6 ms·

Seems like this is too little too late, cats already out of the bag in the US.

refurb 7y ago
It's all about flattening the curve at this point. You can do your best to identify those infected and have them self-quarantine, but if the gates are open and infected people are streaming into your country, you're not going to get far.
- zbraniecki 7y ago
  Ugh, USA is at the moment likely on level with Europe. The idea that this will prevent "infected people streaming into USA" is uninformed. This step limits transfer both ways, between two regions that both have similar level of infection spread. It may help both sides contain the virus, but it won't limit the amount of infected people in the USA on its own. Please, be careful about the language you use, the way you wrote the sentence promotes FUD.
  - refurb 7y ago
    but it won't limit the amount of infected people in the USA on its own I never said it would. By stopping flights, you're removing one potential source of new infections.
    - KarlKemp 7y ago
      You're also eliminating one potential source of infected people leaving the country before symptoms show. Assuming prevalence is equal in the US and Europe, you gain exactly nothing. (Op already said as much. Your answer reminds me of my Grandmother: "I know God doesn't exist, but it can't hurt to go to church.")
      - refurb 7y ago
        The presumption is you have better tracking over your own citizens than people coming in.
      - adventured 7y ago
        > Assuming prevalence is equal in the US and Europe, you gain exactly nothing. That assumption is wrong, the prevalence will not be equal. One will be better off, one will be worse off. There is no scenario where the prevalence is going to be identical across such massive populations with such dramatically different cultures, population densities and healthcare systems. The US and various European nations will not act the same, they will not quarantine the same, death rates will vary, and so on. In fact, it'll vary considerably just within Europe, as we're already seeing. It's better to separate accordingly, for both sides.
  - olliej 7y ago
    Also, it ignores the deliberately inaccurate case numbers in the US :-/
  - scarmig 7y ago
    > Ugh, USA is at the moment likely on level with Europe. Probably not true, as we don't have 1000 deaths yet. Though, give it two weeks, and we'll easily have caught up (to where Europe is today).
    - toyg 7y ago
      It’s more precise to say you don’t know whether you have 1000 deaths yet, as you are not testing even dead people at the same rate as elsewhere. Washington state got “lucky” by having a pretty obvious cluster that could not be brushed under the carpet, but there are likely hundreds of other pneumonia-related deaths going on right now who might well be undiagnosed covid19.
      - theferalrobot 7y ago
        > but there are likely hundreds of other pneumonia-related deaths going on right now who might well be undiagnosed covid19. Let's just throw around blatant speculation, that will help. Speculation aside that is extremely unlikely to be the case for a variety of clinical reasons https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22553193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22553193
        ebrenes 7y ago
        The estimate of how many deaths might be undiagnosed might be speculation, but it has already happened in Seattle that COVID deaths were misattributed to seasonal flu. In both cases, the death and symptoms will look identical the difference being in the underlying virus causing the issues. "In fact, officials would later discover through testing, the virus had already contributed to the deaths of two people, and it would go on to kill 20 more in the Seattle region over the following days." The US has failed to do any significant level of testing given its population, so it's understandable why many people are not confident in the official figures, especially when it becomes apparent infections have been running unchecked for weeks before testing started. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...
- wpietri 7y ago
  But doesn't that require the notion that infection rates are higher in the excluded place? Given the US's incredible failure to test widely, I am not seeing why flights from Sweden or Ireland are any more dangerous than flights from Seattle at this point.
  - chasd00 7y ago
    I have to agree. you may as well ground all flights at this point.
