CDC advises Americans not to travel for Thanksgiving

https://www.axios.com/cdc-thanksgiving-travel-coronavirus-spread-48170cf3-8121-4bb5-bd37-2ddb507cdb55.html

by hhs • 6 years ago

189 171 6 years ago

axios.com

jeffbee4• 6 years ago

Close the airports.

Maarten88• 6 years ago

No, head of CDC fired in 3, 2, 1, ..

_Microft• 6 years ago

It would not surprise me. Someone on german TV called Trump's behaviour a "retaliation campaign against the country that did not want to elect him again" and it really feels like it.

https://www.tagesschau.de/kommentar/trump-letzte-monate-101....

kemiller20022• 6 years ago

(Not sarcastically), I would really love to know how much this would help. I read a statistic once that the majority of people live within 8 miles of where they were born. If that's true, then although there are is a lot travel in airports during Thanksgiving, a large portion of the people would be unhindered by this.

codyb• 6 years ago

Is that statistic of 8 miles for the US or worldwide? I'd have to imagine countries with large populations of very poor residents would have a much different stat for that compared to the United States.

KingMachiavelli2• 6 years ago

If you live that close then you probably already see family semi-often so 'traveling' for Thanksgiving makes little difference. So the probability that you/one group doesn't have the virus and the other hasn't is already low since both groups live in the same region and would have already transmitted it to each other.

If you live far enough that you have to fly then you most likely have a completely separate social sphere where you live plus traveling by plane means being close to 100s of complete strangers. So the chance that one person/group is coming from a region with an outbreak to a non-outbreak region is higher and the risk of catching it during travel is higher.

It's just like ring security theory. Level 2 > Level 1 vs Level 3 -> Level 1.

vharuck• 6 years ago

While it's hard to predict the number of people who will travel outside their communities, I'd say the packed highways, airports, and buses during past holiday seasons mean that number's pretty high.

spijdar• 6 years ago

Really? I'm currently out of the country on a special visa which expires at the end of the month. I'm traveling for family/health reasons that couldn't wait, not for leisure or holiday. If the US forcibly closed the airports I'd be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

bitxbitxbitcoin• 6 years ago

While that would certainly dent holiday travel, it wouldn't nearly be enough. The type of family gatherings being discussed here could happen just via driving. Even a more extreme mandate of "Close all state borders" wouldn't stop a student in their state college to drive a few hours back home for the holidays.

Looking at pre-Covid numbers from 2019, driving accounts (~55m) for more travel than flying (~36m) during the Thanksgiving period.[1][2]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/thanksgiving-travel-2019-... [2] https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/thanksgiving-travel-forecast/#:...

jeffbee4• 6 years ago

University students are pretty much obligated to go home for the holidays. My niece attends a state university where all the undergrad housing is closed as of now and through the end of the year. Final exams are happening remotely.

lhorie4• 6 years ago

Remember when the outbreak just started and China aggressively closed off all travel (including by road) to/from Wuhan (and this was all going on near the Chinese New Year). It's a somewhat similar situation now in the US with a holiday that historically involved travel and large family gatherings, but I'm afraid that many government leaders have downplayed covid for so long that it'll be hard to get any compliance at this point, especially in the worst hit areas, which at some places are in full-blown collective denial.

dylan6042• 6 years ago

You don't need compliance from the populace if you close the airports. Preventing them from driving is an entirely different proposition, but most people would not be able to make the drive due to time and distances involved. So closing the airports would probably be pretty effective, if you also shut down trains. The airlines would hate it, but the car rental places would see a boost.

cpursley• 6 years ago

We should also lock people in their homes. Except the technocrats and politicians, they get a free movement pass.

https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/11/18/...

matthewmacleod• 6 years ago

I think this issue has been so downplayed and politicised in the US that such a move is now essentially unthinkable.

You can see that in some of the rather predictable responses you've received. Of course, I don't think you literally mean "close all airports" – rather, a move to temporarily ban nonessential long-distance travel, which is a pretty normal tool that you'd expect to use to tackle a pandemic.

I'm in England just now—hardly the poster child for excessive restrictions–and pretty extensive limitations apply for the next two weeks for travel and gathering. This isn't anything that anybody particularly wants, but it definitely feels that the country has collectively shat itself to a lesser extent.

eminence322• 6 years ago

I've seen lots of sites[1] that show the risk at someone will end up being covid-positive during a large gathering (like Thanksgiving). This data is, as far as I can tell based on an estimate of how many people in a given population are likely to have an infection.

