I was on one of the last flights to transit through Taiwan. Here in the UK, the government have been talking about a program to get brits back from Australia because many of the places you have to stop and refuel are closed even to transiting passengers.
Weirdly enough, I had a quick look at Heathrow arrivals and departures, and there's still loads of flights leaving every 10 minutes, to all kinds of destinations. Multiple flights per day to Rome - I guess if you absolutely, positively have to be in Italy right now! In comparison, my local airport in North of England had a single flight the entire day.
My understanding is that if airlines stop running flights they may lose their access to a given airport or terminal. So they run flights even if they aren't full or in major demand.
When I came back to Gatwick, they were still listing flights from 12h before (100s of them) as "delayed". I think the system they use is pre populated long in advance...
Right, Qantas was getting people across via Perth (and also, briefly, Darwin) until recently, but now Qantas has stopped flying, and I don't think those routes are available to other airlines.
Is there a treaty limiting routes? I know the US used to allocate them domestically. I'm a little surprised BA couldn't just least a gate from someone at Perth. Or just pay Qantas for charted flights.
I think it's an organisational problem rather a technical one to be fair.
You can (could) fly Perth to London. But will Perth put up with extra flights when (say) Singapore won't? And Western Australia has closed it's borders too, so you'll need political approval, can you get that? And are you sure you will have aircrew that will do the trip? And 26h is a long time to be on a flight, what happens if someone starts coughing harder and harder, you can't leave them at the midpoint. And remember, your airline is now on the verge of bankruptcy, so there isn't a budget for any of this and everyone senior is busy...
Interestingly they were talking about doing London-Sydney back in Jan. Popular Mechanics had an article about re-enforcing the Hull so pressure inside could be higher so you would not feel as rough at such a long flight...
Is it reasonable to assume, at this point, that international travel is still a relevant contributor to the spread of the virus? Apart from reducing travel overall, I don't see how the ban could have an impact once the virus is distributed. Especially since domestic flights seem to continue.
Initially, yes. It could have changed things. But this action now feels way too late. Like two months late. It feels like a nationalistic rally of blaming others for the spread.
I suspect it’s the airports and aircraft themselves rather than the destination that’s at issue. Small isolated groups may become infected, but they are far less likely to infect others outside the group. Airports inherently mix people from large areas within a country together which crosses those boundaries.
Take a look at Vietnam and Singapore. Both clamped down hard back in January. They were keeping their numbers quite low (<100), especially impressive considering Vietnam is 100M people.
Once the virus spread to other countries and they started to shutdown, a lot of Singapore and Vietnamese nationals returned home. Contact tracing indicated that almost 100% of new cases were people returning from overseas.
Last I checked Singapore has close to 1,000 cases and Vietnam almost 300.
To answer your question, yes, stopping international travel can have a big impact on controlling the disease.
As a Canadian, I find it frustrating that for weeks, the Federal government was hesitant to halt air travel, citing the WHO who stated that closing borders showed little evidence on slowing the transmission of influenza (https://postmediaedmontonjournal2.files.wordpress.com/2020/0...)
And in the end, we ended up closing our borders except well beyond the time when it could've made a major difference.
Italy has a lot of Chinese-staffed sweatshops. All it would take is one infectee to start their new job in December or January to start the steamroller going.
Hugely. Taiwan is an 'isolated island' with no outbreak i.e. no community spread. They have the 300 cases there nailed down. So anyone coming in the country is a source of contamination.
Otherwise - this is still a problem.
In my little regional city in Canada - cases are small and they've already peaked. Case load is small enough that we are now a 'landlocked' island. Within days we could feasibly 'go back to work' were we to be sure nobody is 'entering the bubble'. That won't be the case, but you see what I mean.
I think borders are a pretty big deal in terms of being able to contain this problem.
I suggest that in order to travel internationally in the next little while, it might be required to have a 'test card' indicating you're clean from COVID within the last x number of days for example.
Either that or everyone coming into a country has to isolate for x days.
1. My guess is that you're right, the main reason this is happening is a nationalistic wish to blame others for the spread.
But also:
2. As other commentators have noticed, it's difficult to socially distance in an airport. On the plane itself, there is extremely good ventilation and what limited evidence I've seen suggests that transmission is low, but in airports that might not be the case (I'm not sure).
3. Air crew may refuse to fly. Of course there are many other service professions in which enormous numbers of staff are being asked to expose themselves to a high risk of infection ... but almost all of those staff are (sadly) easy to replace if they refuse, whereas pilots are not.
