The Walls Come Down: No Travel Betwen US and Europe for 30 Days

[FaxModem1]

So, worst case scenario, what happens if the US pulls it's funding from the WHO?

[ray245]

So, worst case scenario, what happens if the US pulls it's funding from the WHO?

China use the opportunity to increase WHO funding and further restrict US influence on world politics? US policy-makers can be alarmingly inept at long-term strategic thinking.

I wonder if this crisis is going to finally challenge capitalism as a system that promotes a lack of strategic foresight in its practitioners. Although I highly doubt it.

[chimericoncogene]

So, worst case scenario, what happens if the US pulls it's funding from the WHO?

The WHO loses legitimacy and geopolitical neutrality, and the world loses depoliticized global public health, with impaired responses to future global public health crises, especially among poorer nations. US-allied and neutral nations cease allowing WHO personnel unfettered access to their populations, WHO recommendations are not followed, and unified and coordinated global responses to public health challenges are no longer mounted. In their place, US CDC and WHO recommendations, advisers, and responses compete for space, time, and attention.

Heck, half this current outbreak is people ignoring WHO recommendations and not aggressively testing, monitoring, and containing COVID-19, instead going for various mitigation strategies in February, when the outbreak could have been contained to East Asia.

The reason Trump, that moron, is so confused is precisely because the WHO advised that COVID-19 was bad but containable, and urged everyone to contain it. To many policy-makers, "containable" sounded like "harmless", for semantic reasons, when what the WHO was trying to say was "this is very bad and containment is essential". Europe and North America were lazy with containment efforts, containment was lost, and now the Trump Administration is blaming the WHO for advising that it was containable.

As it turns out, even if it might not have been containable, containment-esque methods are apparently the bare minimum necessary to control COVID-19. That was not immediately clear at the start of the outbreak, since China's containment efforts were highly successful, and there were messaging difficulties - the experts certainly knew that COVID was very very very bad, but couched the strongly worded need for harsh measures in the language of "we hope to achieve containment", not "this is the bare minimum to survive the ultimate doom-plague COVID", because the WHO knew that containing the virus would be the best outcome for the globe, and because nobody had ever seen a pandemic virus that could spread this fast even under containment-type strategies. SARS-1, from 2003, would have been stopped in its tracks.

The moment someone talked about mitigating COVID-19, the WHO and the PRC strongly strongly denounced the move towards mitigation, and advised containment again and again. The WHO did not downplay the outbreak. What happened was a phrasing and messaging issue which did not get through the skulls of unspecialized politicians.

Imagine this sort of thing happening every time a new pandemic rears its ugly head, with everyone slinging geopolitical mud.

[The Romulan Republic]

Mailing of coronavirus relief checks may be delayed several days because the Fuhrer wants his name printed on every check:

https://cnbc.com/2020/04/15/trumps-name ... hecks.html

Paper checks of coronavirus relief payments approved by Congress to be sent to Americans will have President Donald Trump’s name printed on them, a Treasury Department official has confirmed to NBC News.

It won’t be a signature, but “President Donald J. Trump” will be printed on the fronts of the checks, the Treasury official confirmed.

Congress last month passed a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package that includes direct cash payments of up to $1,200 for individuals, with an additional amount for children, as well as other measures. Trump signed it into law.

The majority of coronavirus relief payments are expected to go out by direct deposit, but some people will get paper checks. The Treasury Department expects the checks to start going out next week.

The Washington Post, which first reported the story, said the process of adding Trump’s name to the checks could slow their delivery by days.

The Treasury Department official disputed that and said there would not be any delays.

“Economic Impact Payment checks are scheduled to go out on time and exactly as planned — there is absolutely no delay whatsoever,” a Treasury Department spokesperson said in a statement. “In fact, we expect the first checks to be in the mail early next week which is well in advance of when the first checks went out in 2008 and well in advance of initial estimates.”

More from NBC News:
Senate Republicans investigating WHO and China’s coronavirus response
These medical workers are tackling the coronavirus. They’re also saddled with student debt.
A wealthy private community in Florida is testing every resident and worker for coronavirus antibodies

The move to add his name to the checks sparked criticism that Trump, who is aiming to be re-elected in November, is trying to get voters to believe he is giving them the coronavirus relief payments. It is Congress that passed the package that authorizes the payments.

