vanessa able

Web exclusive Tues May 5th 2009
An inexpert mull over a bunch of random alphabeticised phenomena that have occurred since the outbreak of Swine Flu in Mexico City.

Apocalyptic doom scenarios and conspiracy theories
(available for discussion with any of the city’s taxi drivers, who , let’s face it, invented most of them)
-The world’s gonna end! We’re all gonna die! We’re all gonna die! The world’s gonna end!
-The government here in Mexico is covering up a whole bunch of stuff, including hiding the true figures of the amount of dead and infected, which most likely stretches into the thousands.
-The flu was actually an attempt to assassinate President Barak Obama during his recent visit to Mexico City, during which he shook hands with the director of the Anthropology Museum who died from Swine Flu days later.
-This wave of the flu is just one of several that will evolve to be increasingly aggressive and lethal, eventually killing us all in one even bigger epidemic in November.
-It’s all a ruse by the government to display their dexterity in handling crises.*

*My favourite so far.

Bootleg Tamiflu
Unlike just about every other drug available to buy with a nod and a wink over the counter from your friendly pharmacist, Tamiflu cannot be purchased in Mexico without a prescription. Probably because there’s only a million or so doses to go around a population of 110 million (compare that with the UK which has stockpiled enough treatments for half its population), and because the sick here frequently prefer self-diagnosis and self-treatment to visiting a hospital. But like all drugs in Latin America, if there’s a demand, they will make it onto the streets by hook or by crook. The latest offer I had was from a friend of a friend of a friend coming back from a holiday in Guatemala with a small consignment of about 4 packs of the anti-viral. Hardly Pablo Escobar, is he?

Compulsive news checking
As if the internet’s siren draw wasn’t enough of a distraction during peacetime, the hyperbolic high-drama ‘journalism’ of news companies vying for readership in times of so-called crisis has the rather effective consequence of keeping our attention glued to the screen. Website stories branch off from one another with such graceful ease that it’s hard not to jump from one story to the next video, to a photo gallery and to a blog. It’s the well-crafted melee of scientific fact, expert opinion and political analysis that excel in distracting us from pressing tasks and lunging us into the dark forest of fear and paranoia.

Domestic Bliss?
Since Friday 24th April, we’ve all been warned by the government to stay at home as much as possible and to only leave the house under pain of necessity. Initially, the prospect of a few relaxing days off work was rather appealing given the warm summer weather and the Mexican penchant for taking it easy. But once restaurants, cafes, bars and shops began to close down, our homes took on a darker, more penal hue. We were no longer indoors by choice but by obligation. Families were suddenly flung together in the confines of their houses and apartments and forced to face up to the often grim reality of kinship, while most couples I know, rather than lolling in a pool of romantic rapture, have reported an upsurge in stress-induced squabbles and arguments over heavyweight subject matter like which movie to watch next.

Economy
Screwed. The businesses that will hopefully be re-opening at the end of this week will have been closed for a fortnight, which for some will deal a fatal financial blow. The mayor of Mexico City has estimated that the city has been losing $88 million per day since the start of the crisis, and businesses have reported a slump of 80%. One of the worse hit industries will be tourism, which brings an annual $14 billion into Mexico’s national coffers. In a climate of global recession and with the peso already weak against the dollar, things ain’t looking up.

Friends
Potentially hazardous carriers of Swine Flu, friends were to be avoided at all costs during the first few days of news of the outbreak. As time wore on and we all realized we were fine and not in fact dying of the deadly scourge set to wipe out humanity in one fail sneeze, things began to get more intimate. My first venture into the outside world was a trip to a girlfriend’s house for lunch four days into the lockdown and we ate pasta and complained how bored we were. Another friend came round to my place the next day, and another, and another, and before I realized it we were a drunken party, united under siege and happily sharing our trusted saliva on the tip of a Turkish water pipe. On reflection perhaps not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but during a tipsy, six-person game of scrabble with Monty Python animating the background, it seemed like a great idea and a thumbed nose to the authorities that had tried so hard to isolate us from one another.

God
Apparently not protecting worshippers from Swine Flu. All masses in Mexico City have been cancelled or re-located to open-air spots like outside the massive Basilica de Guadalupe in the north of the city. Oh ye of little faith…

Hypochondria
Inevitable: sniff, sniff; is that a runny nose? I wake up and feel a tickle somewhere in the back of my sinus. Is that a pain when I swallow? Is that an ache in my joints? I sneeze. Oh my god I just sneezed. Call the hospital, call the undertakers, call the priest; it’s the beginning of the end. Or is it? A bleary cup of coffee and a vitamin drink later and sanity is returning. Morning respiratory hiccoughs are par for the course for residents of Mexico City. It is, after all, one of the most polluted places in the world. A breath of fresh air here is inextricably laced with frightening levels of nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide. The fact is that I feel like this every morning; I’m just never that aware of it unless there’s a killer epidemic on my doorstep.

