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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

#621

Post by dx034 »

misiti3780 wrote: post #190
negrit wrote: 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.

That is correct, but most people dont live in cities here. As of 2010, the top 10 cities had 24MM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_populous_cities_i... People in the suburbs do have big garages (think long island vs manhattan)

How does a garage help? Many people living in urban areas in Europe have a basement. And even those who don't shouldn't have issues storing 2 weeks worth of food in their houses or apartments. Fridge space is probably the only restriction for that.

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

#622

Post by Scoundreller »

dboreham wrote: post #572
Scoundreller wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It gets mathematical and statistical really fast.

So there's a constant conflict between simple and easy to understand but not totally correct info, and scientifically correct but incomprehensible to most info.

Someone sneezing in your face = really bad. Someone sneezing an hour ago vs. touching something they just sneezed on... hard to say which is worse.

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

#623

Post by tlb »

miked85 wrote: post #562
jackson1way wrote: post #476

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.

The most important detail that was missed, it seems, is that this doesn't go into effect until midnight on Friday 03/13.

Is that departure time or arrival time?

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

#624

Post by azernik »

floetic wrote: post #10

Wouldn't that make UK the next hotspot? People will travel to and from UK to get to USA. Unless UK restricts travel from the rest of Europe.

The ban is for people who have been in the Schengen zone within the last 14 days, not just for direct arrivals from those states.

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

#625

Post by dx034 »

jorblumesea wrote: post #142
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…

Europe is a huge place and it's hard to pin it down to a single culture. The collectivism is mainly seen in northern Europe and Scandinavian countries. If you've ever been to Napoli or Sicily you wouldn't feel the same way. Feels more like Morocco sometimes. Many parts are really not as collectivist as people seem to think. Not as collectivist as Asia at least, not even close. Individualistic tendencies are strong ov…

I would've thought that the closer personal contact in Southern Europe (hugging/kissing for greetings) would spread it faster. But if you look at infection rates, most more Northern countries now look pretty similar to how it spread in Italy 1-2 weeks ago. So not sure if culture actually plays a role.

I guess it's all down to the economy, business travel spread it a lot. that's why areas with strong economies seem to be affected more than others (at least in Spain, Italy and Germany). Banning travel could work quite effectively for that.

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

#626

Post by klintcho »

One thing though; which airline will fly only american citizen back from europe? will they fill a plane with those customers only? I think my main concern is that most if not all major European airlines will cancel all flights, regardless if there are a couple of US citizen on the flights. Meaning it's probably still going to be somewhat problematic to get back (if not from London then of course)

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

#627

Post by dx034 »

Animats wrote: post #104
Scoundreller wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can anyone comment on supply chains that rely on Europe to source goods? I know medical grade steel comes from over there, but I don't know what else. I don't see why commercial sea-shipping would be restricted. Mariners may not be allowed to leave their ship while in port though.

I don't see why commercial sea-shipping would be restricted. Me either, but Trump did seem to say that. Vaguely. Stand by for "clarification".

He issued it by now (though the tweet reads as if written by someone else). I think it would've been a disaster banning cargo, with little benefit. Banning people could actually help to slow the spread of the virus. And ironically it could help Europe if they get infections better under control than the US.

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

#628

Post by tomnj »

syspec wrote: post #443
tomnj wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One other factor in the US favor, it’s extremely low population density laughs in jersey

Not that your statement is not funny, but please do not turn hackernews into reddit

Allow me to rephrase then: while the overall population density of the US is low, we have some pretty large dense areas, including Southern California and the northeast megalopolis

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

#629

Post by vanniv »

yellowapple wrote: post #565
gottebp wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would have had a massive uptick in pneumonia related deaths if this was the case. If anyone has stats on that they would be an interesting look.

Best I could find is this handy interactive map/graph from the CDC: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html No "massive uptick" yet, but there are quite a few every week, so it could be that it's still blending in with non-COVID pneumonia cases.

That's a really good dataset (with a really clunky visualization, but hey!)

Indeed. There are typically above 3000 deaths/week due to Pneumonia and 200/week due to influenza at this time of year. We had a smallish spike in mid-late January, where for 3 consecutive weeks, deaths were above trend at nearly 4000 & 400 per week.

If you assume a 1% mortality rate for COVID, and you assume all deaths are due to pneumonia, and you assume the entire late-January spike is due to COVID, that could be hiding 300,000-400,000 US cases. (To be clear, those are all questionable assumptions! The mortality rate could easily be either lower or higher, a meaningful fraction of deaths might not show as pneumonia or influenza, and it is normal for there to be a moderate spike above trend at some point in the flu season)

That doesn't mean that there were or weren't a few hundred thousand cases in that time -- it just means that some significant number of cases could easily hide in "routine-looking" spikes in the graph.

This does mean, though, that it is unlikely that everybody who got "the really bad flu" that's been going around this year actually had COVID -- but, especially if you live in a place with lots of people who travel to China regularly (like I do!), it isn't unreasonable to wonder if that "really bad flu followed by a lower-respiratory-tract infection that tested negative for influenza" you got in late January/early February wasn't really COVID.

(Remember, though, that while the rapid influenza test has a pretty low false-positive rate, it's got about a 50% false negative rate -- so testing negative shouldn't lead you to assume it isn't influenza)

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

#630

Post by will4274 »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #360
rsj_hn wrote: 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…

> even if congress were to pass a law banning such gatherings, there would be first amendment implications Isn't there an obvious compelling state interest?

Strict scrutiny requires not only a compelling state interest but that the restriction be narrowly tailored and the least restrictive means that satisfies the purpose. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny .
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