Stanford Works with Taiwan To Test Global Travel Quarantines That Could Help Get Passengers Back Into the Skies
“Stanford Health Policy’s Jason Wang and colleagues will ask volunteers to fly to Taiwan to test whether quarantine periods might safely be shortened — and help travelers become less wary of taking to the skies.”
" Wang said volunteer participants will fly on six flights from San Francisco to the Taiwanese capital. Five hundred volunteers will be randomized into an experimental group that gets testing; another 500 will be in a control group that gets no testing before they fly.
Those in the experimental group will first take the Stanford Medicine coronavirus test and remain quarantined at an airport hotel for a day, until they get their results; 500 volunteers will be placed in the experimental group on three separate flights and only those who tested negative will be allowed to board. Those 500 passengers in the control group who are not tested will also take three separate flights."
I am not sure if this is a roundtrip experiment or the idea is to let people get in who would already get in with their passport or ARC, or maybe would let experiment people participants come in and give them special entry permission. I signed up for the mailing list out of curiosity to see what it does.
The study design does seem a little odd in that it is mainly looking to see how people change from negative to positive it seems over a course, in the two groups, with continual testing, but such a test can also be done locally. It also seems like if you are in the free-movement group that would be a nontrivial risk to introduce a new local transmission case.
"Many people around the world are itching to get on a plane for that summer vacation, to make up for the missed graduations and family get-togethers. Business travelers are desperate to resume their global networking, industry conferences and market-moving deals.
But people don’t want to get onto airplanes, particularly those long international flights, until they feel safe. "
So it has nothing do with closed borders and grounded aircraft? Anyway I can’t understand the reason they need to do any actual flying in this study. Can’t they just put the volunteers in a grounded aircraft for 10 hours then take them to a nearby hotel for quarantine?
“If we can prove that you only need to be quarantined for three days — that’s a beautiful thing, not only for business, but for summer tourism.”
This sounds like… a waste of time, money and resources.
Why would one only need to be quarantined for three days when it can take an average of two weeks for symptoms to appear/ tests to show up positive? Am I missing something here, or are they trying to prove something that has been understood for 5+ months to be untrue?
Or is Standford being funded by the CCP to undermine all of Taiwan’s quarantine efforts and get looks of COVID-positive jerks running around Taiwan’s night markets?
I’m in the Bay Area and signed up to be a volunteer for this study. This study was planned for the second half of June; however, it was paused indefinitely on June 12 due to logistical issues. A bit frustrating since I was really looking forward to finding a way to see my family in Taiwan.
“The travel experiment has been put on hold while logistics get resolved.”