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Comment by newfeatureok | Hacker News Reader

Looking at total air travel is meaningless because a huge amount is for business - I use holiday travel as an example because it is the most discretionary.

My point is that air travel (along with vehicular) was highest during this thanksgiving despite Covid being the worse during this thanksgiving and people having a good understanding of the risk. This is also shown in your link.

If people are traveling at such numbers (again thanksgiving was highest at any point between now and last March) given what we know now, there’s no way they would follow a lockdown when the effect is unknown like a hypothetical lockdown being done last February.

There’s just no evidence that Americans would’ve obeyed a lockdown at the levels necessary to stop spread.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2020/11/27/flights-tsa...

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Like I said, I'm not disagreeing with your premise... but you presented the numbers as something other than they actually were. And I agree that there was way more travel than was necessary.

But those numbers aren't about total air travel, they're about air travel at the holiday at that highest point since March was _still_ a 50% reduction (which is pretty minimally impacted by business travel, so not sure why you're bringing that up at all.) Again, from your latest link:

> The number of travelers flying Wednesday was half of what it was on the day before Thanksgiving in 2019, before the coronavirus was a threat in the United States

> But those numbers aren't about total air travel, they're about air travel at the holiday at that highest point since March was _still_ a 50% reduction (which is pretty minimally impacted by business travel, so not sure why you're bringing that up at all.) Again, from your latest link

My point in bringing up business travel is that it still happens during the holiday, almost exclusively by air, but the rate of increased travel from late number until thanksgiving is similar to last year.

Meaning if the rate of change is the same but the amount is offset, that could mean either it’s business travel during the holidays, or that there’s a group of people who were going to travel no matter what (which is my point regarding a lockdown not being followed)

Vehicular travel is also representative because it shows how the behavior people who are within driving distance was hardly affected.

In any case my point was about a lockdown not really being feasible to begin with, which we apparently agree on.

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