A common belief that's been circulating for decades is that you're more likely to get sick if you fly on an airplane. But in a new Washington Post op-ed, Joseph Allen, an assistant professor of exposure assessment science at Harvard, writes that this simply isn't the case. While he acknowledges that "airplanes are certainly vectors of disease," he adds that "you are not necessarily at risk during a flight" and that "there are fairly simple things you can do, if you do need to travel, to reduce the odds of getting sick." Wearing a mask is one of these precautions, but the bottom line, Allen writes, is that "aircraft ventilation systems do a really good job of controlling airborne bacteria and viruses."
