Airlines lockdown due to Corona virus (SARS-CoV-2): Absolutely nonsense.

I start with a statement: stopping the virus by isolating it at one spot is nearly impossible. Taking this more or less as a fact I come to the following:

The strategy for controlled virus spread is the only strategy available. The only way to achieve that is by social distancing, which will slow down the speed of virus spreading, in such a way that the capacity health care organizations will be sufficient when the Corona virus is at its maximum activity. 

This strategy has an additional advantage over doing nothing. Instead of around 90 % of the population getting ill in a few month time, there is a reasonable chance this percentage is going to be much less, say 50 to 60 %, with a corresponding lower number of deaths. Even better there is a chance that we develop a vaccine for the virus, which is profitable for the people who did not get ill in the first round. 

The purpose of this strategy is clear: if you increase the number of recovered people, the fraction of people who are susceptible lowers.  This will slow down the speed of the virus under its critical level and the number of infected will decrease. At that moment, or perhaps one or two weeks later, it is time to mitigate the measurements taken for social distancing, and life can return to normal again.

In Holland this is the strategy for now. Not bad at all.

For almost every country in the western world holds that the spread of the virus is over the whole country, with a lot of affected areas. Even with the simplest models you can show that the influence of restricting air travel at this stage is neglectable. A subgroup of those travelers are the ones already staying abroad e.g. for their holidays. If you would allow these people to travel it will shift the curve of infected, cured, etc. only by a few hours or perhaps a not even noticeable amount of time.

If you would allow this latter group to travel and go homewards bound would solve a lot of unnecessary drama worldwide. 

Less travel OK, but a complete lockdown is not necessary.

Perhaps Trumps should take some initiative.

And if we need more measurements to control the speed of this very serious virus, where we still know so little about, more social distancing on a local scale will be necessary, more hygenic measurements have to be considered. Even wearing mouth masks in the western world might be reconsidered. All this to buy more time to do research, adapt our strategy and to develop a vaccine.