I spoke with Arnold Burnett, a professor of statistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-authored a recent paper modeling the risk of contracting COVID while flying early in the pandemic. He and his students combed through available data and built complex mathematical models to determine the risk of being infected on board. However, limits were being met as neither the United States nor any other country made any systematic efforts to systematically contact his COVID infection, which left traces on board.

“No one has been tested. No one has been asked if they had COVID,” he explains. “No attempt was made to determine where people got it. We have very little data.”

That’s right, among the billions of dollars spent fighting the virus, providing home testing kits, and bailing out airlines, the basic question of where and how people actually contracted the disease in the first place? Very little has been spent answering, and models like Barnett’s are helpful, but offer only best guesses.

“If we had real data from the US, we probably wouldn’t have needed a model,” he says.

One systematic attempt to contact Trace on a flight that landed in Vietnam found 12 in business class and one symptomatic case among 16 passengers who tested positive. In other words, the group of high ticket holders who were in front of the plane got sick from the same people.

However, this study by Vietnam’s National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology was conducted in March 2020. Consider what would have happened if we had continued to collect data during the pandemic.

See also What will insurance coverage for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments look like? The Biden administration is trying to figure it out

unknown unknown

Think back to the fall of 2020. With the first wave of COVID-19 over, people thinking about traveling were thinking: Is it safe to return home on vacation?

Based on a bizarre study involving mannequin-mannequin coughing commissioned by a number of federal agencies, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that “most viruses and other bacteria are responsible for how the air It doesn’t spread easily in flight, depending on how it’s filtered.”

You may remember that study. You may not know (as I didn’t know until recently) that the researcher who ran it received so much criticism that they added a disclaimer: hours or seats. “

Airlines such as United continue to cite this as proof of air travel safety, but the CDC has removed its message and references to the study.

United Airlines’ website still mentions the problematic study.

As I was writing about all this in 2020, I was trying to parse out these confusing messages, using a study of mannequins as evidence that flying wasn’t as dangerous as originally thought.

It turned out I was wrong, but I didn’t realize I was wrong until years later.

Poorly interpreted studies are not the only real problem. What this means is that we still don’t know the rate at which people contract (and die from) COVID after being on a plane.Was 1% of COVID cases caused by air travel or 10%? more?

We don’t know, but it could have a big impact in the future.

Read: Learn about frequent flyers and the blows they’ve taken to the skyrocketing popularity of private jets.

flight into the unknown

Barnett’s model spits out good round numbers suggesting that the odds of catching COVID on a full two-hour flight were about 1 in 1,000 early in the pandemic. But he thinks the risks have probably increased significantly since then.

“Omicron BA.5 is much more contagious than previous versions,” Burnett says. “And now people generally don’t wear masks on planes.”

Thankfully, vaccines and treatments have reduced COVID mortality, making the risk more manageable. But what if a new strain emerges? Will it knock on trees and evade vaccines altogether? Or will it (no, really, knock on trees) cause serious illness in young people and children? We all want real answers to simple questions. How bad is his COVID infection on the plane and are some airlines safer than others?

Infuriatingly, perplexingly, and mind-bogglingly, we still don’t know for sure.

“All models are wrong. Some are useful,” Burnett says with a wry smile.

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Sam Kemmis writes for NerdWallet. Email: skemmis@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @samsambutdif.