Lo and Behold, Mexico is Passing

Joshua Keating and Tyler Cowen say that Calderón's response to the flu show that the Mexican state is not failing. Here's the former: 

Thanks to Mexico's raging drug violence, there's been a growing meme in the U.S. media -- including this magazine -- that the country was teetering on the brink of anarchy. The Obama administration even chose an expert on state failure as its ambassador to the country. The Calderon administration's decisive response to swine flu at least complicates this notion.

Compare, for instance, Mexico's fast and seemingly effective handling of swine flu to China's disastrous initial denial of the 2003 SARS outbreak and ask which one looks more like a failed state.

I am happy to see that American analysts are taking notice of events in Mexico beyond drug violence, and the idea that Mexico is not a failed state is certainly an improvement over the theory Mexico is a failed state. Yet, such posts are frustrating, because arguing that now we can be assured that Mexico is not a failed state implies that before the flu epidemic, there was a reasonable doubt. Ridiculous! As I argued here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, the idea that Mexico is a failed state is simply divorced from reality. Calderón and Ebrard seem to have done a good job in reassuring the public and preventing the epidemic from becoming a worldwide pandemic (though probably more the former than the latter), but the Mexican state was never in play.