Lt. Gov. Josh Green hopes to reopen Hawaii’s tourism industry by July
hawaiinewsnow.com
hawaiinewsnow.com
But I have also read some other countries like Taiwan and Korea have better testing regimens in place, which high accuracy and fast results. Could Hawaii implement such a system for incoming travellers?
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
Because the name of the game is keeping the terrorism rate low. Catching some potentially-dangerous passengers (even if not all) serves that purpose directly and effectively. Nothing remotely "theater" about it.
To my knowledge, the TSA has never caught a terrorist.
Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security conducted a test where they attempted to smuggle weapons or mock explosives onto airplanes. 67 out of 70 times, they succeeded.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-fin...
In the meantime, passengers have to wait in long lines and endure random indignities.
It was simply intended to raise the difficulty of getting weapons onto a plane enough that terrorists would choose other, easier options. It's irrelevant that DHS can get weapons onto a plane--there's no risk to their agents when they get caught since they can just flash a badge and move on with their lives. If a terrorist gets caught with actual weapons, the consequence is failure and imprisonment for the rest of their life. The risk may be small, but it's significant enough, and it's just the first hurdle. (There are additional hurdles, like locked cockpits, randomly-assigned US marshals on most high-value flights, and 100s of fellow passengers that a would-be terrorist must also contend with.)
And it worked. Terrorists in the West shifted their goals away from attempting to bomb/hijack planes and trains to simply renting trucks and trying to drive them into crowds. This is why bollards began surrounding so many areas that draw large crowds, like sports arenas and pedestrian thoroughfares. (In the U.S. bollards have been required for federal buildings and mass-crowd facilities like Sports Arenas since the Oklahoma City bombing. After a mass-fatality driving accident at Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade, California began requiring them at outdoor malls as well and this has become standard practice in the U.S.)
We know that infected people can spread COVID19 without any deliberate action on their part through the simple, reflexive action of exhaling. This part is not in doubt. The virus has an R0 greater than 2 in uncontrolled circumstances, meaning that each infected person will likely infect at least 2 others. This is the lower bound; other analyses have placed the uncontrolled R0 for COVID19 as high as 6.
Thus, identifying and quarantining as many of those who are infected as possible will reduce the transmission rate because there will be fewer opportunities for those infected people to (unwittingly) infect others. This part is not in doubt. It's basic physics and basic medicine.
As many others have noted now, if I can bring a test result taken days ago, I can easily have acquired the virus in the meantime. On the plane, for example. As you note, respiratory viruses are usually contagious, and there’s an incubation period where you probably won’t test positive or show symptoms.
If we can devise low impact ways to reduce the transmission rate (masks, chokepoint testing, remote temperate checks) then we can do away with the more onerous methods (closing down the entire global economy for example).
We have to do something (to reduce transmission)! This is something! Let’s do it!
And there's nothing theoretical about this. Regularly stopping infected individuals form boarding planes will reduce the transmission rate, not in theory, but in fact.
That is not itself a justification for doing more of them.
The world really needs to stop self harming itself in order to protect a few boomers with power.
It's very clear that the vast majority of people under 50 are not at risk of dying from covid19 in developed countries with adequate healthcare.
And the problems they experience will have an impact economically going forward.
only a small percentage get seriously ill, less than 5% across all age groups, with much less in the younger groups
> And the problems they experience will have an impact economically going forward.
The US economy at large is/has been destroyed, with up to half of the layoffs likely being permanent job losses.
Europe has avoided mass layoffs, but the US is throwing tens of millions of its citizens under a bus. Lockdown has to end in weeks, not months.
The way to have done this was to have a swift, effective response to the virus. We missed that. Now we are suffering the consequences.
Other places did better and are not having to make as stark a choice.
In the US, this is anathema to the ruling party, so even trillion-dollar nominal relief legislation is structured to channel money with little oversight primarily to corporations, and erect preferential barriers to relief reaching states, local governments, and citizens' pockets.
There is more concern in the US ruling party over the "moral hazard" of a fast-food worker in a big city on the edge of poverty receiving unemployment that exceeds their $8 per hour salary, than there is over shell companies thrown together in a week receiving $55M no-bid contracts to resell PPE seized by the federal government from the states [1].
[1] See Blue Flame Medical, Oren-Pines, Panthera, et al.
Creates pretty bad incentives if implemented (people will seek out the virus). Also relies on accuracy of individualized antibody tests.
I know it’s unconventional but this is not a normal situation. If it was done in an orderly and controlled fashion, possibly even incorporating vaccine testing, this had the greatest odds of actually fixing the problem as a whole.
I'm going to err on the side of not getting it if given a choice.
What I don't feel is correct is to institute policy based on things that the CDC says are not effective enough to determine policy. Or to support intentional infection based on not understanding the illness well enough. The reason I don't support that is not because I care about what the people forcing infection do to themselves, but what they do to the people that need to support them (hospitals, going out when ill and infecting others who didn't sign up for that, etc).
infection passports are problematic because these incentives crop up for people who are actually at notable risk but either need the economic livelihood or just don't believe the facts around the virus
Regarding anti body tests, there was literally just a notice from the CDC saying the current tests can't really be trusted for policy decisions. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/anti...
The numbers are absolutely clear: if you’re under the age of 50, you are overwhelmingly likely to have nothing more than a minor illness. Over 30% of infections are estimated to be asymptomatic. In New York, over 90% of hospitalizations (in addition to being heavily skewed to the elderly) involved one or more comorbidities. Nearly 90% had two or more.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.the-scientist.com/news-opin...
Acknowledging that most cases are minor and not that bad doesn't mean you have to run down the entire path of doubting the virus' threat.
While I would not phrase it so harshly, I understand the point. But looking further down the road: I worry that if we encounter a virus that truly does threaten the entire population, that we'll end up in a permanent, North Korea-like state. The precedent has been set for this by the Covid-19 experience.