[2006alum]

Probably been mentioned before, but I missed it. The first case of coronavirus was identified in Italy more than a week later than the first identified US case. The Italians id'd two Chinese tourists with the disease on January 31st, ironically the same day Trump announced travel restrictions from China. Amazing how swiftly the disease decimated Italy.

I don't think that's right - the strain that is decimating Italy came from German who came back from China in mid-January, exposed his colleagues, and one of those colleagues then went to Italy. I will find the source and follow up, but I am almost certain the major strain was not directly from China.

ETA: Here you go:

“The sequence closest to the base of the branch, which is the one that probably precedes the others, came from a person infected in Munich in all likelihood between Jan. 19-22,” said Massimo Galli, head of the university research group and of the infectious-diseases department at Milan’s Sacco hospital.
Galli added that the German patient had caught the virus after contacting someone who came from Shanghai.

He said their analysis showed that the Italian outbreak must have started between Jan. 25-26, well before the first patient was officially diagnosed in the northern town of Codogno.

Here's another source:

He says it looks unlikely that Italy could have done anything to completely prevent the virus from entering. “The only thing we could have done is introducing the current lockdown on 30 January, a decision that was impossible and unthinkable at the time,” he says. Even stopping flights from China might have had no influence at all, he says – new, provisional research suggests that the coronavirus reached Italy from Germany.

And it bears repeating - viruses don't care about borders or ethnicities. Sealing off borders helps insofar as it reduces transmission by reducing population movement, but a travel ban from China was never going to stop a virus that had long since hopped to other shores.

[2006alum]

Probably been mentioned before, but I missed it. The first case of coronavirus was identified in Italy more than a week later than the first identified US case. The Italians id'd two Chinese tourists with the disease on January 31st, ironically the same day Trump announced travel restrictions from China. Amazing how swiftly the disease decimated Italy.

I don't think that's right - the strain that is decimating Italy came from German who came back from China in mid-January, exposed his colleagues, and one of those colleagues then went to Italy. I will find the source and follow up, but I am almost certain the major strain was not directly from China.

ETA: Here you go:

“The sequence closest to the base of the branch, which is the one that probably precedes the others, came from a person infected in Munich in all likelihood between Jan. 19-22,” said Massimo Galli, head of the university research group and of the infectious-diseases department at Milan’s Sacco hospital.
Galli added that the German patient had caught the virus after contacting someone who came from Shanghai.

He said their analysis showed that the Italian outbreak must have started between Jan. 25-26, well before the first patient was officially diagnosed in the northern town of Codogno.

Here's another source:

He says it looks unlikely that Italy could have done anything to completely prevent the virus from entering. “The only thing we could have done is introducing the current lockdown on 30 January, a decision that was impossible and unthinkable at the time,” he says. Even stopping flights from China might have had no influence at all, he says – new, provisional research suggests that the coronavirus reached Italy from Germany.

And it bears repeating - viruses don't care about borders or ethnicities. Sealing off borders helps insofar as it reduces transmission by reducing population movement, but a travel ban from China was never going to stop a virus that had long since hopped to other shores.