Does anyone know of any sites/data that offer the same risk analysis, but can take into account people who receive negative covid tests? For example, how would you estimate the risk of a 15 person Thanksgiving gathering if all 15 people receive negative covid tests prior to gathering?

[1] https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/

brewdad3• 6 years ago

Considering the White House has been doing daily COVID tests long before Trump caught it and has still had multiple large spread events, I'd say it doesn't tell you much.

If you could all get tested a week before, isolate completely for the next 7 days, and continue to test negative the day before or day of, then you can be confident.

Otherwise, with the 5-7 lag where you can be infected and spreading the disease while still testing negative and having no symptoms, a single test isn't a guarantee. Depends on your group's specific risk factors.

lacker2• 6 years ago

I mean, it’s a little better because the danger window is 7 days instead of 14 days. A back of the envelope estimate would be that 2X people with clear coronavirus tests have equivalent risk of someone having coronavirus as X people who have had no testing.

mixmastamyk2• 6 years ago

WH folks were traveling all over the country for election events.

usrusr2• 6 years ago

What's the point of sandwiching the 7 days between tests? Wouldn't 7 days isolation, then test be just as good? The only scenario (ignoring actual technical false negatives) where you'd get positive on the first, negative on the second would be a very late stage where infectivity was mostly over already at the time of the first test.

matsemann2• 6 years ago

Are tests so easily available now that they can be "wasted" on people just using them for convenience, instead of reserving the testing capacity for better use?

The test may anyway be worthless if you take it and then anyways have been exposed during a flight or so.

lacker2• 6 years ago

Yes. Near me at least in Oakland CA there are several providers that offer no-appointment, no-referral covid testing.

sethhochberg• 6 years ago

NYC and NY State are running TV ads reminding everyone to get tested often, because you can be contagious and asymptomatic and frequent testing helps detect that earlier.

I'm sure there is regional variability... but in at least some places, it seems like tests are indeed plentiful.

If I had to guess, the regions that have decided to handle the pandemic by largely doing nothing different than normal don't have great availability, but probably more for political reasons than logistical ones.

renewiltord4• 6 years ago

Depends on the region. Urban California, for instance, has high testing capacity. I get tested here in SF pretty often and any time I'll be hanging out with people.

Rural and semi-urban areas like SLO etc. are quite strapped on the other hand.

EDIT: See below, my info was out of date by a week. I would hypothesize it's everyone who wants to be tested for the holidays.

akiselev2• 6 years ago

In San Diego, a family member and several friends working for various biotech companies and research institutes get tested weekly. However, those that don't have physical experiments to tend to are WFH and not receiving the test AFAIK. It's also easily available as a drive through test at every pharmacy I've seen throughout Southern California.

timr• 6 years ago

There's no one way to estimate it, so any such tool is just going to turn into a reflection of the assumptions used to create it.

Setting aside the probability that someone could be asymptomatic and contagious after a negative test (which actually seems to be fairly low), you'd need to know the false-negative characteristics of the different tests that were used. Unfortunately, people seem to be far more concerned with the former risk than the latter -- they assume that their tests are infallible (wrong), but that the risk of asymptomatic transmission is relatively high (also wrong).

eminence322• 6 years ago

you'd need to know the false-negative characteristics of the different tests that were used

Good point about this. Do we have enough data to compute this? my layman's guess is that if someone is asymptomatic and receives a negative test, they're not likely to follow it up with another test (which would be one way to learn the first test was a false-negative). But maybe there are other clever ways at getting at the false-negative rate for each type of test.

im3w1l• 6 years ago

I think it's not just about the "first-order "risk of infection itself. It's also the fact that a disease is a graph phenomenon, and gatherings will connect parts of the graph that are normally separate. This means that infections will lead to more than average amounts of secondary, tertiary infections.

But on the other hand this may not matter as much anymore since we are in a late stage of the epidemic, and the disease is everywhere already.

Also I don't mean to dissuade anyone from attending with this.

sjg0072• 6 years ago

You can do the math, take the GA Tech prevalence data and combine it with the false negative rate (has covid, tests negative).

If you want to go further, consider the time you will spend together in an indoor environment mask-less. I think there are some estimates of indoor transmission probabilities per time of exposure to a positive case.

