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11-27-2021, 12:06 PM #17401Registered User
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Do you really think this is how covid got around, via a pennyless illegal running across the border to get a shitty job in America ?
OR does covid get around on really nice clean people who have assloads of money which they spend to travel cuz they have great jobs where they meet other really nice clean people from all over the world who also have assloads of money to travel ?
In 2020 heli skiing in BC got shut down because 3 people in 3 ops tested positive, I'm pretty sure they just flew in and rented a car ... no coyotes involvedLee Lau - xxx-er is the laziest Asian canuck I know
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11-27-2021, 12:09 PM #17402
To Vaccinate or Not---The Rat Flu Odyssey Continues
The banning of travel isn’t a punishment, nor a comeuppance— it’s a public health measure
In a world with rampant uncontrollable virus spread, the suppression of trade or tourism isn’t the primary problem
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11-27-2021, 12:11 PM #17403
My response is that is a bunch of South African politician BS spew.
South Africa has ample vaccine stocks and refused further deliveries due to lack of demand. South Africa may in fact have been one the few countries where, pre-Omicron, the pandemic had morphed into endemic levels due to massive infection during the last year.
And if you think I said that COVID was no big deal in South Africa, you didn't read my posts. It was a HUGE deal in South Africa. HUGE. Things were Italy 2020 bad. (Italy and SA have about the same population size, but median age in Italy is 47 vs 27 in SA while cumulative deaths are 134K vs 90K respectively).
South Africa is not its neighbors.
South Africa is NOT the best or only place performing genetic sequencing. They are not more extensive than the US. Seriously. Who the fuck told you that load of bullshit? They have sequenced like 0.5% of cases while we have gotten up to close to 5% of current testing, which is about where we need to be.
You would have been telling us about how we shouldn't take one single action against the PRC because we would be punishing them for sharing information January. Well, unlike China, I think South Africa is acting in good faith. Your logic is the same logic of the people screaming RACIST about wanting to ban travel from/through China in mid-January 2020.
So all that said, what exactly is your proposed response to knowing about a potential new VOC that has a geographically oriented primary prevalence that we could take some self protective action against?Originally Posted by blurred
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11-27-2021, 12:17 PM #17404
Don’t question altaslob, he knows everything. He is an attorney in Tacoma after all and the most woke person on the planet.
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11-27-2021, 12:33 PM #17405Registered User
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No I just think Covid gets around on international travelers with the means to travel easily in international airports
most of the Covid originaly came to USA from china thru Yurp
and in other news worldometer is just about to clock 800,000 dead Americans
should happen tomorrowLee Lau - xxx-er is the laziest Asian canuck I know
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11-27-2021, 12:33 PM #17406
Worried about dirt immigrants 1400 miles away taking their white collar college grad job...
Worried about same dirt poor immigrants giving them COVID but won't wear a mask or get the vaccine...
Did I miss something??Go that way really REALLY fast. If something gets in your way, TURN!
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11-27-2021, 12:35 PM #17407
You should pay more attention to your sarcasm meter than the worldometer
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11-27-2021, 12:42 PM #17408
300,000+ people came from the PRC after the “travel ban” took effect. It was never a travel ban, and neither is this. It’s a ban on foreigners traveling to the US. some antivax lardass Texan on coming back from his hunting safari in Zimbabwe is likely more a risk, but they are fine.
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11-27-2021, 12:46 PM #17409
I think it’s a bit different this time with better testing for US citizens returning. It could buy a little time. On the other hand this could be the end.
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11-27-2021, 12:46 PM #17410Registered User
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11-27-2021, 12:47 PM #17411
I honestly an starting to doubt seatbelts or airbags could be introduced to the US in the present environment. Because they don't prevent all deaths. I hope I'm wrong and just being too pessimistic.
Who is doing the most sequencing? Or I guess it could be several countries. And why is 5% were it needs to be, is that just cost/effort per detection of variants or are variants rare enough that any more sequencing is wasted?
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11-27-2021, 12:48 PM #17412
Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, echoes a lot of what I said in an opinion column in today's NYTimes.
