BELIZE IS FLU FREE AND WELCOMES TOURISTS

SWINE FLU OUTLOOK IN BELIZE (BELIZE IS FREE OF THE FLU AND WELCOMES TOURISTS THAT HAVE NO COLDS, FEVER, OR SICKNESS ) OUR SALT SEA INSIDE THE BARRIER REEF IS 4 TIMES SALTIER THAN FLORIDA WATER AND CURES ALL AILMENTS. JUST GARGLE AND SWALLOW A BIT IF YOU HAVE A COLD.

The radio talk shows had callers from Corozal this morning, worried about Mexicans entering Belize . Since there are reports of outbreaks in the Yucatan , this concern is not without reason.

In Mexico City the death toll is about 7%, which means 1 person in 14 that comes down with Swine Flu would die. A virus mutates fairly rapidly, so it may get weaker, or even stronger. This at the moment we don’t know? Mexico City has a population of 20 million, so the death toll if nothing is done in a preventative manner could be 1.5 million people. The virus has already got outbreaks in various parts of the USA and even in New York City . Mexico City is being shut down in order to isolate clusters of infected persons and starve the virus of victims.

Gauze masks are the method of prevention most common. It is possible to make virus vaccines, but these are slow to make and since the virus mutates is of questionable performance.

During the SARS virus outbreak some years ago, isolation or quarantine was the method of making the virus die off, from lack of victims. The EBOLA virus for instance was starved for victims more easily, as the method of transmission was by bodily fluids. Quarantine resolved that problem. We do have anti-virals, but these are more for HIV and not for flu virus strains.

One caller this morning to the radio shows in Belize was recommending a strong immune system by eating hot peppers, such as our Jabanero pepper. I myself believe in this therapy and haven’t had any problems with colds or flu for years and I’m 72 years old this year. The medical doctors in the government though, remind us this is not scientifically proved. The reports also from Mexico City are saying that the ones who die are healthy people in their prime, not the little children and old people that normally die from the flu and subsequent pneumonia complications.

The Belize Health Department are meeting with emergency responders today this Monday, to decide on the course of action for what is currently a SWINE FLU FREE country. Flu that is airborne in almost impossible to contain though. Also to be considered are the economic activities and impact, versus the dangers. The SARS virus had a 50% death rate and the 7% death rate of this Swine Flu is not nearly so bad. Little else is known about this swine flu yet. As the world population keeps multiplying exponentially, the war on humans by virus attacks are expected to become more frequent.

China advises that they learned their lessons six years ago. Speed and isolation is of the essence, which slows spread and gives the medical establishment time to identify the virus and come up with solutions. Hong Kong is taking the temperature of EVERY arriving plane passenger, with an ear thermometer. If you have any fever they whisk you to isolation. They have a 1000 bed dormitory for quarantine. It is hermetically sealed, with lower pressure maintained in the dormitory. They say that the General Hospitals were the worst incubators of the flu virus during the last epidemic. The best attack is isolation until the virus runs it's course of two weeks. Followed by washing of hands all day regularly and wearing a mask.

OVERNIGHT TOURISM in Belize, RECOVERING IN APRIL from loss of high season in January.

TOURISM RETURNING TO NORMAL IN WESTERN BELIZE.

December and January were terrible for tourism in Western Belize, with all the negative panic publicity from BUSH and OBAMA at the changeover of USA administrations. Due to Banks that gambled with derivatives and lost in the TRILLIONS. Other investment banks that collapsed with their PONZI pyramid schemes and Hedge Funds that went belly up, a tradition in a BEAR MARKET everytime. Hedge funds only work a little bit in BULL markets. Most of the time, they are a scam sold to the gullible for brokers commissions. We lost in Western Belize our six week high season of last half of December and all of January, in which most tourist places make the most money, equal to the rest of the year put together. February, a trickle of travelers for overnight trips started. By March things were doubling. Now it is April and reports out in the TWIN TOWNS indicate that tourism is back to normal, equal to the statistical performance of past years. We can breathe a sigh of relief over that.

Western Belize Tourism, starting to slowly pick up.

Now the hysteria in the USA and some of Europe is dying down over their swindles and gambling with banking credit swaps and other examples of criminality and greed in their major financial banking circles, tourism seems to be picking up a bit around Cayo Western Belize.
Things haven't got back to normal yet, but there is a small trickle flow that seems to be slowly increasing here in March, after the dead months of December and January, during the height of the television media talk shows of self serving PANIC they have been spreading among their own countrymen.

BELIZE LOW BUDGET TOURIST STUDY REVELATIONS

A study of low budget visitors, using cabins, rooms and hostels in Belize, reveal that 80% of the tourist travelers staying overnight in both Guatemala and the country of Belize are European girls in their mid-twenties.
This has implications for advertising purposes by the Belize Tourist Board in our country of Belize, as we can focus advertising on this niche tourist group. It also has implications as to the types of facilities, the décor and services that should be applicable for the private sector

WEATHER PATTERNS AND RAINY SEASONS OF BELIZE

RAINY SEASONS AND WEATHER PATTERNS OF BELIZE

By Ray Auxillou

Belize has two rainy seasons, which are September and October and also December and January. Belize also has a dry season, our summer which is April and May. May, being the hottest month of the year.

Right now we are getting a lot of October rain. The two rainiest months are October and January.

