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U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

nbcnews.com

351–360 of 919 posts

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#351
post #178
post #17

I get that they excluded the UK for diplomatic reasons, but it's literally only a few days behind the rest of Europe in terms of infection count, which means this will have almost no effect. I actually think banning travel from China months ago was a good call, but by analogous reasoning, the right time to ban travel from Europe (including the UK) was last week.

>I get that they excluded the UK for diplomatic reasons No, Ireland is also exempt. In other words, the US is banning travel from the Schengen Zone.

Doesn't mean it's not still partly political, to be clear.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#352
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the right time to ban travel from Europe (including the UK) was last week. The US had active uncontained clusters, and was known to have them, two weeks ago. Once that's true, there's no way that mere travel numbers are going to move that needles significantly. Again: we banned travel from China and it was too late already . This does not work. And I'm horrified at the number of people on this site that don't see t…

I beg to differ. US was the first major country to ban travel from China. Other countries only followed suit after. South Korea, Japan, France, Germany and Italy never did, and see where they are now.

Please do not spread disinformation: Italy banned direct flights from China pretty quickly too.

It did not matter, because patient-0 in Europe was a German. It’s now accepted that the virus arrived by crossing the Alps in some sort of Euro-business trip, not directly from China.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outbound flights are going to get a hell of a lot more expensive if all the planes have to return to the US empty.

Nah, all planes are just going to be routed through a non-European destination en route back. The Azores are about to be very popular.

The ban is on the Schengen area, which does include the Azores.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#354
post #259
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the hospitals are overloaded.

This has not happened in Korea, Japan or Singapore, and all have been dealing with the virus for longer than Europe. At some point, this scary story is going to have to be adjusted to reflect reality.

Singapore did a top job containing it but it's a small country, one airport..., countries like the US or Italy on the other hand will have a different outcome.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#355
Joe Rogan has a guess on his podcast recently that is an expert. This virus spreads through air very easily. Huge numbers of the virus develop in the throat before symptoms appear. A person sitting at the front of the bus, can infect people many rows back.

The takeaway. Avoid all crowded places. Buses, Stores, Metro. And places that recirculate air, such as cruise ships, airplanes.

It will come like a wave, many many people will get infected at once, quickly. 1-3% will die. Eventually virus will run out of people not already immune to it, and the spread will subside.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#356
post #138

Why is the U.K. not included? This is so weird; it's such a mess in the UK too.

That is bizarre. As of today, the UK has 459 cases and the US has 1311. The UK population is approximately 20% of the US population so on a per capita basis coronavirus is more prevalent in the UK than in the US. The optics on this are horrible and will be construed as showing more of a concern with political theater than evidence based decision making.

I wonder. UK has Assange and 5G cards to play. I am willing to agree that move was more political than virus-based.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#357
post #234
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mortality rate seems to be as low as 0.6% in South Korea or as high as 5% in Italy. [...] It is not an End of Days zombie apocalypse. A few percent is a lot . World War II killed 3% of the human population, and that's where we're headed if we don't stop it.

No we're not. That's absolutely absurd to claim. It might -- MIGHT -- kill 2-3% of people who are highly susceptible to it, people who are in their 70s+, people with cardiac and respiratory disease. Maybe. We don't even know that will happen, because we can probably save a huge percentage of that population as well. You're fearmongering, and it's bullshit.

This is false. Studies done in Wuhan show that people with CVD have well over a 10% mortality rate. In addition, COVID-19 has the potential to cause permanent disability if it does not kill you first.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#358

Regardless of the ability of people to travel to the UK or Canada and get here (which people have done for a long time with other nations we don't take kindly to) it's absolutely going to reduce the number of people who will travel across the pond. Which is the goal, reduce infection rates. My concern is how economies are going to respond to the US being cut off from Continental ports for a month, which as far as I c…

>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…

In Boston, at least, I'm seeing significant cultural changes. It's gotten much, much quieter, and meetings are all going online.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#359
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why can't you believe it? It will spread until so many are immune that it stops spreading. That requires it infect a good fraction of the population.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#360
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> even if congress were to pass a law banning such gatherings, there would be first amendment implications

Isn't there an obvious compelling state interest?

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