Friday nights are now one of the most exciting times of the week. Each Friday, Diio by Cirium loads that week’s schedule changes, and I get to see how the airlines are feeling about the near future. (Please, hold your criticism of my social life. Yours is probably just as sad these days.) A near-term cut means demand is likely weakening. A good outcome these days is no cut at all. And this weekend, the scissors were out again in force.
Florida continues to see coronavirus cases increase with abandon. The mismanagement of the virus there would be impressive if it weren’t so deadly, and it is causing real headaches for airlines. Frontier, Spirit, and United all made cuts with a heavy focus on Florida, though United was more geographically varied than the rest. In brighter news, Southwest added some last minute trips, but this is nothing to get excited about. The real story is the cutting. Let’s take a look.
Frontier Cuts More for July
Last week, Frontier made late cuts for July. This week, it’s at it again with flights being reduced more dramatically. Looking at the week of July 15-21, flights were slashed more than 13 percent. That’s an enormous drop so close to travel.
I pulled the data twice to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake. Sure enough, there are nearly 100 flights that are being canceled to Florida within a couple weeks of travel. What’s even more amazing is that in a lot of these markets, it’s a complete pull out during this time period and not just a reduction in frequency.
Spirit Cuts July As Well
Spirit got into its own cutting party this weekend. August was on a pre-coronavirus schedule until these cuts, so the 50 percent cut in flights is an eye-popping number. But Spirit can’t wait until August. It trimmed more than four percent of flights in in July at this late date. Again taking a look at July 15-21, you can see the bulk hits Florida and Myrtle Beach.
Take notice that much of this is from the northeast to Florida. Also remember that this quarantine in place for people flying into New York/New Jersey/Connecticut has to be a big driver. And that brings us to United.
United Told Us This Was Coming
In an SEC filing, United said it was already reversing some of the additional August flying it was planning due to declining demand. What United didn’t say was that it was even making cuts in July.
The near-term cuts for July were completely focused on Newark. Orlando and Miami lost 4 flights per week while Nashville and Dallas/Fort Worth lost 6. Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Los Angeles, and Tampa each lost 1 flight per day while West Palm Beach lost 2 per day. What do these have in common? All are to states with high positivity rates of COVID, and that means that travelers are subject to a quarantine upon arrival in the New York area. It’s no surprise that flights would be cut here.
In August, more than 3 percent of flights were cut. Newark to Orange County and San Francisco to Shanghai were removed completely. The rest just saw decreased frequency.
As you can see, there was a whole lot of cutting in Florida, but there was a lot of cutting in other hotspots as well. California, Phoenix and Vegas saw cuts as did Texas, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. This isn’t solely about quarantine rules.
Southwest Grows in July
It’s not all dire news. As some readers pointed out last week, Southwest has been adding extra flights at the last minute as demand allows. There isn’t really a geographic focus here, but the map still tells us something.
To me, a couple of things stand out here. First of all, if you drew a line from Baltimore to Phoenix, you’d see the bulk of these adds being north of that line. Below there are some adds within Texas, but there is very little in Florida, as you’d expect.
One thing to keep in mind here is that these aren’t big adds. For the week of July 15-21, these adds are from 1 to 3 weekly flights in each market. So don’t read too much into this. I just figured I’d try to find a little good news in a sea of bad.
These changes paint a picture of major demand decreases to major leisure destinations. If the change was minor, then it wouldn’t require such cuts. Until Florida and other states get the coronavirus under control, it looks like demand has stalled… and that’s the best case scenario.
46 comments on “Demand Drying Up: Airlines Chop Summer Schedules With Florida Taking the Lead”
thanks for your great capacity updates. This site has been the go-to place on the internet for meaningful virus-driven airline capacity updates and analysis.
Note that Southwest’s CEO has just said that they need to see a tripling of demand in order to avoid furloughs. Delta just today said that they have received 17,000 takers on their early retirement/voluntary severance packages. United wasn’t able to offer packages as rich as Delta’s but both recognized early on that deep cuts in airline employment were necessary; Delta could well meet most if not all of its needs through voluntary programs. Not sugar-coating the depth of the crisis early on has allowed carriers to get programs in place to cut costs when the government cheese runs out.
The level of cuts is not surprising. Virus spread is still way too high. Demand will not come back until people feel safe -and not just on airplanes.
