If you are just as likely to encounter a Covid positive person in your own state at a trip to the store, why the need for quarantining those coming from elsewhere? Isn’t that just kind of stupid?
The
goal of a travel restriction requiring one to quarantine is to try to control the
SPREAD of the virus from coming IN from other states. NY, NJ & CT aren't the
only ones requiring a 14 day quarantine. There are also about 17 other states. We just happen to have the only
thread here on the DIS. I don't want people, somehow missing the info, to accidentally come in/come back and THEN find out they have to quarantine.
Not only can it mess up plans, it can be an awfully expensive mistake to be handed a form on board a plane/train and told you will have to quarantine when you arrive, when you didn't know or remember about the quarantine, and then have to turn around or figure out how to pay to quarantine. And there are people who then can't go back to work immediately. I think, once I got over the initial shock, I'd just sit there and cry.
Some states, even with high infection rates, have travel restrictions and quarantining to try to stop their rate going HIGHER. It's hard enough to control the infection rate in one's state, let alone other people accidentally bringing it into an area with them.
Here was a
FULL LIST of 20 states with Coronavirus Travel Restrictions by State. It takes a bit of time to load, and then click on the tab "Show More" for descriptions. They stopped updating it as of Sept 30. It probably got too unwieldy to keep up on all the states with their different restrictions.
According to the
Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus percent positive map, mouse over it and you will see many states are at different rates. Some at 20%.
HI has a "blanket travel restriction" in which anyone from anywhere has to quarantine when coming in. Doesn't matter what the infection rates are. New England has been basically able to stay low. NY, NJ & CT are between 1.2% - 2.5%. One time, CT was down to
0.3% with only 22 new cases.
NY had been able to keep the infection rate at a low 1%-ish all summer,
due in large part because of the quarantine.
As students started coming here in the Fall, here is an example of COVID coming into the state and how quickly the infection grew before it got tamped down:
5 college students hold mass parties on campus right after the beginning of the fall semester, near the end of Aug. According to the Health Dept. who had tested everyone and has their names & addresses, some of them came from out of state, and should have been quarantining at that time, instead of partying. Within 5 days there were 500 cases on campus. Within another few days, the cases went up to
723 cases.
"Until that outbreak began, the
whole county had only recorded 117 infections since the pandemic reached the upstate region in March."
Oneonta didn't have a Coronavirus problem there before then. That county had some of the lowest infection rates in the whole state. When the students brought the infection there,
91 people in the city also got infected. Thank God, they weren't elderly or high risk. NY does so much "oversampling" of testing in hotspot areas, that the Health Dept knows down to the BLOCK where cases are. They have everyone's name & addresses who test positive.
Another time, there was a cluster of 3 people in Rensselaer county, near Albany, NY. It turns out that the cluster had just come back from Atlanta, Georgia, where the infection rate was quite high. The Contact Tracers had to track down and talk to everybody on the plane, and anyone they had long enough contact with too, and get them all tested. These 3 people happened to come in for testing on their own, a few days later, once symptoms appeared. By that time, it was hard to track all the visitors on the plane who had scattered to parts unknown. THAT was when filling out the travel forms on the plane, as to where one would be staying, became mandatory.
BTW, all those COVID tests that were done in Oneonta and all over NY, are free to New Yorkers. But they aren't FREE. NY is eating the cost for them. Even for the infections that people accidentally bring in. The state says it does more testing than any other state. It isn't getting funding from the federal government. Yet, the tests are given free so people don't have to choose whether their money should go for a test or for food. Amylevan, people don't have to pay for a COVID test here the way you have to in PA. I remember a fellow DISer trying to figure out how to get a COVID test in PA a few months back as her insurance wouldn't pay either. I think it was about $60. I don't know if she ever got one.
The NY Gov said the other day that COVID isn't going anywhere any time soon. He expects this to last about another year. That this is the new "normal" now for us in NY. That we should EXPECT there will continually be new clusters, some developing into hotspots. Yes, our infection rate will go up, due to fall & winter with more cases due to being indoors, kids back to school and visitors now allowed to come in from overseas, which is also seeing a rise in cases. The stages, if unable to be controlled are: Cluster --> Hotspot --> Community Spread.
HOW we respond to the clusters and hotspots is key. Contact tracers are sent in immediately to try to track & trace
everyone the COVID positive person came into contact with for a long enough time period to become exposed. That includes all visitors who come in state. Free tests are given. If the positive people don't have or can't afford to isolate and quarantine, there are accommodations set aside for them. And they are given a COVID
"Take Care Package." (In my opinion, it's missing chocolate. A LOT of chocolate.
) Their Contact Tracer is supposed to check in on them again in a few days to see how they are doing (and to make sure they are quarantining.)
NY had successfully tamped out the previous fires so far, before the hotspots turned into community spread. We currently have about 7-9 hotspots with partial shutdowns in zones. The zones and shutdowns are so the infection doesn't spread
outward from the hotspot.
It's the same principal of the travel restrictions, but in reverse. Try to control COVID coming IN from other states, and try to contain the COVID within the state from spreading outward. We are waiting for the test results of the next few days to see if we've got control of the current hotspots and can remove the shutdowns. So far, they seem to have stabilized. If any hotspot turns into community spread that is unable to be controlled, it has the potential to turn into a second wave here that may turn us into being an epicenter
again, which we once were.
As much as we love having visitors, we don't want extra COVID accidentally hitching a ride in.
That's why the quarantine.
MA is allowing a negative test within 72 hours in place of quarantine (I'm very up on MA and CT since I live in one and work in the other and just traveled to FL).
Of the 3 states, CT always, enviably, has the lowest infection rate. 
I guess, as the science, knowledge, and testing has gotten more accurate and they have such a low infection rate, around 1.3%-ish, they consider it safe enough to add testing back on. 
(I will update Post #4 for CT in a bit.) This is what's great about group/community threads. We can all help keep each other up to date. 
I generally only hear about CT if there is something significant that makes the news here. As I already mentioned, they tend to have the lowest numbers all the time. So they don't make our news cycle as much. So, often, I just forget to check otherwise. 