Second, the United States must ramp up genomic surveillance — monitoring viral genes and how they evolve over time — to identify Omicron when it arrives and track it as it potentially spreads through the country. The United States has been a surprising laggard on genomic sequencing and must do better.Lastly, America must push for a global effort to get more people in Africa vaccinated. While global vaccinations have been rising quickly, much of the African continent has been left behind. In South Africa, just under a quarter of the population has been fully vaccinated.
The signal to the next country is
If you identify a variant and share it with the global community
You will be punished with a travel ban
I am not pro or anti travel bans
They can be useful in instances
But we should know that its weak tool for fighting a global pandemic
What I really dislike about travel bans is people assume they work and when they realize they don't work, they blame the government (which further deters people's faith in their government). From the beginning of this pandemic, every country has had a me first, insular reaction. It's as if we can gate off the rich from the peons in the ghetto. Experts have been saying from the beginning that this is not possible. You cannot wall off the problem, you need to address the problem where it lies (i.e. vaccinating poor countries with effective vaccines). The travel-ban, wall-off attitude permeates through other areas of policy. I mean, look at MTT who is honestly trying to claim that the southern border is somehow a COVID concern right now. There are a lot more MTTs in the US than Summits.Last edited by altasnob; 11-27-2021 at 01:26 PM.
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11-27-2021, 01:29 PM #17413
I agree what we did was a joke in January 2020, sadly, and we paid for it. It was by Chinese design and American incompetence. We weren't testing and we weren't even symptom screening. Quarantine should have been the order of the day and it wasn't.
I'm advocating for better: anyone transiting or originating from the region banned or quarantined. Probably it needs to last about 120 days, evaluate every 30 days. If Omicron becomes widespread in the US, end the ban. If Omicron is deemed a non-threat, end the ban. Govs don't follow this. Look at Canada, they only lifted the US travel ban in August.
Unlike 2020, there is at least a blanket testing requirement, which will catch the majority.Originally Posted by blurred
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11-27-2021, 01:31 PM #17414
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11-27-2021, 01:31 PM #17415
Australia, NZ, Iceland (last I looked) are doing the most sequencing... they were hitting half or most cases.
WHO recommends >5%.
See, the point is not to ID every case, because for the most part you don't treat cases different based on variant (although you could have targeted MAB if you had timely results). The point is to detect emergent VOCs early and understand prevalence trends of variants. Basically, is a new variant behind a local spike and is that a threat?
We only really started surveillance in the US at the end of 2020 and it was a modest start. We expanded capacity significantly during 2021.Originally Posted by blurred
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11-27-2021, 01:33 PM #17416
Just call them freedom belts
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11-27-2021, 01:37 PM #17417
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11-27-2021, 01:39 PM #17418Originally Posted by abraham
The variant has prompted several countries to impose restrictions such as travel bans on several southern African countries, against the advice of the World Health Organization
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11-27-2021, 01:45 PM #17419
Knows or should know exactly what I said in my post about the reality of SA vs the rest of Africa. SA reached an apparent endemic state and wasn't interested in mass vaccination on the individual level.
it certainly deters countries from being honest with their data.
The alternative is being a goddamned motherfucking selfish asshole, like the People's Republic of China.
South Africa did the right thing. They aren't being punished. This is PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY, not behaviorism applied to nation states. And Ashish understands that.
Rather than a ban, why can you not require a 14 day quarantine? I wouldn't oppose proof of vaccination and a quarantine (the Belgium chick was not vaccinated).
Experts have been saying from the beginning that this is not possible.
So let's agree:
1. Poorly executed travel bans don't work.
2. Well executed travel bands buy some time in the short term but should not be sustained.
You can cannot wall off the problem,
you need to address the problem where it lies (i.e. vaccinating poor countries with effective vaccines).Originally Posted by blurred
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11-27-2021, 01:46 PM #17420
To Vaccinate or Not---The Rat Flu Odyssey Continues
Really?
