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

nbcnews.com

531–540 of 919 posts

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

#531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's security theater, just like airport security screening. The politicians need to be seen doing something.

Don't put this on "The Politicians". There is exactly one politician in the world that sees closing the borders as the solution to all their problems.

What?

I can't even tell if this is supposed to be about Trump. Also it doesn't matter.

There are thousands of borders and even more politicians on this planet and if you don't think borders are the scapegoat for problems the world over, then you're really thinking very small.

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

#532
post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you've never been outside of a city in Europe and never been to a city in the US? Urban population in the EU in 2018 is 76% while 82% for the same year in the US according to The World Bank.

Got a citation for those numbers? Another poster claims that the US suburb population alone is 175M, and that's roughly half the country right there. Add in the rural population (46M), and 82% urban seems not even remotely correct.

Other than the citation I gave?

> The World Bank.

Here's some direct links though:

- https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat... - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat...

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

#533
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm betting we've been seeded since even before Wuhan's quarantine started. My folks and I all got pretty thoroughly sick during a cruise in early January, and they're becoming increasingly convinced it was COVID (especially since my stepmom tested negative for any sort of flu, and this was well before there were reports of COVID outside of China so of course the doctors wouldn't think to test for it even if they hap…

I dunno, where was your cruise and were there lots of mainland Chinese people on it? Sadly the symptoms for CoVid-19 are pretty common across a variety of diseases, so “flu-like but not flu” doesn’t necessarily point to this. At that time during the outbreak, it seems likely you would have needed to have people from Wuhan on-board.

> where was your cruise

Los Angeles → Catalina Islands → Ensenada → Los Angeles

> and were there lots of mainland Chinese people on it?

I mean, I didn't exactly go around asking people "are you from China?", but based on the number of people who sounded like they were speaking Mandarin I'd tentatively answer "yes".

> Sadly the symptoms for CoVid-19 are pretty common across a variety of diseases, so “flu-like but not flu” doesn’t necessarily point to this.

Indeed, which is why I'm still at least somewhat skeptical. Still, it's hard to rule it out, especially given the relatively-severe symptoms (not the absolute worst I've felt, but it was pretty bad).

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

#534
post #514

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 footag…

It's tragic that a lack of test kits is costing us the ability to accurately track the spread of this disease and its true mortality rate. If right now there are 100,000 (actual) positive and 50 deaths, that's a whole different situation than 1000 (reported) positive and 50 deaths.

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

#535
post #506

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…

Johns Hopkins is keeping up with the totals. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu

Thanks for that link, very helpful.

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

#536
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean we need a more robust domestic response to contain coronavirus, instead of or in addition to restricting travel to the US? Akin to how securing a network is more than setting up a firewall at the perimeter.

It cannot be contained. That’s what the pandemic declaration means (even though the WHO should have done this weeks ago). At this point, the only rational thing to do is to try to slow the spread. The good news is that this is a very mild virus, and the vast majority of infected people will have minor symptoms. The fatality rate in Korea is currently 0.6%, and becuase of the comprehensive nature of their testing, thi…

It cannot be contained. That’s what the pandemic declaration means

That's the exact opposite of what the WHO said when they made the pandemic declarations:

"We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough: all countries can still change the course of this pandemic," reads a statement from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO.[1]

South Korea has shown this to be correct.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/11/corona...

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

#537
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t matter if there’s no flights or boats.

I suspect there will be flights, from the UK (which is why it was left off).

I suspect UK was left off because POTUS has resorts in Ireland and Scotland, and no where in Europe. There's nothing credible about UK being off the list while every surrounding country is on it.

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

#538

Just de-boarded and re-boarded an aircraft going to Europe from NY because of this „small“ missing „detail“ in the initial announcement. 4h delay and the people who de-boarded the plane initially, are not re-boarding because they probably left the airport by now, not knowing they had wrong information. Ouch.

4h delay and the people who de-boarded the plane initially, are not re-boarding because they probably left the airport by now, not knowing they had wrong information. For those that live in the US and de-boarded because of this "missing detail", I wouldn't be surprised if in a week or two they don't feel like they dodged a massive bullet.

> I wouldn't be surprised if in a week or two they don't feel like they dodged a massive bullet.

I'm guessing you didn't mean this to be a double negative? In other words:

> I would be surprised if in a week or two they feel like they dodged a massive bullet

but I suspect you meant the opposite?

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

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. From the CDC: > It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads. > In general, because of poor survivability of these coronaviruses on surfaces, there is likely very low risk of spread from food products or packaging that are shipp…

>but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads. How does it spread then? Seems hard to believe all these people are being infected through hand shakes or being coughed on.

Droplets from a sneeze can take hours to drop down.

And it’s the small droplets that float around the longest. These penetrate deep into your lungs and get stuck there.

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

#540
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you hermetically seal yourself from the outside world, you are still at risk. Yes that risk can be reduced, but as more and more people are affected, your own chances go up exponentially, no matter what measures you take.

Yes, it's the value of the exponent that I am talking about. Smaller is, uh, exponentially, better than larger. (I'm being sarcastic, but changing the exponent is (literally) what all the public health messaging about flattening the curve is about)

(to be completely pedantic, flattening the curve is about changing the base. The exponent is time.)
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