I’ve been wondering how things will return to normal. I read an article in The Atlantic about one guy’s experience traveling by air. He had a miserable experience even though there weren’t that many people on the plane because they were all trying to distance, so they expected that the empty seats would give them room and became contentious if people encroached on their space. I Just Flew. It Was Worse Than I Thought It Would Be.
He had a confrontation with another passenger along with a lot of uncomfortable situations.
The author concludes that things won’t return to how they were.
Shortly after I read the article, I saw this picture of a full plane of people, none of them seemed to be complaining. I don’t know for sure when the picture was taken, but everyone I can see is wearing a mask.
I’m wondering if the return to normal will look more like the first person’s experience or the picture of pretty much business as usual. Will it depend on the place?
Cheap air travel has always involved taking your chances squeezing into an enclosed cabin for hours with dozens of other people, of whom you are 100% guaranteed some are teeming with particularly undesirable germs. Has any airline advertised any change in policy and concomitant jacking up of baseline fares? Would you be willing to pay what used to be first-class fares every time? I doubt it.
The big issue with air travel is the air con systems - they amount of recirc is such that even if you are spaced well apart it is completely meaningless - you might as well be right next to each other.
I have seen no mention of that fact - but if air were to be cleaned up and less use made of recirc then it would inevitably be more expensive to fly.
After we have a vaccine, I think things will just go back to normal, except for a requirement to prove immunity.
Until then, it’s going to be difficult. As testing gets easier and better, PCR testing within 48 hours of flight departure would not be perfect but would reduce risk. But it seems likely that a lot of countries will mandate 2-week quarantine upon arrival.
Of course, the clusterfuck that is the U.S. may just get out of control, a million deaths - but herd immunity by Christmas, hooray for everyone left alive!
There’s no way that can be a long-term policy without killing off almost all travel.
Vacation travel? Most people’s vacations are probably around two weeks to begin with. Even if there isn’t a quarantine after you get back home (and why wouldn’t there be?), that means you need a month of vacation to get your two weeks vacation at your actual destination. How many people can take a full month off?
Business travel has the same problem. You’re sending your people there because you don’t think they can do the work remotely. Are you going to pay them a month’s salary for a few days work in between quarantines? Imagine every meeting on your schedule needing a full month’s time commitment.
The only travel you’d see would be long-term re-locations, where a two week delay isn’t a deal breaker. So things like immigration, where you plan to live there forever. Or long-term job placements, like teaching in a foreign country. People retiring to Costa Rica.
I agree, but I was talking about the interim period until we have a vaccine. I think most nonessential international air travel will be killed off in that period. What’s the point of undergoing the hardship of lockdowns and social distancing measures to control the spread if you are going to allow potential new sources of infection to first enclose themselves in groups in close proximity in a metal tube for several hours, then disperse and travel around the country at will?
There will never be a requirement to prove immunity.
If a vaccine - not itself a likely thing anytime soon - is produced, then people will no longer worry about the disease at all, the way they don’t worry about polio now. There will be outrage over antivaxxers, but as it currently the case, that problem won’t be enough to get people panicked.
Supposedly they turn the air over every 3 minutes with external air, so it’s not like they just pressurize the cabin and everyone just marinates in everyone else’s exhalations and emissions for the duration of the flight.
Perhaps not in the long run, if vaccination becomes routine and widespread so that a few holdouts don’t drop us below herd immunity. But when the vaccine is first introduced? I think your options will be to prove immunity, to be quarantined for 2 weeks on arrival, or to stay home.
There may briefly be situations like that, but a much likelier scenario is that travel would not be permitted or - to be honest, the most likely outcome - that eventually people will just shrug and live with the disease, after some time has passed and new cases level off to a steady rate.
Any guesses (if you care to) about when that might be. In the OP, I was wondering if that time was now. I just watched a video done by a couple Swedes about how they think the fear is mostly manufactured by the media and how relaxed they are about the whole thing there. Maybe people who get on planes a lot are more risk-tolerant than people who don’t and would likely take the chance?
Thanks for that info. I would never have guessed that considering how many times I’ve gotten sick after trips and the same with the people I know and also the foul smell of the air in planes. But as you say, it could be that coming into contact with different people and being in close proximity with them causes the illnesses.
Right. Planes are very leaky. Air is constantly entering and exiting the plane’s interior.
It’s one reason why that “Airport” movie where the 747 sinks into the ocean and the passengers relax for the rest of the day (as if they were in a submarine) is laughably wrong.
JetBlue announced a week or so ago that all passengers on all flights would be expected to wear masks during the entire flight, from take off to landing. That’s unfortunate for me, as they’re my preferred airline. Not sure if other carriers will follow their lead.
I’m not sure. I know to those of us in lockdown it feels like forever, but it’s not even been two months here.
Of course, it depends a lot where you live. Here in Ontario, there remains substantial public support for lockdown; I’m not sure how far into good weather that will last, though. There are nuts EVERYWHERE who think this is all a hoax, Bill Gates, QAnon, blah blah blah, but the “Shrug” moment comes when normal people are accustomed to the risk. That point isn’t pre-set. It’s dependent on the pandemic levelling off, a thing that can happen and then not happen again.
My guess for here is that support for lockdown is going to wither away in June, although most people will still support blocking Americans from coming across the border. What will happen, though, is that at some point, likely before summer is up, a critical mass of people here will say “yeah, this sucks but it’s someone else’s problem” and will want to go about their business as long as there are “Security theatre” pageants they can see to make them feel better, the way that after 9/11, heightened security at the check in at airports made people feel better even though it didn’t really do anything to make them safer.
The thing about a graduated lifting of lockdown is that it’ll level off the infection rate to a predictable number. It doesn’t matter if that number is high, what matters is that it stays the same. That’s what will get people used to it, the way t hey are used to car accidents and drownings. It’s an upward change in the number that frightens people.
I agree they are uncomfortable. I’m willing to be uncomfortable for a few hours though, if it is for a good cause. If I had to fly tomorrow, I’d go out of my way to fly an airline that required masks and distancing.