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, : “You are getting your money late because the President thinks it is more important that his name be on the check than that you are able to pay your bills on time.”

Walter Shaub Jr., who resigned as director of the independent Office of Government Ethics in July 2017 months before his term was to expire, that Trump was using the relief checks to promote himself.

“Where you see the dying and suffering of your fellow Americans, Donald Trump sees another opportunity to promote himself — and, by extension, his reelection campaign. Corruption, you see, has its visionaries,” Shaub wrote.

The coronavirus epidemic has shut down large parts of the economy, and around 16 million people have filed for unemployment in the past few weeks.

As of Tuesday night, there have been more than 606,500 cases of the coronavirus illness COVID-19 in the U.S., with more than 29,500 deaths, according to NBC News’ tally.

Honestly, knowing that sack of shit's name will be on the check makes me want to turn it down.

He wants to claim credit for the cash payments and bribe voters into forgetting how he bungled the response. Surprised he didn't ask to have them gold plated and titled Trump Checks.

[ray245]

The WHO loses legitimacy and geopolitical neutrality, and the world loses depoliticized global public health, with impaired responses to future global public health crises, especially among poorer nations. US-allied and neutral nations cease allowing WHO personnel unfettered access to their populations, WHO recommendations are not followed, and unified and coordinated global responses to public health challenges are no longer mounted. In their place, US CDC and WHO recommendations, advisers, and responses compete for space, time, and attention.

Heck, half this current outbreak is people ignoring WHO recommendations and not aggressively testing, monitoring, and containing COVID-19, instead going for various mitigation strategies in February, when the outbreak could have been contained to East Asia.

The reason Trump, that moron, is so confused is precisely because the WHO advised that COVID-19 was bad but containable, and urged everyone to contain it. To many policy-makers, "containable" sounded like "harmless", for semantic reasons, when what the WHO was trying to say was "this is very bad and containment is essential". Europe and North America were lazy with containment efforts, containment was lost, and now the Trump Administration is blaming the WHO for advising that it was containable.

As it turns out, even if it might not have been containable, containment-esque methods are apparently the bare minimum necessary to control COVID-19. That was not immediately clear at the start of the outbreak, since China's containment efforts were highly successful, and there were messaging difficulties - the experts certainly knew that COVID was very very very bad, but couched the strongly worded need for harsh measures in the language of "we hope to achieve containment", not "this is the bare minimum to survive the ultimate doom-plague COVID", because the WHO knew that containing the virus would be the best outcome for the globe, and because nobody had ever seen a pandemic virus that could spread this fast even under containment-type strategies. SARS-1, from 2003, would have been stopped in its tracks.

The moment someone talked about mitigating COVID-19, the WHO and the PRC strongly strongly denounced the move towards mitigation, and advised containment again and again. The WHO did not downplay the outbreak. What happened was a phrasing and messaging issue which did not get through the skulls of unspecialized politicians.

Imagine this sort of thing happening every time a new pandemic rears its ugly head, with everyone slinging geopolitical mud.

I think in the future, any hope of containment needs to account for management stupidity. Public Health science needs to account for the potential of mismanagement and assume incompetence as a big vector for outbreaks.

[MKSheppard]

Image in spoilers so it don't break boards:
Spoiler

Takeaways

Spain Looks definitely like they're on the downslide after the main killing portion.

USA Looks like we're slowly heading towards a little bit below Italy level of maximum kill (about 10-12 deaths per million) for about 3,500~ dead/day maximum.

UK is tracking very well with Italy. NHS über alles. Shouldn't NHS not have shortages of PPE, since it's a government run organisation and can plan ahead for pandemics and not have to nickel and dime like US hospital administrators?

France The french are playing with their numbers to hide how bad things are. It's impossible to tell what's going on due to their EXTREMELY PREDICTABLE CYCLIC PEAKS LIKE A SINE WAVE.

Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%8 ... land_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coro ... c_in_Spain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coro ... c_in_Italy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coro ... _in_France
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coro ... ted_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coro ... ed_Kingdom
https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-dat ... unties.csv (NYC and New Orleans)

[madd0ct0r]

France The french are playing with their numbers to hide how bad things are. It's impossible to tell what's going on due to their EXTREMELY PREDICTABLE CYCLIC PEAKS LIKE A SINE WAVE.

