South America is now the epicenter of the coronavirus the number of
infections decrease in asia while surging in latin america
the virus hot spots have moved from here in europe to south america
the world health organization is now calling that region the new epicenter of
the global pandemic we're alex and lindsey we're two
travelers who were exploring south america
suddenly a strict lockdown began in peru and we've been stuck ever since
along the way we took in a stray dog and he hasn't left our side
it's been months and we're still here so we're documenting the whole experience
and sharing it with you so guys south america
is now unofficially the epicenter of the coronavirus and they predict it's
going to get worse before it gets better so which is crazy to think because when
we first started this trip there were almost no cases in the u.s
and in south america we hadn't really heard of any cases at all it was more in
asia so we're gonna go into a lot more
details about what's happening right now in peru and in south america but really
quick we just wanted to tell our own story about how this started
and how it really wasn't a problem when we started traveling down here
yeah so when we first got to south america everything was fine
i'd say like around the beginning of march we started hearing our family
saying that things were getting worse in the us
that maybe we should come home but we were like well there's really no talk of
any cases here in south america i was reading an article and the first
confirmed case of kovid in peru was march 6th and then
strict lockdown began here march 15th so there
really wasn't a lot of time it progressed really fast
and we left in the beginning of february so just to give you a time reference
so we left to south america we went to colombia
and people were just acting completely normal as they would
there were a lot of tourists people were out no masks or anything
and we were there for a few weeks and then we got to peru
for a couple weeks and then suddenly the lockdown hit
so when we were traveling around there was really
no talk or anything about it and south america kind of seemed like the safe
zone in the world and then all of a sudden
one day we woke up and there was an announcement there is
going to be a very strict lockdown beginning march 15th and
i think almost all the countries in south america were taking a strict
approach but peru seemed to be the most aggressive
and then brazil wasn't really taking any aggressive measures
so these measures were preventative so there really wasn't that much
in the in south america for a while so we thought that peru was doing what
was right by taking preventative measures and
starting the lockdown before really anyone else but
it didn't seem to work yeah and yeah we were hopeful because we figured well
since it's so strict maybe in two weeks or a month the cases
have got to be declining because the virus is only really contagious i
think it's like for 10 days or something so
if people are actually isolating like they were supposed to
we thought it would have worked the north of peru
and lima got hit the hardest right now in cusco
we've been doing pretty well so after two months of strict
lockdown and people supposed to be staying inside and
when we went outside we didn't see much of anyone out
we thought that things would get better but it's been
over two months and now south america is the epicenter
and peru has the second highest amount of cases in south america
and some of the highest in the world and when we say that it's second highest in
south america for confirmed cases peru has one of the highest amounts of
testing so those results could not really be the
most reflective of what's actually accurate because some
of these countries can't afford tests or they don't have
any access to them so who really knows but right now brazil is supposed to be
number one in cases and i guess they're still not really
wanting to take any aggressive measures so one of the biggest reasons that
coronavirus has hit so hard in south america and in peru is because
of the poverty here because people need to go
out and work they need to go out and get their food
and so people will go to the markets like these to get the food that they
need to survive and so they're exposing themselves to
hundreds if not thousands of people all the time yeah and the reason why the
lockdown has had to be so strict all this time is partly because the
healthcare system here in peru can't really support the country if there were
to be a ton a ton of cases because there's not that many icu beds
so yeah lockdown's extended till june 30th we
hope this will be the last extension from what we read it looks like
lockdown probably will not be extended in south america too much longer
it seems like it's not really working and it's just
preventing people to go out and really work legally
but yeah it's just unbelievable that peru has pretty much done
everything that it could lock down wise and the cases are still growing so we're
gonna go out to the edge of this thing we're gonna go
quickly to the market or just the edge of one of these markets to show you guys
what it's like and what people have to deal with every
day all right guys now we're gonna go out and we're gonna show you what it's
like on the fringe of these crazy markets
so look at this we have these sanitizing stations
all over the city this is a bus station here or a bus stop
and now they've spray painted these circles to keep you
apart you have to stand in these circles
guys look at these signs at the stores now maintain distance 1.5 meters
it's obligatory to wear a mask it feels like cusco is getting more and more
normal there's definitely a lot more people out
than before the five-week extension and our site right now we have about 100
people just from here and look at this i think this is a
police checkpoint where they check all the cars that are coming into cusco
so there's blue so we have to order from out here
so we finally let lindsay in but they won't let two people in
she's looking for an actual caller for a potato now
huge line of people over here so is there like stimulus checks or some kind
of assistance for a corona virus
i think they do
do
hey guys let's show you my view
so i'm just going to read off a few stats for you guys here that i found
interesting so the region of south america
officially has more than 636 000 confirmed cases and more than 31
000 deaths as of may 25th but experts
believe that the outbreak is actually far bigger than the official numbers are
showing and that's kind of what i was mentioning earlier about
a lot of these areas don't actually have testing to show
so people could be having covet and have no idea if they officially have it
brazil the continent's largest and most populous country
has the largest outbreak with more than 363 thousand confirmed cases
and their president is still refusing to take aggressive measures so he's still
minimizing how serious this is which is actually not helping the situation
at all so in chile the government's inability to provide
food to everyone has caused chileans to go out into the streets and to protest
so there are protests going on in chile right now
so i don't think it's as strict there from what we've heard that it is in peru
and we also heard rumors that ecuador is gonna be
lifting their lock down june first right so that's in like a few days yeah
and mexico as well mexico isn't doing very well
but they supposedly are opening their borders in june
so another reason this is spreading so fast in south america is because the
favelas or the big communities usually on the outskirts of cities
where they're usually close-knit they're really close together and so people
