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Comment by codeulike | Hacker News Reader

Ultimately, Seattle’s experience shows the futility of travel bans

Yes this is complete bullshit. Wuhan and now Italy are showing that travel bans are very important.

edit: When I say Travel Ban, I'm also thinking of a soft lockdown such as Italy have implemented, which is slightly different to a travel ban in some senses.

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Wuhan shows they are important. Italy remains to be seen. Though given the reports I've read suggesting thousands of Italians returned south ahead of the travel ban, their efforts may indeed prove futile.

The whole country is now under a travel ban, so there should be plenty of areas that don't have the virus still, and without further travel, hopefully will never get it.

Those areas will get it. The virus has spread too far throughout Italy to stop it but reacting late, now, to how far it has already spread can slow down how quickly it continues to spread.

At this point its about slowing down the peak so that health services can keep up.

Thousands out of an area of 16 million people is small change. They are probably people who would have been heading home anyway. The Travel Ban in Italy doesn't mean nobody move, it means nobody move without a decent reason. The Italy ban is quite different to the Wuhan one, if you look at the details.

edit: To be clear, as well as restricting travel out of an area, we're also talking about reducing movement _within_ that area. So it ties into Social Distancing really.

Other countries no longer traveling to Italy will show they are important too. Only they decided a bit too late on that one. Still, every little bit helps and any restriction that we can impose on mobility without killing the economy is going to help slow down the spread of the virus.

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