Travel plans to Cancun - cancel or go?

[rwhitlock]

My wife and I have travel plans to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun from 3/27 to 4/3. We’ve been looking forward to this for two years. Sun, sand, water, and golf!

The decision we’re wrestling with is: should we cancel?

Looking for some opinions and advice...

Thanks, Rod

[mikedit]

My opinion only, I would not go. You may not be able to get back if or when this gets worse.

[JNewsted]

Cancel

[BMC]

If you're youngish and healthy go.

34,000 estimated U.S. deaths from influenza 2018/2019 season, according to CDC.

112 Covid-19 U.S. deaths, at this time.

More danger from sharks and tequila.

[extrastiff]

cancel and get what you can back, im sure the travel situation will only get dodgier. bummer, sorry! But if you are worried about a vacation right now amid all this, you are not too bad off. Crush a "vacation" idea that keeps you by your bed and away from people, she'll be stoked.

If cancelling now u lose money, i would wait obviously and potentially border closings plus all the other nonsense will provide a case for refund

[az2au]

Cancel. Has nothing to do with danger to you. You might not be able to get back in.

[sheldonjhacker]

Cancel. I have a buddy stuck in Puerta Vallarta...they are closing all public places, and now he can’t get a plane home.

[oldmotor]

If you’re young enough and healthy, I would roll the dice and go if I thought I could get back into the states.

[extrastiff]

all due respect, "if i thought i could get back into the states" seems like a pretty huge red flag in the vacation planning department. In this current climate, how could they assume?

[BMC]

Wow. Mexico 93 cases and no deaths. Living in fear. What scares me is the 25% unemployment and depression that might be coming.

He11, I might book a one way ticket to Cancuun and go FULL ZAC BROWN.

[Socrates]

Staying healthy is not that big a problem. The problem is you likely will have NO HEALTH INSURANCE. Any minor ailment, coronavirus or not: any kind of hospital visit could cost you 1000's of dollars. You also would likely be forced to self isolate for 2 weeks on return. Add to that, you could easily get stuck there and be unable to return if airlines cancel flights or countries bar travel. Then where do you stay?

But, sure, go ahead.

[az2au]

Look, I've been to 40 different countries. I've been to places in time of war. I've had the national police with machine guns standing outside my meeting room in Panama making sure my team didn't get attacked and had a similar situation during riots and rolling blackouts in Joburg. I've even been to 7 different countries this year already. It is literally part of my job and how I make my living. There's nothing that scares me in regards to travel in general. Most of you wouldn't have any idea how to deal with a normal set of circumstances in normal times. Especially those telling you to go ahead. Have they ever had to deal with medical care in a different country? Police forces? Dealing with another embassy? No. They have no idea and base their opinion on pure selfishness and a complete misunderstanding of what this is. Basically a complete ostrich syndrome. No problem, it is what is and there's no explaining to them how they sound or how little they understand. That's fine.

However, as someone that actually does have those experiences, has zero fear in general, speaks/understands a bunch of different languages and has dealt with various situations, I'm telling you with absolutely certain that I think it would be ridiculous to leave the country at this moment. I was in Poland 10 days ago as an FYI. Do what you want to do. Feel free to ignore my advice. It won't be me that pays the price.

Want to disagree, fine. Explain your experiences and how I am wrong. I'll wait.

[oldmotor]

That’s why I said “if I thought I could back into the states”. If I didn’t think I could get back, I wouldn’t go. I agree with you. That is the issue.

[BMC]

Above...

It's good advice.

OP - Pack up the car and drive to the Outer Banks (NC) , get a VRBO cottage and put your toes in the sand. Good golf, too.

 

 

[rwhitlock]

Thanks everyone for you advice / opinion / experiences.

I feel it’s just selfishness on my part for wanting to sit in warm weather with a nice drink in my hand (it’s been a long cold winter here in Utah).

