AIBU to cancel holiday?

[Nostrings457]

Booked to go to Malta in May - holiday balance is due tomorrow (over 6k). Travelling with young children and 1 aduly is aged 65+

Malta has no coronavirus cases currently but who knows what will happen between now and May. I dont want to pay the balance and then risk trying to claim off insurance if we dont go.

I suppose its more a what would you do than aibu?

(I know the risk is so low, influenza kills more people etc.. but i dont want to end up in quarantine with 3 young kids somewhere either)

The bbc and other sources are quoting 2% @Tigerlilly17

What exactly do you do for the nhs?

@GreyishDays
I am a nurse in primary care. We get regular updates on the virus and advice regarding the patients as well as the latest statistics etc. The advice is also to not attend surgery, hospital or clinic if you show symptoms. Remain at home and call 111 for advice. Yes, it’s nasty , yes it’s spreading but unless your health is already compromised you will be fine and survive. The news never reports on the large amount of deaths each year from regular flu, but this is a story they can run with for a while. They are also playing on words , as There are a lot of people being monitored but not testing positive that are being used in statistics too. Follow good hand hygiene and keep away from people with certain similar symptoms. This will go a long way to helping the spread and your own personal health x

I was in a pub today for lunch - our local. When we arrived it was more or less dead, but by the time we left it was absolutely crowded - no masks. We have a lot of Chinese tourists or students studying here. Long before this virus appeared we'd see Chinese people wearing masks, even though we're a small city so don't have a real problem with pollution. Nothing's changed with the coronavirus. I got some extra toilet roll but that's about it. I'm obsessed with having enough toilet paper, so I can't put it down to stockpiling.

On the negative side, I can't help feeling that the way the Government are dealing (ie not dealing) with the coronavirus and the flooding is covering up far worse things.

I wouldn’t go. I don’t see the point in putting yourself or others at risk for the sake of a holiday.

My stepsister and her husband paid a similar amount for a holiday in Tenerife. They were due to fly out the morning the news broke about the hotel in lockdown there, and they cancelled losing all their money. However, her husband has had a heart attack in the past, so that may have influenced their decision, but still they are having misgivings about their decision. Personally, where Malta is concerned unless there is a reason to be worried healthwise I would go ahead.

I'd go unless the government advised otherwise., or I had anyone in the vulnerable group.

It’s probably already in Malta, @Nostrings457. They just don’t know it yet. Heard that people were probably walking around with it for weeks in Washington State in US - now someone has died.
Covid-19 is now in 54 countries apart from China as of 28 February according to WHO.
Be safe regardless of what you decide.

For anyone flying abroad on holiday, you probably wanna think about climate change a bit too if you’re worried about your family being in danger #shortsighted

@Tigerlilly17

You say ‘literally 17 cases in the US as of today’

But the WHO was reporting 53 four days ago. www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200226-sitrep-37-covid-19.pdf

The bbc and other sources are quoting 2%

I don't think anyone can reliably calculate the mortality rate. We know how many have died, but we don't know how many have contracted the virus. There is a possibility that many more people have had the virus than any statistical analyst is aware (and survived, and indeed had symptoms so minor that they have simply passed under the radar). In which case the mortality rate diminishes.

lindyloo57, go on holiday pirates and in the search engine put in term time dates, you'll be surprised at how cheap holidays can be.

I was just responding to the figure of 0.2%.
I appreciate it’s an estimate.

you'll be surprised at how cheap holidays can be

You’ll be shocked how crap they can be too.

We have just cancelled our holiday to France. None of us personally fall into the at risk group, but it's our social responsibility not to travel through high risk busy airports and then potentially pass it on to people who won't survive it. It actually fucks me off quite a lot when people are blasé just because they would probably survive it, that they won't pass it on to people who will die. Also - Italy was a low risk area a few weeks ago .... no one knows what's going to happen but the WHO and most Governments seem to assume it's going to get a lot worse before it starts to get better.

I’d definitely go. I’m a hospital doctor and almost every country has more hospital bed, medical staff and ITU provision than we do. I’d cheerfully take my chances overseas in a pandemic; suspect the odds would be in your favour if you were unlucky enough to be infected and ill enough to need medical help.

@madroid thanks for the reply. Can you give a source for your other stat?

What about those people who chose to travel to Italy, as it 'didn't have any cases' then returned to various places around the world and passed on the virus? Some of those people they passed it on to will be hospitalised, and some will die. I'm not having that on my conscience. Some idiot poster on here said they'd been to Italy and they'd come back and they were fine and going about their daily lives, and yet we know people can be asymptomatic. It's just insanely selfish to put other people at risk because you feel like a holiday and you don't want to lose money.

• I heard on a advise show that if a holiday is abta atol protected that is the best senerio for getting money back.

Independent holidays are unlikely to get a claim though insurance.*

This is not true (for my insurance anyway)
We will get our money back if our holiday is cancelled due to FCO advice not to travel. We will not if we choose not to travel. It’s not relevant what type of holiday it is. Insurance companies will expect you to try to reclaim costs from airlines or hotels first if possible but will pay whatever refunds we don’t get.

I'm not going on a holiday to Spain in June with my two friends who are still going but we're grown up enough not to quibble about it. I have underlying health issues and don't want to risk COVID-19 being worse by then.
In your case, I really wouldn't go, simply because of the children. First, as you say it'd be no fun with them in quarantine for 14 days! It's getting more common now to be stuck in your hotel room. What a nightmare! Then of course, you have the airports and flights. Both are notorious for germ spreading. At airports you don't know where people have come from, and on planes the same air is circulated through pipes that aren't going to be cleaned out after every flight.
Keep your money and if everything has settled down before your holiday dates, go somewhere closer to home, and somewhere with fewer people around. Better safe than sorry. Especially with children.

I work in London so going to most of Europe is lower risk.

The bigger risk seems to be global economic meltdown as everyone stops doing normal activities.

Go! Malta is beautiful, you’ll have a great time. So much mindless scaremongering on here. Just make sure you wash your hands!

Washing your hands isn’t going to stop you breathing in the virus. Also, I think a global economic meltdown is going to be far, far worse when people refuse to stop travelling, every country reaches epidemic levels of the virus and millions of people have days off sick, overwhelm their health services etc. It’s very British to think keep calm and carry on, but in this instance it’s also entitled and stupid. On the cusp of a global pandemic the socially responsible thing to do is not travel. The less people travel the slower the spread and the more chance we have of not overwhelming the NHS.

Yes all those idiot posters who came back from Italy in unaffected zones and carried on as govt advise stated at the time. . These people have done nothing wrong.

Govt will need to impose restrictions if this is going to be properly stopped. Then we won't be able to do sod all about it.

But that’s surely the point - we know now that the virus has spread to pretty much every country so why make matters worse by making our over stretched health system have to spend resources chasing up all those incidences that come from people who have travelled and then pop up in places that haven’t yet experienced the virus. And the idiot poster was one who sounded proud that she’d gone and then even now was carrying on as normal with no thought at all as to whether she’d brought the virus back with her. If you want a steer on the situation look at how big business are closing down travel for their employees. It makes sense, we don’t have to wait to be told what to do by the government in order to take individual action to stop the spread