Stop bickering and get jabbing

The front pages (and beyond) of ITIJ this month contain many positive articles that focus on how our industry is going to emerge from this nasty little pandemic that’s been bothering us for the last year.

Let’s face it. For us in the international travel and healthcare community, if there’s no travel, there’s no work, and there’s been precious little of that for the last 12 months. And it’s not only in healthcare; there’s a huge raft of the world economy that depends on travel, whether for work or leisure.

It’s fairly clear then, that in the immediate future, vaccination is the way to get the world moving. But it’s no good just having your own country and civilians vaccinated. International travel will only be really facilitated when the fear of travel, and catching and importing the virus, is negated.

Which is why, for us at ITIJ, it’s so frustrating (and pathetic) to see our political masters bickering and point scoring over supplies of vaccines and their (politically) perceived (and incorrect) inadequacies. Negative publicity surrounding perceived ineffectiveness or even dangers posed by vaccines, espoused by politicians who should know better, has done huge damage to the rollout of vaccines across the globe. Hoarding of vaccines also does no-one any favours.

So, we here at ITIJ would make a plea to all politicians around the world. Sort your act out, please. This thing is bigger than political point scoring.

Why does the behaviour in a school playground come to mind? But then, that would be insulting the kids in the playground.

We can but hope that common sense will prevail.

But then again, it’s politics….