4 ms·

> One horrible effect of this continued “stop the pandemic” daydream masquerading as a policy goal: It is driving counter-productive and outrage-inducing measur

by est31 7y ago

> One horrible effect of this continued “stop the pandemic” daydream masquerading as a policy goal: It is driving counter-productive and outrage-inducing measures by many countries against travelers from other countries, even their own citizens back from other countries. But possibly more horrible: The messaging is driving resources toward “stopping,” and away from the main potential benefit of containment – slowing the spread of the pandemic and thereby buying a little more time to prepare for what’s coming. I don't get this part of the article at all. What's exactly counter-productive about not allowing civilian travellers from affected provinces? That seems like the best method to slow the spread to me. The longer we can keep it away from anybody, the better, because the more time we have to come up with a vaccine or alternative ways to combat the disease. It's definitely possible that covid-19 will eventually reach all parts of the globe, but we should try everything possible to not let it reach those parts before we have come up with a vaccine.

bpfrh 7y ago
Closing borders isn't easy. Most of the time there are still ways you can cross, so instead of having known routes where you can test and treat accordingly, you have an unknown number of people crossing the border on unknown points and spreading the virus in unknown regions.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  The point of epidemiological containment is to reduce the R value such that R<1. Once this is done, eventually, inevitably, the epidemic will burn out. Yes, more people will become infected, yes, some will die. But the level of person-to-person transmission will have fallen below the level necessary for the epidemic to sustain itself, and it will slowly decline and fade out. Perfect containment, 100% effective vaccines, 100% vaccination rates, (neither of which apply here: there is not yet a vaccine), 100% travel and contact curtailment, 100% sanitation, 100% filtration, are not required. Only sufficiently effective methods to reduce transmission. Of which, strong, effective, and widespread travel restrictions within or from epidemic zones are a very sensible tool.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Excellent comment and too bad it is this far down the thread.
- est31 7y ago
  The virus doesn't spread because of a natural effect, but because infected people travel and take the virus with them. The speed of the spread is as fast as the fastest method of travel. If we have FTL travel, it travels faster than light. If we have airplanes, it travels as fast as them. So even if you don't watch land borders, shutting down airplane traffic to a country is highly useful: the virus cases are isolated to the border region of your country, and you can focus your attention to that part. Usually there is already infrastructure to close down land borders for cars and similar. So why not use that infrastructure? Besides stomping out the few cases inside its own borders or preventing travel from affected regions, it's the most useful measure a country can take. After that there are only inside country prevention methods, like curfews, forbidding car usage, etc.
jacquesm 7y ago
The time that border closures would have stopped the spread is past. Those measures are useless now, 25+ countries have the virus within their borders now (and likely, many more without knowing it) so it will spread within those communities unless measure to stop that spreading will be taken. This sucks but if you live in a wealthy country you will likely survive this, it may still impact you economically.
- est31 7y ago
  Closing borders might not stop the spread, but it certainly slows it down if there is a major population of sick people in one country, but in the other country the population of sick people is smaller. The numbers of detected and undetected cases are different, but definitely not uncorrelated. The less people have the disease, the more you can focus onto containment measures. If you detect one case in a country of 30 million, you can test everyone who had contact with that person and maybe even their entire street. However, if there are 10 000 cases in that same country, you suddenly have a problem. Even if you assume constant spreading rates with an exponential model of patient number increase, where after a period P, the number of cases doubles, then with 10 case, after P you have 20 cases. If you have 100 cases because you left your border open and, say 50 000 people from the country with many cases got in, you'll have 200 cases after period P. Closing borders is an efficient method to slow down the spread. Of course you need to accompany these cases by within-country measures like China is taking, but you can isolate them to affected regions. What's important though is that you prevent travel in any fashion as much as possible, because the virus doesn't travel by itself, it needs humans to travel for it.

by est31 7y ago

bpfrh 7y ago

Closing borders isn't easy. Most of the time there are still ways you can cross, so instead of having known routes where you can test and treat accordingly, you have an unknown number of people crossing the border on unknown points and spreading the virus in unknown regions.

dredmorbius 7y ago
The point of epidemiological containment is to reduce the R value such that R<1. Once this is done, eventually, inevitably, the epidemic will burn out. Yes, more people will become infected, yes, some will die. But the level of person-to-person transmission will have fallen below the level necessary for the epidemic to sustain itself, and it will slowly decline and fade out. Perfect containment, 100% effective vaccines, 100% vaccination rates, (neither of which apply here: there is not yet a vaccine), 100% travel and contact curtailment, 100% sanitation, 100% filtration, are not required. Only sufficiently effective methods to reduce transmission. Of which, strong, effective, and widespread travel restrictions within or from epidemic zones are a very sensible tool.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Excellent comment and too bad it is this far down the thread.
est31 7y ago
The virus doesn't spread because of a natural effect, but because infected people travel and take the virus with them. The speed of the spread is as fast as the fastest method of travel. If we have FTL travel, it travels faster than light. If we have airplanes, it travels as fast as them. So even if you don't watch land borders, shutting down airplane traffic to a country is highly useful: the virus cases are isolated to the border region of your country, and you can focus your attention to that part. Usually there is already infrastructure to close down land borders for cars and similar. So why not use that infrastructure? Besides stomping out the few cases inside its own borders or preventing travel from affected regions, it's the most useful measure a country can take. After that there are only inside country prevention methods, like curfews, forbidding car usage, etc.

jacquesm 7y ago

The time that border closures would have stopped the spread is past. Those measures are useless now, 25+ countries have the virus within their borders now (and likely, many more without knowing it) so it will spread within those communities unless measure to stop that spreading will be taken. This sucks but if you live in a wealthy country you will likely survive this, it may still impact you economically.

est31 7y ago
Closing borders might not stop the spread, but it certainly slows it down if there is a major population of sick people in one country, but in the other country the population of sick people is smaller. The numbers of detected and undetected cases are different, but definitely not uncorrelated. The less people have the disease, the more you can focus onto containment measures. If you detect one case in a country of 30 million, you can test everyone who had contact with that person and maybe even their entire street. However, if there are 10 000 cases in that same country, you suddenly have a problem. Even if you assume constant spreading rates with an exponential model of patient number increase, where after a period P, the number of cases doubles, then with 10 case, after P you have 20 cases. If you have 100 cases because you left your border open and, say 50 000 people from the country with many cases got in, you'll have 200 cases after period P. Closing borders is an efficient method to slow down the spread. Of course you need to accompany these cases by within-country measures like China is taking, but you can isolate them to affected regions. What's important though is that you prevent travel in any fashion as much as possible, because the virus doesn't travel by itself, it needs humans to travel for it.