Sunday, June 20, 2021

European Speaking Trip: The UK Problem


As I recently mentioned, I would like to travel in Europe this summer and give talks, having interrupted such a trip last March because of the pandemic. I usually start my trips in London, both because there are convenient flights to there and because I can usually arrange for two or three talks in the UK. Also, London has some of my favorite museums.

At the moment, however, an American traveling to the UK must, among other things, spend several days in quarantine, which I am reluctant to do, and the current lockdown rules make a talk undoable, at least indoors. I had been hoping that would change in time for a mid-July talk, one of my invitations being to Georgia for an event happening then. So far, however, the travel restrictions seem to be staying on and the increasing infection rate in the UK makes the lockdown likely to continue. One possibility would be to skip the UK, but it probably makes more sense to plan on a later trip. I note that Georgia currently has much higher infection rates and Covid death rates than the other countries I plan to visit.

Comments welcome, especially from anyone better informed than I am about the present and likely future situation in the UK.

1 comment:

heiner said...

Hard to say if the US will become a "green" country by then, the process isn't very transparent. Entering the UK from an amber county means having to pay for and do a number of Covid tests with the option of "early" release after day 5 (0 indexed). Self-isolation is "enforced" by daily phone calls; occasionally one hears of in-person checkups but the probability for that is low; fines appear to be in the order of £1000.

I guess it depends a bit on what kind of anarchist you really are? :)