It’s Time to Ditch Your Thanksgiving Trip Plans
This Thanksgiving is different . Yes, it has been a tough year. Yes, we all miss each other. But if you love your family, it is worth skipping this holiday season to make sure they are alive and well by the next.
While we stressed that election night will last five damn days, the coronavirus had a great time raging across the country. October 30th is our first day when we will look at 100,000 cases; there were 143,408 new cases yesterday . We are losing more than 1,000 people every day to this virus.
The number of hospitalizations has also increased . Thus, the percentage of positive results is a critical indicator of both the prevalence and availability of tests. Mortality rates are lagging behind cases and hospitalizations, and they are starting to rise right on schedule. Shit is getting worse and vacation travel will only make matters worse. The Midwest and North United States are currently the places with the most cases of the disease compared to the general population. Some hospitals are again struggling to keep up with their intensive care unit capacity, but capacity isn’t just about beds. North Dakota is facing such a shortage of hospital staff, which allows nurses to stay at work even if they test positive for COVID .
It will take a lot of work for the community to make things better, but the only thing we can do on an individual level right now is not make things worse .
Your security measures suck
Don’t travel. Don’t hang out. I know you think you are special and everyone else is contributing to the spread of COVID. No, actually, it could very well be you.
Is everyone getting tested? Well, don’t forget that you can get a negative test and then get infected with the virus, and that even after infection, you will still get a negative test for several days. Remember, routine COVID tests did not protect the president because tests themselves are not a preventative strategy.
Will your Thanksgiving be “socially distant”? Good luck with that. If you live in a warm place and have your entire meeting outside, and people really do follow the rules of distance and camouflage, then this is a great plan. But very few families will be able to do this. Do people get together to cook in the kitchen? Do you go to the same bathroom all the time? Getting too close after having had a few drinks?
In most of the country, we will be indoors. Masks will not save you if you sit in the same air with a group of people all day. You take off your mask to eat anyway, don’t you? Think about it: Restaurants and bars are among the top contributors to the spread of COVID. Thanksgiving dinner has a lot in common with dinner at a restaurant, except that it is worse because you have been there for longer, and your interlocutors often flew in or came from different hotspots around the country.
In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated in October, the same day that we celebrate Columbus Day or Indigenous People’s Day. Thanksgiving last month likely sparked a spike in the number of cases in that country a few weeks later .
Can we learn from our own experience at least once? Celebrating in the midst of a pandemic is a terrible, terrible idea. Better to call Mom at Zoom, roast the duck you’ve always wanted , and do your part to make 2021 less deadly.