Given a Winter season in which we are We advise against vacation trips and being with the familyThere is a temptation to at least find a change of scene. It can ease the pain of missing traditions and loved ones, but it can also ease the cabin fever after enduring a pandemic that kept us at home for almost a year.
When I knew I wasn’t going home The angel For Thanksgiving, I gathered my partner and the three friends that make up our COVID pod and booked a remote Airbnb that we could drive. Our thinking? We picked up groceries along the way and only left the house to walk a number of nearby hiking trails that we knew didn’t have many visitors.
But when we got home the following Monday, I realized how many people were zigzagging across the country ThanksgivingI wondered if hiding in the cabin was as responsible as I’d thought. With Christmas and New Years in mind, I’m not sure I would do it again – even if we could manage a trip perfectly confined to our car and rental home. (The first trip certainly taught me that every vacation requires more grocery stores and gas stations than you plan on.) Desperate for a straight answer, I called Susan Hassig, a professor at Tulane University and director of the school’s Masters of Public Health epidemiological program to ask what she thinks of traveling to a rental home over the holidays.
“A month or two ago I might have said that could be a sensible plan,” says Hassig. But now she has concerns. “I think the key piece is how good is your bladder? There has been a lot of bladder erosion. “When it comes to who is traveling, the safest group travel, she says, is a single household. When we talk about “bubbles”, which usually refer to some friends or family members who do not live together, it becomes particularly dubious so few people have completely restricted their social interactions like at the beginning of the pandemic. It only takes a hole to burst a bubble.
But even then, there are reasons we see so many States impose travel restrictions Prevent visitors from coming. California’s new restrictionsFor example, make it illegal for hotel and landlords to take in travelers until the end of the year – unless they know the guest will quarantine themselves for 14 days.
“Part of what the states are saying:” Do not travel to our state “is that their health systems are overwhelmed and they fear that you will end up in the hospital,” says Hassig. Even if you don’t pass the virus on to someone, you can get sick yourself – and then the target will be forced to take care of you. Intensive care units are currently approaching capacity According to the New York Times in the United States, what Hassig hesitates when travelers travel to other communities for a short vacation.
“It is especially problematic for places that people think of as idyllic hideaways, remote, less populous areas, even in a state where they live,” says Hassig. “These places, rural areas or non-urban areas are really, really difficult to provide health care. Most do not have intensive care units, they have very low staff margins, and they are already stressed. “
