Love of flying in the Time of Coronavirus

[ilovecornfields]

Not to start any hysteria (although from the pictures of grocery stores in Seattle, its already started) but just curious how people are reacting to this coronavirus and if it has any effect on your flying. 

[Niko182]

If i had my plane right now probably not. Eventually itll make it to where i live, and considering that a large portion of people cant afford to go to the doctor or take time off, itll spread. Cant run and cant hide so id say altering my plans doesnt make sense...

[Nick Pilotte]

I voted.  I’m altering my flying because I am limiting my time in the aluminum sewer pipes they call commercial aircraft.  I’ll stick with GA in a plane I can somewhat control cleaning in. 
 

I am altering where I visit to minimize exposure simply because I have young kids.  Not going to California or Orlando for spring break.  Containment is broken, exposure likely imminent but I can delay for hopefully enough time to gain more info on treatment and/or die out when summer hits.  

[toto]

More GA, less commercial.

[Mike A]

On my last commercial flight for the foreseeable future as we speak. Thank God for the ability we have to transport ourselves with almost the same effectiveness as the big boys. 

[gsxrpilot]

This thread was started while I was on a United flight back to Denver from Seattle. Although the company has told us to quit traveling. I'm not really changing anything. Although if travel across the country gets shut down AND schools are closed, my wife and I will jump in the Mooney and go traveling. So we might actually fly the Mooney more if things get worse.

[Cody Stallings]

[steingar]

Corona has been spreading faster than any virus I've seen.  Seems to persist on surface, and perhaps infected unsymptomatic folks can shed virus, though I don't understand how.  All that said, I'm not the least bit afraid of it.  Most immunocompetent people get a minor infection that resembles a bad cold.  They get over it, have immunity and move on.  The folks who really need to worry are the old, infirm, and those will immunological, cardiac, or pulmonary conditions.  In folks like that the virus can initiate a dangerous and potentially lethal infection.

 

[tmo]

Just wash your hands...  Perhaps my tickets to get to the Summit will be less expensive due to this hysteria...

[Ibra]

Obviously there are more risks flying in winter than death after catching a new flu but it will also limit our GA flying (who flies a Mooney with cold/flu ?)

My company just cancelled my trip LDN-NYC this March (they axed all business travels), I am not sure that is doable in GA  

[Hank]

I just don't understand the scope of the reaction against the novel coronavirus. Flu kills tens of thousands of Americans each year, millions refuse to get vaccinated, but I've not seen any travel bans during flu season! Looks like the mortality rate of corona is about 2X that of flu, but people on a global scale are reacting like it's the Black Death come again! 14th Century Bubonic Plague had mortality rate > 50% . . . . . . .

[N201MKTurbo]

12 minutes ago, Hank said:

I just don't understand the scope of the reaction against the novel coronavirus. Flu kills tens of thousands of Americans each year, millions refuse to get vaccinated, but I've not seen any travel bans during flu season! Looks like the mortality rate of corona is about 2X that of flu, but people on a global scale are reacting like it's the Black Death come again! 14th Century Bubonic Plague had mortality rate > 50% . . . . . . .

The difference is that there is a lot of people in this world with international media access that would love to ruin the current robust economy to put their own political party back in power.

Their efforts are successful, so I would expect the hype to continue until the threat has long diminished.

[Bravoman]

 The way I see it, this is the beauty of having a personal aircraft. You can travel without  most of the hassles that the general public has to endure, including exposure to the general public.

[Bravoman]

45 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

The difference is that there is a lot of people in this world with international media access that would love to ruin the current robust economy to put their own political party back in power.

Their efforts are successful, so I would expect the hype to continue until the threat has long diminished.

Agree

[N201MKTurbo]

Absolutely, even without the Coronavrus, those filthy silver tubes are worse then a daycare center!

[Igor_U]

4 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Absolutely, even without the Coronavrus, those filthy silver tubes are worse then a daycare center!

I agree.

