Post by dirtdiva on Feb 28, 2022 10:31:55 GMT 10
Not to be 'that guy', but the travel advisory board have listed Australia as a 'Level Four Travel Health Notice for Australia'. Sure. Entirely off the back of Covid 19, on the basis of CDC recommendation. Sure. The part that you're ignoring is that if you actually go to the CDC website and look up Australia, a 'Level Four Travel health notice' from them equates to:
"Key Information for Travelers to Australia
Avoid travel to Australia.
If you must travel to Australia, make sure you are vaccinated and up to date with your COVID-19 vaccines before travel.
Even if you are up to date with your COVID-19 vaccines, you may still be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19.
Anyone 2 years or older should properly wear a well-fitting mask in indoor public spaces.
Follow all requirements and recommendations in Australia.
Level 4 Travel Health Notices are determined by level of COVID-19 in the destination or other special considerations."
Aka. "If you want to go there then fine, just don't be stupid while you're there".
You're entirely missing the fact that the Travel Advisory Board's "Level Four Do Not Travel" doesn't translate to what the CDC's "Level Four Travel Health Notice" actually is, and you've made the mistake of concluding that one equals the other.
CDC = We don't recommend that you go there but you do you.
TAB = DON'T GO THERE BECAUSE THE CDC SAID IT'S THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF DANGEROUS DON'T GO THERE OMG OMG (but what the CDC really said is like, you can... But maybe just be careful about it".)
I still think this is a nothingburger situation. USA saying don't travel to places with high illness rates is an obvious step. There's no political messaging. There's no ulterior motive. It's just that it takes a million years to get large organisations to coordinate their responses and it'll probably take them at least six months to a year to remove or reduce the recommendation. Not because of some mass conspiracy, but because of bureaucracy.
In the last several weeks my husband and I received 4 Covid home testing kits in the mail free from .gov. This is a great help as they had become hard to get locally. Also it solves the problem of having to go to a clinic for testing and if you did not have Covid before the clinic you do when you visit the clinic, doctors office or hospital due to exposure. If you know you have it quicker you can limit the number of people you expose to it.
The other improvement is that within the last couple weeks when we went to the supermarket they were handing out N95 masks and encouraging people to wear them. N95 masks had not been available for almost 2 years. They were giving each individual 6 masks. We don't wear the masks all the time but it is nice to have a better masks for those times when you do need them. Not sure if that was Federal or State funded program.
Numbers do seem to be be going down now in our area. I have to wonder if during the Easter break everyone will be traveling and if the numbers won't spike again after that though.
We are hoping with better quality masks now available, more at home testing kits available and vaccines that maybe we can finally get ahead of this thing. Maybe not but worth a try.