That will be something like non-hospital coroner's/nursing homes reporting on a weekly / not weekend cycle

[MKSheppard]

In fairness to Cuomo, NYC has the most cases of... anywhere. This is also a whole different question from whether Trump has the authority to open the country unilaterally so... what's your point? (just kidding, I know its bad Whataboutism)

'member when Cuomo wanted a million health care workers and that he might give them back once he was done with them? He hasn't made many friends with his behavior.

I-95 passes through a lot of other states. What happens if Cuomo's Groupies declare that things are back to somewhat normal, and try to reopen regular travel; while other states are experiencing their peaks?

Maryland for one, will peak later than the nation in some models being studied.

So...people with NY State license plates being forcibly quarantined for 14 days by Maryland State Police after being pulled over on I-95 per Hogan's orders is something I can see happening.

At that point, Trump can just shake his head when Cuomo complains about NYers being stopped by Maryland police; so sorry, it's a state matter, like you were saying a few weeks ago.

[MKSheppard]

'member when Cuomo wanted a million health care workers and that he might give them back once he was done with them? He hasn't made many friends with his behavior.

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/ar ... -stabilize

https://kfor.com/health/coronavirus/okc ... -contract/

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – An Oklahoma City nurse who took a huge leap of faith to save lives in New York City, was left high and dry after she arrived in New York and was told she was no longer needed.

“They’re literally cancelling like hundreds of nurses,” said Kari Goen.

Goen is an RN at both St. Anthony’s Hospital and OU Medicine. She says when COVID-19 hit New York City hard, she wanted to step up.

“You get to help other communities in need and be selfless in that act, but it’s also a really good learning experience,” said Goen.

She put in her two weeks at work and packed her bags. She left Oklahoma City Monday morning, but getting to NYC was nearly impossible.

“My connecting flight to New York City was cancelled because of high winds and thunderstorms. They moved us to a later flight, and then, within ten minutes, that flight got cancelled,” said Goen.

After another cancelled flight, she rented a car and drove, through thunderstorms and heavy winds. When she finally arrived, the news came.

“Was here for like an hour and got a text message that said, sorry girls. We just found out, but your contract got cancelled,” said Goen.

KPG Healthcare, the agency Goen found her job through, sent her this explanation:

“Hey Girls. I have some bad news. The hospital just emailed us and said you were both cancelled. They said the situation had cleared up and the census is down. I’m so sorry. I know it’s not fair. This is frustrating for you and us both. I know how much you guys both sacrificed and left behind for this. We’re working to bill the hospital for one week for you and I’m doing everything I can to find spots open that we can redirect to. Feel free to call if you want to talk about anything. I’ll do everything I can to help.”

“I’m still hearing of unsafe conditions of patient to nurse ratios. You would think that they’d still want to have a little bit more adequate staff,” said Goen.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo held a briefing on Tuesday and said hospitalizations, cases and deaths are leveling.

“We had to deal with so many obstacles just to get up here, and then to have succeeded and get up here, and then to be told, ‘Okay, we don’t need you, you’re contract’s cancelled,’ it was kind of a slap in the face,” said Goen.

Goen’s apartment and traveling expenses cost around $6,000, but none of the expenses will be reimbursed.

“We’re trying to beg to get paid for at least one week of pay,” she said.

The worst part, Goen’s job in Oklahoma City also might not be there when she returns.

“Since they knew that I was leaving to go basically help another hospital in a different state, it would have to be considered a resignation, and if I wanted to work again, I’d have to reapply,” said Goen.

She says her first priority is finding another nursing job in NYC. She’s also looking into hiring a lawyer because she says KPG Healthcare breached her contract.

News 4 tried to reach out to KPG Healthcare for a comment, but as of Tuesday evening, has not heard back.

This will never backfire! No sir!

[LaCroix]

US-allied and neutral nations cease allowing WHO personnel unfettered access to their populations

Cute. You think the US has any allies left?

What will happen is that everyone just continues as is - and gives more money to the WHO to make up, and the WHO will have to maybe scale down operations a bit.