Planting usually is encouraged for natural tropical crops, done in the two rainy seasons. We do get lots of isolated showers most of the year and we could describe the weather as being ETERNAL SPRING. Though from April through August, the weather is the warmest time, with April and May being the hottest DRY SEASON.

For vegetables, the temperate zone seeds must be planted between September and February. The summer months require more summer, or tropical type vegetable seed varieties. The difference is mostly to do with the biological genetic triggering mechanism. Summer vegetable seeds have a very minute short space between their requirements for day temperatures and night temperatures. Otherwise vegetables that are for the wrong season, which means the period when there is a marked increase between day and night temperature for the winter crops, will spiral out of control, if planted and grown during the summer season. There is another problem in that seeds from Northern latitudes have a different biological day time exposure. Usually around 18 hours, whereas in the tropics, the day time exposure is timed biologically to about 12 hours.

The weather during the FALL rainy season is based both on the Hurricane season, when passing hurricanes can drop lots of rain, or local convection. Local convection is caused by the tilt of the EARTH as it wobbles and the tropic zone is readjusting, finding a new latitude, either side of the equator. The place of greatest centrifugal force, while the planet spins. The shifting of the Gulf Stream, a warm river of water in the Atlantic Ocean passing through the Caribbean Sea, moves it’s course early in the Spring/ Summer season toward Belize and retreats Eastward during the FALL season. Water temperature differences, combined with the centrifugal force of the spinning planet, create pathways through the atmosphere for the transfer of heat and cold between the Artic and tropical equator.

Natural plants have evolved to fit their needs to the rainy seasons primarily and somewhat along the difference between night and day time temperatures. Some tend to blend between seasons and can ripen and bear outside the parameters of the major rains. There is little difference between the day and night temperatures from March through August. The temperature stays fairly constant and does not shift enough at night, to turn off the biological growing switch. They require different imported summer seed varieties for farmers to work. Plants that have other means of turning off the day and night growing systems, or a very hair trigger switch to distinguish when they should metabolize the sugars they produce through photosynthesis.

The controlling factors for planting crops are the supply of water. Either you gear to the natural rainy seasons and grow two crops a year, or you regulate your water supply mechanically and plant all year around. The next determining factor will be the seed variety chosen by the biological mechanism dependent on the temperature range of tolerance, between the day and night temperatures. There has to be a biological temperature thermostat switch inside the seed, to tell the plant when to stop feeding for 12 hours. Most winter varieties of seeds require a marked difference between day and night temperatures. Otherwise the biological triggering mechanism will turn them on, and they spiral into non-stop growing, 24 hours a day.

The FALL rainy season of September and October are usually local convection. As the Gulf Stream retreats Eastward from the coast of Belize and the Great Barrier Reef , the water temperature changes slightly. Temperature differences between the sea and the land, create a rainy season based on local convection patterns. Huricanes coming in from the Atlantic and Africa also bring rain from along the equatorial belt of the Atlantic ocean . The rainy season found for December and January is different. The planet Earth has tilted to maximum tilt in the wobble as it spins and the transfer of cold temperatures of the artic to the tropical zones starts to occur. In Belize , we get what are called Northern Fronts, coming from Alaska and the Baring Sea . These fronts move south as the FALL/WINTER season progress and the earth stops the wobble, while spinning and reverses, to tilt the other way. Northern Fronts usually stall out around Nicaragua . They have enough force to go as far as the Southern USA in August and September, but by October these cold fronts are reaching into Central Mexico and even Belize . By late December and all through January, these cold fronts move down to Nicaragua . They are accompanied by a wide belt of rain, roughly 70 miles wide, which can take a few hours to pass over Belize and followed by dry clear and very cold weather. Temperatures in Belize can drop to the mid 60 degrees farenheight during this month and sweaters and jackets come out for the population. Northers as they are locally called, last anywhere from three days to ten days at a time. Heat transfer for the planet occurs in the late summer/FALL months in our Northern hemisphere from the Caribbean to the Artic, in the form of hurricanes. This heat transfer reverses in December/January from the Arctic Ocean to the equatorial Caribbean belt in the tropics, by cold Northern Frontal weather waves.

Maximum temperature daytime differences in Belize occur in January, the coldest month, and May the hottest temperatures. Usually the lowest temperature is around 64 degrees farenheight and the highest temperatures can occur in May over a hundred, with many days of ninety degrees. These May high temperatures play havoc with the farmer growing vegetables. They also effect seed germination, as seeds germinate around sixty eight degrees farenheight and performance falls off, as you go outside the needed temperature range. Most seeds will not germinate over 80 degrees farenheight.

WESTERN BELIZE HAPPENINGS - Antonio the mason.

Antonio here is our mason. We have an arrangement. He works when he wants during the week, but we limit him to three days, day pay. Some weeks he doesn't show up, other weeks he gives us one or two days and the 8 hour workday turns out to be more like 6 1/2 hours. But he is honest and does decent work. The arrangment is mutually beneficial and we have been building our small hotel for years now ( about 7 years ) this way, as the budget can afford it per month. Antonio is one of the handsome batchelors of HILLVIEW in the Cayo District where we are located. He walks home for lunch and has a bit of corn planted on two acres of land for his mother. Don't know what else he does? I kinda think he is a friend also. He is a whiz on computers, go figure that?