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Comment by geocrasher | Hacker News Reader

It saddens me that this is even necessary. On one hand I want to say "kudos!" for recognizing the inherent hazard to their staff, but the cynical side of me also says "is avoiding cancellations worth flight attendants risking their health or safety?"

I don't have an answer. Food for thought. For myself I don't think there's enough hazard pay available to get me on a plane with a bunch of stressed out people who just spent their maskless holiday travelling with strangers and to maskless family gatherings, whether masks are required on the aircraft or not.

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> "is avoiding cancellations worth flight attendants risking their health or safety?"

It seems you are disproportionately concerned with Covid as opposed to other occupational hazards. There's a lot of jobs that are dangerous, and being a flight attendant isn't one of them.

I don't know if it's 'dangerous' but it is certainly extremely unhealthy.

https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/flight-at...

I'd trust that if it gave Business Insider gave a methodology that wasn't absurdly vague. And in the top three hazards listed for flight attendants is "Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings." That's not threatening to the health of anyone familiar with bandaids and Neosporin.

Most dermatologists do not recommend Neosporin. https://www.newportbeachdps.com/polysporin-instead-neosporin...

Presumably flight attendants' jobs became substantially more challenging when so many Americans want to take off their mask, and it's the flight attendants that have to get them to keep them on.

Seems like it was left up to the flight attendants themselves (and union) to decide. They probably have a decent idea of what risk/reward ratio they're comfortable with.

Flight attendants are already significantly more likely to get cancer:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865289/

I wonder how the COVID risk compares?

Isn't that most likely due to radiation?

Seems likely, although as the paper points out, there are a few other possible causes too, like use of pretty powerful insecticides on many routes.

The air in a pressurized aircraft cabin is often unhealthy also, due to contamination with lubricants/hydraulic fluids in the engine bleed air.

the unorthodox sleep schedules required to fit flight schedules is also probably a contributing factor. night shifts and irregular schedules have been correlated with negative health outcomes for a long time.

Please call this “fume events”, as the risk is desperately concentrated on a few flights in a dozen years, and fume events are not yet recognized as events (“just renew the air and no-one will see” - while we have amateur testimonials that people get conditions for life after such events).

Where can I read more about this?

Sure, if I had to guess something that wasn't radiation, I'd guess stress, which I would guess could depress your immune system and make you more susceptible to C19

As far as I can determine, once you are vaccinated, the risk of serious illness drops down considerably. So much so that (from what I can assess), you are effectively back in range of "its just the flu". No?

It’s still a nonzero risk of catching it and it being fatal. And there is the lost opportunity in being positive, having to isolate, and not having income above your base pay.

I think a bump in pay makes a lot of sense - but I sometimes get the sense that there's a large disconnect between what people _feel_ the risk profile is (with vaccines) vs. what the actual risk profile is.

From my standpoint, vaccines have transformed the risk profile back into the usual background noise of everyday life. It's perhaps slightly worse than the usual flu season, but nothing to be overly alarmed with.

It makes sense for organizations to have plans for a drop in staffing availability. But to charactertize that as putting people's lives at risk seems... over the top to me.

Same is true of H3N2 and other flu variants.

“Zero risk” is not a reasonable threshold for routine life decisions, IMO.

Zero risk isn't. But the risk picture right now is crummy.

I'm a teacher and 42 years old. I think the risk, if I catch it, being vaccinated and fully boosted, is about 3x the risk from infleunza. And I have a substantially higher chance of catching it than influenza in any given timespan with how high case counts are.

But even more than that: I can shoulder that risk. But when you stack the risk of all the disruption that would come with a mild infection, things are really crummy now.

Then there's the worst thing: my dad is immunocompromised. He's vaccinated and boosted, but one can assume the efficacy is even worse for him. So, effectively, while I'm teaching and case counts are high, I can't see him.

So I went rummaging around to see what the stats were for flu risk vs. covid-19 (w/ vaccine) risk.

Judging by the this website of historical data, looks like deaths per year seems to average around 15/100,000 a year. It's interesting to see how the number has come down quite a bit over the last 40 years. Check it out. Was quite a bit higher even in the late 90s!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184574/deaths-by-influen...

Now onto the fatality rate for covid-19 for those who have been vaccinated. Judging by the CDC's table here, looks like it is around 35/100,000 after the 2nd shot. I do think (hope?) the number will improve a bit thanks to post infection treatment protocols.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7043e2.htm#T2_down

> Judging by the CDC's table here, looks like it is around 35/100,000 after the 2nd shot.

Yes, so this is a different approach than I took, but it's yielding equivalent numbers. You have about 2x the risk of influenza after vaccination for the population as a whole. It's a bit worse at my age (influenza death rates don't rise much for age 42, but COVID death rates do a bit more). And now we have Omicron showing up and reducing protection from vaccination. So back of the envelope from these numbers it's reasonable to come up with an estimate of 3x, too.

Of course, this approach has myriad flaws-- better to take the conditional probability approach that I did and look at probability of infection and probability of severe illness given infection.

In any case: I can accept a 3x influenza risk. It's the cumulative effects of the others that is making me take every possible precaution. And even so, I can't really see my dad.

There is also a nonzero risk of catching the flu and being fatal.

There is also a nonzero risk of the plane crashing and being fatal.

...

Zero risk is not posible. It's about reducing the risks as much as possible and then managing them.

For most people yes, and those who are high risk (elderly, obese, immunocompromised) are likely not working as flight attendants.

But many flight attendants will have high risk family members, friends, housemates, etc.

Who should also, hopefully, be vaxxed. And then in the case of them being severely immunocompromised, well, I’m not sure it’s the responsibility of someone to be required to do something because someone they interact with knows someone who knows someone who might be affected by it and may be among the 3% of Americans who are immunocompromised.

At that point perhaps a job that requires you being around people isn’t the job for you, or you should get and wear an N95 mask because if it’s not COVID you’re going to be bringing other germs and bacteria and viruses home anyway - for example I just got done recovering from the flu not long ago. Note that masks on a plane weren’t required prior to COVID to protect friends of friends of friends, even though the flu kills many also.

You could spread it to your vulnerable family at home

You're saying there's no amount of money for which you would do that? I am highly skeptical

If they are vaccinated and boosted their health risks are minimal.

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