(In the USA) Is this going to accomplish anything?
The virus is already here and has been spreading out-of-control for quite a while now. The only reason the numbers are still so low here is the incredibly low number of tests being done.
The virus is already here and has been spreading out-of-control for quite a while now. The only reason the numbers are still so low here is the incredibly low number of tests being done.
it has quite a lot of significant costs, in particular on the airline industry and business travel which is smaller in number but pretty important. And given that community spread is going to be a far bigger issue this ban is nonsensical.
However, we do already have the virus in the USA. So it's not suddenly going to go away because of this proclamation.
I don't think it'll have such an effect on Americans since they are exempt from the ban. But now they're guaranteed to have more room to stretch out on the plane.
But you know what would have such an effect? If the government just came out and said "We strongly recommend that you cease all non-essential overseas air travel, including vacations"
The healthcare system is at risk of being overwhelmed by an exponential function. That means, to a first approximation, nothing matters except the last doubling.
Discussion questions: How does this policy, implemented now, affect the time span of the last doubling of COVID cases in the US? Does it do fuck all? Why, or why not?
And just like Italy went from "contained" to a country-wide lockdown in the space of a week, so will we at this point. Those tens of thousands of cases are incubating right now and will emerge in the coming days.
This travel ban does nothing.
What are you on about? We have fewer deaths than far more countries than that (France and Spain for instance) and per capita we are doing even better.
The US has fewer deaths than the following countries per capita:
Italy, Iran, China, S. Korea, Spain, France, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Albania, Lebanon, Netherlands, Belgium, Panama, Ireland, Iraq, Bulgaria, Japan, Australia, UK
Country Population and coronavirus numbers can be pulled here:
> What are you on about? We have fewer deaths than far more countries than that
You edited out the second sentence. The full quote is:
Only vs. China, Iran and Italy. We're within a factor of two (that is, about 5-6 days) of everyone else.
which is accurate.
The statement is inaccurate any way you slice it. Why use incomplete information when more is available?
The statement was accurate. It may not be a useful metric, but it was an accurate one.
But it's also not the case when looking only at absolute numbers either. I would also argue that per capita is implied because it's the only way you can really make that comparison.
In order to not significantly undercount the number of coronavirus deaths attributed to other causes in the US, there would need to be wide-spread testing here... which there isn't.
Imaging (by the way, you're referencing tests on live patients not dead ones) could be used as another kind of coronavirus test, though an extremely inefficient one, so probably is essentially un-used. Anyway, for pneumonia I believe we're talking about x-rays which is poor at distinguishing coronavirus (see link). Not to mention all of this is brand new. So approximately zero Radiologists are trained and using radiology in a clinical setting to diagnose coronavirus in people who have apparently died of pneumonia.