Mar 11, 2020, 10:13 am
Last edit by: Ocn Vw 1K
In order to reduce noise in the Coronavirus / Covid-19 : general fact-based reporting thread, and to create a central place to invite any member to ask a basic question about the impact of COVID-19 on travel, your moderators have decided to open this separate "lounge" thread for related discussion that isn't strictly fact-based reporting.
Any member who can provide a constructive, helpful answer to a question; or post constructively in reply to a member's point-of-view, is welcome to post.
All FT rules apply, including avoiding personalized, snarky, political, other off-topic, commercial, and repeatedly disruptive content.
Discussion of general economic impacts of Covid-19 belongs in the OMNI forum, not here.
Discussion and critique of political/government actions to aid the economy or which is far more political than related to COVID-19 is for the OMNI/PR forum, not here.
This is a protocol for posting adopted by the forum Moderator team:Please follow this protocol, based on FlyerTalk Rules and long-standing FlyerTalk best practices. Doing so will help keep the thread open, and allow our moderator team to aid members, rather than having to resort to discipline.
•Constructive, respectful posts, views, opinions, questions, and replies, related to the topic are welcome. Avoid commenting on members personally, or posting off-topic or political messages.
•While respectful disagreement of a posted view is allowed, don’t call-out posters to prove their points. FlyerTalk has never required discussion standards at the level of a Ph.D. dissertation defense, or a trial court witness cross-examination.
•After a reasonable exchange of views on a point, please yield the floor so that others may bring up different topics, questions or points.
•Especially important in this time of pandemic, when normal life and travel have been upended: please take regular breaks from the thread.
Please stay healthy,
your FT Coronavirus and Travel Moderator Team.
Any member who can provide a constructive, helpful answer to a question; or post constructively in reply to a member's point-of-view, is welcome to post.
All FT rules apply, including avoiding personalized, snarky, political, other off-topic, commercial, and repeatedly disruptive content.
Discussion of general economic impacts of Covid-19 belongs in the OMNI forum, not here.
Discussion and critique of political/government actions to aid the economy or which is far more political than related to COVID-19 is for the OMNI/PR forum, not here.
This is a protocol for posting adopted by the forum Moderator team:Please follow this protocol, based on FlyerTalk Rules and long-standing FlyerTalk best practices. Doing so will help keep the thread open, and allow our moderator team to aid members, rather than having to resort to discipline.
•Constructive, respectful posts, views, opinions, questions, and replies, related to the topic are welcome. Avoid commenting on members personally, or posting off-topic or political messages.
•While respectful disagreement of a posted view is allowed, don’t call-out posters to prove their points. FlyerTalk has never required discussion standards at the level of a Ph.D. dissertation defense, or a trial court witness cross-examination.
•After a reasonable exchange of views on a point, please yield the floor so that others may bring up different topics, questions or points.
•Especially important in this time of pandemic, when normal life and travel have been upended: please take regular breaks from the thread.
Please stay healthy,
your FT Coronavirus and Travel Moderator Team.
COVID-19: Lounge thread for thoughts, concerns and questions
Mar 5, 2020, 11:08 am
#46
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Obviously, stopping all Schengen would be even more effective, but the idea isn't to be 100% effective (you really can't be), but to get as much bang for your buck. Just threaten "liars" who don't honestly report their travel history with jail. And then put somebody in jail if you catch them. That's good enough, I think.
Mar 5, 2020, 11:09 am
#47
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Mar 5, 2020, 11:14 am
#48
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If you look at the number of current confirmed cases and deaths, the death rate is 7.3% which means its either super deadly or there are many more people that have it than confirmed cases. Death rate is supposed to be around 3%.
Mar 5, 2020, 11:15 am
#49
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No, actually, the biggest problem in the US is not fear. It's that authorities have their heads so far up their behinds that they're not taking any measures to protect the American public. I am staying out of the USA for now and staying in SG/HK.
Last edited by l etoile; Mar 5, 2020 at 7:37 pm Reason: language filter
Mar 5, 2020, 11:17 am
#51
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Obviously, stopping all Schengen would be even more effective, but the idea isn't to be 100% effective (you really can't be), but to get as much bang for your buck. Just threaten "liars" who don't honestly report their travel history with jail. And then put somebody in jail if you catch them. That's good enough, I think.
We should probably also sort out how we’ll actually deal with infected convicts first before sending more people with possible infections to jail. Iran supposedly is releasing 54k temporarily on bail. ( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51723398 ). Germany is restricting access to prisoners in one strongly affected part of the country. No family visits, only lawyers with urgent needs, ...
