Community Updates on Coronavirus Travel Restrictions

On 3/8/2020 at 6:28 PM, Captain Fathom said:

And yet this Corona virus outbreak is being hyped and weaponized in part for political service

Pure BS, unless you mean it is being ignored and downplayed for political service.

2 hours ago, tursiops said:

Pure BS, unless you mean it is being ignored and downplayed for political service.

When I say weaponized I do not mean deliberate spread, I mean that an unfortunate circumstance is being used for political purpose. And that is not BS. It is very difficult for normal people to make reasonable decisions when so much of the news media is providing false or deliberately hyped information. I am going to go to the WHO and CDC, not NBC or MSNBC, for information. 

The government of the Philippines has announced "community quarantine" in the entirety of metro Manila. Domestic air travel is shut down, and highways will be closed by the weekend. That means access to all dive sites is not possible via Manila but access to some is currently possible via Cebu. However it is clear that we will see nationwide cases soon, so restrictions are certain to expand. 

Sometimes I get the impression this virus has more impact on the brain than on the lungs.  Getting bizarre.  Here in Germany we had 25.000 peoples dying from the flue in 2018 alone. Zero so far on Corona. And people stack loopaper for the next 10 years... Lets have a Mexican beer, shall we?      

 

Germany is going to get hot in 1-2 months too, although you don’t have the problem of gross incompetence at the highest levels of government.  

Anyone saying this is a hype or a hoax is watching too much US Pravda TV and Facebook groups.... I’d like to chuckle and say go for the Darwin Award ... but the reality is people who are young and become carriers will be killing 60+ year olds. 

Also Spanish Flu on 1918 had three mortality peaks - one small in June, the highest one in November, and another medium one the following Spring. So it may get better and then much worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1918_spanish_flu_waves.gif

Hi,
its a virus very simmilar to the flue.
But a bit more deadly.
We had 25000 flue invected, dont know how many have died this year. But sure more than this one!
And its allways the older or not so fit persons...
A scientific pro had sayed that it is possible that this virus was around for years,
but nobody had been tested for it.
So if somebody died in wintertime while flue is around, nobody would have had a look for that virus...

In the moment i am sitting on a tropical island, no case here...
But i got a mail that i have to go home one week earlier, because there will be no more flights....
Here its save, and at home?
Had to shorten the annual dive trip from 20 to 12 days before out of medical reasons.
Now 7 days less....
Only spent a lot of money and had a stressy time traveling for nothing..
And thats the annual "long" holiday. Have no idea if i can get another one this year...

Any we will do this and that in 3 days mean, that all the people will do it before, so no effect.
If i tell you te traffic will be shut down on monday, you will leave saturday...
And if infected, take it with you...

Regards,
Wolfgang

Travel ban to the Philippines has been expanded to a really long list of countries including all Europe and North America.

https://www.rappler.com/nation/254274-philippines-bans-foreigners-novel-coronavirus-hit-countries?fbclid=IwAR0i61ryThPIoNMF5-IuhiCfVTV4MP6uTNFE7gWojlISHcxmummai98Np7E

The point of government action is not to eliminate new cases, but to flatten the curve. It’s all about the Rate of Rise of the transmission curve, so that we do not swamp the health care system. That is what is going to kill people.

All humans on the planet have a responsibility to each other, and especially the elderly and compromised, to do their part as governments direct. There are lots more smart people running the show than Youtubers, Facebookers, Tweeters and the like.

As a recently retired physician, my provincial medical licensing body has put me on notice I may be called back into service if the shit really hits the fan....

ian

Well said, Ian

20 hours ago, Captain Fathom said:

When I say weaponized I do not mean deliberate spread, I mean that an unfortunate circumstance is being used for political purpose. And that is not BS. It is very difficult for normal people to make reasonable decisions when so much of the news media is providing false or deliberately hyped information. I am going to go to the WHO and CDC, not NBC or MSNBC, for information. 

 

 

 

It amazes me, however, that when the media directly quote or link to the primary sources, like CDC or WHO, that the information is suddenly deemed false.

I live in Milan, italy..… the situation is really difficult… only my region(lombardy)  today had 146 people dead… the total deaths in lombardy only, is now 890...  isn't a joke, i some place(bergamo province) they  no longer know where to put the bodies of deceased people... morgues are full… :-(  please don't underestimate the situation! ;-) 

Boletus

Sobering indeed.... I just heard a CBC program on the situation in Lombardy and other parts of Northern Italy. It sounds very dire.

The head of the Italian society of critical care was interviewed. His comment was the only control measure that will have any real effect is "social distancing". Forget the masks until you are infected, and gloves are of no use at all....False sense of security and possibly makes things worse.

Wash your hands, but most importantly stay away from close contact with unknown people and stay away from mass gatherings...

