Helen Carter lived in Shropshire for 27 years, both in Roman Road, Shrewsbury, and Trench, Telford, before emigrating in 1996. She now lives in Mexico’s second largest city, Guadalajara, where she is a professor at the local university. Here she described her experiences in the country at the heart of the swine flu crisis.
It’s a bit weird here. I’m a university professor and every educational institution in Mexico has been closed by order of the Government until May 6.
I was in my office yesterday doing admin from 8am to 3pm, then it was home with my boyfriend with a stack of movies and shutting ourselves in for a week.
It’s also extremely hot here in Guadalajara, so it’s not as though one really wants to go out anywhere anyway. It was 95 degrees yesterday.
Banks and supermarkets are still open as are government offices. Many people have “tapabocas” – face masks – but the shops have run out and those that are left, well, there’s some price gouging going on.
One guy on the news last night was complaining he’d been to 10 stores and couldn’t find any and someone else said they’d paid five pesos for one, when the normal price is a fraction of that. The state of Jalisco government said there will be two million more available in the next few days.
Businesses have been informed that they are obliged to allow any employee with children to be absent with no penalty. The normal time for sickness is two days and then you have to produce a doctor’s letter from the social security hospital.
I’m supposed to be working from home and communicating virtually with my students, but many of us do not have internet so I’m giving my students my home number so they can call me if they need to.
The last week and a half of our university semester classes have been cancelled and so things such as final projects got to be done virtually. I’m really annoyed, as one cannot close the semester properly, after having spent all this time and effort with the students.
Other things closed include football stadiums, bars, casinos, nightclubs, any public place where people gather in quantity. Restaurants which have open areas are allowed to work as normal, those with enclosed spaces are less encouraged to do so, but it is permitted.
However I can’t see them doing a whole lot of trade really. The roads are kind of quiet as there is much less traffic, but as far as I’ve seen buses are running normally, so it’s not as though the country has entirely shut down.
The illness was first noticed last week, but the government just tried to say “oh it’s an extension of winter illnesses or something, they’re just carrying on a bit longer than normal this year”. But since then, well it’s obviously taken on a life of its own.
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What’s happened to rational thinking and risk assessment in our country?
There have been over 1,600 MRSA deaths in British hospitals – The actual death toll in Mexico is a proven 7 cases so far.
The fact is that one sells papers and the other one doesn’t, and thats just fine and dandy by this government.
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Thanks for this interesting insight. Good luck!
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Can somebody please explain the following to me
1) Why are people returning from Mexico not being put in isolation for 2 weeks to see if this flu strain develops
2) Why are people still being allowed to visit Mexico
3) Why have we not stopped all entry into and out of our country for the next 3 months?
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Son of Destiny – Have you noticed that we are still here? We were told we would be winging out way heavenwards on the back of Avian Flu only two years ago. Before that we were told that we were going to have our brains melted if we ate a beefburger. Get cynical folks! We are in the throe of a big convenient economic distraction – trust me.
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So, merc, if you were a journalist, would you have reported it, or just ignored it and hoped it went away?
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