❚ Viewpoints: Lessons from 1918 flu outbreak can help us today.
López Obrador downplayed coronavirus pandemic, and the consequences of his slow response won’t be confined to Mexico
Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has been dismissing the coronavirus pandemic, is finally taking some steps to deal with it.
The president this week closed schools, banned gatherings of 100 people or more and temporarily suspended processing asylum requests as confirmed COVID-19 cases climbed into the hundreds.
But López Obrador also previously displayed his recklessness with massive rallies in which he enthusiastically shook hands, hugged supporters and kissed babies. He even told the nation of roughly 130 million to dine out – if they could afford it – and to just “live life.”
One of the few sensible things Ló
pez Obrador has done to slow the coronavirus spread – and it is dubious at best – is agree with President Donald Trump to suspend nonessential crossborder travel.
Alas, the U.S.-Mexico border stretches 2,000 miles across Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas where trade and other “essential” travel keeps humming with few safety controls.
On Wednesday, protesters at a Sonora-Arizona border crossing blocked Mexico-bound lanes demanding greater controls and screenings, worried that U.S. travelers to Mexico could be coronavirus carriers.
Can’t blame them, right? They see catastrophe on the U.S. side and hardly anyone doing anything to keep the virus from spreading between the neighboring countries.
The U.S. is now leading the world with the most confirmed coronavirus cases. Nearly 100 million Americans are practically on lockdown, businesses are closed and hospitals can’t find enough ventilators and protective gear to treat COVID-19 patients.
If this is happening in one of world’s wealthiest industrialized nations, just imagine what Mexico will face in a few weeks when the outbreak peaks there, as experts predict.
Just like President Donald Trump did at the onset of coronavirus outbreak, López Obrador has been downplaying the health threats posed by the pandemic, even trivializing it to protect the economy.
His fears about the economic impact are real, but dismissing the outbreak won’t help. A new report suggests 18 million jobs could be at risk.
The peso, Mexico’s currency, plummeted to a record low of 22.9 per dollar in mid-March, Bloomberg reported, and could drop even further if global oil prices remain low. The country is a significant oil producer.
And just like Trump, López Obrador has resisted taking strict measures to stem coronavirus, fearing it would further hurt the economy. He grudgingly began taking some steps this week but only after a barrage of criticism about his slow response and local leaders began enacting varying rules and urging people to stay home.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum closed museums, bars, gyms, sports facilities and other public places. She kept restaurants open but urged the city’s roughly nine million residents to stay home. The metropolitan area tops 21 million people.
Meanwhile, some states have closed businesses, including bars, movie theaters and shopping malls, according to Expansión Política.
The governor of the border state of Chihuahua went further, not only issuing stay-at-home orders this week but also closing all nonessential businesses, including restaurants.
Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, a key López Obrador ally, downplayed the coronavirus pandemic this week, saying that most people recover from it.
“We are not going to die of coronavirus but we will starve,” he told fellow business folks in Spanish.
Sound familiar?
Everyone on both sides of the border understands the importance of protecting each country’s economy. Mexico can’t handle a massive coronavirus outbreak similar to the one striking the U.S. It doesn’t have the medical capacity and it certainly doesn’t the financial mechanisms to survive it.
“Our health system could be overwhelmed, like what is happening in Italy and when you reach that point, you have an uncontrollable situation that could lead to social chaos,” José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, a former health minister who led the efforts to fight the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in Mexico, told The New York Times.
López Obrador knows Mexico’s predicament better than anyone else. He rose to the presidency in December 2018 on a socialist agenda promising to lift tens of millions out of poverty.
Trivializing a global pandemic isn’t going to save Mexicans from it, and the virus surely won’t stop at the border.