Arquivo para a ‘Economia’ Categoria
Reinfection, care and vaccine
01
Feb
Current studies indicate that someone who has had covid may have
a new infection because of the virus mutation, in São Paulo there are already three confirmed variants (by the Adolfo Lutz Institute, of course many will not even be counted because it is necessary to have PCR tests), and there are suspected cases in Santa Catarina, Paraná, Acre and Mato Grosso do Sul, while the infection is growing and the vaccination campaign is still going slowly.
The variant of the virus called P1 has already been detected in eight countries, in addition to Brazil, Japan, Italy, South Korea, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Faroe Islands. What worries most is that vaccines may not immunize this new variant, studies are still ongoing.
On January 17, a case of reinfection was detected in Manaus, the case was studied and had a scientific article published clarifying and giving data on reinfection by the new variant, it was a 29-year-old woman who had contracted Covid in March of 2020, on December 19 she returned to show symptoms and was diagnosed with the Covid 19 variant.
Care should be redoubled, however, not only are there authorities that neglect social isolation, but there are also contradictory attitudes, the government of São Paulo puts almost every state in the red phase, of greater gravity, but goes to court to take face-to-face classes in public schools already this month, initially lacking coherence in speech and action.
Brazil does not follow the identification, tracking, monitoring and isolation of Covid-19 infections and the alert is from the Brazilian scientists themselves, the Gisaid platform that monitors the virus in the world, has only 0.5% of published cases, studied in Brazil .
Vaccination started mainly with health professionals, it is necessary to clarify that care must be redoubled, since the area of infection is strongest, and that only after a certain degree of vaccination, which depends on the effectiveness of the vaccine, you can have some measure of flexibility, opening completely is far from happening.
Vaccine: Efficacy and Efficiency
25
Jan
The effectiveness of the vaccine basically depends on the action
that it can take on the virus in specific people and populations, as for the age, the physical type and the organic development of each person and certain comorbidities, diseases that collaborate with the infectious process.
The fact that a vaccine is 90% effective, for example, for it to be efficient, it would be necessary to vaccinate at least 56% of the population, where the development of the virus would be limited to contagion and infectious rates would drop until the end of the pandemic in a given period, and also the vaccination time is important and the availability of the vaccine for a percentage of the population dependent on its effectiveness depends on it.
The problem is that rich countries are having inputs to produce the vaccine, so they may be more likely to fight the pandemic, the poorer countries beyond this availability, which depends on the agility of governmental actions, need to have resources for purchasing inputs. to produce vaccines in their own country or buy vaccines.
There is a market dispute and also at the political level, WHO itself said that a moral problem could occur if the poorest countries have difficulties in obtaining the vaccine and / or the inputs to produce it.
The capacity of the hospital system and the organization of the health system is also an efficiency problem, Brazil has a good public organization in the SUS system, however there is an urgency for the state’s actions, the return of the disease to a critical phase was not so there is a big problem of efficiency in the response to the disease, the lack of oxygen in Manaus was this.
Finally, there is a cultural problem, which is the understanding that we have not yet emerged from Pandemic and any measure that favors the end of isolation is worrying and this has led to an exhaustion of the hospital’s capacity to respond to the new critical phase of Pandemic.
Financial pandemic covid
18
Jan
The current crisis, which is a health pandemic may have
serious financial consequences, the warning is from World Bank chief economist Carmen Reinhart.
The prolongation of the Covid-19 Pandemic overloads domestic and business economies and evolves into an economic crisis. Reinhart calls this effect “cumulative cost”, explains that there are classic balance sheet problems.
In 2009 he published a book with Kenneth Rogoff, then a Harvard colleague, who analyzed the most recent financial crisis, the book “This time was different: eight centuries of Financial Folly “has become a benchmark for governments for recessions, bank runs and infringement proceedings.
Those who believed in a full return to normality are mistaken, as well as a plan for future pandemics and a co-immunity (concept created by Sloterdijk before of Pandemic), it is necessary to develop a kind of mutualism, that is, relationships that have mutual commitments, where the Other is not uncomfortable but part of the solution.
It must be imagined that this could promote a great change of mentality, this seems almost impossible , but the future of humanity depends on this, and learning must be fast, is one of Sloterdijk’s subjects in “Change Your Life”, written before the pandemic.
What to expect in 2021
31
Dec
Judging by the year that ends, it is better not to make predictions,
but be prepared for positive or negative surprises, we talk about resilience in 2020 and this means being prepared for adverse situations, stress and deprivation, of course always hoping for improvements.
