Posted on 04/02/2020 4:48:30 AM PDT by Travis McGee
Please watch this 5 minute video of current clips from Guayaquil, Ecuador, population 2 million. This is what the Coronavirus pandemic looks like with no mitigation. People with very basic masks handling corpses, people dropping in the street, bodies being burned on the street because people are afraid to touch them. Piles of bodybags and buzzards circling.
That’s likely right about the buzzards circling on thermals.
But it sure won’t do much for local moral if it’s near their main hospital.
In Panama, they were often over Ancon hill. Gorgas (formerly Army) Hospital is located on Ancon hill. Great views...
I remember they had a HUGE national flag there.
Probably not many expats at hot sea level Guayaquil.
Following the Panama / Costa Rica model, most gringo ex-pats like to build at higher/cooler elevations with a lot more “social distance.”
I would have homesteaded in Panama if it had been allowed by treaty.
But, I likely would never have got the job, except for the treaty.
Great place, nice to be treated as a friendly foreign aristocrat..
Reliably corrupt countries can be wonderful if you are in the moneyed class. In Panama, almost all Americans were in the moneyed class...
You're right. Quito is much more popular but it's still in the same country with the same collapsed medical system. When I was looking their PM was an American trained economist who at least understood the value of bringing dollars into the country but the natives were starting to resent them even before me moved in 2016. I don't know if they kept coming or took the hint that they were no longer wanted and moved elsewhere.
Saw a buzzard overhead this morning, eleven hours from NY city.
Yikes.
Because of T.R. and the canal, Panama got a huge jump on its neighbors in terms of modernized infrastructure. Like, many decades ahead.
I highly recommend this book:
“The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914” by David McCullough.
One of the best non-fiction books I have read in my life, out of thousands.
https://www.amazon.com/Path-Between-Seas-Creation-1870-1914-ebook/dp/B002FK3U4Q
I have taken boats through the canal both before and after the turn over, and I have a very favorable impression.
Sounds right to me. Personally, I’d choose Panama or Costa Rica.
Now, I must, on your recommendation.
Here is one for you:
The Sack of Panama, by Peter Earl.
One of the best history books I have ever read.
https://www.amazon.com/Sack-Panama-Peter-Earle/dp/0670614254
Used copies available for a few dollars.
Reads like one of your adventure thrillers.
Sounds great, thanks!
Our crew all read TPBTS on the voyage from San Diego to Panama, it really prepared us to understand the country.
Many thanks for posting this.
I have a special feeling for Ecuador because I used to help support a little girl there through a program called Foster Child or something like that. If you sent a separate gift, the money went straight to the family, and when I did I was told that it went to buy a sewing machine for the mother so she could have some income and a bed for the “foster child,” who had been sleeping on the floor.
I am breaking the rule about not telling when you give because I wanted to relate the poverty. This was in the suburbs of Guayaquil, which are poorer than the inner city.
The letters that came to me from the father were so beautiful, both in handwriting and in politeness and gratitude. I remember them so well. The point in that video where one person remains a little longer at the coffin as the others move away was heartbreaking.
I seem to recall this was one of the locals that was featured on HGTV’s House Hunters International as a place expats were moving because it was the least expensive ocean front property in the western hemisphere.
Did they put all 98 in this video?
Anyway, the pandemic is bad enough. Best to convince people with real facts and figures.
Do you think “Worldometer” is accurate and updated to the day for every nation on earth?
Do you also believe the “official” (LOL) Chinese and Iranian numbers posted on “Worldometer?”
Outside of Communist China and Iran, where frank and honest reporters seem to disappear, in the free world I tend to believe multiple local TV news reports over “Worldometer.”
And you can always google Guayaquil and judge for yourself from dozens of current news reports.
Not so cheap now.
It is heartbreaking. They are our fellow human beings, and this tragedy is so global in scale that the Mercy is in Los Angeles, and we have little or nothing left for the desperate 3rd world.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.