Determined to reclaim Thanksgiving traditions that were put on pause last year by the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people in the US have loaded up their vehicles or piled onto planes to gather again with family and friends.
The number of air travelers in the US this week is expected to approach or even exceed levels before the pandemic, and auto club AAA predicts that 48.3 million people would travel at least 80km from home over the holiday period, an increase of nearly 4 million more than last year, despite sharply higher gasoline prices.
Many feel emboldened by the fact that nearly 200 million people in the US are fully vaccinated.
Photo: AFP
However, it also means brushing aside concerns about a resurgent virus at a time when the US is averaging nearly 100,000 new infections per day, and hospitals in Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado and Arizona are seeing alarming increases in patients.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that unvaccinated people should not travel, although it is unclear whether that recommendation is having any effect.
More than 2.2 million travelers streamed through airport checkpoints on Friday, the busiest day since the pandemic devastated travel early last year.
From Friday through Tuesday, the number of people flying in the US was more than double the same days last year.
At Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Christian Titus was heading to Canada to visit extended family.
Titus said that his has spent much of the pandemic inside, but is willing to risk flying on a crowded airplane because he misses being around his family.
He got a booster vaccine to increase his protection.
“My mental health does better by being around my family during these times,” he said. “Yeah, it’s dangerous. But you love these people, so you do what you can to stay safe around them.”
Meka Starling and her husband were excited for many members of their extended family to meet their two-year-old son, Kaiden, for the first time at a big Thanksgiving gathering in Linden, New Jersey.
“We’ve put pictures on Facebook so a lot of them have seen pictures of him, but to get to actually touch him and talk to him, I’m excited about it,” said Starling, 44, of West Point, Mississippi.
At the Denver airport, Rasheeda Golden arrived from Houston with her boyfriend and his sister on their way to a snowmobiling excursion over Thanksgiving.
“It’s exciting to be traveling now, especially with things opening back up, some sense of normalcy going on. I welcome it,” she said.
Golden added that she’s not worried about flying, but she remains cautious when she is in “a cluster of too many people.”
“As long as we have our masks on, I’ve done my part,” she said. “The rest is to enjoy my vacation.”
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