Here's a map showing Delta Airlines international routes

[MineralMan]

One airline. Just one. Look at the flights from Beijing to the US. Folks were flying those routes every day, all the way back to the beginning of the COVID-19 problem and before that. Just one airline. Direct flights between Beijing to and from Seattle and New York. One airline. How many on those planes? Hundreds.

[MineralMan]

1. Here are Air China's Routes:

Even more destinations...what are the odds that nobody flew to or from before anyone even knew about COVID-19?

[MineralMan]

2. To see what airlines flew to and from what cities in the USA and China

You can find a chart at this link. Look at the right side of the chart to see flights in 2019.

Lots of travel between the two countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_route_authority_between_the_United_States_and_China

[msongs]

3. "I'd love to get you on a slow boat to china" - Kay Kaiser and orchestra nt

[greatauntoftriplets]

4. When I went to China, I went there via Pan Am.

That was a long time ago and just before the merger with United.

[MineralMan]

5. I've never been there.

The man I work with on websites, though, has parents in China, and generally flies there once a year. He skipped this year, though. I flew Pan-Am between JFK and Istanbul, Turkey though back in the late 1960s, courtesy of the USAF. Long flights that were part of Pan-Am's round-the-world route. I always wanted to take that entire flight some day. Never happened.

[greatauntoftriplets]

6. I'm happy that I went when I did in the early 1980s.

The air was still breathable and much of the "old" China still existed. Now, I see photos and the cities are unrecognizable. Beyond that, for the most part they could be Mexico City or Frankfurt or Houston.

That has to have been hard for your colleague not to visit his parents this year. A wise choice, but a hard one.

[MineralMan]

7. Yes. His parents are in their 80s.

He left China as a college student right after Tienanmen Square. He had been on track for medical school, but changed to neuroscience, and ended up with a PhD from Vanderbilt. I've been working with him now for 13 years. He's an interesting man.

[greatauntoftriplets]

8. That makes it even worse for all of them if his parents are in that age group.

Sounds like he's succeeded here, even if he didn't get the M.D. he originally wanted.