However, the virus is not spreading equally among all populations or geographies even in Florida. You need only look at the difference in cases and deaths in S. Florida vs. Orange County (Orlando) to see the differences. Disney is not careless which is why they are reopening and it is also why Florida doesn’t need a statewide lockdown. Certain populations and activities are causing the virus spread and account for large portions of the death rate; while the numbers change on a state by state basis, governors and the federal government know the virus is not impacting everyone the same.
You do realize Delta lost $3.9 billion in 90 days, don’t you?
That’s even worse than Wall Street expected.
So you can cheerfully point out that 17,000 good people fell on their swords for The Widget today.
How do the Delta pilot buyouts compare to the Southwest pilot buyouts? Which company is taking better care of its people? Initially, Delta’s pilot incentives were quite generous. After all, Delta’s pilots are the only unionized work group on the property. But the Delta flight attendants, in the midst of a unionizing campaign, started complaining about the pilots. So, naturally, Delta cut the pilots benefits in hopes of placating the flight attendants into not voting for the union. Same thing on the Delta flight attendant uniform issue: let’s placate them to fend off the union. Last time I flew Delta, it was a farcical hodgepodge of the old uniforms and the plums. That is not Leadership. I will say it again: Delta has failed its people.
First of all, nobody “fell on their swords” for anyone.
17,000 Delta EMPLOYEES SO FAR have chosen to take voluntary separation (mostly retirement apparently) packages for which they are being compensated.
No other airline has said how many people have signed up for their packages but it is highly unlikely that any other airline is going to get anywhere near the number of people to voluntarily leave as Delta has announced so far.
And Delta’s pilot retirement package is still open.
Given that United decided early on that it is going to furlough, AA put out very costly packages that don’t get costs off the book for a long time, and even WN is saying that bookings have to triple in order to avoid furloughs, the evidence is far from clear that DL is beyond the curve on this or that any other carrier is doing a better job.
So, before you goad anyone – as hard as that may be – let’s see how many people leave each carrier and how much each carrier SPENDS for those people to leave before you make any comparisons, let alone a judgment about how much any carrier has gained from their employees.
I know using facts and not emotion is a tall order but it is the only rational and fair way to actually
And, just one final note, more Delta flight attendants have voted in more union elections than any other group of employees in American corporate history and they have rejected unonization multiple times.
Let the Delta employees speak for themselves but the notion that any of them want it any differently is not expressed in their choices. Nor is it expressed in better outcomes so far for any of their competitors’ employees.
Here’s a deal for you: I will personally buy you an Xbox for you to play with if you will agree to leave this Forum. I think that’s only fair in that Delta recently reminded its workers that they could buy Xboxes with the dues money they will save by not voting for legal representation. Are you in???
Can I volunteer, too? ;)
Point of order: Dispatchers at Delta also have union representation (PAFCA).
“Until Florida and other states get the coronavirus under control, it looks like demand has stalled… and that’s the best case scenario.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one. If Florida has shown us anything, it’s they believe in the idea that the economy trumps public health. You can see it in the stupid decisions being made such as the opening of schools statewide & the opening of Disney Parks. In the case of the former Miami Dade, Broward & Palm Beach Counties said no way to that as the virus rages & in the latter I cant see the parks staying open for long as the whole concept of theme parks just doesn’t pencil out in a pandemic. Disney executives will learn this hard lessen soon enough.
You do realize that Disney is not in S. Florida?
Central Florida and esp. Orlando is experiencing the virus very differently.
It makes sense to target what are known virus transmission and covid targets. No other disease is targeted on a blanket basis for the entire country and neither should covid.
Disney just reopened. Universal and Seaworld about a month ago, I believe, and a week or so afterwards the numbers started going up. So give it some time :)
While I hope that large corporations can and will implement strict distancing and masking rules better than beaches and individual bars/restaurants, I would still expect Orange County, FL to continue to see an upswing (though visitors may actually be mostly counted in the statistics of their home county/state anyway). And it’s not like their curve has been flat or going down in recent weeks anyway.
let’s see what the statistics say.
Maybe, just maybe, compliance with CDC regulations will allow business to return to normal.
I doubt very much that Disney is willing to take a monumental liability risk of having infected people sue; if they require compliance with CDC recommendations, then either the government guidelines are validated or the only option really is to stay locked in their homes with food and supplies dropped by drones.
Maybe, just maybe, compliance with CDC regulations will allow business to return to normal.
How do you define “normal?”
I doubt very much that Disney is willing to take a monumental liability risk of having infected people sue; if they require compliance with CDC recommendations, then either the government guidelines are validated or the only option really is to stay locked in their homes with food and supplies dropped by drones.
