Argentina battles dengue surge and repellent shortage

[Quilombo]

While our president was cosplaying a soldier and abasing himself in Tierra del Fuego, we had this priceless example of libertarian medicine in Buenos Aires:

"This week, the Buenos Aires City government’s health minister posted photos of himself at a community center in a poor neighborhood, large vats and pans laid out before him. For this, he told his audience, they would need fresh thyme, lemon, vinegar, cloves, and a series of other plants.

He wasn’t swapping chimichurri recipes. It was, allegedly, a homemade mosquito repellent — the city government’s response to a dengue outbreak that has sickened over 134,000 people and killed over 100 in Argentina".

From https://buenosairesherald.com/op-ed/the-sting-of-an-absent-state, you couldn't make it up. Meanwhile, the mostly AWOL federal health minister resurrected himself for Easter to announce that he's being pressurized by repellent laboratories, vaccine manufacturers, and the caste, of course, to basically do his job;

Mario Russo culpó a la casta por el dengue y le metió presión a los laboratorios

El ministro de Salud de la Nación sostuvo que trabajan en la planificación de políticas públicas, pero las provincias deben llevar adelante su fase operativa

www-diariouno-com-ar.translate.goog

Presumably the manufacturers of long trousers and long-sleeved shirts have also been exerting pressure on the poor guy:

Apareció el ministro de Salud, Mario Russo y recomendó "tener cuidado con los pantalones cortos" para cuidarse del dengue

Mario Russo espera que el problema de la falta de repelentes se resuelva en dos semanas y también se refirió a los cuidados personales para evita ser picado por los mosquitos.

www-perfil-com.translate.goog

Both he and his sidekick in CABA deserve to be removed from the medical register.

Meanwhile, the free market must be working since a donation of repellent has arrived from Mexico, with more to come: https://www-lanacion-com-ar.transla...es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=es-419&_x_tr_pto=wapp Oh, wait...

How long until we have "The forces of heaven" intentionally getting dengue to own the libs?

How can people look at the state of healthcare in Argentina and think this isn't a crisis that needs to be addressed? People are abandoning prepaid medicine because people can't afford it, and the public health system has been collapsed for years due to underfunding, and now we're going to send hundreds of thousands of people to hospitals each year as dengue becomes an epidemic in GBA due to climate change?

Obviously this isn't all LLA's fault, the Ks have underfunded healthcare for decades, but burying your head in the sand and hoping Mexico sends us Off isn't leadership imo...

 

[FrankPintor]

I'll see if I can get a prescription for the vaccine tomorrow, and report back on the experience. I know it's late, and I've been indecisive, but some protection has to be better than none. It doesn't look like dengue is going away.

 

[on the brink]

It's amazing that you're still here in Argentina in the middle of the apocalypse. I commend you for your unheralded bravery. But I suppose you have your bags packed and your ticket home booked. Please, have a safe flight home, and god bless. Think of us once in a while.

Some board members like to bemoan, groan, complain and kvetch about Argentina day in and day out. Yet, they are still here - perhaps a vocation for martyrdom. Let's hope that, when they go to the Happy Hunting Grounds, such sacrifice will be rewarded with a seat on a cloud right next to St. Peter's, .

 

[retiredbanker]

No, repellent. You're so high on your Fuyi you feel you can sneer at the rest of us?

Try Fuji unless you enjoy paying more for Raid, which of course is fine with me.

 

[DarrenKK]

Can we expect these pesky mosquitos to die off in the next month or so or not?

 

[Quilombo]

Can we expect these pesky mosquitos to die off in the next month or so or not?

I usually notice a decrease in them between June and September, but as the climate has changed over the past decade since I've come to Argentina I've noticed them hanging around longer, which is also contributing to the dengue epidemic itself.

I run the AC in my bedroom at 22 on dry and that usually keeps them out, but I'm looking forward to the winter so I can keep the window opens throughout the apt

 

[Rich One]

Try Fuji unless you enjoy paying more for Raid, which of course is fine with me.

Thanks, rushed to Pigmento and bought AKTIOL a repellent, one per customer. $2900 pesos.

 

[FrankPintor]

No Pigmentos out my way in provincia, but thanks to @retiredbanker for sharing. My attempt at getting a dengue prescription foundered at the first step, but I'll persevere.

 

[FrankPintor]

From https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj.q896

“There is no leadership,” says Tomás Orduna, the former head of tropical medicine and travel medicine at Hospital Muñiz in Buenos Aires. “There is no plan for mitigating the outbreak, no communication at all, no measures to control the mosquitoes that transmit the virus. This lack of action affects coordination in the provinces. There is no support for hydration units, for example, or mosquito nets for sick people.”

Our low-profile, low-energy health minister is getting noticed in spite of himself.

In the meantime, we can entertain ourselves with the latest blatherings from this useless individual: Fernán Quirós gave assurances that we are "in the final phase of the dengue outbreak"

From: https://www.ambito.com/politica/fer...-dengue-pero-la-epidemia-no-finalizo-n5994090

Forgetting, of course, that he had forecast the end of the dengue plague a month back: Quirós stated that “the latest reading shows almost the same, which means that in the next week and a half this will be in its final phase.”

From: https://www.pagina12.com.ar/726974-fernan-quiros-afirmo-que-se-acerca-la-fase-final-del-brote-d

All to avoid buying a safe, effective vaccine.

From personal observation, I'm thinking that the 20 degree threshold, under which the mosquitos should be less active, is an urban legend. We had two very cold mornings last week (4 degrees out here in the sticks), and I get bitten to pieces every time I step outside. And the mosquitos here are used to biting through cowhide. According to Campana 360 we're having yet another wave of mosquitos now.

 

[Ange]

Agreed. i d say this is the worst wave of mosquitoes in the campo since October. The campo mosquitoes are something else, vicious little shits and bigger in size too. You walk outside and are literally covered in them.
Had dengue type I years ago and don’t wish it on anyone