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Post-9/11 Drop in Air Travel Delayed Flu Season, Study Finds
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The obvious new factor that year was the 20 percent drop in U.S. air travel in the months after Sept. 11. That hypothesis was strengthened when the Boston team looked at the data from Europe, where air traffic was not reduced and where flu timing was unchanged from previous years.
Earlier research had already shown that the spread of flu within each region of the country was driven largely by workers commuting to their jobs. And computer models had assumed that commercial flights could influence the larger-scale spread of the flu among regions.
The new analysis confirms and puts numbers on those assumptions.
The study concludes that the number of international travelers flying into the United States during the month of September is a key determinant of when the U.S. flu season will peak. And it finds that domestic air travel during November -- perhaps especially during Thanksgiving week -- is a key determinant of how quickly flu will spread around the country.
"Eventually the virus gets in, but cutting back on air travel provides some lead time to get other measures in place," said Brownstein, who estimates that a 50 percent reduction in the number of passengers might delay the flu's peak by a month.
The researchers emphasized that while some people get sick from sitting near contagious passengers, the main benefit of curtailing travel comes from stemming the dispersal of sick people to unaffected communities, where they can launch new networks of infection.
But the researchers also conceded that many factors work against the idea.
"There are significant economic, social, legal and constitutional consequences," Brownstein said. "It's up to government to consider and balance these different factors."
Michael T. Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said the debate over competing flight-restriction policies is likely to prove irrelevant.
"If an influenza pandemic strikes, flight cancellations will not be a function of government -- they will be a function of people choosing not to travel, and of pilots and flight attendants not being there to work," Osterholm said. "We're not spending nearly enough on figuring out how to deal with realistic problems like that."