The WHO is a great tool for everyone, liked by every nation, and nobody gives a shit about what the US is saying, anymore. Especially when someone like Trump is calling shots. Maybe the next President will come back and rejoin, but do not believe that anything will change in regards to trust towards the WHO because Mr. I knew it was going to be a pandemic long before anyone else did is again trying to shift the blame on someone. Right now, most Nations like China more than the US...

[LaCroix]

UK is tracking very well with Italy. NHS über alles. Shouldn't NHS not have shortages of PPE, since it's a government run organisation and can plan ahead for pandemics and not have to nickel and dime like US hospital administrators?

The NHS has been gutted almost beyond repair in the last decade by the UK Republican Branch Office, who have wanted to kill it for even longer. It was already short 30k nurses and whoknows how many doctors before Brexit, which then turned another part of the nurse recruitment pool away. Doctors have been warning that they aren't even properly funded to deal with the spring flu season this year, because the emergency beds in the hallways from last year were still in full use in winter.

And the approach to deliberately let it spread far and wide to get it over with, along with the refusal to prepare for it has made any proper reaction impossible...

[Zaune]

I am hoping, probably in vain, that owing his recovery entirely to NHS personnel and facilities (private hospitals in the UK barely do non-elective surgery, much less emergency medicine) will force Boris Johnson to do some self-reflection about the policies he's supported in the past. If staring death in the face won't do it then nothing will.

[aerius]

The WHO loses legitimacy and geopolitical neutrality, and the world loses depoliticized global public health, with impaired responses to future global public health crises, especially among poorer nations. US-allied and neutral nations cease allowing WHO personnel unfettered access to their populations, WHO recommendations are not followed, and unified and coordinated global responses to public health challenges are no longer mounted. In their place, US CDC and WHO recommendations, advisers, and responses compete for space, time, and attention.

Heck, half this current outbreak is people ignoring WHO recommendations and not aggressively testing, monitoring, and containing COVID-19, instead going for various mitigation strategies in February, when the outbreak could have been contained to East Asia.

The reason Trump, that moron, is so confused is precisely because the WHO advised that COVID-19 was bad but containable, and urged everyone to contain it. To many policy-makers, "containable" sounded like "harmless", for semantic reasons, when what the WHO was trying to say was "this is very bad and containment is essential". Europe and North America were lazy with containment efforts, containment was lost, and now the Trump Administration is blaming the WHO for advising that it was containable.

The WHO needs to take some blame for the spread of the disease. Let's see what they were saying as of the end of February, when several countries already had big outbreaks.
https://www.who.int/news-room/articles- ... 9-outbreak

Excerpt:

WHO continues to advise against the application of travel or trade restrictions to countries experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks.

In general, evidence shows that restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions. Furthermore, restrictions may interrupt needed aid and technical support, may disrupt businesses, and may have negative social and economic effects on the affected countries. However, in certain circumstances, measures that restrict the movement of people may prove temporarily useful, such as in settings with few international connections and limited response capacities.

Travel measures that significantly interfere with international traffic may only be justified at the beginning of an outbreak, as they may allow countries to gain time, even if only a few days, to rapidly implement effective preparedness measures. Such restrictions must be based on a careful risk assessment, be proportionate to the public health risk, be short in duration, and be reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves.

Travel bans to affected areas or denial of entry to passengers coming from affected areas are usually not effective in preventing the importation of cases but may have a significant economic and social impact. Since WHO declaration of a public health emergency of international concern in relation to COVID-19, and as of 27 February, 38 countries have reported to WHO additional health measures that significantly interfere with international traffic in relation to travel to and from China or other countries, ranging from denial of entry of passengers, visa restrictions or quarantine for returning travellers. Several countries that denied entry of travellers or who have suspended the flights to and from China or other affected countries, are now reporting cases of COVID-19.

Temperature screening alone, at exit or entry, is not an effective way to stop international spread, since infected individuals may be in incubation period, may not express apparent symptoms early on in the course of the disease, or may dissimulate fever through the use of antipyretics; in addition, such measures require substantial investments for what may bear little benefits. It is more effective to provide prevention recommendation messages to travellers and to collect health declarations at arrival, with travellers’ contact details, to allow for a proper risk assessment and a possible contact tracing of incoming travellers.

