Kind: captions
Language: en
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is it safe to fly now to be honest my
advice is minimize
air travel minimize contact with people
we have a pandemic you know in 6 to 12
months a pandemic
will be over it's really balancing the
risks and the benefits of travel
for the individual i would say right now
as cases are surging throughout the
united states that those risks are
higher it's important to think about
the family member that you're seeing and
how vulnerable they are to severe
manifestations of covid
how vulnerable you are to covet the most
vulnerable people
are those who are older and who have
certain underlying medical conditions
including diabetes heart conditions
obesity smoking
a weak immune system risks of travel go
up with the infection rates at your
point of origin
and your destination but what if you do
fly
transmission on an airplane does happen
but the relative number of cases
reported on airplanes is on the lower
side so i think with with good
precautions
you can really work to minimize the risk
the most important way to reduce your
risk face masks use them consistently
correctly and use a well fitting face
mask of high quality
face masks are crucial because the
primary way
covet spreads is through tiny droplets
in our breath
these can hang in the air for hours
making indoor spaces
especially dangerous a well-fitting mask
is snug around your nose and chin
with no large gaps around the edges you
want your breath to be filtered through
the mask
not flowing in and out around it
and when it comes to quality the tighter
the weave of the fabric
the more protection it provides if you
as a passenger are masking if your other
passengers are also masking
this is very very important wearing
masks reduces
your droplet spread and sort of contains
it
i personally would not eat on a flight
because i would not want to take off
my mask which brings us to how you
should behave on a plane
so the nature of this virus is that it's
driven
by contact duration contact proximity
and contact frequency and right now with
cases soaring
each of these factors is elevated when
people are close together
there is a risk so minimize contacts
do not talk to people ideally never ever
use a middle seat
making sure you're traveling with hand
sanitizer and not touching your face or
your eyes
airplane cabins might be safer than most
indoor spaces
the ventilation on airplane is thought
to be better
than the ventilation indoors which is
stagnant
the air you breathe inside a plane is a
mix of
outside air and recirculated cabin air
along the lengths of most aircraft the
air enters from overhead outlets
flows downwards and leaves through
grills near the floor
there's very little forward and backward
movement of the air
in addition every few minutes the air is
pushed through a hospital-grade
hepa air filter while the plane is
cruising
the volume of air in the cabin is
exchanged every couple minutes
not only are the airplane filters very
effective at
filtering out coronavirus it is also
helpful in terms of how the ventilation
flows
this helps really to decrease the risk
of transmission
but the issue is when you board or
at the time of exit often they turn off
the engines
and then the ventilations may stop
getting on and off the aircraft can pose
the highest risk
you know waiting in your lines and
security
and then there's always a rush when you
exit there's crowding
i think the risk is much higher in these
settings
certainly being in an environment where
others are masking and
as much as possible maintaining six feet
social distancing will certainly
decrease those risks
in the lead-up to your trip try to
minimize exposure
and we should stress if you have coveted
or you think you might have been exposed
you should not be flying symptomatic
persons should not be traveling they
should not be in airplanes they should
be at home
self-isolating full stop
therefore transmission and that is still
occurring
is that because of asymptomatics it's
estimated that up to 40
of people infected with the coronavirus
have no symptoms at all
a simple symptom screen or doing
temperature measurements
while it's important won't catch all the
people who are infected
due to the high risk of asymptomatic and
pre-symptomatic spread
some airports and airlines are offering
rapid
on-site or at-home testing before you
board for some flights
they are not yet perfect and they may
not detect all cases but
testing is the way forward so make sure
that you do not spread it
also from one country to the other or
from one state to the other one city to
the other
testing passengers after they leave the
plane and screening wastewater from an
aircraft that's just
landed won't stop the spread of covet
but they can help with contact tracing
if you want to be sort of extra cautious
quarantined after you
arrive right now covet 19 is surging
across the u.s
chances are higher now than at any other
time during the pandemic
that someone on your flight will be
infected even if they don't know it
and it could be you if we take
precautions
i think we can minimize the risk of
inflamed transmission
that being said it's not a zero risk and
so everybody needs to factor that
into their decisions about travel and
perhaps more dangerous than flying
is the act of getting together with
friends and family
small gatherings have become
increasingly responsible for the spread
of coronavirus
wait it out your next year will be
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better