nerdlinger wrote: ↑Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:21 pm It's boggling my mind just how many people here seem to be under the delusion that every other country in the world haven't also put various travel restrictions in place in response to the pandemic.

Half the thread is people criticizing the UK response for being too little too late and the other half is people who've somehow managed to get the idea that the rest of the world is allowing free movement while Britain alone has fallen to the fascists.

I am not under any delusion. I felt the full whack of it over a March weekend last year. I was in Mexico city and the whole of the continent slammed the doors shut over the weekend of the 14th-15th, followed by Canada on the 16th thereby blocking my return here. There was only one route left to one destination that would have me; London via Madrid. Spain in March was red hot with the virus.

The only two countries with zero travel restrictions one month later was...... the UK, and, ironically, Mexico. I could of stayed there!

Mexico is now the only country that you can freely enter, you just fill in a declaration card. It never placed any restrictions on entry.
https://www.iatatravelcentre.com/world.php

The UK is currently in a good position given the mess of another full lockdown last November and no vaccine results published yet. Four months later and things are looking a whole lot brighter. What they should be doing today is the same as what they should of done last January, namely, seal off the borders - completely. If a new variant somehow evades the current vaccine and become the new dominant strain in the UK, we will be back to square one. Better to at least slow it down (it will still get in) until a vaccine can be tweaked and made to combat it. In other words, tourism is dead for 2021, so get over it.

Will they do it? No chance. It's just too draconian and just doesn't sit well with the British psyche and the politicians have always got an eye on the electorate and the possible electoral blowback. The fine people of Cornwall do not want a load of hooligans from east London turning up for their summer holiday and causing chaos. That's what Benidorm is for.

As a result we are going to leave ourselves wide open to the risk of importing a new and improved dangerous virus to which with have no protection yet. Maybe we will get lucky this time and the current vaccine does the job well enough, but if we don't and it all goes pear shaped again, the government will really own this one.