    - kyleee 7y ago
      Flights seem like fertile grounds for spread of the virus, so that may be reasonable. Obviously disruptive, but keeping people out of airports and planes should help flatten the curve to some extent
  - djohnston 7y ago
    no that isn't required for the travel ban to reduce the extent of the damage
  - adventured 7y ago
    > I am not seeing why flights from Sweden or Ireland are any more dangerous than flights from Seattle at this point. I'd favor grounding most flights at this point. However, the reason to restrict people from eg Sweden or Ireland or anywhere, is because those people in Seattle are our people (legally, citizenship-wise), which are the ones we should be concerning ourselves with and attempting to control/restrict/observe/test/treat. The US is about to enter mass quarantine, as numerous other countries are. It's better if people from other countries stay outside of the US / stay in their own countries. And further, it's dramatically better to only have to deal with our own people as a vector, not foreign persons. It's obvious that the fewer people that are infected within the US, the better.
    - wpietri 7y ago
      You seem to be imagining some sort of net inward migration, but I don't see any evidence for that. I do agree that general travel restrictions make sense, but I again don't see why Europe in specific matters here.
- bratawurst 7y ago
  You’re describing the opposite of flattening the curve. Closing the gates now does nothing. I do not mean to be patronizing, but this is literally life or death and the math is very simple. Today there are k infected people. Tomorrow there will be kn people. If n is unsustainable, any positive value for k is equivalent. Arbitrarily large changes to k today make an arbitrarily small contribution to the final doubling. “Infected people streaming in” means k becomes k+c. How much does reducing c flatten the curve? How much does it increase the time span of the critical last few doublings? It doesn’t. That’s only dependent on n. Ok, we can’t “flatten” the curve, but we can move the peak, right? How much does reducing c move the peak? Well, every day we prevent k additional people from entering buys us one day. Remember, tomorrow that’s kn. Act fast. If we could, this week alone, prevent a quantity of infected Europeans equal to the infected population already within the US from entering, that buys us one single doubling period before the collapse of healthcare. Maybe a week if we got lucky. I will guesstimate that that is not a realistic target in fact. The actual benefit scales proportionally. And next week it’s the same work for half the benefit. What are you talking about.
  - localhost8000 7y ago
    What do you propose be done instead of a travel ban?
    - logicchains 7y ago
      A bad idea doesn't stop being a bad idea just because of the absence of alternatives.
      - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
        Suddenly everyone is an armchair president, virologist, and strategist. No, shutting down the travel from a country with an outbreak that is not contained is not a bad idea. Stop politicizing this matter and either trust your government or go to your bunker. Everyone the past week has been plain fearmongering and it's disgusting.
    - 7y ago
beamatronic 7y ago
The signaling serves a purpose though.
duxup 7y ago
It's more about slowing the progress to spread out the number of infected over time.
golemiprague 7y ago
Even if it is closed people can still cross easily from the southern border, there is no way to hermetically closing everything, you can only slow things down a bit and control the pace. Turns out that controlling the borders is not such an insane and "racist" idea, but that's also a bit too late.
olliej 7y ago
As others have commented the goal at this point is curve flattening. What is "flattening" in this case? it's attempting to limit the peak concurrent cases. There will likely not be a hugely significant reduction in total cases, but that isn't the goal. The reason this is important is because no matter where you are, healthcare systems have a finite limit to the number of people they can treat at once, and if you exceed that you'll get a massive increase in mortality - both due to "survivable". cases not being treated, as well as unrelated medical events that don't get treated because there isn't capacity, e.g. you have a stroke, but there's no ED or ICU beds available.

