Despite the warnings people traveled to XYZ and are now stuck. Who is responsible?
- Thread starter Scared Silly
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Hi Katie,
We were not promoting anything by staying. It was, at that time one of the safest places on earth. We had other obligations at home that we wanted to tend to. In hindsight we should have come early
SueJ
I don't feel we made any gambles or bad decisions. In my opinion the state department, completely dropped the ball. Since we are talking government at this point, the government has completely dropped the ball on managing this entire pandemic. We were just a small part of it.
I will repeat something else: The Airlines are the real issue here, the State Department is secondary, but is quite culpable. The airlines just walked away from their passengers. To Katie's comment - we wanted the airlines to repatriate us from a 0 incident environment to one that was growing far quicker than most people knew. We were going from a country that was taking this very very seriously to one that was not - knda like running into a burning building - quite ironic don't you think!
Look, everyone has a different risk profile, and typically people who think they take fewer risks pass judgement on those who take they feel take more risks. Being someone who likes the occasional hit of adrenaline, I have seen this far to much. My view is that these folks passing judgement do it out of ignorance. They are acting out of to little information, or as shown here, a need to use hindsight to judge others - 'Monday morning quarterback' mentality, it's really unpleasant!
To put it in recognizable terms: a basic OW diver will look at someone who is doing deco dives as someone taking unnecessary risks. OTOH the deco diver understands the technology, realizes that there is some risk, and makes their own assessment. You can rest assured that if something goes wrong, anything, there will be a chorus of 'I told you so's'
Bottom line, for those of you who feel obligated to say this is a 'gamble' or an 'unnecessary risk', I respect your opinion, right up to the point where you start applying and judging others.
There are plenty of people who view your diving as dangerous and unnecessary, you on the other hand know better. You manage the risks AS YOU KNOW THEM...
So remember, the next time you are in the water and something goes wrong - it's your fault for taking unnecessary risks, but if I am there, I will be glad to help!
Ray
We were not promoting anything by staying. It was, at that time one of the safest places on earth. We had other obligations at home that we wanted to tend to. In hindsight we should have come early
SueJ
I don't feel we made any gambles or bad decisions. In my opinion the state department, completely dropped the ball. Since we are talking government at this point, the government has completely dropped the ball on managing this entire pandemic. We were just a small part of it.
I will repeat something else: The Airlines are the real issue here, the State Department is secondary, but is quite culpable. The airlines just walked away from their passengers. To Katie's comment - we wanted the airlines to repatriate us from a 0 incident environment to one that was growing far quicker than most people knew. We were going from a country that was taking this very very seriously to one that was not - knda like running into a burning building - quite ironic don't you think!
Look, everyone has a different risk profile, and typically people who think they take fewer risks pass judgement on those who take they feel take more risks. Being someone who likes the occasional hit of adrenaline, I have seen this far to much. My view is that these folks passing judgement do it out of ignorance. They are acting out of to little information, or as shown here, a need to use hindsight to judge others - 'Monday morning quarterback' mentality, it's really unpleasant!
To put it in recognizable terms: a basic OW diver will look at someone who is doing deco dives as someone taking unnecessary risks. OTOH the deco diver understands the technology, realizes that there is some risk, and makes their own assessment. You can rest assured that if something goes wrong, anything, there will be a chorus of 'I told you so's'
Bottom line, for those of you who feel obligated to say this is a 'gamble' or an 'unnecessary risk', I respect your opinion, right up to the point where you start applying and judging others.
There are plenty of people who view your diving as dangerous and unnecessary, you on the other hand know better. You manage the risks AS YOU KNOW THEM...
So remember, the next time you are in the water and something goes wrong - it's your fault for taking unnecessary risks, but if I am there, I will be glad to help!
Ray
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Fellow divers,
I would encourage US citizens and nationals to enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, STEP, a service of the US Dept of State, Bureau of Consular Affaires Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. It allows you to enroll an international trip with the nearest US embassy or consulate. You receive important information and allow the US embassy to easily contact you.
