I understand you, Sarah. Basically to take these public health measures like lockdowns here, they had to decide suspend the constitution due to the public health risk. The government is not, in normal times, allowed to implement curfews or tell people they cannot have gatherings in their homes. I guess it is similar to the state of emergency that many countries have implemented.

Here the curfew is a touchy subject because when the country was under dictatorship in the 70s and 80s, the government implemented curfews and restricted people's right to meet. There were serious consequences for not complying.

In general, most people here seemed to be willing to follow the public health rules because they understand we are in a pandemic. Masks were never a big point of contention. Yeah, there were some secret concerts/parties in lockdown and an antimasker here and there, but those tended to be isolated. Our high rate of vaccination and declining case counts are why the government can't justify keeping the constitutional exception in place any more.

I don't blame you for being frustrated with the situation in the US. The governors of certain states seem to want to kill off their own constituents by prohibiting school districts and businesses from implementing public health policies.

Here the kids are back in in-person school for the most part. I have a few friends who are teachers. There are mask mandates at schools here and they say there haven't been many issues with compliance. We haven't had the outbreaks the schools like the US has.

I am originally from the US but have been living in Chile for almost 2 decades.