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Russia has halted all flights into and out of the country

reuters.com

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Re: Russia has halted all flights into and out of the country

#61

Post by jcranmer »

creato wrote: post #50
spindle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there are at least three issues: 1. My guess is that you're right, the main reason this is happening is a nationalistic wish to blame others for the spread. But also: 2. As other commentators have noticed, it's difficult to socially distance in an airport. On the plane itself, there is extremely good ventilation and what limited evidence I've seen suggests that transmission is low, but in airports that migh…

> 1. My guess is that you're right, the main reason this is happening is a nationalistic wish to blame others for the spread. More than half of the world's population is under lockdown within their countries, and you still think that shutting down air travel is a nationalistic wish?

As others point out, by distinguishing domestic from international travel, you're implying that you believe your citizens are smart, intelligent, and know not to travel, but you can't trust other citizens to do that. That implication is what it makes it nationalistic.

More practically, though, is that it's a measure that can only be effective if domestic transmission is not a major cause of new cases, which is true in only very few countries right now (and I believe none of those countries have banned visitors). Enacting such a policy at this late stage is a measure that looks like you're taking a strong stance while having virtually no effect at all, and could well be an attempt to distract from your own failures to contain it beforehand.

Given the way Putin has governed in the past decade, I am rather more inclined to believe that the primary goal of this measure is in fact propaganda.

Re: Russia has halted all flights into and out of the country

#62

Post by AnimalMuppet »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #22
jessaustin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's start with two months. It seems quite possible that we'll have a better idea what's going on by June. A number of important events that affect my community have been postponed until at least then. In June, we can ask the public health experts whether we can start ramping back up with big public events, including elections. I wish all the democracy superfans would show some consistency and demand all-paper-ballo…

I'm in favor of paper ballots too! But surely you see why it's more concerning to say "alright, elections are cancelled, and we won't hold an election again until unaccountable public health experts make a subjective judgment that it's safe". What would happen if they don't?

Well... there are different scenarios.

1. If you're saying "everybody stay home, the NBA is cancelled, the NCAA tournament is cancelled because of the threat of transmission, but we're going to have the entire state parade in front of a bunch of old people who run our polls"... yeah, that might not be a great idea right now. Deciding to either postpone it or do it mail-only seems rather responsible.

2. Postponing it indefinitely is a whole nother can of worms. You can't just postpone the general election for two years until we have a working vaccine.

So, worst case, we're going to have to conduct the general election by mail only. I think it has to be conducted on time in November, though, to avoid giving rise to conspiracy theories (or to tempt people from taking advantage of the situation...)

Re: Russia has halted all flights into and out of the country

#63

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

rfoo wrote: post #59
refurb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at Vietnam and Singapore. Both clamped down hard back in January. They were keeping their numbers quite low ( Once the virus spread to other countries and they started to shutdown, a lot of Singapore and Vietnamese nationals returned home. Contact tracing indicated that almost 100% of new cases were people returning from overseas. Last I checked Singapore has close to 1,000 cases and Vietnam almost 300. T…

It may help, but Italy (also shutdown flights to/from China in January) shows that the impact is not big enough.

Italy has a lot of Chinese-staffed sweatshops. All it would take is one infectee to start their new job in December or January to start the steamroller going.

Re: Russia has halted all flights into and out of the country

#64

Post by dang »

jonmartinwest wrote: post #15
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not, but do you have some concrete plan for when the polls should have been rescheduled to? A democratic country can't indefinitely postpone elections, no matter what the costs of holding them are.

Democracy and Democratic governments are two different things. The USA is a democracy. China, North Korea, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are Democratic governments.

Please stop using HN for political or ideological or nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Russia has halted all flights into and out of the country

#66

Post by mopsi »

jcranmer wrote: post #61
creato wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. My guess is that you're right, the main reason this is happening is a nationalistic wish to blame others for the spread. More than half of the world's population is under lockdown within their countries, and you still think that shutting down air travel is a nationalistic wish?

As others point out, by distinguishing domestic from international travel, you're implying that you believe your citizens are smart, intelligent, and know not to travel, but you can't trust other citizens to do that. That implication is what it makes it nationalistic. More practically, though, is that it's a measure that can only be effective if domestic transmission is not a major cause of new cases, which is true i…

> As others point out, by distinguishing domestic from international travel, you're implying that you believe your citizens are smart, intelligent, and know not to travel, but you can't trust other citizens to do that. That implication is what it makes it nationalistic.

There is no need to make up conspiracy theories. Domestic flights are essential in a country the size of Russia, international flights are not. The same thing can be seen elsewhere. For example, TAP Portugal has grounded all flights except those between the mainland and Madeira / Azores.

Re: Russia has halted all flights into and out of the country

#67

Post by kds3 »

ineedasername wrote: post #58

I'm not aware of information coming out of Russia that contradicts their official reporting, but I still find it extremely implausible that they have been so little impacts by the virus spread. But I'm flying blind on this speculation, I freely admit: Are typical travel patterns between Russia and the rest of Europe so minimal as to explain their decrease exposure?

Maybe because they started testing early? Their first cases were in January and they screened everyone in airports since then [0], they performed 639606 tests with 4731 positives. [1][2]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-health-pneumonia-russi...

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing

Re: Russia has halted all flights into and out of the country

#68

Post by dang »

jessaustin wrote: post #3

Wow I wish our executive branch actually did take orders from Russia, per the fantasy we all enjoyed for three years. They're certainly taking the situation more seriously than we are. After several states held disastrous primary elections over the last two weeks, Wisconsin is set to hold another one this week!

You started a flamewar here and then perpetuated it. That's not cool. Would you please follow the site rules and not do this again?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I haven't rate-limited your account again, but this is the kind of thing that causes us to.

Re: Russia has halted all flights into and out of the country

#69

Post by dang »

sambull wrote: post #5
jessaustin wrote: post #3

Wow I wish our executive branch actually did take orders from Russia, per the fantasy we all enjoyed for three years. They're certainly taking the situation more seriously than we are. After several states held disastrous primary elections over the last two weeks, Wisconsin is set to hold another one this week!

Amazing, in the same paragraph, acquiescence of power to a foreign state and a plea to end democracy.

Please do not use HN for political or ideological or nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Russia has halted all flights into and out of the country

#70

Post by dang »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #30
jessaustin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Democracy"? Is that what we're talking about? Read the transcript: "We're gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we're gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have -- and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That's not the way it was done. But they co…

You need to work on your reading comprehension. That is an argument for why the plaintiffs don't have standing. That is not a description of what the defendants had done or even what the defendants wanted to do. Your poor comprehension has turned you into a conspiracy theorist.

Please stop using HN for political or ideological or nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

Personal attacks are particularly not ok.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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