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A comment on U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days. Parent comment

Re:U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days by knzhou on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @10:18PM (#22552954)
Banning travel isn't a magic cure-all that guarantees zero cases, it just lowers the initial caseload. That's extremely important because exponential growth is extremely slow in the beginning -- it takes as long to go from 1 to 100 as 100 to 10,000. If banning travel reduces 100 starter cases to 1, you double the time you have.
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Re:U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days by kyleee on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @10:47PM (#22553163)
Some commenters on this post are having a hard time acknowledging this aspect. I think every little bit helps, this included
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Re:U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days by anigbrowl on Thursday March 12, 2020 @02:16AM (#22554251)
It won't. Screening all arrivals is helpful, but just shutting down travel is going to end up creating a whole new class of problems.
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Re:U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days by DanBC on Thursday March 12, 2020 @03:01AM (#22554475)
Medical officers (and Italy) tell us that screening arrivals doesn't help.
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Re:U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days by anigbrowl on Thursday March 12, 2020 @03:34AM (#22554608)
I was thinking more for data gathering purposes and so on before the healthcare system collapses under the weight of exponential growth. But I take your point.
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Re:U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days by logicchains on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @11:59PM (#22553622)
Every little bit also has a cost, and it's possible for the cost to outweight the benefits, especially when a decision is made without even considering the cost.
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Re:U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days by kyleee on Thursday March 12, 2020 @12:39AM (#22553832)
True and fair point with which I agree. I don't know all the considerations that went into this decision but I lean towards supporting such plans that limit unnecessary chances for exposure
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Re:U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days by ska on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @10:37PM (#22553077)
Problem being, best information is there is no solid numbers on initial case load in the US, for structural reasons. So while your argument may be correct, it may be too late for this to make a difference (perhaps with equal likelihood, but we don't know.)
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Re:U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days by knzhou on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @10:51PM (#22553186)
Yeah, I'd agree with that. At this point it would help a tiny bit, but only because it slightly decreases links between people, like a social distancing measure does.
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Re:U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days by yellowapple on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @11:03PM (#22553273)
> it just lowers the initial caseload

If it's done in time to prevent the bulk of that initial caseload, which is almost certainly not the case here.

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