Do we Cancel Everything? You still Travelling??

[Alan_A 1,650]

53 minutes ago, birdguy said:

When are they going to start giving us the numbers of CURRENT cases, not the total cases since this thing started.  

I don't think the counts are that detailed yet, and there are too many reporting inconsistencies.

In many jurisdictions, case counts are based on "clinical confirmation" - that is, an antigen test. 

Others are also counting probable cases based on clinical signs in the absence of a test.

But both methods miss counting people who get ill, and then die or recover at home without coming near the healthcare system.  The ones that die aren't recorded as covid deaths - which explains why researchers are looking at "excess deaths" (above the annual average, adjusted for seasonality), to correct the likely undercount.  And those that recover aren't officially logged as recovered because their data was never picked up by any official reporting mechanism.

And there are probably asymptomatic people who are going uncounted as well.

All of that means that official data on infections, deaths and recoveries probably represents an undercount.  The excess death research attempts to get closer to an accurate total.

As testing levels go up, the data on prevalence of infections should become more accurate - but with the caveat that accuracy depends on how broadly the population is being sampled (i.e. if it's only sick people, it inflates the total) and how accurate the tests are.

Total case numbers are valuable, but not for assessing current risk in a community.  They help show the overall trajectory of the infection so we know whether it's slowing down or accelerating.

I don't think anyone is trying to deceive - it's just that the reporting system is still coming up to speed, and has some inherent flaws.

The numbers in your area show very low counts for cases and deaths.

 

[birdguy 3,943]

Alan, the average Joe Blow like myself aren't sophisticated or educated enough in the field to understand what the numbers mean.  We see a published number and right away assume that's how many cases there are and say my area is rife with cases or my area has a low incidence of cases and we base our personal assessment of the risk accordingly.

In my personal case I see there were 34 cases a week ago.  Then it jumped to 36 cases.  On Saturday it jumped to 38 cases. And this morning it jumped to 40 cases.  So when Betty went to the store this morning I told her to wear a mask.

I will keep monitoring the cases.  But even 40 cases and 2 deaths out of a population of 60,000 isn't as bad as the number of flue cases during flue season.

If we get no new cases in a week we will probably stop wearing our masks again.

My daughter in Denver called me the other day and asked, "Isn't anybody dying of anything but the corona virus anymore?"  She was being sarcastic, but it has become like saying a word over and over again until it becomes meaningless.

Noel

 

[Bob Scott 7,714]

55 minutes ago, Alan_A said:

The article you linked describes legal immigration at a border checkpoint, not illegal immigration.

The danger is presented by a large concentration of people - the same as it is by a pool party at Lake of the Ozarks, or a crowd jamming an airport entrance hall as a result of confusion caused by a botched travel ban announcement.

There is no special danger posed by illegal immigration.

You haven't chosen good ground to fight on.

EDIT: And "Your discomfort is noted" doesn't exactly bridge any gaps.

Nice try, no sale.  I'll spell it out for you.  Given that Baja is a bad enough, uncontrolled hot zone to have the problems they're describing with people coming through the checkpoints legally, then it follows directly that illegals coming from that same hot zone by cutting through or climbing the fences pose the same sorts of problems as well.  We can check the people entering legally through the checkpoints...the ones breaking the law and invading the country illegally are unscreened and unaccountable, and then they tend to quickly migrate long distances into the interior and assimilate themselves into underground communities, and you can be pretty sure they're not following all the CDC guidelines while packed into the back of a coyote's truck or bus or holed-up in a safe house.  These lawbreaking invaders absolutely do pose a threat of re-seeding communities across a wide area with the disease.  People sneaking in from known hot zones like Tijuana and Juarez *are* a special danger. 

 

[Luke 782]

7 minutes ago, w6kd said:

Nice try, no sale.  I'll spell it out for you.

The virus doesn't care about your immigration status. I don't see your case being any better than me being stuck in the immigration queue at JFK Terminal 4 with 1,000 of my newest friends. 20 have the virus and are contagious. 8 are asymptomatic and are missed by whatever testing system we have. Of the remaining 12, six are US citizens or permanent residents who are let into the country anyway, and only six are turned back.

If I spend two hours with them, how was I any better off? While screenings at the border and travel restrictions are helpful, they are no magic bullet and don't solve the problem, just limit it to some slight extent.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Luke

[Alan_A 1,650]

6 minutes ago, Luke said:

The virus doesn't care about your immigration status. I don't see your case being any better than me being stuck in the immigration queue at JFK Terminal 4 with 1,000 of my newest friends. 20 have the virus and are contagious. 8 are asymptomatic and are missed by whatever testing system we have. Of the remaining 12, six are US citizens or permanent residents who are let into the country anyway, and only six are turned back.

If I spend two hours with them, how was I any better off? While screenings at the border and travel restrictions are helpful, they are no magic bullet and don't solve the problem, just limit it to some slight extent.

Exactly.  The issue is concentrations of people and transmission paths, and that's it. The New York outbreak - and as a result, the US outbreak - was the result of legal immigration, helped along by unnecessarily and the near-total failure to screen, isolate and trace.

 

[Bob Scott 7,714]

12 minutes ago, Luke said:

The virus doesn't care about your immigration status.

Of course it doesn't.  But the process of invading the country illegally bypasses any and all of the checks and safeguards we do or ever could put in place.

12 minutes ago, Luke said:

I don't see your case being any better than me being stuck in the immigration queue at JFK Terminal 4 with 1,000 of my newest friends. 20 have the virus and are contagious. 8 are asymptomatic and are missed by whatever testing system we have. Of the remaining 12, six are US citizens or permanent residents who are let into the country anyway, and only six are turned back.

