Elections and the Flu

Jul 06, 2009 10:26




Two shades of the same color, originally uploaded by blmurch.

Legislative elections were held a week ago Sunday. The city was more shutdown than normal for Sundays. You couldn't buy alcohol until 21:00 hrs - a couple of hours after the polls closed. I took the 88 bus to La Matanza, once again going to the province of Buenos Aires to take photos. A friend was working the polls and he said that it should be okay for me to take photos of people voting. The bus started five blocks from our apartment and dropped me off about six blocks from the school. The hour and a bit ride went without incident as per usual on the buses here.

Upon arriving at the school, I walked in and upstairs and took some photos looking down on the crowds and of people voting. I didn't get very far before an official came up to me with her clipboard and said it was against electoral code to take photos inside. As she was accompanied by a cop and also really nice about it all, I asked her if I could take photos outside and she said of course. Always easier to ask forgiveness than permission when shooting, but still, a bummer. I left without saying goodbye as my friend was busy and I had to go. As I have been making an effort to walk at least an hour a day, I walked back to "downtown" which was about 1 hr and 15 mins walk away. I was glad to get the exercise, see the town and also I got the best shot of the day, a torn campaign poster.



Voting with care, originally uploaded by blmurch.
I haven't been paying very close attention to the news, but I have been trying to loosely follow the elections. They were congressional elections and the big news grabber was that Nestor Kirchner, the former president and husband of the current president, Christina Fernandez Kirchner, was running in the province of Buenos Aires. He lost. In fact the Kirchners took a beating and lost control of congress. There were rumours that they would leave the presidency if that happened and that chaos would break out. All was calm this past week on the politics front, at least from the point of view of the streets not being a mess.

What hasn't been calm is all the hyps about GRIPE A! OMG we're all gonna die!!!! Not really, or at least not now, but people are freaking out. Schools have been closed for a month as of last week. I'm just going about my normal routine and just washing my hands and using alcohol gel a lot more often. I see a lot of people with surgical masks and scarves around their noses & mouths out in the streets and on the buses, etc. They are useless, but make people feel better, much like the security theater at the airports. They don't protect the wearer from infection. They only prevent a sick person from infecting others as the masks are nowhere near airtight. Argentina is third in the world with the number of deaths from this flu at 55 as of this morning. This is behind Mexico and the USA. Unfortunately, this is a third world country and the government is scrambling and behind the ball and people are hording tamiflu and there is only one lab to test for the flu and it takes 15 days which is too long to get a good result. If you need tamiflu you need it quicker than the 15 days it takes to confirm. Ahhh, Argentina, I love you, I just hope you don't kill me.

buenos aires trip, flu, elections, photography, politics

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