My wife was making Christmas cards last week, and despite our best efforts there is now glitter round the entire house.

That's viruses for you, especially ones like this coronavirus which has a fairly long latency/asymptomatic period. People spread it before they know they're infected. Measures like closing borders *may* slow it a little, but once it's out there it's gonna get everywhere pretty soon, and there are no evolutionary pressures on this to get less dangerous so you can bet it's just going to get more and more infectious, Darwin #101.

The implications on overlanding are pretty clear - as it stands most borders are closed or about to be, whether or not this is an effective infection control measure. The value of vaccination, previously hoped to be the magic bullet, is in question as the virus mutates faster than scientists can roll out the vaccines. Really, it's difficult to see an end point in this (fingers crossed it isn't a doomsday one either, because another version of SARS killed 70% of those it infected). Certainly until medical science has got a handle on control it makes me reluctant to travel - I really don't want a big dose of vaccine-resistant covid out on the road in the middle of nowhere. I suspect travel within Europe will be viable come next spring, outside that into Asia definitely more questionable. As for Africa, it'll take a huge change of direction from vaccine-hoarding western countries before that has the slightest chance of getting on top of the problem.