Elisa Judy wonders why we are ignoring air travel as a super spreader event?

I am so tired of hearing about “super spreader” events on the news.  It seems like almost daily, we are bombarded by news of another college party or Trump rally linked to COVID-19 cases. 

Living in California, the powers that be have closed or limited the use of parks, playgrounds, and beaches to keep Californians safe from COVID-19 throughout the pandemic. In my neighborhood, children are not permitted to trick or treat this Halloween for their safety, and recently our Governor put out a communication stating that among other things: Thanksgiving celebrations must be limited to the outdoors while maintaining a 6-foot distance, masking, and keeping the time to under two hours. We all want to prevent super spreader events and will comply, right? 

You May Enjoy: https://www.reelurbannews.com/elisa-judy-provides-an-active-duty-family-perspective/

My family has been dutifully following the directives, but when my daughter was unable to take the SAT anywhere in CA, we decided that we would end our shelter in place and fly to a neighboring state, so she could take the test. I expected mask wearing, additional health screenings, physical distancing, and cleaning. That is not exactly what I observed. First of all, airline terminals, in my experience, are fairly empty, but the gates are not spaced, so passengers are congregating for long periods of time (especially when a flight is delayed) in close quarters. Gates are full because flights are full. While there is signage and announcements, I did not see anyone monitoring passengers and everybody seemed okay with it. Shocking. 

My daughter and I flew on full flights. Some passengers removed their masks during the flight, moved around the cabin, and had conversations with one another.  All are considered high-risk activities. I wonder how this is acceptable. Is there some kind of magic happening in airline terminals and on flights that prevents people from contracting COVID-19?

I understand there are several studies that show there is an extremely low-risk of contracting COVID-19 inside an airplane as long as everyone keeps their masks on, stays seated, doesn’t talk, or eat or drink. The issue I observed is that once in-flight, most passengers violate at least one of those assumptions. Why have the studies ignored these very important variables? Maybe it doesn’t matter and imperfect use of masks does prevent most of the spread? I would love to see contact tracing for every American Airline passenger. Seems like that would be pretty easy to do. Get an email that provides your mileage award points and complete quick health survey.

Perhaps if we studied air travel as a super spreader event, we could be one step closer to opening up? Just a note, it has been more than 14 days since our last flight and we have had no ill effects from our travels. On top of that, my daughter did well on her SAT, so it was well worth the risk. Maybe we’ll try going to the beach later this week without wearing a mask and see what happens?

Cynthia Shaffer, National Editor, ReelUrbanNews.com contributed to this article.