There’s hysteria. Then there’s common sense. And as we try to make sense of what is hysteria and what is not, a big question is whether senior citizens should fly. Sadly, that question has become a political issue.
The Trump Administration has been accused of blocking a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendation that elderly and physically fragile Americans not fly on commercial airlines.
An unidentified information told the Associated Press that the Administration ordered the specific reference to air travel be removed. Instead, the updated CDC warning advises high-risk individuals (senior citizens and those with heart disease, lung disease, or diabetes) to:
- Stock up on supplies
- Take everyday precautions to keep space between yourself and others
- When you go out in public, keep away from others who are sick, limit close contact and wash your hands often
- Avoid crowds as much as possible
- Avoid cruise travel and non-essential air travel
So avoid air travel may have become avoid “non-essential” air travel…
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is calling the AP story fiction, adding that avoiding air travel “was never a recommendation to the Task Force.”
Vice President Mike Pence, who President Trump tapped to head the administration’s response to COVID-19, said on Saturday:
“If you’re a senior citizen with a serious underlying health condition, this would be a good time to practice common sense and to avoid activities including traveling on a cruise line.”
Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told older Americans to avoid crowds “especially in poorly ventilated spaces.”
My Continued Coronavirus Conundrum
So what do we make all of this? Should senior citizens fly or not?
Whether seniors should fly or not should not be a political issue. But in a time of uncertainty in a presidential election year, gamesmanship will rule the day.
And so we are left with an uncomfortable reality of uncertainty. I don’t have an answer. I don’t know how much is hysteria and how much is not. Should we all just err on the side of caution?
This is a huge struggle for me. I think back to my Israel trip in January, where many warned me not to go because of escalating tensions with Iran. I went and had an incredible trip with my wife and son. The entire time I felt incredibly safe. COVID-19 is a whole different beast, but similar in that the most cautious approach is to stay home. It should be noted that terrorism cannot be spread from one person to another while viruses can.
But I can’t help but to continue to think this is all just a fear-based overreaction with disastrous economic effects, even as I will advise my father, uncle, and grandmother not to travel by air during this time. Am I just ignorantly joining the bandwagon considering how much unsafer it is to drive than fly?
I really don’t know. I really am confused about all of this, especially as one who is more prone to take risks. How about you?
There are two kinds of v facts. The ones trump deals with and the ones the rest of us deal with.
The fact is that people over 80 and those with health issues have very high mortality rates to covid-19. About 15%. Listen to this:
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/a0309-covid-19-update.html
Also, republicans suck.
I feel exactly like you…….confused and torn because I’m suppose to fly to NC tomorrow with my elderly dad(87 yrs old) and my 15 yr old son…..to visit my sister in GA over spring break…….but I feel it’s too risky and we should postpone the trip. My dad is a tough guy and wants to go with or without me….don’t know what to do.
I feel your confusion. My 85 year old husband and 8$ year old, me, have spent the winter in FL. We are planning to fly home the 16th of April. We have to fly out of Orlando/Sanford airport. We do not know what to do. He thinks it is OK, I don’t.
Seriously, Republicans suck? Are you 12? You are saying that 75 million people suck?! Since you are obviously a democrat, what does that make you? A seriously warped and single minded human being who has a sense of superiority, without having the intellect to realize his short comings.
Statistically speaking, the number of deaths related to this globally is basically nil. I understand the impacted families don’t feel that way, and I don’t mean to sound insensitive to them.
With that being said, we’re staying home because we fear what ‘might’ happen. We’re not protecting ourselves from something that’s actually happening.
I am only a board-certified infectious disease MD. If you are in your high sixties or above, don’t fly unless it’s something important, like a child’s wedding. If it can be put off, put it off. End of the story.
Masks, sanitizing airplane seats, etc. are all BS.
I think that the problem is that unlike almost everything else in life this is not just about personal risk. If you choose to go skydiving and die, you die. That’s a personal impact, but no one else dies. I’m fine with that, I can make a personal risk assessment and decide if it’s a risk I’m happy with.
If you choose to travel and catch the virus, and spread it in your community then you have a high chance of killing other people, not you. And the death rates for high risk individuals are extremely high, just look at Italy.