I’ll be cancelling and hopefully getting refunds tomorrow ?

[LukeDonaldsTiger]

Good call to cancel. One more thing nobody mentioned here: it is very well possible they go on lockdown real soon there, like they are doing in Europe right now. You don’t want to pay for a nice holiday and then be forced to stay in your resort. No open restaurants, golf courses, nightlife etc.

My mother in law has been on holiday in Egypt this week and was flown back to Germany today. They didn’t see this coming, but the tone changed real quick here and I assume that’s also going to happen in MEX at some point.

 

Stay safe and don’t panic.

[sheldonjhacker]

It’s happening.

[raynorfan1]

All bridges onto the Outer Banks are closed to non residents.

[hammergolf]

Thank you for providing a logical data driven response.

[BMC]

I'm not sure if that was sarcasm or genuine. Either way, the facts are the facts.

Why isn't CDC and the media screaming about normal annual influenza deaths? It's more deadly.

[Socrates]

It's actually closer to 65,000 deaths annually in the USA from Influenza. There reason people don't get bent out of shape over it is because it happens gradually and more or less uniformly over the course of the year. It's a part of life and death and to that end has been accepted as "normal." This influenza is new and therefore no vaccine to help prevent it. It also has the potential to spike and spread very rapidly. With the lack of hospital beds, hospitals will become swamped.

The other thing is when it goes bad, the severely inflicted need to be put on a respirator. If it spikes like it did in Italy, there aren't enough ventilators to help all that will need them. Then, like Italy, doctors will have to decide who lives and who dies (who gets the ventilator). In most cases it likely is based on age and health. If there is an 80 yr old and a 30 year old and only one ventilator - you know who is going to get it.

Stay at home.

[gripandrip]

This.

[golow]

They cancelled for you .... put your refund in the bank

[Malvern]

I think this is dangerous advice as it doesn't provide the key information to avoid the virus.

Keep your baseball cap on (back to front) at all times, on the plane, inside a restaurant, on the beach, sleep with it on. Watching the news, this method seems to be working for all spring breakers.

[az2au]

If anyone still has questions on this...

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/ea/travel-advisory-alert-global-level-4-health-advisory-issue.html

[tiderider]

mexico during a pandemic ...

 

what could go wrong ...

[hammergolf]

Not sarcasm at all. You are correct, more people are dying from influenza than the beer virus. Based on statistics about 10 times the number of people.

[LukeDonaldsTiger]

But the flu doesn’t take a break now that COVID-19 is here. Comes on top of that and is a huge strain on the healthcare systems worldwide.

Also, there‘s a vaccine for the flu, but none for COVID yet. That endangers a lot of vulnerable people.

And lastly, we have no long time data about Corona. What if it’s infection numbers don’t decrease in the summer, like the flu? What if it comes back big time next winter?

Careful with this, it’s serious and new- we don’t know the long-term effects yet. Also, we have to be responsible for those who are vulnerable due to age or health conditions. That’s what this is about.

 

I‘ve changed my mind about this after seeing first hand how quickly this spreads right now. I live in a neighboring country to Italy.

[buzlin]

Of the 220,000 people infected worldwide with COVID-19, 9,300 people have died, that's a death rate of just over 4%. In the US alone, 36 million people get the flu annually, 22,000 die, that's a kill percentage of 0.06%. COVID-19 is 66 times more deadly than the flu. We are encouraged to get flu shots each year, but because the death rate is relatively low, we accept it as part of life. If we don't take precautions against COVID-19, and without a vaccine, or effective ways to treat the illness, and a higher transmission rate than the flu, we're talking the potential for greater than 1,440,000 deaths in the US alone.

Using "statistics" only works if you have a more complete picture. Anyway, I'm not a specialist or expert, but this is how I'm interpreting what's going on and why we're taking it more seriously.

[az2au]

If you want real time stats: https://covid19info.live

Click on "More Graphs" to help he visualization.