Bear in mind the average 5-8 day incubation period so even if you test the day before you are still almost a week behind in exposures.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/20/covid-19-test-accuracy-s...

chadash2• 6 years ago

Very hard to estimate false negative rate for a group given that the false negative rate itself is fluctuates considerably based on when you get the test. False negatives are very high the day before symptoms and go down dramatically at the third day after symptoms (which is the best day to get tested).

itronitron• 6 years ago

You may also want to consider at this point that social gatherings of people do not represent a random sample of the population but are instead self-selecting for higher exposure to covid.

brundolf3• 6 years ago

We're planning on skipping Thanksgiving, but for Christmas my parents, my sister, and I are all going to quarantine very strictly (separately) for 2-3 weeks beforehand and then get together. We may also get tested at some point, and none of us will have to travel by plane. I'm hoping that with the precautions and the small-ish group it will be safe enough.

dont__panic2• 6 years ago

That's very similar to my plans for the entire holiday season -- I live across the country from my family, so my girlfriend and I (who work remotely) are just driving quite a few hours and staying with family for the entire Thanksgiving -> Christmas season. We've been quarantining at home for over two weeks now, so as long as we're highly cautious on the drive when we have to stop at gas stations I think it'll be OK.

As long as you can avoid risky situations the rest of the time, there shouldn't be a problem doing the holidays with family. The trouble is that even going to the grocery store counts as "risky" in my book, so you need to plan well in advance.

brundolf3• 6 years ago

Maybe the situation varies greatly in different areas, but we haven't been to the grocery store since March. We order deliveries from the regional chain and they can generally be scheduled just a few days out from when you order

zerkten2• 6 years ago

That seems like a good approach. Andy Slavitt's podcast had really good coverage of this recently: https://www.lemonadamedia.com/podcast/toolkit-how-to-stay-sa....

pbronez2• 6 years ago

Yeah, that's where my family landed. 2 week strict quarantine for everyone, then you can get a little slice of normal.

brundolf3• 6 years ago

It will honestly be the best Christmas present I could have asked for

symlinkk• 6 years ago

Kinda late, most people have booked flights and made plans by now.

brewdad3• 6 years ago

All of the major airlines are offering full credits for money spent on flights. In some cases, "non-refundable" tickets are actually fully refundable in cash.

People cancel "plans" all the time.

dylan6042• 6 years ago

I would think it could be argued that a pandemic is not of one's own choices for the cancelation, and much more aligned with act of god reasons for canceling.

mattnewton• 6 years ago

Anecdotally, covid tests in the bay area seem to be all booked up until Thanksgiving, with walk ins being very busy. I hope all those tested people are only traveling to each other though; it won't help them much if they fly with untested folks to gather with untested people.

ghaff2• 6 years ago

In Massachusetts, according to an article in the Boston Globe, at least some MA test centers are getting backlogged because of people getting tested prior to traveling for Thanksgiving. (Which the governor has asked people not to do but not much he can do besides saying people are required to quarantine when they return.)

_nothing2• 6 years ago

I feel like anyone who would actually care enough to heed this was already planning not to travel for Thanksgiving, but I suppose it would at least give _some_ support to their case when other relatives complain about them not attending/hosting Thanksgiving this year (whether or not it satisfies those relatives).

One would think the fact that cases in the US are rising faster than they ever have would be deterrent enough.

ISL• 6 years ago

I know people who are on the fence. Such a guideline may well change their mind.

giarc2• 6 years ago

I wonder if there would be any implications for travel insurance? I know you aren't covered if you travel to a country against the advice of your country (ie. travel to a place with ongoing war or conflict), would that extend to travelling within your own country against the advice of CDC?

Zenst4• 6 years ago

Excellent point, many insurance covers would have certain criteria and CDC announcements would certainly qualify in many instances. Though might be case that advisories are less credible than an announcement/alert. They advise people use sunscreen to reduce skin cancer and yet if you get skin cancer the insurance company don't get out of cover as you missed using sunscreen one day. So from that analogy perspective, I'm wondering if an advisory is enough to help some policies insurance wise.

astura• 6 years ago

I'd imagine it depends on the specifics of the policy you bought.

tobyjsullivan• 6 years ago

I see where you’re coming from with that. Especially if someone has already booked flights that may be non-refundable, they are likely to go anyway.

But people feel intense pressure to follow the norm. In the absence of clear messaging from some third-party authority, that norm is generally “what we’ve always done.”

Messaging like this can change the perceived norm to “it’s okay to stay home this year.”

zerkten2• 6 years ago

Especially if someone has already booked flights that may be non-refundable, they are likely to go anyway.

