Posted on 03/19/2020 5:49:52 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Theres an old joke in Mexico: a man is driving on the wrong side of a crowded freeway. Cars swerve, some spin out of control; others barely manage to avoid a collision. Its utter chaos.
Mexicos president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), has been driving on the wrong side of the road during the coronavirus crisis. At first, López Obrador followed the playbook of denial and finger pointing. Two weeks ago, when the virulence of the disease was already apparent, he suggested Mexicans should carry on hugging each other, social distancing be damned.
On Sunday, López Obrador turned even more defiant. Pandemics and other unfortunate events wont do anything to us, he argued in the southern state of Guerrero, one of the poorest in the country.
Although Mexicos popular soccer league has been suspended and schools will be closing earlier for spring break, the López Obrador administration has been oblivious to the challenges ahead. Sometimes stubbornly so. The government has refused to shut down international travel, much less close off its borders. The president has also resisted calling for the cancellation of massive public gatherings. On Sunday, some 40,000 people gathered at the Vive Latino music festival in Mexico City.
Why López Obrador has chosen to disregard even the most basic social distancing recommendations why he has chosen to be the driver on the wrong side of the road is a mystery. There is no political advantage to be gained from such theatrics. Unless the theater itself is the point. For political analyst Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, López Obrador has rejected the seriousness of the moment in order to focus on the joy of being visible and celebrated. For López Obrador, to govern is to be seen, Silva-Herzog wrote on Monday. His irresponsibility is almost criminal.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
As of this morning, Mexico has 118 cases, 25 new cases plus one fatality.
Not every country needs the same level of preparation. It seems the Coronavirus doesn’t do well outside temperate climate zones. The areas that are temperate will need better preparation than others.
Boom goes the dynamite.
What's the joke?
Remember the AMLO!!
Looks like we will have a natural experiment.
Mexico, which takes virtually no precautions, and the United States, which is taking extreme precautions.
Must not have been anyone in his cabinet or ministers. That would get his attention.
LOL!
Must have been the delivery.
Is Mexico ever ready for anything?
The answer to that is, yes. They are always ready foist all of their problems upon their neighbor to the North. What an idiot.
Time will tell if AMLO’s approach is correct. I’ve been in Mexico the last six months and I’m going home as scheduled next week. However, I’m thinking of staying here another two months until the craziness up north subsides. AMLO may be a leftist but his approach is decidedly laissez-faire. If he’s right, at the end of the day, Mexico’s economy will be less disrupted than America’s once this is over.
It must lose something in the translation. Or maybe it’s funny after a bottle of tequila.
I am betting on the Mexicans. They will no doubt have a few nursing care facilities get hit as we have here, but outside of that they will likely have few problems. Good for their President for not falling for the extreme BS. We are wasting trillions of dollars “fighting” a virus in nonsensical ways. What would make sense would be to protect our vulnerable people and let the rest of us get back to work.
“As of this morning, Mexico has 118 cases, 25 new cases plus one fatality.”
The problem with that statistic is that it reflects only cases confirmed by testing. I’d guess the real number at this point is between 10,000 and 1,000,000. Maybe more. Mexico has a lot of crowded, squalid conditions.
Look at the exponential growth of cases internationally. This is a highly contagious agent. I’ve traveled extensively in Mexico and my assessment is that Mexico will do nothing effective to contain the problem.
It seems Mexico *may* get very lucky and be saved by the treatment announced yesterday that seems so promising. We’ll see.
If not, we may see a wave of infected individuals coming from that direction, right after we’re winding down our economic massacre.
A whole lot depends on how many asymptomatic carriers are in the population. We need random testing of representative populations to get a handle on the problem.
This economic meltdown is probably insanity. I think this thing will make the rounds through the general population in the next couple of years, like it or not - if there’s no way to cure/prevent it. I hope this new treatment, very effective on 24 patients, is the answer. It’s even cheap, a well known malaria drug.
Note the much different tone in the first search result:
https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2020/3/18/21183917/coronavirus-covid19-france-drug-trial-professor
The rest of the joke was left out.
Basically the joke is that a guy’s wife hears on the news that someone is driving down the wrong side of the freeway. She calls her husband to warn him.
He replies, “it’s not just one guy. There’s hundreds of them!”
Should the Poles demand their joke back?
Thanks.
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