Mexico, A Brief Narrative About COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has been caused by risks and dangers associated with globalization, whose manifestations in different countries depend on the vulnerability of their populations. In this context, vulnerability is the risk to human existence, related to poverty, disease and old age.
However, some effects of vulnerability can be curtailed if social protections are inherent in state welfare policies, although these have proved insufficient in the presence of a new virus that has caused millions of deaths throughout the world.
In Mexico, vulnerability in the form of risk to the existence of its inhabitants has been expressed as narratives that refer to COVID-19, in order to justify new social behaviors.
The connotations of the narratives are binary, meaning that for some the virus exists, whereas for others it does not. In this case, the Mexican health authorities have demonstrated that the virus exists, and that although it cannot be observed, it is however highly contagious. Consequently, a sanitary protocol must be followed to avoid mass contagion.
However, other groups do not accept its existence, and as a result they refuse to follow the sanitary protocol, arguing that this is a government lie to prevent people from opening their businesses or circulating in the streets. Others blame the Mexican government for its existence. Why? Because by means of its campaigns to clean streets and squares using disinfectants, it has spread this to make the population sick, thus acting as a means of extermination.
From the point of view of the health authority, the virus was imported, meaning it was brought in by high-income social groups, who made trips abroad. It should thus be more a disease of the rich rather than the poor.
Meanwhile, the current Mexican government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has affirmed that his immunity to the virus has been due to the protection provided by his amulets and humane values.
But according to the scientific narrative, the health authority has tried to measure the impact of the virus using a statistical curve, called the sentinel model, showing a continued rise; however, it argues that the time will come when a decline will initiate. And when the curve starts to go down; contagions will decrease.
This model only reports the number of infections, deaths, number of beds available in hospitals each day, but its information is more than 70 days late. For this reason, another narrative from scientists who disagree with this model, argues that this information is inadequate for designing an epidemiological policy.