With the pandemic I completely stopped following the details of the aviation and airline industries (a combo of not flying and impact to my family working there.) In normal times, many tickets would be changeable with a hefty change fee. Has the industry switched to even more restrictive "use it or lose it" fares?

_nothing2• 6 years ago

That's a good point, and I hope this is the case. It just seems that, as with many things these days, people I've encountered are so set in their opinions that contrary messages from anyone, even (or especially) an authority, wouldn't change anything for them. But I hope you're right.

chadash2• 6 years ago

Especially if someone has already booked flights that may be non-refundable, they are likely to go anyway.

Pretty much every airline is offering credits for future travel, at the very least. I doubt too many people are in this position.

munificent3• 6 years ago

Especially if someone has already booked flights that may be non-refundable

At least when the lockdown first kicked in during the spring, my impression is that most airlines let you cancel your tickets for a full-price credit that you could use later. That's what happened when I cancelled my "non-refundable" spring break tickets.

I got an email from Alaska Airlines recently saying essentially the same thing. They'd rather let people cancel in return for a credit than have people simply not book at all out of fear of needing to cancel. Hell, they'd be happy to take your money now for a plane ticket in the future. It's basically a loan to help them weather the pandemic.

stjohnswarts4• 6 years ago

The messaging from medical experts has been about 99% on point. Those individuals who choose to listen to a certain lying-through-his-teeth-to-the-point-being-considered-the-norm commander-in-chief instead are the ones who are mostly doing these sorts of dangerous activities. It is really hard to have any sympathy for them. I have more sympathy for my wallet which ultimately pays the taxes that will be used by the government to fix the economy that would be a lot healthier if people listened to experts.

rootusrootus• 6 years ago

We were on the fence. Up until recently our local area has been only lightly affected by covid. It wasn't the decree from the governor that made us decide not to go, however, it was the big surge in cases. No need to be part of that mess, thanksgiving will still be here next year. And this year we're going to use a Zoom call to get everyone together while we eat :)

bsder3• 6 years ago

but I suppose it would at least give _some_ support to their case when other relatives complain about them not attending/hosting Thanksgiving this year (whether or not it satisfies those relatives).

Messaging is important. It irritates me to no end that newscasters aren't wearing masks--for example. There are a lot of people who are "Oh, the lady on TV is wearing a mask--so I guess it's bad enough that I should, too."

yabones2• 6 years ago

When cases were down this summer (Ontario, Canada) I briefly considered having an outdoor 'x-mas in august' for the family. Seeing the trajectory we're on now, really regretting not doing that.

edoceo• 6 years ago

It's the year for hindsight

lhorie4• 6 years ago

Seeing the trajectory we're on now, really regretting not doing that.

Props to you for helping maintain social distancing.

I noticed people stopped wearing masks outside and started doing more gatherings around Toronto right about the time cases started going up again. Coincidence? I don't think so...

yabones2• 6 years ago

We're just outside the 'sphere of influence' of Toronto, and I can really see the diligence going down and the cases going up. Our area wasn't hit very hard in May, maxing out at just over 1:4000. Now it's getting cold, the college kids are back in town, and we seem to have forgotten about the very real threat. Last week we broke our city's record for cases every day, 5 days in a row.

h2odragon• 6 years ago

Seen several families have their big, invite friends and family type dinners early, last week and this week.

qntty• 6 years ago

Seems kind of silly to tell people who have been working at customer facing jobs this entire time that 8 hours at work is ok, but a few hours at dinner isn't. It's even more silly to blame working people for being unwilling to accept this contradiction rather than the government for being unwilling to pay people to stay home.

giarc2• 6 years ago

Depending on where you live or work, you might be wearing a mask and other PPE during your working hours. You wouldn't be wearing a mask or PPE during dinner (and likely any other time during the visit).

jmckib• 6 years ago

In addition to that, Thanksgiving often requires traveling to another area (which is what the headline is specifically about). You also don't need to attend Thanksgiving, but you do need to work. We are probably going to have vaccines for everyone by summer or possibly as early as April, with those who are at risk getting vaccinated by next month. It would be extra unfortunate to die right now when a vaccine is right around the bend.

lhorie4• 6 years ago

In addition to mask mandates, I've also seen copious amounts of hand sanitizers at store entrances, 6ft floor stickers and large plastic shields at checkout stations, and even thermometer checks in some store entrances.

vmception• 6 years ago

It's more about the communal traveling, or even isolated traveling, and mixing diagnosis from different areas, exacerbating local transmission.