I’m not personally willing to risk killing elderly friends/family/co-workers/storekeepers just so I can continue flying, so have reluctantly cancelled trips.
This, exactly. And the thing is, the United States is not prepared if this escalates. There will not be enough ventilators available. COVID19 attacks the respiratory system and that is why people end up in the hospital needing help to breathe. I read if it gets bad, they may need to do triage; determine who gets to use those respirators. I have a 95 year old father; I am sure he would be at the bottom of the list. I personally don’t think anyone should be traveling unless absolutely necessary until we get this under control.
You’re right there are only a little over 56,000 mechanical ventilators in the US. In addition there are only 920,000 hospital beds, There’s over 8 million people just in New York.
There is a surfeit of bed and icu capacity in the USA. Swine flu/H1N1 years, when the viruses kill more than 50,000 a year, there is more than enough icu level of care available. So, I am not sure how any of this became a talking point.
‘…until we get this under control.’ Precisely. The problem is the inability of people, modern era adults to stay still for more than 4 minutes. Twitchy, itchy and ever looking for somewhere to slip off to because they are almost all have something akin to attention deficit disorder. Adults! This is the reality. “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal in 1664. Oh, how true.
First off, I don’t see how Pence advising the sick and elderly not to fly is inherently political. Is politics relevant in your suggestion to your grandmother not to fly?
On the paranoia aspect, while I haven’t the faintest idea as to your father’s health, presuming he’s in good health I think it’s silly to try to frighten him. The two things that have been largely missing in this conversation are openness from the government (not completely surprising, considering how badly they’ve screwed up) and common sense. Give people real information, even if it’s bad news, and let common sense prevail.
Pence’s advice is not inherently political – if that is the scientific consensus, then seniors should avoid flying…we can take the emotion out of it. But it has become political if the WaPo “informant” is correct and the advice was tempered (for whatever reason).
Just who is a Senior? I’m 71 and in pretty good health with no heart or respiratory history, no diabetes or anything else. I walk pretty much everywhere in the course of a normal day within the 3/4-mile radius of my condo and work (yes, I am not “retired”) and travel somewhere on the planet at least every other month. Just returned from a week in South Africa followed by an enroute 5-days in Seoul (EY Apartment and JL F) and have pretty much self-quarantined for the past 14-days. No fever or any symptoms of the virus. I get my flu shot every autumn.
I don’t consider myself any more susceptible than someone aged 50 or younger who is in good health. As long as I follow logical hygiene and don’t find myself in crowds there should be no fear of infection. At the moment I still plan to fly to SIN and KUL for my 72nd birthday (SQ EWR nonstop). Maybe when I reach 92 I’ll consider myself a Senior who should not travel!
I think it’s up to each person to assess one’s health and vulnerabilities and make the decision accordingly…but do observe common sense hygiene and quarantine on your return if there is a flair up where you’ve just been.
Age, in absence of any other factor, is the best predictior. While 71 isn’t terrible for this virus, especially in men, mortality curve starts in late 60’s to rise. This is in absence of any other factor.
Coincidentally, this is true even of run-of-the-mill pneumonias. This is quantitated in what is called a FINE pneumonia severity index. Age matters above all else.
The statistics are there for everyone to see who bothers to look. Below 50 your chances of dying are not much greater than the flu and I do not believe any children under the age of 10 have died which is unusual since the very young and very old are usually most at risk. At age 50 the odds start to go up probably because by that age some people are already starting to experience health issues such as diabetes, etc. Over age 80 your chances of dying really go up. I believe the rate is about 15% right now for the over 80 demographic. Obviously, the odds vary depending on a person’s particular circumstances. People with one or more comorbidities(i.e. heart disease, diabetes, etc) have a much higher risk than an elderly but comparatively healthy but elderly person.
