So, have you had “the talk” yet? Have you and your usual holiday mates determined how Thanksgiving is going to play out this year? There’s little doubt what the expert advice is (though you may not want to hear it). According to the CDC, while you have to assess the level of COVID infection in your own community, the holiday activity with the lowest risk is clearly staying in your own home with just members of your own household present. Other loved ones can join in remotely (and you can even strategize some meal sharing or recipe sharing ideas to make it more communal) but inviting extended family and friends may be a recipe for disaster (and infection). As an example, take note that public health officials in Utah have traced 80% of COVID infections to small family get-togethers where familiarity and comfort led people to let their guard down. And, as Michael Osterholm, of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, definitively stated, “People should not gather for Thanksgiving with people outside their immediate households…you can infect someone in the day or 2 before your own symptoms kick in.” 

But can (or should) you hold the line on no large or extended family gatherings? Despite expert opinion (note that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s 3 adult daughters will not be coming home this Thanksgiving), not everyone may buy into this caution. A recent article by writer Olga Khazan in The Atlantic gives some advice about how to think about risk if you want to push on those boundaries. For example, recognizing that the odds of catching COVID are 20 times higher inside, maybe consider an outdoor experience (weather permitting). And keeping your guests 6 feet apart with masks on will heighten the precautions, as will limiting the size of the gathering and excluding those over 60 (not sure where that leaves many of us!). She suggests consulting the website Pandemics Explained to find out the infection rate in your gathering area. You can also consult the new My COVID Risk app to help you better determine your potential risk at such a gathering and can find some common sense and expert advice from the website USPIRG.org, created by public interest researchers to help inform the public.

But supposing you or your loved ones still want to push ahead and travel to each other for the holiday? Evidence continues to mount that there is limited risk of becoming infected through air travel, and many major airlines continue to block middle seats and enforce mask-wearing while making the cost of air travel a fraction of what it used to be in order to get back passengers. In fact, you may not realize that there are now “no-fly” lists of passengers who have refused to wear masks on planes and thus been banned from air travel. Still, many of us will only travel if we can do so in our own car, and given the surge in cases again, even vehicle travel to another area may not be such a wise idea. In the end, we may feel forlorn and frustrated about Thanksgiving, but those feelings may be better than becoming infected.