One of the most worrying things about the current pandemic for those of us who try to understand the figures offered daily and the assessments made of them is the different conclusions reached by different experts. And it’s not just about minor points, which might well be understandable. Rather, it affects questions which are key to decision-making on even more drastic proposals than those already adopted by the Catalan government.
Without looking any further than a radio interview on Sunday morning, a scientific figure, Dr Rafael Bengoa, former health systems director for the World Health Organization, said that home confinement in Spain would be inevitable, and will probably have to be introduced within a week or two because it will be found that nothing is working well and that we are not lowering the rates enough with the current measures and thus moving to the next level will be required. For Bengoa, who was an adviser to Barack Obama while he was in the White House, this new lockdown should last for about a month and the second wave will be harsher than the first.
Bengoa is not the only expert who predicts that this development is already assured, and in fact we can find more doctors and researchers who see it that way than those who take an opposite view. But I have to say that the health authorities do not give this message, and they take refuge in an improvement in some of the parameters, such as, for example, that the virus transmission rate Rt in Catalonia has fallen for the sixth consecutive day, dropping to 1.21 when the previous Sunday it was 1.53. If the progression continues like this, next weekend it could be below 1 and, hypothetically, could even raise the possibility of some of the current measures being reversed in a few days. Yet someone seems to have forgotten that the outbreak risk (EPG index) in Catalonia is at 889.
But what strikes me most is how there can be such contrasting analyses, and above all, the effect that all this ends up having for the public, who live between anguish and bewilderment with the increasingly stressed hospital system, the ICUs filling up and outpatient home care for those who test positive leaving much to be desired. And not because doctors do not give of their best, but rather, for them also, the day only has 24 hours and the required resources simply do not arrive.