Comment by bratawurst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bratawurst | Hacker News Reader

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You’re describing the opposite of flattening the curve. Closing the gates now does nothing.

I do not mean to be patronizing, but this is literally life or death and the math is very simple.

Today there are k infected people. Tomorrow there will be kn people.

If n is unsustainable, any positive value for k is equivalent. Arbitrarily large changes to k today make an arbitrarily small contribution to the final doubling.

“Infected people streaming in” means k becomes k+c. How much does reducing c flatten the curve? How much does it increase the time span of the critical last few doublings?

It doesn’t. That’s only dependent on n.

Ok, we can’t “flatten” the curve, but we can move the peak, right? How much does reducing c move the peak?

Well, every day we prevent k additional people from entering buys us one day. Remember, tomorrow that’s kn. Act fast.

If we could, this week alone, prevent a quantity of infected Europeans equal to the infected population already within the US from entering, that buys us one single doubling period before the collapse of healthcare. Maybe a week if we got lucky.

I will guesstimate that that is not a realistic target in fact. The actual benefit scales proportionally.

And next week it’s the same work for half the benefit.

What are you talking about.

You're all over this thread with the same point: what makes you think that not letting new cases in (in this case, travel from hotspots) is somehow not improving the situation?

>the math is very simple

Yes it is. There are infected people in Europe. Stopping travel from Europe = less infected people in the US. Yes, there are already infected people in the US, but a travel ban will neither increase or reduce that number; it's irrelevant.

So your argument is, because the travel ban doesn’t have a big impact it’s not flattening the curve?

What do you propose be done instead of a travel ban?

A bad idea doesn't stop being a bad idea just because of the absence of alternatives.

Suddenly everyone is an armchair president, virologist, and strategist.

No, shutting down the travel from a country with an outbreak that is not contained is not a bad idea.

Stop politicizing this matter and either trust your government or go to your bunker.

Everyone the past week has been plain fearmongering and it's disgusting.

1. Restrictions on internal travel

2. Isolation for those exposed or showing symptoms

3. Paid time off work for people who can't do their jobs in isolation, to make sure people report exposure and symptoms

4. Suspension of public gatherings

Some of these are being done voluntarily and/or by local governments, but that's very patchy.

I agree on all points, but are restrictions on internal travel much different from restrictions on external travel? Seems to depend on the definition of the boundaries, and I think it’s hard to quantify the relative costs of external/internal travel restrictions. So I’m not sure what we lose by also restricting “external” travel other than another level of inconvenience.

For a country the size of the US? Yes, there is a MASSIVE difference between the two. The volume of movement by air between California and, say, Colorado is massively larger than that between California and China, and one of those places currently has a COVID-19 outbreak and one does not.

The distinction between the two for the sake of definitions is also very clear - whether the restrictions apply to travel that does not cross the borders of the United States. The currently-announced restrictions do not.

The question isn't of restricting external traffic in addition to internal traffic; we're only limiting external traffic. We probably need to be doing a bit of both, though with less draconian limitations on internal traffic to accommodate economic realities.

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