People need to make their own assessment but IMO people should not only think of themselves but of people around them. The containment ship has sailed, Now we are talking mitigation. If the virus were to spread unchecked the mortality rate will soar. It is not simply a case of mortality rates but hospitalization rates. I believe there are only about 65,000 ICU beds in the US. Many of those are already filled. Medical resources would be tapped out leading to not only higher death rates from Covid 19 but people other medical conditions as well that require hospitalization. Look no further than China to see what can happen. Those “hospitals” they built were really just quarantine centers with minimal care not to mention all of the hospital personnel who got infected. And don’t forget we stupidly offshored almost all of our medical manufacturing capacity (mostly 0o China) and we are not the only country in need.
I can only speak for my mother, who is 73 but in good health, and a retired nurse practitioner for what that’s worth. She regards what’s going on now as mostly patent hysteria. While she’s avoiding cruise ships and international travel, she’s not canceling her domestic travel plans, unless a specific outbreak occurs either here at home or where she’s planning to go. Her take is that we should all be conscientious about hygiene and take common sense precautions, like you would to avoid any cold or flu, but she regards the recommendations of some that seniors should basically live a “semi-hermit existence” like that doctor at Vanderbilt University suggested as nonsense, and unlikely to be effective anyway.
FWIW, this is a very good, non-fear based article on coronavirus in general, that I think anyone on the panic train should take a deep breath and read.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-what-you-can-do-help-slow-outbreak/607369/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Good article.
As a 71 year old senior, I agree with your mother. I have no health issues. I just returned in February from Lisbon. ( a great trip )
I am going to a foreign land in two weeks.
I am travelling with my daughters and grand daughter to Disney World in Orlando from Toronto.
I will be careful of hygiene but otherwise have no fears.
Disney World in Orlando is closing this coming weekend, due to coronavirus outbreak. Hopefully, you can reschedule.
FYI – I’m also 71, and in good health, scheduled for a trip from Seattle to Maui later this month, but now reconsidering due to CDC warnings, etc.
Any opinions?
This article is hokey and oversimplifies and embellishes many recommendations to the point they actually don’t resemble the original recommendations. Please read the actual CDC guidelines at the original web site and not a heavily filtered, tilted and misinterpreted version.
The virus is all over the United States. It is not contained. Why is being on an airplane any more dangerous than being anywhere else in public? I can think of no reason for that to be the case. If you want to retreat from life, go for it. But I think that’s silly. Do you what you normally would do and have fun. Just be more focused on hand washing/hand sanitizer and not touching your face unless having just washed/santized.
Proximity hence the canceling of so many large scale events.
The virus is not passed through the air (and even if was, airplane air is continuously cleaned). If you disinfect the surfaces around your seat and/or wash your hands / use sanitizer, the only risk is being coughed or sneezed on by an infected person. Seems low risk to me.
Sorry to break it to you but yes it is passed through the air. And there is a case study from China showing how a person on a bus who did not move the entire trip(this is china they had cameras) infected people up to 14 feet away.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/transmission.html
The virus is thought to spread mainly from person-to-person.
Between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet).
Through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs.
Dan is 100 percent correct. Six feet of separation is a general guideline but transmission can happen at greater distances, esp with sneezing and coughing and marginal ventilation and environmental factors.
Matthew, like you, I feel that a lot of the world’s reaction to what is happening right now is based more on fear than well-founded facts; largely because there aren’t a lot of facts out there right now. I just had to cancel a work trip to Rome, which I am told is for my safety and that of all of my co-workers here. However, at this stage of the game, I am hard-pressed to believe that I am at significantly greater threat of exposure in Lazio than I am here in southern California. But that’s not what’s driving all of this. I would have been more concerned about stigma and the impression of others should I have taken that trip.
That said, I think we also know enough to at least urge those people who are in the high-risk demographic to strongly reconsider their activities, including travel. There’s a difference between contracting a virus and suffering mild symptoms versus coming down with a potentially fatal illness. *If* experts had suggested that this was a good recommendation to be made to the American public (and I believe that they did) and those recommendations had been withheld for reasons not having to do with the safety of this at-risk population, then the gamesmanship and politicization of this thing is pretty one-sided … and irresponsible, in my opinion.
My travel is going to be curtailed for at least the next month, if not two, and I’m pretty bummed about it. But I think I’m also at the point where I have just come to accept that it is to be, whether or not I think it is well-founded.