Disney’s first goal is making money just like any other corporation, so the liability issue comes a distant second. To get out of the liability problem, many companies are making employees sign a waver that puts the responsibility on the worker. If by chance they catch the virus, , the company is “held harmless.” That means they cant take legal action as they forfeited that right. Disney could do that with every “guest” before they enter the parks & they as I said would be held harmless if someone became ill or died from CV.
To add,
As it is right now, Florida isn’t following CDC guidelines outside the Miami metro area. And as for your comment on dropping supplies by drones at people’s homes, it may come to that if the virus continues to spread as rapidly as it has. Over a 2-day span (Sunday & Monday) there were 27000 new cases in Florida FYI.
“normal” is being able to operate without restriction as Americans did before the virus – and that is not happening anywhere.
And since CDC guidance is not binding, then it behooves any local or state government or company to assess their own risk. And local and state governments do have data that you and I don’t which show that the risk is concentrated in specific demographics allowing many activities to continue without full lockdown. It is precisely on that basis that Disney is reopening even with social distancing guidelines.
As for the legal argument, I don’t know what Disney is or could do but people do not automatically sign away their rights and companies or governments cannot strip them of people even if there is a known risk.
and, no dropping supplies by drone isn’t happening and didn’t happen in Europe or other places that contained the disease. Europe aggressively locked down and stripped even healthy people of rights which won’t happen in the US.
The notion that management of the disease is either a full lockdown or having the disease run rampant throughout entire states is patently false. There are specific behaviors and demographics that are problematic and the US will overcome the disease by dealing w/ those groups rather than a full lockdown of everything just as is the case with every other type of disease including infectious diseases.
Hate to break it to you Tim, but in many companies customers are in fact signing their rights away & are agreeing to binding arbitration. The notices are often hidden within “terms of service contracts that you see especially on web sites, but most people just agree & ignore.
Come on Tim, you know that it takes up to two weeks for CV cases to blossom.
I keep seeing comments like yours and I shake my head.
What should Florida do? Stay closed until there is a vaccine?
Who is going to pay the salaries of all the employees? Who is going to pay the mortgages of the owners?
It’s all well and gone to advocate closing, but when these people lose their homes, can they come live with you?
Some of you folks think we can magically pay everybody for a year.
Yes close Florida for a year if that’s what it takes & yes I am absolutely serious. If Florida took things seriously in January, you wouldn’t see what you do now. I cant believe that it’s so obvious & yet it’s being missed by so many.
You do know that poverty kills? The more money the government prints, the more future health issues due to the hyper inflation that is coming. Look at any country that the government that has done it in such a large degree.
Your point?
Simply that closing down society and businesses will in the end result in mire deaths than Corona.
Sean, so who is going to pay the bills for a year? Are you?
Are you going to pay the mortgages and rent and car payments of people you demand sit at home? If not, who is?
John G,
The federal government. If they have the money to drop bombs on other countries, then they have the money to house & feed their citizens.
@cranky : funny you don’t assign any blame to southwest’s rush-to-more-flights strategy that correlate nicely with the rush-to-reopen states that are now degenerating to rush-to-ICU.
and thoroughly hilarious you only think Florida and Texas are the only hotspots I stare at that WN map up there and i see plenty of lines connecting to LAX, LAS, PHX, DAL, HOU, SAT, BNA, CHS, ATL, OKA – all hotspots like no tomorrow.
I’m glad Friday night schedule changes give you something to look forward to. Today was the highlight of my week: trash day!
I suppose the affected August reductions won’t show up In the schedules until this weekend?
Mdrendfeld – Not sure what you mean. Whatever is being reported here has already been loaded or I couldn’t see it. There may be more that come this weekend.
Cranky,
I just herd your governor is pulling back on non-essential business activity as CV is spreading rapidly. Also schools in SD & LA counties aren’t opening in the fall as planned do to fear of rapid spread of CV.
SEAN – Correct. That happened yesterday and it’s the right move to make.
“The mismanagement of the virus there would be impressive if it weren’t so deadly, and it is causing real headaches for airlines.”
With all due respect Cranky, your statement has no basis in science. Unless we can develop a vaccine soon, humans have little to no impact on this or any other virus. So far, the best we can do is what (in March) our epidemiologists said we could do: flatten the curve. If you can detect the virus early enough, it does appear that you can actually “flatten the curve.” But that means exactly what is was supposed to mean: you get the same number of infections, but spread them out over more time. It can prevent your hospitals from being overloaded, and maybe you have time to develop new treatments, but that’s about it. You still get the same amount of virus.