I had a trip to Bonaire planned for April 3-17 and received important updates. I have a trip to Colombia planned for June and am receiving updates for that trip. Colombia is currently tightly secured and US citizens are having trouble returning to the US.
You can also subscribe to countries you are interested in, but do not yet have a scheduled trip. For instance, I am currently subscribed to Bonaire, the Cayman Islands, and Mexico and am receiving current alerts and information.
Good traveling and diving,
Craig
I would encourage US citizens and nationals to enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, STEP, a service of the US Dept of State, Bureau of Consular Affaires Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. It allows you to enroll an international trip with the nearest US embassy or consulate. You receive important information and allow the US embassy to easily contact you.
I had a trip to Bonaire planned for April 3-17 and received important updates. I have a trip to Colombia planned for June and am receiving updates for that trip. Colombia is currently tightly secured and US citizens are having trouble returning to the US.
You can also subscribe to countries you are interested in, but do not yet have a scheduled trip. For instance, I am currently subscribed to Bonaire, the Cayman Islands, and Mexico and am receiving current alerts and information.
Good traveling and diving,
Craig
OP
Scared Silly
Contributor
Ray, I have been thinking about yours posts, they are really good and I think this conversation is really helpful. So again my thanks for chiming in.
The current administration has certainly dropped the ball in multiple ways but there are others who are really trying and in some cases fighting against the current administration. That said, we should leave that out of the conversation.
Not sure the burning house is a good analogy but I do get your point. If one is going to get sick one wants to get sick where they feel most comfortable. For those of us in first world countries that is home. I will address the Dept of State and airlines below.
I would agree more often people make these judgements lacking a good understanding. However, I think there is a large body of people on this board who have traveled extensively who do have a good idea of the issues. One reason I wanted to start the discussion so that others could perhaps learn because at the end of the day we are each responsible for our actions.
Risk assessment involves contingencies. If Davey Jones comes a calling one wants to have contingencies. There are some contingencies that one can not really plan for when traveling. For instance, a major earthquake that shuts down a region. And I believe that is really the issue here. I will say one could not plan for the travel restrictions to be put into place so quickly. But on the other hand it was not a matter of if, but when the virus was going hit.
Here would be my analogy, it has been raining hard for weeks and one travels across a tenuous bridge that is the sole route in and out. The bridge has always been reasonably reliable but an extra ordinary amount of rain falls way up stream, comes down, and it gives way. One is now stuck. Who is responsible when one are in no immediate danger only inconvenienced? Should the county build a replacement immediately (airline in your case), should the national guard airlift one out (US Government in your case). Who is responsible? At the end of the day, one made the decision to travel down the road, no one forced them.
I can understand the Embassy not having good information as it was a rapidly changing situation, and I do find it odd that they sent a plane to pickup a sport ball team (connections perhaps??). Not sure what to think that some airlines would travel but others not. I would like to hear their reasoning before saying more.
Finally, when one is in the public eye whether by choice or not, one gets judged. Like it or not! Not always easy and why I greatly appreciate you chiming in.
The current administration has certainly dropped the ball in multiple ways but there are others who are really trying and in some cases fighting against the current administration. That said, we should leave that out of the conversation.
Not sure the burning house is a good analogy but I do get your point. If one is going to get sick one wants to get sick where they feel most comfortable. For those of us in first world countries that is home. I will address the Dept of State and airlines below.
I would agree more often people make these judgements lacking a good understanding. However, I think there is a large body of people on this board who have traveled extensively who do have a good idea of the issues. One reason I wanted to start the discussion so that others could perhaps learn because at the end of the day we are each responsible for our actions.
Risk assessment involves contingencies. If Davey Jones comes a calling one wants to have contingencies. There are some contingencies that one can not really plan for when traveling. For instance, a major earthquake that shuts down a region. And I believe that is really the issue here. I will say one could not plan for the travel restrictions to be put into place so quickly. But on the other hand it was not a matter of if, but when the virus was going hit.
