We are all aware by now of how the various dictums of the 'state' have been influential factors in our mobility over this past year.
In fact until recently it hasn't been that much of an inconvenience (though it has become more expensive with more limits on less routes, etc) depending on your country of origin, and the rules in the country of destination. If you test negative with the PCR generally speaking you have been able to go where you needed to go, sometimes quarantining on arrival or not. That all changed in the late part of 2021. 2020 I was on the move from Myanmar to Canada to France to Ecuador and it was pretty easy, I blogged about it here. In 2021 I didn't move internationally in an entire year for the first time in probably around 30 years...has to be said this was due more to a state of illness (only indirectly linked to Covid) rather than the state of affairs in the world. Many people were travelling through 2021, and today, check out 'flightrader24.com' and take a look at all the birds in the air, there are lots of people travelling.
The requirements have been a bit confusing to follow since they change all the time, PCR or antigen test? 72, 48, or 24 hrs? ahead of boarding or of getting the result? Do you need to abide by restrictions if only transiting? Will they serve food aboard, etc? So uncertain and unclear and inconsistent across countries of arrival, airlines and across short timelines. Airlines saddled with the obligation of ensuring their passengers comply with the rules have managed variably well and not well. KLM is an airline I have had much to do with this past couple of months and based on their screw-ups, their inability to communicate in a timely manner and their onboard gouging, they are not doing very well.
More than that the complication of not knowing once you arrive whether you will be able to return from whence you came is disconcerting, a definite disincentive to travel for many; we live in a world where having 'certainty' is akin to feeling safe and secure, it's why insurance companies do so well... they underscore the insecurities then cash in on making you feel secure. With the whole Covid ethos we feel more uncertain than ever... and of what exactly is a good question (and the subject of another blog). What do you do if the rules change for example, the Brits living in France who went to the UK for holidays (before Christmas) were then banned from returning to where they lived in France after the holidays...bit of a shocker that one. As a codicil, this is probably a better example of how geopolitics are alive and well and how using something like Covid as a political football is considered fair game. Only we all know it is not fair, and that it is more about manipulative men in political power positions, their egos and mis-placed national pride than anything to do with protecting citizen's health. Did you here the US has banned entries for folks with the Russian SputnikV vaccine? but I digress.
Recently my oldest son (16yrs) made the journey from Switzerland to Ecuador via the Netherlands and Panama some awful number of hours on the inward flight including an unexpected 24hrs in Panama (thanks to KLM) which caused considerable perturbance. He arrived intact, but a concern that shadowed his visit was not knowing if the Swiss rules for re-entry of non-citizens arriving from Ecuador would change while he was away. We didn't dwell on it, you can't worry about that which you can't control right? They didn't change their rules and Ecuador remained on the green list for Suisse entries, so thank goodness for that.
Actually more concerning was his PCR test as he was preparing to leave (get this) which needed to be taken 48 hrs before entering the Netherlands where he transited, but 72 hrs before entering Switzerland... if they were the other way around he would have been screwed. Not to mention the negative or positive options and those few hours of uncertainty and discomfort while waiting for the result. No matter how philosophical and 'go with the flow' you might be... there is stress; the kid has school on Monday, despite a strange 'flu' going around the Valley where I live, he tested negative with the 'gentle' PCR.
Mandated vaccines for entry into Ecuador became a reality on 01 December. Wow. Suddenly basic freedoms of association and movement were trashed without ceremony and other countries (though not many) followed suit. That changed things considerably for anyone unvaccinated including people who have arrived in a bit of an avalanche, US citizens, Canadians leaving their country due to the 'tyranny' (their word) of covid restrictions on civil liberties and others from other places; Vilcabamba has evolved a name for itself as a place of refuge. The Canadian Prime Minister disgraced himself the other day and may be indicted for hate speech, saying "that those who have not been vaccinated are very often “Misogynists and Racists”, he then stated that “They don’t believe in science/progress”. Finally, Mr. Trudeau went on to make the statement “This leads us, as a leader and as a country, to make a choice: Do we tolerate these people? “and “that they take up some space.”
