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'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

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Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

#21

Post by elorant »

notafraudster wrote: post #2

This is an aside to the overall story, but > At any given time, there are more than 1.4 million seafarers plying the world's waterways, according to the International Chamber of Shipping. I mean, I guess this is obvious because SOMEONE has to ship all the stuff everywhere, but that's a truly crazy number of people to me. I guess it goes to show that the oceans are almost unfathomably huge that they can still be compl…

1.4 million people though doesn't equal 1.4 million ships. Divide it by let's say 15 people per ship and then all you have is a little less than 100k ships. Which doesn't sound like a lot.

Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

#22

Post by varjag »

jacquesm wrote: post #19
Cyph0n wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealand is now a city in Australia?

How on earth did you get that from what I wrote?

I think they just nitpick rather than genuinely misunderstand your point, but yes the 'Place, Bigger-place' is a common form of toponyms in American English.

Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

#23

Post by jacquesm »

varjag wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth did you get that from what I wrote?

I think they just nitpick rather than genuinely misunderstand your point, but yes the 'Place, Bigger-place' is a common form of toponyms in American English.

I think it was sufficiently disambiguated by the word 'dedicated', it wouldn't be possible to have Australia both dedicated to agriculture and to have a city the size of New Zealand inside it. But thank you for explaining.

Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

#24

Post by jacobr1 »

Aeolun wrote: post #15
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just trying to imagine a city the size of New Zealand, Australia devoted to agriculture and the rest of the planet devoted to nature. That would be quite a statement with respect to stewardship of the planet.

Can’t we choose places that are a little closer to the rest of the planet?

If the point is the keep them as a nature preserve, their distance is probably a feature.

Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

#25

Post by petertodd »

ForHackernews wrote: post #10

I don't see how they can justify keeping these people trapped on ships while plenty of business and leisure travellers jet back and forth around the world. I'd understand if we were actually enforcing a real quarantine with closed borders, but we're not. What makes these maritime workers such a greater risk? Is it just that they're not wealthy citizens of western nations?

It's simple: they can't. Anywhere with non-trivial amounts of community transmission would have negligible additional risk by allowing those workers to enter, especially if symptoms are screened. A handful of new cases is a drop in a very big bucket. That's been true over almost the whole world for months, because covid has spread to pretty much the entire world.

These workers have been imprisoned because of politics, not science.

Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

#26

Post by vecinu »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #8
notafraudster wrote: post #2

This is an aside to the overall story, but > At any given time, there are more than 1.4 million seafarers plying the world's waterways, according to the International Chamber of Shipping. I mean, I guess this is obvious because SOMEONE has to ship all the stuff everywhere, but that's a truly crazy number of people to me. I guess it goes to show that the oceans are almost unfathomably huge that they can still be compl…

1.4 million is an exceptionally small number of people compared to the size of the oceans. You could fit all 7+ billion humans in New Zealand if we all lived as densely as Manhattan. [1] So 1.4 million people on the oceans is still virtually empty overall. Think about it this way. There are 3.2 million Mongolians and Mongolia is quite large -- thus, Mongolia is extremely empty. There are less than half as many seafar…

> You could fit all 7+ billion humans in New Zealand if we all lived as densely as Manhattan. [1]

Can stop spreading these factoids as if they would be feasible in any way?

You can't just stick people vertically on a small plot of land ad infinitum, it doesn't scale. Think about all the services required for all 7 billion people to function properly, New Zealand would collapse on itself.

Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

#27

Post by tomjakubowski »

jacquesm wrote: post #19
Cyph0n wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealand is now a city in Australia?

How on earth did you get that from what I wrote?

Misparsed it as something with structure like this, "I'm just trying to imagine a city the size of [Chicago, Illinois] devoted to agriculture[,] and the rest of the planet devoted to nature." I did the same thing and had to read it twice.

Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

#28

Post by Cyph0n »

jacquesm wrote: post #19
Cyph0n wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealand is now a city in Australia?

How on earth did you get that from what I wrote?

It's just a joke based on the structure of your sentence. Should have included a /s or something I guess.

Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

#29

Post by samatman »

jacquesm wrote: post #19
Cyph0n wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealand is now a city in Australia?

How on earth did you get that from what I wrote?

A with placed between New Zealand, and Australia, would not have gone amiss.

Re: 'Sea Prison': Covid-19 has left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stranded

#30

Post by optimalsolver »

sharkweek wrote: post #17
notafraudster wrote: post #2

This is an aside to the overall story, but > At any given time, there are more than 1.4 million seafarers plying the world's waterways, according to the International Chamber of Shipping. I mean, I guess this is obvious because SOMEONE has to ship all the stuff everywhere, but that's a truly crazy number of people to me. I guess it goes to show that the oceans are almost unfathomably huge that they can still be compl…

There's that famous story of that Marine who fell off a boat and survived at sea for 36 hours. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-11-30-951130... I cannot for a second imagine the absolute horror of feeling THAT alone with god knows what beneath you. But imagine the good fortune required for a random fishing boat to pass by and find you. Or this guy who fell off a fishing boat in the middle of the night…

Relevant username.

Also, that guy who survived in a pocket of air in a capsized boat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oqnpEozQYo

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