Next Pandemic at my place?

15 April 2020. Ao Nang, Thailand.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we are lucky enough to be stuck in southern Thailand, a well-known vacation paradise. Although travel plans have been nipped in the bud, we remain in good spirits and enjoy the privilege of working from our temporary home.

It is, perhaps, not much more than the sentiment of nostalgia that compels me to write at this place. Or the impossibility of travel in times of a pandemic brings back fond memories of traveling, and of this blog we used to keep.

How fragile we are.

I hope you, dear reader, have as much luck as we do, being "stuck" in a lovely little home in Thailand, with the government pardoning the possible overstay on our visas. We have Internet, food, and a better mattress than we had in a long time. We can go around the neighbourhood on our scooter, jog, even go to the beach if we exercise physical distancing. A friend calls this place, with a pardonable sense of sarcasm, "pandemic paradise".

Is there anything charitable we can do? How far can our empathy with the local business owners, wholly dependent on tourist dollars as they are, go? Yes, we buy local and tip generously in the small restaurants, but that doesn't amount to much. I am afraid the powerful, those with the most resources will least suffer from the economical crisis that will dominate the remainder of 2020.

We all hope "the system" will change: that hard and honest work will in most cases lead to well-being. That it becomes impossible to make the world pay for your destruction in the form of externalities while you make a huge profit. That health and happiness become valid arguments in courts and parliaments, without the need of being first reduced to monetary values.

We dare to dream again.

I wish our readers a healthy time, full of reflection. The challenges on the road ahead will require the best of all of us.

Stay safe.