Status update January 2022 – Kenya expedition deferred for another year; hopefully this will be the last deferral of 2022

In the end, the decision made itself, because most citizen scientists were not comfortable with coming on the expedition, despite and perhaps because of stringent hygiene procedures. So we will defer the expedition for another year. The 2023 dates are very likely to be 12 – 24 February | 26 February – 10 March and we will confirm this within the next month or so

Hopefully this will be the last deferral of 2022, before we can run expeditions again. If not, things will get difficult for us again and we will have to start another survival fundraiser to make it through. More than two years of no expeditions have really had an impact, to put it mildly.

On the bright side, the WHO chief thinks 2022 will be the year we beat the pandemic, as does clinical epidemiologist Dr. Rhagib Ali. There are certainly encouraging signs that the virus is moving towards the less virulent, endemic stage, to take its place alongside the flu and other endemic viral diseases.

We certainly think that we cannot let Covid rule our lives forever and that we should develop procedures that allow us to live – and run expeditions – with the virus around, because it will not go away. We tried with this Kenya expedition and failed. May the next try with the Azores, starting at the end of March, be successful!