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?

@ApplesandBunions

Because invariably when people argue for these 'small measures' they're including at least some that failed to prevent an uncontrolled Omicron wave here, and usually elsewhere too, so we've no reason to believe evidence free assertions about how helpful they are. Also, people in other countries aren't a monolithic bloc and the idea that one person could possibly speak for all of them is absurd.

As a person from another country, I thought Muffster's explanations quite good.

I find your continual denial of masks ... strange. You do it on almost every thread. So given the choice between a mask-free positive person coughing towards you, or one with a mask, what is your pick? Currently it would seem the maskless person, by the tone of of your posts.

@Dishh thanks 😊
this thread by Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care, Oxford is an exhaustive round up of all mask data and arguments.
I sometimes wave it in the direction of mask-avoiders. I can’t see how protective measures like masks ever got political but these are weird times, sigh
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1414294003479089154.html

Weird how some of the responses here have been surprisingly vitriolic.

Probably because your initial posts seeking advice for your own situation seem to have turned into a rather preachy diatribe against the very country you’re intending to visit.

Just for your information: some people still want to wear masks, and do. Haven’t seen any reactions against them in public. All the people I know who have had Covid have isolated regardless of the fact that there is now no legal requirement to do so. If I was visiting someone who might be at risk, I would certainly test before visiting them, even if they didn’t specifically ask me to do so. Don’t imagine that the noisy folk on here are necessarily representative of the whole population, and don’t imagine either that you are the only person well-educated enough to have an understanding of the situation.

For people who live here who want to reduce the risk to themselves, there are various ways of doing it, and you can do the same. Presumably you won’t be visiting any non-essential crowded places and will use essential public transport only?

this thread by Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care, Oxford is an exhaustive round up of all mask data and arguments.

This thread was written in 2021 and it uses old data from the earlier stage of the pandemic.

There is a solid mathematical reason why in the current situation masks are not particularly useful. Here is one of the best explanations I have found but it's still quite technical:

twitter.com/MichaelSFuhrer/status/1524929484926791680

In the situation with high R0 controlled by infection-acquired immunity (i.e. now), adding a measure which reduces transmission by X% doesn't reduce cases by X%, rather by only ~X%/R0!

Even earlier studies indicate that masks are only marginally useful at the community level. Back in 2021, SAGE estimated their effectiveness at 6-15%.

If Omicron's R is around 5 (just a guess), in the very best case scenario, the impact of masks on the community transmission will be reduced to 3% (15%/3). The impact on spread will be negligible.

@MrsFezziwig I apologize if it came across as a diatribe against my country. I am British, and I am fed up with the UK Gov gaslighting and pandemic handling - although I tried to keep my temper and not resort to personal attacks and spite, as several commenters did. I responded instead with info about why the UK situation seems nuts to me, compared to where I’m resident, where precautions are standard. Maybe people got triggered by that but why read the COVID forum threads if so?

Glad to hear and see not all are of the COVID-minimizing persuasion (I started another thread in chat asking people who masked if they ever got grief for it before I began this one and was reassured to hear most said no not at all).

yes, definitely not using public transport or visiting crowded places. Will rent a car. Relatives live in countryside driveable from Heathrow. We can mask for the ride to their home, open car windows and then do two day quarantine to mitigate against passing on the virus before we hug them because they are CEV.

and sadly we won’t be visiting our friends in London where we spent most of our adult lives because of the risk of bringing the virus back to our elderly family hosts.

but at least we can explore the countryside and have outdoor pub lunches etc

The data on masks (and any intervention) will always lag the virus variant evolution pace but it’s worth noting that most mask studies are on all types of masks including cloth, baggy surgical etc - not specifically the now-recommended respirators (N95, KN94 etc) with a reasonable seal.

As information from aerosol scientists breaks through (belatedly) and the message that #CovidIsAirborne is finally pushed (patchily) it is becoming clearer that GOOD masks do a lot of good work if worn consistently- and along with improved ventilation and filtration. Masks can’t do it all, any more than vaccines and boosters can - but they are layers of protection that mitigate viral load and need community buy in.

One way masking isn’t enough unless using a fit-tested elastomeric respirator.