What a steaming load of bullshit. There's a reason why Taiwan doesn't have a covid-19 outbreak, and has its infections contained. They slammed the gates on China and all other infested countries, then temperature scanned & quarantined all of their own citizens who were returning from those countries. There's a reason the Taiwanese have been calling the WHO a bunch of bad names, had they actually followed the WHO's advice they'd be drowning in dead bodies like the countries which did.

This is on the same level as Fauchi's March 9th statement that going on a cruise is totally fine, even after the disaster of the Diamond Princess and several other ships.

[The Romulan Republic]

aerius defends another abhorrent Trump policy. What a surprise.

Anyway, the province of British Columbia has extended its state of emergency by two weeks (they can't extend a state of emergency for more than two weeks at a time, apparently).

[aerius]

aerius defends another abhorrent Trump policy. What a surprise.

I'm talking about Taiwan you illiterate shitbag, but apparently you feel a need to get your Trump hate boner on because you saw me make a post. There's like 10 stickied threads at the top where you can go stroke yourself without shitting up the rest of the forum.

[The Romulan Republic]

aerius defends another abhorrent Trump policy. What a surprise.

I'm talking about Taiwan you illiterate shitbag, but apparently you feel a need to get your Trump hate boner on because you saw me make a post. There's like 10 stickied threads at the top where you can go stroke yourself without shitting up the rest of the forum.

You were responding to a post criticizing Trump's attacks on the WHO. Which you responded to by saying that attacks on the WHO were justified. You only then transitioned to talking about Tawain. I'd post quotes, but it would frankly be a waste of time, because anyone can scroll up a few posts and see for themselves that you're a liar and a troll.

More likely, however, you will successfully conceal your dishonesty by distracting everyone with yet another Two-Minute Hate against me.

[chimericoncogene]

The WHO needs to take some blame for the spread of the disease. Let's see what they were saying as of the end of February, when several countries already had big outbreaks.
https://www.who.int/news-room/articles- ... 9-outbreak

Excerpt:

WHO continues to advise against the application of travel or trade restrictions to countries experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks.

In general, evidence shows that restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions. Furthermore, restrictions may interrupt needed aid and technical support, may disrupt businesses, and may have negative social and economic effects on the affected countries. However, in certain circumstances, measures that restrict the movement of people may prove temporarily useful, such as in settings with few international connections and limited response capacities.

Travel measures that significantly interfere with international traffic may only be justified at the beginning of an outbreak, as they may allow countries to gain time, even if only a few days, to rapidly implement effective preparedness measures. Such restrictions must be based on a careful risk assessment, be proportionate to the public health risk, be short in duration, and be reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves.

Travel bans to affected areas or denial of entry to passengers coming from affected areas are usually not effective in preventing the importation of cases but may have a significant economic and social impact. Since WHO declaration of a public health emergency of international concern in relation to COVID-19, and as of 27 February, 38 countries have reported to WHO additional health measures that significantly interfere with international traffic in relation to travel to and from China or other countries, ranging from denial of entry of passengers, visa restrictions or quarantine for returning travellers. Several countries that denied entry of travellers or who have suspended the flights to and from China or other affected countries, are now reporting cases of COVID-19.

Temperature screening alone, at exit or entry, is not an effective way to stop international spread, since infected individuals may be in incubation period, may not express apparent symptoms early on in the course of the disease, or may dissimulate fever through the use of antipyretics; in addition, such measures require substantial investments for what may bear little benefits. It is more effective to provide prevention recommendation messages to travellers and to collect health declarations at arrival, with travellers’ contact details, to allow for a proper risk assessment and a possible contact tracing of incoming travellers.

Your statement is the steaming load of bullshit, not the WHO's recommendation.

The WHO did not advise nations to lock down their borders or forbid entry to West African nationals at the height of the Ebola outbreak. Or advise travel restrictions from Hong Kong or China during the darkest days of the SARS outbreak. And AFAIK, very few countries really banned travelers from those regions during those respective outbreaks, and everything ended up fine.

Travel restrictions are draconian measures, and not cheap to boot. You know, international freedom of movement to anyone with a passport and visa and all that being kind of a basic right for humans (consider the Evil Soviet Empire and its travel restrictions). Contact tracing is and was the cornerstone of the WHO's response to COVID and all other global epidemics - because you know, it worked every time, and we've never had anything as bad as COVID for a century.

