Chile in 'critical' grip of second Covid wave despite one of best vaccination rates
A massive second wave of the coronavirus is gripping Chile, despite a much-lauded vaccination program that is the best in Latin America and one of the top worldwide.
Millions of Chileans are returning to full lockdown Thursday after health authorities this week ordered a return to Phase One restrictions.
The renewed order means 70% of Chile’s 19 million people will be confined to home under tighter measures, such as the removal of permits to visit supermarkets on weekends.
On Saturday, Chile recorded its highest number of daily cases since the beginning of the pandemic, 7,084 new Covid-19 cases, breaking the single-day record of 6,938 reported in June.
The second wave is edging the country's health care system perilously close to the breaking point. Critical bed occupancy is at 95%, and many medical staff members embroiled in Covid-19-infected wards for a year — sometimes working on complex cases beyond their expertise levels — have taken medical leave because of exhaustion and stress.
At: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/chile-critical-grip-second-covid-wave-one-best-vaccination-rates-rcna505
Chileans enjoy warm Southern Hemisphere summer weather in Santiago yesterday.
Despite one of the highest per capita vaccination rates in the world, Chile's daily Covid-19 infection rate is currently around twice the rate in neighboring Argentina or the U.S. on a per capita basis.
The trend has forced President Sebastián Piñera to impose lockdown measures covering 70% of the nation's 19 million people - including the entire Santiago metro area (7 million).
= new reply since forum marked as read
I thought of their president, Sebastián "worships money" Piñera, and decided to look at his personal information in Wikipedia. Had never bothered to do that, since I lost all interest in knowing more about him once I learned he placed one of Pinochet's people in his own cabinet, and that his own brother was placed high in Pinochet's government, in Economics.
Wikipedia profile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebasti%C3%A1n_Pi%C3%B1era
The facts of Piñera's life a far, far uglier than I even imagined. He's been sleazy, dirty a long, long time, even having everything, like Trump, handed to him from birth. Same moral grotesque failings, shortcomings, of course. He claims one of his ancestors is a descendant of an Incan emperor. Funny, Piñera simply looks like a slimy, dishonest gasbag, like the other governmental criminals.
Piñera takes credit, of course, for the superior, organized, efficient disbursement of vaccine to the masses, yet doesn't bother to set up a system to inform, educate, explain the importance of cooperation to the people. We know Chileans can and do follow the herd when fascist dictators want them to, as illustrated by the great numbers of right-wingers throughout Chile now, like all the ones who stumbled forward to kiss the casket of Pinochet when he bought the farm.
Graphic! Fear Flasher! Horror Horn! Beep! Turn away, turn away!
How is it Piñera hasn't told them to get with the program?
They'd better hope they will respect the lockdown. The Corona Virus is nothing trivial.
On edit:
Sorry, I got carried away, too rowdy, too emotional. I think it was a backlash to Trump, probably!
On edit: This is a peculiar situation, having a superior vaccination program in place, running so well, while the people are running amock. It probably has looked that way here, considering all the slow-learning wingers using the virus as a stage on which they can show the world what two-fisted humdinger individualists they are in scoffing at liberals who urge them to think of others by wearing their face masks.