It’s time to cancel your Thanksgiving travel plans in the event of a pandemic

This Thanksgiving is different. Yes, it has been a difficult year. Yes, we all miss one aother. But if you love your family, it’s worth skipping this holiday season to make sure they’ll be alive and well for the next one.

As we insisted on election night which lasted for five damn days, the coronavirus was having a good time rampaging through the country. We reached our first day of 100,000 cases on October 30; yesterday there were 143408 new onescase. We lose more than 1,000 people every day to this virus.

Hospitalizations are also increasing. The same is true for percent positive, a critical measure of test dissemination and availability. Deaths are lagging behind cases and hospitalizations, and they’re starting to unfold as planned. Shit goes wrong, and vacation travel will only make matters worse. The Midwest and Northern United States are now the places with the most cases relative to the population. Some hospitals are impeding their intensive care capacity again, but the capacity is not limited to the beds. North Dakota faces such a shortage of hospital staff that they are allow nurses to stay on the job even if they test positive for COVID.

It will take a lot of work as a community to make things better, but the only thing we can do on an individual level right now is don’t make things worse.

Your security measures are void

Don’t travel. Don’t have a date. I know you think you are special and that’s everyone other which is behind the spread of COVID. No, in fact, it could very well be you.

Does everyone get tested? Well, remember that you can test negative and then catch the virus, and even after you get infected you will still be negative for a few days. Remember that routine COVID testing failed to protect the presidentbecause testing alone is not a prevention strategy.

Will your Thanksgiving be “socially distant”? Good luck with that. If you live in a warm place, and you hold the whole gathering outside, and people really follow the distance and masking rules, so that’s a great plan. But very few families will succeed. Are people going to cook together in the kitchen? Going to the same bathroom several times? Getting a little too close after having had a few drinks?

In most parts of the country, we will be in the interior. Masks don’t save you if you share the same tune with a group of people all day. You take off your mask to eat anyway, right? Think about it: restaurants and bars are among the biggest factors in the spread of COVID. thanksgiving dinner has a lot in common with a restaurant meal, except it’s worse because you’re there longer and your table mates have often stolen or tripped on the road from various hot spots across the country.

Canada has its Thanksgiving in October, the very day we celebrate Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day. Those Thanksgiving celebrations last month probably caused the increase in cases in this country a few weeks later.

Can we learn from the experience for once? Mid-pandemic holiday gatherings are a terrible, terrible idea. Better call your mom on Zoom, roast that duck you always wantedand do your part to make 2021 a less deadly year.