Is it possible to travel responsibly (during a pandemic)?

[formernuke]

Right now I would say no to flying. Ironically during the time of all the lockdowns in the spring and summer last year yes.

Why do I say this. Talking to people who had the travel, they said the flights and airports were pretty much empty, sometimes them being the only passenger on the plane or their only being a couple others. Now the planes are getting full and airports crowded.

Lucky for me I live 1-1.5 hour drive to several shore dive sites so it doesn't really effect my diving.

 

[Jcp2]

i think this is a good question.

if i understand correctly, if a u.s. citizen has had the virus, is still testing positive, but has a doctors note saying they have "recovered" and it is ok for them to travel, then the requirement for them to provide a negative test to re-enter the usa is waived ? is that about right ?

i do not know enough about the science to know whether this is appropriate or not. and most GP's probably don't either.

but it seems to me that policies should always err on the side of caution. i am not sure we should trust the opinion of someone's GP to decide whether they are safe to travel. in my opinion, if you test positive, then you test positive. stay home. if that means you have to wait 2, 4, or 6 months before you are allowed to travel then so be it.

K.I.S.S.

The persistent positive but treat as recovered was an interesting development during the March April 2020 surge with April May recovery.

We had just developed and deployed the PCR test for hospital inpatients and had the assumption that positive = actively infected and infectious, with then a transition to negative once a patient was recovered.

However, we learned that this was not necessarily the case. While the majority of our patients that did clinically recover sufficiently to no longer require hospitalization did transition from a positive to a negative, this was only a slim majority. Remember that the test is for nuclei acid remnants, not for viable organisms. This is also why we cleaned our groceries with bleach wipes and had a mail jail early on, but now just wash our hands.

Many of our clinically recovered patients needed to return either to their nursing home or assisted living facility of origin, or needed to be transferred to a lower acuity chronic care or rehabilitation facility. These facilities at first required negative tests to accept these patients. The result was that acute care hospitals in our region were slowly being overwhelmed with walking well that had a positive test, were thought clinically to be of low infectious risk, and had nowhere to go.

Modern American acute care hospitals don’t have a large convalescent ward by system design. Some nursing home facilities were felt to be gaming the system by dumping COVID positive residents into the hospital and not taking them back to simplify their own internal operations while other facilities were being good citizens by helping out with chronic care management.

In the end, the 90 day convention was put in place because it took several months of learning about the disease course in long term patients over the summer as well as some resolution of patient care conflicts internally between separate corporate care entities. It could have well been 60 days or 120 days, but three months was the arbitrary compromise. People like to think in quarters or seasons.

 

[tridacna]

My friend's son just returned from Akumal on Fri. Tested negative before he returned.

Bad news: Infected his entire family and his father was admitted to hospital this morning.
Good news: He and his college buddies had a great time down there.

 

[uncfnp]

My friend's son just returned from Akumal on Fri. Tested negative before he returned.

Bad news: Infected his entire family and his father was admitted to hospital this morning.
Good news: He and his college buddies had a great time down there.

That is awful but I could also tell you about the elderly couple who's family convinced them to visit over Christmas. He was transported by ambulance to the ER with complications from covid the same morning she came to me and diagnosed with covid pneumonia. The family didn’t tell the couple they were under quarantine.

Again it wasn’t the travel but the family’s behavior that put them at risk. Same with travel.

 

[rick00001967]

That is awful but I could also tell you about the elderly couple who's family convinced them to visit over Christmas. He was transported by ambulance to the ER with complications from covid the same morning she came to me and diagnosed with covid pneumonia. The family didn’t tell the couple they were under quarantine.

Again it wasn’t the travel but the families behavior that put them at risk. Same with travel.

sorry but your example is not even close to the same thing. in your example the people knowingly had close contact with others and withheld the fact they were in quarantine.
in tridacna's example, someone tested negative and still ended up bringing the virus home without knowing they were infected.

 

[GJC]

Pretty rough stuff. I stand by what I said. Cautious, intelligent, travel can be safe, it’s been proven by members on this board. I talked to a dive shop owner today, many many people that worked in Cozumel left the island and went back to the mainland, to work in produce fields. Many of those people will never come back. Do you believe that people can just stop and start their life on a dime, because the cruise ships suddenly appear? Actually there may be nothing to come back to. Doesn’t matter if you work in the service industry in Cozumel or if you own a restaurant in Oklahoma. Literally destroying whole economies and peoples livelihoods, possibly forever, would leave dire consequences as well.

Unless you were on this boat:

Covid-19 infection on a liveaboard at the Maldives

 

[formernuke]

sorry but your example is not even close to the same thing. in your example the people knowingly had close contact with others and withheld the fact they were in quarantine.
in tridacna's example, someone tested negative and still ended up bringing the virus home without knowing they were infected.

Yes and no, he posted they tested prior to returning. Which means they probably got it on the plane in transit. A little bit of speculation but not much of a stretch. The original question is can it be done responsibly right now.

 

[Dan]

My friend's son just returned from Akumal on Fri. Tested negative before he returned.

Bad news: Infected his entire family and his father was admitted to hospital this morning.
Good news: He and his college buddies had a great time down there.

That’s a bummer! False negative. That’s the first time I heard.

For my last 2 trips overseas (last month to Costa Rica & 2 weeks ago to Mexico) I self quarantined myself for 2 weeks before meeting face-to-face (like having dinner together) with family & closed friends, just to be sure that I won’t give bad stuff to them.

 

[formernuke]

That’s a bummer! False negative. That’s the first time I hea

Could be false negative or got it in transit.

 

[uncfnp]

sorry but your example is not even close to the same thing. in your example the people knowingly had close contact with others and withheld the fact they were in quarantine.
in tridacna's example, someone tested negative and still ended up bringing the virus home without knowing they were infected.

I wasn’t discussing testing. I have pointed out in other threads, I think now deleted, that the rapid (now called antigen) is not even indicated for asymptomatic testing. On this we absolutely agree.

I was pointing out that irresponsible behavior is the main driver for transmission.