Department of State says travel is cool now... if you can find somewhere to go
Good news everybody! After close to five months, the U.S. Department of State has rescinded its "Do Not Travel Advisory". The Level four travel warning, which was pushed out last March, warned Americans to stay the hell within their borders because the rest of the world was waaaaaaay too full of COVID-19 for anyone to risk travelling abroad. Now, it's totally cool with them for folks to leave the United States, if they want to.
From the U.S. Department of State:
On August 6, in close coordination with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of State lifted the Global Level 4 Health Advisory. The Global Advisory, initially put in place on March 19, 2020, advised U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel due to the global impact of COVID-19.
With health and safety conditions improving in some countries and potentially deteriorating in others, the Department is returning to our previous system of country-specific levels of travel advice (with Levels from 1-4 depending on country-specific conditions), in order to give travelers detailed and actionable information to make informed travel decisions. This will also provide U.S. citizens more detailed information about the current status in each country. We continue to recommend U.S. citizens exercise caution when traveling abroad due to the unpredictable nature of the pandemic.
Awesome... provided where you want to wander is on the list of nations interested in seeing Americans within their borders. Right now, the said list is pretty limited. However, many of the locales willing to allow U.S. citizens to meander their lands are absolutely lovely.
As a Canadian, there are currently a ton of options of where I can travel to (not gloating here, it is what it is). Given that a new wave of COVID-19 (or more of the same damn wave, depending on how you look at it) is expected to hit un this fall, despite being a full-time nomad, I'll be staying home, this year. For me, there are too many unanswered questions about whether the health insurance I purchase when I'm travelling overseas will be enough to provide me with the care I need, were I to get sick. There's also the medical capabilities of the nations you're visiting to consider-are there enough beds and ventilators for the country's citizens, let alone foreign travellers? Finally, how in the hell would I get home if the part of the globe I was paying a visit to decided to go back into lockdown?
Even though most of us are itching for a change of scenery, it's likely not the time to wander too far afield, just yet.