At the end of January, with Wuhan and Hubei Province locked down, the rest of China had somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand cases, a case per million people, with the curve peaking within two weeks. The WHO expected that a slow trickle of cases would leak - 1-10/foreign country/day - a completely manageable leak rate that any first-world public health system should have been able to contact-trace and contain, even without border controls. HENCE CONTAINABLE, HENCE CONTAINMENT.

Hence the WHO's insistence that everyone put 110% into contact tracing and testing, with the goal of CONTAINMENT. Because people would not have bothered if the WHO had said it was unstoppable. Contact tracing failed in Seattle and Milan, and worked very well in East Asia, because the local authorities missed cases (and probably failed to take the whole exercise as seriously as they should - herd immunity, mitigation, blah blah blah, which is why the WHO was screaming for containment throughout February).

Read your own quote. The WHO clearly believed that "the main function of travel restrictions is to buy time for the most exposed nations". Can you imagine more exposed regions than the Hong Kong and Taiwan? Hence, border controls were suitable for HK and Taiwan under WHO guidelines, but not for anyone else. Also, a blind man could see that neither Hong Kong or Taiwan are unbiased actors - strong internal political pressures were major factors in their travel restrictions, which IMO were not strictly necessary.

[mr friendly guy]

What a steaming load of bullshit. There's a reason why Taiwan doesn't have a covid-19 outbreak, and has its infections contained. They slammed the gates on China and all other infested countries, then temperature scanned & quarantined all of their own citizens who were returning from those countries. There's a reason the Taiwanese have been calling the WHO a bunch of bad names, had they actually followed the WHO's advice they'd be drowning in dead bodies like the countries which did.

This is on the same level as Fauchi's March 9th statement that going on a cruise is totally fine, even after the disaster of the Diamond Princess and several other ships.

Trump also banned travel from China. It didn't work out because we now know most of New York state's cases (the most affected US state with covid ) came from Europe.

Taiwan did however do aggressive contact tracing which as of like last month Fauci was saying the US lacks the capability to do until months later.

[mr friendly guy]

UK is tracking very well with Italy. NHS über alles. Shouldn't NHS not have shortages of PPE, since it's a government run organisation and can plan ahead for pandemics and not have to nickel and dime like US hospital administrators?

The NHS has been underfunded for a while now. It has now less beds than in the 1980s and the population has grown.

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publicatio ... ed-numbers

The total number of NHS hospital beds in England, including general and acute, mental illness, learning disability, maternity and day-only beds, has more than halved over the past 30 years, from around 299,000 in 1987/88 to 141,000 in 2018/9, while the number of patients treated has increased significantly.

Now they do try and explain that things like faster surgeries, treating mental health patients as outpatients does explain some of this, but you got to wonder especially when UK doctors have been talking about the NHS struggling for a while now. Most UK doctors I talk to working in Australia describe problems with the NHS, and this has been going on for at least a decade and a half.

[aerius]

The WHO did not advise nations to lock down their borders or forbid entry to West African nationals at the height of the Ebola outbreak. Or advise travel restrictions from Hong Kong or China during the darkest days of the SARS outbreak. And AFAIK, very few countries really banned travelers from those regions during those respective outbreaks, and everything ended up fine.

I worked for Canada Customs & Immigration during that time. China had an "Avoid all non-essential travel" advisory issued against it during that time, the hot spots in China and all the other areas got the "Avoid All Travel" stamp of approval from the government of Canada during the events in question.

Travel restrictions are draconian measures, and not cheap to boot. You know, international freedom of movement to anyone with a passport and visa and all that being kind of a basic right for humans (consider the Evil Soviet Empire and its travel restrictions). Contact tracing is and was the cornerstone of the WHO's response to COVID and all other global epidemics - because you know, it worked every time, and we've never had anything as bad as COVID for a century.

At the end of January, with Wuhan and Hubei Province locked down, the rest of China had somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand cases, a case per million people, with the curve peaking within two weeks. The WHO expected that a slow trickle of cases would leak - 1-10/foreign country/day - a completely manageable leak rate that any first-world public health system should have been able to contact-trace and contain, even without border controls. HENCE CONTAINABLE, HENCE CONTAINMENT.

