OP here, and I don’t want to jack with your quotes, but monstro I do think you meant “Your next-door-neighbor”, correct?
Which I guess is the point of my original post if monstro’s hypothetical person travels, and comes back coughing like a motherfucker - he’s an asshole right?
But if Person B does not travel, she maybe goes to the CVS down the street, and comes back like coughing a motherfucker - we give her a pass *because she didn’t travel, right?
*
IMHO that’s sort of a good point, and maybe a flaw in monstro’s example.
But the difference is, the person who travels takes a much greater risk, probably for less need, than the person who goes to the CVS down the street. And what makes the traveler an asshole is the taking of the unnecessary risk, not the result.
It’s tempting but wrong to judge people’s actions by the results of those actions. Imagine one driver who is drunk and is driving around town at high speed for fun, and manages not to hit anyone. Another driver is driving carefully to work and, through no fault of her own, hits a pedestrian. Which driver is the asshole?
It is every where. But each time infectious travellers go to a new place, that 2 week quarantine clock has to restart. Ok, call it 3 weeks to really get a handle on it.
Washington State/Seattle area, went into pretty serious work from home 5 weeks ago. When all those spring breakers came back home, they kicked off a new round of infections and spread.
At this point, covid has spread. Reducing air travel is not about preventing a first case in a new location, it’s all about not reintroducing new cases.
I don’t buy the premise that one must—or is even likely to—come within 6 feet of 40 people while grocery shopping, and certainly not for the same total duration of time as flying, assuming we attach no stigma to either, and both carry on as normal.
So maybe part of the problem with the OP is that the premises are faulty to begin with, and the scenario overly contrived.
Taiwan obviously has it, but is working hard at keeping the numbers down. Only residents and a few others are allowed in, and they would have to self-quarantine. It’s not nearly as wide spread here in Taiwan and people are strongly urged to not travel to other cities unless necessary.
I would not call the traveler an “asshole”. Maybe a fool, but not an asshole.
At any rate, we give anyone who is infected a “pass”. It’s not like there’s a Coronavirus Police Force who arrests people who become infected from making stupid choices. And thank goodness for that!
Still, most people see a difference between getting infected from an essential activity (like picking up a prescription) and getting infected from an unnecessary recreational activity that everyone knows is risky. We can anticipate that eventually an apartment building will become infected through everyone carrying out essential activities for a long enough time, even with social distancing. But someone who travels and brings back the virus speeds up that progression. And that’s a big deal since social distancing is all about buying time.
Let me axe you something. Let’s say your next-door neighbor knocked on your door to ask if he can use your toilet, since his is broken. In one scenario, you know he just returned from the CVS down the street but has been otherwise been following social distancing. In another scenario, you know he just returned from NYC. Do you feel equally comfortable letting him use your bathroom?
Think about what a airline trip + 3 night stay involves, at a bare minimum:
Are you seriously suggesting all this is equivalent to one visit to the grocery store??
Person B didn’t potentially transfer the virus to an entirely new environment at the other end of their travel, like Person A did. There are many ways that your apartment building could get infected from the local environment - take out food, shopping trips, exercise. It’s already in the community around the building and there are inevitable interactions.
But that’s not true for distance travelling. Flying to another city and visiting a relative, going to your vacation home at the beach, going for a hike in the mountains; may introduce the virus to a geographically distant locale and become a nucleus for a new round of infection.
This plus the fact that there seems to be a population actively trying to avoid doing the hard work (which actually isn’t hard at all).
Under the guise of “trying to understand” or determining what weird loop-hole you’re trying to exploit so you can have cocktails together, you’re at best spreading doubt and misinformation and, at worst, endangering others.
FFS, it doesn’t take a quantum physicist to figure this out. And why the fuck are people doing this?
I wonder how much of this is the “boy who cried wolf” syndrome. We were told that we were all going to die from AIDS, SARS, MERS, H1N1 and so forth and none of those became as widespread as this virus so when we heard of Covid-19, a lot of us said “Fuck it, more media/government bullshit”?
You know what a “wonder” about? How much of this is the chief executive flagrantly lying about public health recommendations and factual information.
Stranger
Taiwan is unfortunately relaxing its guard because the vast majority of new cases are “imported”, people who caught it overseas.
We had a long holiday and there were a number of idiots — families of students at my school who went on domestic travel.
It does make a difference on how you contract the disease. If there are no other ways of shopping, it’s an unfortunate risk. Catching it while playing is more reckless.
Not to mention, touching common surfaces like, say, a bathroom.
I can manage a 2 hour flight without needing to avail myself of the dubious amenities on a plane. Not everyone can (and I manage by using the restroom on the ground before and/or after). Do you trust every other passenger to have washed up thoroughly?
There is one glaring omission in this “plane travel” scenario that needs to be mentioned: going through the terminal.
Especially if you have to change planes in Dallas/Fort Worth, or O’'Hare. (Oh Gawd)
There are a lot more people you will contact than just your fellow passengers and the flight attendants!
Check-in counters, TSA screening, a drink at the bar, stop to get a magazine and some snacks, and then the ever-popular restroom visit!
Murphy’s Law says that when you change planes, your next flight leaves from the other end of the terminal. And those moving walkways allow you to efficiently pick up germs from even more people!
At your destination there is everybody’s favorite, the luggage carosel!
ONE plane trip can cause you to encounter a hundred people or more.
The necessary trip to CVS wouldn’t come close to the plane trip!
~VOW
I think the most valid reasons have already been stated, but I’ll propose an aggravating factor. For most Americans, airline flight is still considered to be a somewhat luxurious mode of travel. There is also a great deal of misinformation about the HVAC systems on airplanes. Airplanes are thought of as the germ factories of the elite. I think you will find that those who drive a long distance to another city will be met with far less opprobrium than those who fly. Even train riders, who probably have all the same dangers as flyers, will not received quite the same snarls.
The simple fact is that the game is containment. Travel is the opposite of containment. The farther you go out of your zone, the worse your breach of the containment strategy. If you travel between a hot spot and a cool spot, thus potentially spreading infection to an area which was previously well contained, you should be horse-whipped.
But most people won’t dig into all those details or consult CDC reports to obtain infection ratios between your destinations. They’ll just ask “did you fly?” and respond accordingly.