US Passes 750K Daily Air Travelers Over July 4 Weekend

I want flights reserved/rationed for serious purposes only, until electric airplanes are the rule and/or algae-based jet fuel, and the evil TSA is abolished. The No. 1 climate crisis demands we do this as part of ourt collective response. Four-fifths of people on Earth now have never flown in an airplane. The last of my 12 non-trivial flights starting in June 1984 was in October 1993, and I have abided by flygskam since then, barring a life-or-death emergency such as being medevaced to an STC hospital from an accident scene. This eco decsion has cost me myriad opportunities in my journalism career. Ace teen eco champion/ethical vegan Greta Thunberg on this point, as on virtually all else, is spot-on. (I have been vegan since Friday 1 January 1993.) Our planet's biosphere is at stake--and we are rapidly racing toward the cliff of no return.

As of today-- June 28, 2020-- anyone who gets on a plane right now if they have ANY other choice is suicidal. Period. End of story. There are plenty of people making staggeringly bad decisions every minute of every day, so some people will be flying when they don't absolutely need to be. But there is simply no way for any rational human being to believe it's a good idea to do this unless they simply have no other choice. Maybe it was at least possible to argue otherwise back when this article was originally written, but the argument is over now for anyone capable of rational thought. The cases, hospitalizations, and projected deaths are skyrocketing beyond anything seen before, and the exponential growth in infections continues daily. There's something eerie and disturbing about anyone trying to even claim otherwise now, like watching people run off a cliff while claiming gravity doesn't exist.

@Josh, since airlines are operating at 10%-20% capacity from last March, it should roughly scale to about 210K to 420K actual passengers.

What I think a lot of people are missing is that those non-stops and quick connections aren't as abundant and more are going landside during longer connections. That, I think, is skewing the numbers.

Add in all the deadheading staff and you get what is a "total figure" that isn't really representative porportionatly to the 2019 figures. If the totals were broken down, we would have a better representation of unique passengers traveling.

I enjoy a cigar and on a connection of several hours will pass through TSA several times. On 2+ connections I may pass through TSA a half-dozen times between origin & final destination. I am but one passenger on one itinerary flying on a single day but I would be counted 6 times.

The numbers don't truly reflect how many unique passengers are actually flying and without the data they are based on, pretty much worthless.

James

There is one reason and one reason alone why the US (and soon to be Brazil and Russia) are so incredibly bad at managing this pandemic. We all know what that is.

Add in that a good chunk of the population who have no concept of what the greater good means, or why small sacrifices today make for better days tomorrow and well, there you go. 2MM infected, 115K dead, and counting. People bitching about masks when we as a country NEVER locked down, JFC, what a bunch of loser pussies. If putting on a mask is a personal Vietnam War for you, you really are a pansy ass bitch who needs to learn how to suck it up. Keep being clueless, keep being selfish, and keep being stupid. Pray it's not your mom, grandpa, sweet neighbor, or mentor who dies next, because wearing a mask and being uncomfortable is far more important than some stranger's (or not) life.

@Ray, the fact that you say this isn't political just shows how deluded or disingenuous you are. Of course it is political. When lockdown hysterics say to "follow the science," they don't actually mean follow the science. They mean to prostrate yourself in front of their favored experts and politicians. Public officials openly lied to the public about masks and admitted it soon after. If everyone had worn masks from the very beginning and governors had "followed the science" and taken measures to protect the most vulnerable, i.e. nursing home residents, we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead, the virus was allowed to freely spread in New York and elderly, sick patients were ordered back to nursing homes. Why do you think the death counts are so high and with a very high median age of decedents? Any dissent from the party line was not tolerated and the media were complicit in trying to scare the public into thinking that a young, healthy person was at just as much risk of dying as an 80-year old with hypertension and heart disease. You claim to be scientifically informed, but I doubt you have any statistical training or else you wouldn't be saying what you are. You are Innumerate just like the rest. It turns out that shamed Mr. Ferguson of Imperial model infamy and his fellow experts on SAGE weren't even recommending lockdown for the entire UK population in March. And have you examined his model, held together with Scotch tape? Again, I have to assume you haven't, as your writing is purely political blathering with no evidence to back it up. The US is ninth in per capita COVID-19 deaths. Ahead of the US are all Western European countries with socialized medicine you think are so much more enlightened than the US. Why does the idea of others carrying on with their lives bother you so much? Do you have a job guaranteed by the state such that you don't need to worry about where your next paycheck will come from? Even Cuomo changed his tune from "just one life" to "people are going to die." ANYONE WHO IS VULNERABLE OR AFRAID CAN STAY HOME. Trying to make this issue into "MAGA/Christians R so DUMB" does not make you seem more enlightened. I didn't vote for Trump, I am not Christian, and I doubt you've read more about evolution and atheism than I have. You are clearly the kind of person who thinks he knows better than everyone else and is willing to ruin their lives to try to prove it. In a couple weeks I'll be enjoying the beauty of Venice without having to fight the usual sweaty throngs while Ray is holed up at home, smugly enjoying the smell of his own farts. #YOLO!

@Guru Singh

YOU should stay grounded. How many times do you need to be told that the air on a plane is cleaned as well or better than in an operating room? How many times do you need to be told that the risk of dying if you are relatively young and healthy is minimal? If you can't accept the risk, don't go out, but I don't know how you accept driving on the roads or even chewing food if you are so scared. As for guaranteeing $1 million to anyone who gets sick, that is just preposterous. How would you even prove such a thing? Before COVID-19 did you demand that any business you entered pay you if you got sick later? You realize that deadly flu viruses have been circulating in the population forever, don't you? Your alarmism and safetyism are a bane on society.

