Questions and Answers

Hi Ben,

A while ago you asked when it will be social responsible to travel again. Interesting topic. But I think the real question (for me at least) is when will most countries begin accepting US travels again? Our incident rate for Covid is awful—-4.25 percent of the worlds population yet more than a third of confirmed cases. W/o a vaccine, I could easier see that much of the first world (EU/Japan/China/HK/Oceana/Singapore) not allowing American visitors till mid 2021 (or even 2022 plus for Oceana), And, that could easily extend to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean too given the former’s much lower level of infections and the later group’s more fragile health infrastructure. For instance, Greece may open up for limited tourism by July 1…but from what I have read the US will most definitely not be on the list of accepted countries.

So for anyone traveling on a US passport as a US resident, that could really limit where you can even conceive of going (Russia/Brazil anyone?). Curious to your perspective—I am very depressed at the prospect of extremely limited US travel options for 18 months or more. Obviously, a vaccine would be a game changer…but I wouldn’t count on it for the foreseeable future.

I think the way that St Lucia is treating international visitors is somewhat indicative of what the immediate future will look like. Ben summed it up pretty well, in my opinion – it’s safe to go, but it might not be fun.

[URL]https://onemileatatime.com/st-lucia-reopening-to-tourists/[/URL]

Personally, I’m getting excited at the prospect of exploring my own backyard, in a way. When all this started, we had to cancel two major international vacations and, like you, were somewhat depressed about it. But now, we’re realizing after minimal research that there is so much to explore domestically that we never would have considered. We’ve decided to give ourselves an 8ish hour radius of drive time from our house, and there are literally endless options of small cities, national parks, hiking, beaches to explore once stay-at-home orders are lifted.

The current times with many countries restricting travellers is very upsetting. I’m sorry that as a US Citizen you are feeling restricted when researching travel. Unfortunately your country has no control over this current virus. States are opening up businesses to protect the economy, meanwhile there has been no plateau to your infections curve. Coronavirus is not something that you can just ignore, or treat as the common cold. Yet that seems to be the vast opinion of your countrymen. Until your country realizes their mistakes, and flattens their curve, I do not think any country would be willing to risk letting American citizens into their country. As a Canadian, I am glad that my country closed the land border to the US. Yes it is impacting our economy, but we are protecting our citizens. We do not have any plans in the near future to open the worlds longest land border to the US. Your country has to get control of this virus before that happens, but your current regime thinks it’s fine to ignore it, and go play golf, meanwhile 100,000+ Americans have died. They have mass graves in the US. 1 out of 1,000 New Yorkers have the virus. How messed up is that?

So for the above reasons, I think it’s fair to say that Americans won’t be able to travel for a while. If you need to travel, try traveling domestically. Just do it responsibly. If you are from an area which is hard hit from the disease, do not go to a new area which does not have the disease yet. This is how it spreads