If you spend any time looking at the data, it is obvious that the Northeast/Rust Belt didn’t have time to flatten the curve from the NYC outbreak, but much of the rest of the country did. The problem for the airlines is that everyone hoped/believed the virus was “over” once the deadly infections in the north burned out. Sadly, this was untrue. It turned out that the USA was too big and too lightly populated for the virus to act exactly the way it did in Europe. The Sunbelt is sadly getting its peak 2 months after the North. Fortunately, this peak is WAY less deadly than the northern peak, but it’s almost as scary — especially since our ability now to due hyper-testing (140,000 test results in Florida in ONE DAY!) makes the case count quite frightening, especially since the media and our elected officials are so awful at explaining virus science.
The good news is that the current Sunbelt wave is doing what needs to be done to get through this thing. Like with EVERY virus, we need to have a certain percentage of people infected for the epidemic to end. Nobel-laureate Michael Levitt relies on the data to show that’s 15 to 20% (not the much higher numbers initially believed without considering t-cells). The Sunbelt is certainly getting there. Nothing moves fast enough with COVID-19, but Houston (the heart of the Texas infection) now seems to be having declining hospitalizations and Miami (the heart of the Florida infection) looks close. Sadly, California may be the last place to be liberated from this virus plague because of both geography (furthest from NYC) and the government’s zeal to flatten the curve. California would have done better to listen to its brilliant Stanford scientists (like Levitt and Ioannidis) instead of its bureaucrats, but that was a political leap too far for the state.
In any event, once the virus count starts falling, especially in Florida and Texas — and it will — air travel will again increase. And, of course, borders will start reopening once America starts looking less scary. It’s very difficult to predict virus timing, but the data suggests that August will be a lot less frightening than July. I would therefore expect a decent airline recovery for August, especially the last 2 to 3 weeks as delayed vacations start getting planned. Airlines cutting August service now based on current conditions may regret it.
The good news is that the current Sunbelt wave is doing what needs to be done to get through this thing. Like with EVERY virus, we need to have a certain percentage of people infected for the epidemic to end. Nobel-laureate Michael Levitt relies on the data to show that’s 15 to 20% (not the much higher numbers initially believed without considering t-cells). The Sunbelt is certainly getting there. Nothing moves fast enough with COVID-19, but Houston (the heart of the Texas infection) now seems to be having declining hospitalizations and Miami (the heart of the Florida infection) looks close. Sadly, California may be the last place to be liberated from this virus plague because of both geography (furthest from NYC) and the government’s zeal to flatten the curve. California would have done better to listen to its brilliant Stanford scientists (like Levitt and Ioannidis) instead of its bureaucrats, but that was a political leap too far for the state.
In any event, once the virus count starts falling, especially in Florida and Texas — and it will — air travel will again increase. And, of course, borders will start reopening once America starts looking less scary. It’s very difficult to predict virus timing, but the data suggests that August will be a lot less frightening than July. I would therefore expect a decent airline recovery for August, especially the last 2 to 3 weeks as delayed vacations start getting planned. Airlines cutting August service now based on current conditions may regret it.
There are so many falsehoods & assumptions in your post I don’t even know where to begin.
1. letting a virus run wild just so it will “burn itself out” as you put it, is what the Sweads believed in until it burned them & now they are following their neighbors Denmark & Finland.
2. If the sunbelt followed the NY/ NJ/ CT line of thinking early, they would have beaten the outbreak before it hit them so hard. But this part of the country tends to have residents who look down at places like NY as being elitest & therefore pay them no mind.
3. California is having a resurgence of cases do to many residents not following CDC suggestions.
4. Cases will NOT decrease as quickly as you think as you failed to include the reopening of schools. If Covid gets into a school, it’s going to spread rapidly & there’s no telling what will occur.
5. I seriously doubt airline passenger counts will increase all that much, well not until vaccinations become commonplace. Once that happens, maybe some but I doubt that the huge wave will come as so many will be paying more attention to staying employed. Also as the public gets use to staying in place, perhaps a good number of Americans will see they could live without that trip on a flying tube.
Nice piece of panic porn there, Sean. Fortunately, even the liberal media is starting to understand that not everyone on the left is anti-science. The Atlantic, for example, ran this story yesterday. It was a brave move on their part. Maybe reality can become bipartisan.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/herd-immunity-coronavirus/614035/
What are you talking about… never made a comment about being on the left & being anti science. In fact I have a science background. What I was referring to had to do with this idea that this virus will just die off if everyone live their lives & not take the necessary precautions as many appear to be doing. This virus isn’t something to play roulette with, but of course I know you are aware of that already.