Not silly at all.

rixrax• 6 years ago

Exactly this. It’s one thing for local people to spread it from one to the other. But now you have a country wide super spreader event where you mix people from all over - either spreading virus to their relatives and their communities when visiting somewhere, or taking it back to their own communities after the thanksgiving. Just in time to do it all over again during Xmas, and then New Years.

jczhang• 6 years ago

Not a comparable situation because you are now potentially spreading it to people in your family whom you have not seen since.

reb• 6 years ago

Aren't people stuck working out in public exactly the people who should think carefully about passing that risk on to others in their extended family?

It's a horrible position to be in, but I don't think it's silly.

sp332• 6 years ago

Spending a small amount of time around an infected person where you're both wearing masks is much less likely to spread the disease than sharing an enclosed space for an extended period of time with no masks.

Edit: source https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7362827/

core-questions• 6 years ago

the government for being unwilling to pay people to stay home

The difficulty here is that there are some truly essential services, and there are some businesses that will die if not attended to, and we can't simply just let that all fall apart or people will starve. The government does actually have to grapple with questions like that, and even the best government will necessarily accept medical deaths to prevent a larger number of starvation deaths in the short term, or mass poverty in the long term.

The trick is adequately figuring out what is an 'essential service'. Really, it's more like figuring out what's inessential....

I'm lucky enough to be a Canadian and the CERB benefit has helped family members and friends who work in inessential industries like tourism that have been hurt badly by this. I support programs to help with that so those folks don't become poor. But no amount of money is going to let us close grocery stores, at least not without some other food logistics system in place.

bhandziuk• 6 years ago

At work you might be in a large space, you probably don't have long contact with any one person (when contact tracing it seems they ask who you've been in contact with for >15 minutes, not sure if they're still doing that), and you're wearing a mask. None of that might be true for a family gathering.

bsder3• 6 years ago

Your interaction with an infected customer is probably less than 5 minutes--and you are probably both wearing masks.

Your interaction with an infected family member is hours in a close setting with poor ventilation without masks.

See: "56 coronavirus cases were linked to a Starbucks in South Korea. But employees who were wearing masks didn't get infected." https://www.businessinsider.com/56-got-coronavirus-south-kor...

_jal• 6 years ago

It may seem that way. But they are talking to the populace as a whole, not just people who work customer-facing jobs.

And who is "blaming working people"?

ebg132• 6 years ago

8 hours at work is ok, but a few hours at dinner isn't

Large, well-ventilated space vs close poorly-ventilated space.

Not sharing food vs sharing food.

Not yelling at each other vs yelling at each other.

Everyone wearing a mask vs not wearing masks.

There are some important differences between workplaces and dinner tables.

beamatronic4• 6 years ago

Yelling at each other??

collias2• 6 years ago

I assure you customer-facing retail employees experience plenty of yelling at work.

klmadfejno• 6 years ago

A gathering of many people from diverse areas in an inadequately ventilated home is a bad idea. If you imagine transmission rates as a punch of particles bumping around with a chance of infecting nearby nodes that haven't been previously infected, run the additional mental model where you decide to first randomize every node's position.

NicoJuicy4• 6 years ago

In January 2020 China blocked Chinese New year travel for 1 billion people.

To this day, it amazes me that some people don't get that a nationwide travel and dine with a lot of people, could exponentially spread the virus.

We are almost 1 year later... And I think most people are here are well educated.

This saddens me deeply.

disgruntledphd23• 6 years ago

Actually, the real problem is that they didn't shut Wuhan before Chinese New Year.

If they had done that, the Chinese lockdown probably wouldn't have needed to be nationwide.

JohnTHaller• 6 years ago

8 hours in a large, ventilated space, everyone wearing masks, limited/no physical contact, generally brief interactions usually from a safe distance

Thanksgiving aka the exact opposite of all of the above

Dumblydorr• 6 years ago

It's not silly at all. At work, They are wearing masks, staying socially distant, have shields and blocks in many cases,and keeping the economy afloat.

Contrast that to crowding within 6 feet of 5+ family members unmasked for hours, traveling and spreading virus everywhere for a holiday that celebrates native americans giving food resources to ill prepared settlers?