@wintertravel1980 here is an omicron specific mask article looking at airborne modeling of higher viral load smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2022.w30133

“RESULTS: Our modelling suggests that a much larger proportion of individuals infected with the new variants are high, very high or super-emitters of airborne viruses: for the WT, one in 1,000 infected was a super-emitter; for Delta one in 30; and for Omicron one in 20 or one in 10, depending on the viral load estimate used. Testing of the effectiveness of protective strategies in view of the lower critical dose suggests that surgical masks are no longer sufficient in most public settings, while correctly fitted FFP2 respirators still provide sufficient protection, except in high aerosol producing situations such as singing or shouting”

Gawd I don't live in the UK and find you very preachy. Are you really asking for advice or you just want to criticize. If you don't want to go because the people and government of the UK are so immoral then don't go

I personally think you have been as brainwashed as anyone else. You can performance mask and restrict your life/movement forever and will still end up with covid multiple times...your just putting off the inevitable in my opinion. There's no way of knowing which perspective is "wrong" - people will land all over the spectrum on their risk tolerance which is fair IMO.

Brainwashed by epidemiologists, aerosol scientists, public health experts maybe, lol. More than happy to take their expert advice. Notice how they all wear masks like 3M Aura and take precautions? Masking isn’t performative.
I guess I can come across as preaching; trying to share facts, in the face of abuse and denial. I’m also autistic so I miss some social cues and tend to bang on about my passions and interests. I am genuinely extremely interested in getting unfiltered responses from people in the UK regarding their understanding of, and attempts to mitigate the impacts of the current COVID wave. I need it to make risk-based decisions about a) coming to see my family here b) how safe it is to move around in public spaces here.

so thanks! Based on this thread, yesterdays questions to mark wearers and reading around MN, I’ve got some great insight which along with local COVID data is really helping me plan our visit. The fact that some people find me annoying on this thread I can live with. I’m here to work out what I need to do to minimize the infection risk whilst visiting.

cheers and stay well

I thought OP was going to say family she wanted to visit were in New Zealand, mustn't go to NZ now, they have some of highest rates in world right now.

"top seven for deaths, ahead of Australia, the US and the UK"
"Doctors say the strain of those cases has put the country at risk of a catastrophic collapse of the healthcare workforce”.

You finding them quite good is neither here nor there really, the concept that everywhere that isn't the UK can be generalised into one monolith defined by it's not UK-ness is at best laughable and at worst grotesque. Incidentally, I was born outside the UK myself and hold dual citizenship.

You finding someone correctly pointing out that mask rules haven't prevented uncontrolled Omicron waves both in the UK and elsewhere is also neither here nor there, because you're hardly the barometer of sense on these points. As wintertravel1980 points out, the decent evidence we had that masks could be helpful in controlling earlier strains doesn't apply in real world conditions with Omicron. For all the talk of antimaskers, sensible measures etc, nobody ever manages to refute this point. You're no exception. All we ever get is evidence relating to earlier, less transmissible strains which did indeed indicate that mask wearing could be useful. It's oudated.

In response to your question, firstly I'm not self centred enough to define the matter in the way you frame it here. I'd want to know more about any particular individual before I could decide whether I'd actually want them to wear a mask. Is this person a small child, does a mask make their breathing difficult, did it trigger their trigeminal neuralgia pain? There are some people I actively prefer not to wear one, But then I don't think of a fellow human being as purely a disease vector.

I have also accepted that I'll likely be catching covid on multiple occasions despite my previous infection and multiple vaccinations, and understood that I consent to encountering it whenever I choose to go into public spaces. So I don't really care if someone coughs in my direction. I'm indifferent. If I did, whether their mask made me feel any better about it would depend entirely on what it was and how they wore it.

I’m here to work out what I need to do to minimize the infection risk whilst visiting.

Disingenuous at best. Thanks for "educating" everyone with your big big brain OP

I’d holiday but you obviously don’t want to, so don’t. (You can stop going on about it now).

I think your problem is deciding that most people on this thread have been brainwashed and gaslit @Muffster by the Government. Rather than having lived through the past two years, read their own material and come up with a different risk assessment to you.

You do you and make you own decision. But dont assume that those on the thread who have different opinions to you have simply taken on board what the Government have said.

Partygate pretty much destroyed that.

Is there an argument that like a lot of things human nature is to ignore it and hope it will go away - yes of course. I remember saying the beginning that it would be 2 years because that is how long I thought it would be until people had assimilated it into a normal everyday risk.

Mix into that a desire to follow the herd and you get where we are. It has nothing to do with being gaslit at all

Because it we actually looked at every risk in the way Covid was on this thread we would never leave the house!

Please keep in mind that we have still have a great testing regime on the Uk compared to other countries so our rates will be higher.
Covid will be here for some time to come and it comes down to how much you want to see your family.
You're used to a very different regime on your island and may need to give your head a wobble if you want to leave or stay there happily but not see people.

@ApplesandBunions

In response to your question, firstly I'm not self centred enough to define the matter in the way you frame it here. I'd want to know more about any particular individual before I could decide whether I'd actually want them to wear a mask. Is this person a small child, does a mask make their breathing difficult, did it trigger their trigeminal neuralgia pain? There are some people I actively prefer not to wear one, But then I don't think of a fellow human being as purely a disease vector.

