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by anonsivalley652 2296 days ago
The tl;dr: Health security theater catches about half of cases. Wouldn't the prudent step be to globally announce a two-week quarantine of all arriving passengers? In other words, not a total shutdown but slowing to prevent spread rather than foolishly squeeze out some short-term, imaginary economic gains. It may not be at all popular, but it would be the moral and ethical thing to do.
4 comments
ComputerGuru 2296 days ago
It’s easy to sit in an armchair and claim you’ve found the moral and ethical solution, but there are moral, ethical, and logistical ramifications to instituting a two-week quarantine on all overseas travelers including loss of life.

Are you also going to quarantine every pilot and flight attendant for two weeks each time they land, given their close proximity to possibly infected passengers? What is the point of a quarantine if it’s been shown we can’t reliably detect all cases (when dealing with such volumes)?

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jtdev 2295 days ago
Point of any measures would be to slow the spread of COVID19 and reduce the likelihood of an overwhelming wave of infections that cripples the health system, resulting in greater loss of life than otherwise would occur and unrelated mortality due to said impact on health system.

Even some simple recommendations from leadership (CDC) would be encouraging to see, but we keep being fed a “nothing to see here, no need to panic” politicized message.

Meanwhile, events like HIMSS (~50000 attendees from 90+ countries meeting in Orlando March 9-13 to sell overpriced antiquated health tech software to one another and hear the likes of HHS Secretary Alex Azar deliver keynotes) are likely to be a catalyst for pandemic.

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yokaze 2295 days ago
> Even some simple recommendations from leadership (CDC) would be encouraging to see, but we keep being fed a “nothing to see here, no need to panic” politicized message.

Which recommendations are you missing? (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/get-your...)

And the advice not to panic comes from medical experts.

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jtdev 2295 days ago
The recommendation that “mass gatherings” be postponed or canceled.

WHO defines “mass gatherings” as amplifiers of transmission of COVID19.

The recommendations you linked are basic infection prevention measures, but the fact is that being within 3 feet of someone infected with COVID19 (even asymptomatic) is enough to contract the virus.

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nl 2295 days ago
Point of any measures would be to slow the spread of COVID19 and reduce the likelihood of an overwhelming wave of infections that cripples the health system, resulting in greater loss of life than otherwise would occur and unrelated mortality due to said impact on health system.

Selective travel bans would seem to be just as effective for this, and a lot more practical.

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etrabroline 2290 days ago
>It’s easy to sit in an armchair and claim you’ve found the moral and ethical...

This sounds like moralizing to me.

>including loss of life

How would temporarily not issuing tourist visas kill people?

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sjwright 2295 days ago
Those challenges could be overcome with special protocols. The real problem would be the decimation of the tourism industries.
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nl 2295 days ago
Health security theater catches about half of cases.

It's not security theatre when it's that effective. It provides real benefits in terms of slowing the spread of the disease.

Wouldn't the prudent step be to globally announce a two-week quarantine of all arriving passengers?

The practicalities of that make it pretty difficult. And it means that large numbers of people who don't have the disease will be kept near those who do, meaning some of them are likely to die. (As happened on the cruise ship). I don't think the morals and ethics of this are as obvious as you are making out.

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majos 2295 days ago
Passenger traffic between the USA and the rest of the world was about 20m in March 2019. Not all of this is into the USA, but a sizable fraction must be. Quarantining millions of people in the USA sounds extremely hard.
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themagician 2295 days ago
The prudent step would be putting all resources against a vaccine and taking some risks by skipping to late stage trials for anything that looks promising. Sort of like what happened with Ebola.

Quarantines just buy you a little extra time. If there is no vaccine, the inevitable always arrives.

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grecy 2295 days ago
> taking some risks by skipping to late stage trials for anything that looks promising. Sort of like what happened with Ebola.

I was in Africa when all that went down.

The huge difference here is that the West didn't really care about giving a not-completely-tested drug to Africans in the middle of nowhere.

I don't believe they'll accept that for their own important citizens.

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themagician 2295 days ago
Oh, I 100% agree. Too politically risky.
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mattrp 2295 days ago
Agreed... I remember during Ebola feeling almost as if we simply gave up trying to stamp every little possibility and instead focused on making sure the right patients made it through the system to get the right care. At the same time it’s a little hard to excuse the lack of measurements or even the ability to determine if the virus is present.
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s1artibartfast 2295 days ago
Are you volunteering to take the vaccine?
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