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

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

#511

Post by m0zg »

All those panicking on the account of economic downturn need to remember that the US need not run faster than the bear, economically, it only needs to run faster than the other guy. Which it will. For starters, the US has 16% of population over the age of 65, compared to e.g. 21% in Germany, 22% in Italy and 20% in France. Population density is much lower here. There are 2.5x ICU beds per capita as well, and more diagnostic equipment, too. A lot fewer people use public transport. Strong containment measures were also taken _earlier_ in the infection cycle than e.g. in Italy.

I mean, sure there's some well publicized incompetence at CDC and FDA, that happens, but to say that the US is _more fucked_ than e.g. continental Europe is just not in alignment with reality.

Later this week the improved test kits should arrive en masse, and then we'll see how bad the situation is. Right now it's just pure conjecture and panic.

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

#512

Post by Polylactic_acid »

dcolkitt wrote: post #114
moosey wrote: post #58

I feel like there are some particular cultural attributes in the United States that make this useless at this point. The United States has a very individualistic attitude. Sure, we can pause travel from Europe, but the current administration is very anti-europe. Can we pause travel in the US? I strongly doubt that we can effectively given the strong anti-expertise attitudes as well. My guess is that the United States…

On the other hand, Americans have much larger and more comfortable homes than Europeans. Americans have big garages to stockpile supplies, which means less trips to the store. Very few people use public transportation regularly. Most people have private back yards. Many more meals are take-out or drive-thru. More Americans use e-commerce for shopping than Europeans. In Europe by contrast, much more of life revolves a…

Americans all gather together in the same room 5 days a week to work. They also have less protections for paid sick days so you will have min wage mcdonalds workers coming in sick and coughing on your burgers.

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

#513

Post by nl »

cj wrote: post #4

I see in some places it says this includes cargo / shipping. Is that true?

Trump said "these restrictions will not only apply to the tremendous amounts of cargo..."

but DHS is now clarifying that it doesn't apply to cargo, and the order itself doesn't mention cargo[1].

So who knows?

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation...

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

#514

Post by danso »

zuminator wrote: post #498

Is there anywhere in the US where we are doing random testing of residents to determine what the real infection rate is here? From all I can see we're currently just adding up the number of people who have come in with symptoms and tested positive instead of getting a real handle on what percentage of the population is infected. The CDC website right now says that there are 938 total cases.[1] That's laughable. At th…

The CDC gave local labs the go-ahead to develop their own tests, but that was very recently and it seems very likely that the CDC doesn't have a centralized reporting system in place.

I really doubt there's capacity to do random tests for scientific field study, considering there's a large backlog of people with symptoms or suspected contact w/ infected that are waiting to be tested.

For example, here's aerial footage of the lines in Denver for a drive-thru clinic restricted to patients with "a doctor's order confirming they meet requirements": https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1237869000169644032

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

#515

Post by Johnny555 »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #254
jmull wrote: post #91

(In the USA) Is this going to accomplish anything? The virus is already here and has been spreading out-of-control for quite a while now. The only reason the numbers are still so low here is the incredibly low number of tests being done.

A little, not a lot. On the very pessimistic side, it will at least convince all the casual travelers who go "ooo look at the cheap airfare! I'm sure I'll be fine" from booking/traveling. Overall this will have a very chilling effect on travel, even to non-targeted regions. However, we do already have the virus in the USA. So it's not suddenly going to go away because of this proclamation.

it will at least convince all the casual travelers who go "ooo look at the cheap airfare! I'm sure I'll be fine" from booking/traveling

I don't think it'll have such an effect on Americans since they are exempt from the ban. But now they're guaranteed to have more room to stretch out on the plane.

But you know what would have such an effect? If the government just came out and said "We strongly recommend that you cease all non-essential overseas air travel, including vacations"

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

#517

Post by sangnoir »

mminer237 wrote: post #451
hrasyid wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention probably there's only a small use case of going to Europe without needing to return.

US citizens can always return though. It's kind of unconstitutional to stop them from returning.

There is the small matter of a 2-week quarantine upon return though.

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

#518

Post by brianpgordon »

creato wrote: post #455
willj wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I misinterpreted what you meant. Your quote from the CDC said that the virus has poor survivability on surfaces, but the study I linked concluded it can survive for 2-3 days.

These are not mutually exclusive statements. It probably can survive for weeks in rare cases, but if it doesn't do that often it doesn't matter. Any method of transmission that infects fewer than one additional person on average are effectively negligible on the overall exponential curve. So yes, it is likely possible that symptomatic people can infect others, and it is likely possible that a contaminated doorknob ca…

I see the point you're making from an epidemiological perspective but, because it's so important to people from an individual perspective to avoid contracting the virus, I have to take issue with your claim that it is likely possible to contract the virus from a surface after a period of a week or even weeks. I haven't seen evidence that would substantiate such a claim. According to that preprint linked above, even a period of one week on a steel door handle is more than six half-lives past the "death" of the last detectable viable COVID-19 virus. The science is not all in yet, and it may indeed turn out that COVID-19 is much hardier than we thought, but until then I don't see how you can say that it "probably can" survive for weeks in some cases.

I apologize if this is coming off as pedantic but the damage being done by misinformation and speculation about the coronavirus is significant, and I don't think it's possible to be too zealous about precision here. Trump's claims that fears were overblown and a "hoax" have been amplified into widespread and potentially deadly skepticism that coronavirus is even a danger. People have suggested various quack cures that at best drain the resources of vulnerable people. Even saying something as seemingly-innocuous as "wear a face mask to reduce your risk" ends up having a devastating impact on healthcare providers who really need the masks but can't source them. We should be listening to public health authorities and mainstream health experts, and taking reasonable precautions, but absolutely refraining from speculation that might have unforeseeable consequences.

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

#519

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

URSpider94 wrote: post #326
irq11 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It IS happening in Italy, and it definitely happened in China. The difference is that Japan, South Korea and Singapore have much more powerful nationwide governments. This allowed them to put infection controls in place much earlier than we have in the USA. It remains to be seen where we top out, numbers-wise, vs. hospital capacity.

The Japanese response has actually been pretty lackluster and haphazard. I'm rather surprised rates there have not been exploding the way they did in Korea, Iran and Italy.

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

#520

Post by kyleee »

logicchains wrote: post #439
kyleee wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some commenters on this post are having a hard time acknowledging this aspect. I think every little bit helps, this included

Every little bit also has a cost, and it's possible for the cost to outweight the benefits, especially when a decision is made without even considering the cost.

True and fair point with which I agree. I don't know all the considerations that went into this decision but I lean towards supporting such plans that limit unnecessary chances for exposure
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