Tag: Thanksgiving

TRAVEL

Data shows Americans couldn’t resist Thanksgiving travel

8 months ago
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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Americans couldn’t resist the urge to gather for Thanksgiving, driving only slightly less than a year ago and largely ignoring the pleas of public health experts, who begged them to forgo holiday travel to help contain the coronavirus pandemic, data from roadways and airports shows.



FILE - In this Nov. 25, 2020, file photo, air travelers line up to go through a a security checkpoint at Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City. Data from roadways and airports shows millions could not resist the urge to gather on Thanksgiving, even during a pandemic. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

© Provided by Associated Press
FILE – In this Nov. 25, 2020, file photo, air travelers line up to go through a a security checkpoint at Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City. Data from roadways and airports shows millions could not resist the urge to gather on Thanksgiving, even during a pandemic. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

The nation’s unwillingness to tamp down on travel offered a warning in advance of Christmas and New Year’s as virus deaths and hospitalizations hit new highs a week after Thanksgiving. U.S. deaths from the outbreak eclipsed 3,100 on Thursday, obliterating the

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TRAVEL

Many Americans Ignored Thanksgiving Travel Warnings From CDC, Data Show : Coronavirus Updates : NPR

8 months ago
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More Americans stayed home for Thanksgiving this year compared with last year — but by relatively small margins.

An NPR analysis of mobile phone location data showed that 42% of Americans with smartphones remained home, up from 36% last year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention repeatedly urged people to avoid holiday travel because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the warnings, 13% of Americans still traveled a significant distance, the data showed, although that number was down from 17% last year.

Ali Mokdad, from the University of Washington, said that ideally, more people would have stayed home given the high case rates. “This level of travel will unfortunately lead to a rise in cases,” said Mokdad, who is the chief strategy officer for Population Health.

Data, provided to NPR by SafeGraph, are based on tracking the locations of about 18 million mobile phones across the United States. NPR analyzed

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Flights & Ticket

64 Tickets, 4 Arrests During Thanksgiving Enforcement

8 months ago
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Press release from the City of Crystal Lake:

December 2, 202o

Crystal Lake, IL – The Crystal Lake Police Department made 1 impaired driving arrest and issued 5 seat belt and child safety seat citations during the recent IDOT Thanksgiving enforcement campaign.

During the mobilization, the Department:

  • Stopped 60 motorists for traffic violations
  • Issued a total of 64 traffic citations which included:
  • 37 citations for speeding
  • 8 citations for unlawful use of an electronic communications device
  • 1 Graduated driver’s license violation
  • 5 citations for occupant protection
  • 13 citations for other moving violations
  • In addition, 4 persons were charged for the following offenses:
  • 1 adult for DUI alcohol and for having a BAC over .08
  • 1 adult for driving with a suspended license
  • 2 adults for possession of cannabis

Law enforcement agencies throughout Illinois participated in this effort to reduce highway fatalities by getting impaired drivers off the roads and more

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Flights & Ticket

United Airlines charged an extra $386 for a Thanksgiving flight

8 months ago
[email protected]_84

Q. I booked a round-trip flight from Washington, D.C., to Chicago for Thanksgiving. The original flight was supposed to leave from Washington at 10:45 a.m. on Thanksgiving and return on Dec. 2 at 7:30 p.m.

When I arrived at the gate, United announced that a flight attendant did not show up for work that day, and United had no additional flight attendants on reserve. They could not give us an estimated departure time and said that the flight was delayed “indefinitely.”

Since it was Thanksgiving morning, I spoke to a ticket agent about other flights going to Chicago. He put me on standby for the 11:45 a.m. flight, which was full, and said I was confirmed on the 12:45 p.m. flight in case my original flight was still delayed beyond 12:45 p.m., but that I would lose my seat on my original flight.

I ended up getting on my original

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TRAVEL

Experts warn of case surge from Thanksgiving travel

8 months ago
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Erin Einhorn

1d ago / 6:49 AM UTC

When schools closed, Black, Hispanic, poor kids took biggest hit

When the pandemic forced the closure of most U.S. schools last spring, students were thrown into new and unfamiliar ways of learning. Special education students and children learning English lost support that their schools struggled to provide online. Many students had no access to computers or internet and were completely cut off from their teachers.

The true toll these disruptions have taken on student learning won’t be known for months or years, but new reports from national education-testing organizations have begun to offer an early look at that impact.