Fingers crossed for the affected people in Italy, and a cautionary tale for the rest of the world. This is NOT the 'flu' or a 'bad cold', despite what conspiracy theorists will say.

In the end, concern about cancelled basketball games and cancelled dive trips will seem banal.

ian

This is  the single most useful aggregation of factual information I have found so far:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

The typical timetable to get a medicine through a trial is well over 1 year assuming you have something that works

Considering that the level of proximity in planes is not compliant with the requirements to prevent covid transmission I am concerned that if there is no alternative approach there won’t be any trips involving flights for some time. This may lead to disintegration of the diving industry and maybe other touristic enterprises

On a positive note pollution is dropping and the air is cleaning at this pace this will be more effective of any government green emissions scheme

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think Interceptor 121 may be correct... this might be a long process, but maybe something good will come of it. The world does generally seem to be coming together and maybe there are long term lessons we can learn for this, in many areas of human interaction.

That said, and not trying to be unrealistic, but the SARS outbreak lead to rapid escalation of research activity, and bypassing of some regulations. (It's too bad we didn't learn long term lessons from that outbreak!).This is not without some risk, but people are pretty smart these days. I have confidence that the scientific community will get ahead of this.

I saw this:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.987958v1

This type of "treatment" may serve as a bridge until a full-on vaccine is on the shelf. One of many areas of investigation:)

Fingers washed and crossed!!

I think it will be faster to accept the consequences and take the risk of some people dying. In some countries they don't think the same way about life and I think they will rather get on with things than have everybody starve

Probably a mix of things and then when you go to one of those countries you need to self isolate at return

I would be ok with that

@Interceptor121 You have it backwards...

For example - to visit NZ right now you would have to spend 14 days in self-quarantine when you enter the country. That would make for a very long (and somewhat boring) first two weeks of a holiday. They care (much less) about if you choose to self quarantine once you get back home.

And BTW - suggesting that people should accept the risk and have some of their country-people die is a pretty piss-poor view of the world. You are very lucky that your own government backed away from a similar strategy given the "acceptable loss" number had ballooned up to ~250k people. 

Life is valuable, regardless of where you live.

 

[mention=34353]Interceptor121[/mention] You have it backwards...
For example - to visit NZ right now you would have to spend 14 days in self-quarantine when you enter the country. That would make for a very long (and somewhat boring) first two weeks of a holiday. They care (much less) about if you choose to self quarantine once you get back home.

And BTW - suggesting that people should accept the risk and have some of their country-people die is a pretty piss-poor view of the world. You are very lucky that your own government backed away from a similar strategy given the "acceptable loss" number had ballooned up to ~250k people. 

Life is valuable, regardless of where you live.

 

PNG citizens have no interests in dying, thanks very much. The PNG public are campaigning to close the borders to protect their health over the economy and the government has responded. No international flights inbound to PNG from Sunday. Qantas and Virgin have both cancelled all international flights from Australia from June 30. Australia is denying entry to all non-residents from 9pm tomorrow. NZ has already started this.

For the minute, travel is off. I guess we'll see what happens with a grand reopening at some point later in the year...if this works.

1 minute ago, errbrr said:

PNG citizens have no interests in dying, thanks very much. The PNG public are campaigning to close the borders to protect their health over the economy and the government has responded. No international flights inbound to PNG from Sunday. Qantas and Virgin have both cancelled all international flights from Australia from June 30. Australia is denying entry to all non-residents from 9pm tomorrow. NZ has already started this.

For the minute, travel is off. I guess we'll see what happens with a grand reopening at some point later in the year...if this works.

Sorry but if a vaccine or cure is 18 months away what are you going to eat in the interim? This is not going to go away in 6 months.

I hope this does not end up in going back to over fishing!

21 hours ago, ianmarsh said:

I think Interceptor 121 may be correct... this might be a long process, but maybe something good will come of it. The world does generally seem to be coming together and maybe there are long term lessons we can learn for this, in many areas of human interaction.

That said, and not trying to be unrealistic, but the SARS outbreak lead to rapid escalation of research activity, and bypassing of some regulations. (It's too bad we didn't learn long term lessons from that outbreak!).This is not without some risk, but people are pretty smart these days. I have confidence that the scientific community will get ahead of this.

I saw this:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.987958v1

This type of "treatment" may serve as a bridge until a full-on vaccine is on the shelf. One of many areas of investigation:)

Fingers washed and crossed!!

I agree that this is likely to take a while to resolve.

Also, I want to point out that Biorxiv is for preprints, that is, they have not gone through peer review yet, so be very cautious about anything published there.  It could well be correct, but also might have errors in methodology or analysis, for example.  I am not saying that it is wrong, but to read papers there with a higher than normal level of skepticism.