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Comment by zbraniecki | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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).

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.

> 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

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-de...

>In both cases, the death and symptoms will look identical the difference being in the underlying virus causing the issues.

As stated before that is absolutely false which is why those cases were caught. Will data be imperfect, yes, but that doesn't mean we should start throwing around Chinese propaganda.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/conspiracy...

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.

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.")

> 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.

The presumption is you have better tracking over your own citizens than people coming in.

Also, it ignores the deliberately inaccurate case numbers in the US :-/

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