We had 1.5 months of partly lockdown. We were blocked from leaving our cities of residence except for work for two weekends. We closed pretty much everything until a few weeks ago.
And with all that, we had almost 1/2 the deaths of Sweden. Not 5% or 10%, but close to half (3800 vs 1450).
And we 'reopened' the country and right now have more cases per day (yesterday 350) as at the beginning when gov. decided to shut down everything. (State of emergency was declared on 18 of March where our cases were around 200 per day)
Portugal's state of emergency consisted of imposing the duty of home confinement only to risk cohorts, comprised of sick and actively monitored patients. Everyone else was only subjected to "social duty to home confinement" and was obligated to wear protective masks on public transportation, customer service, and services open to the public.
> We closed pretty much everything until a few weeks ago.
That assertion is somewhere between disingenuous and confused. There was a healthy general attitude towards the civic duty of home confinement, but it was primary self-imposed restrictions. The Portuguese government ceased to impose general confinement restrictions after they revised the first declaration of state of emergency, which were downgraded to mandatory facemasks in public transportation and public services.
The state of Emergency (we had 3) lasted 6 weeks and during this time, bars, restaurants, car stands and a bunch of other stores were closed. They closed lojas do cidadao (?still many aren't open) and essential services were by appointment only.
'Que estabelecimentos encerram obrigatoriamente?
Todos os estabelecimentos que não prestem serviços essenciais ou forneçam bens de primeira necessidade são obrigados a fechar portas. O diploma do Governo é exaustivo na lista que inclui: todos os locais de atividades de lazer e diversão, como bares, discotecas, zoos ou parques de diversões; locais de atividades culturais, como auditórios, cinemas, teatros, bibliotecas, galerias ou praças de touros; locais de atividades desportivas, como campos de futebol, courts de ténis, ringues de patinagem ou ginásios e academias; termas, casinos, salões de jogos, bares, esplanadas e restauração em geral.'
Layoff (furlough for other countries) was used to around one million people. 10% of the population and about 25% of the active population, and you are telling me that people just decided to stay at home and gov didn't ordered anything?
Please, I don't know where the fuck you lived during the State of Emergency, but saying it was just 'social duty to home confinement' is a joke to what really happened here. The economic and social damage done was huge.
> we 'reopened' the country and right now have more cases per day (yesterday 350) as at the beginning
That's probably the bigger problem for your country than the absolute number of deaths: the "reopening" happened too early compared to some countries of equivalent size where the cases per day became lower before the "reopening."
Even after the "reopening" the war is not won.
Also, looking at the graphs of daily cases and comparing it with some other European countries, the measures were obviously less effective than in these other countries. Given that 10 million of people are involved, it's much more nuanced than "we had X for Y days."
Edit: To answer: "I don't know how we got the good press": deaths per million: Portugal: 142, Switzerland: 222, Sweden: 450, Spain: 580. It's easy to see that's how Portugal looks obviously better, statically. What I point to with "probably the bigger problem" (that it's not over) is that e.g. new daily cases in Switzerland are now 19, v.s. Portugal's 350.
I'm not defending my country at all. I don't know how we got the good press of being the 'miracle' country in international news where other countries did much better but are seemingly ignored.
We did ok, not a miracle. As mentioned, we had about half the deaths of Sweden, which is touted as the worst possible thing they could have done, and have triple or more than other countries (listed above).
Seems either people had very low expectations of Portugal, or are just using the Portugal is almost the same as Spain idea and expected the same results (even though we were affected later, if we were first, we would probably see something similar)
Political leadership matters.