Corona-zona

  Today's post is by Corona-zona Senior Canada Correspondent Salishsailor. Many countries have set hard border closures as a way to block the spread of COVID-19. Canada is one of them. All “nonessential” travel across the U.S.-Canada border has been blocked since mid-March 2020. What’s “nonessential” and what’s “essential,” though, depends on where you stand.   Literally. At the national level, “essential” means “ any nondiscretionary travel ,” which is equivalent to saying that essential means . . . what, obligatory? Mandatory? Who knows? The hard closures might better allow people to comply if authorities circulated behavioral descriptions of the terms. At the national level it remains murky . British Columbia—the province I’m most focused on, because I’m moving to BC when I can get access—has made a stab at defining cross-border “essential” travel. Included are such reasons as fleeing the risk of abuse or violence; working, both paid and volunteer; getting healthcare;...

  Today's post is by Corona-zona Senior Northeast Asia Correspondent  Kaigai If I were at home in California right now, I would be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The state is awash in vaccines. Increasingly this is the case across the United States, where in the near future anyone who wants to be vaccinated will be. But I’m in Japan, where a significant new COVID-19 wave appears to be accelerating, and I have no idea when my turn will come. All I know for sure is it won’t be anytime soon—even though my age (over 65) is said to qualify me for a fairly early dose. Japan’s vaunted public health system is for real, and people have exceedingly healthy lifestyles here. Lifespans are longer than in all but two other countries.  Unlike the U.S., UK, and much of Western Europe, Japan has done a better job controlling the coronavirus than its industrial peers. Cases and deaths have been way lower. All that is coming undone, or threatens to unravel, as a new surge in cases leav...

Today's post is by Corona-zona Senior Southeast Asia Correspondent PBR Hello from the S’pore!!! Or SIN as the International Air Transport Association ( IATA) airport code labels this place. That code has gotten some folk in a tizzy in the past. Weirdos. This update, using the parlance of the young ‘uns, may be considered a flex. But hey, it is an update about this City in a Garden ™ and I’m just sharing a couple pieces of pandemic-related information. First, we are where all Asian parents want their kids to be—Number One baby! Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking puts us there and we are not turning it down. Bloomberg claims we are the place where the pandemic is being handled most successfully while avoiding significant social and economic disruption. The U.S. is number 17 as it stands. Now that I have stated it, I worry I may have jinxed the situation. Sorry Singapore. (Of course, when rankings in other areas are bad, we just ignore it. The gag here is that the pro-gov...

Today's post is by Corona-zona Senior Southeast Asia Correspondent PBR Alright folks! Keeping it tidy ? Still here, stuck on a tiny island where nature is creaking at the joints  because folk are trapped. My wife maintains that the cupboard I am using as an office smells of teenage boy. I'd like to take a different angle from all the excellent posts from other Senior Foreign Correspondents that have been featured here. Let’s talk about branding.  Branding is something I know little about, bar the Pepsi Challenge back in the day. By the way, Coke is the way to go. Pepsi is foul. But—and I am not sponsored in any way—my plug for a soda is Irn-Bru. Look out for it since I suspect you have time on your hands. It outsells Coke in Scotland . And rightfully so because it is awesome. Ah, sorry, I digress. Back to branding. Countries have been trying to  brand themselves for a fair while. Thanks to such measures we get terms like  sportswashing —here’s looking at y...

Today's post is by Corona-zona Senior Europe Correspondent Maria Iovine  There’s a German expression, sicher ist sicher —safe is safe, or it’s better to be on the safe side. But in a pandemic, is it really? What is the cost of clinging to that worldview assumption? A recent story in the New York Times concludes that European institutions are risk avoidant and hold to the strategy of choosing caution when risks cannot be clearly defined. By contrast, the same article describes U.S. dealings with drug makers by saying “[t]he United States made the negotiations easy — its critics say far too easy.” And there you have it, the cultural dimension known as uncertainty avoidance . Germany high, United States low. Beneath the NYT’s analysis lies this phenomenon. It’s fair to say both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. But this post is about how the inflexibility, unwillingness, or inability to shift a tightly-held worldview assumption, to “err on the side of caution,” ...

