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

nbcnews.com

571–580 of 919 posts

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

#571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only time will tell, but fairly aggressive measures are already being taken in California and Washington where the cases are only in the hundreds, and many other states are following close behind when they have few to no cases. One thing even many Americans don’t properly appreciate is the degree to which most things are actually run at the state and local level. So far the federal dysfunction has not stopped the sta…

fairly aggressive measures are already being taken in California and Washington Such as?? I'm living California, outside a major city. I don't see anything.

Aren't all the California universities switching to online or shutting down? That's kind of aggressive, no?

Gatherings are also being shut down. Public meetings are shutting down.

What else would you have them do?

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

#572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Thanks, that's interesting and not something I've heard before. I think the CDC etc should make this clear : it isn't "an infected person sneezing near you" but "a volume of air into which someone has sneezed in the past few hours". If people knew this I think they would be more inclined to accept the distancing measures.

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

#573
post #444
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans have big garages to stockpile supplies No they don't. No one in NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, ... have big garages to stockpile supplies and most of the US lives in those big cities with apartments without garages. In the suburbs they do but that's a minority of the population.

> No one in NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, ... have big garages to stockpile supplies I think most of San Francisco by area is zoned "RH-" (Residential Housing), and most of that RH- area is RH-1 or RH-1D (single family). Most of the homes in those regions have lots of space. We're not just talking about Zuck's mansion either, plenty of homes in the Sunset or other West SF areas that have that kind of room.

Plenty of houses in outer richmond, sunset, ingleside, ... have multiple in-law units and converted garages. The cost of living is too expensive.

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

#574

I am beginning to strongly suspect that supply chain disruption caused by government decisions is going to cause way more damage to the world than this virus ever could have on its own. I think more people making these decisions could benefit from a good deep reading of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations".

Don't underestimate how costly it is to society to have a bunch of people die. Not taking this seriously will kill a lot more people than taking it seriously.

The worst case of the virus is around 2% of people die, mostly elderly. The worst case of "taking it seriously" is an economic collapse in which a double-digit percentage of people die because global supply chains have fallen apart and there is no longer enough food to feed everybody.

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

#575
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>All reductions in (non-essential) travel are good in a pandemic. All travel is essential to somebody. All restrictions on movement also have a cost, and any analysis that only looks at the benefits of something without looking at the costs cannot hope to be correct.

> All travel is essential to somebody

I travelled to starbucks today. I’d hardly consider that essential.

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

#576
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Overall, social distancing is probably easier for Americans because our way of life already involves a good deal of social distance to begin with. While that's true, behavior trumps lifestyle I think. I had a dentist appointment scheduled for this morning in San Francisco. I called my dentist office and explained that my wife has some mild-flu symptoms and asked if we should reschedule. They said that's since I don…

You think that should be cancelled?

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

#577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re describing the opposite of flattening the curve. Closing the gates now does nothing. I do not mean to be patronizing, but this is literally life or death and the math is very simple. Today there are k infected people. Tomorrow there will be kn people. If n is unsustainable, any positive value for k is equivalent. Arbitrarily large changes to k today make an arbitrarily small contribution to the final doubling.…

What do you propose be done instead of a travel ban?

A bad idea doesn't stop being a bad idea just because of the absence of alternatives.

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

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so dumb, immediate family members not applicable -- so check-in agents are now going to be in the business of examining birth certificates?

I'm guessing we're going to get a lot of these sentiments over the next couple weeks (months?), about how these restrictions are interfering with the comforts of modern life. Let it stand as a reminder of how good we have it, and how fragile things actually are. It's a pandemic. There's going to be some bumps.

I don't know it seems like it might be dumb to make an exception that would be hard to check and thus might be hard to apply and would mean that anyone who didn't want their comforts interfered with could say "I'm an immediate family member!"

But I guess the ethical will follow the rules and be uncomfortable, and the unethical won't, as per standard operating procedure.

On Edit: Why the downvote?

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

#579
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).

Which makes total sense since the UK is a haven from this pandemic... oh wait. Nope. It's spreading at bloody Heathrow itself: https://www.airport-technology.com/news/coronavirus-heathrow...

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

#580
post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The UK is an Island nation with entry controls - passports are required even from the EU and there is at least token screening at the airports and docks of people with fever or other virus symptoms. Not that it’s the same thing, but being an island (so no walking traffic) and having some screening in place means that the UK simply doesn’t have certain diseases (like rabies) that are at least somewhat common in Europe…

Yeah but the UK certainly has the coronavirus and more importantly, Heathrow has it. https://www.airport-technology.com/news/coronavirus-heathrow...
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