Paper short abstract:

This paper examines perceptions and decision-making related to holiday travel during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In particular, through ethnographic storytelling this paper will complicate typical sociodemographic divisions purported to determine infection control behaviors throughout the pandemic.

Paper long abstract:

Almost a year after SARS-CoV-2 began to spread, millions of Americans descended on airports in time for the Thanksgiving rush. Once a classic, humor-filled movie trope, now bustle of traveling for the holidays is fraught with risk, contagion, and the specter of death. For some. This paper aims to explore the risk perception and decision-making of individuals during a global pandemic. While media portrayals of infection control adherence tend to divide the population by geographic region, political affiliation, religious background, and education level, anthropologists and public health researchers have observed that there are deeper cultural dynamics at play (e.g., understandings of cleanliness, microbes, and threat). These cultural dynamics are not so easily divided into neat sociodemographic groups. Two PhD-educated women flying Chicago-Dallas, reuniting to care for a friend in her first days out of the hospital. A businessman flying roundtrip Miami-New York in 72 hours, returning to his house where his elderly mother also lives. A public health researcher relocating 9-hours away for a new job, paid movers and children mingling about the new house. Altogether, this paper combines grounded ethnographic storytelling with a cultural analysis of perceptions and decision-making related to travel and hygiene during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.