Acapulco – Here in Mexico, the swine-flu outbreak took everyone by surprise. Even today, the details remain murky. We hear rumors that as many as 3,000 people have died, which should be enough to justify the state of emergency the Mexican government has declared. Yet according to the available statistics, Mexicans are still more likely to get run over by a car than they are to contract the virus. All of a sudden, we are supposed to walk around with surgical masks, and basic communication has become a challenge. Handshakes, kisses, and hugs are forbidden, and smiles are undetectable behind the masks. People look at each other suspiciously. God forbid you happen to sneeze. In a Starbucks near where I live, you can still get a coffee, but when you step into the shop, someone asks you to wait outside until the customer ahead of you has exited. Mexico City has been shut down, and it has seen an exodus of citizens — half of them afraid of the virus, the other half eager for an early-May vacation. President Calderón has appeared on national TV, asking people to stay home and stay calm; but the schools are closed, and anyone able to exit the capital has done so. Normally clogged with traffic, Mexico City is aptly described by CNN as a “ghost town.” In the initial days of the epidemic, a friend arrived at my house one afternoon looking tired and disheveled, telling me she had spent the whole morning looking for flu vaccine in three different hospitals — with no success. I hope she didn’t catch (or pass on) anything in the course of her search — particularly since Mexican authorities have said that the vaccine is ineffective against this specific kind of influenza virus. Treatments such as Tamiflu are scarce, and we are holding fast to the two boxes we procured thanks to my son’s contacts. (He is a doctor.) Surgical masks are also hard to obtain. On top of these difficulties, Mexico has recently experienced sizable earthquakes, one of them registering a 6.0 on the Richter scale. Mexicans were quick to find the humor in all this. One joke making the rounds goes: “What do Mexicans tell the virus? Look, I’m shaking with fear!” A T-shirt sold on the Internet featured the quote: “I went to Mexico and all I got was this s***** virus.” An American friend of mine wrote that Mexico was undergoing the equivalent of the biblical plagues. Ministers, of course, were quick to call the virus a God-sent scourge intended to steer Mexicans back onto the path of righteousness. A rabbi said the message couldn’t be clearer: Masks are keeping people from gossiping, and being under house arrest is bringing families together and forcing women to return to their kitchens, which they should never have abandoned in the first place. Trust in government has been badly damaged, and conspiracy theories proliferate. Here’s one: Since President Obama visited Mexico just days before the epidemic began, the virus must have been created by the Americans to stimulate their pharmaceutical industry. Another theory points out that former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador was preparing to gather two million people in Mexico City’s Zócalo Square; the “contingency,” these conspiracists say, was used to stop him. Mexicans remember past official lies meant to distract them from political scandals. I am writing from Acapulco, where I took my family for the weekend. I came here for four reasons. First, as the French singer Charles Aznavour croons, “It seems to me that misery would be less painful in the sun.” Second, the medics seem to agree that the virus cannot survive in humid, hot weather. Third, if I’m going to die, I’d prefer to die happy. And finally, the only people wearing surgical masks in Acapulco are policemen and Wal-Mart employees, and the only places shut down are discothèques and bars. The beaches are crowded, and so are the restaurants. Hotels are registering a 70 percent occupancy rate. I suspect tequila sales, too, remain untouched by the crisis. After all, I live in a country where glasses are raised to toasts of “¡Salud!” – May Samra is a journalist in Mexico City.