Your “liberal media” comment tells me exactly why your post is so detached from reality. It’s because you’re getting news from right-leaning sources that have significant credibility issues.
The United States has failed to flatten the curve because of a combination of poor leadership on response and unwillingness among various segments of the population to accept some short term sacrifices and inconveniences for the long term good.
Your comments about the necessity of infecting a certain segment of the population are hogwash. Much of the rest of the world is doing much better, notably New Zealand and Taiwan. And before you denigrate them as small island nations, Taipei has a population density similar to the city of San Francisco. New Zealand has zero community spread.
New Zealand had a strategy of eliminating the virus. The United States has a strategy of denying it exists.
So today there is peer-reviewed “hogwash” that confirms what everyone who was willing to do math already knew: Nobel laureate Michael Levitt is correct, t-cells protect the majority of humans from COVID, and the threshold to get to virus burnout is low.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z_reference.pdf
For airlines, this means that we are truly playing the Herd Immunity Game, and betting that the Sunbelt gets to virus burnout — and therefore the end of paralyzing fear — before the cash runs out. I think it’s a good bet, but it is by no means a sure thing. There certainly could be another curveball that no one is seeing. You can also bet on a vaccine to save us, but I don’t like those odds as much. Medical breakthroughs are hard.
BTW, as far as NZ goes, good luck to them. Australia also thought they had this thing licked, but new infections recently emerged and Melbourne is now in for 6 weeks of (likely futile) totalitarian lockdown. If you study virus history, like the famous 1973 Antarctic influenza study, you’ll see this almost always happens with respiratory viruses. They are nearly impossible to completely eradicate. Which is why we also still have the famous Spanish Flu. Unless we get a vaccine quickly, it’s a very good bet that NZ will eventually go through the same thing Europe and the Americas have gone through. Taiwan may be a different situation, however, as there seems to be a still unproven extra immunity to coronaviruses along the Pacific Rim (again, math pretty much tells us this).
Vaccines for $200, Alex.
That article, if true, still means over 1 year of Covid-19 precautions before the trend is such that businesses, governments, and overall society feel comfortable enough to get back to the old normal.
Only 1% of the US population has tested positive for Covid-19 ….and it took us 4 to 5 months to reach this number. Assuming the burn out rate is 5%, that still means over a year in front of us before we see that burn out rate reflected in the daily cases.
We may realistically see a vaccine before this theory has a chance to even play itself out.
Let’s also add that the US death rate is vastly inflated because of grotesque mismanagement of the virus in high risk environments such as nursing homes and hospitals in the NE, esp. NY, that cost tens of thousands of lives.
Further, there is huge incentive for states to categorize deaths as covid-19 while not adequately recording deaths by other factors – which still exist.
Finally, we are going a daily play-by-play of covid-19 statistics which has never happened for any other disease in human history and isn’t happening for other diseases which still exist. Only when statistics for ALL diseases are fully known and a true side by side comparison can be done of all types of diseases – with appropriate adjustments made for known biases (ie cancer deaths are not really dropping just because covid-19 is listed as the primary cause of death) can we know the real damage done by this virus.
And that can’t be done for months into 2021 or later.
Quit trolling Tim! It’s obvious you don’t have the slightest clue on this infection.
If you have been reading Cranky for a while now, you know that Tim very often makes comments which display his ignorance.
@sean,
given that you are as fully engaged in attacking other people’s positions, I’m not sure what gives you to call someone else a troll and not include yourself.
The simple fact is that NONE of the Southern states (or CA) is going to hit the number of deaths as happened in NY state or a number of other states.
Should we do all we can to avoid all unnecessary deaths? Yes.
But managing disease risk is not solely a job for the government any more than a diabetic can drink sugared sodas all day long while some teenagers can get by with it at that point in their life.
Disease management HAS ALWAYS involved a certain degree of personal responsibility. Those that are most at risk of covid need to manage their own risk based on the relatively little amount of data that is being released about who is being most impacted.
Locking down the entire country or even entire states or counties is not going to solve the problem.
Airline travel is depressed because the public is not able to see who is really at risk on an individual basis and because infectious diseases, even if they are more targeted at specific groups, are not totally isolated to them.
And since we are discussing air travel, CF’s post highlights that there are a number of carriers including ULCCs that significantly overestimated the return of demand – which is not happening.