Information (and lack thereof)
Never a global trailblazer in bureaucratic efficiency, the Mexican authorities excelled even their own standards in their erratic response to the swine flu crisis. Official death counts have peaked and troughed with all the stomach-turning turbulence of a roller-coaster ride, from 7 to 158 and back down again, depending on which organization you choose to believe, while details of victims and how they might have contracted the disease have remained flimsy, as has information about the behaviour of the virus itself, and indeed any sense of how this is all going to pan out in the future.

Jitters
Easy to succumb to, important to keep away from. It is my profound belief that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, and since the start of the outbreak, humanity appears to have divided into two sections: freaked-out harbingers of extinction with far too high a backlog of Hollywood doomsday imagery to kick start their already fear-ridden minds, and the other lot, the ultra-pragmatic, ultra-denialists who think that anything more than a raised eyebrow in the direction of a possible global pandemic is an act of extreme over-reaction and alarmist nonsense. Already, people have begun leaving Mexico City in their droves, heading for outlying towns and villages, the United States, Europe, usually under the influence of mothers and fathers scared to their wits’ end by the black armband-rhetoric of international news stations, while others refuse to so much as cover their mouths in an orgy. Could it be that a sense of balance is the first thing to go in national crisis.

Kissing
In breaking with national tradition, all Mexicans have been warned off kissing and shaking hands when meeting people. By all accounts, it’s been by far the hardest habit to break. Chance encounters with acquaintances on the street have become a minefield of etiquette. They start at a rather awkward distance from which I’ve embarrassed myself several times by crying “air kiss dahhh-ling!” in too-loud Ab-Fab alto if I sensed the other party was cruising for a peck on the cheek. Greeting comportment also depends heavily on alcohol intake: stiff handshakes at the beginning of the night soon meld into hearty embraces and juicy kisses after a few jars of plonk.

Lassitude
Bored, bored, bored. What’s on TV? Don’t care. How about a game of chess? Nah. Fancy making a dent in that stack of books you’ve been meaning to read? Can’t be bummed. And how about that rapidly growing pile of work? Tomorrow. It appears that tedium breeds ennui breeds lethargy, and indeed what initially seemed to be an opportunity-laden home sabbatical soon became dreary house arrest. Bored with everything being closed. Bored with bad news. Bored with the general negative mental state. Bored by the prospect of another hour spent in my own company. Bored of complaining about being bored.

Metro
The one place even the cynics and pragmatists are steering well clear of. Taxis in Mexico City are relatively affordable, and the gloved, masked taxi drivers offer a service free of the sardine-tin scenario of most metro trains. Plus there’s the additional perk of thrashing through some key conspiracy theories with your driver (see A).

Narco-wars
What the hell happened to them? One minute there’s a raging border conflict with news of cartel killings pasted over the front cover of every broadsheet and tabloid, and the next they’ve been elbowed out of the spotlight in favour of some sickly piggie winkles. How fickle the press… Though if there are any cartel bosses reading this, my top tip of the day is that the world’s drug of choice appears to have changed from Polvo Blanco to Tamiflu, so you could consider adjusting your supply lines accordingly (see B)

Out of Office
With most offices in the city shut down last week, the majority of my friends, acquaintances and colleagues have been ‘working from home’. This has meant a huge increase in Facebook activity as well as larger telephone bills. (See L and C)

Parklife
With restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs, concert venues, small businesses, cinemas, stadiums, gyms, offices and schools all closed, the one remaining recourse for public interaction appears to be the trusty old park. Mexico City’s green areas have taken on a whole new dimension with the new fear of public gatherings in enclosed spaces, as well as providing exercise junkies with a back-to-basics alternative for the treadmill. Parque Mexico, my local, has transformed into some kind of utopian architecture model: scores of ardent joggers run laps of the park, while dogs bark, run, pee and sniff each others’ butts in age-old fashion; children ride bikes, teens play football, lovers kiss in the shade of the giant trees and bohemian students on benches bury their noses deep in library copies of Hegel.

Quake
As if the panic, hype and sequestration of the Swine Flu weren’t enough, at around 11am on Monday morning, the city was treated to a series of 5.7 tremors that ripped through its infrastructure, forcing masses of residents out onto the streets. It appears that Mexico City has incurred a wrath in our Maker so mighty as to compare with the Ten Plagues of Egypt back in the 1600BC. We are now scanning the skies for clouds of locust.

Resignation
An inescapable part of the lifecycle of any sentient being: the eventual resignation to one’s fate and mortality. Ahhh, quit worrying! If we die, we die, and that’s it. Now, what’s for lunch…?

Superama
The supermarket two blocks from my gaf that seems to be doing pretty damn well from the closure of restaurants and the air of siege mentality in general, as shoppers are turning up in droves to fill their trolleys with everything from long life milk to bottles of tequila. In fact, if appearances are anything to go by, alcohol sales are going through the roof. It seems Chilangos are unanimous in the conviction that only the steady administration of ethanol into the system will get us through this. So we don the masks at Superama, let the security guy at the door spooge our hands with antiseptic gel, and we go forward into the only enjoyable commercial activity that remains open to us: food shopping. On one occasion I back into a masked man by the meat counter, who, after careful inspection of his eyes and hair reveals himself to be my editor. We both laugh though the gauze of our masks at the ridiculousness of it all, before casting a guileful eye into each other’s baskets to check there isn’t something we might have forgotten.

