Why it doesn’t matter that so many die in Mexico from Covid-19

There are so many deaths that there is no sensitivity to suffering, and what prevails is apathy and inaction.

From 53rd place out of 53 countries measured in Bloomberg’s Covid-19 Resilience ranking, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s self-praise for his strategy to deal with the pandemic hurts. Mexico is the country that has handled the pandemic the worst. Last place on the list of 53 countries.

But we have a president and a person in charge of dealing with it who insists on saying that we are alarmists because we have pointed out that a death rate of 8.6 percent is not normal and that we, the citizens, need to correct the course. They do not understand that more than 100,000 deaths are a clear sign of the error. The virus did not come to us “as a ring to the finger,” that it is necessary to wear a face mask.

Mr. President, your work in the face of the pandemic is not worthy of being copied. It deserves to be repudiated. But above all, it would be best to rectify the path.

Perhaps both López Obrador and Hugo López-Gatell are suffering from what professors Paul Slovic and Daniel Västfjäll have called psychological “numbness in the face of tragedy”. There are already so many deaths that there is no longer sensitivity towards suffering, and what prevails is apathy and inaction. The value of life is lower; the more lives are lost.

Slovic and Västfjäll recommend trying to make the numbers smaller to help raise awareness of this psychological numbness. If we consider that the first case of Covid was registered in Mexico on February 27th, 269 days have passed in which 101,926 people have died.

This means that an average of 379 people has died every day, 16 people every hour since February 27, on average.

Both AMLO and Hugo López-Gatell know that these numbers are conservative concerning the actual deaths in Mexico but perhaps knowing that at least 16 people have died every hour in Mexico because of Covid-19 might help sensitize them to the need to change the strategy.

President Lopez Obrador says that in Mexico, no authoritarian measures have been used to confine people. Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience ranking shows that eight of the ten countries that have best handled the pandemic are democracies. Success in containing the Covid-19 with the least interference to daily life seems to depend less on having a strong hand in ordering people to submit to the state’s rules and more on governments generating a high degree of trust, and this invites social cooperation and compliance.

But here, the President announced yesterday a new gift: 11,460 pesos for funeral expenses, for each family that has lost a loved one to the pandemic. After presenting the death certificate stating that the person died from a coronavirus, it takes 5 days to receive the money.

AMLO has decided that he will give away more crumbs to those who have less and that way maintain his popularity without dealing with the virus. Poor Mexico, the foolishness; the indolence and insensitivity of one person is costing our people a lot, in conservative figures, the lives of 16 people every hour.

APOSTLE: And we don’t even talk about the education of children and adolescents. Gyms, markets, bars, and restaurants are open, while schools and universities remain shut down. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to send your children to study at a market, restaurant or gym.

Ana Paula Ordorica – Journalist 
www.anapaulaordorica.com
Twitter – @AnaPOrdorica