  Today's post is by Corona-zona Senior Canada Correspondent Salishsailor As I write this post it’s snowing here on Moscow Mountain in northern Idaho.  Again.  It has snowed every day for the past week, and the berms the plow has heaped along the driveway are up to seven feet high. Meanwhile on Gabriola Island in British Columbia—our intended settling place once the border reopens—it’s 9˚C (that’s slightly over 48˚F to you people south of the border) with showers predicted for this afternoon. Admittedly, much of Canada is colder and snowier than Idaho. Canadian expats living in Texas say they’re weathering the recent winter storms better than Texans.  And as Canada falls further behind other countries in vaccination rates, those expats are lining up for shots in the States .   Back in Canada there’s some anxiety and resentment over snowbirds getting vaccinations.  In addition, anxiety-fueled Covid-shaming calls out neighbors who don’t follow soci...

  Today's post is by Senior Europe Correspondent  Maria Iovine In Germany there’s an expression— Wer viel misst, misst viel Mist —i f you measure a lot, you measure a lot of crap ( Mist ) . That’s something like the German version of "figures lie and liars figure."  We have been awash in a giant sea of pandemic data for longer than ever expected. News, stats, charts, graphs, you name it. It’s exhausting, even if you love numbers.  New types of stats emerge almost daily. The latest is the number of vaccinations administered…or is that produced? Or delivered but not yet administered? Shots in arms . It sounds like the new boots on the ground . But I digress.   As a US expat living in Europe, I have the double whammy of comparing the EU to the US, or Germany’s population to California’s. Trying to get to some useful vaccination numbers, I compare my German state, Baden-Württemberg, to Colorado, Virginia, or Arizona—wherever seems like home. Then there’s county l...

Today's post is by Corona-zona Senior Canada Correspondent Salishsailor While I wait for the border between the United States and Canada to reopen, I keep track of how our boreal neighbor and its provinces have been managing the pandemic.  My wife and I are planning to pull up roots in Idaho and replant them in British Columbia as soon as the border opens. That’s where you’ll find Canada's  best climate and one of its most socially progressive populations .  I’ve lived most of my life in the US, the country of my birth. In the 1990s I lived in Spain for half a year and, prior to that, in Japan for two years. But I’ve never lived north of the border, even though I’m a Canadian citizen. So, naturally I would want to compare Canada’s record with the US. It’s clear that Canada’s effort to control the invasion of the coronavirus and limit the number of COVID-19 cases beat the Trump Administration’s actions—by a wide margin.   According to Our World In Data , the US...

  [Today's post is by Corona-zona Senior Southeast Asia Correspondent PBR] A report from Singapore? On COVID? You got it! Why? Because I am bored out of my brains. Unlike others , I can’t embrace boredom. Humanity is a doing thing. And boredom is doing my head in.   COVID-19 is not as much of a problem if you are on a roomy island with awesome outdoors and can manage incoming folk (like New Zealand, but certainly not the UK ).  COVID-19 sucks if you are on an island that is 280 sq miles with a population of almost 6 million.  For perspective, that’s about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island and with almost six times the population. With fewer White folk. Socially, things are a tad rubbish for interaction, but it’s not like the rest of the world. Cinemas are open if you want to be in an enclosed space with folk for an hour and a half. Alcoholics can rejoice as early shutting hours for pubs have led to beer deals in the afternoon .   Beaches are open, though y...

  [Today's post is a by Corona-zona Senior Mexico Correspondent Cuitláhuac] As a Yanqui (and former Arizonan) living in Mexico City since 2017, I’ve watched from a safe distance the political and epidemiological goings-on in the USA. We discovered my wife was pregnant in early February of 2020, and so we spent the entire pregnancy under lockdown. Since the birth of my son in September 24  we’ve remained battened down. COVID-19 has ravaged Mexico.  We just passed India – a country with over ten times our population – to become third in the number of pandemic deaths, behind the USA and Brazil.  Mexico’s leader, President Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador (a.k.a. AMLO), is a populist in the mold of Trump and Brazil’s Bolsonaro, but leaning left rather than right. Like his conservative brethren, AMLO downplayed COVID-19, exhorting Mexicans to live life normally and eat at restaurants for the good of the economy.  He has argued that the poor will be unaffected and t...