Why You Can't Let Covid Stop You From Traveling

At the beginning of the pandemic, I was living in Hanoi. But because of all the global Covid panic, I left Vietnam to go back to England.

That was when Covid seemed like a literal apocalypse, and there were rumours going around of people dropping dead on the street and all that. So I came home. I still beat myself up for giving into that fear, because I always try to be motivated by adventure and excitement rather than fear.

If you’re still avoiding travel because of Covid, you need to stop being scared. Unless you have a genuine, specific reason for fearing Covid (like old age or an existing horrible illness), you need to grow up and get over it.

In this quick post, I’ve brought you 7 reasons why you can’t let Covid stop you from traveling…

People Have Always Died

Do you avoid traveling because people die of cancer? Or the flu? Or measles? Norovirus? What about during the short-lived bird flu breakout? Or when ebola was gonna be the next big pandemic? Do your put your life on hold to stop people from catching the common cold? Do you avoid transport because people get lung diseases caused by pollution?

No, you don’t, and you didn’t, and you shouldn’t.

Around 150,000 people die every day. Around 7,000 of those (at present and at most) are from Covid. That’s less than 5%. So we’re going to stop living our lives because of an extra 5% deaths? You didn’t stop traveling because of the ~140,000 daily deaths before. And no-one tried to guilt-trip you into it either.

On average, according to the link above, daily global Covid deaths are two times as common as daily global car accident deaths. So for every 2 people who die of Covid every day, 1 person dies in a traffic accident every day. Are you gonna stop using cars and buses? No, you’re not.

Covid is Here to Stay

Covid is never going away now, no matter how much we might want it to.

You might have told yourself, ‘Oh, I’ll just wait until Covid is gone, and then I’ll travel.’

If you want until then, you’ll be waiting forever. And then you’ll die anyway.

Life is Precious

The reason Covid is so tragic is because it’s taking people’s lives away. And for the people who’ve been affected, it’s awful. But we can’t stop living our lives just to avoid our deaths.

If we acknowledge the inherent sadness of death, we must also acknowledge that death is sad because life is precious. And if life is precious, we should make our lives special. So if we lock ourselves away all day and do nothing, we’re wasting our lives, and we might aswell all be dead anyway.

There’s little point in living a sub-par life.

Live your life now, not in some imaginary future when everything is perfect.

There is no perfect future, and there never will be. If you wait for the perfect time and the perfect future, you’ll be waiting forever.

You’re Gonna Die Anyway

If you’re scared to catch Covid cos you might die, here’s some news for you: you’re gonna die anyway. Soon. Probably within 80 years, at the most.

Travel is full of risk. You could climb up a mountain and fall off. Your plane could crash. You could go hitchhiking and end up in a car accident. A bear might eat you. You might try some lovely local food and then choke to death on it.

Risk isn’t new, even though everyone’s behaving like it is.

A cartoon of a man being scared of Covid; to demonstrate why you can't let Covid stop you from traveling — Don’t be like this scared idiot

The Moralisers are Stupid

‘You shouldn’t travel until people aren’t dying anymore!’

‘You’re LITERALLY killing people by living your life!’

‘Everyone should be banned from traveling and partying and smiling forever, because my great-grandma has long Covid.’

I had Long Covid. People I care about have Long Covid. People I know have lost loved ones because of Covid. But should 99% of people pause their lives so that 1% of people (at the most) can prolong theirs?

Don’t be guilted out of living your life.

People will tell you to stop traveling and living your life so that they can see their grandma or hug their friend or whatever. But if we all sit at home all day, like those people want, they’ll never get to do those things anyway – because they’ll be too busy sitting at home all day.

If they want to waste their lives, let them. But don’t let them guilt you into wasting yours.

Covid is Relatively Harmless, and The World is Not Ending

People don’t like accepting this fact, but it’s true.

According to these stats (and I’m open to seeing others, so comment if you have them), you could take 1 million people aged 20-49 (most people who read this blog are in that age group), and infect all 1 million of those 20-49 year-olds with Covid, and only 200 of them would die.

That’s 1 in 5,000. That’s 0.02%.

You’re gonna sit in the house all day and shit your pants and stop living your life because of a 0.02% chance that you’re gonna die? When there’s a 100% chance you’re gonna die one day anyway?

This isn’t rabies. Lots of people who catch Covid are asymptomatic. The vast majority of people are absolutely fine. Very few people who catch the disease are dying (and I mean that from a literal, objective, statistical point of view).

If you’re scared of catching Covid, you’re either old, or you have co-morbidities, or you’re an idiot.

There is No Such Thing as ‘Safe’

Why has ‘safe’ become a synonym for ‘protected against Covid’?

You are not safe, you never have been, and you never will be. Clutching a bottle of hand sanitiser does not make you ‘safe’. Staying at home does not make you ‘safe’. And avoiding traveling does not make you ‘safe’.