TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Some are elderly and figure they don’t have many Christmases left. Others are trying to keep long-distance romance alive. Some just yearn for the human connection that’s been absent for the past nine months.

Millions of Americans are traveling ahead of Christmas and New Year’s, despite pleas from public health experts that they stay home to avoid fueling the raging coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 320,000 nationwide.

Many people at airports this week thought long and hard about whether to go somewhere and found a way to rationalize it.

“My mom’s worth it. She needs my help,” said 34-year-old Jennifer Brownlee, a fisherman from Bayou La Batre, Alabama, who was waiting at the Tampa airport to fly to Oregon to see her mother, who just lost a leg. “I know that God’s got me. He’s not going to let me get sick.”

Brownlee said that she would wear a mask on the plane “out of respect” for other passengers but that her immune system and Jesus Christ would protect her.

More than 5 million people passed through the nation’s airport security checkpoints between Friday and Tuesday, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

That is down around 60% from the same time last year. But it amounts to around a million passengers per day, or about what the U.S. saw in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, when some Americans likewise disregarded warnings and ended up contributing to the nationwide surge.

Michelle Lopez wondered if she made the right decision after flying from Houston to Norfolk, Virginia, where her boyfriend serves in the Navy.

“I didn’t want to go, but I haven’t seen him in so long,” said the 24-year-old, who last saw her boyfriend about five months ago and was trying to maintain their relationship.

Before flying, Lopez took a COVID-19 test that came back negative. But the two planes she took offered little room for social distancing. Some passengers removed their masks to eat or drink. And not everyone used wipes that airlines offer to sanitize armrests and trays.

Her layover at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport was equally unsettling, she said. It was packed with people and felt hot from too many bodies. Some people wore their masks below their noses. In the bathrooms, not everyone washed their hands for at least 20 seconds, Lopez said.

She works as a medical assistant in a doctor’s office. She will have to quarantine for 10 days at home and get tested again before heading back to work.

Joan Crunk, 75, and her husband, Jim, 80, of Grandview, Missouri, were at the Kansas City airport Tuesday, waiting to pick up their daughter and son-in-law, who were flying in from Savannah, Georgia, and planned to stay with them until Jan. 2. It had been a year since they had seen each other.

Joan Crunk said they talked a lot about whether to gather.

“It is very hard, and we are older. My husband is 80. There is no guarantee from one year to the next,” she said as “Silver Bells” played over the airport speakers.