People with Thanksgiving travel plans largely ignored government officials’ warnings against traveling for the national holiday, according to data crunchers, and coronavirus rates have shot up in the eight days since.
“People were less willing to change their behavior than any other day during the pandemic,” StreetLight Data founder Laura Schewel told the Associated Press.
Although vehicle traffic in early November was down 20% compared to a year earlier, it rose last week to nearly mirror the amount seen last Thanksgiving, a strong indication many people opted to leave their home for the holiday despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation against it, according to StreetLight Data published in a report Friday.
More than 1 million people flew each of the four days leading up to and after Thanksgiving — that figure has surpassed the million-mark just once since March, according to the Transportation Security Administration, which estimates airline passenger levels by the number of people screened at airport checkpoints.
Meanwhile, deaths in people who have contracted the virus peaked Thursday to the highest level recorded since the outbreak largely broke out domestically in March. Daily new cases have surpassed 200,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
The federal government’s top infectious disease adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned ahead of Thanksgiving that if people did not heed warnings to stay home last week, they could prompt another surge in mid-December. The National Football League postponed a Thanksgiving night game after players on the Baltimore Ravens team tested positive.
Alabama, Delaware, and Mississippi each reported one-day record-highs for positive cases this week. Florida surpassed 19,000 deaths of residents and 1 million total infections — or 1 in 21 people. Out west, the virus has raged through the late summer and fall. South Dakota’s death toll breezed past 1,000 Thursday, which is low compared to other states, but high considering its small population of 885,000.
More than 12.7 million people in the United States have tested positive, and 262,000 have died.
