Austria Urges Homecoming as Rest of the World Deemed Unsafe | Hacker News Reader

Austria Urges Homecoming as Rest of the World Deemed Unsafe

bloomberg.com

37 pointslihaciudaniel11 comments

Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific airline just increased capacity on some flights from the US:

..this capacity increase is because the airline “understands that many Hong Kong students and citizens in North America are eager to come home as soon as possible in time for the Easter break.”

[...]

This decision comes as Hong Kong has issued a “red” travel alert for the United States, requiring a 14 day quarantine for anyone who has been in the United States for the past 14 days.

Given that this situation is about to get significantly worse in the US, many from Hong Kong clearly feel more comfortable returning there, where the situation is under much better control.

[...]

I believe the (Canadian) govt. wants to minimize the cost and hardship of an emergency evacuation in case things get hairy in any particular part of the world where response to the virus is inadequate:

Case in point: The Israel-Hezbollah conflict of 2006 and subsequent evacuation of Lebanese Canadians. Some hard lessons learnt there.

https://sencanada.ca/content/sen/committee/391/fore/rep/rep1... https://toronto.citynews.ca/2006/07/19/canadians-begin-evacu... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/lebanon-evacua...

Canada also encouraging return of residents [0]

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-travellers-abroad-...

I'm shocked the haven't closed the border to the US yet.

Surely the direct flight ban from EU->USA means tons of people are simply flying to Canada then on to the USA.... I'd be interested to see if there has been an uptick in travellers transiting through Canada.

I think the US ban is against people who have been in the EU recently, not just people flying direct?

Canada is funneling international flights through a few airports, and asking people who come from outside the country to self isolate for 14 days. It's not completely open season for traveling here.

Closing the US Canada border entirely would be insane, there are communities in both countries which are only connected by land to the other country. There is literally a town split in the middle by the border. Tons of freight is trucked through (which unlike other modes of shipping doesn't have a natural hand-off at the border). Etc.

On the flip side, Canada has just started communicating to it's citizens pretty strongly that they should come home right away... so closing the border soon might be in the works.

> Closing the US Canada border entirely would be insane

Oh, I know. Look how many countries around the world are completely closing their borders. I'll be shocked if all borders in the world aren't closed in the next week (two max)

At this point, I doubt anywhere is safe.

Apparently China is totally safe and everything is under control.

I do wonder though.

Get to a place where the virus hasn't taken hold yet, within a country that's taking decisive action against it spreading. Then quarantine yourself for 14 days, so that you won't transmit the virus to others (in case you're infected) and create a dangerous community-spread outbreak in the process. Plenty of people will essentially be safe from this, the whole problem is the sheer amount of people who won't.

I don’t think the country you’re describing exists.

Some countries have been successful in getting the virus under control.

Quick, decisive quarantine followed by heavy testing to carefully track and manage the virus has enabled badly effected regions to mostly get back to normal.

The worst places to be right now are the areas with insufficient testing and no broad quarantine.

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