Attention Travelers
Attention Travelers
Traveling always comes with risks but we have to be aware of the risk to protect ourselves. Traveling with XBB.1.5 and future COVID variants.
Traveling enhances our awareness of ourselves and the world. Being on a tropical beach in a faraway land or experiencing the culture, foods, and amazing sites around the world provides real perspective and self-reflection that people can’t get without actually traveling away from the everyday lives we live. Traveling is good for the soul.
Keeping that perspective in mind, the risks we accept are usually our own. The risks we accept when traveling with COVID can mean someone you know or someone you will never meet becomes ill, disabled, or worse, dies. As of January 12, 2023, over 500 people are dying every day, and over 40,000 people are hospitalized from COVID in the U.S. Understanding the scope of what’s occurring may help provide some insight and incentive to protect yourself and everyone else.
New strains reach countries around the world within weeks through unchecked transmission on flights and cruises.
Pictured above are all the flights at 9:00 a.m., as shown on FlightRadar24.
We can see from the picture above that at any given time, there are a lot of planes in the air. A recent study, which Dr. Eric Ding reported on, said that COVID was found in 96% of the flight toilet water within the Southeast Asia region last year. Think about that. 96% of the flights had at least one person who was infected and used the toilet.
In early December 2021, Two flights came into the Netherlands from South Africa with 62 passengers testing positive. All 14 passengers infected with Omicron were fully vaccinated. (2) XBB.1.5 variant can bypass antibodies from prior infections and vaccines, including the BA5 bivalent boosters.
This study looked at the XBB variant, which isn’t as transmissible as XBB.1.5 but provides insight into what we are dealing with.
“BQ.1.1, BM.1.1.1, and especially XBB, are the most antibody-evasive strain tested, far exceeding BA.5 and approaching SARS-CoV-1 level."(3)
"These results suggest that current herd immunity and BA.5 vaccine boosters may not provide sufficiently broad protection against infection." (3)
"It is possible that infections by those mutants may hardly revoke pre-existing memory B cells that encode NAbs, but only recall those memory B cells that encode non-neutralizing antibodies.” “This may cause inabilities to induce rapid increase of plasma neutralization after infection and may correlate with escalated percentages of severe symptoms." (3)
In other words, this means everyone is susceptible to infection and potentially more severe symptoms. XBB.1.5 takes it a step further, by having an enhanced binding to ACE-2 receptors, which it uses to infect the cells we have in our nose, throat, lungs, and even our eyes and ears.
If all of these flights traveling all over the world have a handful of people that are contagious, and, for argument’s sake, say only 5% of flights have a Superspreader on board that gets 50% of the people on the flight infected, then we are still talking about an extremely large number of seed cases that are being planted all over the region where those flights land. On a cruise ship, the chances of a Superspreader becoming contagious increase significantly due to the length of time and the larger number of people on board.
Pictured below are cruise ships in the water all over the world, as shown on CruiseMapper.com.
Perspective from a Cruise in 2020
“An expedition cruise ship departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, for a planned 21-day cruise of the Antarctic Peninsula, including Elephant Island, before sailing to South Georgia Island on a route similar to that taken by the British explorer, Ernest Shackleton, in 1915–1917. “The ship departed in mid-March 2020, after the global COVID-19 pandemic was declared by the WHO, with all 128 passengers and 95 crew members screened for COVID-19 symptoms, and their body temperatures taken before boarding.” (1)
Of the 217 passengers and crew on board, 128 tested positive for COVID-19 (59%). They were quarantined after the first passenger tested positive, so despite being quarantined, 59% had already been infected. Over 80% were asymptomatic!
Every one of these newly contagious travelers gets off their ships or their flights and jumps on another flight, goes to their hotel or wherever they are staying, or goes home, unknowingly spreading new variants into the community. The children traveling or are at home when the traveler returns, will inevitably take this into schools where other students become infected. Those students go home, and their brothers or sisters become infected and take it back to another classroom or different school. The point is that it doesn’t stop with you. Eventually, it finds someone who is more susceptible to more serious outcomes.
What can we do to limit transmission while traveling?
The single most important thing that can be done is to wear an N-95 or FFP2 mask on flights or when around crowds of people in places that aren’t extremely well ventilated.
What are N95 and FFP2 face masks?
“N95 and FFP2 are similar kinds of respiratory masks. These masks supposedly protect both the wearer and people around them. The World Health Organisation cites studies which show the filtration systems of FFP2 and N95 masks are 94 and 95 per cent effective respectively. Their enhanced effectiveness has led to countries such as Austria and Germany making them a requirement on public transport. FFP3 masks are the most effective, followed by FFP2/N95, then surgical masks and, finally, cloth masks.”(2)
What is in N95 and FFP2 face masks?
“So what makes these respiratory masks so good at filtration compared to surgical or cloth masks? FFP2 masks are defined as being composed of three layers of synthetic non-woven materials, available in different thicknesses, with the inclusion of filtration layers between." (2)
“It’s this combination of factors that lead to those strong results. But, 94 to 95 per cent of what? This figure is achieved by testing masks using NaCl (sodium chloride) particles and paraffin oil – this is only for FFP2 testing, with the N95 certification process only testing using NaCl. While standard medical masks only filter three micrometre droplets, FFP2 respirator masks filter down to 0.075 micrometre solid particles. The masks are then tested by seeing what percentage of these small particles make it through and, in the case of getting FFP2 certification, only six per cent or less can do so.” (2)
Lets work together against COVID transmission. Safe travels!
#COVID
#XBB15
#Travel