Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Update on Swine flu in Mexico

A quick update tonight: check Michael's blog tomorrow and there will probably be a lot more detail and pictures.

First of all, we're safe. We live in a remote place on the coast, we live outside most of the time in a warm (non-friendly to flu) climate, there's no wheezing and hacking by our neighbors. We're probably living in as safe a place as we could be.

But there's definitely impact to the citizens of Mexico, regardless of the health issues.

At mid-day today, just as we were taking our friends Pat and Sanders Lamont out for a last lunch before they caught their plane back to the California from Manzanillo, the governor of Jalisco closed all the restaurants in the state.

No lie!

Everything was closed or closing in Melaque, we went on to Barre de Navidad -- ditto. We didn't realize that it had been mandated. We just thought the owners had decided to close.

When we got back to La Manzanilla late this afternoon, we found Palapa Joe's was closed. We figured there had to something pretty dramatic going on. Friends on the street told us what was up.

When we got back to Arroyo Seco, the police were just coming thru posting the declaration on the walls of the tiendas in town.

Our friends on the beach say they're pretty happy that the governor is getting in front of this thing, rather than waiting for the citizens of Jalisco to start spreading some virus.

But for the people of Mexico who have to work to feed their kids, there's a lot of disbelief and panic going on. Our friend Chena said she thinks we'll all soon be feeding the poorest of the poor who aren't able to work right now and won't be able to feed their children.

It's a little scary to watch a country shut down. It makes me worry for the economy of the country, and the global economy as well. But I'm willing to wait and see how this unfolds, hope that this virus will die a rapid death as the weather starts to turn hot.

What is also a little disheartening is how the U.S. and European news coverage of Mexico is confined to simply reporting on the number of sick, the number of deaths, and no reporting on actions and impacts, especially outside of Mexico City.

Just imagine living in a city the size of Puerto Vallarta --- almost 200,000 people --- and having all the restaurants, malls, theatres, bars and all other areas where people can gather closed down for more than a week.

In the meantime, it's a quiet, lovely night in the village. All is calm, for now. We'll try to keep you updated as we can.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just took a drive through Barra and found that all our restaurants are open for business. Also there's a post on the tomzap site by someone in Melaque and all restaurants there are also open. Now you know where to go to get something to eat!