Thanksgiving

Despite the repeated warnings of public health experts and officials, millions of people traveled for Thanksgiving.

Perhaps you're one of them.

Millions of Americans are ignoring the advice of public health experts and traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday.

The Transportation Security Administration reported that more than 1.04 million people went through airport security checkpoints Sunday, the most since mid-March, and about 1 million more went through TSA checkpoints each day on Friday and Saturday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is strongly recommending that people stay home for Thanksgiving to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. With the holiday one week away, the agency issued a statement that taking a trip to see loved ones is simply inadvisable right now.

For Thanksgiving this year, Kurt Beard was planning to travel from Indianapolis to Ohio and meet family for an outdoor hike, but as he watched COVID-19 rates spike he decided even that was too risky. Instead, his family is ordering pizza, video chatting with relatives and playing games.

However, when weighing spending time with elderly family members versus the coronavirus threat, Beard is conflicted.

It's time to gather the family together for the talk. Not that talk — the talk about what to do for Thanksgiving this year as the pandemic rolls on.

It has been months since many of us have seen extended family — we're longing to check in on aging parents, to see old friends from back home, etc. But even though Thanksgiving often conjures up pictures of big happy reunions, how safe is it to make them a reality?

Black Friday isn't what it used to be. Just ask Chris Ott.

He married into a family that never missed the occasion. And let's just say, he really got into it.

After Thanksgiving dinner, they'd peruse Black Friday ads, developing a "really fun strategic plan — pick the store that we were going to wait outside of, we would divide and conquer," says Ott, 42, a cybersecurity engineer and youth pastor in the Denver area.

Travel officials are predicting this to be one of the busiest Thanksgiving weekends on the roads, so the Ohio Department of Transportation will be suspending many construction projects.