Oh irony.
Yesterday, the United States announced that it was raising the Level Four World Health Notice, which had been in position since March 19 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, Americans have very little target selection, as less than 10% of the world’s countries allow access to U.S. citizens with strict restrictions due to the maximum rate of COVID-19 spread in that country.
The State Department has lifted the Global Travel Advisory level four in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and now recommends that citizens “be careful when traveling because of the unpredictable nature of the pandemic.”
Here’s the problem: the CDC fitness recommendation map lately looks like this (below). Practically, the overall total is designated as Level 3, where the coVID-19 threat is also superior everywhere.
But who are we kidding? The appearance of COVID-19 varies widely worldwide. On the CDC map, it appears that the United States and Canada have a similar occurrence of coVID-19 propagation. In fact, the spread of COVID-19 in the United States is ten times greater than in Canada. Who can blame Canada for keeping the Canada-U.S. border closed?
For a more accurate review of COVID-19 hot spots, see the Harvard Global Health Institute threat assessment map (above). From now on, the United States ranks eighth in the world by COVID-19, between Colombia and South Africa.
The Harvard map provides an easy-to-understand COVID-19 threat color code: green, yellow, orange, or red. (You can also move to the U.S. state or county. To see how your home network is doing.) Risk assessment grades are based on the number of new instances consistent with 100,000 inhabitants, based on a weekly cellular average.
With an average of 17.3 new COVID-19 consistent with 100,000 inhabitants, the United States is orange. This indicates that there is an “accelerated propagation”.
By comparison, Canada has only 1.2 new cases, on average, consisting of 100,000 inhabitants. On the Harvard map, Canada is yellow, indicating a controllable point of network propagation.
Last month, the European Union created a list of 15 countries with low infection rates whose citizens can enter Europe freely. Canada was listed, along with Algeria, Australia, China, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay.
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I’m looking for new tactics to travel better, smarter, deeper and cheaper. So I spend a lot of time observing trends at the intersection of travel and technology. As a
I’m looking for new tactics to travel better, smarter, deeper and cheaper. So I spend a lot of time observing trends at the intersection of travel and technology. As a long-time freelance travel writer, I have written many articles for Conde Nast Traveler, CNN Travel, Travel Leisure, Afar, Reader’s Digest, TripSavvy, Parade, NBCNews.com, Good Housekeeping, Parents, Parenting, Esquireweek, Newsweek, The Boston Globe and many other media. Over the years, I have led an authorized circle of family members who make vacation plans on the site; interviewed Michelin-starred cooks, sent captains, taxi drivers and musher dogs; he looked up plenty of places to stay, from majestic windsuits and lighthouses to rustic cabins and kitsch motels; on the iconic Orient Express; bathed in the glory of Machu Picchu; and much more. Follow me on Instagram (@suzannekelleher), Pinterest (@suzannerowankelleher), and Flipboard (@SRKelleher).