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Best Posts in Thread: Ph not opening its border to international tourism until the second half of 2021

  1. eskirvin

    eskirvin DI Forum Adept Blood Donor Veteran Navy

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    Agreed 100% sir. I wear my mask in rooms full of maskless people, on airplanes, when confronting cleaning staff coming to service a hotel room, and even in my car with strangers. I wash my hands a lot, something which I've always done, santize a few times a day, but otherwise continue life as normal, as it is allowed.

    My "normal includes" avoiding smokers and their accompanying clouds like the plague, walking away from fights I'm not personally involved in, staying away from armed people, and being constantly aware of my surroundings, especially when driving.
     
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  2. djfinn6230

    djfinn6230 DI Senior Member

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    I can understand how people became irrational. Just look at the massive fear porn we were subjected on regular media and social media including Facebook. The videos on TV and youtube showing dead bodies in Italy falling off the trucks onto the street. In the US in Staten Island, New York with the ambulance sirens as they passed by every 2 or 3 minutes and people huddling inside their homes, TV doctors claiming that millions will soon die, videos of Wuhan residents being dragged out of apartments and crammed into into trucks bring driven to quarantine camps and videos of people in Wuhan simply dropping dead on the street.

    Now it has been a while and we recognize that although the disease is horrible, much worse than flu strains we are familiar with, the death rate is 1.5% and not of the whole population but only of those testing positive. It has been going down according to the IATF graphs. I the early days I heard figures of total deaths approaching 10% of entire country populations if we didn’t lockdown. Our data on countries that did not lock down is sparse but it seems to show that lockdowns have some life saving benefit but mass casualties do not occur when they are lifted.

    But when it comes to matters of life and death it is psychologically difficult to roll back and take a less emotional and more rational perspective. You have been scared out your wits. The fright does not leave the mind so quickly when those shocking images and words have sunk in so deeply.

    It seems to stay with people for a long time, reading the majority of comments to covid news on FB. Those who want to relax lockdowns are akin to psychopaths who do not care if people die. So many are probably afraid to comment. Peer approval is much more important here than in the west.

    Past “quarantine” actions always meant “quarantining” individuals known or suspected to have been in contact with sick people and then “isolating” the sick people themselves. However, China started a new procedure we could call the “Wuhan” process; what they did, and the rest of the world copied, was to quarantine the entire population, not just the sick or potentially sick as before.

    This was the first time in history that happened in a large scale, at least as far as I can see. The 100% quarantines started in Wuhan China and we thought they likely knew the best way to handle it, after all, they were the experts, so everybody followed and they quarantined entire cities and regions just as Wuhan and surrounding provinces did.

    Initially this may have been justified because of the high presumed contagiousness. It is truly quite high with an R of 1.3 or more. But at the beginning, scientists were saying it was 6, definitely an added reason to keep everybody inside. To my knowledge, nobody is re-evaluating the need for 100% mass quarantine now that R is known to be much lower.

    R = 1.3 is highly contagious; it means that every sick person infects 1.3 more people, so, the disease rampages through the cities if no restrictions are made (like quarantine in its “normal” definition).

    Remember the 14 days to “flatten the curve”, to stem the increase in RATE of infections? That occurred here months ago. And for those who think “death rate” is more important, that rate has been in the negative direction even with the statistical increase in new cases (but not increase in rate of infection aka flattening the curve).

    “Flattening the curve” is a passé term nowadays for those who remember it. But at the beginning it was the most urgent effort to be undertaken by all nations on the planet. There is not much advertising revenue when reporting news that said we made significant progress on the disease, at least not then.

    I tend to be in eskirvin’s corner on this. We really need to do a deep dive and readjust our containment measures if more recent data supports it (loosening restrictions).

    I did not say we should stop trying to contain the virus. Or to not selectively protect the most endangered. But we need to give it another look and we may find many relaxations that would make perfect sense.


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    Last edited: Sep 21, 2020
  3. DavyL200

    DavyL200 DI Forum Luminary ★ Global Mod ★ ★ Moderator ★ Highly Rated Poster Showcase Reviewer

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    Manila, Sep 7 (efe-epa).- The Philippines will not open its borders to international visitors until the second half of 2021 and plans to gradually reactivate domestic tourism in October, a spokesman for the Department of Tourism told EFE on Monday.

    “When other countries lift border controls, the Department of Tourism expects international visitors from the region in the second half of 2021,” said spokeswoman Czarina Zara-Loyola.

    Rather than fully opening up to foreign visitors, the Philippines plans to create travel bubbles with countries in the region, which have generally been successful in containing COVID-19.

