Swine flu on You Tube

My friend Dyana Pari Nafisi has been making a series of videos on You tube since the beginning of the swine flu outbreak. You can click here to see them or subscribe, or click here to go directly to the ones in which she interviewed me.

Also: My friend Patrice Wynne sent along the following quote from Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations:

"I think the whole world should be saying, 'Gracias, amigos,' to the Mexicans for the tremendous sacrifice they have made. They may have stopped what would otherwise have been a serious pandemic."

Also: My friend Tapen Sinha, and his coauthor Bradly Condon, wrote a paper called "Chronicle of a Pandemic Foretold: Lessons from the 2009 Influenza Epidemic." Click here to download it.

Flu Confessions

On Sunday, March 29th, I felt that little tickle in the back of my throat. You know what I’m talking about. The one that tells you that you are going to get sick and there’s nothing you can do about it. So I did … nothing.

I had a fever the following day. I tried to medicate myself with chicken broth and aspirin. The fever got worse. I was exhausted, my limbs ached and I had a persistent cough that caused me terrible chest pains. For three straight days, I had to go to Pachuca, Hidalgo, two hours from the city, to do research on a project with a tight deadline. I’d come home late afternoon and fall into bed, hoping to sweat out the fever with more aspirin. I couldn’t eat. I lost about five pounds in a week. On Friday, April 3rd, on the way back from Pachuca, I finally went to the doctor.

He told me I had flu and prescribed some pills called Augmentin. I don’t know if they are antibiotic or antiviral, but in a flash they gave me back my appetite. I took them for ten days, after which I felt like my old self. On April 15th, I went to New Orleans to attend a wedding. As various friends who witnessed can attest, I drank like a Cossack and ate mountains of fried food for six days.

When the news came out about the swine flu on April 23, I panicked and returned to the doctor. He said that I “probably” had it and that if I were not careful I could get it again.

The dust seems to have settled. I felt a change in the air last Friday. The vibe in the streets was much calmer. It may have been in part because it was a national holiday but I also think it was due to the fact that there hadn't been an incremental spike in flu cases.

Twenty-two Mexicans -- only about one in a million citizens here in Mexico City -- are confirmed to have died from it. With the exception of a 23-month-old infant in the U.S., no one else in any other country in the world has died from this flu.

Medical authorities have only grudgingly given out the most minute details of those who have perished. We don't know where they lived or what the sanitary conditions of their homes or neighborhoods are like. We don't know if they suffered from any other medical conditions, such as respiratory ailments, that may have facilitated their deaths. Mexico City has recently suffered from a water shortage and we don't know if they had running water.

Click here to read an article by Pablo Ordaz in El País that conjectures that the deaths from the virus simply confirm some terrible home truths about Mexico: If you have money, you survive; if you don't, your chances of death increase.

My two cents

Photo by Robert Otter

Today the Op Ed page of The New York Times published a vignette of mine about what it is like on the streets of Mexico City in the time of swine flu. Click here to read it.

For information about the brilliant photographer responsible for the photo above, click here.

Who was that masked man?

Photo by Anthony Wright

The CDC says that surgical masks are absolutely useless in preventing swine flu, unless you are working in a health-care environment. The drug stores that have any left are selling them at seven pesos a pop. Many have run out, and I saw a guy outside of the Farmacia Paris (which had posted a sign that said "Ya no hay cubrebocas") selling them for ten pesos each.

Yet everyone and his brother has one in Mexico City. The Minister of Health, José Angel Córdova, has all but made them obligatory. Some people move them to the side while they puff on cigarettes, while others pull them down while they eat street tacos. Everyone and his brother talks through them on their cell phones. At a cantina last Monday, the customers were wearing them around their necks jauntily as if they were scarves.

I imagine that someone in a very high place here has a cousin in the surgical mask business.

Nearly nude

In one of the first posts I wrote for this blog, I expressed the opinion that much of public space in Mexico City has been raped. Enormous billboards are not only in your face on the inner-city highways, but they also hover over the main boulevards. In residential neighborhoods they sometimes are painted on the sides of buildings or hang like banners over balconies and terraces.

A friend – let’s just say he is a gringo well into his sixties – saw that post and said he thought I had been harsh in my assessment. “Don’t forget,” he said. “There are all those ads of women in their underwear.”