Hence the WHO's insistence that everyone put 110% into contact tracing and testing, with the goal of CONTAINMENT. Because people would not have bothered if the WHO had said it was unstoppable. Contact tracing failed in Seattle and Milan, and worked very well in East Asia, because the local authorities missed cases (and probably failed to take the whole exercise as seriously as they should - herd immunity, mitigation, blah blah blah, which is why the WHO was screaming for containment throughout February).

Read your own quote. The WHO clearly believed that "the main function of travel restrictions is to buy time for the most exposed nations". Can you imagine more exposed regions than the Hong Kong and Taiwan? Hence, border controls were suitable for HK and Taiwan under WHO guidelines, but not for anyone else. Also, a blind man could see that neither Hong Kong or Taiwan are unbiased actors - strong internal political pressures were major factors in their travel restrictions, which IMO were not strictly necessary.

International travel & border restrictions - "but my rights! We got the right to travel because visas!"

Entire States and countries locked down and ordered to shelter in place because we dropped the ball. Yeah.

Yes, Taiwan has a longstanding grudge against the Chinese, doesn't change the fact that they're one of the few countries which successfully contained the virus. As for the North America & Europe, you're gonna contact trace while letting countless thousands of people from the affected regions flood through the airports and other points of entry every day. Good luck screening out the positive cases given the long asymptotic phase of the disease. Have fun with that, you've got a better chance of winning the war on drugs.

I get it, border lockdowns and entry restrictions are serious business. Our modern society depends on the free flow of goods and people throughout the world, restricting the flow has severe consequences. Then again, 100,000+ dead people and a near complete shutdown in North America and Europe is also pretty serious shit.

Trump also banned travel from China. It didn't work out because we now know most of New York state's cases (the most affected US state with covid ) came from Europe.

Of course it failed, the way he did it was completely half-assed. There were loopholes for US citizens in China, their family members, and some other things I can't recall off the top of my head. Additionally, there were no mandatory quarantine measures in place for these people when they returned to the US so cases could slip right into the population. Taiwan as I noted had mandatory quarantines for everyone, including returning citizens.

As for NYC, that was a shitshow. Canada was the same way. Full blown epidemic going down in Italy & Iran and we just let everyone waltz right in. In Toronto, we literally had dozens of active cases flown straight in from Iran even after we knew it was a hot spot. We even had an entire air force base setup and ready to quarantine arrivals. And we barely used it. The incompetence was astounding.

Taiwan did however do aggressive contact tracing which as of like last month Fauci was saying the US lacks the capability to do until months later.

Taiwan and most other Asian countries have much better contact tracing capabilities than we do, but it only works if you get on it early and limit the number of cases. Once there's a few thousand known cases and who knows how many asymptotic carriers, it's pretty much game over unless you get real lucky like South Korea did where they were all traced to a super spreader.

[chimericoncogene]

I worked for Canada Customs & Immigration during that time. China had an "Avoid all non-essential travel" advisory issued against it during that time, the hot spots in China and all the other areas got the "Avoid All Travel" stamp of approval from the government of Canada during the events in question.

ADVISORY. Not BAN. Huge difference.

International travel & border restrictions - "but my rights! We got the right to travel because visas!"

Entire States and countries locked down and ordered to shelter in place because we dropped the ball. Yeah.

Yes, Taiwan has a longstanding grudge against the Chinese, doesn't change the fact that they're one of the few countries which successfully contained the virus. As for the North America & Europe, you're gonna contact trace while letting countless thousands of people from the affected regions flood through the airports and other points of entry every day. Good luck screening out the positive cases given the long asymptotic phase of the disease. Have fun with that, you've got a better chance of winning the war on drugs.

Would travel bans have helped? In hindsight, yes. But it was not strictly necessary.

Would contact tracing have been adequate management? It was in Korea, and it worked in Taiwan and Singapore for a few days. It should have been. Containment was lost by narrower margins than is commonly appreciated.

"Thousands" is totally wrong. Case exports from China were in single digits/double digits tops once Wuhan was locked down. One case per 100k-1000k people, remember? There were under ten thousand cases outside Hubei, all being aggressively traced and locked down.

Seattle and Milan were from SINGLE, ONE OR TWO imported untraced loose spreaders. They could have been found.
The Milan cluster, not the Chinese one, spread the virus through Europe and the East Coast.
Italy and Seattle should have locked down earlier, and their contact tracing should have been done more aggressively. From what we (and the WHO) knew of pandemics, it had a chance of working.