    The Philippines has imposed one of the longest and strictest quarantines in the world, which has particularly affected the tourism, transport and aviation sectors, as not only the country’s borders are closed, but movement between provinces is also restricted.

    To offset the losses in a sector that in 2019 came to represent 11 percent of GDP, the Department of Tourism plans the gradual reopening of domestic tourism in the last quarter of the year, at a time when the pandemic is increasingly under control , with the exception of Manila.

    “National tourism is the backbone of the industry. The Department of Tourism expects, with the support of local governments, its gradual activation from the last quarter of this year until the first six months of 2021,” said Zara-Loyola.

    https://www.laprensalatina.com/phil...ZJBlcON4SlrC2enmO0xfYurG2dksMe5vwHf3qw7XS8Usk
     
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  4. eskirvin

    eskirvin DI Forum Adept Blood Donor Veteran Navy

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    It is tough to describe the madness I witnessed, but it was in July as I had a flight on the 15th to the UAE. Sorry, I just figured many read my rather long set of posts on the subject.

    As we arrived, there was a crowd of people, large enough to make walking in through the ambulance access driveway difficult without shouldering people. As it turns out, "most" of these people were waiting for evaluation by a 30 strong force of nurses/doctors that were situated in booths separated by 5 foot partition walls. These were people that feared they had COVID and were there to see if it was true. They were questioned and if their description of events/symptoms held up to scrutiny, they were actually tested. I saw many leave without being tested. So when I said "evaluated", I meant just that.

    In what way was I lucky? I ended up spending a couple thousand dollars to stay in a hotel, get tested, and change flight dates due to last minute changes. Was I lucky that I didn't catch a disease that would have robbed me of my sense of smell for 2 weeks in exchange for all of that wasted time and money? I suppose some view it so.
     
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  5. SkipJack

    SkipJack DI Senior Member

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    I don't know.
    Will you ever let this topic rest? Everything has already been said.

    It seems some people have an uncontrollable need to have the last word and the last word again after that.
     
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  6. eskirvin

    eskirvin DI Forum Adept Blood Donor Veteran Navy

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    I'm not sure what you see anyone denying. I'm glad I don't make policy either because I don't want the heat. @jimf just presented some facts. Do you deny they are facts?
     
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  7. jimf

    jimf DI Member Showcase Reviewer

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    20% of common cold viruses are corona viruses. This one is dangerous for at risk individuals over 70. So was the seasonal flu of 2018 that took 80,000 Americans. Why didn't we shut our world down then?
    The overwhelming majority infected with covid 19 either have mild symptoms, or don't know they have it at all.
    Go to the CDC report dated August 26. Just 6% of the U.S. deaths from covid 19 are soley from covid. 94% had significant comorbidities and at the extremes of age.
    If you're at risk, quarantine.
     
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  8. djfinn6230

    djfinn6230 DI Senior Member

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    The element of fear in some locations has been attenuating, due to common sense, so now it is time to give the fear virus another boost.


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    Last edited: Sep 19, 2020
  9. eskirvin

    eskirvin DI Forum Adept Blood Donor Veteran Navy

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    I honestly don't know anyone that doesn't fear death. It is the end of all things, completely so for the non-religious. I think @Rye83 means "scared" in the same context I do. I admire anyone's intent to preserve their own life, as long as it doesn't come at the cost of other's lives. Some advocate things that make sense, like staying at home if you are elderly and avoiding potential contact, whereas others advocate economic and societal collapse in favor of their own self interest. You (cautious people) can be perfectly safe if you take measures to prevent contacting the infected, on your own. There's no need to destroy the lives of others to save your own.
     
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  10. eskirvin

    eskirvin DI Forum Adept Blood Donor Veteran Navy

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    I recently stayed in just such a hotel. At the Manila Hilton, you have to have a reservation as there are no walk-ins. My wife and I stayed there for a few nights as we attempted to get PCRs for onward travel. We went to St. Luke's in Manila, to the emergency room, to find a huge crowd, probably numbering a couple hundred or more, getting evaluated for various sniffles. We waited for our PCR tests right next to people at the emergency room complaining of COVID symptoms and awaiting assessment. After getting tested, we moved through the press of people to a car that was waiting for us. I felt like a celebrity.

    During our stay, we ate at public restaraunts that were open on occassion, visited an overcrowded 7-11 for supplies, got coffee from a Starbucks, and ate a buffet style breakfast, with spacing controlled by floor stickers to ensure social distance was observed. Please explain to me how we were not "exposed to Manila residents" as you say.
     
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