Here would be my analogy, it has been raining hard for weeks and one travels across a tenuous bridge that is the sole route in and out. The bridge has always been reasonably reliable but an extra ordinary amount of rain falls way up stream, comes down, and it gives way. One is now stuck. Who is responsible when one are in no immediate danger only inconvenienced? Should the county build a replacement immediately (airline in your case), should the national guard airlift one out (US Government in your case). Who is responsible? At the end of the day, one made the decision to travel down the road, no one forced them.
I can understand the Embassy not having good information as it was a rapidly changing situation, and I do find it odd that they sent a plane to pickup a sport ball team (connections perhaps??). Not sure what to think that some airlines would travel but others not. I would like to hear their reasoning before saying more.
Finally, when one is in the public eye whether by choice or not, one gets judged. Like it or not! Not always easy and why I greatly appreciate you chiming in.
- Messages
- 20,895
- Reaction score
- 20,587
- Location
- Philadelphia and Boynton Beach
- # of dives
- 1000 - 2499
Here is an example of the important messages you could receive automatically from the US embassy:
Attachments
For those that may not fully understand the concept of exponential growth, here is an excellent illustration of why the growth rate of Covid 19 is so dangerous:
When a danger is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn’t, printed in the Washington Post, March 10, 2020. Link below.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/10/coronavirus-what-matters-isnt-what-you-can-see-what-you-cant/
When a danger is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn’t, printed in the Washington Post, March 10, 2020. Link below.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/10/coronavirus-what-matters-isnt-what-you-can-see-what-you-cant/
Dan
Contributor
I registered to STEP now. Thanks for posting.
outofofficebrb
HARRO HUNNAYYY
I've been enrolling in the STEP program for all my travels for years. They are super helpful. The earlier you sign up for them, the sooner you get relevant data to the areas you will be going. I was following the news and government warnings + travel restrictions/bans, both those issued at home (US) and at my destination or transit countries (Singapore and Indonesia) extremely closely while keeping an eye on other countries because I was set to be gone for a very long trip (5 weeks) with a departure date of March 21. I ended up not going and it was the right decision. The warning from the US govt for non-essential travel was posted about March 11 or 12. It was around then that positive cases and countries starting to tighten up their borders/restrict travel really shot up exponentially worldwide. By March 14-16, I knew the writing was on the wall that this trip was 100% a no go based on the number of cases, the travel restrictions in each country (destination and on a whole), the non-essential deal of course, and where I saw it heading. I did not need to wait for the Level 4 Do Not Travel warning to be issued to know that.
Here are the warnings issued by the US Embassy for Indonesia, as an example:
Jan 28 - COVID Outbreak in China
Feb 4 - Travel restrictions due to COVID outbreak in China for people having been to China
March 5 - Govt of Indo has 2 confirmed cases.
March 6 - If you have traveled to China, Iran, parts of Italy or South Korea in the last 14 days, you will be refused entry into Indo.
<<< March 11 or 12 - US issues Level 3 Non Essential Travel Warning >>>
March 14 - Announcing first death in Indo due to COVID. Request to reconsider travel abroad due to global impact of COVID.
<<< March 19 Level 4 Do Not Travel issued >>>
I will leave everything past that off. I just wanted to illustrate what the big picture looked like.
Below is data from Johns Hopkins.....
Here are the daily increases in cases in the US starting March 5, while keeping in line with the travel alert dates above so that you can see how this exponentially was changing. The worldwide daily increases are in parenthesis.
March 5 - 45 (3,900)
March 6 - 140 (4,000)
March 11 - 382 (2,500) <<< Level 3 non essential warning issued >>>
March 12 - 516 (16,900)
March 14 - 772 (11,400)
March 19 - 5,400 (29,500) <<< level 4 do not travel issued >>>
March 25 (latest data) - 18,100 (61,900)
And then here were the confirmed cases (albeit a function of how much we were testing) in the US and then the total numbers worldwide in parenthesis
March 5 - 262 (101,800)
March 6 - 402 (105,800)
March 11 - 1,700 (128,400) <<< Level 3 non essential warning issued >>>
March 12 - 2,200 (145,200)
March 14 - 3,500 (167,500)
March 19 - 19,100 (272,000) <<< level 4 do not travel issued >>>
March 25 (latest data) - 83,800 (529,600)
I won't even mention what Indo had at the time relative to all this - hardly anything because they weren't really testing. They only had 34 by March 11 in a country that has 260 million people or so.
