You may not get the coronavirus on an airplane. But the air is likely to continue to spread COVID-19

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This is a wonderful time to be a member of the national low-budget jet set. The fall sale of JetBlue, which took place in early August, will offer tickets as low as $20 between New York and Detroit or between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Recently, Alaska Airlines offered a “buy one-for-one” sale, a more familiar offer for Payless shoe buyers than for airlines. United Airlines passengers were recently able to electronically book a circular vacation from Newark, N, J.ft. Myers, Florida, a primary viral access point, for as little as $6, before taxes and fees increase the value to an astonishing value, wait, $27. All of this, of course, assumes that he is willing to threaten exposure to COVID-19, a virus that killed more than 170,000 Americans this week.

These agreements exist for a variety of reasons that have been combined to put the U.S. aviation industry. In a strange way. First, airlines are suffering severely. The air has dropped by approximately 66%, judging by the number of other people who passed through the Transport Security Administration checkpoints on 16 August compared to the same number last year; the 4 largest U.S. airlines lost $10 billion in combination between April and June, The Associated Press reports.

Second, many airlines have survived and moved away from mass layoffs only because they have accepted grants and express loans for a federal pandemic under the CARES Act, passed in March. Airlines that took the cash are prohibited from making mass layoffs until October; An autumn massacre is likely to occur.

Finally, the airlines that obtained those loans also agreed to a safe point of service regardless of passenger demand, and carriers feel that if they have to use safe routes anyway, they could also pay to earn cash in the process. even if it’s only $6. (Since then, the government has had at least some of those service requirements.)

U.S. airlines have done a lot of what they do to ensure the quality of individual passengers on their planes. All primary carriers require passengers to wear masks, some do not sell middle seats and stay blank rather and more frequently. And at least some experts say it’s for Americans to fly without worrying about getting COVID-19 on an airplane, in part because the cabin air is continuously updated (that said, many epidemiologists say they’re not personally comfortable at risk. fly right now).

But so far, the U.S. aviation industry. He has said little about the macro-level risk of other people spreading the virus across the country across the air: the issuance of reasonable tickets for a global pandemic is one thing, ethics is another. COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. Through the air, and the global viral symbol would actually be another if there were no trendy air travel, allowing a user to succeed in San Francisco or Seattle from Wuhan, China in the blink of an eye compared to, say, a steamship.

“The likelihood of an express user getting on a plane sitting next to an inflamed host and contracting the virus is low,” says Dr Robin Thompson, a mathematical epidemiologist at the University of Oxford who has studied the role of air transport in viral epidemics. “However, when many other people travel, the likelihood of safe infections, and the threat of the virus being transmitted between countries through one of these other people, is no longer negligible.

Similarly, the ability to fly from one corner of the United States to another in a matter of hours is also a public health risk, as users would possibly unknowingly take the hot spot virus to spaces where it is more under control, which can also cause a new epidemic. An August 18 ProPublica report based on anonymous location awareness revealed that of the 26,000 smartphones known on the Las Vegas Strip during a four-day era in mid-July, some of those same devices were detected in all contiguous U.S. states. , underlining the unique ability of air to spread to others, and therefore a contagion such as COVID-19, across the country at full speed and with ease.

It is too early to say with certainty how air fuels domestic viral spread in the United States compared to other modes of transport. But states close to each other tend to have similar COVID-19 situations, which means that the threat of an inflamed user starting a new epidemic by going to a neighboring state is probably much less than the threat of doing so through that user. crossing the country.

Meanwhile, while U.S. airlines offer round-trip flights to viral hot spots for less than an Uber’s fare to the airport, foreign airlines are particularly cutting service to cities where epidemics are known: flights to Auckland, New Zealand, for example. have increased. in mid-August after a new outbreak of less than a hundred cases. “This U.S. government, unlike governments around the world, has necessarily positioned airlines, and at most other companies, to interact for free,” says Brian Sumers, aviation affairs editor at Skift, an industry. news site. “It’s about the economy, and no one thinks about the social or moral ramifications of airline capacity decisions.”

In the absence of government obligations to do so, it is unreasonable to expect U.S. airlines to reduce their service in the interest of public fitness. These are corporations that are accountable to shareholders, and while it makes sense for them to focus on protecting individual passengers to convince others that it’s safe for them to fly again, they have little incentive to worry as much about public fitness as Array Airlines is fighting for their lives, after all, and it’s vital to note that they help at least 10 million jobs , according to Airlines for America, an industry group. “Your business has been decimated, they’re just looking to survive, they’ve got all those planes, they need to make cash, and if the most productive way to make some cash is to offer $27 round-trip fares in Florida, I’m going to do it,” Sumers says. In addition, the careS service needs were established at the beginning of the epidemic in the United States. The viral landscape has since replaced and, in some cases, airlines have more or less a mandate to fly to what have since become viral access points.

But what is moderate is that airlines are reconsidering the wisdom of offering moderate flights to a fatal pandemic showing few signs of reflux and flow. In addition, the U.S. aviation industry, which has only obtained a limited recommendation from the federal government for a pandemic, “needs some kind of safe travel protocol,” Harteveldt says. It cites countries such as France, which asks that incoming foreign passengers be examined for COVID-19 detection.

Of course, mass passenger testing is more complicated for U.S. domestic travelers, given their volume; Nearly 800 million other people flew to the United States in 2018, compared to just over two hundred million foreign passengers. And like many other pandemic disorders, it also returns to testing: with expanding delays across the country and almost unnecessary effects as they arrive, there’s simply no way to make sure everyone gets on a plane right now with viruses. Free. Many U.S. airlines require passengers to certify their own health, but there is no certainty that others are fair to their condition.

“Until other people are required to prove they are healthy before they travel, there is a threat that they simply get on a plane and may not infect anyone on that plane, but that they infect their destination,” Harteveldt says.

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