This Years' Most Useless Christmas Gift?

[Jim Cassedy]

I saw these in the "Gift Card Rack" at a local store last week.
AMC_GiftCard.jpg
Given the fact that theaters here in CA are still closed, with no
sign of re-opening any time soon, & with the shaky future of AMC
in general, I nominate these cards as this years' "most most useless
holiday gift". (Or maybe this is part of AMC's plan to raise the $750m
they need- - by selling gift cards nobody can use)

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

In the event of bankruptcy gift cards usually become worthless.

[Leo Enticknap]

Last week I had an email from Delta about how great London is at Christmas time, and why don't I hop on one of their planes and go there?

Were I to splurge and go business class, would that come with a free upgrade to the new mutant coronavirus?

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess they must have planned that marketing action somewhere at the beginning of this year.

I got an e-mail from Marriott that some of my "Bonvoy points" were to expire, but that they would double any of my spent points if I booked NOW as a Christmas special... We're still in lockdown here and practically all hotels in Europe are closed to anything but the most essential travel. So, thanks Marriott, frickin' great!

[Leo Enticknap]

The other ironic aspect of the Delta ad is that most of the people who received it would be legally barred from taking up their plane ticket sale offer. The USA is currently not admitting any arrivals from the UK, apart from its own citizens, permanent residents, and resident visa holders. I've lost track of what the UK is doing. As a dual US and UK citizen I probably could legally travel, but would have to quarantine for two weeks immediately after both legs of the journey. No-one is going to fly between the two nations at the moment, unless their business is so important that they're willing to spend a month "behind bars" in order to get it done. So their planes are likely flying almost empty of passengers and with cargo only, hence this desperate attempt to make a few extra bucks by putting at least a few bums on the passenger seats.

It's going to be a dilemma for the airlines and hotels as to what to do about their loyalty programs. The desire to stem their losses dictates that they let the points expire as they would have done normally; but that will piss off the high spending frequent travelers that those programs are used to try to lock them in to a single airline, car rental or hotel chain, thereby making them less effective when this is all over.

[Marcel Birgelen]

As a dual US and UK citizen I probably could legally travel, but would have to quarantine for two weeks immediately after both legs of the journey.

Due to the mutated coronavirus they've found over there, which is said to be about 70% more infectious, currently all travel to and from the UK has practically been suspended. I know a few legal citizens and UK pass-holders that currently can't return. Right now, even freight isn't allowed into France, making Kent the world's biggest parking lot...

[Leo Enticknap]

The ferry and Chunnel crews go on strike so frequently that they've had enough practice turning Kent into a parking lot!

It seems that there is a lot we don't know about the new strain, the two biggest questions being whether the vaccines being rolled out are effective against it, and if it is actually the emergence of the new strain that is responsible for the surge of cases in the UK, or just lockdown fatigue and the cold weather. It seems that the government put two and two together (cases are surging, a new strain is discovered, therefore the new strain must be causing the surge), without any hard evidence of a causal link. Because the regular "nasal sodomy" test can't distinguish between the different strains (only a very expensive blood sample analysis, for which there is very little testing capacity anywhere in the world, can; not to mention the logistical difficulty of mass testing: anyone can poke a stick up your nose, but taking a blood sample can only be done by a trained professional), that evidence will be very difficult to gather, too.

[Harold Hallikainen]

The prohibition of travel except for citizens is interesting. I suspect a US citizen brought the first cases from China to the US west coast. If ANYONE is allowed to travel, it seems like there should be a required quarantine.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The ferry and Chunnel crews go on strike so frequently that they've had enough practice turning Kent into a parking lot!

The French also staged some "Brexit trials" lately, a bit of a reprisal to give the UK (and the EU) a feel of things to come, once actual hard border-checks are back in place...

The virus has mutated several times now, the virus most people are suffering right now isn't the "original" Wuhan strain from the end of last year. Pfizer/Biontech has announced that first tests indicate that the vaccine is also effective against the new strain, although how much it potentially affects isn't known yet.

The prohibition of travel except for citizens is interesting. I suspect a US citizen brought the first cases from China to the US west coast. If ANYONE is allowed to travel, it seems like there should be a required quarantine.

It wasn't a prohibition except for citizens, it was a general prohibition installed by a bunch of seperate EU countries in this case. Countries with direct connections to the UK, like France and the Netherlands simply stopped ALL traffic (including goods) with the UK, they didn't even allow their own citizens to return, nor did they allow UK citizens to return to the UK. Since today as of midnight Central European Time, the EU has essentially overruled this direct travel ban and traffic is now slowly starting up. Everybody coming from the UK needs to be tested for COVID-19 though, so I don't expect this huge, distributed parking lot of 3000+ lorries that ended up being stranded to dissolve any time soon.

[Leo Enticknap]

It should be possible to test 3,000 truck drivers without horrific delays, especially if priority is given to the project (which, for food chain reasons if nothing else, it should be). Given that they have minimal contact with others in the course of their work, I'd have thought that truck drivers are among the lowest risk essential workers operating. Most of the time they are by themselves in their cabs.

As Marcel points out, this was a ban on transportation vehicles arriving, not on individuals entering based on their citizenship status. For practical, if not legal purposes it amounts to the same thing; though presumably if someone swum across the Channel and arrived on the beach at Calais with their papers in order (and dry!), they would still be admitted.

Discussing the alleged Brexit angle to all this would be getting political, obviously. Suffice as to say that given that the UK government itself pushed the panic button over this new strain, by creating the Tier 4, one can hardly criticize any other nation for taking it equally seriously. We now need hard evidence as to whether or not the new strain is a specific public health threat, to either confirm or refute the play-it-safe assumption that has been made, that this is the reason for the recent surge in cases in the UK.