A Plague Upon Mexico, or, Hiding on the Beach from Swine Flu, Drug Violence and Earthquakes

I just got back from a very short jaunt down to Cancun, Mexico. Yes, despite all of the travel warnings about drug violence down there--because honestly, the chances that the Mexican drug lords are hanging out at the beach of the Omni Hotel & Resort in the Zona Hotela of Cancun were slim.

What we didn't expect was to see the swine flu hysteria unfold while down there. I had gotten a call the night before we left from a health department friend saying that there was an outbreak of swine flu in New York with kids who had just gotten back from Cancun. Great. We still left the next day.

The funny thing is, you wouldn't have known there was such a thing as swine flu unless you watched CNN and Fox News. No one was wearing a mask in Cancun, no one seemed concerned. Maybe there were people hiding out in their rooms in plastic bubbles, but I doubt it. At the airport coming home there were some people (Americans) with masks on--many of whom thought there were protective benefits to wearing them around their necks instead of over their nose and mouth. I was very tempted to walk up to them and cough.

On my return, I got clearance to come into work the next day since I was asymptomatic. Swine flu has about a 3-5 day incubation period so we could in theory be incubating H1N1 virus even though we felt fine. I haven't really attempted to quarantine myself (i.e. I still went out for happy hour the next day), although my coworkers tend to talk to me from about 5 feet away (or through the plexiglass window I have in my cubicle divider) and like to tensely ask how I'm feeling a lot. It's Day 4 and so far, so good.

Oh, and also while we were down there, Mexico City, the epicenter of swine flu, was also hit with an earthquake. During the five days we were there we saw the exchange rate for the peso increasingly slide to our advantage. Mexico just can't seem to catch a break these days. Talk about Montezuma's Revenge...