What IS silly is that this is a holiday, it's a fun but nonessential day. Do you think Turkey day or Jesus's "birthday" (aka coopted Pagan winter solstice day) is worth the 1000s of deaths that they will certainly cause? The pandemic that has killed 250,000 Americans in just 8 months is far, far more important than a couple family meals.

mumblemumble2• 6 years ago

Anecdotally:

I got to spend a week making daily visits to a hospital this summer, and of course ended up spending a lot of time chatting with the care team about the pandemic. For context, the room we were in was next door to the space set aside for the COVID-19 isolation cohort, and the some folks were back and forth between both areas throughout the day. As far as customer-facing jobs go this year, having your customers be, not just anyone, but specifically people who are a known SARS-CoV-2 infection risk, seems like a pretty singular situation.

They all felt pretty safe, though, and, at least up to that point, hadn't had a single staff member test positive. They attributed this to everyone on the team being very scrupulous about masks and hand washing.

Somewhat similarly, and less anecdotally, my state recently released some information about their contact tracing efforts, and, while they didn't give any specific numbers, they indicated that workplaces did not seem to be a significant source of transmission as long as mask policies are being followed. The bulk of the transmission was from social gatherings, both in home and in public. There were some case studies of super-spreader events at public gatherings, and the general story is that, as long as the staff is sticking to the policy of wearing masks while at work, they are generally not getting caught up in these events.

So, I suspect it would be fine as long as everyone involved kept a mask on at all times.

The problem with getting together for a Thanksgiving dinner, then, is that you simply can't share a meal and (properly) wear a mask at the same time. Heck, you can't even offer your guests light refreshments and have them properly wear a mask at the same time.

raverbashing2• 6 years ago

The isolation room probably has negative air pressure

gentleman11• 6 years ago

Our society considers those people in “essential services” to be sacrificial animals. They really don’t matter as long as we keep benefiting from their work. It’s brutal but it’s always been like this, just less obvious.

thelean122• 6 years ago

Sorry, are you saying we're capable of not having essential services run? Because we're not. There's no choice for society to make when it comes to essential services.

goatherders• 6 years ago

I agree with your point but don't think it's any less obvious at all. Our country has long treated essential service personnel as fungible.

rv-de• 6 years ago

reducing contact is a statistical method. But it's ethically questionable to allocate the stochastic social activity budget primarily to work.

akiselev2• 6 years ago

Healthcare personnel get COVID as such higher rates than most other fields because of the rate of exposure. Being in a small room with someone with COVID for a few hours is far riskier than passing 100 people with COVID on the street or in a big box store over the course of eight hours, where your exposure would be measured in seconds or minutes.

Most jobs outside of transportation also limit exposure to a relatively small group of regulars like a neighborhood grocery store, so we're already in the range of acceptable consequences (since most people need to work to eat). Creating transmission links between disparate regions is outside the range of acceptable consequences (IMO, and for the first year at least)

thelean122• 6 years ago

You seem to be under the impression that things are fair during a pandemic. It's not, and shouldn't be.

syshum2• 6 years ago

It is also silly to believe the issue is simply unwillingness of the government to pay people to stay home

Do you honestly believe that everyone can just stay home until we have wide scale vaccine? Who will make the vaccine, who will keep the water flowing, the power, the food, everything else we need for daily life

Lockdown has never, and will never be a reasonable strategy for a pandemic, this one or future ones

disgruntledphd23• 6 years ago

You don't need a lockdown forever, just to reduce transmission enough that contact tracing can be effective.

This worked in Europe for a few months, although all the tourism over the summer probably seeded the current outbreaks.

permo-w• 6 years ago

People who work customer-facing jobs aren’t travelling cross-country, and are probably behind Perspex or wearing masks

oliwarner• 6 years ago

Except that every family that takes notice is potentially a dozen fewer direct infections. Two fewer hospitalisations.

Every little helps when it comes to public health messages.

yalogin• 6 years ago

I don't understand why. If one works with customers there are two possibilities. One, their company has strict protocols that keeps them safe and so they should still be worried about getting it from guests. Two, their company is lax on protocols and so they are the ones risking the lives of their guests.

Either way, I am surprised to see this comment on HN, I would expect people here to not look at it at the individual level, and think in terms of probabilities.

tshaddox3• 6 years ago

I think the obvious response is that working customer-facing jobs isn't safe, but is necessary for many people to pay for important things like food and shelter.

This criticism seems similar to the common one of "why are grocery stores okay but not concert venues: surely the virus doesn't know the difference?" Of course not, but buying food is, at least in the short term, more vital.

jcranmer• 6 years ago

For many people (especially those who travel), Thanksgiving isn't "a few hours at dinner" but "stay with relatives at least overnight and maybe an entire long weekend".

craftinator• 6 years ago

Equivocation and blame games.

