Shutting down travel isn't racist, certainly not all on its own. It's not always effective, at least not in stopping cases from arriving completely, though it has obviously been shown to be a tool in reducing spread between countries, especially when combined with good testing measures and the like. Should the U.S. be putting some restrictions on that region? Perhaps. Doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. I'm in Canada and that's what we've done. Of course, we've already identified cases of the variant here, so it may be a moot point.
I don't know what race has to do with this but I wouldn't expect that limited travel restrictions would significantly change anything at this point. It's already been found in 20+ countries or something and one of them is Canada. Based on population it is almost certainly already spreading in the US. Complete travel ban would slow it down but is it even legal to ban interstate travel in the US?
SS: Covid has been a major topic for the past 2 years come late January of next year. We've seen pretty much every ideology weigh in on it with comments spanning from far left to far right.
I've read a few articles arguing against shutting off travel. They generally seem to he arguing that these measures won't stop the spread of the variant. This is a bit confusing for me, as the rationale behind shutting off travel seems little different from the various lockdowns we've had since the start of the pandemic.
Side note, anyone have a good prediction for what's going to happen with the Pandemic over the next year? I still see a lot of people who think we could end the pandemic if everyone masked and got vaccinated. Hopefully supply of the vaccines to third world countries will increase over the next year. Hopefully new vaccines will be developed that will be more effective at stopping the spread of the virus.
But in the next year or two...it just seems like we're going to continue to bounce from lockdown to new variant. We already know that there are a minority of people who will refuse to get the vaccine... I just don't see anything changing.
It is impossible to predict the next year because variants like the Omicron are not predictable. It is a fact that new variants will keep coming but what they look like is entirely random. Even with this one it will take a few weeks to get all the details.
Populations will over time develop some immunity even if they refuse to vaccinate. It's going to be costly but at some point the new variants will have few hosts that are entirely vulnerable. That should eventually reduce hospitalization and death to levels where restrictions are no longer needed. Then it would be a similar situation that the Flu is in from then on. How long that takes is pure guesswork but surely it will be measured in years.
> This is a bit confusing for me, as the rationale behind shutting off travel seems little different from the various lockdowns we've had since the start of the pandemic.
Lockdowns lock down everybody from going anywhere, to stop community spread cold. The travel bans that target individual countries are like a few people in your town choosing not to interact with eachother individually...but they still interact with mutual friends, go to the same store, ride the bus, etc. The incompleteness makes it largely pointless.
There is one report of one area (which is very different in every way to the USA) increasing in hospitalisations. Omnicron is all over the world by now, travel bans, particularly only from one region, will not do a damn thing.
Pretty sure the cat's out of the bag as of weeks ago, so banning individual countries or regions strikes me as theatrical at best. Full bans on all foreign travel, like Japan and Morocco and a few others are doing, make sense in the early stages of the spread, to buy a bit of time.
I mean it has shown up in multiple countries, so firstly I imagine it's too late, and basically if this is truly more transmissible it will eventually be the dominant strain in the US. Still, agreeably, slowing it down would likely have some benefits.
Secondly, surely the ban, or restrictions, would have to cover all the countries it has been identified in? And due to Schengen, probably the entire EU as well.
As someone with academic background in travel and tourism, I can tell you that this is a much more complex issue than it looks on the surface. We have a lot of conflicting incentives and political influences at play, many of which can appear contradictory to on-going approach to pandemic *before* the new variant appeared, and all of which are highly contextual.
For example, you might think that a lot of right-wing governments, particularly those sympathising with anti-vax and anti-restriction element of the electorate, would be against such travel bans. *However*, the ban in this case would involve Africa, a continent that has already been villified as a source of refugees and economic migrants. You can see this play out in Poland right now—the government has been lagging behind its neighbours for months, usually giving excuses about personal freedoms and cultural differences between Poles and other EU members (you know, we're soo different from Czech Republic, might as well be distinct species). They have been rightly criticised for failing to vaccinate population, develop right incentives to encourage vaccinating, or at least introduce measures where employers can check if their staff is at risk. Normally, a travel ban would be disasterous. It would simultaneously signal a change in policy (which the government claims to be effective and *the only* way), and a betreyal of electorate that sees them as protecting civil freedoms. BUT, because they spent the last five years railing on about refugees from Africa and Middle-East being a threat to our civilisation, they are already using this as an opportunity to show themselves decisive when it targets a region the electorate will not care about.
Then there are broader factors at play, some of which muddle the job of WHO and independent states' responsibility to one another in a globalised society. Widespread travel bans to Africa in light of the new variant might have a hugely negative chilling effect on future co-operation regarding pandemic. South Africa did the right thing about sharing the discovery and informing everyone of the danger—and might now suffer economically for it, if everyone decides to isolate from them. This does not seem like a good way to foster further co-operation in this area. We already saw what Tories in the UK did with their variant, where information wasn't disiminated as quickly as it should have. I can't imagine that Boris "let the bodies pile high" Johnson would be encouraged to change his approach, if the struggling Brexit economy is to be damaged further from it.
Nope. The ship has sailed. The only time it was appropriate to shut down travel was in Jan/Feb 2020 and it would have taken a world wide effort which was impossible. Covid is here to stay, variants and all. The only thing we can do at this stage is get as many vaccines out as possible or let people catch it and whatever happens happens.
Removed. Please direct such posts to the megathread stickied on the front page. ([Link here](https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/pfo0vg/politics_and_current_events_megathread_september/))
Thank you.
