Mexico: the populism/COVID-19 syndemic

ABSTRACT

Using eight cross-section econometric models applied to a sample of 31 countries, we find that, although the Case Fatality Ratio (CFR) of COVID-19 is explained by ‘structural’ variables that were given prior to the pandemic (healthcare infrastructure, comorbidities, poverty and the HDI), the ’response’ variables to the crisis (fiscal support, health policy, and, above all, government narrative) have been determinant in the evolution of the pandemic. We show that the dummy variable representing populist countries is significant, demonstrating that, as Shiller (2017) stated, narrative plays a major role in shaping behavior and economic outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• CFR
• narrative economics
• economic populism
• COVID-19

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• B22
• C31
• E71
• H12
• H51

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Luis Rodríguez and David Rumbo and the careful readings of Patricia Magaña.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study were derived from resources freely available cited in the References section.

Notes

1. The syndemic refers to a ‘group of two or more health conditions in a particular context; the interaction among these conditions via biological, social or psychological channels; and the participation of social, political, economic or ecological detonators’ (Mendenhall and Singer 2019, 741). Our approach is based on this definition and proposes a perspective of both as a multidisciplinary narrative-economic-econometric, and the epidemiological one.

2. Due to the monitoring by the society (or by large groups) of the leader’s behavior. So, if the leader denies the severity of the virus, and does not follow the required protocols, their followers will mimic the leader’s behavior further aggravating the problem (Ajzenman, Cavalcanti, and Da Mata 2020; Barrios and Hochberg 2020).

3. Nevertheless, in Mexico it was commonly observed that many people died undiagnosed or with their death certificates even indicating other causes (i.e. severe pneumonia).

4. Deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.

5. For instance, the systemic denial of the efficiency of wearing facemasks and of mass testing as well as the tracking of positive cases; lack of clarity, coordination, congruence in the policies and lack of transparency of healthcare data.

6. This sample was constructed in this way because these were the only countries with full and robust data consistent with our hypothesis, and it can be considered representative because it encompasses a broad range of very heterogeneous countries. We take data available as of 2 January 2021, given that these data were the most recent for this research, and that the CFR and Mort have stabilized.

7. Based on data from INEGI (2021) available from January to August 2020, 58% of deaths caused by the COVID-19 occurred at home or on the streets, rather than in hospitals.

8. Out of 7,000 healthcare workers, who died worldwide because of the pandemic, 1,200 were registered in Mexico, followed by the United States (1,077) and Brazil (634) (Agren, 2020).

9. As of 27 December 2020 Mexico City had 100% more deaths than, on average, between 2016 and 2019, that is, an excess of 54,892 deaths. It was followed by 43,941 in Lima, 28,352 in New York, 26,736 in Lombardi and 19,081 in Madrid (Romero and Despeghel 2021). Data as of 2 January 2021.

10. In the econometrics section, we consider overweight (OW) exclusively because this condition triggers other comorbidities that matter/are relevant for the goal of our research.

11. Positive tests per each 100 tests realized.

12. Specifically, given a higher number of deaths in the group of individuals aged 60–70 or older (Onder, Rezza, and Brusaferro 2020; Hoffmann and Wolf 2021; Signorelli and Odone 2020). However, Bello-Chavolla et al. (2020) also consider individuals who are 40 years or older in the risk group.

13. Hypertension, diabetes, obesity, kidney disease and tobacco use, considering higher admission rates to intensive care units and higher CFR recorded (Bello-Chavolla et al. 2020).

14. Classified as autocracy (it decreases it) and democracy (it increases it). This result can be biased due to a large weight of China.

15. In Mexico, since there are official data on record (2005Q1), informal employment amounts to around 56% of the total and contributes with 25% of GDP (ENOE 2021; INEGI 2020).

16. In the case of Mexico, president López Obrador still keeps 60% preference of voters (June 2021) and his rejection of preventive measures could well explain the current results. For Barrios and Hochberg (2020) the political partisanship is determining in the perception of risk associated to the contagion.

17. The origin of the word populism goes back to the Russian narodnik whose literal translation is ‘going towards the people’. It was a movement in which peasants sought to create autonomous entities of the kulaks or owners of the land (Ulianova 2003).

18. The epidemiological model SIR (Kermack and McKendrick 1927) proposes that the rate of infections, in principle, grows exponentially until the rate of recovered population exceeds the rate of the population likely to be infected.

19. As examples of the folk-economics narratives, the following statements can be found: ‘Increasing the wage above productivity solves poverty’, ‘the international reserves should be shared among the (poor) population and should be used to pay the external debt’, ‘social programs through direct monetary transfers solve poverty’, ‘more money should be issued to solve poverty’.

20. In line with Miguel et al. (2021), these behaviors could be associated to antisocial personality disorders since they ignore and violate other people’s rights.

21. In the case of Argentina, data are from FEMEBA (2020).

22. This performance is congruent with the literature revision whereby, once more was known about the virus and adequate measures were implemented to mitigate the contagion, the CFR dropped and afterwards remained constant.

23. The latter country is where the pandemic originated, and it by far had the fastest recovery in healthcare and economic terms.

24. Apart from the United States, Denmark and Italy, where deaths related to the COVID-19 pandemic represent 79%, 76% and 78%, respectively.

25. Wang et al. (2020) propose that detecting light or asymptomatic cases on a large scale is necessary to control the pandemic. This policy, in order to be successful, should locate at least 70% of the infected patient’s contacts to contain the contagions (Keeling, Hollingsworth, and Read 2020).

26. Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Bolivia, and Peru; and we consider the following as non-populist countries: Germany, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, South Korea, Denmark, France, Indonesia, New Zealand, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland and Italy.

27. In addition to these criteria, we refer to populist leaders as individuals who are anti-pluralist, who do not accept points of view different from theirs, who tend to proclaim themselves as defenders of morality, who are convinced to know and to be guided by the ´will of the people´ which allows them to perform all kind of actions without facing any consequences (Müller 2016).

28. We do not present beds, because they were not statistically significant in any model.

29. Due to the great heterogeneity of the data, the whole averages of the 31 countries incur in bias problems, either way, they are presented for reference. For this reason, it is more reliable to do the analysis between countries, because their marginal relations are already normalized by the statistical procedure we use.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the DGAPA, UNAM [research project IN308021].