Comment by solresol | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solresol | Hacker News Reader

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I have heard this version of events many times, but that's not how I remember it.

I remember the only international flights allowed as being the repatriation flights. (e.g. when an overseas government organised for some non-Chinese who were in Wuhan to be able to come home). And presumably the return flights for planes that would otherwise have been stranded in Wuhan.

FactCheck matches my memory...

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel...

Wikipedia for 23rd January says all outbound flights were banned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...

And anyway, there's something wrong with the whole idea: if domestic flights were banned international flights were still allowed, wouldn't the people of Wuhan who wanted to get to Beijing just fly via Bangkok or Seoul? A ban on domestic-only flights wouldn't have achieved anything.

Those articles are only referring to flights directly from Wuhan (ignoring the fact that neither Wikipedia nor the WHO are credible sources). International flights were still allowed from Beijing and other cities.

From a NYT article[1]:

> “I was surprised at how lax the whole process was,” said Andrew Wu, 31, who landed at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Beijing on March 10.

> Sabrina Fitch, 23, flew from China to Kennedy International Airport in New York on March 23.

> About 60 percent of travelers on direct flights from China in February were not American citizens, according to the most recently available government data.

So these were not only repatriation, but commercial flights.

The flight data also shows plenty of activity in February and March[2]. Whether those were only domestic flights or not is difficult to say, but clearly the shutdown wasn't total even domestically.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...

[2]: https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/the-chinese-roller-coaste...

Even so, from late December to 23rd January is a long time to still allow dozens of international flights everyday from Wuhan. Incompetence is ruled out because domestic flights were suspended right away.

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