The latest is a report from NWEA, formerly the Northwest Evaluation Association, which analyzed the results of tests given to nearly 4.4 million U.S. students in grades three through eight this fall and found that most fell short in math, scoring an average

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TRAVEL

U.S. is heading for 100,000 COVID-19 patients in hospitals as experts worry about a coming Thanksgiving travel spike

8 months ago
[email protected]_84

• U.S. added record 4.2 million COVID-19 cases in November

• Osterholm says there’s light at the end of tunnel in form of promising vaccines

• Vietnam records its first case of local transmission in almost three months

The U.S. set a record for hospitalizations with the coronavirus illness COVID-19 on Tuesday at almost 100,000 patients, and health experts worried that the situation will worsen in the coming weeks after millions of Americans traveled around and across the country for the Thanksgiving holiday.

There are currently 96,039 COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals, according to the COVID Tracking Project, breaking the record of 93,265 set a day ago. The peak for hospitalizations during earlier case surges were 59,712 on July 23 and 59,773 on April 21.

Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory panel, told CBS the numbers could go much higher.

“What happened during Thanksgiving is

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TRAVEL

Washington region braces for increase in virus cases after Thanksgiving travel

8 months ago
[email protected]_84

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on Monday said she expects a rise in coronavirus cases in the coming weeks, underscoring concerns about holiday travel as leaders across the Washington region lobby the federal government for additional financial relief.

The District reported 371 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, its highest total in a single day since the start of the pandemic. The city’s daily case rate per 100,000 people, calculated on a seven-day rolling basis, reached 27 in recent days — a number not seen since May.

While it could be weeks before the region sees the effect of Thanksgiving travel, Bowser on Monday pointed to a nationwide jump in cases that is still being felt in the nation’s capital. She reminded residents to adhere to city travel guidelines, which call on those who visit a “high risk” state to limit activities for 14 days when returning to the

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VACATION

Vacation rental bookings in SC saw an increase for Thanksgiving 2020

8 months ago
[email protected]_84

The ongoing pandemic didn’t affect travel for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in Horry and Georgetown Counties based on recent data. 

For the week ending on Black Friday, vacation rental bookings in Horry and Georgetown counties increased from 44.5% booked in 2019 to 65.2% booked in 2020. 

Taylor Damonte, the CCU professor who puts out the school’s weekly tourism update through the Clay Brittain Jr. Center for Tourism said the weather this year may have played a role in that increase. 

“The vacation rental properties had a pretty good fall, this was the first year since 2014 that we didn’t have a major named tropical event,” Damonte said. “Vacation rental bookings were substantially above where they were for the week beginning November 21-27. They’re substantially above where they were for the equivalent week last year.”

Damonte said these numbers are based on the center’s observations of random samples of internet websites

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TRAVEL

Sunday saw the most travelers pass through US airports since the pandemic began as Americans bucked CDC warnings against Thanksgiving travel

8 months ago
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a group of people in a room: Travelers at New York's LaGuardia Airport. AP Photo/John Minchillo

© Provided by Business Insider
Travelers at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. AP Photo/John Minchillo
  • Over 1.1 million travelers flew on Sunday, breaking a record for pandemic travel for daily passengers not seen since March.
  • Thanksgiving was largely successful in getting more flyers in the air as over 15 million passengers flew between November 19 and November 29, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned against Thanksgiving travel but over a third of Americans told Insider that the guidance didn’t change their plans. 
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The Transportation Security Administration is reporting that a record-breaking 1,176,091 passengers traveled by air on Sunday, likely returning home after the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s the first time since March 16 that daily traffic numbers have been that high.

Thanksgiving encouraged more people to fly following a lackluster summer for airlines, TSA statistics show.

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TRAVEL

Did Thanksgiving Spread Covid-19? Here’s Why You Can’t Tell Yet.

8 months ago
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That’s what happened after July 4, said Megan L. Ranney, an emergency physician and public health researcher at Brown University. She said a jump in positive tests began between two and four weeks after the holiday, suggesting that many were pass-along infections.

The American Automobile Association forecast that about 50 million people would travel for Thanksgiving. Even if only 1 percent caught the virus, Dr. Ranney said, “that’s an extra 500,000 infections in one day,” and they could infect untold thousands more before showing up in the statistics. “We are looking at an exponential effect,” she said, one that would only truly be seen around Christmas and New Year’s Eve. “It will be a double whammy.”

Lewis S. Nelson, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, said he was not certain that Thanksgiving travel and gatherings would create a widespread surge in new cases.

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