The Associated Press reported earlier this week on Britain opening its borders to fully vaccinated travelers from the U.S. and the European Union because travel industry leaders urged the government to further ease restrictions. I wonder how many will end up sick or dead because of the lobbying? When will we finally hold them accountable? This pandemic has revealed the naked truth that globalism was only about profit for some.
European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen has called on U.S. President Joe Biden to lift a travel ban on arrivals from Europe’s Schengen zone and the Republic of Ireland. If he does, could Americans contract the delta variant from European tourists and die? The economy! Ahh! The tourism-related industries of Europe are wailing.
Back in June, the commission allowed unvaccinated Americans to travel to Europe but put the final decision in the hands of member states. Have any Europeans contracted the coronavirus on account of these decisions? If left in place, how many more will be at risk in places like Greece, where a resurgence has all but shut sections of the country back down? Russian oligarchs and their German partners, their stock prices are in the toilet, somebody do something! (TUI’s net debt has ballooned to 7.2 billion euros during the pandemic and the company needs to start repayments in 2022.)
Greece’s Tourism Minister Harry Theoharis is crying and moaning about the unfairness of it all. The decision by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) to place the south Aegean islands as dark red on the risk assessment map. The politician seems totally detached from reality and humanity in his unceasing quest to put tourism revenue ahead of the safety of Greeks and visitors.
And the jockeying continues. Instead of pushing really hard to ensure everyone in the world is vaccinated against COVID-19 variants, most of the world’s leaders are, as always, focused on the short term. Revenue, the reboot of tourism, the restart of business as usual have taken precedence over the safety and security of the people of Earth. There is no wiggle room in arguing this.
Using Greece as the prime example, we can see the damage a protracted coronavirus pandemic has created. Instead of developing strategies to keep Greece closed once the first wave of COVID was pushed down, external and internal forces pushed Athens officials to restart everything. In Summer 2020, Greece should have stayed closed, no matter what the economic cost. Strategies for attempting this seem to have never been discussed. And to make matters far worse, the government did nothing to educate the people about the importance of vaccines, once they finally became available.
2020 was a disaster anyhow. The people took the tourism industry reopening as a sign the coast was clear, and the second wave of COVID killed thousands of Greeks. The stringent nationwide lockdown in late 2020 caused thousands of businesses to go bankrupt by Summer 2021. Here in Crete over 150 hotels are now for sale anyhow. Many more people have died. And huge cruise ships stand docked in Heraklion harbor because giant corporations need to stay afloat. Theoharis and his boss Kyriakos Mitsotakis are at fault, for letting business dictate what is safe and what is not for the people of Greece.
Mykonos and other islands were supposed to be fully vaccinated under the evil genius plan “Blue Freedom,” but they were not. In places like Crete we were deprioritized for vaccines so that the touristic islands with smaller populations could get everyone innoculated. This proved to be only theoretical in the end, as Mykonos and other islands proved problematic. Meanwhile, at-risk people in deprioritized sectors died. It’s no a point for conjecture, it happened. And more will get sick and die, because the world’s leaders never, ever had our backs in this catastrophe. The EU, the width and breadth of nations on our planet, cannot even agree on which vaccine is best, or safest, or what kind of vaccination certification is needed to stamp out the spread.
These leaders do share a common goal, however. They have no qualms whatsoever about borrowing trillions from central banks. And the borrowed trillions will be paid back by the same people whose grandparents died helpless, alone, and in misery in ICUs across our world. If I am blunt, which seems so appropriate now, these people fucked up royally, and now we will all pay for their idiocy and malfeasance. 2021 is a tourism catastrophe too, and COVID is still here, lingering, striking us all, and killing the weak in need of our protection.
And the lobbyists? Well. Should the people declare me emperor for a day, there would be a reckoning. TUI, the airlines, the cruise industry, the heartless and soulless banksters with their pasty pale lender complexions, they would pay with everything down to their socks and office furniture. The world would change back, back to a time when Mom and Pop mattered, and when human beings meant more than the return on investment. The aftermath of Phil Butler Emperor of Earth would be a new way, something like Vladimir Putin’s “third way”, I guess. For we cannot go on like this. Isn’t it abundantly clear now?
Travel and tourism have to be expensive. Corporations that operate on massive volume and tiny margins must go. The days of profit-thirsty pirates of business must end. Using the public trust and taxes, or milking average investors to create funds, is folly that favors a few. We screwed up, and royally, ever allowing such a thing as a stock market. The power of greed is now scorching our tiny blue home here in the vast cosmos. James Cameron’s Avatar movie is our reality. The gigantic mechanized machines of the greedy bloodsuckers of Earth are set loose to rampage what’s left of this garden in the heavens of space. We are hurt, abused, and we’ve been run afoul by idiotic bean counters who are when all is said and done, the least capable among us.
I hope I am being clear. I speak for the billions of people catastrophically displaced by a pandemic that should have been tamped out FIRST, and long before the accountants started counting revenue from seasons of despair. God save us from their obtuseness and their stupidity. 13,000 Greeks, 616,000 Americans, 427,000 Indians, 562,000 Brazilians, 161,000 Russians, 112,000 French, 130,000 in the UK, 128,000 in Italy, 122,000 in Columbia, and millions elsewhere are gone because of a virus that could have been halted. One UN meeting. A conference call. A series of SMS messages could have closed Earth down for business – but the messages were never sent.
I hold you all accountable, leaders of Mother Earth. You who failed us all so miserably.