China and America are toeing up at the post-virus starting line at the continent of Africa, and it’s pitiful how out of shape Americans are. Mike Pompeo and the State Department rely on a tried and true Trump technique of dominance: lie until it’s believed. But Africans aren’t as dumb as Americans.
Category: South Africa
Corona Cordoned
Imagine about a year from now when much of the world, even a few parts of Africa, start to really manage the virus. Imagine an airplane actually flying from London to Johannesburg. Imagine, too, that Americans are banned from these flights.
I just finished an hour reading the sarcasm, fear and disbelief – mostly from Africa – about Trump suggesting “injecting” disinfectant into the body to kill the virus.
These emotions rope off America from the rest of the world. Today’s African commentary was particularly worrisome that the medical advisors sitting beside him didn’t jump up and scream, “NO!!!”
America isn’t just the laughing stock, but the King Kong monster of the world.
Corona Canting
Open up? We privileged have more latitude implementing our morality than our poor bloke cousins. Alas, the current partisan pandemic. The growing impression is that Covid-19 is a rich man’s sickness, and ‘god forbid, let them die.’
No better magnification glass on this painful dilemma than what’s happening in Africa.
Corona Calculations
Sometimes it’s better to let your brain suppress your gut. Better than Rolaids. It’s what I have to do when contemplating the virus in Africa.
There’s an enormous disconnect between what my gut tells me about the dangers of Covid-19 and what my brain does. The numbers on the continent are – and I suppose this is the point – ridiculously low. But numbers in Africa are like snow flakes in a cotton field. They rarely appear and when they do, they’re very hard to find.
Corona Compensation Denied
The first insurance claim made by an EWT traveler that we know of was March 3. This morning that claimant said they received acknowledgment of their claim but as of today the claim had not been reviewed.
It doesn’t look very promising. The situation is similar with the airlines. Here is a brief summary of what EWT clients have explained to me regarding their various insurances.
Calculating Corona – II
When will it be safe to travel, again?
This is the second of three blogs about travel in the era of the coronavirus pandemic. Yesterday’s explained why so much money is tied up, now, in scuttled travel and tomorrow’s will carry my recommendations about what you should do.
Corona Closeness
South African police and military are enforcing one of the strongest shelter-in-place orders in the world. Airports, rail, buses and all borders are closed. The country just exceeded a thousand cases and two deaths.
Two thousand miles north, Kenya has 31 cases and one death. All international flights are banned and police are rigorously enforcing physical distancing and a dusk to dawn curfew. Are these locally draconian policies proportionate to the threat?
Corona Insured
Travelers generally come from privileged classes so it pains me to talk about the unexpected suffering attending travelers, today. But that’s my job. It’s where my life’s been anchored.
Airlines and travel insurance companies are screwing travelers royally. In fact, they’re abusing them. Most larger non-American airlines unbound here by the stricter regulations constraining them on their home turf are exploiting the disastrous incompetence of our government to wave American passengers off with the finger. It’s turned our industry into a pack of thugs.
Corona Africa
America, wake up.
“There is no shortage of lab tests [for coronavirus] in Africa,” Rosanna Peeling, chair of diagnostics research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told South Africa’s Fin24 a few hours ago. Stated, yet still hard to believe.
But because of this perception together with the widely exposed negligence of America managing the virus, Americans have been banned from South Africa and Kenya as of last night.
Corona Chaos
Coronavirus is creeping into Africa but at a much slower rate than some expect given the high levels of transport exchange between Africa, China and even Italy.
South Africa reported a seventh case, prompting a school closure in a suburb of Johannesburg.
Twenty-two passengers who arrived Uganda yesterday from China, Korea and Italy were given the option of two weeks self-funded self-quarantine or to turn around and go back. They all went back.
Sick South Africa
With South Africa’s first confirmed case of Covid19, some experts say that the virus is unlikely to spread much in Africa.
Here’s why.
Elephant Bus
Suspend your belief. I found an African charity that doesn’t boil my blood.
The human/wild animal conflict in Africa is almost as politically volatile as climate change throughout much of – especially rural Africa. Elephants in particular are the problem and a tour company has done something admirable about it.
Melting Time
America, your weak, lilly-white specious religious and facetious democracy with its high faluting quasi morality is in complete meltdown. Wide-eyed Africans watch in disbelief. The “trust” and “transparency” and “morality” of the self-styled always-correct America that kept them at bay are evaporating into thin air like the last drops of water in a burning world.
I can find only one – not two – pardons given by any African chief executive in the last century that comes a mile close to what Trump did yesterday. But guess what. They’ll be rolling off the equatorial alabasters, now.
Coronavirus
No coronavirus cases have been confirmed in sub-Saharan Africa, but they’re expected. The two main airlines from Africa to China, Ethiopian and Kenya Airways, have suspended many of their flights and Ethiopian is quarantining all incoming passengers from China.
What does this mean for upcoming safari travel?
Where is Jacob Zuma?
Jacob Zuma’s seven years as South Africa’s president was one scandal after another and constantly indecent. His nepotistic appointments led to random deregulation that has actually caused escalating power outages and food shortages. His potbelly of corruption despoils the word “emoluments” and now finally South Africans want to bring him to justice.
And they can’t find him.