Originally Posted by
Transpacificflyer
It appears that some people are unaware of the ongoing problem with the constant arrival of infected people on passenger flights into Canada. The airlines have a growing PR crisis. Maybe it is because the issue has not been highlighted or some do not wish to acknowledge that the airlines deliver new infections to Canada. IMO, if the general public was aware of the extent of the issue, there would be pressure to further curtail international air travel.
At this point, COVID has visited, and remains in almost every country including Canada. It is either endemic, or well on the way to becoming so. If one looks at cases (which are incredibly decoupled from actual harm such as hospitization, ICU entry, and death), one sees continual case rebounds as soon as a nation increases social interaction to reduce the other kind of harm (economic damage, losing homes, not being able to feed children, etc).
The average age of hospitalization is 70+, and average age of death is 80+ -- the vulnerable community has been identified in many retrospective studies (all this talk about comorbidities is not junk science). The root "social cause" of harm is transmission to the vulnerable. So we can ask -- are recent flyers passing COVID directly in one step (or indirectly in only a few degrees) to the vulnerable? Or is it more likely old age homes cases are coming from well-established community transmission (care workers and non-flying visiting family).
My second question would be: Are the % of infected passengers on flights arriving into Canada really greater than the % of infected in the general population -- of the departure country, or within Canada? Are the flyers a large component of new case loads?
I am pretty sure travel between international communities is no longer a major factor in case loads, hospitalizations, re-transmission, or death. I recently saw some stats for a country, that travel-related COVID had dropped under 1% of case load [CBC:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/can...tial-1.5710005 : "In February, 42.2 per cent of COVID-19 cases were associated with international travel. That number dropped to a low of 0.4 per cent in May, and has since inched up to 3.2 per cent for the first three weeks of August.."] So the article is saying 96.8% of cases are transmission in the Canadian community, unrelated to flyers.
COVID is already in Alberta. When someone carries it from Vancouver or Paris, really -- what's the difference? Especially if they are a Canadian and their return home cannot be blocked. Is Air Canada supposed to park planes for a year?
Canada isn't in the same position as NZ. It's worth noting South Korea and Australia tried a model similar to NZ, and are discovering a population with .00001% COVID soon has more, and the current cases in Melbourne are not people who flew in. The cat is out of the bag.
The current best practice is for vulnerable people to isolate themselves from the community, especially from flyers or meat-packers or churchgoers... and please no singing on planes.