China And Hospital Ships

[vulcan42]

Seeing as China has at least six hospital ships and other countries also have them, wouldn't it have been a better idea to repatriate foreign people on them rather than use aircraft?
The people returning wouldn't be enclosed together in a small space, the quarantine would take place on the ship and not start only when they return and if anybody developed the virus on the ship then it doesn't dock. In many cases the people arriving in their own country by ship would be free immediately. Is this an easier option or have I missed something glaringly obvious?

[dannyk13]

Vulcan, I suppose it is a matter of time.How long a journey would it be from China to the UK?

[dannyk13]

http://ports.com/sea-route/port-of-shanghai,china/london-thamesport,united-kingdom/

[teacake44]

If someone got sea sick, over the side it might infect the fish. :0)

[emmie]

time would be of the essence surely.

[Peter Pedant]

chrissakes
well if the 83 were all members of AB - you could tell them to WALK home!

OK trying to take this seriously
if ships were the case - coz of long voyages then ....
plague / black death would never have reached England ( burnt out on the way see?)

was quarantine invented for ships ?
had to stay off shore for 40 d ?

on a more gloopy note - still more Brexit bollooox - in my exciting Cartography of Disease
certainly worth a read if we have a Brexit evg again
certain things come up- the Vinland map was impossible because they didnt have an idea of putting distance on paper until....
1265 Someone put a dot for Leipsig and another dot for Cologne on paper and said that the length between the dots had meaning about the distance between the cities
it took another three hundred years for someone to realise that you cd put something else on a map, which was a line around a city to show the quarantine boundary and then another line to show the boundary at ANOTHER time.

there you are - history of quarantine mapping