Fighting the Coronavirus Down Mexico Way

As the rest of the world dedicates time, money and resources to finding a cure for the Coronavirus, Mexico has put its faith in the supernatural, by producing these candles that come with their very own spell to ward off the Chinese Pox.

These veladoras, as they are called down Mexico way, retail for between £2.50 and £5.00 in sterling for the Coronavirus version, but you can get them with the promise that they will deal with all sorts of infirmities and problems. You light the candle, recite the conjuration as instructed on the product, and then pass the veladora over the bodies of everyone in the house so that its mystic fumes will protect them as they go about their daily business. The candle is then placed on the family altar and left to burn out of its own accord, something which will take up to a week or so. During that time, the Coronavirus is kept at bay.

El Universal has the story in Spanish and also in an English translation, which is not quite the same as the Spanish original. In the original version, the woman stallholder interviewed claimed that she had bought 40 of these veladoras and had sold 38 of them, leading her to buy another 60. The English version gives different quantities, for some reason. Both versions say that a made at home hand sanitiser which is 90% alcohol is also on offer, but only the English story has it that the sale of the veladoras comes with advice on western-style "hygienic measures" such as showering, albeit with a magic lotion.

My guess is that whoever created the English version of the story added those extras because they were embarrassed that people put their faith on the supernatural. The English readers are led to believe that actually, the venders are trying to help their peasant clientele by jollying them along into adopting modern cleanliness responses to this virus and that the magic element is just to get them interested.

However, before anyone starts to feel too superior, we should remember that here in the UK there are any number of utter fuckwits who blame the Coronavirus on the new 5G telephone masts that are being installed, and some of them are reported to have been burned down.

Frankly, I prefer Mexican mysticism to British bollocks.