Would you consider canceling a holiday/family visit if COVID was surging there?

[Muffster]

The idea of flying to visit family and stay with them for a summer holiday is now giving me concern: 1 in 19 people where my family live have COVID, there is a surge going on and it hasn’t peaked yet.

There are very few people masking, case numbers are not accurately reported, people do not have to stay home when positive/unwell so infections continue and the health care system there appears to be under serious strain.

would you fly over and visit now?

no not NZ: British Overseas Territory.
Kind of ironic really because we accessed the vaccines via the UK and work with Public Health England on national policy and we managed to control COVID and minimize deaths and the UK didn’t 🤷🏻‍♀️. Shame they didn’t follow the advice & expertise they shared with us

Difficult to advise you. Only you know how you feel. I live in the UK so I doubt COVID would be more prevalent in another country.
COVID is out of control here I agree. But that doesn't mean you will catch it. I haven't had it yet I'm not a hermit I do go out but I'm careful and I still wear a mask on public transport and in enclosed spaces. Even though sometimes I am the only one and I feel as though people are thinking I am crazy

Would you feel better if your family could come and visit you instead.

Dh had it once at the end of last year and the 3 others in the house didn't catch it. When we went on holiday at the end of June this year the other 3 got it but dh didn't catch it. We didn't do any isolating from each other.

It's a strange virus indeed.

Did you want opinions? You seem to just want to lecture us about how wrong the UK is.

Permanent restrictions vs freedom with small chance of death. Easy choice.

If reading threads about considering COVID risks on the COVID forum during a period of high COVID transmission triggers you into making pointlessly spiteful remarks
maybe you should go read more lighthearted posts?

(That post should have had a quote included, it was at someone who was getting snippy. Apologies, I have not used MN much for the last few years)

Remember the only reason we know our figures is that our government has a surveillance programme with random testing. Other countries haven't tested anywhere as much and have no surveillance programmes. It's very catching, granted but I managed to not catch it off dp

@CinnamonSwirlGirl you are talking absolute crap and it is very offensive. Most people lost 2 years of their lives due to mitigate the risk to others, children lost huge chunks of their childhoods, people with other illnesses who have subsequently died, lost time with their families due to the lockdowns, so piss off

Not sure which state you are in/or if Vancouver based on flying time but having been on the east coast of the USA nobody was taking preventive measures there either

Did you want opinions? You seem to just want to lecture us about how wrong the UK is.

Permanent restrictions vs freedom with small chance of death. Easy choice.

They aren’t permanent restrictions here; they dial up and down depending on the risk/community transmission/hospital pressure levels. That’s what I mean by saying it’s not a binary let it rip/lock down & restrict situation. There are smarter ways of living with COVID. I’m British btw. So I’m despairing at my birth country and wondering how it got so bad. As I’m the MN demographic and a decade + reader of this place, it is useful to me to see how women similar to me are approaching issues that affect us all.

Personally I think for once Britain got it right. Life goes on

Not sure which state you are in/or if Vancouver based on flying time but having been on the east coast of the USA nobody was taking preventive measures there either

yeah we already cancelled our fun trip to Colorado. No family there, so not worth the risk of getting infected on the flight there or back

am in British Overseas Territory not Canada.

Blimmin heck OP I think you need to unclench just a bit.

Like someone else said it's like trying to stop the tide coming in, I presume wherever you are living overseas it isn't a country pretty much at the centre of economic and cultural Europe? 70 million inhabitants with a further 450 million just across the channel?

Thought not

The OP is evidently in somewhere rather more isolated than the UK, let alone the mainland US.

I live in Germany OP, we had the big European Covid waves but our hospitals were never under severe strain, ambulances never stopped coming and our numbers were much lower than those of the UK.

Guess what, Covid is still there and numbers climbing. Why? Because restrictions have been relaxed and people are now happy to live ‘normal lives’ at the price of taking the risk of catching it more often.

We still have masks on public transport. We still have masks on planes. The numbers are still going up - because most infections don’t come from buses and planes. They come from close, continuous social interaction.

People are socialising again. We go for meals, to the theatre, children have birthday parties, we visit family and friends and meet at home in large numbers. That’s what living with Covid means. I’m sorry but not eating inside restaurants or testing before every single play date is not living with Covid. That’s what we did during lockdowns.

