The people of the Mexican capital are by and large staying indoors, writes JO TUCKMANin Mexico City
SITTING FIDDLING with her hair on a bench outside the brown painted doors of Our Lady of the Rose church, Dominga Garcia can barely disguise her fragile state.
“We are frightened for ourselves and really frightened for the children,” she says. “The government tells us to put on a mask and avoid crowded places but that doesn’t seem like very much to us. We want to do something more to protect ourselves and we don’t know what.”
A mother of two who earns 150 pesos (€8.50) a day cleaning houses, Garcia is not alone.
Three similarly anxious companions had joined her outside the church in Colonia Roma, a leafy district in the heart of the great bustling metropolis that is Mexico City. But the doors of the church were shut, the priest nowhere to be seen and the Mass cancelled, as in all churches across the city. Dominga and her friends had turned up anyway in the hope they could still receive the monthly food handouts.
Once there, they could not help but give themselves over to the contained terror, confusion and a large dollop of disbelief that stalks the streets of the capital.
The city’s 20 million residents are coming to terms, some of them at least, with living in the ground zero of an epidemic of a hitherto unknown swine flu strain which is deemed to have pandemic potential by the WHO and which has killed more than 80 people.
A few metres away from the church, an entire family worked frantically, setting up their street stall selling barbecued goat.
“The illness could be anywhere. We don’t see it, we don’t know where it is.” Teenager Brenda Gomez’s eyes darted about as she talked. “We don’t know what do to, all we can do is wait.”
As she scrubbed the pavement with bleach, her relatives put cactus salad and hot sauces on the tables covered in bright red plastic. They did not, however, expect to get much custom at a time when increasing numbers are heeding government calls to stay at home if possible.
This weekend, the usually teeming, chaotic city became a calm and tranquil place where it was possible to cycle down main roads and easily find seats on the bus. The closure of museums, cancellation of concerts and football matches played behind closed doors only added to the otherworldly feeling.
“It’s as if the whole city is on holiday,” said university geography teacher Manuel Molla as he ordered a coffee on the terrace of La Piazza cafe. By mid-morning, he was still the only customer but he was not worried, he said, because he trusted the government to bring things under control.
Then his eyes fell on the headline in the paper before him that relayed the WHO’s warning of an international emergency. “Well that is rather alarming,” he added, smiling rather weakly.
Down the road at a small private hospital, about a dozen people waited patiently to be ushered behind a closed door to see an emergency room doctor.
Most had come with mild respiratory symptoms they hoped were symptoms of run-of-the-mill illnesses, but were quietly terrified that they might just turn out to be carriers of the dreaded virus.
“My son has a runny nose that started a few hours ago,” said Elvira Juarez. “I am worried now, not panicking, not yet.”
Up the road a steady stream of silent people wearing their blue masks crossed the pedestrian plaza outside the Insurgentes metro station, which is a gathering place for the capital’s urban youth tribes. There were not very many hanging out yesterday morning.
“It’s all psychological,” said Edgar (20), an emo whose fringe covered most of his face. “I think it is a plot by the government to control us.” He was echoing a widespread sentiment that what the authorities say cannot be trusted.
The first measures against the killer flu were announced late on Thursday night, the most dramatic of which is the closure of all schools, nurseries and universities until May 6th.
By the weekend, there were soldiers on corners handing out masks and most public gatherings had been cancelled, although the authorities have stopped short of closing work places.
On Saturday night the health minister, José Angel Cordova, put the probable death toll nationwide at 81 and the number of suspected cases at more than 1,300. By yesterday the fatalities had risen by another five.
Most cases are concentrated in Mexico City and its suburbs, but exactly where outbreaks of the illness are focused within that area has not been revealed. With the dead and ill quarantined in hospitals to which the press has no access, and the milder suspected cases told to isolate themselves at home, few people have physically seen the danger.
They are left guessing how close the virus might be to them and questioning the information they receive, with rumours flying that the real death toll is much higher and the drugs the health minister says are ready and waiting are not effective.
Another problem fuelling speculation is that so little has been revealed about who might be at risk for being close to outbreak centres. All authorities have been willing to say so far is that a disproportionate number of young adults are among the victims, rather that the usual concentration in the very young and very old.
This has got the experts particularly worried because it is typical of pandemic strains. The other thing causing particular concern is that it is highly unusual for flu epidemics in the northern hemisphere to occur in spring.
“The last time that happened was in 1918,” says medical historian Mark Honigsbaum, author of a book on that pandemic, which killed 50 million people worldwide, including about 225,000 in the UK.
“There was a first wave in the spring that affected the vulnerable and then it seemed to go away. Six months later it came back and this time young adults got sick with very high mortality. The question is whether we are seeing the first or the second wave.”
Honigsbaum says seasonal flu typically infects about 1 per cent of the population and kills about 0.1 per cent of those. A pandemic, meanwhile, can make up to 25 per cent of people ill and kill some 2 per cent of those. That could mean five million people getting sick in the Mexican capital and 100,000 dead.
Matilde Perez remembers her mother’s tales of people dropping dead in the street from that time.
“Now it wants to come back,” she said, as she milled about a square where the older generation regularly congregates at weekends to dance the courtly Danzon. – (Guardian service)