A large slice of the public don’t use logic anymore
Pizza parlor pedophile rings
Space lasers
Invading the Capitol
People screaming in PTA meetings about CRT; school boards dismissing good administrators for not following the bullshit fear-mongering hype machine
Politicians voting against their constituencies’ best interest to not fund the government or an infrastructure bill or stop a pandemic
Pure partisan insanity
[ETA]I think we’re addressing diverging thoughts about the original statement
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11-27-2021, 02:12 PM #17421
I don't know anything so I don't have an educated opinion on travel bans. That said, pre-Covid, a pandemic simulation was run as part of a preparedness exercise (John Hopkins 2018 in DC, CladeX ). One of the things that stood out to me was that certain measures, despite being known to be ineffective or counter productive, would have to be enacted because of 'demand' and perception of taking action. Not logical and demonstrated need, rather appetite for perceived 'action' (politics / optics). One of those actions was travel bans. Also worth noting, many of the missteps of the former guy were forecasted and cautioned against; even our public reactions were prescient.
https://www.centerforhealthsecurity....de_x_exercise/
https://www.globalhealthnow.org/2018...sible-pandemic
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31593508/
The assembled experts quickly mapped out the case against travel bans. Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, playing the role of the CDC director (a role she held in real life from 2002-2009), pointed out that Frankfurt is a major airport hub, so banning just one leg of the journey wouldn’t work. Travel bans, she explained, are simply “…not effective, impractical and potentially harmful.”
The White House National Security Advisor, played by Tom Inglesby, MD, director of the Center for Health Security, pushed the Council to consider whether there could be any circumstances under which travel would be banned? And, if not, he asked, how should that be explained to Americans, given bans by other countries? The discussion underscored the importance of education and communication surrounding sensitive issues that might seem counterintuitive to people outside the public health community.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...el-ban/381577/
Again, while these diseases (and circumstances) are very different some of the same arguments would seem to apply to COVID. I dunno. There's all sorts of differences.
The first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States has caused some to call on the United States to ban travel for anyone from the countries in West Africa facing the worst of the Ebola epidemic.
That response is understandable. It’s only human to want to protect ourselves and our families. We want to defend ourselves, so isn’t the fastest, easiest solution to put up a wall around the problem?
A travel ban is not the right answer. It’s simply not feasible to build a wall – virtual or real – around a community, city, or country. A travel ban would essentially quarantine the more than 22 million people that make up the combined populations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
We don't want to isolate parts of the world, or people who aren't sick, because that's going to drive patients with Ebola underground, making it infinitely more difficult to address the outbreak.When a wildfire breaks out we don’t fence it off. We go in to extinguish it before one of the random sparks sets off another outbreak somewhere else.
We don’t want to isolate parts of the world, or people who aren’t sick, because that’s going to drive patients with Ebola underground, making it infinitely more difficult to address the outbreak.
It could even cause these countries to stop working with the international community as they refuse to report cases because they fear the consequences of a border closing.
Stopping planes from flying from West Africa would severely limit the ability of Americans to return to the United States or of people with dual citizenship to get home, wherever that may be.
In addition to not stopping the spread of Ebola, isolating countries will make it harder to respond to Ebola, creating an even greater humanitarian and health care emergency.
Importantly, isolating countries won’t keep Ebola contained and away from American shores. Paradoxically, it will increase the risk that Ebola will spread in those countries and to other countries, and that we will have more patients who develop Ebola in the U.S.
People will move between countries, even when governments restrict travel and trade. And that kind of travel becomes almost impossible to track.
Isolating communities also increases people’s distrust of government, making them less likely to cooperate to help stop the spread of Ebola.
Isolating communities and regions within countries will also backfire. Restricting travel or trade to and from a community makes the disease spread more rapidly in the isolated area, eventually putting the rest of the country at even greater risk.
To provide relief to West Africa, borders must remain open and commercial flights must continue.
There is no more effective way to protect the United States against additional Ebola cases than to address this outbreak at the source in West Africa. That’s what our international response—including the stepped-up measures the president announced last month—will do.
What works most effectively for quelling disease outbreaks like Ebola is not quarantining huge populations.
What works is focusing on and isolating the sick and those in direct contact with them as they are at highest risk of infection. This strategy worked with SARS and it worked during the H1N1 flu pandemic. Casting too wide a net, such as invoking travel bans, would only provide an illusion of security and would lead to prejudice and stigma around those in West Africa.
Americans can be reassured we are taking measures to protect citizens here.
