A lot of us have or at least had plans to do some traveling this summer but have been forced to put our plans on hold or even cancel them.
But there may be some good news coming your way if you were planning a Summer vacation.
The leading infectious disease doctor in the US, Dr. Anthony Fauci, believes that summer vacations might still be a thing this summer.
When speaking to CBS This Morning, Fauci was asked if he could envision a typical summer, filled with things like vacations, weddings, etc.
His response: “It can be in the cards.”
But he went on to provide some caution:
“And I say that with some caution, because as I said, when we do that, when we pull back and try to open up the country, as we often use that terminology, we have to be prepared that when the infections start to rear their heads again that we have it in place a very aggressive and effective way to identify, isolate, contact trace and make sure we don’t have those spikes we have now. So the answer to your question is yes, if we do the things that we need to do to prevent the resurgence.”
So a big component to travel still taking place is that there’s need to be a bullet proof system put into place for testing, tracing, and isolation.
Tests need to be readily available and we need a way to keep those infected out of the public until they are no longer contagious. And then we need to trace all of the contacts of infected individuals.
This is what countries like South Korea and others in the region have been able to accomplish and why their infection rates have probably been so low.
One reason they were probably so much better at it is because a lot of those countries had direct experience with SARS in 2003.
Now that we have taken a crash course in pandemic prevention over the past few weeks, we should hopefully be able to put a system in place for testing and tracking that could keep the spread down for this disease.
Things still won’t be completely safe until a vaccine rolls around, but from what the experts are saying, we could at least get back to some degree of normalcy.
I’d imagine we’ll still need to take adequate precautions throughout the summer like social distancing, hand washing, and perhaps face coverings when in close quarters.
Some spots will likely be safer than others based on things like population density. Also, some events may still not be going on due to the risks involved with huge crowds.
But I think many in this country will consider this a major victory if we can get to the point that people are taking summer vacations again in 2020, even if a large segment of would be vacationers is still staying home.
The models I’ve reviewed over the last few days show that we could have massive containment by the middle to end of May, so I think that’s when people will start to feel the urge to travel again.
But at this point it’s just a matter of waiting to see what happens with the trends of infections and what type of system our federal and state governments can put into place so that carriers of the virus are rapidly taken out of society until they are better and their contacts notified about potential infection risks.
CNN
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.
