It's security theater, just like airport security screening. The politicians need to be seen doing something.
It's also on message. America First. You stop coming here. You're the problem, I alone can protect you from the bad hombres/virus people... Don't look into yourself and see what can be fixed, always blame the other.
Yep, notice how in the speech how many times he mentioned China and blamed Europe for not closing off to China.
Unfortunately this kind of measure is going to increase the R0 of the virus, because some people will think "oh I see, the virus is over there, and now the president has closed off that vector."
My 2 cents. All reductions in (non-essential) travel are good in a pandemic. That doesn't mean it's sufficient, but it's something positive. I think we would all like to see stronger social distancing rules domestically (in the US), but here the US has a problem as it granted the President broad discretionary powers to suspend international travel but not domestic gatherings, which can't be banned via executive order…
OP's point wasn't "this is only going to have very limited effect", to which your reply "better than nothing" would be appropriate. Their point is that there's absolutely no effect of banning travel between two areas with similar prevalence, based on rather simple logic. Take two bags with mostly white and a similar number of red balls in them. Then, twenty times, grab one hand from each bag and empty it in the other…
I see loads of people saying that we're beyond containment, and they're correct. However, it does slow infection rates to some degree. That allows us the time to try to learn more about how it behaves, how repeated cases impact people who aren't currently affected as much, and find ways to combat it. That's a positive.
>Which is the goal, reduce infection rates. Based on the localized infection cases I see across the US and have been watching as well as the characteristics of the virus (life outside host/on surfaces, in air, the degree of asymptomatic transference, etc.), it's well beyond containment IMHO. Travel isn't going to do too much to reduce infection rates alone. We need significant cultural changes to reduce infection rat…
My 2 cents. All reductions in (non-essential) travel are good in a pandemic. That doesn't mean it's sufficient, but it's something positive. I think we would all like to see stronger social distancing rules domestically (in the US), but here the US has a problem as it granted the President broad discretionary powers to suspend international travel but not domestic gatherings, which can't be banned via executive order…
> ... the US has a problem as it granted the President broad discretionary powers to suspend international travel but not domestic gatherings, which can't be banned via executive order and even if congress were to pass a law banning such gatherings, there would be first amendment implications as well as federalism issues.
I don't know how strong that actually is. Over the past few years, we've seen some Trump work the courts pretty consistently. Even if his administration is doing something explicitly unconstitutional, running something all the way to the Supreme Court can take 6 to 18 months, during which time the unconstitutional order would stand (if not stayed early on).
Estimates have said that they expect 20%-60% of people to get it (originally [1] but updated according to [2]. Something like 10-15% of those people require hospitalization [2] and something like 0.5% - 4% of people die [4]. If we use the lower bounds on all those we are talking about 6.5 million Americans hospitalized and 327,000 dead. For the sake of comparison, that is almost half the number of Americans who have…
I can't believe the 40-70% number. Looking it up, this underscores just how horribly the internet is set up to have these kinds of conversations. If you backsource it, you discover he said "there's a chance" it will hit 40-70%, and then only if no countermeasures are taken. That's very different than what is represented in the cbs transcript. I saw another seemingly reputable estimate today - some disease person on J…
I can't pretend to be an expert on this. All I can do is defer to experts, look at the numbers as they currently stand, and do some simplistic math. I also don't have the skills to vet the various experts, but I can tell you I have more faith in the vetting process of places like CBS News, BBC, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the German government than I do Joe Rogan.
My 2 cents. All reductions in (non-essential) travel are good in a pandemic. That doesn't mean it's sufficient, but it's something positive. I think we would all like to see stronger social distancing rules domestically (in the US), but here the US has a problem as it granted the President broad discretionary powers to suspend international travel but not domestic gatherings, which can't be banned via executive order…
OP's point wasn't "this is only going to have very limited effect", to which your reply "better than nothing" would be appropriate. Their point is that there's absolutely no effect of banning travel between two areas with similar prevalence, based on rather simple logic. Take two bags with mostly white and a similar number of red balls in them. Then, twenty times, grab one hand from each bag and empty it in the other…
This is false. Any reduction in travel is going to have a positive effect. The best situation is for people to reduce their exposure to other people and to stay at home. If they do need to be exposed to others, the best is for them to be exposed to the same set of people all the time, and not to different sets of people.
Why is the U.K. not included? This is so weird; it's such a mess in the UK too.
Excluding the UK hints that this is, at least in part, politically motivated. In terms of risk the UK is no different to other European countries. We are certainly not immune to coronavirus, and there are currently no restrictions on travel between the UK and the continent.
There are many more flights terminating in the UK than any other European country. Plus, American students studying abroad in the UK have yet to return home.
Not sure the CDC is the most credible source at this point
Not sure why I can’t reply to the commenter below. Anyway, here’s a link backing up the parent’s claim, contrary to whatever CDC is saying: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217v...