[romeros]

not 100% sure.. my guess is that they depended upon tourism and it was severely impacted by the pandemic.

For Sri Lanka, the right thing to have been done (in hindsight) is to keep the country open for tourism and disregard covid impact. Kind of like Texas/Florida.

They had to choose between the lesser of the two evils. This is a hard decision to make.

[chii]

> the right thing to have been done (in hindsight) is to keep the country open for tourism and disregard covid impact.

but even if they did, would tourists still be arriving? I suppose if the leaders thought that the human toll is worth keeping the economy alive - but then again, they wouldn't have mandated "organic" farming if they could come to that conclusion.

And in any case, the inflation and war in ukraine raising fuel prices would not have been helped by tourism imho. A double whammy isn't easy to recover or prevent tbh.

[nibbleshifter]

Their healthcare system would not have coped - as things were, it was pretty much at breaking point.

Also, the rest of the world had curbs on travel, which would have made it non viable anyway.