> 1. My guess is that you're right, the main reason this is happening is a nationalistic wish to blame others for the spread.
More than half of the world's population is under lockdown within their countries, and you still think that shutting down air travel is a nationalistic wish?
As others point out, by distinguishing domestic from international travel, you're implying that you believe your citizens are smart, intelligent, and know not to travel, but you can't trust other citizens to do that. That implication is what it makes it nationalistic.
More practically, though, is that it's a measure that can only be effective if domestic transmission is not a major cause of new cases, which is true in only very few countries right now (and I believe none of those countries have banned visitors). Enacting such a policy at this late stage is a measure that looks like you're taking a strong stance while having virtually no effect at all, and could well be an attempt to distract from your own failures to contain it beforehand.
Given the way Putin has governed in the past decade, I am rather more inclined to believe that the primary goal of this measure is in fact propaganda.
> As others point out, by distinguishing domestic from international travel, you're implying that you believe your citizens are smart, intelligent, and know not to travel, but you can't trust other citizens to do that. That implication is what it makes it nationalistic.
There is no need to make up conspiracy theories. Domestic flights are essential in a country the size of Russia, international flights are not. The same thing can be seen elsewhere. For example, TAP Portugal has grounded all flights except those between the mainland and Madeira / Azores.
Isn't it curious that they make a distinction between international and domestic travel at this point? If air travel is spreading the disease, why not shut it all down?
> On the plane itself, there is extremely good ventilation and what limited evidence I've seen suggests that transmission is low, but in airports that might not be the case (I'm not sure).
I doubt that airplanes are in any way safer than airports. In an airplane it's hard not to touch places other people's droplets have reached.
Yes, it's reasonable to assume it's a contributor to the spread -- but I'm not sure what you mean by 'relevant'. Significant? (un)controllable? Worth bothering with?
I can't find the article now, but a week or two ago Singapore and South Korea (IIRC) were claiming most of their new cases were imports, as they'd been approaching some level of control (via tracking & testing) within their borders.
Because different countries have wildly different attitudes, policies, and procedures - the best place to enforce domestic controls are at your own border.
As you say, domestic travel can and will also spread the virus, but that doesn't mean you throw arms in the air and accept all travellers from everywhere.
I meant significant. I don't think Russia is at a point that compares well with South Korea. For SK I can understand when they differentiate between domestic and international fights.
Okay. I tend to side with the 'do everything we can' approach, on the assumption that'll save more suffering and lives, and with the anecdotal evidence coming in from regions that have not done everything they could, and with an optimistic expectation that it'll reduce the length of time it takes to bring it into manageable spread rate.
It may not have a profound impact on the spread within (and indeed outside) Russia, but it almost definitely will have some impact, and at this point that's probably sufficient reason in itself.
Based on what I've read about how and where the outbreaks started, I'm pretty sure that when this is over and the analysis comes in, air-travel will get the blame for the early and rapid spread of this virus. It looks clear that Taiwan's robust success is the result of immediate quarantine of travelers.
Two people recently flew into a Gwitchin community in the Yukon expecting to live off the land. They were quickly (and angrily) isolated and flown back to Whitehorse by the RCMP.
That would be my assumption as well. I would hypothesize that once the virus is well seeded within a country, the contribution by new travelers is dwarfed by internal propagation.
Using the famous Washington Post simulation as a reference:
I imagine it's like the second scenario in reverse. Rather than the wall opening, picture it closing after the virus is already spreading uncontained on either side.
Of course, it could be a significant factor in keeping the outbreak initially contained. But that involves an even more fanciful assumption in my view: that you could impose and really tightly enforce a ban early enough to matter. The continued pressure from Trump and many of his political allies to "open the economy" -- and their resistance to "shutting it down" in the first place -- shows such a proposition, offered at a point it would have mattered (if that were even possible with the initial stonewalling by China on the severity of the outbreak) would almost certainly have been cried down as paranoia and overreaction by the kind of business and political interests who hold real influence over these matters.
It was announced during the tournament with a grace period, which has now expired. I feel bad for Rajubov who actually predicted this happening and they kicked him out of the tournament.
I'm not aware of information coming out of Russia that contradicts their official reporting, but I still find it extremely implausible that they have been so little impacts by the virus spread. But I'm flying blind on this speculation, I freely admit: Are typical travel patterns between Russia and the rest of Europe so minimal as to explain their decrease exposure?