I watched the movie The Midnight Sun and some thoughts about a possible dark future came to mind, it is based on the Lily Brook-Dalton and just like the film (which is on Netflix) they are very successful, although the critic does not praise, at least the performance of actor George Clooney is commendable, and there is a perfect combination of optimism and fiction.
I watched the movie The Midnight Sun and some thoughts about a possible dark future came to mind, but now with a touch of humanism and even optimism, it is based on the book Good Morning, Midnight (2016), written by Lily Brooks-Dalton.
The mixture of science fiction with feelings seems inadequate, this is one of the main criticisms, I think that in the case of a deep crisis on our planet this mixture is adequate, the second main criticism is the type of plot, undoubtedly very different, the Sometimes we lose the sequence and we need to think a little, at this point, success on Netflix is curious, maybe people have learned to like this, reflection is good and leads us to questions.
The film led me to think about 2021 because it is a resilient attitude, on my part, to think if the worst happens, what can I do positive to help myself and help people.
Let the vaccine come, let us start a process of resuming life, but we hope that the new normality will be more human, with a more empathic look to those around us, and that we will have more solidarity among people, then the pandemic will have taught us something.
However, it is necessary to change attitudes, behaviors and mentalities, affirmative gestures by well-intentioned and altruistic people are not enough, we need to take more seriously what we can help us as humanity, as a society and as a person.
That this year come the vaccine, with a vaccine and a lot of solidarity and if necessary with a lot of resilience.
Routes and paths
01
Dec
While the West suffers from covid-19, the east in the midst of the
crisis continues to show signs of vitality and strength, formed a bloc of 15 countries with China, South Korea, New Zealand, Japan and Australia ahead, called RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) was signed at a regional summit in Hanoi on 11/15, although the conference was online.
One of the objectives is to progressively reduce tasks in key areas in the coming years, in addition to the countries that were part of the Asian ASEAN treaty, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, bloc has half the world population and almost 40% of the GDP of the entire planet.
In addition to the pandemic, the West is struggling with polarizations, crises with minority and racial rights, a degrading moral environment, in which corruption is only part of the whole structural gear around it, with an increasing presence of migrants from the whole planet, but especially the Arabs, who have a very different culture.
The Eurozone will have to strengthen ties to get out of the economic crisis imposed by the pandemic, the departure from England that ends in December, still has unpredictable effects also for England, but the conservative government has managed to impose itself in the midst of the pandemic and prepares the first mass vaccination in the west.
In Latin America, the step taken by Bolsonaro from Brazil and Fernandez from Argentina to hold the first bilateral meeting is still encouraging, but the call for cooperation from the Brazilian government’s armed forces and the request for collaboration on the environmental issue despite of the diplomatic touch also represent a provocation in what the presidents believe.
The elected government of Bolivia, supporter of the deposed Evo Morales, tries to break the isolation by inviting the opposition leader of Venezuela, but used the Bolivian flag and Whipala, symbol of the indigenous peoples’ congregation, in the liberation party of the state of Potosi.
The call for cooperation and the formation of a cohesive Mercosur bloc is difficult to leave the paper for concrete measures where cooperation, respect for political and cultural diversity, and cooperation across borders is a step taken as in the East or in the still fragile European Union, agreements of the Americas, as was the proposal of NAFTA, if they go forward with Joe Biden they must be a very slow process
Vaccines under test and an economic dispute
30
Nov
Even recognizing flaws in the theses, Pfizer’s vaccines against 
covid-19 should be approved within a few days, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, so the United Kingdom becomes the first country in the west to have a vaccine, and vaccination can begin. on December 7, in Brazil, the race is for Coronavac, no matter which one is safer, behind the vaccines there are economic deals and investments made in the manner of betting and not really scientific criteria.
In Brazil the authorization is made by Anvisa, in Europe by the European Medicines Agency and the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, a final Brexit transition is for December 31, but the Regulatory Agency for Medicines and Health Products in the United Kingdom has the power to temporarily authorize the products, and there is an obvious interest in the UK even though it is in partnership with German BioNTech.
The process could be applied to the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford (Brazil participates in FioCruz), on Sunday, Friday (27) the government asked the regulator to review the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, thus showing the real interest .
