MEXICO City – López Obrador once again has deflected attenction on subjects that matter and surprised Mexicans by his peculiar ways during the pandemic, which registered more than 146,000 infections and left 17,141 deaths in Mexico so far. The president, who resumed presidential tours in early June, will return to the road this week to visit five cities.
In recent days, the president has insisted on calling on Mexicans to lose their fear of going out on the streets and “exercising their freedom”. This weekend, presented a decalogue that owed more to morality than to science to get out of the coronavirus and to get on the road to a new normality.
The presidential appeals contrast again with the alert that the technical team of his Cabinet, which recalls that half the country is still on maximum alert for infection and that the coronavirus will be among Mexicans with intensity until October.
On Saturday, through a video, the president read his “decalogue” in one of the majestic corridors of the National Palace. Among the measures proposed are: to act with optimism, to turn our backs on selfishness and to move away from consumerism, to live in calm and without anguish, to eat well and not to eat junk food, to exercise, to eliminate racist and classist attitudes and to seek a spiritual path. “I believe that we have had the time suficiente to familiarize ourselves with the medical recommendations and health provisions and that now is the time to put them into practice according to our criteria,” said the president, who has not been captured in a single photograph with a mask since the first case of the pandemic.
“Our new reality is to live with an epidemic disease that will have ups and downs, but we cannot stay frozen as a society in perpetuity, not even for three years, that would be incompatible with the survival of society,” he said.
For that reason, he bet on citizens to be able to “incorporate social solidarity,” that is, to contribute to “risk awareness,” without having to rely on “a scheme of surveillance and punishment by political, administrative and health authorities” to ensure that healthy distance and hygiene measures are followed.
Yesterday, Sunday, the president provided “good wishes” instead of data. “We are leaving behind the most difficult stage of the pandemic. The riskiest part is over,” he announced in another video. The president pointed out that he has managed to “flatten the curve,” since the country never went beyond the 1,700 patients in intensive care beds in the Valley of Mexico, the main focus of contagion in the country.
The worst-case scenarios without intervention from the authorities contemplated, according to estimates from oficiales, that 4,700 such beds would be needed daily for central Mexico alone. The entire territory had just over 3,000 ICU beds. “We are already going down,” added López Obrador. “We’re going to be able to go out on the streets, feel safe, not be afraid or act afraid… Let’s regain our freedom and act with judgment,” said AMLO.