Maybe because they started testing early? Their first cases were in January and they screened everyone in airports since then [0], they performed 639606 tests with 4731 positives. [1][2]
That makes it sound about as sealed shut on speaking out as the Chinese were in the early days, only without the mass quarantines that they wouldn't be able to hide as easily. Either way it doesn't paint a good picture.
This doesn't align with their propaganda that claims coronavirus has no more harm than regular flu.
People are told there is no coronavirus in Russia, just couple minor cases.
Huh. I live in a rural area. Tourism (hunting, fishing, etc) is the main driver for visitors. Now many locals do not want visitors, notwithstanding the money that they spend.
WHO's bad advice is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. I watched their conferences in January. Simultaneously heaping praise on China for their effective quarantines while demanding other countries not cut off flights from China because there was little risk. If every country ignored them and stopped travel, or said every person entering the country has to spend X days in quarantine, this could have been contained. And that's only one part of WHO's failure.
You're really taking an overly broad and negative reading here. The commenter you replied to obviously referred to the current U.S. administration when wishing for them to take orders from Russia. The joke being that the alleged conspiracy would have a favorable outcome compared to the bumbling response we observe. The comment doesn't suggest (at least to me) that this should be a general policy.
Similarly, calling conventions disastrous during the current pandemic is well in line of discourse about limiting the spread. Interpreting this as "a plea to end democracy" overinterprets things much. Is a democracy really a democracy if it is so fragile it could cease to exist when a few conventions cannot be held?
Please show a bit of good will when reading others' comments.
I'm not, but do you have some concrete plan for when the polls should have been rescheduled to? A democratic country can't indefinitely postpone elections, no matter what the costs of holding them are.
Let's start with two months. It seems quite possible that we'll have a better idea what's going on by June. A number of important events that affect my community have been postponed until at least then. In June, we can ask the public health experts whether we can start ramping back up with big public events, including elections.
I wish all the democracy superfans would show some consistency and demand all-paper-ballot elections, like most democratic polities in history and in the present. The closed-source electronic voting box is certainly a bigger threat to democracy than several months of primary delay. When other nations have exit poll discrepancies of over 4%, the UN calls it an indicator of probable vote fraud. Our primaries regularly feature such discrepancies. [0]
I'm in favor of paper ballots too! But surely you see why it's more concerning to say "alright, elections are cancelled, and we won't hold an election again until unaccountable public health experts make a subjective judgment that it's safe". What would happen if they don't?
1. If you're saying "everybody stay home, the NBA is cancelled, the NCAA tournament is cancelled because of the threat of transmission, but we're going to have the entire state parade in front of a bunch of old people who run our polls"... yeah, that might not be a great idea right now. Deciding to either postpone it or do it mail-only seems rather responsible.
2. Postponing it indefinitely is a whole nother can of worms. You can't just postpone the general election for two years until we have a working vaccine.
So, worst case, we're going to have to conduct the general election by mail only. I think it has to be conducted on time in November, though, to avoid giving rise to conspiracy theories (or to tempt people from taking advantage of the situation...)
Democracy and Democratic governments are two different things. The USA is a democracy. China, North Korea, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are Democratic governments.
Do you have any idea why that is? Length of travel? Cost of travel? I'm a Pole living abroad and every year I try to go to visit my family for Easter, it seems like a pretty normal thing to do.
Orthodox Christianity is not a big thing among the current generation of Russian diaspora, so Easter doesn't have any cultural significance to most of them.
Summer is a good time to visit because of the mild climate, and New Years', because it has always been a big holiday, culturally.
Thank you for sharing that! It's amazing that this tradition exists in Poland. Do Poles come to see family for New Year / Christmas?
Oh, and by the way: Russia has state holidays from Jan 1st till Jan 10th (+/-, every year is slightly different), which makes it a lot easier to meet everyone.
Easter does not have any state recognition in Russia, so everyone would be quite busy with their regular errands, I guess.
Yeah, we go home for Christmas too. So per year I'll usually go for Christmas and for Easter. Maybe if the year is really good we'll try to visit at the end of summer too.
This comment shows how little westerners know about Russia and Russians. Easter is of very little importance in Russia, especially for Russians living abroad.
For religious Russians abroad there are Orthodox churches in almost every country, even in Thailand and Cambodia.
I was on one of the last flights to transit through Taiwan. Here in the UK, the government have been talking about a program to get brits back from Australia because many of the places you have to stop and refuel are closed even to transiting passengers.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus-travel-re...
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/australia/return-to...