I have also accepted that I'll likely be catching covid on multiple occasions despite my previous infection and multiple vaccinations, and understood that I consent to encountering it whenever I choose to go into public spaces. So I don't really care if someone coughs in my direction. I'm indifferent. If I did, whether their mask made me feel any better about it would depend entirely on what it was and how they wore it.

I hoped by reducing the question to a clear 'an infectious person is in front of you - would you prefer them to be wearing a mask or not?' you could then answer it as clearly. But, no. You had to swerve. This isn't about seeing other people as "disease vectors". It's simply that those with COVID that go into the community should wear a mask - why is that an issue?

You're indifferent if someone coughs in your direction? In this current environment? Okay.

@Dishh yes I imagine some people not longer really give it anymore thought now about someone coughing than they used to.

As I said its not really surprising that it has been assimilated by a huge number of people as to being something they dont think about.

Nothing on this thread posted is wrong about what we should be doing or that it is probably sensible to be doing so but as I remember saying to a certain Nutty poster back in January human nature is such a huge variable in all of this. People dont need to be gaslit or lead on this to get to this point

The only thing that would keep all of this in line would be fear - and that has gone. Once that has gone you really are shouting into the void.

@Muffster the fear has gone here - you need to work around that.

Has the OP said which country she is in? Have I missed that? I'm curious.

@BigSandyBalls2015 Bermuda would be my guess apart from the travel time is less.

Oh yes, it was very clear what answer you were hoping for. Clocked that immediately. That's why you structured the question as you did, despite the fact that this is a very different point to whether mask laws have stopped uncontrollable Omicron waves. You asked me about my preference in one quite specific situation and are now having to struggle with the reality that not everyone thinks like you. Meanwhile, the mask laws OP talks of still didn't prevent uncontrollable Omicron waves, and not just in the UK.

I'm fairly certain that I picked it up on a flight abroad 2 weeks ago, but didn't test (as didn't take any with me). I had a cold and slight cough that lasted for 3 days and then totally gone. Honestly, I think you have a fairly good chance of picking it up at home too now, so I would just go.

I probably wouldn't go.

I caught Covid on a flight a couple of weeks ago and felt very unwell for a good 10 days.

How's the healthcare situation in the country you're planning to travel?

@ApplesandBunions

Oh yes, it was very clear what answer you were hoping for. Clocked that immediately. That's why you structured the question as you did, despite the fact that this is a very different point to whether mask laws have stopped uncontrollable Omicron waves. You asked me about my preference in one quite specific situation and are now having to struggle with the reality that not everyone thinks like you. Meanwhile, the mask laws OP talks of still didn't prevent uncontrollable Omicron waves, and not just in the UK.

Masks alone won't prevent Covid waves. They need to be used with other mitigations.

And I'm not struggling - thanks. I do sometimes find it amusing, though.

Not half as amusing as I found your incredulity and your failed attempt to elicit the desired response there. Was lolz.

You're not wrong that masks would need to be combined with other measures to prevent uncontrollable Omicron waves when the virus is already present throughout a population though, and those measures on current evidence need to be in lockdown territory. Obviously that's not a realistic possibility now in the UK.

interesting article yesterday on how UK Gov messaging policy reframing risk as personal responsibility has impacted behaviour - and infection and spread

seems like the messaging sure makes a difference

John Drury, a professor of social psychology at the University of Sussex, said the policy shifts in early 2022 accelerated the decline in people taking protective measures, and reframed the risk, so that even with cases now soaring again, few people are back to mask wearing and other precautions. “There has been a step-change in the public’s perceptions of the risks associated with Covid in the past six months or so,” he said

Some of that reflects the success of vaccines, but government messaging has promoted a sense of the pandemic being over, he said, which has “significantly impacted public perceptions of risk and subsequent behaviours”.

Part of the shift in behaviour, said Stephen Reicher, professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews, can be traced back to the “living with Covid” plan, which emphasises the need for people to take personal responsibility for their safety.

Throughout the pandemic, many people adhered to restrictions for the good of the community rather than themselves, but the shift from social responsibility to personal responsibility undermined that, Reicher said. Now, with minimal testing and no requirement to self-isolate, people have not been able to take personal responsibility. The TUC found nearly one in 10 workers with Covid symptoms have been put under pressure to go into their workplace, with similar pressure on children going to school, Reicher said. The result is stubbornly high infection rates even between successive waves.

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/19/how-living-with-covid-is-helping-keep-englands-infections-stubbornly-high