 Hi guys, this is Dr. Ahmet Ergin and I'm an endocrinologist and founder of SugarMds.com. Today I'm going to talk to you about COVID-19, coronavirus and travel. Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner. Everybody is asking whether it is safe to travel during this COVID-19, also known as coronavirus. Visit the family or gather for holidays. What do we do? I will talk about the travel and the considerations about the celebrations and so forth. As you all know, diabetes and chronic diseases puts you at significant risk for COVID-19. You may not be at significant risk, you may be younger, but you may cause someone else's death. If that person is in your family, that's going to be very tragic. Now, let's prevent that. By the way, even if you survive, you may feel very sick. You may be very sick, like sick sick. You don't want to be sick during Christmas or Thanksgiving either. Many factors really contribute to being infected. Of course, we have to keep certain things in mind, although we think we know. It is always good to have some reminders and I'll give you some tips to how to get through this. Let's get started. So traveling does increase the risk of getting or spreading the COVID-19 and staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others. Now, if you decide to travel, here are some tips. Wear a mask. Please wear that mask. You can wear an ugly mask instead of an ugly sweater, but wear that mask. Maintain social distancing. Again, distance and the duration is the two key components of determining like if you would get that high risk for getting that infection or not. So, stay away from other people. If you think that you have been exposed, you know, there's no point of putting other people at risk. And if you have symptoms of such as fever, shortness of breath, or if you have tested positive for COVID-19, please do yourself a favor and do others a favor and just stay away. The local community levels of COVID-19 is actually very important to know because if you're in a low risk area, you may not be questioning this too much, but if you're in a high risk area or the people who come visit you are living in those high risk areas, that may be a problem. You can find this county health department websites will tell you, you know, what is the risk or the rate of infection in that area. Now, do you want to do indoor or outdoor? Yes, indoor gatherings pose a more of a risk, but is outdoor gatherings are totally safe? You know, is that really true? So, I mean, remember, recently White House gatherings happen and almost everybody in the White House got infected. They're also human and if you don't pay attention, you will catch the infection. The symptoms, as I said, can be severe. And also, number of people really matters. So, you don't want to say, oh, well, this is okay, 100 people, everybody has masks, but that 100 people can still contaminate that air, especially if it is indoor area. So, number of people matters, distance matters. So, try to even limit the time you spend together too long in a small space, even with the mask. Ask these questions, like, did anybody in this gathering attend some other gathering? Did they travel somewhere else? Did they meet other larger groups of people? You know, there are some people like social butterflies. You can't stop them, they're like everywhere. You know, they just want to talk, talk, talk, talk, and just create a new butterfly zone, okay? That's like, come on, you know, like sometimes you have to protect yourself from these very nice people who like to talk. Now, wearing a mask as a holiday isn't ideal at all. It sucks, actually. But as I said, just, you know, try the ugly mask contest this year and see who wins. Distancing from family members could be sometimes offensive, but I think they should understand because we are really living in a strange and unprecedented times right now. Remember to have hand sanitizers and make sure that you wash your hands frequently. Make sure you do not touch your face. Now, who should not be attending these in-person holiday gatherings? That's not a brainer. Of course, people with COVID would not be a good choice to have around. And people may have symptoms of COVID. They may not been tested, but every test has positive and post-negative rate. So you never know if they have symptoms. I don't think they should be around because they may have flu. God knows what they have, and they don't want to, you know, even if it is not COVID, you don't want to spread that virus all around. Of course, people with chronic diseases, with immune dysfunction, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, all put you at high risk. And try to do a barbecue. Try to stay outdoors. If you're indoors, try to keep the ventilation really good. Keep the doors and windows open if it is not freezing cold. Try to make it a little bit of EIP easier. Try to limit the number of people that you're bringing in. And if you cannot stand that cousin, just leave that person out. Excuse, why not, right? You know, tell them not to go anywhere else, you know, like there's no reason of party hopping in the holiday season. One more thing that I want to remind you guys, try not to have buffet style. Yes, it's nice and easy, but maybe let your mom do the work this season and somebody can serve other people so that everybody's not on top of each other, right? So other than that, try to do a non-traditional, like a virtual holiday, I mean, virtual visitation, which I've seen in practical jokers at TV doing it. Why not, you know, and I think it was fun. And lastly, I would suggest, you know, the holiday times are the times where people really go for shopping the last minute. I would say try to be early on and try to even order online. Now, Publix does it, Walmart, Amazon, everybody delivers groceries nowadays. There's no point of trying to fight for the food in the grocery stores anymore. Just get it online, guys. So if you like this video, give it a thumbs up and we'll see you in the next video and make sure you subscribe so you can be reminded of all the coming videos.