I just want to make it clear for some people armchairing this and saying "it was so obvious" and "if you flew, you should have known better in Feb or early March" - a LOT changed just between the days of March 9-16. Again, while I did not end up traveling and am so glad I was paying attention to all of this in detail, I have empathy, sympathy, and compassion for those that left during that time period when it was between the cusp of it being obvious and not obvious. Or, maybe they left when things were fine and their trip overlapped to a point where it wasn't. I was lucky enough that my trip fell around a time period that allowed me to make the right decision in hindsight, but that did not apply to everyone who is in this pickle now. I respectfully ask that you try to find the same within you. Some countries (and our own states for that matter) did not have very many cases or any at all, and no travel warnings or restrictions whatsoever. Obviously, that might be a function of whether they were testing or not. Sometimes, you make a decision based on the knowledge you have at the time. Decisions always look a lot easier to make after the fact when you have all the information and facts.
The bolded is the primary purpose of my post.
Here are the warnings issued by the US Embassy for Indonesia, as an example:
Jan 28 - COVID Outbreak in China
Feb 4 - Travel restrictions due to COVID outbreak in China for people having been to China
March 5 - Govt of Indo has 2 confirmed cases.
March 6 - If you have traveled to China, Iran, parts of Italy or South Korea in the last 14 days, you will be refused entry into Indo.
<<< March 11 or 12 - US issues Level 3 Non Essential Travel Warning >>>
March 14 - Announcing first death in Indo due to COVID. Request to reconsider travel abroad due to global impact of COVID.
<<< March 19 Level 4 Do Not Travel issued >>>
I will leave everything past that off. I just wanted to illustrate what the big picture looked like.
Below is data from Johns Hopkins.....
Here are the daily increases in cases in the US starting March 5, while keeping in line with the travel alert dates above so that you can see how this exponentially was changing. The worldwide daily increases are in parenthesis.
March 5 - 45 (3,900)
March 6 - 140 (4,000)
March 11 - 382 (2,500) <<< Level 3 non essential warning issued >>>
March 12 - 516 (16,900)
March 14 - 772 (11,400)
March 19 - 5,400 (29,500) <<< level 4 do not travel issued >>>
March 25 (latest data) - 18,100 (61,900)
And then here were the confirmed cases (albeit a function of how much we were testing) in the US and then the total numbers worldwide in parenthesis
March 5 - 262 (101,800)
March 6 - 402 (105,800)
March 11 - 1,700 (128,400) <<< Level 3 non essential warning issued >>>
March 12 - 2,200 (145,200)
March 14 - 3,500 (167,500)
March 19 - 19,100 (272,000) <<< level 4 do not travel issued >>>
March 25 (latest data) - 83,800 (529,600)
I won't even mention what Indo had at the time relative to all this - hardly anything because they weren't really testing. They only had 34 by March 11 in a country that has 260 million people or so.
I just want to make it clear for some people armchairing this and saying "it was so obvious" and "if you flew, you should have known better in Feb or early March" - a LOT changed just between the days of March 9-16. Again, while I did not end up traveling and am so glad I was paying attention to all of this in detail, I have empathy, sympathy, and compassion for those that left during that time period when it was between the cusp of it being obvious and not obvious. Or, maybe they left when things were fine and their trip overlapped to a point where it wasn't. I was lucky enough that my trip fell around a time period that allowed me to make the right decision in hindsight, but that did not apply to everyone who is in this pickle now. I respectfully ask that you try to find the same within you. Some countries (and our own states for that matter) did not have very many cases or any at all, and no travel warnings or restrictions whatsoever. Obviously, that might be a function of whether they were testing or not. Sometimes, you make a decision based on the knowledge you have at the time. Decisions always look a lot easier to make after the fact when you have all the information and facts.
