The United States Department of State updated its list of foreign travel advisories – some for political and military instability but mostly for raging and continuing COVID outbreaks – to total a walloping 130 countries. A quick check of the Our World in Data vaccination comparison chart above (as of April 26th) gives you a pretty good view of who’s beginning to get COVID under control with sufficient vaccinations… and who is definitely not.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories.html/ is the site to check before any foreign travel. India and Brazil lead the list of truly horrific numbers, as infection and death rates in those countries are breaking records. A snapshot of India for example, taken on April 26th by the BBC.com, is particularly disheartening: “For the fourth day in a row, India has set an unwelcome world record for new coronavirus infections, with 349,691 more cases in the 24 hours to Sunday [4/25] morning, and another 2,767 lives lost. The BBC's Vikas Pandey reports from the capital Delhi, where hospitals are overwhelmed and people are desperate.” Oxygen, which is manufactured far from major cities that require such supplies the most, is in seriously short supply and can only be shipped by overland routes for safety.
Elsewhere around the globe, the distribution of vaccines is anything but uniform. Some very modern nations have exceptionally horrible vaccination rates. Because of overly stringent government quality controls, only around one percent of Japan’s population, for example, has been inoculated. But once having been one of the worst bad boyz of COVID control, as the above numbers illustrate, the United States’ recent massive deployment and availability of vaccines, despite a bit of start-stop with the Johnson & Johnson inoculation, has proven rather successful, even as diehard pockets of anti-vax sentiments could derail our effort.
We’ve done so well it seems, that if we keep up the current pace of vaccinations, even as we might warn American travelers of issues all over the planet, a significant part of the world is keeping an eye on our progress, telling us that if we continue at the current pace (not clear that we will), restrictions against Americans entering other nations will possibly be lifted in the very near term.
In other words, for Americans savoring international travel, there is hope in the wind, as this extract from the BBC.com (April 26th) suggests: “Americans may be able to travel to the EU this summer - if they are fully vaccinated against Covid-19… European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the New York Times this should be possible as both sides have approved the same jabs… However, she gave no exact timetable and said it would depend on the ‘epidemiological situation.’… European nations have restricted non-essential travel from the US for more than a year.
“The EU toughened its recommendations on foreign visitors in January - but each member state must put the measures in place. Greece, for example, has already said Americans with proof of negative tests can enter… The UK, which is now outside of the EU, is introducing a traffic light system on 17 May that will set out its travel restrictions on countries around the world. Which countries get which traffic light is yet to be finalised.
“The US still bans leisure travel from the EU and UK. There have been some suggestions it could reciprocate in lifting restrictions, but nothing has been announced… Its current advice to Americans is to avoid 80% of countries worldwide because of the coronavirus pandemic… Vaccination programmes are proceeding swiftly in the US and UK, and the EU's target for the summer remains ‘a minimum of 70% of the entire adult population’ receiving at least one dose… The US is on target for 70% of adults by the middle of June. The UK total is already at 65% for at least one dose.”
Whatever the prognosis, the vast hordes of people living all over the world who do not have the likelihood of access to viable vaccines are potential pockets of infections where seriously dangerous COVID variants could develop and spread, inevitably threatening the United States. We may need booster shots to thwart these potential contagions, although the remaining vaccine skeptics here in the United States are equally capable of sabotaging our efforts to return to normalcy. If we do it right, can we find some viable salvation this year? For sure in 2022? Or is this going to be a much longer recovery period that most of us can imagine? Time will tell.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I am still aghast at vaccine and COVID skeptics who somehow have manufactured a non-existent “constitutional right” to avoid masks and social distancing and infect whomever they come in contact with without any responsibility.
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