Pandemic travel

On December 28, John Chadwick gave us a perfectly rational explanation for the reason a new Covid variant was concentrated in certain areas. ( New Variant). But what about further afield and worldwide?

On December 23 my eldest son arrived back in the UK after having been locked down in north east Brazil since March, Brazil being the second most toxic place to be after the US.

He signed off his ship for a two month holiday, but the result of the pandemic meant that his ship never returned. Luckily, he had somewhere to stay, but after the first couple of months he had to report weekly to the local police and pay a fee for his temporary visa extension. Yes, I know what you are thinking, but who would argue in that situation and have a good enough command of Portuguese to dispute it? The British Consulate couldn’t help and the Swiss/Italian company he worked for virtually abandoned him.

He was not paid after April (no ship to sign back on) and was then told to leave the country by the end of December, planes were flying. so no argument. Where is all this going. I followed his flight back to UK on Flight Tracker. After a long internal flight, he took a Covid test and after four hours was given a negative result so was able to fly from

Sao Paulo to Lisbon and then to Heathrow. After a 36 hour journey he was home and in quarantine again.

What I saw on the Flight Tracker however was a revelation. While looking at his journey a little message told me that on screen, I was looking at 157 aircraft out of a possible 5,000-plus. I expanded the area I was looking at over Europe and lo-and-behold the continent was swarming with aircraft.

I was able to pan across the globe. What I was looking at were thousands of planes all in the air, transporting potentially hundreds of thousands of people in all directions. We are grateful for the safe return of our son but are all these flights still repatriating people around the world, or just flying backpackers, skiers, and all the others who couldn’t do without a holiday for their wellbeing?

It was obvious from the start of this pandemic how the virus travelled so far and so fast out of China, but you question why the madness of seemingly unfettered worldwide travel by air is still happening.

But is it only Covid we should be concerned with now, as air travel facilitates any disease-carrier, the potential outcome of not controlling

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