If I spend two hours with them, how was I any better off?

The best prevention is to prohibit the flight from ever arriving and the line from ever forming.  That's the "A" answer, and then your point becomes moot.

At this point, I think requiring the 30-min rapid test on every arrival before anyone on a flight is released from the holding area isn't out of the question.  Absent that, a forced 14-day quarantine for new arrivals like Hawaii is already doing seems prudent.

But all that said, none of these measures work if we let the borders continue to leak like a sieve.

[Alan_A 1,650]

What this discussion misses is that we're months past the point where border control measures are any kind of answer.  Community spread is here and well established on a large scale.  The virus is doing quite well for itself thanks to the pool party at Lake of the Ozarks and the massive crowds on the Ocean City boardwalk.  We're as much of a danger to the immigrants as they are to us.

[Luke 782]

15 minutes ago, w6kd said:

At this point, I think requiring the 30-min rapid test on every arrival before anyone on a flight is released from the holding area isn't out of the question.  Absent that, a forced 14-day quarantine for new arrivals like Hawaii is already doing seems prudent.

As I mentioned, I don't see how that protects me from contracting the virus while I'm in the holding area; how it prevents US citizens and permanent residents from entering the US despite a positive test .... and if we cannot get certain individuals to wear a mask for five minutes, the quarantine will be very interesting.

Cheers!

[Bob Scott 7,714]

6 minutes ago, Alan_A said:

What this discussion misses is that we're months past the point where border control measures are any kind of answer.  Community spread is here and well established on a large scale.  The virus is doing quite well for itself thanks to the pool party at Lake of the Ozarks and the massive crowds on the Ocean City boardwalk.  We're as much of a danger to the immigrants as they are to us.

I disagree.  The US is not a monolithic community...it is a large group of individual communities, with a wide variation in risk factors.  I'd agree that putting an infected illegal into the NYC petri dish wouldn't make much of a difference, but that same illegal in Hays, KS is a different story.  One infected illegal coming in and living in close quarters with a dozen others in a place like that does pose a new risk of a superspreading event.

[Bob Scott 7,714]

Just now, Luke said:

As I mentioned, I don't see how that protects me from contracting the virus while I'm in the holding area; how it prevents US citizens and permanent residents from entering the US despite a positive test .... and if we cannot get certain individuals to wear a mask for five minutes, the quarantine will be very interesting.

No, what I proposed is that if anyone on the flight tests positive on arrival, all of the passengers are prevented from leaving the holding area and placed directly into quarantine, just like the pax on those cruise ships that were allowed to dock in the US were placed into quarantine.  If none of them test positive, you're nearly certainly not getting it there. 

[MartinRex007 390]

13 minutes ago, w6kd said:

none of these measures work if we let the borders continue to leak like a sieve.

Actually the illegal crossing on our Southern Border are pretty low right now. From the Border Patrol website:

"In Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 To Date (TD), during the month of April, a total of 1,146 individuals were apprehended between ports of entry on our Southwest Border",

Compare this to folks arriving from around the world during this pandemic and I suspect it's negligible as far as COVID-19 is concerned. Like Alan eludes to, it's community spread which is the issue now. If we had caught this outbreak earlier, than any case arriving legally or illegally from another country would of been of concern.

They have just recently put in place tighter border crossing requirements here along San Diego, the irony was Mexico was accusing the Americans for bringing COVID-19 into Mexico.

Martin

 

[Luke 782]

3 minutes ago, w6kd said:

No, what I proposed is that if anyone on the flight tests positive on arrival, all of the passengers are prevented from leaving the holding area and placed directly into quarantine, just like the pax on those cruise ships that were allowed to dock in the US were placed into quarantine.  If none of them test positive, you're nearly certainly not getting it there. 

The only "holding area" in such a circumstance is the plane itself. Once you step off of the aircraft you're in a secure area, but it's upstream of customs & immigration and passengers from the different aircraft can mix.

[Alan_A 1,650]

2 minutes ago, w6kd said:

One infected illegal coming in and living in close quarters with a dozen others in a place like that does pose a new risk of a superspreading event.

As does a US citizen who visits a nursing home and then goes to a family reunion - or who goes to a church service where she sings loudly, recites the prayers out loud and embraces her fellow congregants.

There's minimal chance this person has been tested.  So from the standpoint of disease transmission, there's absolutely no difference between the asymptomatic US citizen and the "illegal invader."  That's culture-wars fodder.  We're not a monolithic community, but we have plenty of physical and social mobility and can do this to ourselves.

My objections to the invasive-pathogen-in-the-body-politic narrative don't seem to be getting traction. Please allow me to suggest some background reading - this, and also this. For the second piece, I recommend searching on the word "maggot."

I'm going to persist about this because it isn't an abstraction to me.

[Bob Scott 7,714]

1 minute ago, Luke said:

The only "holding area" in such a circumstance is the plane itself. Once you step off of the aircraft you're in a secure area, but it's upstream of customs & immigration and passengers from the different aircraft can mix.

Well the testing would have to be done prior to allowing intermingling of inbound pax from other flights.  It certainly can be done...at a cost, but everything being done is at a cost.

[HighBypass 2,339]

Noel, I don't believe you're a conspiracy theorist. 😎 However, I can mail you a tinfoil hat because the Black Helicopters have no jurisdiction in the UK.. What's that? They do? OK well, bring them on!! (I like flying in helicopters).

Ahem, back to a serious discussion. From that last couple of pages I've now learned that actually unwanted individuals making their own way to UK shores are not the big problem I thought they were. AT LEAST in terms of the pandemic. Thank you gents! 😎 There are other issues for other times and not necessarily on this forum.