The bolded is the primary purpose of my post.
OP
Scared Silly
Contributor
And it is a good post. A friend likes to say they have never made a bad decision in their life, as they made the best decision they could at the time with the information they had at the time. But once the decision is made they own it. That is one should be responsible for it which might mean relying on their own resources.
Rickk
Contributor
As far as I am concerned, anyone traveling internationally, especially those traveling to less developed places, need to do their due diligence on every trip.
In normal times this would be not too much, you take a sun flight package deal to somewhere touristy and can reasonably expect that you will be returned home in due course. All you need to do is make sure no issues, DAN and travel insurance all paid up and still valid and tickets and passport in place.
However, this virus was high on if not dominating the news cycle since early February. The potential for a pandemic was obvious back then. While the experts are discussing the actual numbers the potential for geometric growth was there.
People are generally poor at understanding numbers; they are poor at understanding really large numbers and anything statistically related. People do not understand geometric growth. I am an engineer and this comes as easy as breathing, I generally do not try to explain this stuff because people’s eyes soon glaze over, and they just don’t get it.
Let’s say that the growth rate is 30% per week, it appears that the number is somewhere around that. This means that not only will the number of cases double every roughly 2 and a half weeks, but that the number of NEW cases in any doubling period is equal to the number of previous cases up to the start of that period. (OK actually the number of previous cases minus 1 but once we are in the millions, we can ignore the minus 1).
There is a tale of a man who in ancient times did a great service to his king. The king offered to reward the man and all he asked for was a single grain of rice to be placed on a chess board, with the number doubling on each square until the board was full. The king thinking that this was a small amount of rice really agreed. On first square 1 grain, on the second 2 then 4, 8 16,32,64,128,256,512,1012 etc. At the end of 64 doubling period the amount of rice needed was equal to just about all the rice in the world. ( on the last square 1.8 x 10^19, that is 19 zeros in the number, that means that the total grains was 3.6 x 10^19. That works out to 7.2x10^11 metric tons of rice or enough to fill somewhere in the vicinity of 26 BILLION standard 20 ft shipping containers.) That is the thing about geometric growth patterns, the number s very quickly escalates to huge numbers and you eventually ruin out of new people (or grains of rice).
Between 31 or 32 periods would be sufficient time to infect every person in the world. At 30% per week that means roughly a year and a half for everyone to be infected.
These numbers were published and discussed at length on the media, In Feb I only was getting CNN Philippines and coverage was somewhat limited but when they were broadcasting the International feed, there was sufficient information PUBLICLY available to see where this was going. Any responsible government should have had access to better data, more fully developed, researched and explained than did CNN.
Anyone traveling very far from home should have done their due diligence at that time. It was clear to me that there would be some travel restrictions being put in place, I was a little surprised at how fast and how stringent some of these were but am still amazed that some places are operating normally.
I have sympathy for those who traveled before any information was available, but that period ended sometime in January. A soon as even limited information became available, people should have reassessed their options and taken the necessary steps to ensure their own health and safety. As more information became available, say middle of February, anyone traveling should have known of the risk and made their own assessment of it. Those who took the risk and ended up stranded far from home have no one to blame except their selves. I believe that it is the governments role to inform citizens of travel risks and take steps to assist travelers through information and limited logistical assistance but it is the responsibility of each individual to assess the risks and take responsibility for their own decisions.
I am in Moalboal Philippines now. I choose to come here knowing that there would be limited medical available should things get bad, With the travel restrictions I only have a few more days before I could return to Canada, assuming that space will be available and plans will still fly. In theory flights are available to leave until mid-April but the reality is many are full, and some are being canceled. Any routing from here will take me through some hot spots on the way so I have accessed that staying in my rental here is about my best option.
I think I made the best decision based on the information I had available at the time, I will not second guess it as that is counter productive but will continue to monitor and may revise my decision at any time.
