The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2020 27 Beyond the shock, no two pandemics are alike, explains the FSO who was deputy chief of mission in Mexico City in 2009, when swine flu swept the world. BY L ES L I E BASSETT Leslie Bassett retired in 2017 from the Senior Foreign Service. She is a former U.S. ambassador to Para- guay. Ambassador Bassett also served as deputy chief of mission in Seoul, Manila, Mexico City and Gaborone, among other overseas assignments. W aking up to a pandemic is like walk- ing toward a beautiful garden and hitting a plate glass door. Without any warning, the expectations you never questioned are violently dis- rupted. Your brain reels, unable to process the brutal warping of reality. The British call this “gobsmacked.” A health crisis professional might describe this as the prelude to a “pandemic response.” At the end of April 2009, Mission Mexico was anticipating a brief respite from months of high-impact diplomacy. Thou- sands of American spring-breakers had come and gone across Mexico’s white, sandy beaches. Newly appointed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had made a very successful trip, inaugurating a new consular pavilion and holding wildly popular people-heavy events in two Mexican cities. She was followed on April 16-17 by President Barack Obama, on a historic visit to Mexico City accompanied by a large Cabi- net and congressional delega- tion. We were happily returning to our routine obligations—visas, American citizens services, trade initiatives, environmental programs, law enforcement operations and, for State Department folks, evaluation season. It felt good to be back to normal. On April 24 I sent my daughter down the steps to get on the school bus and began to pack up my briefcase and head to work. My personal goal was to steal an hour during the day to face the multipage checkout list that detailed all the things I had to get done before we could move in just a few weeks. As I reached the front door, my daughter walked back in, a big smile on her face and a letter in her hand. All schools in Mexico City were closed for an indefinite time because of a public health emergency. Gobsmacked. Random newspaper reports of occasional flu deaths over past weeks had morphed into a new, unknown strain of swine flu called H1N1, confirmed through tests of Mexican samples conducted in Canada. With the results in, the government of Mexico informed the Pan-American Health Organization and World Health Organization and, overnight, implemented dramatic protocols to impose social distancing, first in Mexico City and then across the country. By the following Monday we had dramatically curtailed public services, procured masks and gloves for embassy team members, and redirected anyone we could to supporting the waves of CDC experts who began flooding in to expedite pan- demic response. Colleagues who only weeks before had been mapping out presidential motorcade routes were now donning full protective gear and accompanying CDC doctors into labs to act as translators, procurement specialists and helping hands. Their contributions were vital. Within days Mexico City— and shortly thereafter all of Mexico—evolved into what we see now across the globe dur- ing the coronavirus pandemic. Empty streets, closed venues, masked citizens maintaining “social distance,” and elbow bumps instead of the tradi- tional warm abrazo. Confer- ences, concerts, sporting events and cruise ships fled to other destinations. The economic and social costs were enormous. Then as now, the CDC scientists both with us in Mexico and on endless conference calls with Washington, were categori- cal about following the science. No two pandemics are alike, they insisted, and they would not make educated guesses about anything until they had data. Dozens of scientists came to Mexico despite the risk, and across the globe experts began pooling knowledge, sharing insights and reporting new devel- opments. They worked days and nights alongside exhausted Mexican counterparts. That global cooperation was central to the successful man- agement of the pandemic. As hard as they all worked, the pace still felt slow to those of us anxiously awaiting news on when our lives could return to normal. The uncertainty was—and is—the hardest to manage. Today I sit at home and watch news loops about coronavirus deaths, and better appreciate how anxious our housebound community felt in 2009. We held Emergency Action Commit- tee meetings almost daily, but we found our planned pan- demic tripwires were completely irrelevant to our H1N1 real- ity. Borders were open and commercial flights kept moving,