Traveling to COVID Hotspots
We’re getting ready to embark on a risky venture. My wife and I and our one year old son, we’re about to get on a plane and take an international flight. This of course always holds a little trepidation and risk, I know flying in these times is extremely safe, but I always flash through all those movie-like scenarios right before I arrive at the airport. But on this trip, I’m not thinking about any of that. What has been occupying my mind is the place that we are going to, and how the COVID 19 pandemic has gotten out of control there. It’s a place where the people are turning down the much needed vaccines that so many people are desperately waiting for around the world. Worse, the people there, and even the government, dispute what the health officials are saying, and they flagrantly walk around in crowded environments without masks over their nose and mouths. I have even read and seen, that in this country they disregard the health and safety of their fellow countrymen and women, and all just because of politics and a deep hatred and defiance towards the federal government.
We are leaving from a country that hasn’t handled the pandemic with great skill either, but here in a country of over 200 million, where a massive part of the population lives in remote and rural places that lack modern hospitals and infrastructure, it seems they have fared better than the people of the country where we are headed. So, where are we headed, to which corrupt developing country where the respect for the rule of law is challenged and disobeyed blatantly? Well, it’s my home of course, the good ‘ol USA.
At one point I really thought that we would have a hard time entering the US arriving from Brazil, where we live. I thought that Brazil’s reputation with the vaccine roll out and the variants that were emerging here, would have made it hard for us to get on a plane. I thought that the people of the US wouldn’t want us to come and make the situation more complicated over there. Never would I have imagined that it would be the USA with all these issues and more. And of course most surprising, is the fact that in the country with the most resources, with the most modern science, technology, and infrastructure available to fight this nasty virus, it would be the people who would sabotage themselves and that great country.
Wish us luck.
Anthony Bevilacqua
São Paulo Brazil
Aug 27 2021
