Some people have taken COVID mania pretty far. Still others have taken it really far. Some have taken it beyond the boundaries of known weirdness.
And then there's...Kiribati:
When the coronavirus began spreading around the world, the remote Pacific archipelago of Kiribati closed its borders, ensuring the disease didn't reach its shores for nearly two full years.
Kiribati finally began reopening this month, allowing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to charter a plane to bring home 54 of the island nation's citizens. Many of those aboard were missionaries who had left Kiribati before the border closure to spread the faith abroad for what is commonly known as the Mormon church.
Officials tested each returning passenger three times in nearby Fiji, required that they be vaccinated, and put them in quarantine with additional testing when they arrived home.
Oh, but you see where this is going, don't you?
Yep:
It wasn't enough.
More than half the passengers tested positive for the virus, which has now slipped out into the community and prompted the government to declare a state of disaster. An initial 36 positive cases from the flight had ballooned to 181 cases by Friday.
Yeah, that's...generally how it shakes out, right?
Now the good people of Kirbati is trying some viral mitigation tactics that might sound familiar to some of our readers:
Kiribati has now opened multiple quarantine sites, declared a curfew and imposed lockdowns. President Taneti Maamau said on social media that the government is using all its resources to manage the situation, and urged people to get vaccinated.
Bless their hearts.
Well, I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually.
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