No change in Flying GA; my wife and I are still planing a trip to Vegas in few weeks. But then we live in Seattle... 

[ilovecornfields]

Interesting thoughts from everyone. Thanks for sharing.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I do have a graduate degree in public health so I have some knowledge about this subject but I have tried to refrain from commenting. 

Personally, I am changing my behavior and it is encouraging to see others in the community do the same. The increased emphasis on hand washing and avoiding socializing when you’re sick is very satisfying to see. Probably two of the most important public health measures (next to immunizing). 

Some comments were made which I think may benefit from clarification. I apologize if these are things that are already common knowledge:

All diseases have an incubation period so it’s not at all uncommon for people to be contagious before they’re symptomatic (and after they feel better). Nothing new here.

Mortality rates for this virus seem to be all over the place. The latest information I’ve heard from a trusted source is approximately 2% mortality rate compared to approximately 0.1% from seasonal influenza. Age distribution is somewhat different.

 

Nice to see that we can have a civil discussion. Personally, I am changing travel plans and being more vigilant about hand washing/disinfection.
For example, my mother lives in the SF Bay Area and asked me if I wanted to fly up at the end of the month and see my aunt who is taking a cruise from Mexico and will be stopping along the coast and will be in SF for a day. I said “no” although truth be told I probably would have said that anyway because I don’t like her. It was nice to get to blame it on coronavirus, though.

[hammdo]

21 hours ago, Cody Stallings said:

You forgot h1n1.. ;o)  2010-2012

-Don

[Bravoman]

3 hours ago, ilovecornfields said:

Interesting thoughts from everyone. Thanks for sharing.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I do have a graduate degree in public health so I have some knowledge about this subject but I have tried to refrain from commenting. 

Personally, I am changing my behavior and it is encouraging to see others in the community do the same. The increased emphasis on hand washing and avoiding socializing when you’re sick is very satisfying to see. Probably two of the most important public health measures (next to immunizing). 

Some comments were made which I think may benefit from clarification. I apologize if these are things that are already common knowledge:

All diseases have an incubation period so it’s not at all uncommon for people to be contagious before they’re symptomatic (and after they feel better). Nothing new here.

Mortality rates for this virus seem to be all over the place. The latest information I’ve heard from a trusted source is approximately 2% mortality rate compared to approximately 0.1% from seasonal influenza. Age distribution is somewhat different.

 

Nice to see that we can have a civil discussion. Personally, I am changing travel plans and being more vigilant about hand washing/disinfection.
For example, my mother lives in the SF Bay Area and asked me if I wanted to fly up at the end of the month and see my aunt who is taking a cruise from Mexico and will be stopping along the coast and will be in SF for a day. I said “no” although truth be told I probably would have said that anyway because I don’t like her. It was nice to get to blame it on coronavirus, though.

Now that’s funny. That’s a silver lining if I ever saw one!

[skydvrboy]

18 hours ago, ilovecornfields said:

As someone who works a lot with statistics, these graphs are a terrible presentation of the underlying data.  However, if you line up the age ranges, it looks like CV has roughly twice the mortality rate until you get over age 65.  Then all bets are off.  Given I'm not over 65 and am healthy, I won't change anything.  I'll try not to get sick, but if I do... oh well.

[ilovecornfields]

8 minutes ago, skydvrboy said:

As someone who works a lot with statistics, these graphs are a terrible presentation of the underlying data.  However, if you line up the age ranges, it looks like CV has roughly twice the mortality rate until you get over age 65.  Then all bets are off.  Given I'm not over 65 and am healthy, I won't change anything.  I'll try not to get sick, but if I do... oh well.

I’m curious what’s so terrible about it? The underlying studies may have used different age categories or they may have seen sharp differences at different cutoffs that they were attempting to illustrate with the chart and would perhaps not have been apparent if they used the same cutoffs in both charts. How would you have presented it?

