Wanderlust, vaccines, and a third wave

Cabin fever is starting to hit us all. For the past two weeks, US airline travel has hit a one-year high. This is despite the warnings of the CDC that people should still avoid unnecessary travel. More and more states are dropping restrictions for residents. But the side effect is that more and more people from other states are traveling to those states to escape their own state restrictions.

I’m still all for traveling. I just took a trip to New Mexico. Following guidelines still make sense. In New Mexico more is up. They had some of the more severe restrictions. Out-of-state travelers were required to quarantine for 14 days until they changed that in mid-February. State parks and open spaces were restricted to residents only until the end of February. By the time that I visited, dine-in eating had reopened. But it required such a bizarre check-in measure that I just choose take-out most of the time.

Some countries are entering the third wave. Even local jurisdictions in the US are implementing restrictions to try and slow the spread as they see more of an influx of visitors.

It’s still easy to find a cheap flight, but it won’t be long before prices go up. Airlines predict that they won’t be back at pre-pandemic flight numbers until mid-2022. More travelers, fewer flights. Prices are going to go up.

And then hotel rooms are going to get hard to find. Staffing at hotels might be an issue. Will people want to get back to work knowing that they might still get infected? Hotels, like airlines, have cut back. It’s going to take a while to wind back up.