Tapabocas
Literally ‘cover-mouths’ or masks, they’re the new craze sweeping Mexico City. Available in a variety of shapes and designs, from the blue surgical kind that scrunch up small around the mouth, or expand to cover half your face, to the white work-shop models with the thin aluminum strip across the nose that’s meant to be molded to your face for a better fit. My own personal mask comes from the home of public hygiene: Japan. I got a bad hit of flu there during a trip last winter and actually purchased a batch in line with local protocol regarding spreading one’s germs in public. My tapaboca differs from its Mexican cousins in its streamlined Akira-type design as well as its integral behind-the-ears attachment and not via a piece of elastic that goes all the way around the back of the head and thus ruining any chance of a good hairstyle.

USA
The H1N1 virus looks like it’s spreading from second world bogs like Mexico (where it’s OK if a few people die) to first world civilizations like the USA and Europe (where it’s certainly not OK if people die, or are even inconvenienced for a few days – unless, of course, they’re originally from second-world bogs like Mexico.) The US has always had an uncomfortable relationship with Mexico in many ways, what with border issues, illegal immigrants, spring break Cancun invasions and that whole drug war thing. Add lethal swine flu to the list of delicate diplomatic subjects and Mexicans holidaying in the US might as well start wearing bells.

Vaccines
Nope. Not for at least another 6 months. By which time, as the taxi drivers warn us, the virus will have mutated beyond recognition. So lay down that tiny flame of naïve hope, will you, and accept the plain and simple fact that we’re all gonna die! (See A)

Where’d everybody go?
May 1st 2009. Mayday, you know the drill: it’s when mobs of disgruntled lefties traditionally take to the streets in earnest to protest exploitation of the working class and to make a fresh call for the socialist revolution. Then police in riot gear make their habitual entrance and start blasting the demonstrators with hoses and batons, and the whole spectacle is pasted together on celluloid for the evening news viewing pleasure of the bourgeoisie. But this year was different: the streets of Mexico City have never been so empty. May 1st was like a ghost town and being out and about felt like trudging through the set of some strange post-apocalyptic stage set. People kept mentioning ’28 Days Later’ and ‘I am Legend’, and it didn’t feel too far from that. You could hear the birds sing; it was actually quite beautiful. So where the hell has everyone gone? Well, as it turns out a lot of people have skipped town for the outlying hotspots just a few hours drive from the city centre. Valle del Bravo, Cuernavaca, even Acapulco. All playgrounds of the affluent, and word is that these places are rammed with visitors congregating in enclosed spaces, kissing, holding hands and breathing over one another, sans facemasks. Is that really a good plan, guys?

Xenophobia
It’s official: the world now hates Mexico, and they’ve no reason to hide the fact any more. France has all but put forward a motion to nuke the country off the face of the planet, while most of South America refuses to even fly here any more. China is quarantining Mexicans and anyone who’s had anything to do with Mexico ever. And as if Mexicans in the US didn’t cop enough crap already, they’re now going to be dealing with people treating them like lepers for at least the next year.

Yuk it up
As Lao Tzu probably once said, the most effective strategy in the face of fear is to belittle one’s opponent by way of a good old larf at its expense, and indeed Chilangos have been pumping out the jokes with the proficiency of court jesters. Tapabocas have been painted with all manner of amusing mouth shapes while rib-ticklingly mirthful online references to hamaggedon, parmageddon and the aporkalypse have been dealt in every direction. For my part, I spent a good hour trying to come up with a pun to do with flying pigs in the past tense in which I could fashion into a sentence involving ‘pig flu’, with little success.

Zeitgeist (‘The defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time’)
What, at the end of the day, will we be able to glean from all of this? Is our over-comfortable world really lapsing into absurd paranoia at the prospect of a jolt to the social order from a phenomenon that is beyond our control? Or are the powers that be in fact dealing with this incredibly well by identifying a possibly lethal pandemic at an early stage and nipping it in the bud before it reaches the dizzying homicidal heights of the 1918 Spanish Flu? Indeed, two weeks of shutdown in Mexico City appear to have contained the virus, for the time being at least. With technology, hindsight, and a good sprinkling of irony, it seems that we might be able to transform this and other potential global catastrophes into a risible, and maybe even educational, storm in a teacup.

An a-z of the swine flu epidemic in mexico city from an armchair perspective

Recent work
Photographs & Articles

Article archive

Articles by subject
News
Features
Arts and Reviews
Travel
Interviews
Humour

All images

images by place
Turkey
Mexico
Syria
Northern Iraq
Iran
Serbia
Israel
The Caribbean
USA
Armenia