Special Report: Pandemic South of the Border
[Today's post is a by Corona-zona Senior Mexico Correspondent Cuitláhuac]
As a Yanqui (and former Arizonan) living in Mexico City since 2017, I’ve watched from a safe distance the political and epidemiological goings-on in the USA. We discovered my wife was pregnant in early February of 2020, and so we spent the entire pregnancy under lockdown. Since the birth of my son in September 24 we’ve remained battened down.
COVID-19 has ravaged Mexico. We just passed India – a country with over ten times our population – to become third in the number of pandemic deaths, behind the USA and Brazil.
Mexico’s leader, President Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador (a.k.a. AMLO), is a populist in the mold of Trump and Brazil’s Bolsonaro, but leaning left rather than right. Like his conservative brethren, AMLO downplayed COVID-19, exhorting Mexicans to live life normally and eat at restaurants for the good of the economy. He has argued that the poor will be unaffected and that carrying amulets such as a US $2 bill will protect him and other Mexicans.
This led to early (and prescient) criticism. In reality, the poor have been ravaged and AMLO himself was infected ($2 bill notwithstanding). Conspiracy theories emerged soon after the virus started spreading, including ones that made people fear going to hospitals or taking precautions. This continues to make matters worse.
As with the rest of the world, however, vaccinations are coming. Mexico is set to receive up to 24 million doses of the Sputnik 5 vaccine, perhaps as a result of Russia's aggressive marketing in Mexico. The rollout here has been slow – around 4500 doses per day – and frustrating, but frontline workers, the elderly, and the most at-risk people are being registered.
I and most others have been very skeptical, and I am not signed up for any vaccine yet. But I am feeling a little better about it, despite fearful American patriots’ natural aversion to anything Russian.
It appears as though Sputnik 5 has been tested in the West now, is found to be about 92% effective, and prevents hospitalization and death. The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, published these results, which have been reported around the globe. The Director of Health at the prestigious university Tecnológico de Monterrey has sent a clearly worded, simple message to reassure people about the vaccine – via Instagram, naturally.
So…I feel a little better about it. In April, Mexico will receive something like 70 million vaccine doses from Astrozenaca, via former richest-man-in-the-world Carlos Slim (who also came down with the COVID-19 recently). So it seems that things are looking up.
People are still worried about the fact that the government is running the program. There will no doubt be cases of corruption, fake vaccines, and people paying to jump the queue. I’m not a conspiracist, but this is just reality here in Mexico. We are hoping when the time comes we can be vaccinated at the private hospital where my son was born.
But of course in the USA you have the rabid anti-vaxxers. For them, simply not getting the vaccine isn’t enough. They’ve got to prevent others who actually want it from getting it. “Don’t these sheeple know what’s (not) good for them?” ¡Yanquis locos!
I am not aware of any large-scale, coordinated anti-vaccination movements here in Mexico. But there are plenty of people who are skeptical, for some of the reasons I gave earlier. Some are repeating anti-vaxxer arguments made in the USA as well. For instance, a friend told me she worries that a vaccine will change her DNA, a medical impossibility. And in the age of COVID-19, even some children are speaking out about their parents’ foolishness in refusing them vaccinations.
Meanwhile, we are just staying put and hoping the end is in sight.
Image by Corona-zona.
