Litigation

Swine Flu Frenzy

By Angel L. Reyes, III

The Mexican government began shutting down schools-not just in Mexico City, but in places like Cancun and Puerto Vallarta too; and then bars, clubs and restaurants followed. I am beyond baffled when airlines from Canada cancelled all incoming flights and all cruise lines were diverted from Mexico. Do the people who made those decisions own a map? Or, is this just another example of the effects of hysterical, uninformed media coverage and hyperbolic statements from US government officials?

Canceling flights and cruise ship dockings in Cancun and Puerto Vallarta because of the flu in Mexico City is akin to closing JFK or LAX because someone in Chicago has a cold. Swine Flu is a flu virus, after all, despite the irresponsible declaration by Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization that "all of humanity is threatened." Even  common flu strains kill approximately 36,000 people per year in the United States.

To this date, there isn't a single confirmed case of Swine Flu in Puerto Vallarta. Yet panicked people cancelled weddings, honeymoons, anniversaries and vacations because there was an outbreak of an easily treatable virus 550 miles away. The biggest losers are the poor people of Mexico; the people who make their livings as servers, taxi drivers, maids and in other tourism-driven careers.  High season was slower than usual this year, thanks in part to overblown coverage of the drug wars. Now cut short, this ensures that there will be even less money during summer, a time when many Mexican families are near starvation already.  Next year's high season isn't looking too good right now either.  It took years for China to recover from SARS, the last hysteria-fueled super virus that was going to destroy life as we know it, but didn't.  It's sad that so many people allowed themselves to be taken in and manipulated by fear, and sadder still that there will be real human suffering as a result.

When you visit Mexico frequently, you know to take the dire travel warnings issued by the State Department with a handful of salt. As most full-time residents of Mexico will tell you, it isn't possible to discuss the recent Swine Flu outbreak without also addressing the ongoing drug wars.  Listening to the media, you'd think severed heads were rolling through towns like tumbleweeds, instead of what is really happening: The police and military are battling it out with drug lords in border towns, far from popular tourism centers.

To put things in perspective, in 2005, 11,346 people were killed by gun violence in the United States and no travel warnings for America were issued vs. the roughly 2,100 people killed by Mexico's drug war in the last two years, the majority of those being police, military and drug dealers, not bystanders or tourists.  Despite what the media wants you to think, the crime rates for cities like Puerto Vallarta and Cancun are far less than most American cities. All of this bad media only puts more fuel on the fire for anti-immigrant factions in our country.

Let's hope for fairer days, less hyperbole, and comprehensive immigration reform this year.

©2009 Angel Reyes
www.ReyesLaw.com

Full post as published by Angel Reyes Blog on May 09, 2009 (boomark / email).