And, for what it’s worth, I think that the analogy with your trip to Israel (which made me pretty jealous!) had a lot flaws. 😉
Read this for some perspective for those who think this is no big deal. The whole of Italy was not put under quarantine because they simply panicked. Their health care system is in danger of collapsing under the weight of so many hospitalizations and critical cases. If we mitigate the disease in this country and flatten out the wave we will be ok.
https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/-2019-ncov-new-coronavirus/italy-2019-ncov/835416-italy-dr-daniele-macchini-a-doctor-from-humanitas-gavazzeni-talks-about-his-life-on-the-front-lines-to-combat-coronavirus
This should not become a political issue. Senior Citizens like the backpack couple pictured should not fly. Senior Citizens should take cruises to keep the boats full, supporting the cruise industry. They mighty get quarantined for 14 days, but so what? They weren’t doing anything important.
You write like someone who has no living parents.
I think everyone should be wearing masks. I also think this is not recommended now because if 300 million Americans started wearing masks, the supply would go to zero in a week. If everyone wears 2 masks per day, that’s 600 million masks per day or 4.2 billion masks per week.
‘The entire time I felt incredibly safe.’ Well, I’ll base the decision on medical, scientific facts and not ‘feelings’. No, seniors should only not fly, but also avoid crowds, contact (as much as can be avoided) at this critical time. This too shall pass, but in the meantime I’d bet that many seniors could handle not going on a cruise, flight, bus line for the next months – or longer. I am just under 60 and self-isolating. Entry to my premises involves folks putting on (provided by me) disposable shoe covers, wearing of disposable masks and disposable exam gloves. Don’t like it? No entry. Period. To each his/her own. It’s about risk assessment and pro-active measures. This is no time for complacency or denial. Events are now rapidly unfolding. New Rochelle, NY is the first quarantined town in the U.S. Just the start IMHO.
I don’t recall seniors saying during H1N1 : “ this disease only kills young people so I’ll just continue my life as normal”, including the risk of spreading it further. Sadly there is an element of “I’ll be okay but you can go to hell” in this current outbreak.
It is disturbing that so many clueless twits leave comments on forums/blogs, offer advice , make definitive pronouncements…plainly inaccurate, apparently because they’re not in any higher risk category , don’t feel affected , don’t care about others. It would be better, when you don’t know/can’t be bothered to spend 2 minutes finding out, to just shut the F up. “It’s no worse than flu”. Effing morons….
My parents are in their late 90s. I will stop traveling for now, because I don’t want to isolate for 14 days on return before visiting them.
As long as they are not infected it is really up to them if they want to take the risk. It is now Spring break and I am shocked on the number of families that I know that are going on a cruise. I would never put my family at risk but some people don’t really care.
Debit you suck and are still a Liberal IDIOT
I’m in a different quandary, I have elderly parents (89 & 85) who need to get home from Florida. I can put them on an airplane (Tampa to Memphis) and have them home in under 2 hours or I can put them in a car for 2 days, 20 hours driving and making at least 8 stops for gas, food, bathrooms and a hotel stay. So realistically which mode of transportation offers the least amount of exposure? Sure seems like the airplane does, especially with the heightened cleaning protocol, but I am so torn and want to make the best decision for their health.
Wow, that’s a tough one. I would put them on a plane.
I’m in the same situation. 11-12 hour drive from Myrtle Beach to Pittsburgh or 1 hour flight to the small airport in Latrobe, Pa. I too think the quick flight with Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, and two out of the way seats is the safer way to go.
Any of you have aged parents who flew recently ? My 83 yo dad has to fly to Boston. It is a 4 hr flight and he has to get home for medical reasons. But we are worried.
I’m not a doctor, but here are my thoughts. There’s always a risk at that age, but this is an essential trip. Tell him to wear an N95 mask (which will protect him rather than protect others from him) and that there is scant evidence for COVID-19 being spread through surfaces, food, or drink. I wish him all the best!
So, I get pneumonia and the flu most every January-March…Usually after flying. I’ve always gotten the shots. Should I fly or not this year?