[aerius]

"Thousands" is totally wrong. Case exports from China were in single digits/double digits tops once Wuhan was locked down. One case per 100k-1000k people, remember? There were under ten thousand cases outside Hubei, all being aggressively traced and locked down.

Seattle and Milan were from SINGLE imported loose spreaders.
Italy and Seattle should have locked down earlier, and their contact tracing should have been done more aggressively. From what we (and the WHO) knew of pandemics, it had a chance of working.

You're trying to screen out a handful of carriers, with half or maybe even more of them been asymptotic out of many thousands of daily travellers from the affected regions entering major airports and other points of entry. Without border restrictions and drastically cutting down that daily influx of travellers, we do not have the ability to screen out the positives before they get into the general population and start seeding the disease.

[chimericoncogene]

You're trying to screen out a handful of carriers, with half or maybe even more of them been asymptotic out of many thousands of daily travellers from the affected regions entering major airports and other points of entry. Without border restrictions and drastically cutting down that daily influx of travellers, we do not have the ability to screen out the positives before they get into the general population and start seeding the disease.

That's not how contact tracing works. Your criticism is based on a lack of understanding of what "disease control" was trying to achieve.

You let people in, they present to hospital with COVID, and you run down everyone they talked to or sat next to over the past two weeks, and quarantine everyone. Some of them will be infected, so you run down their contacts too. Also wipe down every seat they ever sat in.

You don't catch people at the border - that's impossible, partially because of the asymptomatic carrier problem.

Since only one or two or ten or twenty people from China are coming in with the disease every week (which was totally the case), it should be totally doable.

But nope. Everyone got lazy, said it was "going to spread anyway", and decided to ignore the WHO and go for "mitigation". Now they're blaming the WHO for their own failures.

[aerius]

That's not how contact tracing works. Your criticism is based on a lack of understanding of what "disease control" was trying to achieve.

You let people in, they present to hospital with COVID, and you run down everyone they talked to or sat next to over the past two weeks, and quarantine everyone. Some of them will be infected, so you run down their contacts too. Also wipe down every seat they ever sat in.

You don't catch people at the border - that's impossible, partially because of the asymptomatic carrier problem.

Since only one or two or ten or twenty people from China are coming in with the disease every week (which was totally the case), it should be totally doable.

But nope. Everyone got lazy, said it was "going to spread anyway", and decided to ignore the WHO and go for "mitigation". Now they're blaming the WHO for their own failures.

1) Contact tracing doesn't work when there's a significant number of silent carriers. Which there are.

2) We go back to the Taiwan model. Lock the borders down to a trickle, EVERYONE entering gets quarantined for 14 days, no exception.

3) We all fucked up royally and now we're paying for it. Our choices now are long term lockdowns and hope that nothing critical in the supply chains breaks before we can reopen, or open up soon and sentence a bunch of folks to death.

[chimericoncogene]

1) Contact tracing doesn't work when there's a significant number of silent carriers. Which there are.

2) We go back to the Taiwan model. Lock the borders down to a trickle, EVERYONE entering gets quarantined for 14 days, no exception.

3) We all fucked up royally and now we're paying for it. Our choices now are long term lockdowns and hope that nothing critical in the supply chains breaks before we can reopen, or open up soon and sentence a bunch of folks to death.

Yes it does.

Contact tracing still works (not as well, but it was not appreciated how not-as-well) even if you have asymptomatic carriers, because you quarantine all contacts, symptomatic or not. You get the majority of cases, the R0 falls below 1, and your outbreak is stopped in its tracks. Sure, you suppress rather than halt the outbreak because of more leakers, and contact tracing gets longer, harder, more expensive, and more involved, but it still works, and would have if North American health authorities had shown more backbone and competence.

(10k+ people - contacts, contacts-of-contacts, people found on CCTV cameras and phone apps - were quarantined and contact-traced in Chinese and Korean cities - that's the kind of effort that was clearly necessary to stop COVID by mid-February. N'Am and Europe looked at the effort, and just gave up.)

Also, asymptomatic carriers was being used to justify mitigation strategies in many countries - unstoppable, so why try? What do you think the WHO was pushing back against?