100,000 Americans Died. Did We Examine the Role of Travel In It?
Photo Credit: An abandoned Times Square in New York during the coronavirus outbreak quarantine. Skift
Skift Take
We have to ask the hardest questions, and answer them, for the sake of hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens dead here in America and around the world — and the billions who are still alive.
100,000 Americans dead today. So many more here and around the world by the time you read this.
That’s the “milestone” my country passed this evening as I write this. It didn’t have to happen at this scale, so much of this was preventable as every study has said, but such is the state of the “Failed States of America”.
Today should have been a day of national mourning, as should have been every day for the last three months. We need to mourn, collectively, to start any healing, any recovery, psychic and real, from here.
And we have to examine the controversial and unmistakable role of our industry of travel -- the movement and the gathering of humans -- in this, especially as the reopening of travel is gaining momentum every day. We can’t just hurtle into reopening with fingers in our ears. After all, our industry’s output, the globe of travelers, has been the biggest vectors of spreading the virus around the world.
Much of the travel industry is NOT at c
