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

nbcnews.com

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

#701
post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>that's why areas with strong economies seem to be affected more than others (at least in Spain, Italy and Germany)

Are you saying Spain and Italy has strong economies?

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

#702
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because CV19 is a thing now doesn’t mean the US magically has Medicare for all.

No, but it is in the nation's interest to get as many people tested as possible (assuming we can solve the pesky test kit shortage). If people aren't getting tested because they can't afford it, that hurts the country just as much as it could potentially hurt them.

It is also in the nations interest to have free healthcare for everyone, so why should this be handled differently?

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

#703
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…

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…

On the other hand here in Italy

- we have a better healthcare system than is US (better as in public and for everyone)

- we own the most cars per capita in the west and are second in the world, public transport wasn't a big factor in this pandemia here

- food is much more controlled and we have a tradition of home made, home grown food, that doesn't require to go to the supermarket

- things are closer so trips are shorter and you can shop at many non packed smaller shops

- we react better to panic and are not armed

- infection has spread in small cities in the country where houses are larger, they have more storage, don't use public transport and social distancing in theory was easier

All in all, there are many ways to look at this

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

#704
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…

Just yesterday I listened to an interview with a medical expert, and the host asked him if he should cancel his domestic holiday plans. The host assured him that was premature. And yet here we are the next day. The situation is evolving rapidly.

>The host assured him that was premature. And yet here we are the next day. The situation is evolving rapidly.

Meh.

Your personal risk to become infected via $generic_domestic_holidays is pretty low, but the risk to increase the overall threat-vector by allowing open flights from domestic zones is very high.

The personal assessment just differs from the supervising political assessment, while the observed/assessed situation is exactly the same. Also: be careful with "experts", whenever that label is used, you should be very wary. A "medical expert" doesn't inherently know anything about politics at scale, he just (simplification alert) knows which medication to apply when which symptoms arise.

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

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which timezone?

I expect the natural answer is EDT (Washington DC time) but it's an extremely legitimate question in a country as big as the US and it should have been stated more clearly by the Dyslexic In Chief.

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

#706
post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about British/Irish people. Passports for EU citizens aren't stamped anywhere in the EU. I live in Denmark. Would the USA know if I flew to the UK, then the USA? (I don't intend to do this.)

The details are unclear anyway. What about Schengen citizens living in the UK? I can imagine they'll generally let people in from UK and Ireland but question them about travel history and maybe proof of residence. Lying to a border agent gets you banned for life, that should be a decent deterrent. In the end, it's not like a terrorism threat where the ones trying hardest are the ones you need to catch. Here, keeping…

You realize that the U.S. has probably many more infectious areas than Europe?

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

#707
post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a matter of timing. Europe has higher concentrations of the virus than the US. The chances that a plane from Europe contains an infected individual are getting quite high. When the concentrations in the US get higher it will start to make sense to constrain travel more over there. Right now the chances a domestic flight contains an infected individual is quite low, but that won’t always be the case. Bear in mind…

It's not clear the US does have fewer proportions of actual cases, just fewer tested ones. Saying the virus cannot be stopped seems defeatist. China seems to have managed it locally, albeit with some very aggressive measures.

It’s only a matter of time before it starts over there again, even if through back-propagation from other countries. Everyone’s talking as though China solved the problem. Incredible.

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

#708
post #616
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying people have big backyards, eat loads of tskeour and order stuff online, in Scandinavia? Have you ever lived in Scandinavia?

Not sure how the backyard argument is relevant anyway. It's not like that makes not spreading the disease that much easier. Public transport is certainly a risk. But I'm not even sure if e-commerce helps. Going to Walmart at 1am and using self checkout is probably much safer than receiving your delivery from someone who might be infected and visits several hundred homes a day.

The vast majority of home deliveries are drop-at-the-door with no human interaction, fwiw.

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

#709
post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can people coming from other parts just have a layover in UK and be get permission to enter the US? I believe anyone who's been to the Schengen Area in the past x days faces the ban. Excluding the UK and Ireland surely had political reasons (the UK now also has >400 cases) but it's hard to define Europe if you don't use either Schengen or EU (both of which the UK isn't a part of).

> Excluding the UK and Ireland surely had political reasons Or maybe it's because Trump owns golf resorts in both countries?

Dublin has pre-clearing[1] arrangements for entering the US so you can do all your checks in IE. Most of the US companies registered in Europe are in the RoI/UK, which could be reason for why they exclude it. Also whether this makes sense for "containing" is a different question.

If you have ever traveled to US via Dublin before you will never want to travel from another airport after.

[1] > Dublin Airport is one of only a handful of airports outside North America that offers a US Preclearance facility. The benefit is that having cleared USCBP, passengers arriving in the US are treated as domestic arrivals, allowing them to avoid immigration queues upon arrival and pick up their bags and go. https://www.dublinairport.com/flight-information/travelling-...

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

#710
post #607

Trying hard not to be political. But POTUS speech seems to make things lot worse than better along anything. The efficacy of this travel ban is questionable (given all these exceptions such as one for UK. Can people coming from other parts just have a layover in UK and be get permission to enter the US?). But lets give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they did so in good faith. It is what's not in the sp…

> Can people coming from other parts just have a layover in UK and be get permission to enter the US? I believe anyone who's been to the Schengen Area in the past x days faces the ban. Excluding the UK and Ireland surely had political reasons (the UK now also has >400 cases) but it's hard to define Europe if you don't use either Schengen or EU (both of which the UK isn't a part of).

"Europe and the UK".

Not that hard, especially when it's a decision where lives can be at stake.

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