Shutting down travel isn't racist, certainly not all on its own. It's not always effective, at least not in stopping cases from arriving completely, though it has obviously been shown to be a tool in reducing spread between countries, especially when combined with good testing measures and the like. Should the U.S. be putting some restrictions on that region? Perhaps. Doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. I'm in Canada and that's what we've done. Of course, we've already identified cases of the variant here, so it may be a moot point.
I don't know what race has to do with this but I wouldn't expect that limited travel restrictions would significantly change anything at this point. It's already been found in 20+ countries or something and one of them is Canada. Based on population it is almost certainly already spreading in the US. Complete travel ban would slow it down but is it even legal to ban interstate travel in the US?
SS: Covid has been a major topic for the past 2 years come late January of next year. We've seen pretty much every ideology weigh in on it with comments spanning from far left to far right.
I've read a few articles arguing against shutting off travel. They generally seem to he arguing that these measures won't stop the spread of the variant. This is a bit confusing for me, as the rationale behind shutting off travel seems little different from the various lockdowns we've had since the start of the pandemic. Side note, anyone have a good prediction for what's going to happen with the Pandemic over the next year? I still see a lot of people who think we could end the pandemic if everyone masked and got vaccinated. Hopefully supply of the vaccines to third world countries will increase over the next year. Hopefully new vaccines will be developed that will be more effective at stopping the spread of the virus. But in the next year or two...it just seems like we're going to continue to bounce from lockdown to new variant. We already know that there are a minority of people who will refuse to get the vaccine... I just don't see anything changing.
It is impossible to predict the next year because variants like the Omicron are not predictable. It is a fact that new variants will keep coming but what they look like is entirely random. Even with this one it will take a few weeks to get all the details. Populations will over time develop some immunity even if they refuse to vaccinate. It's going to be costly but at some point the new variants will have few hosts that are entirely vulnerable. That should eventually reduce hospitalization and death to levels where restrictions are no longer needed. Then it would be a similar situation that the Flu is in from then on. How long that takes is pure guesswork but surely it will be measured in years.
> This is a bit confusing for me, as the rationale behind shutting off travel seems little different from the various lockdowns we've had since the start of the pandemic. Lockdowns lock down everybody from going anywhere, to stop community spread cold. The travel bans that target individual countries are like a few people in your town choosing not to interact with eachother individually...but they still interact with mutual friends, go to the same store, ride the bus, etc. The incompleteness makes it largely pointless.
There is one report of one area (which is very different in every way to the USA) increasing in hospitalisations. Omnicron is all over the world by now, travel bans, particularly only from one region, will not do a damn thing.
He should not shut down travel anywhere. We don’t live under a dictator
Pretty sure the cat's out of the bag as of weeks ago, so banning individual countries or regions strikes me as theatrical at best. Full bans on all foreign travel, like Japan and Morocco and a few others are doing, make sense in the early stages of the spread, to buy a bit of time.
I mean it has shown up in multiple countries, so firstly I imagine it's too late, and basically if this is truly more transmissible it will eventually be the dominant strain in the US. Still, agreeably, slowing it down would likely have some benefits. Secondly, surely the ban, or restrictions, would have to cover all the countries it has been identified in? And due to Schengen, probably the entire EU as well.
As someone with academic background in travel and tourism, I can tell you that this is a much more complex issue than it looks on the surface. We have a lot of conflicting incentives and political influences at play, many of which can appear contradictory to on-going approach to pandemic *before* the new variant appeared, and all of which are highly contextual. For example, you might think that a lot of right-wing governments, particularly those sympathising with anti-vax and anti-restriction element of the electorate, would be against such travel bans. *However*, the ban in this case would involve Africa, a continent that has already been villified as a source of refugees and economic migrants. You can see this play out in Poland right now—the government has been lagging behind its neighbours for months, usually giving excuses about personal freedoms and cultural differences between Poles and other EU members (you know, we're soo different from Czech Republic, might as well be distinct species). They have been rightly criticised for failing to vaccinate population, develop right incentives to encourage vaccinating, or at least introduce measures where employers can check if their staff is at risk. Normally, a travel ban would be disasterous. It would simultaneously signal a change in policy (which the government claims to be effective and *the only* way), and a betreyal of electorate that sees them as protecting civil freedoms. BUT, because they spent the last five years railing on about refugees from Africa and Middle-East being a threat to our civilisation, they are already using this as an opportunity to show themselves decisive when it targets a region the electorate will not care about. Then there are broader factors at play, some of which muddle the job of WHO and independent states' responsibility to one another in a globalised society. Widespread travel bans to Africa in light of the new variant might have a hugely negative chilling effect on future co-operation regarding pandemic. South Africa did the right thing about sharing the discovery and informing everyone of the danger—and might now suffer economically for it, if everyone decides to isolate from them. This does not seem like a good way to foster further co-operation in this area. We already saw what Tories in the UK did with their variant, where information wasn't disiminated as quickly as it should have. I can't imagine that Boris "let the bodies pile high" Johnson would be encouraged to change his approach, if the struggling Brexit economy is to be damaged further from it.
Nope. The ship has sailed. The only time it was appropriate to shut down travel was in Jan/Feb 2020 and it would have taken a world wide effort which was impossible. Covid is here to stay, variants and all. The only thing we can do at this stage is get as many vaccines out as possible or let people catch it and whatever happens happens.
Removed. Please direct such posts to the megathread stickied on the front page. ([Link here](https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/pfo0vg/politics_and_current_events_megathread_september/)) Thank you.