Originally Posted by
SMT Member View Post
If it does indeed spread without the carrier exhibiting any symptoms, why on earth are these evacuation flights taking place? Surely containment is the best defence against further spreading of a virus, yet .gov's around the world are organising evacuation flights. Baffling.
Originally Posted by
marchino61
That's why the evacuees are being put in quarantine, I believe.
Well, some evacuees, at some destinations. Per AFP, France flew in a couple of hundred folks from Wuhan, quarantined the 20 showing symptoms of (some) illness upon arrival and told the rest to go home.
Given the number of carriers who have been moving with relative freedom all around the world since the initial outbreak, and the likelihood that each has passed the virus to two or three others (each of whom subsequently . . .), it's probably not possible to effectively prevent widespread epidemics, even a pandemic, with quarantine and isolation measures. The world just doesn't have sufficient facilities or resources.
Fortunately, so far, it appears that the disease in severe in only a minority of patients and the case fatality rate is fairly low, so we may well escape a real catastrophe.