They say that no one experiments on someone else’s head, but there are people, like President López, who do not even experiment on their own. Affected for the second time by Covid-19 in its Omicron variant, he has used his confinement to propagandize in favor of these measures and, contrary to the opinion of experts worldwide, continues to insist that it is a mild illness, like the flu, Lopez Gatell said.
With the argument that it is a mild variant, the morenista governments have advised not to undergo tests, simply before the appearance of some symptoms they are confined to their homes. Employers and authorities have been quick to stress that they will grant absence permits expeditiously.
No one escapes the fact that with this provision, what they are really trying to do is keep the statistics from skyrocketing. In other countries, tests are multiplied as soon as infections begin to rise. The reason is very simple: they need to know the size and location of new infections as a measure of pandemic control. That does not matter here, what matters is that everything is seen to be under control. At the same time, staying home (with Vick Vaporub and tecitos, Alcocer dixit) may mean that those who get sick don’t make it to hospitals. Again the statistics that will say that the toilets are not becoming saturated.
Last week I pointed out that the majority of the population did not want the closure of activities due to the harshness of the months of quarantine, which was combined with the belief that the government is handling the pandemic well. Also at play is the fact that we are fed up with bad news, which in many ways saturates us to the point of indifference. I wrote that the motto of a good part of the population seemed to be: close your eyes and take risks.
This may be changing. Now, I see long lines at places where tests are done, whether free or paid, states that started classes have suspended them, private schools that decided to return to the virtuality of the internet. It is very possible that this is due to the overwhelming number of infections. If on January 6 the more than 25,000 infections had alarmed many of us, last Wednesday and Thursday more than 40,000 were registered on each of those days. Additionally, experts on the behavior of the virus, such as Anthony Fauci, have predicted that eventually we will all get infected. For their part, the WHO and PAHO have refuted the words of the López (Obrador and Gatell) and have warned that Ómicron should not be considered a “mild” version, since it depends a lot on each organization.
The more than 40 thousand infected people must be taken with tweezers. In a country that does very little testing, according to a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, it is highly likely that many more people will be infected, even taking into account that more than 257,000 active cases were detected on Thursday the 13th. . How many infected are we really talking about? And most importantly, how many of these cases will reach hospitals and how many will die?
The world has become monothematic. As in the periods that have shaken a country or the world, one returns to the same theme over and over again. I guess during World War II the theme was the conflict and its stories. Earthquakes, nuclear plant explosions or similar events also require media coverage.
This is how we have been with Covid-19 since the first quarter of 2020. When it has seemed that the infection is under control, then attention is focused on other interests, but eventually we have lived returning to the pandemic. There are few things that distract us in Mexico: Senator Monreal’s future challenges or the fact that Citigroup has had the good sense to want to get rid of a gigantic bank that, in a few years, will become not a white elephant, but a mammoth White on the verge of extinction.
These other topics are distracting, but the media returns to the main news: how the pandemic is going, which an expert assures is the fastest growing in the history of humanity. But the interest of the media is not necessarily that of ordinary citizens. The government has been successful in its strategy of instilling in the majority of Mexicans the idea that we are coming out of the pandemic and that it is being handled correctly. Family gatherings, work, social events are normalized as if everything had happened.
The reality is that the world is alarmed (Mexico is not) because the virus has demonstrated its extraordinary ability to change, to return when it was thought to be going backwards and to kill those who already felt safe.