COVID-19 in Mexico: The pandemic came to us like slipping a ring onto a finger?

Abstract

Introduction: Populist leaders around the world have distinguised themselves by handling the COVID-19 pandemic based on ambiguous messages, half truths and even deliberated lies. Without a doubt, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has sistematically resorted to these types of messages. Objective: To analyze the spoken or writen verbal behavior of the President López Obrador on the COVID-19 pandemic, providing hard data showing that its management has been questionable. Methodology: The discursive contents of President López Obrador were reviewed in his public Twitter account and his web page, as well as official data on: 1) Confirmed cases of the diseases; 2) The deaths has been occurred; 3) Excess mortality; 4) Poverty levels, and 5) The problem of health services access in Mexico. Results: More tan 7 million confirmed cases of the disease, 334 thousand deaths, between 606 and 801 thousand excess deaths, almost half million people who fill into extreme poverty and 30.3 million who between 2018 and 2022 lacked access to timely health services and quality, is the legacy consequence of the political management of the pandemic in Mexico. Conclusions: The content of these points reveals that the narrative adopted by President López Obrador contradicts his statement that “The pandemic came to us like slipping a ring onto a finger”.