[FRIAM] the end of the pandemic

[Steven A Smith]

Gary -

Thanks for the additional context.   I wonder who else we have here from
significantly non US contexts.   We just heard from Pietro and do hear
from Jochen and the two? Aussies off and on, I'm sure we have lurkers
from many more places (I think Mohammed El-Betagay (Cairo/Stockholm)
left the list a long time ago?) that might provide yet more parallax.  
I'm about to chat with my UK/Spain colleagues for the second time since
Humpty-Dumpty started to slip off his perch.  Their network is quite
wide throughout Europe and the middle East.

> Ok, a little clarification is in order. Quito is about 50 miles away,
> but I'm not allowed to drive there (travel is extremely controlled
> right now). Where I can shop is only about 15 miles away, but I can
> only drive on Fridays, from 5am until 2pm.

That matches my general recollection of your context.   I would hope
that in a country such as Ecuador, that *local* agriculture would be
ramping up (though I realize you are *at the Equator* but also *at
altitude* so not sure how that translates into growing
seasons/contexts.  In any case, the options there *have* to be better
than our short non-freeze growing season and significant drought right
at the beginning of the growing season (mid-may->june).    Eric Smith
mentioned his engagement with local farmers (local to SFe or just
farmers interested in local markets everywhere?) and my own engagement
with a subset of the local sustainable farmers in northern NM suggests
that they will be the next  group of front-line essential (though not so
much at risk as health/emergency) workers.   They may not get
remunerated particularly well, but for the first time in a very long
time, their local market for their produce may be expanding beyond the
elite farmer's markets and expensive restaurants that they had to depend
on in the past.

I didn't realize Ecuador had normalized to US $$ (you have probably
mentioned it before)... it does seem like an incredibly mixed
blessing.    Being a petroleum economy isn't promising if my own
predictions (similar but very different to Dave's?)  unfold.   Bananas
might not fare much better if the destination(s) are first world nations
(US only?) an ocean away (as they must be?).  it seems like trade with
your geographic neighbors (Peru, Brazil, Columbia) don't provide a lot
of opportunity for leverage (they produce similar things and have
similar appetites for consumer goods?).  

I haven't followed Ecuadorian politics closely but a quick check shows
that Moreno is probably getting his low marks due to a combination of
austerity and authoritarianism which it seems he *has to* double down
with during this crisis. 

After my own flirting with moving to a rural part of a third (second?)
world country, my own feeling about such is ambivalent in these
contexts.  If I had managed to get settled, get to know my community,
build some self-reliance (water, power, food), I might feel a lot better
where you are than where I am.   I feel like NM is a bit of an island of
sanity in some ways, having *some of* the benefits of rurality and low
population but with a modestly high index of education and
worldliness.   Mary, whose family-of-origin is in *western* NE and whose
children are in small-cities in TX and the Midwest is getting very
different messages than we experience here.

- Steve