can't really get away from others and social distance
and so that's where it's hitting really hard yeah and
so who knows what's gonna happen i mean lockdown could live
soon here in peru and then it could get worse again and it could
be locked down again we have no idea what's gonna happen and
flu season is on its way and so experts say that with flu season it's just gonna
get a lot worse people are gonna be sick
already coronavirus might hit harder and even if
it doesn't people will get sick because of the flu
and things like that and they will need these hospitals
and so covet patients won't be able to get in these hospitals and it's just
gonna be madness possibly and so just gonna get
worse so it's a weird time in the world
there's a lot of unknowns and we're all in this together
no one knows what's gonna happen with coronavirus or how long it's gonna last
but hopefully things get better sooner rather than later so for our own
personal situation we are from the us and obviously it has been really bad in
the u.s for the last month the us was the top contender for kovid
and now we're in peru and peru is becoming
one of the top places so it's not really the best idea to go home or it wasn't
and now it's not really the best idea to be here
where it's just gonna get worse and worse
and possibly be the epicenter for the next several months
and even get worse so we're stuck no options seem
great right now staying doesn't seem amazing but also going home
isn't the perfect solution either so we just wanted to go over some of the pros
and cons of leaving and staying with you guys we've
talked about this many times we have not come up with a really good
solution or what we want to do for sure there's no easy answer whether staying
in peru is the right option or going home is the
right option all right so pros of leaving we get to
be home with our families we wouldn't be spending as much money
because we wouldn't be paying for airbnbs
although we probably would spend more money on deliveries because food is a
lot more expensive in the us but you gotta take into consideration
how much we'd spend on a flight to get home
literally it would be probably 2500 to 3 000
for the flight alone which is a lot of money for us
and then to get to lima to fly out of here that would probably be easily
i'd say eight hundred dollars to hire a private car transport to lima
and i was talking to a local and he said that you have to pay for the driver's
meals and lima's a 30-hour drive so that's
probably like three days worth of driving
also probably their accommodation your own accommodation
gas and wear and tear in the car the driver's time
and you have to pay for them to take you to lima
and for them to get back because they're probably not going to be driving anyone
back to cusco so we'd be paying for a round trip thing so
the price to get home is a lot yeah so hundreds of dollars each just to
get to lima and then a couple thousand just to get
to miami and then we would either have to get to
minnesota where lindsay's from or california where i'm from
which would be another who knows yeah several hundred or a thousand
depending on what flights are even offering right now you really don't know
because they're all going bankrupt yeah so financially then i guess it probably
does make more sense to stay because we'd be spending all that money
for a flight home and then health-wise
the risk of contracting coronavirus is probably the same here as back home so
there's a lot of cases in south america and in the u.s
the us isn't taking it quite as seriously
but but when it comes to health care and everything obviously it would be better
if we were home yeah where we're from we can go to the
hospital there if something happened here we really don't know back home we'd
have a lot more freedoms we have hardly any freedom here and it's
starting to wear on us or i'll speak for myself it's starting to
wear on me so there are kind of partial lockdowns back home but you're
allowed to leave your house there isn't a military or a police presence
forcing you there's no curfews at 9pm lindsay had a cop follow her and follow
me home from the main center because she took out her
phone for 10 seconds and he followed her for two minutes
until he caught up to her and then he got mad that i didn't have my
official document for my passport i had a copy
which a copy is totally okay not to say we don't love cusco we
still we love it here for many other reasons it's just harder
when it comes to the police yeah and everyone's going through that here
so i don't think it's just hard on us it's hard on everyone yeah just
comparing to back home how it would be yeah so i don't know it sounds like at
this point we're probably gonna stick it out
if lockdown gets extended again especially if it's for another five
weeks i really think we'll go home at that
point because i mean that will be crazy that will be over four months
which is a third of a year spent that's insane we don't want to come off
like we're complaining cause that's not really what we're doing i mean maybe in
a sense but we know that a lot of people have it a lot worse
yeah we're not complaining we are just comparing so that you guys know
comparing what it's like at home compared to here i mean obviously we
have stayed here when we had chances to go home for the last
three months so and we chose to be here what do you guys think about our pros
and cons what would you do and how do you feel about south
america being an epicenter are you surprised
yeah we get a lot of conflicting comments from you guys
we get a lot of you saying that we should go back home to the usa
but a lot of you say that it would be safer and better to stay here in cusco
we get about half and half so i don't know it's still very interesting
to read your comments uh either way hi
my name is kelly and i am also stuck in cusco
i know that this is a very stressful time for a lot of people but i've been
pretty zen many of us are attached to our routines to our lives but
i was in this process of transformation long before quarantine began
and i actually feel as though this is an opportunity
to deepen and accelerate that process of transformation
i had already cut myself off for my old life i left everything and everyone i
knew behind and started doing the internal work that
needed to be done in order to weather any storm
i didn't realize it would help me cope with the global pandemic but
my spiritual journey has kept me from stressing out about all these changes we
have no control over and we're now all facing i'd like to clarify what
i mean by spiritual journey for me it involves discovering who i am
in this world and what i want as well as cultivating a loving
relationship with myself and this can be done by sitting under a
tree going for a walk singing a song dancing alone reading a
book listening to music creating art writing
just these solitary activities that can be done at any time regardless
of a global crisis i've taken this time to learn how to
embrace the emptiness inside enter the void and find peace
there i just wanted to share my message of
practicing mindfulness self-love and self-care this is not
the end of the world it's the beginning of a new one
what kind of world that will be is up to us
we can either lament over losing the life we once knew
or create a conscious effort to look at ourselves
at our lives and see what we need to change
there first before we can create a brighter future together we're going
to continue putting out these lockdown videos every other day at 12
34 peru time that's one two three four so it's easy to remember
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