[aviatoreb]

18 hours ago, ilovecornfields said:

Interesting thoughts from everyone. Thanks for sharing.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I do have a graduate degree in public health so I have some knowledge about this subject but I have tried to refrain from commenting. 

Personally, I am changing my behavior and it is encouraging to see others in the community do the same. The increased emphasis on hand washing and avoiding socializing when you’re sick is very satisfying to see. Probably two of the most important public health measures (next to immunizing). 

Some comments were made which I think may benefit from clarification. I apologize if these are things that are already common knowledge:

All diseases have an incubation period so it’s not at all uncommon for people to be contagious before they’re symptomatic (and after they feel better). Nothing new here.

Mortality rates for this virus seem to be all over the place. The latest information I’ve heard from a trusted source is approximately 2% mortality rate compared to approximately 0.1% from seasonal influenza. Age distribution is somewhat different.

 

Nice to see that we can have a civil discussion. Personally, I am changing travel plans and being more vigilant about hand washing/disinfection.
For example, my mother lives in the SF Bay Area and asked me if I wanted to fly up at the end of the month and see my aunt who is taking a cruise from Mexico and will be stopping along the coast and will be in SF for a day. I said “no” although truth be told I probably would have said that anyway because I don’t like her. It was nice to get to blame it on coronavirus, though.

I have been reading on this quite a lot - and as far as I can tell it is extremely difficult to get an accurate accounting of mortality rate at this still early stage since as far as I read, there are many factors that make for difficulty in assessing the infection rate.  Estimates may be wildly off.   Very sick people may not be reporting for various reasons.  But even more so, if this thing does not hit everyone very hard, there may be slightly sick people who may not be aware that they have this and so may not be part of the sick pool count.  There are an unknown number of people who are infected and may never get sick symptoms at all as well and that may be a tiny fraction or it may well be the overwhelmingly large fraction.

Anyway, this thing is serious enough to pay attention to - I am.

[aviatoreb]

28 minutes ago, skydvrboy said:

As someone who works a lot with statistics, these graphs are a terrible presentation of the underlying data.  However, if you line up the age ranges, it looks like CV has roughly twice the mortality rate until you get over age 65.  Then all bets are off.  Given I'm not over 65 and am healthy, I won't change anything.  I'll try not to get sick, but if I do... oh well.

What's wrong with the graph? I work a lot with statistics too and I think the graph itself is fine.  The graph suggests it is roughly 20 times greater rate of mortality in all age groups.  I wrote in the previous post my worries in how hard it must be to collect and assess data underlying the graphs, but the graphs themselves look good to me.

[skydvrboy]

8 hours ago, aviatoreb said:

What's wrong with the graph? I work a lot with statistics too and I think the graph itself is fine.  The graph suggests it is roughly 20 times greater rate of mortality in all age groups.  I wrote in the previous post my worries in how hard it must be to collect and assess data underlying the graphs, but the graphs themselves look good to me.

Oops, I overlooked a decimal point. I may need to rethink my career options! 

As for the presentation, I prefer to match up the age bins, though the author may not have had the raw data set to work with. I'd also either make the cutoffs where the rates change or put an equal number of years in each deepending on what I was trying to show. 

Edited March 7, 2020 by skydvrboy

[ilovecornfields]

43 minutes ago, skydvrboy said:

Oops, I overlooked a decimal point. I may need to rethink my career options! 

As for the presentation, I prefer to match up the age bins, though the author may not have had the raw data set to okay with. I'd also either make the cutoffs where the rates change or put an equal number of years in each depending on what I was trying to show. 

That would definitely help in terms of aesthetics, but I get the feeling they published the charts that way because the cutoffs where there was a significant change In mortality varied between the two viruses.

I guess it’s getting real now. CDC is apparently telling older adults to stay home. 
https://apple.news/AymksIYXBTtKFax4b1DrWpg

The one upside to this is that people are finally washing their hands! Hopefully that behavior will persist after the current panic is over.

Edited March 7, 2020 by ilovecornfields