You are free to call others trolls but the final analysis of this will be done by those that are objective enough on both sides (or all of the variaions in between) that are willing to admit they might not have gotten it all right and be willing to learn. Calling people trolls in the middle of the process doesn’t give me a lot of hope that process is one you will embrace.
Tim,
1. “The simple fact is that NONE of the Southern states (or CA) is going to hit the number of deaths as happened in NY state or a number of other states.”
That is an “unknowable” at the present time, but lets hope it doesn’t occur.
2. “But managing disease risk is not solely a job for the government any more than a diabetic can drink sugared sodas all day long while some teenagers can get by with it at that point in their life.”
Your thoughts – not mine & who implied the responsibility was with only the government when it came to the pandemic?
3. “Locking down the entire country or even entire states or counties is not going to solve the problem.”
Actually doing that for only a few weeks nationally could halt the virus spread. Note I said a few weeks & not months. No vectors, no spread.
4. And as for trolls, if you read the post above where I corrected the errors with the excepted scientific information at hand, you will see I DID NOT attack the poster personally. That said, you are right science may change, but do you want to run the risk in operating in the dark as many lay people are doing by not following current CDC suggestions? I know I don’t & I’ll bet you don’t either.
And yes this is an aviation blog, but don’t forget it was aviation that brought the virus to our country. So therefore there’s an important tie in & it’s going to have a crucial impact on the entire industry.
Barring the current death rates in their states, every person in the states of Florida, Texas, California and Arizona would have to get covid 19 and total deaths would not equal what NY state registered.
As hard as it is for some to accept, some states have done a better job of managing this crisis than others. none perfect. But let’s save the incessant fear-mongering and move to a true individual risk-based discussion – just like exists for every other disease.
not once have I advocated not following CDC guidelines.
and yes science has flipped multiple times on the same issue in the covid era. You haven’t corrected anything. You have injected your view of data based on what you want to believe.
Calling other people trolls because they happen to have a different opinion is childish.
And there is a laundry list of positions I have taken contrary to groupthink and I am indeed right. But this is no more the place to defend than it is to call people trolls because they are supposedly correcting anything.
I know I’m playing Captain Obvious, but all any airline can do in this situation is to take its best shot about how much capacity it wants to deploy and where it wants to deploy it. Unlike 9/11, where the problem was fairly well defined and simple steps could be taken by airlines and governments to mitigate the risks, this situation is very fluid, with lots of factors that are beyond any airline or government’s ability to reign in. The aftermath of 9/11 was controllable. This isn’t.
“Please, hold your criticism of my social life. Yours is probably just as sad these days.”
Wrong Cranky, mine is even more sad!
Also, excellent analysis as always.
I feel for anyone working in the route planning and revenue management departments these days. Load factors appear to be all over the place day to day on the same route/same time. No way they can accurately predict.
I know I am personally going to be booking two additional trips for August and September today.
For the Covid commenters, my experience is with 14 different nursing home populations. Yes, Covid can be bad, but be VERY WARY of the lab numbers. We are testing positives weekly…WEEKLY…until we get two negatives. The states are not geared to show those repeat positives as not new infections. I was initially assured by the Dept of Health that double/triple counting was not happening. Low and behold, a nearby parish looked hard at the numbers..and sure enough, 40% of the positives WERE REPEAT/KNOWN positives. It is a rough disease for some segments of the society, but we’ve entered into this butt-hurt-need-a-participation-trophy phase of life where the most sensible thing to do (age related/situation precuations) would be frowned upon. I had GREAT results using the hydroxychloroquine/Xarelto/Zithromax/Zinc combo on the early diagnosed asymptomatics.
99.99% of the people walking through the gates of Disney World have no real scientific basis to be afraid of Covid 19. The 60 and under otherwise healthy crowd will be just fine.
Our beloved airline industry and all of the employees involved in it is in deep pain because we simply won’t use common sense and discretion.
Very, very well said and precisely why all of the people that are touting their interpretation of data are simply being led like sheep.
I have certainly not advocated for blowing this off – but far too many people are willing to accept destruction of people’s lives for other reasons (including domestic abuse, poverty, mental health issues) because the public doesn’t have factual, individual-based risk factors. The very reason why the current wave of disease is yielding far fewer deaths is the reason why Disney is reopening and why the airline industry and airframe manufacturers are working on a massive PR campaign to convince people that travel is safe.
The public AS A WHOLE has been needlessly scared and people’s livelihoods are being destroyed; on the verge of massive layoffs in the airline industry, it is time for the public to receive factual information to make informed decisions about their own health.