COVID has hit hard here.
It has been a rough 2 years since this pandemic. We have gone through waves after waves of infections, getting vaccinated over and over, and hopefully the end of this is near.
When we left for México, the Omicron was starting in Europe. We flew through Amsterdam the day after the Omicron popped up on a plane arriving in the Netherlands from South Africa. We already knew it was going to be big. But for it to arrive here in México it would take until the beginning of January for the wave to spread from Europe and across the pond to the Americas. There has been a huge increase in cases, in the tens of thousands, we can just hope that there has been a sufficient enough amount of vaccination so people won't be too affected by its lethality.
What has surprised me is the different approach to the pandemic in México compared to Iceland. Everywhere you go you see people with masks, and so it has been from the early days. The masks were a new addition in Iceland after the first waves of this pandemic. People use masks indoors as well as outdoors in the streets. Stores and malls have security from taking the temperature of people, trying to catch the odd virus sneaking into their establishments. My feet are adjusting to stepping on endless mats layed with alcohol to “clean” the virus from my feet, as if it were my feet that drag that devil in.
Are all of these measures working?
These procedures that are done, measuring the temperature when walking in for example, really have become obsolete as people zoom past them raising their arm to the measurement device, while the device most often spits out “35.5°C” at its testers. Some of these things seem to be more for the show as not even a security officer is watching over the testing, allowing those with high in fever to walk in with no issue.
México has had many thousands of cases through the pandemic and sadly many deaths as well. Iceland is fortunate in that aspect that more deaths have been avoided, of course all death could have been avoided with extra precaution, but in the end of the day we are still humans in a globalized world, and stopping this virus is proving to be a challenge. Of course another factor is that Iceland is a very rich country where the average inhabitant does not have to go out in the morning in search of money, for being able to provide their family a warm dinner that same night.
I really hope that the pandemic will start fading away soon, while we keep vaccinating more people for this virus. The sooner we can force it down, the sooner we can get back to some sort of a normal.
