Sport Pilot Talk

As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, it seems that some flight schools are beginning to relax health and safety restrictions, in the interest of resuming normal operations. Although I will leave actual flight school policy decisions to the individual FBO, I thought some of you might be interested in seeing the procedures being used at my flight school, AvSport LLC, on the Piper Memorial Airport, Lock Haven PA (KLHV). Our relevant policies may be found here:

http://avsport.org/docs/pandemic.pdf

Safe Skies,
Paul

The pandemic will be over with on Wednesday, November 4, 2020.

Either that, Bill, or it will be just starting.

Wm.Ince wrote:The pandemic will be over with on Wednesday, November 4, 2020.

So much to unpack from that pretty straightforward assertion, but this is hardly the place for that.

Good news is in just a few weeks the validity of that statement will be tested, and we’ll all get to see if it was accurate or not.

FastEddieB wrote:

Wm.Ince wrote:The pandemic will be over with on Wednesday, November 4, 2020.

So much to unpack from that pretty straightforward assertion, but this is hardly the place for that.

Good news is in just a few weeks the validity of that statement will be tested, and we’ll all get to see if it was accurate or not.

Fair enough!

Wm.Ince wrote:The pandemic will be over with on Wednesday, November 4, 2020.

If only (sigh).

Sadly, the pandemic will be here until enough of us have immunity (via infection or vaccine) that it can't effectively spread any more. Unfortunately, that's likely to take at least another year, so we need to be patient and settle in for the long haul.

Politics may determine our strategies for dealing with it, but the virus only responds to science.

Mikey B wrote:

Wm.Ince wrote:The pandemic will be over with on Wednesday, November 4, 2020.

If only (sigh).

Sadly, the pandemic will be here until enough of us have immunity (via infection or vaccine) that it can't effectively spread any more. Unfortunately, that's likely to take at least another year, so we need to be patient and settle in for the long haul.

Politics may determine our strategies for dealing with it, but the virus only responds to science.

That’s the thing... the problem is not the virus itself ( at least for 99% of people who have negligible or no chance of being seriously affected by it) , the problem is political response which is affecting 100% of people in ways that are often much worse than the virus itself.

To refresh our memory, it stared like this ...

We need to stay locked down for 15 days
Actually a month
Actually two months
Actually three months
Actually until there's a vaccine
Never mind actually we can't trust the vaccine

This thread has gotten off into the weeds a bit. The purpose of my original post was to inform as to how my flight school has chosen to deal with the public health challenges of reopening during a pandemic, and to solicit input from others faced with similar challenges. I do not intend to address the politics of how the pandemic should or should not have been handled, and would appreciate it if others would refrain from going there. Science-based solutions to a public health challenge are always appreciated.

Our company followed the science by doing the math, found out the risk is the same as last year, so we continued the same as last year.

Warmi wrote:That’s the thing... the problem is not the virus itself ( at least for 99% of people who have negligible or no chance of being seriously affected by it) , the problem is political response which is affecting 100% of people in ways that are often much worse than the virus itself.

Even if most people don't get severe symptoms you must remember that pilots are, as a group, older folks who do have the risk factors that make the virus much more dangerous. It's hard to social distance in a cockpit that's less than 50 inches wide unless we fly alone.

Type47 wrote:Our company followed the science by doing the math, found out the risk is the same as last year, so we continued the same as last year.

In 2019, not a single person in the entire world died from Covid-19. In 2020, roughly 1.24 million people (so far) have died from Covid-19. Approximately 235,000 of those were Americans. That's only about 5,000 fewer than the combined number of combat deaths of US service members from the American Revolution, War of 1812, Mexican War, Spanish-American War, World War 1, Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, and the currently ongoing Iraq/Afghanistan War combined! Only the Civil War and WW2 had more combat deaths than the number of American deaths Covid-19 has caused this year.

To me, that represents an increased risk, no matter how you manipulate the data to include/exclude certain deaths from the (possibly inflated) number of Covid-19 deaths... I'm not laying blame on anyone or anything for this – just stating the facts. Facts are not political – they just exist on their own merit.

Personally, I applaud Paul's efforts to take reasonable precautions, thus reducing his potential customer's risk as much as possible, while remaining open for business and continuing to provide training. And I pray every day that scientists will find both a vaccine to minimize the spread, and a cure for those who get sick anyway. (I also thank Him daily that I am NOT the one having to figure out the best policies to deal with the pandemic.)

The CDC has stopped counting seasonal flu deaths.
“Covid” must be a miracle flu cure.
Math is not an opinion.

Type47 wrote:The CDC has stopped counting seasonal flu deaths.

This is not true.

Full disclosure: my daughter is a CDC epidemiologist. I just confirmed with her that there has been no change in their tracking; they just haven't reported any deaths yet this flu season. They do expect somewhat less flu spread this year, due to better hand washing, mask wearing, and social distancing, but definitely not zero.

Mikey B wrote:

Type47 wrote:The CDC has stopped counting seasonal flu deaths.

This is not true.

Full disclosure: my daughter is a CDC epidemiologist. I just confirmed with her that there has been no change in their tracking; they just haven't reported any deaths yet this flu season. They do expect somewhat less flu spread this year, due to better hand washing, mask wearing, and social distancing, but definitely not zero.

Also the fact that fatalities related to COVID are coming overwhelmingly from the same vulnerable population subset as flu fatalities , will make some ( perhaps significant ) difference as well.

Also worth noting, unless I am mistaken, the overall total death numbers are lower for 2020 as compared to 2019 so far.