It's all about flattening the curve at this point. You can do your best to identify those infected and have them self-quarantine, but if the gates are open and infected people are streaming into your country, you're not going to get far.

zbraniecki 7y ago
Ugh, USA is at the moment likely on level with Europe. The idea that this will prevent "infected people streaming into USA" is uninformed. This step limits transfer both ways, between two regions that both have similar level of infection spread. It may help both sides contain the virus, but it won't limit the amount of infected people in the USA on its own. Please, be careful about the language you use, the way you wrote the sentence promotes FUD.
- refurb 7y ago
  but it won't limit the amount of infected people in the USA on its own I never said it would. By stopping flights, you're removing one potential source of new infections.
  - KarlKemp 7y ago
    You're also eliminating one potential source of infected people leaving the country before symptoms show. Assuming prevalence is equal in the US and Europe, you gain exactly nothing. (Op already said as much. Your answer reminds me of my Grandmother: "I know God doesn't exist, but it can't hurt to go to church.")
    - refurb 7y ago
      The presumption is you have better tracking over your own citizens than people coming in.
    - adventured 7y ago
      > Assuming prevalence is equal in the US and Europe, you gain exactly nothing. That assumption is wrong, the prevalence will not be equal. One will be better off, one will be worse off. There is no scenario where the prevalence is going to be identical across such massive populations with such dramatically different cultures, population densities and healthcare systems. The US and various European nations will not act the same, they will not quarantine the same, death rates will vary, and so on. In fact, it'll vary considerably just within Europe, as we're already seeing. It's better to separate accordingly, for both sides.
- olliej 7y ago
  Also, it ignores the deliberately inaccurate case numbers in the US :-/
- scarmig 7y ago
  > Ugh, USA is at the moment likely on level with Europe. Probably not true, as we don't have 1000 deaths yet. Though, give it two weeks, and we'll easily have caught up (to where Europe is today).
  - toyg 7y ago
    It’s more precise to say you don’t know whether you have 1000 deaths yet, as you are not testing even dead people at the same rate as elsewhere. Washington state got “lucky” by having a pretty obvious cluster that could not be brushed under the carpet, but there are likely hundreds of other pneumonia-related deaths going on right now who might well be undiagnosed covid19.
    - theferalrobot 7y ago
      > but there are likely hundreds of other pneumonia-related deaths going on right now who might well be undiagnosed covid19. Let's just throw around blatant speculation, that will help. Speculation aside that is extremely unlikely to be the case for a variety of clinical reasons https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22553193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22553193
      - ebrenes 7y ago
        The estimate of how many deaths might be undiagnosed might be speculation, but it has already happened in Seattle that COVID deaths were misattributed to seasonal flu. In both cases, the death and symptoms will look identical the difference being in the underlying virus causing the issues. "In fact, officials would later discover through testing, the virus had already contributed to the deaths of two people, and it would go on to kill 20 more in the Seattle region over the following days." The US has failed to do any significant level of testing given its population, so it's understandable why many people are not confident in the official figures, especially when it becomes apparent infections have been running unchecked for weeks before testing started. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...
wpietri 7y ago
But doesn't that require the notion that infection rates are higher in the excluded place? Given the US's incredible failure to test widely, I am not seeing why flights from Sweden or Ireland are any more dangerous than flights from Seattle at this point.
- chasd00 7y ago
  I have to agree. you may as well ground all flights at this point.
  - kyleee 7y ago
    Flights seem like fertile grounds for spread of the virus, so that may be reasonable. Obviously disruptive, but keeping people out of airports and planes should help flatten the curve to some extent
- djohnston 7y ago
  no that isn't required for the travel ban to reduce the extent of the damage
- adventured 7y ago
  > I am not seeing why flights from Sweden or Ireland are any more dangerous than flights from Seattle at this point. I'd favor grounding most flights at this point. However, the reason to restrict people from eg Sweden or Ireland or anywhere, is because those people in Seattle are our people (legally, citizenship-wise), which are the ones we should be concerning ourselves with and attempting to control/restrict/observe/test/treat. The US is about to enter mass quarantine, as numerous other countries are. It's better if people from other countries stay outside of the US / stay in their own countries. And further, it's dramatically better to only have to deal with our own people as a vector, not foreign persons. It's obvious that the fewer people that are infected within the US, the better.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    You seem to be imagining some sort of net inward migration, but I don't see any evidence for that. I do agree that general travel restrictions make sense, but I again don't see why Europe in specific matters here.
bratawurst 7y ago
You’re describing the opposite of flattening the curve. Closing the gates now does nothing. I do not mean to be patronizing, but this is literally life or death and the math is very simple. Today there are k infected people. Tomorrow there will be kn people. If n is unsustainable, any positive value for k is equivalent. Arbitrarily large changes to k today make an arbitrarily small contribution to the final doubling. “Infected people streaming in” means k becomes k+c. How much does reducing c flatten the curve? How much does it increase the time span of the critical last few doublings? It doesn’t. That’s only dependent on n. Ok, we can’t “flatten” the curve, but we can move the peak, right? How much does reducing c move the peak? Well, every day we prevent k additional people from entering buys us one day. Remember, tomorrow that’s kn. Act fast. If we could, this week alone, prevent a quantity of infected Europeans equal to the infected population already within the US from entering, that buys us one single doubling period before the collapse of healthcare. Maybe a week if we got lucky. I will guesstimate that that is not a realistic target in fact. The actual benefit scales proportionally. And next week it’s the same work for half the benefit. What are you talking about.
- localhost8000 7y ago
  What do you propose be done instead of a travel ban?
  - logicchains 7y ago
    A bad idea doesn't stop being a bad idea just because of the absence of alternatives.
    - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
      Suddenly everyone is an armchair president, virologist, and strategist. No, shutting down the travel from a country with an outbreak that is not contained is not a bad idea. Stop politicizing this matter and either trust your government or go to your bunker. Everyone the past week has been plain fearmongering and it's disgusting.
  - 7y ago

beamatronic 7y ago

The signaling serves a purpose though.

duxup 7y ago

It's more about slowing the progress to spread out the number of infected over time.

golemiprague 7y ago

Even if it is closed people can still cross easily from the southern border, there is no way to hermetically closing everything, you can only slow things down a bit and control the pace. Turns out that controlling the borders is not such an insane and "racist" idea, but that's also a bit too late.

olliej 7y ago

As others have commented the goal at this point is curve flattening. What is "flattening" in this case? it's attempting to limit the peak concurrent cases. There will likely not be a hugely significant reduction in total cases, but that isn't the goal. The reason this is important is because no matter where you are, healthcare systems have a finite limit to the number of people they can treat at once, and if you exceed that you'll get a massive increase in mortality - both due to "survivable". cases not being treated, as well as unrelated medical events that don't get treated because there isn't capacity, e.g. you have a stroke, but there's no ED or ICU beds available.