@conmama
United
I think folks who are considering travel will have to carefully and thoughtfully consider policies and rules of wherever they plan to visit to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Careful and thoughtful planning is always a good idea and many policies are being changed, depending on the state of local conditions.
Arriving and expecting to be able to do whatever one pleases and disregarding forms you sign and instructions you are given tends to create a very unfavorable environment for everyone.
People are justifiably concerned about the spread of infection and travel IS a vector which has been shown to accelerate the spread, especially when the local population has eliminated new infections.
@HImom I’m not disagreeing with you.
What I’m saying is…kiss your tourist industry goodbye as long as there is a 14 day quarantine when arriving. If that is what your state determines it needs to do re: Covid 19, that is fine. But don’t expect your tourist industry to do anything under those circumstances.
We intend to travel there…but it won’t be until the restrictions are lifted, or significantly relaxed.
I’m sure we aren’t the only ones.
This was a special vacation gift to me…and I’m not interested in substituting camping at some national park instead.
I agree that other options are and will be explored — faster tests, shorter quarantines, etc.
This is what ALL areas grappling with tourism are trying to figure out in a manner that protects visitors AND workers AND residents.
Having thermometers that scan all people at airports and other crowded places would be a start. That’s available in many places but I’ve never noticed any in the US.
If airlines would have smaller penalties for having to reschedule travel due to fever/illness, people may be more inclined to reschedule than now where there is significant financial penalty. (With airlines having huge losses, not sure the ly are interested in considering this.)
+1, @thumper1. I don’t have 3 vacation weeks to spare to spend 2 of them in a hotel room. I also canceled the later trip we planned, and the hotel rep sounded very discouraged. She has her job for now… to handle cancellations.
@bgbg4us , I imagine that you would have to look up each state’s Stay At Home order to see if there is a quarantine requirement. For example, my state of Ohio does have a quarantine requirement of 14 days for those who enter the state and plan to “stay” (“stay” is not defined, but this part is right after the exclusions for those who live near the border and cross it frequently to work, so anything other than that might be a “stay.”)
Perhaps you could plan your trip to avoid stays in any quarantine states; I do think many states in the real midwest (not Ohio midwest) are looser with restrictions; plan your hotels ahead and see if they are open. Also call any places you want to go (parks) to see if they are open.
I think that’s pretty much a wasted effort, given that people can spread the virus while asymptomatic. In fact, I am reading now that Covid is probably most contagious before symptoms appear – https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-infection-contagious-days-before-symptoms-appear – so while it wouldn’t hurt, it’s not going to really protect anyone or slow the spread of the virus.
The short vacation trips away from home will likely die out everywhere for the next few, well, who knows how long.
The better idea for ideal all season places like HI might be to appeal to folks like the longer term traveler. I could see owners offering the first two weeks free in order to capitalize on the next month or three from those who can do that sort of schedule. We run into oodles of them in FL, the Bahamas, etc. We stay a month or a little longer. Many stay three months or whatever they consider all winter.
Yes, perhaps vacations will have to be longer for safer stays. It’s a luxury that is challenging for many but the temperature scans do catch SOME folks who have elevated temperatures and should isolate at home with whatever germs they have rather than spread it. We do have “snowbirds” and part time residents who have a “home” and elsewhere.
I don’t have answers but know this issue is one that is definitely being discussed in our govt and likely many places around the world. How does one protect against asymptomatic spreads especially when testing capacity is not ideal and sometimes folks have false negatives or false positives? It’s not even clear how long folks who have had confirmed covid-19 remain immune from reinfection.
It’s all in the testing. If there were a quick, easy, and cheap way for everyone to be tested regularly and repeatedly – then all of the asymptomatic and mildly ill people (ordinary colds, allergies, etc.) could go about their business. The test is out there – https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-rapid-coronavirus-tests-abott/2020/04/07/98e44a76-78e9-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html – it’s just not available to us peons yet.
Until such testing is RELIABLE, inexpensive and widely available, it’s not very helpful.
We’ve cruised many times, and had a cruise booked for my 50th (would’ve been on it right now, actually) and, of course, that got canceled. We’re in in the tri-state area, so I canceled when things got crazy in New Rochelle, NY and in our county. I then decided to cancel our next cruise in 2021. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get on a cruise ship again after this. We’ve been told it’s a 90 day wait for refunds…I’ll believe it when I see it.
So, my husband and I (who are former avid campers) are going back to camping where we don’t need to be around people -haha. We sold our larger camper a few years ago and now we’re going to purchase a small pop-up that we can tow easily with our Jeep and do all the things we’ve wanted to do by driving…I didn’t envision my 25th anniversary at a campground, but I bet we can make it a pretty cool trip just seeing some stuff here in the States that we haven’t seen/done yet.