@Katherine Whitley

Yes, stay at home. Don't ever leave. Ever. Please.

I look forward to enjoying Venice without the vulgarian swarms.

A few things to share:

Air inside a closed chamber is cleaned well but a sneeze near or around you will get to you.

Social distancing is not possible on the plane unless there is

P E E A P E E
E E P A E E P
P E E A P E E

where
P is a passenger
A is aisle
E is empty

The following is NOT safe even with a mask.

P E P A P E P
P E P A P E P

Toilets are not safe unless cleaned every time someone uses it.

Where are 500,000 people flying?

Who is to blame when someone falls sick and dies?

Airlines HAVE TO state they are safe.
I want AIRLINES to give in writing that they will pay $1 million if someone falls sick.

They cannot do that, because they cannot guarantee it.

They quietly updated their terms of flying to include no liability if you fall sick.

Please don't fly just yet.
Lets lower our numbers and get it close to 0 and then lets start with domestic flying.

We should stay grounded.

@Terrified and people like him are welcome to stay at home. Why is he terrified? What does he not understand about an American under 50 having a 1 in 3,077 chance of dying if he gets infected with the virus? To be clear, you have to catch the virus first to face those odds, and that includes all the morbidly obese and immuno-compromised. If you are healthy, your odds of dying from the virus are obviously even lower. Keep wetting your bed at home, Terrified. You do you!

I began flying once I did my own analysis of the numbers. I had been anxiously awaiting the antibody tests. Covid antibody studies by USC, Stanford, New York and Biobot showed plainly that the number of people who had already had the virus was somewhere in 50x range, meaning that about 50x those who had tested positive, were actually the real number infected. It's really just a simple math problem. That drastically affected the stated mortality rate as it is calculated at deaths as a percentage of positives. So when you multiply the known cases by a multiple so high, it brings down the actual mortality rate to somewhere close to the flu, which was what I thought from the beginning. So for me to begin to fly, I needed to understand the numbers and understand the risk. I didn't want to listen to the 'experts' who were wrong most of the time anyway. For me, the antibody tests were why I began to be counted among the numbers you quote by TSA. And I am going to personally continue to boost those numbers in the weeks and months to come.

Safetyists like @KD get so angry when the numbers don't confirm their disaster scenarios.

From the CDC:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html

The CDC's "Current Best Estimate" of "Symptomatic Case Fatality Ratio" is 0.004. Its "Percent of infections that are asymptomatic" is 35%. With those two pieces of information and the magic of math, we can arrive at the infection fatality rate (0.004 * (1 - 0.35) = 0.26%).

The mainstream media like to report just the headline death numbers to instill fear. Why don't they explore the age-stratified statistics? The CDC best estimate CFR for those 50-64 is 0.2% and 0.05% for 0-49. Those imply IFRs of 0.13% and 0.0325%, respectively. In terms of odds of dying, those mean 1 in 769 and 1 in 3,077, respectively.

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/

The odds of dying from choking on food are 1 in 2,618. Good God, we must ban chewing immediately! Everyone must get feeding tubes! We have a feeding tube shortage! Save us, Jebus! Shame on anyone who thinks chewing his food is okay!

Here are some links to studies arriving at IFRs that accord with what I just demonstrated (not that lockdown hysterics actually care about the "science"):

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v2
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.20057729v1.full.pdf

The real tragedy of the lockdown was that the most vulnerable were not actually protected from infection. Instead, people like Gov. Cuomo ordered patients sick with COVID-19 to be taken into nursing homes, the very populations that needed the protection. So, the economy was ruined (and by economy, I mean the livelihoods of millions of people; maybe you think Americans will be okay, but what about the Bangladeshis who depend on clothing orders from the US and now are receiving nothing?) while the lives people like Cuomo claimed to be trying to save were endangered by his very orders. Read this ProPublica examination of the differences in how California and New York handled the pandemic:

https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california

Cuomo and de Blasio have blood on their hands.

Flying is safe. It is the contagions of innumeracy, safetyism and collectivism that are truly threats to humanity.

@Commenting Commenter

Americans are largely innumerate and the so-called elite are not immune from this failing. Innumeracy among the ruling and chattering classes certainly contributed to the lockdown debacles.

It is you who are factually incorrect about the Nordic model. The Nordic states are capitalist with high taxation. They succeed in spite of their collectivist tendencies, not because of them. The capitalist reforms of Sweden in the 1990s are well known and were necessary after decades of economic stagnation under collectivism. If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe that right-wing rag known as the Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/democrats-use-nordic-nations-as-models-of-socialism-they-actually-involve-a-lot-of-capitalism/2019/06/24/b6d9bbdc-945c-11e9-b58a-a6a9afaa0e3e_story.html

I've flown five segments since late May, three of them international. I have no fear of getting COVID-19 while flying, but I wear a mask on board as required. Most people don't realize that the ventilation systems on airplanes are as good as or better than those found in operating rooms. You are at very low risk of catching a respiratory illness unless you are sitting right next to someone who openly sneezes or coughs. Even then you are not necessarily going to get sick. I'd certainly feel safer sitting on a crowded plane than standing (or kneeling or prostrating myself) in the middle of a crowded anti-racist protest with people chanting and yelling. "Silence is violence" in that context is exactly the opposite of reality given that speaking loudly and continuously produces potentially infectious aerosols and droplets. Since this is not typical passenger behavior on planes, we have yet to see a super-spreader event occur on one. In a few weeks I'll be flying to Italy. Bedwetters and lockdown hysterics are free to stay at home, cowering in mortal fear of a virus that has an infection fatality rate of 0.26% according to the CDC's own data, while I "live my best life."