How International Travel Can Be Safer than Domestic
by Robert McGarvey
My trip across the Atlantic looms and a big question popped in front of my eyes: how crazy am I? Everywhere I look people are cancelling international trips, even some domestic travel, mainly as fear of the delta variant spreads fast across the country and hospitalizations, ICU usage, and deaths are all climbing. Is it nuts to cross the water?
And then I remembered the numbers and as I parsed the math I realized what is nuts is staying in Arizona.
About 53% of us in the US are fully vaccinated. My home state of Arizona comes in at 49% (yeah, a lot of dummies in the desert).
Spain, my European destination, is 74.4% fully vaccinated. That is right. Three in four Spaniards are fully vaccinated and they are taking the same good, high grade vaccinations we are in the US.
Better still, Spain now requires US residents who are travelling to Spain to have proof of full vaccination. No proof, no entry.
And the US requires us to present a current negative test result to re-enter the country.
Think what those facts mean. On my flight from JFK to Madrid it is reasonable to assume most passengers will be vaccinated. On the flight from Madrid to JFK, ditto for a preponderance of vaccinated and definitely everybody has a current negative test result.
I am safer on the international flight than I am on the PHX to JFK leg and god help me if that routing were to get shifted to Atlanta where anti vaxxers are boisterous and plentiful.
That is right: selected international travel just is safer than domestic.
Sure, I know the White House has unleashed a push to get many more of us vaccinated but even optimists believe it will be some months before we can match Spain’s present number (and by then Spain probably will be over 90% vaccinated).
The anti-vaxxers are creating our travel miseries. The blame is theirs.
And some are rising to slap them down.
Some airlines – Qantas is a for instance – say they will require all international passengers to be vaccinated. Canada is requiring similar of air passengers effective at the end of October.
Right now, no other airline has a broad requirement for vaccinations among passenger – but many countries now do. Expect more countries and airlines to join these lists. Travel just won’t truly restart until there are broad vaccination mandates and as airlines eye the many empty seats in their international flights you can bet that they will begin to agitate for vaccination requirements.
Don’t the unvaccinated have rights? Perhaps. But I have a right to not want them on my flights, in my hotels, or in the restaurants where I am eating. And many of us are beginning to share that thinking.
Even with my confidence about the health of my fellow travelers on the international legs of my travels, I will be wearing upgraded KF94 face masks which are a sharp step over conventional cloth masks (which I still wear in stores but some airlines have banned them and I am fine upgrading my air travel masks).
What about eating inflight, and bathroom use? I believe I will skip eating and as for the toilet I’d like to say I won’t use it at all but doubt that is realistic for a 7 hour flight. Stay masked, wash hands, maintain distances from other passengers and very probably this will be a safe trip.
But I wouldn’t have the same confidence about a flight to Wyoming or Alabama.
It’s domestic travel that I now see as risky. Talk about a paradox.
Look who you are flying with! And check the vaccination rate of states into which you are flying.
Yes, I know the CDC advises us to avoid ravel to Spain – and many, many more countries. I am just counting on my ability to stay health by traveling smart, avoiding the unvaccinated wherever possible, and also I come to this fully vaccinated and as a Covid survivor who probably has many antibodies from the actual disease swimming around my veins.
I am betting I do okay.
We’ll find out if that is a smart wager.