We are again facing the unknown: the new omnicron variant of Covid. Even the medical and scientific community does not know its symptoms and effects, there are even contradictions regarding whether or not it is a variant that puts the lives of those infected at risk and what is the speed of its spread.
For example, the South African doctor, Angelique Coetzee, assures that the new variant causes milder symptoms although different from Covid-19, explains that the loss of smell or taste is not observed, but extreme fatigue; On the other hand, the World Health Organization (WHO), warned that this variant is very likely to spread internationally and presents a very high risk of strong increases in infections that could have “serious consequences”, even considered it as a ” variant of concern ”, that is, the highest alert classification and to which the last one you entered was the Delta variant.
Nothing is clear, however, when in doubt, countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom closed their connections from South Africa, the country where the variant was detected for the first time.
Faced with the international alert, Mexico has chosen (as always) to minimize the possible effects of the strain and President Lopez Obrador went further, assured that “there is still no evidence on the contagion capacity of the new strain, only media noise” …
It is true, until now little is known about the variant but apparently, the president and his subject López-Gatell, the nearly 300 thousand dead (officers) that the Covid has left in Mexico are not enough to change the strategy, they have decided not to close the borders, of course, they do not consider it important, nor do they reinforce anti-Covid actions. Go they can not even speak to the relatives of the deceased with decorum and express concern. “The information in this regard is disproportionate,” says Gatell when questioned … perhaps the relatives would still have their relatives alive if this undersecretary had thought otherwise in March 2020.
And Mr. President, these are not versions of the media but about families that are at risk, especially those that you claim to protect the most: the poor, because according to the National Autonomous University of Mexico, poor Mexicans have five times more likely to die from Covid-19 than the rich.
Just when almost the entire country had reached the epidemiological weekly in green due to the drop in hospitalizations and infections, the new variant turns on all the alarms and although in the streets everything seems to be normal again, there is a real fear that is seen in the trends and the information that circulates on social networks and in table talks.
Nobody wants a new closure of activities to occur, but neither do we want to get sick or our family members get sick. Once again we are faced with the dilemma of health vs. the economy of a country with inflation higher than 7.0 percent, the highest in 20 years.
The effects of the variant will be seen soon, there are already cases in Canada and surely they will soon reach Mexico, let’s hope that the vaccines are effective and that the strain is not so aggressive because if we do not have good leaders in dealing with that.