In general, I am very happy with the response of the Government of Canada on this crisis. I get regular emails from them on travel restrictions and information on flights available etc. So far, no Government funded planes have flown to get private citizens out of here, but they did assist people getting flights from Puerto Princesa back to Manila to return to Canada. Logistical assistance, not financial assistance.
In normal times this would be not too much, you take a sun flight package deal to somewhere touristy and can reasonably expect that you will be returned home in due course. All you need to do is make sure no issues, DAN and travel insurance all paid up and still valid and tickets and passport in place.
However, this virus was high on if not dominating the news cycle since early February. The potential for a pandemic was obvious back then. While the experts are discussing the actual numbers the potential for geometric growth was there.
People are generally poor at understanding numbers; they are poor at understanding really large numbers and anything statistically related. People do not understand geometric growth. I am an engineer and this comes as easy as breathing, I generally do not try to explain this stuff because people’s eyes soon glaze over, and they just don’t get it.
Let’s say that the growth rate is 30% per week, it appears that the number is somewhere around that. This means that not only will the number of cases double every roughly 2 and a half weeks, but that the number of NEW cases in any doubling period is equal to the number of previous cases up to the start of that period. (OK actually the number of previous cases minus 1 but once we are in the millions, we can ignore the minus 1).
There is a tale of a man who in ancient times did a great service to his king. The king offered to reward the man and all he asked for was a single grain of rice to be placed on a chess board, with the number doubling on each square until the board was full. The king thinking that this was a small amount of rice really agreed. On first square 1 grain, on the second 2 then 4, 8 16,32,64,128,256,512,1012 etc. At the end of 64 doubling period the amount of rice needed was equal to just about all the rice in the world. ( on the last square 1.8 x 10^19, that is 19 zeros in the number, that means that the total grains was 3.6 x 10^19. That works out to 7.2x10^11 metric tons of rice or enough to fill somewhere in the vicinity of 26 BILLION standard 20 ft shipping containers.) That is the thing about geometric growth patterns, the number s very quickly escalates to huge numbers and you eventually ruin out of new people (or grains of rice).
Between 31 or 32 periods would be sufficient time to infect every person in the world. At 30% per week that means roughly a year and a half for everyone to be infected.
These numbers were published and discussed at length on the media, In Feb I only was getting CNN Philippines and coverage was somewhat limited but when they were broadcasting the International feed, there was sufficient information PUBLICLY available to see where this was going. Any responsible government should have had access to better data, more fully developed, researched and explained than did CNN.
Anyone traveling very far from home should have done their due diligence at that time. It was clear to me that there would be some travel restrictions being put in place, I was a little surprised at how fast and how stringent some of these were but am still amazed that some places are operating normally.
I have sympathy for those who traveled before any information was available, but that period ended sometime in January. A soon as even limited information became available, people should have reassessed their options and taken the necessary steps to ensure their own health and safety. As more information became available, say middle of February, anyone traveling should have known of the risk and made their own assessment of it. Those who took the risk and ended up stranded far from home have no one to blame except their selves. I believe that it is the governments role to inform citizens of travel risks and take steps to assist travelers through information and limited logistical assistance but it is the responsibility of each individual to assess the risks and take responsibility for their own decisions.
I am in Moalboal Philippines now. I choose to come here knowing that there would be limited medical available should things get bad, With the travel restrictions I only have a few more days before I could return to Canada, assuming that space will be available and plans will still fly. In theory flights are available to leave until mid-April but the reality is many are full, and some are being canceled. Any routing from here will take me through some hot spots on the way so I have accessed that staying in my rental here is about my best option.
I think I made the best decision based on the information I had available at the time, I will not second guess it as that is counter productive but will continue to monitor and may revise my decision at any time.
In general, I am very happy with the response of the Government of Canada on this crisis. I get regular emails from them on travel restrictions and information on flights available etc. So far, no Government funded planes have flown to get private citizens out of here, but they did assist people getting flights from Puerto Princesa back to Manila to return to Canada. Logistical assistance, not financial assistance.
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