Cancun Today

Noted right wing savants such as Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann seem to think the White House inflamed the swine flu crisis in order to fast track Kathleen Sibelius for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Maybe they are on to something, but not in the way they think.

A lot of this just doesn’t seem to hang together very well. First of all, although travelers from Cancun (where I live) have been diagnosed with swine flu, there is one confirmed swine flu in Cancun. I will repeat that. There is exactly one confirmed swine flu in Cancun. One case. Is that just aporcalypto (as Mexicans are now calling it), or what? In fact, despite being called a pandemic, there really aren’t a lot of cases anywhere in the world, not even in Mexico City. So it would be understandable to wonder why total hazmat anti-terror precautions have been unleashed.

Yet there is a connection to President Obama, who visited Mexico Apr. 16-17 and happened to shake hands with Mexican museum director Felipe Solis, who then died with flu-like symptoms, supposedly shortly after exposing the leader of the free world to deadly swine flu germs. Can you imagine Calderón’s reaction? Beloved wildly popular president of US infected by life-threatening disease on visit to Mexican museum. Aack.

The president of Mexico is the world’s most powerful democratically elected leader, almost an absolute dictator for six years. Mexico in crisis mode is incredibly thorough. A total review of flu cases was already in progress as a result of some unusual clusters in Mexico City and Oaxaca. This then escalated into the current crisis, which I think is more a reaction to very understandable anxiety about the political consequences.

Although the late Sr. Solis was initially reported to have died the day after his meeting with President Obama, he died a week of cardiac arrest following pneumonia. He had chronic diabetes and had already suffered a number of strokes. Swine flu was not present. All in all, only 22 flu deaths in Mexico have now been confirmed as swine flu — most of them in a densely packed and polluted city of 18 million.

Meanwhile, the whole country shut down for five days, fortunately coinciding with the long weekend from May Day to Cinco de Mayo, which kind of ruined the holiday for some Mexicans (especially the tourism industry), but may have improved it for others, who just wanted to stay home and drink beer rather spending a lot of money to visit Cancun or take their children to the movies. Well, you get the flu, you rest and take lots of liquids, right? Never has there been a better example of the well-worn saying, “The United States sneezes, and Mexico gets pneumonia.”

So how did these people who supposedly got the flu in Cancun really get it?

They might have gotten it from other visitors, say from Mexico City, or before they got here. How long were they here? As of today, no cases have been confirmed in Cancun.

The incubation period is 4-7 days, possibly longer. They could have brought it with them. Maybe they got it on the plane or at the airport. The plane seems likeliest because of the close quarters and recycled air, but the airport transport is also an even more confined space.

Perfectly healthy individuals will be carrying a large variety of viruses, among other microbes. Many factors enter into falling ill. Normally, travelers don’t get tested for the strain of flu they contract. They just get treated symptomatically. H1N1 is probably a lot more common than anyone realizes, but it is only diagnosed in severe cases or in crisis situations such as the present.

It’s not unrealistic to suppose that the various stresses of traveling could have caused them to develop flu. In other circumstances, they would have been treated symptomatically and not tested for the specific variant.

Try to follow me here as I attempt to refine my speculation.

If, over a period of approximately a week:

[1] Obama shakes hands with Felipe Solis

[2] Felipe Solis comes down with flu-like symptoms

[3] Solis develops pneumonia.

[4] Solis develops complications of pneumonia.

[5] He dies.

[6] Mexico announces an unusual cluster of fatal cases among about 1,000 victims (now reduced to 590 confirmed) believed to be suffering from swine flu leading to…

[7] …a worldwide panic in which every traveler from Mexico feels intense Black Death anxiety, and, if s/he/it so much as sneezes, gets tested for Pork Flu, resulting in Hamdemic, The Aporkalypse. Note that this kind of testing is a bit more expensive and complex than peeing on a home pregnancy strip. Normally, people with sniffles or even roaring influenza are not tested, nor is every positive result the top story on Google News.

[8] Because Cancun is Mexico’s most popular tourism destination, it gets a lot of H1N1 alerts (the name now changed in consideration of hogzilla industry sensitivity, while conveniently relieving madrassa educated Barack Hussein Obama of having to speak the forbidden word swine).

but:

[9] Cancun has only one case of H1N1 despite the deployment of brigades of medical personnel rounding up people with runny noses.

then:

What?

I really do think that the whole thing is a statistical anomaly produced by unusual attention to a rather common virus that occasionally produces very grave symptoms and some deaths in a relatively small set of highly susceptible victims.

While right wing speculation that wily Democrats somehow produced this crisis in order to get Sibelius confirmed is, at best, amusing, I do think that the speed with which the Senate acted was notable. These Obama folks move very fast, it seems, with great skill and force, when they have circumstances on their side. No wonder Glen Beck and Michelle Bachmann are exhibiting symptoms of agitated depression and paranoia. Who wouldn’t?

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