Originally Posted by azepine00

Unfortunately media found a story and the couple are made scapegoats. They were stuck away from home with a kid and most parents would try to do exactly the same whether others see it as wrong or not... i recall early in the pandemic there was chinese-american family (with ties to early outbreak at Biogen) who went back to beijing with strong symptoms - they were also driven by the same fear - ending up in hospital with noone to care for young kids.

The real issue is that countless people are flying with symptoms - some intentionally some unintentionally. Unless there is mandatory preboarding test that airlines have to check this will continue. All this story does is telling travellers not to test - the less you know the less liability you have and that's a very misguided direction. In a somewhat similar situation many parents in Utah refuse to covid-test their sick kids to prevent school closures - the result of course is countless outbreaks across the state.

And of course as noted above if there is solid data that suggests that flying infected does not endanger others as long as we enforce masks etc other protocols (as airlines claim) then the couple should not be detained. Airlines actively promote leisure flying and increase flights to for example mexico where unlike Hawaii there are no checks - what message does that send?