COVID is bad, passing it to people is bad, wearing masks and distancing almost guarantees it won't transmit, masks and social distancing are nearly impossible at social gatherings where people eat or drink, so halt social gatherings so we don't overload our hospitals and get a bunch of people killed a few months before a vaccine is available. Really not much more to it than that.

usrusr2• 6 years ago

In my observation it's much easier to maintain a certain level of carefulness around strangers than it is around family. It's as if we were biologically wired to trust family more (we might actually be). On paper, Covid precautions are supposed to be as much to protect the other as to protect the self, but much of the relevant behaviour is so little controlled by rational though that we can only control it by tapping into self preservation instincts. And those simply don't fire as reliable with family as they do with strangers. I claim that if they have the same risk of being infected, n hours with m strangers is less dangerous than n hours with m family members.

It sure looks a bit weird to ask this of people who don't work in isolation, but on the other hand it's not worse for them than for the WFH crowd. It could even be argued that it's worse for the WFH because the customer facing at least still get to interact with humans on a regular basis.

heavymark• 6 years ago

I imagine the difference is at those customer facing jobs they are wearing masks all day, where is at dinner everyone will have their masks off (at least while eating/drinking but in reality most will probably end up leaving them off after eating or even before eating because unlike at work where they maybe surrounded by strangers at home they will feel more comfortable maskless around extended family).

stjohnswarts4• 6 years ago

It's not tho. Families won't be wearing masks or social distancing because of familiarity and alcohol (and probably some weed). Also they'll be eating and talking loudly without a mask which also spraying just tons and tons of germs into the air, often in a relatively small dining room or living room with most likely very limited ventilation. It's a perfect recipe for spreading the disease.

spandrew• 6 years ago

This is caricatured thinking though. You need to work because you want $$$ for rent, and you need to go to the grocery store (or wherever) to eat so you don't die. That's a sunk cost every person generally must assume.

But the point isn't that people have some risk, so adding more is OK. No — the goal is to not take unnecessary risk when avoiable. Eating turkey with family is something that you can postpone or even do over a video call if you have the means and still want some level of connection.

d6e• 6 years ago

I find family to be far more dangerous than strangers. With family people let their guard down and hug and take off their masks in doors. Family are where 70% of infections come from.

Zenst4• 6 years ago

When it comes to family deep rooted historical cultural traditions, I'm sensing that an advisory is not going to make much of a dent upon impact. Maybe better to advise how to have thanksgiving safely - pre isolate prior to meetup - whole scale of what you can do and outline the risk reductions each one has. Give people an educated choice in the risk as like crossing the road - we all make educated risk choices each day and they won't stop the holiday, but can manage it better with better advice/approach I feel.

dragontamer3• 6 years ago

We didn't have an Easter celebration this year. In fact, for the entirety of Lent, the Catholic Church in my area said that mass was not necessary due to the pandemic.

Some things are more important than tradition. Easter is the most holy holiday of the Catholic Church (Christmas has more secular importance, but is still only 2nd most important).

If you were willing to sacrifice Easter back in April, then Thanksgiving / Christmas is no different, at least to those of us who are religious. Its important to take this situation seriously.

And yes, the Catholic Church definitely cares about tradition. In fact, people criticize it for caring too much about tradition at times.

Zenst4• 6 years ago

Wonderful to hear that and was wondering if that would be down to the catholic church having a better structure of leadership that was on-board early? After all, we all know the Catholic church has The Pope as their leader, and probably about the only religion people know who the World voice of that religion is.

But kudos for the Catholic Church for what they have done throughout this pandemic. I am by no means saying other religions efforts during this pandemic are any better or worse and just wanted to clarify that so no subtext is inferred. Indeed I don't want to hear what others if they are be doing wrong, kinda want to hear the good examples so we all learn from them.

And yes, the Catholic Church definitely cares about tradition. In fact, people criticize it for caring too much about tradition at times.

The Catholic Church also has a tradition of caring and people have a tradition of complaining (I'm British so maybe a cultural perspective slant there), but nobody complaining here upon that tradition of caring too much.

collias2• 6 years ago

Not to be crude, but the whole sexual education debate is fairly analogous here.

We can teach people to abstain completely, or we can teach them how to do things safely.