Mar 5, 2020, 11:22 am
#52
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Lots of people say that, but the dead aren't piling up in the USA. And WHO specifically says this isn't a virus that lurks in bushes. You know it when you have it, as many people get really sick and start showing up in hospitals. There are certainly more cases in the USA than have been reported, but it's just fear that's causing folks to speculate that it's already "out of hand" in America.
Just look at the same pattern in Wuhan / China. By the time they reached 50 dead, they had 1k+ infections (officially, likely more)
Mar 5, 2020, 11:23 am
#53
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Mar 5, 2020, 11:36 am
#54
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So it is almost certainly a vast underestimate of the number of cases. That's all I said. The various reasons we are almost certain that this is true, ranging from from instances of probable community transmission to estimates of RNA sequence variation have been discussed multiple times I said previously that we should stop all international travel, which may be excessive. I canceled a work related trip to Italy myself and after that my employer cancelled all work related international travel and requires any personal international travel to be reported to HR and for people traveling to the highest CDC alert level countries to self quarantine for 2 weeks upon returning. I think all employers and local health departments should institute similar restrictions. This might minimize new new infectious cycles from starting and could slow down the spread.
Mar 5, 2020, 11:39 am
#55
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Mar 5, 2020, 12:03 pm
#56
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Yes I get that, but the predictions (guesses) of just a few days ago that the US had thousands of infected people would result in some rise in deaths. And people dying in the hospital are, I believe, tested in post mortem. So they should know.
Mar 5, 2020, 12:10 pm
#57
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Estimates of death rates are based on an accurate (at least reasonably) count of the number of cases. We really don't have that in the US, not even close in fact. Estimates were still about 0.1% until not long ago and they might still be there.
Mar 5, 2020, 12:44 pm
#58
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 825
No, not all hospital deaths are examined post-mortem. And remember, until very recently no one would have tested for SARS-CoV-2 in a patient with no recent travel history (or any contact with someone else who had traveled) who was dead from pneumonia or ARDS. So we've no doubt missed some COVID-19 deaths, probably starting from mid-January. (I don't think we'd have missed a ton, though. A significant uptick in pneumonia or ARDS deaths would have been noticed.)
Mar 5, 2020, 1:25 pm
#59
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COVID-19 isn't going away. It is here to stay. The question is what route do we want to take from pandemic to endemic because even if containment is not possible we still have the capacity to greatly slow down transmission which will save many lives as we ration precious medical resources. But the key to doing this will be effective social distancing measures which everyone adopts (i.e. assume everyone is infectious until proven otherwise and act accordingly), not travel restriction and quarantine.
Last edited by l etoile; Mar 5, 2020 at 7:42 pm Reason: edited quote to conform to rules
Mar 5, 2020, 1:39 pm
#60
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Yes, it is rather ironic that it is now the US and Europe which are the riskiest places to be right now and yet there are still several countries enforcing travel restrictions to Singapore, which is probably one of the safest places to be right now! But that's politics for you.
In a few weeks time, Europe will be asking what plausible rationale could there be to not exclude US travellers. Well, the answer is once you have established community transmission, travel restrictions and quarantine are increasingly futile. I can't help but think the world leaders in countries with established community transmission are placing too much emphasis on travel restriction, case finding and quarantine instead of ploughing resources into effective social distancing and boosting medical infrastructure. Everyone seems to be too scared to admit we are now well into the pandemic phase of COVID-19 and will be in this position for several months before (in my opinion) we end up with a new endemic coronavirus.
COVID-19 isn't going away. It is here to stay. The question is what route do we want to take from pandemic to endemic because even if containment is not possible we still have the capacity to greatly slow down transmission which will save many lives as we ration precious medical resources. But the key to doing this will be effective social distancing measures which everyone adopts (i.e. assume everyone is infectious until proven otherwise and act accordingly), not travel restriction and quarantine.
In a few weeks time, Europe will be asking what plausible rationale could there be to not exclude US travellers. Well, the answer is once you have established community transmission, travel restrictions and quarantine are increasingly futile. I can't help but think the world leaders in countries with established community transmission are placing too much emphasis on travel restriction, case finding and quarantine instead of ploughing resources into effective social distancing and boosting medical infrastructure. Everyone seems to be too scared to admit we are now well into the pandemic phase of COVID-19 and will be in this position for several months before (in my opinion) we end up with a new endemic coronavirus.
COVID-19 isn't going away. It is here to stay. The question is what route do we want to take from pandemic to endemic because even if containment is not possible we still have the capacity to greatly slow down transmission which will save many lives as we ration precious medical resources. But the key to doing this will be effective social distancing measures which everyone adopts (i.e. assume everyone is infectious until proven otherwise and act accordingly), not travel restriction and quarantine.
That's not the same as self-imposed cancellation of travel. For one thing, even in most countries with established COVID-19, it's still very patchy: limiting spread between communities allows governments to focus resources, at least for the time being.
tb