March 9, 2020
The travel industry is suffering significantly as COVID-19 spreads, and it is understandable that many in it would like to see more people flying and attending events, and believe concerns are overblown. But characterizing caution as panic is unfair to travelers and corporations who have looked at the facts and decided that staying put is what's best for themselves and others.
The current confusion is not surprising -- the virus is newly arrived on Europe and the US' shores, and we are getting mixed messages. This sentence from the WHO’s travel advisory page seems to suggest that travel should continue as usual: “In general, evidence shows that restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions.”
But the paragraph that follows indicates how travel restrictions can be helpful:
“Travel measures that significantly interfere with international traffic may only be justified at the beginning of an outbreak, as they may allow countries to gain time, even if only a few days, to rapidly implement effective preparedness measures. Such restrictions must be based on a careful risk assessment, be proportionate to the public health risk, be short in duration, and be reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves.”
In Taiwan, Evidence in Favor of Travel Restrictions
It is not clear what the WHO means by “the beginning,” but surely that window expands when political leaders fail, as they have in the U.S., to use time to “implement effective preparedness measures.”
Slowing the spread of this disease seems crucial – if a roughly 3% fatality rate does not concern you, the rate at which symptomatic cases become serious or critical should give you pause. When regions are hit with rapid outbreaks, as in Wuhan in China and Lombardy in Italy, hospitals become overwhelmed. If you know of stories of the flu having such an effect on otherwise well-functioning hospital systems, please send them to me or share them in the comments.
There is evidence that restricting movement slows spread. How else do you explain that Taiwan, 81 miles from Mainland China, with huge amounts of back-and-forth traffic has seen just 45 cases among a population of 24 million? Compare that to 296 in the closest mainland province Fujian, population 38 million. Taiwan began monitoring visitors from Wuhan on December 31, as soon as the Wuhan government first shared that it was investigating a mysterious illness among 59 residents. This was almost four weeks before the January 25 quarantine of the city. Over the next several weeks, Taiwan would continue to add countries to a list from which arrivals would be monitored, quarantined, or banned altogether. Of the 124 actions listed in this Stanford professor’s analysis of measures Taiwan has taken, more than half relate to travel. Taiwan has been quick to change countries’ risk status and separate and monitor arrivals from risky countries of origin. It has also been an example of transparency, cooperation and data sharing across ministries, and has an effective and affordable health care system.
Destination Decisions in the Time of COVID-19
Travelers everywhere have a new set of issues to consider when they think about taking flights and international trips. Last Thursday on CNN’s Coronavirus podcast (I know -- already. ABC has one, too. At this rate, virus podcasts will outnumber election podcasts before the President admits this is not a hoax), Dr. Sanjay Gupta concluded there was no reason for travelers to cancel vacation plans within the United States, and advised that international travelers simply check the CDC for country-by-country advisories.
But if you work in this industry you know that unlike a trip to the grocery store or a dinner in your city’s central business district, travel is planned months in advance. So while Dr. Gupta’s advice -- keep domestic travel plans if you are healthy, and make decisions about whether to cancel international trips based on CDC alerts – might be reasonable, it won’t do much to shore up travel over the coming months. Travelers will not lay out thousands or even hundreds of dollars for trips they don't know they will actually be able to take, especially given the rigidity of cancellation policies, especially airlines'. (Interestingly, the Chinese travel industry seems to have been quicker to offer travelers relief, and to step up and offer lodging to medical workers in affected areas).
The situation is dynamic to the point of being almost completely unpredictable on a nearly day-to-day basis. A friend of mine returning to Italy from Beijing tweeted this close to midnight on February 23:
The day before he arrived in Rome, there were 79 recorded COVID-19 cases in Italy. That number quadrupled in three days, and by the end of the week, the CDC labeled Italy with its highest warning level. A friend of mine cancelled her February 28 flight to Italy, and I too cancelled a Europe trip at the last minute at the end of that week. In just a few days, the pros and cons of travel to Italy changed completely, and neither of the two events I was to attend in Berlin were taking place. It is reasonable for travelers to conclude this might not be the best time for them to make international travel plans, even to countries not currently affected.
This is Not Hysteria vs Rationality
Most of the takes I have seen from others in travel seem to couch the should-you-stay-or-should-you-go calculus as a matter of hysteria vs rationality. I think this stems largely from the fact that the most recent comparable crisis this industry faced was 9/11. But this is not a terrorist attack in a North American or European city, designed to sow fear, but in reality making further attacks halfway around the world no more likely. This is a contagious disease. You might not personally spread it or contract it by traveling, but you won’t beat it by traveling either. People will continue to fly and even book cruises, but they will also continue to cancel and delay trips in numbers that are painful for the travel industry to absorb. It is not unreasonable for them to do that.
Whether you believe that healthy travelers have a responsibility to prop up the industry by keeping their plans, or feel it is irresponsible to take unnecessary flights, travelers are curtailing their trips and they will continue to do so for months. Fear is not the only reason, and it is not fair to label those who cancel or delay making travel plans as hysterical or weak. They have plenty of reasons, other than getting sick, not to make reservations for now – events they plan to attend could be cancelled; they could be quarantined for weeks going or coming; they could get stuck in transit; and yes, they also could unwittingly become a vector for spread of a disease that does serious harm to a more vulnerable person.
So if you work in travel, sure, keep calm. That is advisable in any situation. But also remember that your responsibility to do all you can to ensure the safety of travelers and the general public is more important now than your load factors and occupancy rates. And the better you do at keeping us all safe, the faster the industry will rebound from this crisis.