Marian, your second paragraph brought tears to my eyes and my heart goes out to you.  Here in South Africa, with its strict lockdown, logic defies how one is not allowed to visit their parents (social meetings of all sizes are prohibited) but one is allowed to cram into a mini-bus taxi with ten other people (taxis can be filled to 100% capacity) to attend their funerals along with forty additional people (up to fifty people allowed to attend a funeral).

When I last posted on this thread (four months ago) we were stuck in Gualeguaychu in Argentina and had not yet decided to call it quits and head back to South Africa.  We eventually made it back via a repatriation flight a few weeks later.  At the time, knowing that international borders would remain closed for a long time, we had envisaged that we would spend much of the rest of the year cycle touring around our own country.  Alas, provincial borders remain closed and overnight travel for leisure purposes is still not allowed with one expected to stay in their place of residence between the hours of 9pm and 4am.  AirBnBs and the like are prohibited from accepting guests and hotels may only admit people traveling for business reasons.  Where this leaves homeless people like Leigh and myself is anyone's guess.  Claiming that our tent is our place of residence won't sway any official's opinion and besides, we would have no legal place to pitch it.  Thank goodness a friend in the village in which we used to live is (illegally) renting his garden cottage to us.

In the meantime we are trying to keep fit with a few rides a week.  As soon as restrictions are lifted we will be on our bikes and will leave in the direction of the Karoo "just like a bullet leaves a gun" (© Tom Waits 1999).

"It’s very stressful for families being split by this pandemic. We’ve experienced some of this ourselves. My father-in-law passed away a few weeks ago and I couldn’t go to the funeral because borders are closed and flights had almost completely stopped."

I had three flights back from Thailand cancelled out from under me before I bought a new ticket on a different route and accepted cash compensation on the original. I was still in the mandatory quarantine for arrivals when China closed its borders.

"My wife was held over NZ for four months but has now been able to get back home via two weeks mandatory quarantine in a guarded Sydney hotel. At least we didn’t have to pay for the quarantine. From now on, quarantine will cost quarantinees about $3000!"

I was incredibly lucky to be flagged as a suspected case on arrival in Haikou. As a result, instead of going to in-home isolation for three days and being picked up and taken to the Hotel when Quarantine became mandatory for everyone, I started out at the hospital and had already been released to the Quarantine facility for ~7 hours when mandatory quarantine (and self-pay!) became the standard.

At around USD 75 a day (including food), my two weeks would have been around $1000. Instead, I not only didn't have to pay for anything, because I was a "returning employee" for an enterprise "resuming work and restoring production", I got a $20/day subsidy payment from the Labor Bureau.