I keep getting this image of a world that has changed radically, but we have come out of hibernation with the pictures in our minds of the world we knew pre-hibernation. We are victims of the Rip Van Winkle syndrome, waking up in a world that is drastically changed from what you remember. Now, in 2023, many of the ravages of Covid are sinking into the past as fading memories. But if we are expecting the world to be as it was before the nightmare, we are likely to get hit with some reality adjustors.

After a year of being pent up, the Great Release is upon us, and now it seems sudden. Things are opening faster than predicted just a few months ago.

In March 2020, the COVID pandemic submerged us in the exponential growth of new infections and, before we could comprehend what was happening, we were virtually imprisoned, taking shelter to save our lives. We settled in and got used to being confined. Now the release is happening all around us. And it seems to be happening faster than almost anyone expected.

The demand for travel is, unsurprisingly, going through the roof. But to say “it’s complicated” is to vastly understate the circumstances. World travel now is an extremely tangled web. Read the rest of this entry »