Today felt like another rug pull as one airline to the next cancelled flights to and from South Africa until further notice. Not a big deal for myself right now but at some point I would like the choice to hop on a plane and visit my family in the UK. There are bigger issues than worrying about myself though.
The new covid strain that we have all heard about with the funny numbers B.1.1.529 and has finally been given a name. We had Delta and now we have Omicron which is like naming a new storm about to hit your coastline.
None of this makes sense as anyone who travels out of South Africa needs to have a vaccine passport so the people who have tested positive for this new mutant strain are vaccinated. I am actually quite happy I held off on vaccine number 2 as nothing quite made sense.
Shutting up shop just because you have 1 case in Hong Kong, Israel and Botswana with a common source as South Africa means it is already too late. Just saw another update as Israel has 4 cases now and the one lady has had 3 vaccinations so what a waste of time and money that malarkey was. We saw what happened with Wuhan so expect two weeks for another global panic attack as this Omicron takes over. Another reason to lock down and sell more vaccines oh and more importantly print more money.
Tourism in South Africa is on it's last legs as this season starting in 2 days time was seen as their lifeline. Nearly 2 million people are employed and depend on the tourists arriving and spending their much welcome foreign currency. Estimates guestimate that this is costing these venues over 1 million Pounds per day which they will no longer see.
As everyone expects whatever this Omicron is it is already everywhere so how bad is it? Brussels announced this evening they had known about it for 4 days already as they had a positive from someone returning from Egypt. Always trying to blame someone else, but themselves. No one wants a lockdown and blaming another country will go a long way of selling that idea as admitting the vaccines don't work is not something they want to really go into.
With the rest of the world watching South Africa now on the next steps I imagine some type of lock down will now round off a perfect Festive season. The Government in the past has taken the lead from other countries and now has to make their own decisions.
The economies around the world are already over stretched and seriously another lockdown would be madness. My business is still on the ropes due to shortages of raw materials ,but at least we have addressed our customer balance by partnering with businesses that stay open no matter what.
At least we all have Hive and Leo so things could be far worse and quite frankly looking forward to the months ahead. The world is a mess and I don't see it getting any better any time soon as there is no leadership and common sense involved in the decisions being made which is actually great news for crypto so we cannot complain.
Africa as a continent only has a 6% vaccination rate so in all honestly what does one expect. If any mutations of any disease are going to occur then this is a broken system and whatever measures were in place have just been bi passed meaning another reset is now required globally. This has taken us full circle back to square one and a bit of deja vous is about to happen. I am on the fence with all of this as nothing makes any logical sense. If you wanted to screw the world economy then this is the way to do it by doing a crappy job of fixing the situation with half baked plans by people thinking how they can benefit the most.
