Why is India having a Covid-19 surge?
At some point people really have to stop trying to guess what is going on in real-time and adopt a more patient, evidence based approach. India is huge, the healthcare system is said to be collapsing and most of them don&#x27;t speak English. We aren&#x27;t going to get coherent reporting in the English press for a few months.<p>On the other hand, if we&#x27;re worried about variants then I hope there are some hard conversations happening about what the strategy here is. Part of what went wrong at the start of COVID around March 2020 was the reactive approach waiting for hard proof that the disease would slip through the borders before cancelling flights. This approach runs a risk that any action will be taken too late.<p>To be honest, I&#x27;m confused by the amount of air travel that is still going on. If locking down large swathes of most countries is on the cards, why is there any air travel happening? Why was there a high profile diplomatic visit to India being planned? Are the benefits from all these plane trips really outweighing the costs? We may as well be trying to evolve COVID to sneak past quarantines.<p>How is it acceptable to scuttle the economy in response to COVID, why are there still plane flights 12 months in to the pandemic? Someone fill me in on what I&#x27;ve missed; this seems to be not taking the situation seriously. Are these variants not going to be travelling between countries by plane and ship?