Current data on the efficiency of Coronavac, a medical vaccine by the Chinese company Sinovac and which has a partnership with the Butantan Institute, should be announced in early December, and an approval in record time would be for January, however the effectiveness is different from the tests that verify side effects, contraindications and long-term efficiency, also a Pfizer was questioned recently due to the tests.
The long-term effects studies indicated that perhaps a single vaccine would not solve the pandemic problem, an article was published in October in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, which lit up a warning sign about vaccines, and said that he did not know until that time. data if vaccines were candidates were effective in severe forms of the disease, the warning sign remains on.
Eschatology and Christmas
27
Nov
As an ontological synthesis of the eschatology that we developed this
week, we return to Heidegger in his three eschatological concepts.
Be careful, Heidegger appropriates the Greek fable in which Jupiter and Care that is shaping clay fight over the name that will be given to the created figure, and called Saturn as a judge he says that Jupiter will belong to the spirit because he was the one who gave it the form , while Care will have the land, since it formed it, and Care will belong to the shape of the clay he created, so to care in the present moment.
Impersonality is one in which it breaks the relationship with the world, and makes the individual isolated, “out of relations of familiarity with the world” and thus almost always in the absence of the other. it breaks this relationship, and makes the isolated individual “fall out of familiarity with the world,” says Heidegger.
Silence is the final aspect of this eschatology, it is invoked when the individual has already discovered himself, and returns to the world now master of himself, so is the return of peace and the harmonious relationship with the world, even if he is in conflict, or in one of his deaths.
Christmas is not only celebrated by many Christians of different sects, although curiously it awaits the new coming, which is the parousia and it is also celebrated in the first weeks of Christmas, the time of advent, but this is the separation we speak of Being of life and being-for-death.
They are not disconnected, it is in it that death, the resurrection of life and the new coming, or a new time, or what happens after a small or great tragedy develops, I think it is true that we live in a time like this, but eschatology who intends to deny death is death itself.
The urgent need for changes in the human life of the planet, in respect for the planet itself, for the Other that is not our mirror, is not “our class”, it is more and more a demand for change, for the death of an old system and to be reborn in a new civilizing perspective.
And if that time comes, that eschatological end, which is the biblical recommendation for those who believe, is the one that is in Mark (Mark 13: 33-34): “33“ Watch out! Pay attention, because you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man who, when he left abroad, left his home under the responsibility of his employees, distributing his task to each one. And he told the porter to keep watch “, whether or not this time comes “watch”.
While for the Christian it must mean an eternal parousia, that is, waiting for a new coming, for non-Christians it must be aware of a new time, a resumption of social, ecological and human values that are abandoned, in crisis or almost succumbed in a civilization in crisis.
A Christmas without big parties and consumerism should be a Christmas closer to its meaning, the Christmas of Care, Impersonality (respect for the Other) and Silence, is an almost perfect eschatology, as it would be if we could actually feel the return of a true time of salvation.
An incomplete epistemology and eschatology
22
Nov
What phenomenology and ontological philosophy seeks is at the
center of the scientific crisis and of the thought that the West is experiencing, and whose epicenter is European, in Peter Sloterdijk’s enlightened saying that Europe is no longer the center as in the colonial period (empire of the Center) and looks for other forms of colonialism to take idealism forward, what in literature has been called epistemicide. In denying the cultures originating from other peoples, he thinks he is finding his own diffusion between barbarism and classical antiquity, he tries a new renaissance exploring the Greek culture in a diffuse way.
At the religious level the disaster is greater, Slavov Zizek recently wrote about the religious concept in Hegel, and the latter of the thinkers who tried to revive classical Marxism, reworked the Hegelian religion, but which was already present in Feuerbach and Marx himself criticized, in the bottom is an atheistic theology, a dead eschatology.
Dead because this is in fact the great mistake of idealistic eschatology, there is no transcendence for it without the separation of subject and object, it needs to deny the substantiality to affirm its “subjectivity” where the subject must always be dead, it denies being-for-dead Heidegger’s motto, but affirms death in life (it isnt epoché).
Every form of original culture, it is obvious that it includes those non-Christian cultures, has an origin (the name says it), the eschatological life and end, which is not where it is going, and at this point this incomplete theology diverges on the that in fact is death, in times of a pandemic one could say the disease that can kill.
For this reason, even if the appeal to phenomenology will be incomplete, it will lead those who incorporate it to exhaustion, to contempt for life, which even in the religious sense is something deeply sacred, its “biós”, its substantiality, to be clear to idealists, its objectivity, fall into theoretical abstractionism.