Sounds delusional to me, and definitely not very liberal, progressive or thoughtful. Let's be clear on one thing being unvaccinated doesn't make you anti-vax, it does make you vaccine free. The most disagreeable outcome of the current state of affairs is the divisiveness the creation of 'us and them', wow, and the judgement involved; there are those who believe the vaccine free are a danger to society even criminal for not complying with mandates, despite the fact that the coercive exhortations of a government may not be legal in many cases, and those who believe those vaxxed have had their human rights abused, that by being vaccinated you are buying into the mainstream narrative (drinking the koolaid) to such an extent you would potentially endanger your (and your children's) immune system integrity, reproductive health, heart condition, etc. It's all out there but you may not find it on Google, and for goodness sake don't ask on Twitter or Facebook because they have censored such questioning content. Particularly this idea of vaccinating children has horrible taste to it and is absolutely unnecessary. Please do your own research, do not trust the so-called 'science' that the big pharma presents through governments and their media lackeys, and don't use Google if your want truth. So many unknowns with this vaccine that for something as important as this, something that could permanently damage my health, I fall back on the axiom... 'when in doubt, wait it out'. And I truly believe this too shall pass and no harm will come. Covid at the end is nothing but a bad flu, the way it has been approached, the global response was an over-reaction initially because of how little we knew and we were fearful but then decisions based on fear started being made built on those before it and pretty soon, well things got out of control, confusion reigned and today we are in a very serious mess.
What we know is that there is only ONE humanity, that we are all ONE. What we know is that this state of pandemic could actually be a scamdemic, or a plan(ed)emic because no one (not you, not me) can say that it isn't because no one can be sure! And we can have this doubt because there are many, many signals that something is not right out there and you need to be paying close attention to see beyond the fear for example: 1) Whatever happened to the Great Barrington Declaration The Declaration was written from a global public health and humanitarian perspective, with special concerns about how the current COVID-19 strategies are forcing our children, the working class and the poor to carry the heaviest burden. The response to the pandemic in many countries around the world, focused on lockdowns, contact tracing and isolation, imposes enormous unnecessary health costs on people. In the long run, it will lead to higher COVID and non-COVID mortality than the focused protection plan we call for in the Declaration. 2) Why wasn't the GBD adopted as a less livelihood destroying alternative? 3) There is a high level of censorship in social media (heard of Dr. Robert Malone one of the developers of the PCR test? and how he has been muzzled? check that out). 4) Why have medical staff who do not want to be vaccinated or speak out against vaccinating been threatened with job loss? 5) There are serious inconsistencies in the narrative around the origins of Covid and the role of Dr. Fauci. 6) Big questions around the validity/veracity of the PCR test (did you know this month the CDC will no longer be using it),"After December 31, 2021, CDC will withdraw the request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, the assay first introduced in February 2020 for detection of SARS-CoV-2 only.". 7) Why the big differences you see when doing independent research using Google vs an untraceable search engine. 8) The censoring of expression on social media. 9) The very odd 'domino effect' of countries falling into compliance like a flock murmuration making health policy changes not even the WHO recommends. 10) The economy and livelihood destroying (we are talking about millions plunged into devastating poverty) lockdowns that are proving not to have been necessary because they didn't change anything in the disease vector, what they did do is make a select group of corporations very rich. As a footnote here, and having lived in Burma for 4 years, in 2020 (we left end of June), we described lockdowns as a luxury of rich countries that has destroyed irreparably already fragile economies. You think you have problems keeping your business afloat in Canada or France? Be forever grateful for government subsidies, most countries can't afford them and many many many small businesses globally have died, not to mention daily wage earners, factory workers in their 100,000's in poor countries, who benefited from that?
These are some of the strange things that have happened. And you have a vaccine on which $billions have been spent given to pharmaceuticals companies and lobbyists (many with dodgy track records, no liability and burgeoning bank accounts). A 'vaccine' which still requires you to mask even if both parties are double or triple jabbed, does not prevent transmission, still has people isolating working from home, schooling online where they are able, still has lockdowns in effect, might result in less intensity in symptoms, is now on its 3rd booster despite the broad knowledge that the variant of the month omicron is a 'saviour variant'.
