Essential travel

 
Old May 5, 2020, 6:08 pm
  #46  
 
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Originally Posted by ashill
If you can really be assured that all travellers are following the required protocols, then great, they're fine. But you can't. It's easier to ensure/expect that essential travellers are following the protocols (both because there are few of them and because a relatively high fraction of essential travellers are [I would guess] in health-related fields and therefore better aware of both the dangers and the protocols), and the protocols are drastically easier to follow with less crowded airports and airplanes.

Of course, it's hard enough to ensure that people who don't travel follow the protocols. But compounding it by bringing in non-essential travellers is needlessly pouring gasoline on the fire.
So its not science, its a political judgement that local people are more likely to follow the BC 60% contact rules etc, but its too much like hard work to ensure out-of-staters understand and will too?

I get the local politics, but I don't think there's much science there. People either follow the set local rules and guidelines or they don't ... distancing, masks, hygiene are really not that difficult for the average Canadian who's been awake the last two months.

To me, essential travelers wouldn't intrinsically seem more or less likely to follow BC 60% contact rules either. Again, happy to be persuaded.
To my mind, either you are fit to travel and able to understand and stick to the rules ... or you aren't. Weed out those who aren't/don't and all's good, no?
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Old May 5, 2020, 6:55 pm
  #47  
 
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Originally Posted by littlefish
So its not science, its a political judgement that local people are more likely to follow the BC 60% contact rules etc, but its too much like hard work to ensure out-of-staters understand and will too?
No, I think I was unclear. BC's modelling simply guesses/assumes that with the current rules, about 30% of the normal contact happens. It's not like the province says "thou shalt have 30% of thy normal contact with others". The actual number doesn't really matter. But the modelling shows that rules can be changed such that contacts roughly double without the disease entering an exponential growth (R > 1) mode; if the 30% guess is right, that would mean we go to about 60% of normal contact. That's not politics at all.

To my mind, either you are fit to travel and able to understand and stick to the rules ... or you aren't. Weed out those who aren't/don't and all's good, no?
I don't think it's fair or reasonable to assume that travellers are any better or worse at sticking to the rules. That 30% is of course an average of people who follow the rules (I am pretty sure that my physical contact with others is way below 30% of normal, which is fine) and those who don't (or are essential/exempt). And most importantly for this discussion, the modelling that shows that double the current contact rate (whatever it is) is based on the current local infection rate. So if you bring in a significant population of people with a higher infection rate (which a travelling population would because most of the rest of the continent has a higher infection rate than BC right now, and at the very least it's a rate that's not incorporated into the local models), the modelling showing you can safely double the current contact rate goes out the window. That's the core of why travelling endangers others.

And none of this is really BC-specific. You just change the infection rate and contact rate for other jurisdictions. But the logic is basically the same: significant numbers of people travelling makes it very hard for any local understanding of the infection to apply. And to me, having sufficient local understanding of the local danger to ease restrictions locally is far more important than allowing people to travel.
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