Our youngest is supposedly studying abroad in Denmark in January, but right now we’re more focused on the the lost internships and what the summer looks like for him. We also have our first grandchild arriving in August in NC - not sure if we’ll be able to really leave this area and be with them, and that’s killing us, but it is what it is. Maybe I could quarantine in my camper…
We are not going anywhere out of state. However, we have a couple of in-state campgrounds booked where we take our RV. I feel like that is probably the safest type of travel since we are just taking our house with us. We don’t have to share any public facilities or stop anywhere for food or supplies.
For travel involving flights I just don’t want to risk it as flights are being canceled, and who knows if there might be another wave of this.
Staying in a vacation spot for a month sounds lovely but really only possible for the retired population, so families, employed people, and students are unlikely to be able to do it. With 35 million unemployed, not many will have the funds to visit Hawaii anyway, I suppose. Maybe the hotels there can be repurposed.
It sounds nice to have no vacationers ruining your home states this summer (fall, winter) but the cost is enormous. The towns and cities and states need that money. I know the city of Denver is losing millions and unlike the federal government, a city can’t just print more. I was just on a zoom call with a few friends who are teachers. The school districts are out of money for this year and they’ve already notified all the paras and extra teachers that they won’t have jobs next year. There just is no money. Denver owns Red Rocks, and most of the concerts for this year have been cancelled, so no seat tax, no concessions, no parking fees. No hotel taxes coming in, sales tax has been practically eliminated as the malls and stores are closed.
Next things to be eliminated are fire and police, park clean up, road repair. We need your outside money. We need those tourists flying into our airport, eating in our restaurants, getting parking tickets and driving on our toll roads. And Denver isn’t a tourist town.
So enjoy this summer by yourself. There may be any tourists next year either if all the hotels go out of business.
Will your rented housing has private non-shared facilities that will keep you occupied for 14 days, since the quarantine for those arriving in Hawaii is very restrictive (no leaving your rented housing or hotel room except for medical care, no visitors except for medical care, no using public facilities like pools, gyms, or meeting rooms, have food delivered)?
https://hidot.hawaii.gov/airports/files/2020/04/Order-for-Self-Quarantine_20200416.pdf
I don’t know about travel for fun but, if S19 goes back to school, we need to fly there so either my H or I will fly with him. Long story, but we have to fly to a different city, get his stuff from a friend’s house and then drive to school. S19 can’t do it on his own. Not sure about where to stay - if hotels will seem safe enough or if it would be better to rent a condo or something for the couple of nights we’d be overnight.
If that goes ok, then one of us will take D21 to look at a few schools this fall if kids are on campus and there are visitors allowed and that would be a flight too. We wouldn’t drive.
As for this summer, we were going to plan something fun but, by March, we obviously knew that wouldn’t be a good idea. Now that we realize this is going to be a summer where the kids might not have their summer jobs and also might not have a ton going on, I’m starting to think of vacation options though. My niece and nephew live in Minnesota and we haven’t visited them. That might be fun and we could just make a last minute decision to drive since it’s just six hours. Pick a good weather long weekend and do fun stuff outside. Also, we’ve always wanted to go to Yellowstone. Made it to Yosemite and Acadia and Redwoods and lots of hiking in Utah and Colorado but never made it to Yellowstone. It would be a long drive but we know people who have done it. We could rent a big SUV to give us more space. We usually stay in hotels and maybe this is the year the ONE hotel near Yellowstone would have space. Haha. Or, more realistically, we could rent a house. We could push the trip all the way to mid-August since the earliest S19 would be back to school would be late August. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just dreaming about this one. But what would be the problem with driving and then staying in rented houses in August? If we can’t do that, then no one is going back to college this fall.
First, it is not a 5 min test (only positive result comes in 5 minutes, but to clear a person, 15 min or so must pass). So with setup time, at best 30 min per test. Second, it is not realistic to use this test for screening travelers because the machine as it exists now is an on-demand, one swab at a time, must be used by a medical professional kind of a machine. And there were some reports that unless the sample is fresh, the test would miss a significant percentage of positives (what can you expect from isothermal PCR?). I am sure Mr. Prez and his surroundings are tested in layers using multiple versions of Covid tests.
I do not understand all of you who say you won’t travel until there’s a vaccine. Really? All of S19’s high school friends (I can think of at least ten of them in the time it’s taking me to type this message and there are a LOT more than that) need to fly to get to college. People are going to get on planes before a vaccine.
It’s a combo of retirees, those who can work remotely (H is in this category), and those on “odd” schedules - more like gig workers - some of these work down south during the winter and north in the summer, others have a month off then a month on or similar. Each year there seem to be more than before (based upon how difficult it has been to get reservations at places).
With the pandemic, we’re wondering just how difficult it will be to find a place for winter - and are also wondering what place to try for. With it’s relative safeness, we’re definitely eyeing HI. I don’t know how many others have it on their radar. We’ve done HI before and absolutely loved it, but the 6 hour time difference makes it tougher for H to work, so have stuck with more eastern locations since. This year we’re weighing how much the time difference will really matter.