This means that it is a highly infectious form of Covid but one with very mild symptoms (well-documented now) and that confers immunity (not well publicized) so indeed it will spread far and wide very rapidly and confer herd immunity. Kind of begs the question; why does anyone need to be further vaccinated or boosted when the virus is conferring immunity on it's own? Let omicron run it's course and this might be over faster.
We have known from the get-go that Covid would be self-limiting (an epidemiological truth that also applies to viruses like ebola when they are contained, with Covid the container seems to be the planet), is what we are seeing in Omicron the way viruses self-limit and burn out, infectious but weakened strains conferring and thus endowing herd immunity? If so, why the panic reaction ruining everyone's holidays and again fanning the fear complex fire? Rather than vaccinate, and this could be said from the beginning, people should be checked to see if they have antibodies (would it have been so hard to develop a quick-test to see if you had natural immunity) and if so send them on their way, why mess with nature? And if they haven't had covid or weren't vaccinated and get omicron... then wow, good for them, natural immunity which many doctors say (and nature concurs) is healthier than an artificially created immunity.
By the way, all of this has been researched and fact-checked and not using Google as a search engine for anything. If it weren't for my email addresses that are Google based I would disavow Google for their participation in what appears to be at best an incompetency of governance, a deceptive manipulation at worst.
Anyway, to say WE the humans (the vaxxed and the vaccine free) need to rise above the divisiveness, we need to join together and question a narrative that has led to such a disruption and destruction. We have to accept that it could be 'they' got it wrong, yes it is a big 'they', the response to a virus that actually, statistically caused yes a difficult number of deaths among the elderly and vulnerable but otherwise was only a bad flu with many affected, more than we will ever know due to the many (millions?) of asymptomatics, and mild responses that millions may have had but never reported. This past 2 years how much has been lost; the grief of dying alone, and of not being able to be with loved ones, loss of freedom of movement, loss of freedom of expression, loss of work, loss of livelihood, loss of friendships, rise in depression, anxiety, domestic abuse, alcoholism (all on the rise) and now active discrimination and division in societies. And the dominance of the fear-complex perpetrated by governments, amplified by media.
Who of us before Covid actually had a trust in government' to do the right thing when it came to economies? Which governments put the people first in the wake of the 2008 housing collapse, which governments bailed out the banks? Who trusts corporations that are blatantly profit before people, who trusts mainstream media that is clearly biased towards it's corporate owners? And yet so many have trusted governments and the media on Covid response and well, lets just say I find that a little weird.
On Wednesday evening I took eldest son to the airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador where I have been living for the past 1yr and 1 week. He is vaccinated and had tested negative as mentioned. He was set, and is only 16, airport rules say parents need to take their kids to check-in and anyway I wanted to see him checked in, boarding pass in hand and headed for security... Thing is of 21 December the private airport authority following the proposals of the National Emergency Committee (COE) has deemed that a vaccination certificate must be presented to enter the airport. This is discriminatory and against international legal instruments, the Constitution which guarantees you the right not to be discriminated against based on a personal health choice. This is no law, it is not even a guideline to prevent you from entering the airport; still I was not allowed to enter. If I needed to leave Ecuador, as a Canadian citizen, headed to a country that didn't require the vaccine to enter, would I be able to get into the airport? No I would be entrapped by the state of Ecuador for exercising my right to make my own health choices.
And so I am stuck in paradise, at this moment on the beach watching the setting sun over the Pacific Ocean in a country so intensely beautiful from it's long stretching beaches to it's deep green jungles to the high sierra of the Andes and towering volcanoes'. Not a bad place to be stuck, but I'd rather my freedoms as a sovereign human being were respected not trampled on by blind, narrow minded thinkers with an agenda that doesn't appear anymore to include protecting public health. Being stuck gets a bad rap and is an unhelpful state of mind to be in, and rarely does one become free from stuck by navel gazing, certainly not by whining. The opposite of being stuck is being free and we can achieve that by relaxing, observing and when the time is right gliding out of stucked-ness, spreading our wings and exercising our right to be free.
Specialists now agree the endemic is ending
(that the video is still up on YouTube after nearly 300000 views in less than a day is telling, video's that are pro-vaccine free or against the mainstream narrative are normally taken down within an hour or so.)
A rather nice shot of the view from my front terrace here in paradise
