THREAD - So as the world shuts down and hunkers down to battle the coronavirus, there's been a notable exception in the region: Nicaragua. Instead of canceling mass events, the government has been organizing them.

They had one in March called "Love in the Time of Covid-19."

Public schools are still open. Private schools that requested permission to close were denied permission. But parents largely kept their children home.

Private schools finally got permission to do "distance learning," where parents come to the school and pick up academic materials.

I spoke to one educator who said: The government has taken the stance of ‘everything is under control, everything is fine.' And the people have responded with the attitude of: ‘we don’t believe you. We already know you are lying,’ the educator said.

He added: “I told my wife: we have taken precautions, but with this attitude Nicaragua has taken, we are going to die. We are finished.”

The government also put together brigades with health workers, police and party functionaries that visited hundreds of thousands of homes, handing out pamphlets.

The country also has not closed its border or stopped foreigners from visiting, although they have to self-isolate for two weeks.

The government claims to have only seen five confirmed cases, which were all travel-related. One person died.

(Meanwhile neighboring Costa Rica has about 350 cases.)

Rosario Murillo, Nicaragua’s vice president and its first lady, said on Sunday that the nation could not come to a standstill and that “with faith we can conquer fear.”