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IIn October, Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, said in an interview that his children would not be coming home for Thanksgiving this year and urged other Americans to avoid big celebrations in order to slow down. the spread of the coronavirus.
Public health officials have often warned that the vacation, one of the biggest travel opportunities of the year, could be a huge super-spreader event.
On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated their guidelines to recommend Americans avoid Thanksgiving travel. But there are signs that many will ignore this advice and travel and reunite with their families.
The Guardian spoke to five public health experts about how they plan to spend the holidays this year.
Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; member of President-elect Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force
“My partner and I are going to celebrate it together, alone. We will be doing virtual Thanksgiving exchanges with my two children, their spouses and my five grandchildren.
I’ll spend the day doing something I’ve never done before [and that is] call a long list of people I have been fortunate enough to have had in my life, and tell everyone that I am very happy they were born.
Sometimes it’s only when you lose something that you realize how much it means. Many families this Thanksgiving are having this exact feeling because they have lost loved ones to Covid. [The rest of us] also lose the wonderful experience of being close to people.
It’s tough, but I’m looking forward to next year and [take comfort] knowing that by doing what we do we all hope to be here next year.
Saskia Popescu, epidemiologist at George Mason University and the University of Arizona
“My husband and I are bubbling over with my parents, who live 90 miles away. We are vigilant about being quarantined for 14 days and then we are all going to be tested in advance. We had to decide to [celebrate] with a set of in-laws, instead of both, so it was a delicate conversation. But we’ll probably be celebrating Christmas with my husband’s family.
It is a time of year when many of us normally get together with friends. My sister-in-law and I have a tradition of pedicuring and dining together during the holidays. I will miss it this year.
I have a virtual happy hour every Friday with a group of friends from my Johns Hopkins scholarship, and we’re planning to have one before the holidays, where everyone is wearing an ugly sweater. I tried sending gifts to my friends because there was so much video chatting which is wonderful, but there is also something nice about being able to open a mail or a small gift. “
Dr Gregory Poland, vaccine expert and internal medicine doctor at the Mayo Clinic in minnesota
“I have two sons and a daughter, and [the older two] won’t be coming home for Thanksgiving like they normally would. My youngest son and his wife live near us and will be coming for Thanksgiving dinner, but we will be in the garage about 10 or 12 feet apart. When we don’t eat, we will all have masks. When we eat, we turn on a fan and leave the garage door open. It can be cold, but we’re going to put a heater.
We’ll have a brief meeting, and then we’ll see our other kids on Zoom. We set up a table for those of our family who are not there, just to remember that we are a family, even though we are separated by space.
Thanksgiving is probably my favorite vacation and it was a tough decision not to spend it [together]. I was trying to think of all kinds of ways to make it work – tests, distances, they drive home – and we just realized, chatting, that wouldn’t be safe. It is not the right thing to do.
Instead, we’ll be celebrating the Thanksgivings that we to have had and look forward to Thanksgiving 2021. ”
Dr Thomas Chin-Chia Tsai, surgeon and health policy researcher at Brigham and Women’s the hospital and Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts
“With the high risk of transmission of Covid and a high degree of asymptomatic spread, we think it’s safer to keep it with our immediate family – my wife, my two-year-old and I – and we’ll zoom in on them. members of our family. Fortunately, our friends and families felt the same.
We’re having a pretty traditional Thanksgiving, watching football and cooking, and we’ll try to keep the social and family bond together, but it will be shorter. We’re all on Zoom all the time for meetings and work, and it’s not the same as being together.
Since there are only three of us and we have a young child, we are not going to cook. We will be buying a lot of take out from the local restaurants. It’s less work for us, and we’re also helping support some of the small businesses that are suffering.
Deborah Burger, RN and National Nurses United Co-Chair, based in Oakland, California
“I have my smoked turkey, my mashed potatoes, my gravy, all that sort of thing. But it will only be me and my husband. We do not make any outside visitors; I think most nurses have limited their interactions with extended family because they don’t want to endanger them.
I’m really lucky that, at least in my family, everyone is on board [for spending the holiday apart]. But I have colleagues whose family members wanted to go ahead with Thanksgiving dinners with 30 or 40 people. As Thanksgiving approaches and the number of reported cases has increased, some people have started to cancel these plans, but I’m really concerned that not many people are reassessing their plans based on current information.
You need to reset your expectations on what the holidays mean right now. It would be extremely selfish to try to have a “normal” Thanksgiving when these are not normal times. Better to have a few empty seats at the table this year, rather than empty seats forever.
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