Today, all outbound passengers from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are screened for Ebola symptoms before they board an airplane.
Staff from CDC and the Department of Homeland Security’s Customers & Border Protection will begin new layers of entry screening, first at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York this Saturday, and in the following week at four additional airports — Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C.; Newark Liberty International Airport; Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport; and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Combined, these U.S. airports receive almost 95 percent of the American-bound travelers from the Ebola-affected countries.
Travelers from those countries will be escorted to an area of the airport set aside for screening. There they will be observed for signs of illness, asked a series of health and exposure questions, and given information on Ebola and information on monitoring themselves for symptoms for 21 days. Their temperature will be checked, and if there’s any concern about their health, they’ll be referred to the local public health authority for further evaluation or monitoring.
Controlling Ebola at its source – in West Africa – is how we will win this battle. When countries are isolated, we cannot get medical supplies and personnel efficiently to where they’re needed – making it impossible to fight the virus in West Africa.
As the WHO’s Gregory Hartl said recently, “Travel restrictions don’t stop a virus. If airlines stop flying to West Africa, we can’t get the people that we need to combat this outbreak, and we can’t get the food and the fuel and other supplies that people there need to survive.”
We know how to stop Ebola: by isolating and treating patients, tracing and monitoring their contacts, and breaking the chains of transmission.
Until Ebola is controlled in West Africa, we cannot get the risk to zero here in the United States.
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11-27-2021, 02:24 PM #17422
I was referring to this idea that if some action is not completely effective at eliminating something then it's not worth doing.
Summit gave you an idea of why some type of travel ban/limit/surveillance is a useful tool. New Zealand had no covid for a long time, yes eventually it got in, and yes it might have been expensive. But they made that choice and it looked to me like it made the quality of life pretty good while they had time to prepare.
I've had the same discussion with a friend about masks. It seems clear there's some benefit, but there are always contrarians. Some question masks in general, some say they aren't completely effective. And they aren't completely effective, but that's not their role. We still have dipshits saying that because you can get covid post vaccination you shouldn't get vaccinated. And again, there's truth that people can still get sick. But when you look at numbers like the ones posted from Wenatchee, there's a clear improvement in quality of life by being vaccinated. So sure there's no magic bullet to eliminate your chance of getting covid, short of eating a bullet, but there are things and actions that seem to make a difference in reducing your risk. And still there's a chorus of: It's not good enough, it doesn't prevent everything. Maybe those people are addicted to outrage or fear, I don't understand it.
When this all started last year I went back and read this article I remembered from the BBC, it seemed like a chance to think about the times I'd read about disease running through communities in the past. I've never really had to deal with the existential threat of communicable diseases, technology is amazing. But this is and was a chance to understand and empathize with how people can't with disease in the past.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-35064071
On 1 November 1666 farm worker Abraham Morten gasped his final breath - the last of 260 people to die from bubonic plague in the remote Derbyshire village of Eyam. Their fate had been sealed four months earlier when the entire village made the remarkable decision to quarantine itself in an heroic attempt to halt the spread of the Great Plague. This is the story of the villagers who refused to run.
Abraham was in his late 20s when he died. He was one of 18 Mortens listed as plague victims on the parish register.
But the story of the plague in Eyam had begun 14 months earlier, with the arrival of a bale of cloth sent from London, where the disease had already killed thousands of inhabitants.
Contained in the bale of damp cloth were fleas carrying the plague.
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11-27-2021, 02:24 PM #17423
He lost me with the wildfire analogy. Containment, walling off, is the primary strategy for wildfires. It’s not black and white. If you use different words like “travel restrictions and quarantine”, people are more receptive than using the word “ban” for anything.
In altaslob’s world, quarantines would be useless and harmful too. I think he worries too much about personal freedom rather than the survival of society. Maybe I’m wrong but in every thread that’s how he comes across.
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11-27-2021, 02:28 PM #17424
Well except where he thought people shouldn't be allowed to live in the woods because of fires, and they really should all live in cities because providing services to rural Americans was a waste of resources. Or something like that, at some point the inane arguments cease to be worth remembering.
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11-27-2021, 02:40 PM #17425Registered User
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