Thread by @eugenio_sp

Covid-19 in Mexico - THREAD🧵

Cumulative confirmed deaths in Mexico are about to exceed 200,000. However, those numbers are misleading as most deaths are not even registered due to lack of testing.

Let's look at excess mortality and economic growth.

With official data updated to 31/12, in Mexico, there were 308,194 excess deaths. Its death toll is the second highest in the world in absolute terms, only exceeded by the US.

Adjusting for population, excess deaths exceed those of the US by more than 40%.

Mortality data for Mexico can be found here: coronavirus.gob.mx/exceso-de-mort…

However, this has not been updated to include January figures although updates were promised to be fortnightly.

Confirmed deaths show that January has been the most lethal period so far. Assuming a similar underreporting factor, it is plausible that cumulative excess deaths may have reached 500,000 by now.

Differences across countries are interesting. If we change the colour and size of the bubbles to represent testing and positivity rates, we find that Mexico is the country with the highest positivity and amongst the ones with the lowest testing rates.

On low testing rates, Mexico’s coronavirus tsar argued that “there is no relationship between the number of tests and the quality of the virus containment” jornada.com.mx/ultimas/politi… at odds with what seems to be an international consensus ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-te….

Mexico sits amongst the 3 countries in the world that perform fewer tests relative to the size of its population.
Furthermore, it has the highest rate of positive tests, indicating a widespread virus transmission.

Even poorer countries test way more.

The Mexican government argues that the country’s high mortality is determined by pre-existing health conditions. While it’s true that comorbidities increase the chance of critical illness, differences in health conditions do not explain the huge differences across countries.

For example, the share of people aged 65 or older in Spain is almost 3 times higher than in Mexico. Despite this, and having a similar overweight prevalence, Spain has 30% fewer excess deaths pm than Mexico.

Similarly, the share of people who are overweight in countries like the UK, Spain or Italy is higher than in Mexico, and obesity prevalence is higher in Egypt or the US. Moreover, Mexico’s cardiovascular disease mortality rate is similar to other countries.

Comorbidities were used as a sort of scapegoat by the Mexican government.

Moreover, officials brought up the country’s economic conditions as an excuse for not being able to control the spread. GDP and HDI data do not back up that story.

In most countries, lockdowns and mobility restrictions caused GDP contraction, but fiscal support measures sought to mitigate the impact.

Mexico stands out as the country that provided less fiscal support as a share of GDP.

Regarding support measures as a share of GDP, Mexico ranks at the bottom with only 0.64%, below Myanmar and Niger.

It is a widespread belief that the lack of economic support measures is driven by fiscal constraints. However, Mexico’s primary balance was in fact positive in 2019 and debt/GDP just above 50%.

Vaccination is not looking any better as the rollout is slow and inefficient. Despite having more than 3.6m vaccines available, daily jabs rarely exceed 120,000.

The country is lagging behind other countries from the region

https://twitter.com/AlejandroC_IQ/status/1374531825801048065

This should be of international concern, as widespread transmission in such a large country may lead to new strains that might reach other countries.

Moreover, it is concerning that policy decisions are not backed up by a complete understanding of available evidence.

For instance, from this study by The Lancet thelancet.com/journals/lance…, Mexico’s coronavirus tsar somehow concluded that “reinfection risk is 1%” excelsior.com.mx/nacional/lopez…

Data taken from the following sources:

Excess mortality data: github.com/akarlinsky/wor…

Covid and other country-specific data:
github.com/owid/covid-19-…

Economic and fiscal measures data:
imf.org/en/Publication…

Mobility data:
google.com/covid19/mobili…