It's pretty settled on which works better to prevent unwanted consequences.

raziel2p• 6 years ago

One might argue there is no safe method in this case. There are enough stories of people who did as much as they thought they could and still ended up infected. Can't really be compared to condoms for example, which have a fraction of a fraction of a chance to break.

acwan93• 6 years ago

That's my initial thought as well. Abstaining from sex (or contact in the context of the pandemic) is a near impossibility for mental health, societal/economic benefit, and just human nature, so it's better to teach how to do so safely.

I fear that there's a large subset of the population who won't follow safe practices unless you scare them with text like "don't visit your friends/family".

dragontamer3• 6 years ago

Condoms are 95% effective.

Masks are only 60%. The only methodology that's anywhere close to 95% effective is a vaccine. Furthermore, you can't wear a mask while eating, and its too cold outside now to hold an outdoor dinner.

If you have a combination of methodologies that reaches 95% efficacy, feel free to tell the world. But mask-up, social distanced (6-feet apart) and all that is only partially effective at controlling the virus. And such conditions are unlikely to be kept during a Thanksgiving party (especially if alcohol is involved)

munificent3• 6 years ago

Sex is a biological imperative entrenched in our DNA through countless generations of evolutionary selection all the way back to the dawn of sexual reproduction millions of years ago.

Thanksgiving is an American secular holiday about eating turkey.

stjohnswarts4• 6 years ago

This is one reason I tend to tell people traditions are stupid if there is no reasoning or thought behind them and the only reason is "because it's always been this way". Humans need to start using pragmatism and logic and forget about those traditions and cultural attributes that no longer serve a purpose in the now.

mos_basik• 6 years ago

It's all very well to say that traditions that serve no purpose are stupid and should be forgotten, but it might be a Hard Problem to distinguish those kinds of traditions from other traditions that serve an excellent purpose that is complex or non-obvious enough that they appear purposeless.

Relevant Slate Star Codex: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...

Relevant HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037749

werber• 6 years ago

I got a lot of flack for cancelling plans with my family, this honestly is a god send in terms of relationship management.

ncallaway• 6 years ago

I really think this is the aspect people are missing.

This helps a lot with people who already wanted to cancel plans, but didn't have "permission" to.

Now, people can say: "Oh, I really really wish I could attend, but I'm following the CDC guidance. I'll really miss you, and I'll definitely be back next year."

stjohnswarts4• 6 years ago

The families who are ignoring covid are quite likely to be the ones who think covid is a government conspiracy to take away their right to not wear a mask. It would be pointless. The best thing to do is just take a stand and say you're doing this to protect yourself and that's the end of the discussion. The evidence is overwhelming that covid is deadly and to be avoided whenever humanly possible. What good is an in-person Thanksgiving if you wipe out half the old folks in your family and know it wouldn't have happened if you had skipped it this year. A lot of people won't be seeing loved ones next year because they willy-nilly killed them this year because "muh rights" or because they let their emotions overrule their logic. I can't believe people want blood on their hands like that.

just-juan-post• 6 years ago

There is no quality discussion that will come from this submission.

Reedx• 6 years ago

Why don't we have cheap/free, widespread, rapid home testing yet? We've known about Covid-19 for almost a year!

Then people could just test themselves before traveling or going to indoor gatherings. They could also be used at airports, etc.

bsder3• 6 years ago

Even if you do, the tests aren't biased that way.

If the tests give you a positive result, you almost certainly have Covid. However, a negative result doesn't imply lack of Covid with the same accuracy.

stronglikedan• 6 years ago

I've read that the rapid (antigen) testing is not as accurate as the tests that are processed in a lab. I've seen figures of up to 37% false negatives. I would have looked into it more, but I've decided that I would personally not trust a rapid test if a lab test was available, except in the most urgent of scenarios.

throwaway4good• 6 years ago

It is going to explode with the cold wheather - isn't it? Travel is already far lower than usual.

jeffbee4• 6 years ago

It's going to explode because of a synchronized nation-wide spreading event, not because of the weather.

treis• 6 years ago

"going to" implies that it is not doing so right now. Which isn't the case. Infections are growing exponentially to the point where something like 1-5% of the US population is estimated to be infected right now.

yread• 6 years ago

Remember that this whole mess started (or at least got a lot worse) because the Chinese travelled a lot for the Lunar New Year. Back then there was a lot of people blaming everything on the Chinese for not staying where they were and spreading the virus.

CDC advises Americans not to travel for Thanksgiving

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