The only substantiality of this incomplete eschatology is to deny religion in order to make it idealistic and to ask for what is inhuman, what in biblical terms he calls “putting heavy burdens on the shoulders of others” and which they themselves refuse to carry in times of pandemic neither enter nor let others in.
The final exam will be substantial: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink…” and you will not be asked whether you have developed a good epistemology or theology, the one that made colonialism the terror of original cultures.
The poor and poverty
17
Nov
The poor is the inhuman condition of living of a certain person
who may or may not be linked to social status, while poverty is structural and where there is a good part of the population there, they are condemned to be poor.
2019 UN report gave the figure of 500 million people living in poverty, below the line of human dignity, the Portuguese Pedro Conceição, director of the Office report that made the Human Development of the United Nations Development Program, creates an important concept of multidimensional poverty, which creates indicators related to health, education that are the structural impact on their lives:
“Multidimensional poverty is an important concept, because it tries to understand how people live in poverty, but not only. Through the fact of low levels of income. It also tends to measure how health and education indicators impact the way people live their lives. When we have this concept a little more comprehensive of poverty, what we find is that the number of people living in poverty is greater than that number of people living in poverty when we measure only through income. There are 500 million people living in multidimensional poverty than those living in extreme poverty, if we look only at income indicators. ”
So when we only measure income we are finding those who are poor, and we need to tackle the structural problem that is multidimensional.
The report says that 85% of the world’s poverty is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, in countries like Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Niger and South Sudan, there are 90% of children under the age of 10 considered to be multidimensionally poor.G
The report assesses the progress that has been made towards achieving Goal 1 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to eradicate poverty “in all its forms everywhere”, in this report the number grows to about 2 billion people who encompass global poverty.
Places where there is “statistically significant progress” towards goal 2 and faster reductions occur in India, Cambodia and Bangladesh, but this development cannot be thought to be “natural” if there is no effort on the part of rich countries to rethink income distribution.
Healthy living and talents
13
Nov
A society of tiredness, fear and authoritarian pressure can stifle 
talents, hide natural gifts that all people have, and that developing them depends on special care such as giving time, space and having sensitivity for them to develop.
Another serious problem is the social demand for efficiency and the pressure for results, they will come naturally if there is room for learning, growth and respect for cultural and social differences, from cultivation in the family, through education and social structure, only gifts will be developed when these structures are prepared to support individual talent. From a personal point of view, it is often necessary to overcome feelings of inferiority, talk and seek support from specialists and social sectors who can develop the aptitude they have, who often need to deepen their vocations and cultivate the gifts they have until they express themselves as a talent.
All the sociological work of Marcel Mauss, in his Theory of the Gift, is to demonstrate that it is not always useful, the simple exchange for financial advantages that in many societies transform cultural and social gifts into healthy social structures where those talents that naturally develop each person has, the issue of exchange and reciprocity are studied in some ancient cultures.
By studying non-European cultures, the gift in the virtuous cycle of giving-receiving-returning, Mauss helped to deconstruct European universalism, and can be considered one of the sources of studies of decolonization.
In his essay, the anthropologist and sociologist Maus, very early realized this challenge of bringing together a discussion about the relationship between decolonial criticism and anti-utilitarian criticism as his vision of the “gift”. In studying non-Western cultures, Mauss seeks to demonstrate the healthy and “universal” value of the gift system, in the form of the give-take-return cycle, that existed before the emergence of the market and the State and continues to exist, despite the dominant utilitarian ideology that seeks to emphasize the selfishness and commercialism of the talents.
The biblical parable of the talents, where a man when traveling abroad delivers his goods to his employees, giving “talents”, although this means a financial value the analogy with the individual talents is clear in the text, says the reading Lk 25,14- 15: “A man was going to travel abroad. He called his employees and gave them their goods”.
One gave five talents, the other gave two talents and the third gave one; each according to their ability.
Then he traveled ”, and the parable states that the one who received five doubled his talent, while the one who received one buried it to return when the boss returned.
So it is not a question of egalitarianism, but of a free distribution of gifts and how each one works his talents, in a healthy context in the case of the parable the man “goes abroad”, that is, each one can work his talent as he received, and when he comes back he gives a greater reward to the one who worked the talents he received the most, but everyone receives some “value” in talents and has the opportunity to develop, it is also clear that in this context it is the ability of each one to receive and return talents, as Mauss completes the act of “giving”, creating a virtuous cycle.
