Add a youngin and those epic road-trips of yesteryear aren’t quite as fun.
been on 30 or so flights, including international, since COVID. Stopped masking after the first few, no issues with getting sick.
Haven’t -known- you’ve caught it.
I didn’t know I caught COVID, either, but recently had a blood test that showed I at least had been exposed to COVID within the last 6 months, though I never noticed it. I’ve never exhibited symptoms as far as I’ve known.
In any case, I figure if I didn’t notice it, I didn’t really need to worry about it. Nobody in my family exhibited symptoms, either.
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How so?
Yes this is a good point. I did catch COVID once at a wedding which was a super spreader event. I think a better way to say my first post was that I haven’t exhibited any sick symptoms after flying in any of these cases.
After wearing a KN95 mask on every flight, I forgot to bring a mask for a flight I had back in May of this year, and since then haven’t worn one…but I’m thinking I might return to wearing one still. Maybe during flu season.
A mile driving is riskier than a mile in a commercial airplane.
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Another data point: I would not have known about my second case of COVID if I hadn’t tested as a precaution when my wife had it.
I wasn’t asymptomatic, but the symptoms weren’t any different from the occasional days of not being 100% I sometimes experience in the summer.
(My first case of COVID, pre-vaccine, was an entirely different matter.)
Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 20 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 595 times higher than for scheduled airlines.
Now compare miles driven by drunk drivers vs miles flown by drunk pilots.
Kid and dog definitely make for less efficient driving.
What percentage of commercial airline pilots in the air at any given time do you suppose are drunk?
What about drivers of passenger vehicles?
Exactly. Relative risk isn’t uniform. It isn’t a good measure of risk to ignore variability in driving vs more consistency in flying.
15-20 hour road trips are a blast. My husband and I enjoy driving long distances together. And once I drove 12 hours to hang out with actuaries (some even on GoA) for a weekend.
Someday we will force the kids on a cross country road trip. But they won’t find it nearly as enjoyable.
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I’m confused about your point. Are you saying flying is more dangerous because a drunk pilot does more damage than a drunk driver?
ETA: directed at Steve
My parents started me on road trips when I was young so I’ve always been accustomed to them.
But I agree about road trips with others being a blast. I enjoy solo road trips too, but it’s definitely a bonding experience if others are along for the ride.
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Sorry I’m not being clear. Driving in a sane manner is relatively safer than the average of fatality/mile comparison (that includes drunk drivers) to commercial flying would indicate because there is very little commercial flying with drunk pilots. Still riskier than flying.
And now compare fender benders in cars Vs airplanes lol.
And coyote strikes, don’t forget coyote strikes.
Ah, ok, so I think you’re saying that just comparing the per mile fatalities isn’t fair to driving if YOU are not going to drive drunk.
You can, of course, be completely sober and get hit by a drunk driver though. It would be interesting to split out fatalities by the BAL of the driver (maybe less than 0.02%, 0.02 - 0.08%, 0.08 - 0.14%, 0.14%+) but of course you’d never be able to get miles driven on that basis.
You’d still have alcohol-related fatalities in even the first bucket due to the other driver being drunk, but presumably the drunker the driver of your own vehicle is the worse your odds.
Untestable though.
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What constitutes a fender bender in an airplane? Certainly pilots land broken aircraft safely all the time.