It’s been a few months since we have addressed the COVID pandemic and its impact on travel. In this video, Allan reviews the current situation and offers his recommendation on making travel plans in the coming months.
Can’t watch the video right now? Here’s the video transcript of Is It Time To Start Worrying About COVID Again?:
Hi everyone this is Allan Wright. I’m the President and Founder of Zephyr Adventures, Taste Vacations, and Travel Montana and I’m here again to talk to you about COVID for the first time in four months.
Today’s subject is – is it time to start worrying about the next COVID wave now. We know that things are pretty good here in the United States right now but we also know that in some Asian countries, they’re experiencing a bit of a boom in cases and that cases are increasing in many European countries as well. The reason is two-fold really over in Asia. Many of those countries have done such a great job at keeping COVID at bay that the new omicron variants are infecting people who are vaccinated.
In Europe, it’s a little bit different. They are primarily seeing a surge because of this new BA2 variant of the omicron variant of COVID and so we often follow what happens in Europe, in terms of this pandemic are very likely to see a similar increase in cases in the coming weeks and probably lasting for a couple of months until it goes back down again. The question then is is it time to worry and I think the answer is no.
We’re right now enjoying a lull in cases and even when that changes I don’t think it’s time to dramatically change our behaviors. We have a lot of immunity in the United States. It’s both immunity from vaccination and natural immunity from people who’ve caught COVID. And we know that while these new omicron variants are too good at getting around the immunity built up by the vaccinated immunity. That immunity does do a good job of keeping people largely from being severely sick or from dying from COVID so that’s a good thing. I don’t believe it’s time to cancel your travel plans or to dramatically change your behavior.
Having said that, for travel, I do think we need to pay attention to this. I don’t want to get sick on vacation from anything – the cold or flu or COVID. But I especially don’t want to get sick with COVID and not be able to return home when I’m done with my vacation. If I’m traveling and I have to test to come back to the United States and I have COVID, then I won’t be coming back on time. Even in the United States, if I have COVID I won’t feel correct about getting on an airplane if I’ve got COVID.
So what that means is my suggestion to you and what I will be doing is I will be behaving more conservatively when I travel than when I’m at home. So I will be masking more in just going into the grocery stores and into other interior environments. I will not be hanging out inside places where there are lots of people who are unmasked and I’ll probably be more cautious about where I’m choosing to go out and eat in restaurants, for example, preferring outdoor than indoor. Preferring places where I can sit a little bit isolated from right next to everybody else and that would be my suggestion. It doesn’t take a lot of hardship to do these small precautions. Keeping to your own travel bubble is a good idea and I do think it’s smart to be more cautious when you’re traveling than when you’re at home.
I definitely suggest that we don’t have to change our travel plans and start canceling travel in the coming weeks and months as we see a little bit of a rise in cases again. We at Zephyr Adventures, Taste Vacations, and Travel Montana had a very good year last year both in terms of the number of travelers but also in terms of controlling COVID on our tours. We had what we believe is zero cases of transmission from one person to another on any of our tours all of last year. That’s what we’ll continue to be working on to achieve this year. So I hope that you continue to keep your travel plans in place both with us and on your own and enjoy the wonders of travel without worrying too much about COVID.
