[remarkEon]

I'm guessing we're going to get a lot of these sentiments over the next couple weeks (months?), about how these restrictions are interfering with the comforts of modern life.

Let it stand as a reminder of how good we have it, and how fragile things actually are. It's a pandemic. There's going to be some bumps.

[hcknwscommenter]

The ridiculous part of this whole travel ban 3.0 is that it is totally unnecessary. If the U.S. had proper testing infrastructure, we could test every single person arriving from abroad and make them wait the 4 hours required to get a read. S. Korea has that type of testing infrastructure. We invented the darn technology. There are no excuses for the deplorable, laughable, incompetent, disgraceful (I could go on) roll out (actually lack thereof) of testing in the U.S. As best I can tell, we now (today) have capacity to test about a 1,000 samples a day? Unbelievable. Give me three water baths, any old microtiter plate fluorometer, and enough tubes and reagents and I can run 1,000 samples a day by hand.

[makomk]

Testing every single person arriving from abroad wouldn't work. The test is not reliable for people still in the incubation phase, and with exponential spread being what it is there are going to be a lot of those. I don't think there's any country on the planet taking that approach; they're all either banning travel from affected countries or forcing a 14-day quarantine period on travellers from them. The American media seems to have oversold people on how powerful testing is for domestic political reasons.

Also, 4 hour turnaround testing is really hard and I don't know of anywhere other than South Korea has managed it. They basically have to process the tests on site after collecting samples to achieve that, which is no easy feat as it requires not only specialised equipment and trained staff but also a carefully set up positive pressure room to prevent sample contamination. Plus, one of the key things that makes South Korea's approach so effective is that people drive up, get a sample taken, then immediately drive home to avoid spreading the disease to anyone else rather than waiting around for results.

I haven't even seen any examples of countries with substantial travel from Europe that routinely test people who've been there recently and developed mild potential symptoms. South Korea probably could but I haven't seen any confirmation that they do; they mostly seem to be focused on contact tracing and the large local outbreak. The UK and Europe don't. Maybe China does? Again, the American media has been running stories making it sound like the fact the US isn't testing everyone with a cough and a sniffle puts them massively behind the rest of the world and confusing people about what the rest of the world is actually doing.

[lenkite]

They don't have a serological test yet. The test uses RNA extraction. So, the testing all over the world is time consuming and testing kits are expensive. I don't think this is just a US problem.

[hcknwscommenter]

You are just wrong. RNA extraction is dead simple. The basic extraction technology dates to the 1980s. The extraction reagents are (or at least very much can be) very simple ad very cheap chemicals like trizol reagent.

[T-A]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51836898

[La1n]

For the people that don't like clicking links:

>Nearly 20,000 people are being tested every day for coronavirus in South Korea, more people per capita than anywhere else in the world.

>The whole process from test tube to test result is about five to six hours.

[jaclaz]

Then, the first positive result that you get should mean that the whole plane is at risk, after all we are talking of people that have been jammed together on the plane for some 8 hours (on the same recirculating air) and then kept (possibly also jammed together) for another 5-6 hours at the airport to wait for the results, that is - from what I can understand of the way the virus is transmitted - the perfect environment to diffuse the virus.

The only meaningful way I can imagine (not doable in practice) is having travelers lodged at a departure airport hotel, and be tested before taking the flight.

[vogatt]

This (the recirculation part) is likely less tragic than it seems.

Air recilculated on the airplane goes through a HEPA filter and the whole air is exchanged every 3 minutes. HEPA filters are able to catch the virus as far as I know.

source: https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/630300-coved-19-recircul...

[bryanrasmussen]

I don't know it seems like it might be dumb to make an exception that would be hard to check and thus might be hard to apply and would mean that anyone who didn't want their comforts interfered with could say "I'm an immediate family member!"

But I guess the ethical will follow the rules and be uncomfortable, and the unethical won't, as per standard operating procedure.

On Edit: Why the downvote?