Coronavirus: Planes turn back mid-air as Jet2 cancels all flights to Spain

Jet2 planes from the UK to Spain have turned back in mid-air as the airline cancelled all flights to the country due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The dramatic move by the low-cost airline comes after new infections rose sharply in Spain and the government put 60,000 people in four towns on enforced lockdown.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said a two-week state of emergency will come into force as the number of dead rose to 120.

Jet2, which is is based at nine UK airports, has halted all flights with immediate effect to mainland Spain, as well as the Balearic and Canary Islands, including Majorca, Ibiza, Menorca, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Tenerife and Fuerteventura.

It goes further than guidance issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office yesterday, which warned Britons against all but essential travel to Madrid, La Rioja and the municipalities of La Bastida, Vitoria and Miranda de Ebro.

Two absolute must-read articles are up on ZeroHedge right now. Here is one.

Covid-19: European Leaders Finally Acknowledge Scale Of Crisis

Sat, 03/14/2020
The disease is spreading fast: more than 28,000 coronavirus cases (93% of all cases) in Europe were confirmed during just the first twelve days of March. The number of new cases has been doubling, on average, every 72 hours.

[EUROPEAN CASES DOUBLING EVERY 72 HOURS!!!!]

“The threat is very significant... There are many epidemiologists who talk about the potential of the virus in terms of attack rates globally that could be between 50% and 70% of the global population.

“It is important to recognize that the virus is here and that it has tremendous potential to be disruptive, to cause high rates of illness and even high rates of death....

“I don’t think we are dealing with the flu here... this is a virus that is now circulating in a population that has absolutely no immunity to it.... You might have an attack rate that is three times higher than seasonal flu with a mortality rate that is ten times higher.

“The most concerning thing about this virus is the combination of infectiousness and the ability to cause severe disease or death. We have not since 1918 — since the Spanish flu — seen a virus that combined those two qualities in the same way. We have seen very lethal viruses — Ebola’s mortality rate in some cases is greater than 80% — but they don’t have the infectiousness that this virus has. They don’t have the potential to explode and spread globally....

“I think that what we are seeing is a virus that is many, many times more lethal than the flu, and a population that is completely vulnerable to it, and we are seeing its ability to explode. It has increased in some countries over the last two weeks by one thousand-fold and many countries are seeing ten-fold or one hundred-fold increases in cases. There is nothing to stop that expansion from continuing unless those societies move aggressively, engage their publics, implement multiple public health interventions, including introducing social distancing....

“We need to modify our behavior. We need to start practicing that now. We have to modify our behavior in ways that reduces the risk of transmitting the virus.... One challenge that we face is that people who are young and are generally healthy won’t perceive personal risk and they will govern their behavior based on what they perceive their personal risk to be. I think we need to start thinking in terms of the social risk. If I have a cold and I go to work and shake hands with my older colleague who has a chronic medical condition, I could be responsible for that colleague’s death. We all need to think about our responsibility to each other as we govern our behavior. We can’t view the epidemic in terms of our personal risk, we need to act collectively in a cooperative manner....

“I don’t think it’s a crazy analogy to compare this to World War 2... I think this is an appropriate analogy and the mindset that people need to get into....

https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-european-leaders-finally-acknowledge-scale-crisis

Oshkalaboomboom checking in. The Spanish government has now locked down the entire country starting on Monday, except to buy food or go to work. I wouldn’t be surprised if my town was one of the ones on enforced lockdown but I haven’t read that. We had 5 cases in one day, all staff at our local medical clinic so Lord knows how many people they interacted with before they found out they were infected. We wouldn’t have been one of them. We were in the Canary Islands until the day they discovered the outbreak.
In typical herd mentality fashion, when we were returning from the airport we stopped at our local supermarket before going to the house. They were completely out of toilet paper but we bought all of the ingredients to make our own hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. They also had plenty of non-perishables but were sold out of items that will spoil quickly like Chicken. We had already stocked up before the panic set in so we just topped off. Tonight I am going out to pick up the last of my wife’s medicines I ordered then we’ll just wait it out. Stay safe in America.

Schnitzel Republic reports that Madrid and the Tyrol area of Austria are the highest risk areas.

Other interesting articles there talk of various EU members are setting up border controls (I suspect that there, as well as here, the Open Borders types are pretty quiet).

Weird stuff like you can only buy bus tickets via the ATM, so contact with drivers - you have to enter/exit via the middle doors for the same reason. Then there's the shutting down of schools, which means a family member has to stay at home, wrecking household finances as well as the labor market due to missing workers.

One Helluva mess.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.