Covid might be slowly receding, but people’s nerves are not.
Travel Journalism is in a very kairotic moment. As vaccines slowly conquer the pandemic, society is coming back alive. Countries are reopening borders, tourism regains momentum, and people are eager to come out of months spent in isolation.
The pandemic, however, is still not entirely over. As some countries open, others struggle with getting its citizens vaccinated and rising cases because of new variants. The entire globe is at different stages of handling the virus. The industry is somewhat in limbo right now.
That’s what makes traveling, and writing about traveling, awkward. It’s hard to determine where people can go and what they’re allowed to do when the landscape of covid is ever-changing.
No one is exactly sure where the fine line is between inviting people to rejoin society while being careful not to regress to just a few weeks ago when lockdowns were a reality for many.
As the world reopens, however, the virus’ lasting effects need to be discussed, specifically, those who suffer from newly developed or worsened travel anxiety.
Caylee Fournier, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Illinois, has dealt with travel anxiety for most of her life. Fournier had her first panic attack on a plane sophomore year of high school when coming home from the Bahamas.
“That was the first time I ever processed that on a plane means being claustrophobic, being stuck in a big flying machine in the air and not being able to get out,” she says.
Fournier comes from a family who loves to travel and uses medication to relieve her anxiety about flying. Her brother, Colton Fournier, a 19-year-old sophomore at Indiana University, began having his own issues with traveling around the same time and also medicated before flights.
Covid has caused many people to join the Fournier’s in their travel worries. The pandemic isolated people to their homes and removed the human contact mankind, as social beings, crave.
People have become accustomed to their own spaces and fearful of the virus, which still rages outside their walls. Even with vaccines and improving case numbers, covid has not been entirely defeated and will have a lasting effect on the world for years to come.
Covid-19 is the largest health crisis of this generation. For many, it’s nearly impossible to look at the virus and not be fearful. Some yearn to remerge into the world and make up for lost time while others cower in the face of the pandemic, not ready to rejoin the world they shut out.
Fournier says the pandemic worsened her travel anxiety because she is not used to traveling anymore. “I used to have travel anxiety only for planes. Now I fear getting in Ubers, getting in trains, and more local travel,” she says.
Many others have developed similar concerns. A study from the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that Covid-19 positively affected travel anxiety, meaning the participants were more fearful of traveling because of the virus.
Getting the vaccine is the first step in relieving some of this anxiety, but two shots into the vein are not all solving. It would be naive to assume that people would so easily fall back into the leisure traveling they were accustomed to before quarantine.
Traveling anxiety was here before the pandemic, however, for many, it has now been heightened. The best people can do is stay well informed and listen to health professionals, but most importantly, listen to themselves and what they are comfortable with.
