbor, Brazil, who is the new Bolsonaro government, today he submitted to the Ministry of Health, and continues to deny that the social isolation has a positive impact, is super-centred in making capital on people, so I also wanted to ask, how in Argentina have they been like the positive impacts, and how do you see that compared to other countries in the region? We are very close to the measures of the countries, brothers, and we do not stop seeing with a lot of astonishment, not only the measures, but the irresponsibility with which some declarations are made, the example of Bolsonaro is perhaps the most discarded example of governments in our continent that have no interest in taking measures in politics that tend to force the national states, and that in some way they can impose some condition on the market, on the contrary. One imagines that Bolsonaro's opinions are very aligned with what the President of the United States is saying, and they are aligned with those who have said other exponents that are clear of neoliberal projects in our continent and in other continents, and it is not only necessary to be a genius of medicine or epidemiology to compare not only the amount of contagions in each country, but also the death rate for each country. There are many programs and applications that, in a very simple way, show, especially how in Argentina, from having taken the measures that were taken, the amount of contagions was flattened and the rate of death growth was also reduced by the number of inhabitants, which is perhaps a slightly more prudent and reliable rate to discuss with those who have been discussing anti-political and anti-science, which in our country are the liberal expressions, both on the ultra-left and on the ultra-right, that offer epidemiological recipes, thought in other countries that are not ours, and that, for example, question, in Argentina, for example, the amount of tests that are carried out and argue that in Argentina there are few cases where it is tested little by little. That is not true and there are a lot of epidemiological and scientific tools to prove that that is not true, but that does not matter because the whole population is not going to look at that, but yes, what we can incorporate as a massive speech to talk to all the people standing up, which is that in Argentina people are dying proportionally three times less than in Brazil today and that we, at least in Argentina, are not satisfied or happy because in Brazil more compatriots are dying. We would love that in all the countries of the continent, whether they are all popular governments and all the governments of the continent, that take measures to protect their towns. Unfortunately, we are in an ideological and sanitary discussion, precisely with Brazil, because there is a confrontation of models that is very clear and that today, somehow and to our judgment, that small game we have been winning by the Argentines in relation to the fact that the measures that we have been taking are much more effective to protect the population and that the dichotomy that other countries have in other countries between health and economy. Well, the president of Argentina has more than one opportunity to protect the health of the Argentines, the economy is also taken care of because we need healthy people and a healthy people so that we can not come out of this situation so ugly that we have to live, we can come back to produce and push back a process of national development that shows a little and also serves as an example, as you said, here a little when we can laugh a little and talk about the matter we say less than we got in 2020, this pandemic and that it did not catch us in 2019 with a government like the one of Madrid because the answer would have been the same or worse than the one of Bolsonaro if the pandemic falls a little at a geopolitical moment of a lot of conflict and at a moment where the continental processes of the great homeland of Latin America are completely open, the pandemic came at a time when there was a coup d'état in Bolivia, in which there were street demonstrations in Chile where there were protests against the government in Ecuador, in Peru, well, those processes can be in some way slowed down by everything that is happening with the pandemic but they will not disappear the day of tomorrow when this happens I hope it would have caught us around the pandemic with much more government popular on the continent and maybe we could have even been able to make policies that are common to some of the countries and not this defensive trend to close itself that in some way and well and well I already mentioned it once but I wanted to know how is the impact that the government left in Macri in that situation today we know that it was four years of cutting public policies of being ministers, that is, it left a country with 40 percent of poverty, that a very difficult situation, so what is the impact of those four years of Macri today while the government is facing that crisis well the economic impact as you say is brutal because in consonance with what you mentioned that it ended its government with more than 40 percent of poverty in our country it also left us a debt that is the debt that is the process of the largest debt that our country made in its history and that are dollars because it is a dollar in dollars that have not been invested in our country but that have fled to foreign capital in a second point of analysis it also leaves us a legacy of discourse that today we are discussing a lot that is the first discourse that the state does not serve that the state is a charge and that is why it has to be as young as possible so that the country can develop and second a meritocratic discourse that the best thing you can do to survive is to save yourself and step on the head of another Argentine, let's say the discourse of the previous government was that for an Argentine there was nothing worse than another Argentine and that also forms part of a legacy that is the legacy if you want more cultural or the discussion of the senses in which the government is built and a third third sphere if you want we can do a great legacy of the macrimonial is the sanitary in the government of macri and the Ministry of Health was eliminated and it was the third time in the history of Argentina that since we have ministries it is eliminated and the last two times they had been in dictatorial processes of coups d'état by which what I do not think that this reality of the pandemic is that today those who tell us that the state is useless they cannot go out and talk anywhere the same that they said that the Ministry of Health did not serve, they also said that for example they did not serve to have a state line and the Argentine line was the company that repatriated all the Argentines who were outside that the same that they did not say that the Ministry of Health served are those who say that they do not serve in public universities or national research and today we have a national institute that has already decoded the genome of the virus in Latin America then for all those who for all those who insisted that the state does not serve for anything the answer is not only the order of the ideological order but also the order of the pragmatic today in Argentina to any person who does not want a family to be killed who does not want a sick grandfather or uncle to be sick or who does not want to die himself, it is advisable for the state to work well and that the measures that the government is taking work well and well, I think that was it, thank you very much for talking to us and a lot of strength, I hope you take care of yourself in the hospitals, well, thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to comment on how we are living from here on, but it is good that we can do it and convey a message of hope that for us this is a difficult moment but that it is also an opportunity and that if we manage to spend this moment in the best way that is what we all expect, it can be opened for our country and perhaps for the region a new process of amplification of rights and unification of the land