We don’t get too much news about our southern neighbor. Given that it is Cinco de Mayo, however, can we ask how Mexico is faring? The charts at ft.com suggest that the country’s experience of coronaplague is fairly typical. Yesterday’s WHO report shows that Mexico, with 2,061 deaths, is substantially less plagued than Canada or the U.S. and that emigrating from Spain to Mexico would have been a smart move, from a Covid-19 perspective.
How about the economy? It is tough to imagine that tourism and oil are doing well. With the U.S. economy in shambles, can the manufacturing plants near the border be prospering? Americans are stuffing themselves like pigs, so maybe Mexican agriculture is thriving?
Related:
- “As World Comes to Halt Amid Pandemic, So Do Migrants” (NYT) says that Mexicans no longer have to play host to half of the world’s asylum-seekers (instead of “fleeing violence” in their home countries, they are now returning home to the violence about which they were prepared to spin a tale on arriving for processing by the American refugee industrial complex)
Phil,
Can you figure out the correlation between a country’s median age and morbidity attributable to the disease? Might explain why the numbers in e.g. Mexico, Africa and India are so low. According to Stanford Professor Nobel Prize winner Michael Levitt the risks are quite low if you are not elderly with pre existing conditions — and that the general lockdowns are a bad idea since they interfere with the development of immunity, Sweden is probably right, but once again a triumph of the Boomers at the expense of the rest of the population. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl-sZdfLcEk
The median age in a country as large as India actually obscures the data. They have 1.34 billion people, of which 131 million are over the age of 50 (100 million over the age 55). That is an incredible number.
They also have 77 million diabetics (second most in the world), which is one of the most common comorbidities, and it is estimated that 91% of the Indian population over 50 is deficient in Vitamin D (which would make their immune systems weak). They are also highly mobile and dense.
And yet the deaths per million is just 1…
Chris: Mexico also has a serious problem with obesity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Mexico says “By 2010, seven out of ten Mexicans were overweight with a third clinically obese. Mexico ranks the most obese country in the world in adult obesity (as of 2013), and first for childhood obesity with about 4.5 million children diagnosed as such. Mexico passed the United States as the most obese country in the world”
2,585 Mexicans were murdered in March, so right now you probably have a better chance of being killed by cartel violence in Mexico than dying of COVID-19. Good demographics are hard to come by for Mexican homicides, so maybe COVID-19 is killing people 70+ and the cartels are taking care of the younger folks.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/mexico-murder-rate-homicide-coronavirus-covid-19
“Mexico’s homicide rate raced to a new record in March, as violence raged even as Covid-19 spread across the country and authorities urged the population to stay home and practise social distancing.”
I would put this differently. The cartels are enforcing the ultimate manifestation of social distancing. I expect López Obrador to highlight that fact in one of his speeches.
“López Obrador stirred further outrage during a visit to Sinaloa state on Sunday, when he stopped to greet the mother of convicted cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – breaking with social-distancing protocols to shake her hand.”
Manufacturing plant winners and losers: If you can dodge the hail of bullets on your way to work in the Honda plant in Ceyala (which is still open), you’re doing OK, at least until your shift ends:
“The bloodshed has hit shocking levels in the city of Ceyala – home to a major automotive manufacturing plant – with gunmen engaging security forces in shootouts, blockading streets and torching businesses.” Just another day at the office.
Ford, GM and Fiat/Chrysler have closed all their plants in north america.
The Rich are Different: Ferrari has overtaken all three in market capitalization, their Maranello and Modena plants have reopened, and they’re shipping cars almost as though nothing is happening in the rest of the world. GM shares are down 43% since November 5, 2019.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/04/ferrari-is-now-worth-more-than-general-motors-and-ford.html
“The value of the Ferrari brand and demand for its sports cars, priced between $215,000 and more than $1 million, has allowed the company to maintain margins of 24%, compared with most automakers, whose margins are under 5%.”
There isn’t a single strain of the virus, it is mutating constantly
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-05/mutant-coronavirus-has-emerged-more-contagious-than-original
They may not have gotten the same one in Mexico, or in Texas, as Massachusetts and NY