Most of China was locked down 01/23 and Trump restricted travel on the 31st. So weren't

[brewens]

most people that would have travelled here blocked already anyway? I know there were exemptions that still allowed quite a few in. I was wondering if that may have been most of the people that could try and get here anyway?

[msongs]

1. one supects people are still coming in from china this very day nt

[mwooldri]

2. Asymptomatic transmission, and the world is a globe.

I remember reading somewhere here on DU that the outbreak in New York came via Europe, not direct from PR China.

[brewens]

5. I was just wondering just how many people Trump really stopped from coming here.

I think I read that travel was something like 300 thousand a month. Did it slow way down from the 23rd to when the travel restrictions kicked in? I couldn't find anything on that easily.

[Igel]

7. The usual numbers bandied about are like this.

From the time it was noticed to something like the end of March, 440,000 came into the US from China--and, the horrible thing was, 40k in the final two months of that time. In other words, nothing was done.

So 400k entered in the first 27 days and 40k in the next 61. How many people were stopped? Even given the spike in travel because of the two New Year's, hundreds of thousands.

Looking at strains of the virus in California, two of them came in with American citizens that were affected. So unless you're going to bar US citizens from entering the country you're stuck. (Which means that those who say, "We should have stopped it at the borders" are also saying, "And locked Americans out if they were coming from China."

And the person above who said that NY was infected by, it seems, Europeans is spot on. Probably infected by Italians, who were infected by Chinese. Because, we were told in late January (and into February), such orders are "ineffectual." CNN, MSNBC, NYT were agreed on this. Note that the first Italian patient (in Italy) was infected while in Germany (take that, Merkel), but even as the infection was ramping up some Italian politician was saying to fight the racism of blaming China for anything and "hug a Chinese."

Part of Taiwan's and S. Korea's successes were immediately stopping anybody who'd been in China from entering the country. Citizens were admitted and quarantined. China called that racism--but you know, it saved a lot of lives. "Ineffectual" is what happens when people are too afraid of being called names to do what actually does work but runs afoul of suspicion and counterfactual beliefs: If transmission is person-to-person, *block transmission." If the infection starts in one place, block people from that place. "But they're disproportionately Chinese" makes no sense; in this case, they were proportionately Chinese. You have to compare it with the right reference sample--not "US population" but "Hubei population".

Note that there's a nifty article today or yesterday on why San Fran's curve flattening worked so well. The mayor issued a lock down order early, before the first death. She was called names and got a lot of pushback. But she had the balls to say, "Nope, this is what it takes." No waffling, no whiffing. You do what's necessary and hit the ball. Good thing she's not up for election.

Also note that after a hiatus in SF, covid-19 returned--and contact tracing led back nowhere. Those who started the lines of infection in the Return of COVID that had contacts traced had no link to a source linked in any way back to Wuhan, and there was no way forward from the first wave of patients forward. In other words, it snuck in.

[Raven123]

3. 2 things

As I understand it some airlines had already stopped flights from Wuhan, if not China all together.

Wouldn’t make a difference. Unless you stopped all international travel, or quarantined every arriving international traveler for 2 weeks, the impact would be limited.

[LAS14]

4. Not sure what I mean by this, but genetic investigations have pinpointed...

... Europe as the source of the New York infections.

[brewens]

6. That just reinforces my thinking that Trump restricting travel didn't help all that much

anyway.

[Igel]

8. Very few things that people say would have saved us

would have had much effect.

Travel ban? Naw. Borders are leaky.

Testing? Nope. People are aren't yet or who are never symptomatic foil any rational regime.

Contact tracing? Like I said in the post I just made, in SF contact tracing in some cases reached a dead end. Community transmission via the asymptomatic foils this. This would have slowed the curve, but it was out. Some in China knew about asymptomatic sufferers *before* it locked down Wuhan. The top government wasn't sharing. Just like it knew about person-to-person transmission for weeks before it said, "Oh, yeah, by the way ...". Somebody had the facts in China--only a lockdown would stop it because there was no way to contact trace once it was too widespread. And the lockdown had to be damned near perfect. (Taiwan and S. Korea were ruthless and lucky. Then again, in December Taiwan says it knew about human-to-human transmission and was already working to thwart the virus. WHO knew, too, they say. WHO won't even say the word "Taiwan.&quot

A couple of DUers say we should have tested everybody. While that would have worked, provided we had 300 million tests we could have run in 24-48 hours, and then a second 300 million a few days later, and a third 300 million a few days after that--and, because the borders are porous, subjected every traveler (legal and otherwise) to the same test and forced quarantining until the test came back negative ... Still the tests available had a 30% false negative. So if all 300 million Americans had COVID, it would have cleared about 100 million of us.

In other words, the test results are leakier than the border. 100% testing = 70% reliable results.

Only way out? Lockdown, early February. Before it spread very far, before there were many deaths. Then let essential jobs get done, but take temperatures twice a day. Anybody suspected of being infected gets confiscated until repeated tests show no SARS-CoV-19. And by "lockdown" I don't mean "stay at home unless you have something to do." It's the "one person per unit leaves the home every two days, and only for a damned good reason" rule.

Of course, *justifying* having Trump do this when only a few voices were saying "pandemic" and even Vox and NYT were saying, "Not to worry"? There were more people saying Trump would use this as an excuse to seize total control (being the fascist that he is) than sounding the alarm, and until people starting testing positive in great numbers and dying, there would have been a lot of push-back against a lock-down. There was a fair amount of pushback in early March. When Wisconsin's elections weren't postponed/made mail-ballot, most called the (R) fascist; when Ohio's *were* postponed, they called the (R) governor fascist. That's the difference in attitude a month made.