There were 2 articles about “health” in the newspaper in early September 2025. One was ostensibly about staying healthy during air travel, and the other was about children staying healthy at school. Neither mentioned aerosol transmission of infectious disease like covid, nor anything you could do about it.
I wish I had the time, but I don’t, to verify my suspicion that infectious disease wasn’t so completely and obviously avoided in articles like this in newspapers pre-pandemic and pre anti public health right-wing takeover of the media. I’m sure it’s possible to go look for similar articles from 2018 or 2012 and find out that they didn’t omit flu entirely and completely ignore the existence, for example. The article on children makes a point to mention handwashing before eating, which is a great idea, but even then they don’t mention why people should wash hands. It’s notable in the continuing wake of an ongoing pandemic where people still die of covid, and there’s real threat to access to vaccines, that they don’t even mention the common cold, which at a minimum was always a persistent shitty risk with airplane travel. I have always associated “summer colds” with travel or amusement parks (or both).
Every time someone I know personally has gotten sick, or I’ve heard about someone getting sick this year, in 2025, either with covid or with unknown or untested respiratory illness in spring and summer, almost always recent travel was involved, and more specifically airport travel. Podcast host Jesse Dollemore reported getting covid after traveling to a wedding in late summer 2025.
How to avoid covid, colds, and flu during air travel? Well, you can wear a N95 (or equivalent respirator) mask if you are traveling, especially in airports and on airlines. It’s really that simple. And get a covid vaccine update boost if you can. It does lower the odds of getting sick at all, and it has been shown to reduce risk of severity. Flu shot updates are also recommended yearly.