Welcome to the fourteenth episode of the Travel Well with Allan Wright!
In this week’s episode, Allan discusses what responsible travel looks like during the COVID-19 pandemic both what you should be doing as a traveler and what to look out for in the destination you are going to.
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Can’t watch the video right now? Here’s the video transcript of Responsible Travel During COVID-19 Pandemic – Episode 14:
Hi, welcome to the Travel Well with Allan video update. Today I’d like to address the question of is it even responsible to travel at all right now. It’s not a clear-cut answer but I think there are a couple layers to it.
First of all, is the issue of legality. If you cannot keep to the regulations and rules in place where you want to be traveling then clearly it’s not responsible to do so. This isn’t as obvious as it seems. It might be that you have people traveling from an area that doesn’t require masks to one that does and that person clearly needs to be wearing a mask if the local regulations require it.
Second, you might be traveling across state lines to an area that requires quarantine and I guarantee you there are probably lots of people doing that and not quarantining. That is also irresponsible travel but that part’s pretty cut and dry.
To me, the less clear aspect and more important one is safety. I’m not so concerned to be honest about the safety of a traveler. You can make that decision yourself. The bigger issue is the safety impact you have on others that can happen in two ways:
Let’s say you have the virus and you travel and infect others. Clearly, that’s not responsible. But secondly, what happens if you don’t have the virus, you travel, you get the coronavirus on an airplane, in a hotel, in a restaurant, and you bring it back. And then you infect your loved ones or let’s say you infect a student and shut down schools for two weeks. That’s not responsible either.
So to me, the answer of is travel responsible right now is first of all a personal one for you to make and second of all an issue of safety. If you don’t think you can guarantee that you don’t have the coronavirus then you shouldn’t be traveling. If you don’t think you can travel without making sure you don’t get it then clearly you shouldn’t be traveling.
Interestingly, responsible travel used to mean something entirely different it used to be sustainable travel which had to do with the environment and also promoting and protecting local cultures. We’ve now changed the definition of responsible travel to one of ethics but that old definition how you impact the environment and other cultures is still important and actually might be changing a little bit with this pandemic so that could be the discussion and a new video.
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