Some friends of mine went your way, earlier this year, on a supposed two-month-or-so trip. Transitted through Singapore
just as things stopped being "Just Wuhan/Just China", and I meant to ask if they'd had much freedomto roam in their stopover days. The XXXXian immigration checks were happy enough that they'd not arrived via/come from China, though, it was so 'early' in the situation.
But then they found their multistate tour curtailed as travel was discouraged. Hobart definitely fell off the list quite quickly (I think after their state of entry and at least their next planned port of call were visited (NT/NSW? - can't remember what they told me about their route)), as they were left sitting in one hotel for a while longer than intended, and there was confusion as to whether they'd get to their planned departure state (WA?) for standard return (idling time away), get there quickly (after only two weeks hotel-isolation) for early rearrangement or have to go for a completely different departure based on where they'd stalled. I
think it ended up being the middle one, but not before booking a contingency flight around the third option (I assume costs to be picked up by insurance or carriers' insurance/rebate). I must find out.
They got back after just the month, before the UK properly locked down even, and were asked to self-isolate for a fortnight (by which time the
rest of us also were). Strangely, the fuss is now over
plans to ask/force incoming travelers to specifically self-isolate once they arrive home/their local point of residence. So that sounds like it's being
de-rescinded (after being considered implicit in the middle period so not a policy in and of itself).
So, anyway, general praise from them for your country's handling of things,
despite how it spoilt their plans. And despite it, at the time, still being an emerging story so neither as effective as a lockdown could have been (with what we know now) nor as undisruptive as it might have been hoped for (for what the public initially imagined, back then).
I'm sure they're planning to return to do it properly, once things are somewhat more resolved. One thing they didn't do, in this truncated trip, was meet up with someone who had planned to fly in from NZ to share part of the trip. A friend they'd made during their journey to Kiwiland a few years before, one in which their return was much delayed by a medical emergency and extended hospital stay! They don't seem to have much luck with visiting your particular hemisphere/quadrant/octant. On the other hand, they survived potentially bad situations both times they did, which might not have gone so well in various other alternate destinations they could have chosen (in both cases, the US could have been a nightmare, never mind other issues you could run into over there), so there must actually be something quite redeeming about them!
Anyway, by way of my partial knowledge of their firsthand experiences, all credit to all you lot who walk upside-down, or mostly so. Never gone anywhere so far as you, myself (East Coast US/western Eastern Europe and Scandiwegia/Mediterranean bound my lifelong travels), but I've known a few people down your way over the years, and in leiu of current contact with them (mostly through my inaction) I thought I'd say something about it all in your direction. Without resorting to saying Fair Dinkum, Cobber even once. ... <|< ... *damn*.
(Ps, it aint your beef and barley that's going cheap, surely. That'd be your budgerigars!)
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Topic: Untamed Virus Containment Thread:COVID-19: Lurking Omni-Flu Edition (Read 496971 times)