Coronavirus Cancels All Lunches (& Flights)
Coronavirus (testing) has finally reached our city, and the first confirmed case, of course, is an American.
The government ordered schools nationwide closed for a month. Suspected cases are being quarantined in government centers, which I can’t imagine are pleasant. Gatherings of more than 50 are banned.
The airport is in chaos with ex-pats panicking that flights will stop and there will be no way out. Many airlines are suspending services to our airport due to a lack of demand in the coming months as tourism has abruptly stopped.
The US embassy has told American travelers worldwide to come back or prepared to stay abroad indefinitely. Consular services are suspended, but embassy staff haven’t been forced to evacuate.
If I hadn’t already survived a coup, I would probably be more concerned about my own safety. After years in land-locked countries, somehow I feel safer being able to walk to the ocean. Should have bought a boat. Hindsight.
Should we use ALL our money to buy this boat?
In any case, it is all but impossible to get from here to Mexico right now, which is the only place we can all go, and which seems likely to also be badly hit in the near future. So I have stocked up on food, water, pre-paid electricity, and the car has a full tank of gas. We are making sure we have cash accessible and are ready to self-test and self-treat for malaria.
If the virus does start spreading widely here, there will be no flattening the curve for the urban poor, who live in crowded conditions. In any case, the health system has no capacity to handle any curve at all. So whatever happens here will happen quickly. The only potential saving grace is the population overall is very young, and elderly people are more likely to be in villages, which are less connected to the urban hotspots.
The other issue we could face is violence directed at foreigners, which has already started happening at a small scale in other countries in the region. This could be a particular issue for us since many people who have never seen a Mexican before think that Man who Works is Chinese. Even though all the imported cases in Africa seem to be from Europe, people who look Asian are targeted the most.
However, our apartment is built like a fortress and our compound has a very vigilant Whatsapp group. We live in a neighborhood full of government officials and ambassadors, so security will probably increase here if chaos brakes out in the city. In general times, violence is very low here and guns are not prevalent so I’m not overly concerned about this possibility, although it is in the back of my mind.
So now we wait...which is probably not going to be the hardest part but for the moment feels like it is.