Thursday, April 30, 2009

Not-the-Mexican flu, as seen from Mexico

Ana María Salazar blogs bilingually from Mexico City. To help contain the flu, that whole country is pretty much closing down until the Cinco de Mayo celebrations. Her view of the ongoing brouhaha over the flu outbreak is interesting:
++ President Felipe Calderón met with former health secretaries Guillermo Soberón, Julio Frenk, Jesús Kumate and Juan Ramón de la Fuente to analyze the situation the swine flu epidemic is posing for Mexico. Jesús Kumate said the epidemic could affect the country for at least a year, since there are relapses or renewed outbreaks… He said that in the case of influenza, the renewed outbreaks occur every two months, or what could happen also is that the virus could mutate yet again over that year. (Comment: What Dr. Kumate is trying to tell us that it is unlikely that children will be returning to school and economic activities will not return to normal by May 6th.)

Read all her posts here. Somehow, the govt down south there will manage to blame this on the gringos (and probably the earthquake also).
The powers have lifted the level of seriousness to a 5 on a scale of 6, with the 6th level being pandemic. Talk of closing the border is fascinating, as it contains an implicit concession that closing the border is possible.

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