Only you can decide how much risk you’re willing to take. But the majority of the world is going back to living with people, close to people, seeing people and interacting with people because we’re a sociable race. And I’m personally done with never eating with my friends or celebrating their achievements in case I catch Covid. I got vaccinated. There’s nothing else I can do. Covid isn’t going anywhere and until when do I restrict my social interactions? Forever? Masks aren’t a magical solution - and I’m someone who defends them. To keep Covid at bay we simply need to reduce social interactions. I’m not willing to do that anymore.

To be honest OP I think your own government has been incredibly cruel in allowing you to believe you will be able to avoid it indefinitely. I'm sorry but the reality is it will hit you and will hit you just as hard as it has everywhere else. That's a fact!
Come on holiday or don't come on holiday but you will only be cutting your nose off to spite your face I'm afraid. I have no time or patience anymore for this ridiculous fear of a mild illness.

More people die of cancer or heart disease every day that covid. You can take basic precautions to prevent catching it. But I think your a fool to put your life on hold forever to avoid catching something that is highly unlikely to cause you any serious harm.

Two years of their lives @Hdhabvdhhebsb ? Don’t be ridiculous. The U.K. went into lockdown at the end of March 2020. While many countries carried on in lockdown, the U.K. opened up way too early with the ridiculous “eat out to help out”. You then had another lockdown with all sorts of “bubbles” and “rule of 6” and stuff, loads of people sent their kids into school anyway, so still not comparable to many other countries where lockdowns were really strict. By the time we came back to the U.K. in April 2021 almost all restrictions had ended (so basically a year after they started). It was unbelievable how many people were already not wearing masks, didn’t know the meaning of social distancing etc. To say you “lost two years” is a complete lie.

Also, don’t you dare talk about people losing their lives. Huge numbers of people are still dying, lots of people are having treatment delayed, all because there are repeated Covid outbreaks on wards (because Brits are just too special to wear masks around vulnerable people), staff are getting ill etc. You don’t get to lecture about people dying when you’re part of the problem and sneer at people showing solutions, or describing countries who have done more to protect their citizens.

Yes, small territory - but with open borders and hundreds of thousands of visitors via full flights from USA, UK, S America, Canada plus giant cruise ships with ten thousand people passing in and out daily. We have far more daily international visitors than most UK towns and are an international business & finance hub as well as a tourist economy

so we have graded protections that dial up and down not ‘let it rip’ Vs ‘lock down everything’.

eg: children continued to mask and get free tests twice weekly until schools broke up for summer, free PCR tests available, antigen tests are easy to buy and cheap, masking voluntary but encouraged in supermarkets and mandated in healthcare settings, testing and case logging is continuous including genomic sequencing for variants & sharing that data

all these sorts of things are available at large ir small scale, the UK or USA could do them too, but don’t.

The binary thinking amazes me.
people use umbrellas and drive slowly when it rains,
people take shelter during a hurricane
people use sunscreen & hats when it’s blazing hot
nobody screams about “you’re living in permanent fear of weather”, nobody yells that “you can’t walk round with an umbrella forever”. These things are protective and used as needed.

during high transmission we do more protective things

then we dial it back as neefed

this isn’t living in fear, this is living in reality during a pandemic

I am positive now - caught my covid in France. Your trip is essential in my view, my trip was purely for fun. Life is too short and you may not get the chance again to see your loved ones.
You will be fine, you are young and not CEV.
It has peaked here now and cases will soon start to drop.

In all honestly I look at the countries still living in terror and fear and think they haven’t got past the brain washing messaging and how sad it is for them, For 99% of people it is a bad cold.

Maybe you have become used to island life and it’s narrow thinking. Many countries didn’t have any restrictions or lockdowns and managed fine.

Your family won’t be here forever

It’s no longer a pandemic either - it’s now endemic. Very different

Yes I would go and enjoy my holiday.

You are as likely to catch it or not by going to the supermarket. At least the holiday will be fun.

Wear high grade masks if you are particularly fearful

And it’s truly disgusting that they are still masking children in your country - even now we know fully how damaging it is to their development and well being.

Honestly OP you just sound just a little bit deranged compared to all of us living freely here. Every country did it differently, looking at China still locking down now seems just ludicrous. When exactly will you deem reasonable to see your parents given that the UK is how it is and we are never going back to heavy restrictions, I can tell you that and I was all for them at the time.

I agree with your stance and very much wish that understand and managing risk was the norm here in the UK. No need for fuss and drama, just sensible, simple precautions and acceptance that things are different now. It's odd that people want to pretend otherwise to me, but you can get some pretty horrible reactions if you suggest Covid is still an issue that might require us to pay a bit of attention.