The virus is already essentially everywhere. Closing borders in January might have done something but now I can't imagine there will be much of an effect.
In the past few days, Singapore and other countries have announced they are also adopting this strategy. Singapore too has a complex highly-interdependent border situation with neighboring Malaysia and has to make an exception there as well.
I'm worried about the U.S. closing state borders (land and air), and what that might mean for supply chains. I hope it doesn't come to that.
For one thing, your setup is bad. You simply do not know that to be true.
Your premise is some kind of equality of distribution, which is never going to be the case.
Simple scenario: how about if the US ends up having 20 times as many cases as Canada, while having only 10 times the population.
Cultures - specifically the people that derive from them - are all different. They all behave differently. They will all comply with or violate quarantines differently. They will all spread, or not spread, the virus differently.
Compare Italian touching culture with Germany. Very different cultures.
It's also better to not be responsible for any more foreign citizens than absolutely necessary, during a time of panic, quarantine, national emergency. We do not yet know how bad this is going to get.
I don't understand why people keep repeating the terrible premise that it doesn't matter, when it's so incredibly obvious there are numerous important ways that it matters. The experts are calling for these travel lockdowns, and they're doing it for good reasons.
Since it is not avoidable that at least one person on a flight is infected, you have to quarantine each passenger.
Unless they think they have significantly fewer cases than the United States, it doesn't make sense to block travelers.
It's fairly trivial (conceptually) to close the border to non-commercial traffic while allowing commercial traffic through, given that both are separated physically at the border and you need paperwork to go through the commercial lane anyway.
> Unless they think they have significantly fewer cases than the United States, it doesn't make sense to block travelers.
Absolutely, given that Washington has mismanaged the crisis, and in the US there is often a monetary cost for even seeing a primary care physician, plus no mandated sick or vacation days, and the numbers so far reflect this.
The biggest concern, in my opinion, would be people who try to come to Canada in the hopes that they can get sick here and recover somewhere that isn't going to bankrupt them as a result. Not that I want our southern neighbours to die in the streets while we lounge in relative medical luxury, but risking overloading both systems would be catastrophic for everyone.
do canadian hospitals not send foreigners a bill?
it seems like this sort of issue would've come up long before now.
It may have changed, but it used to be standard not to.
I remember a news article from about 15 years ago where doctors at a Vancouver hospital were unhappy about it. Not because they were treating the sick traveler for free, but because some stupid regulation meant that he had to remain in an ER bed rather than moving him to a normal hospital bed and freeing the space for anyone else who might need it.
That said, as an American in Alberta I can confirm for sure that they'll make you pay up front here too.
Cost out of pocket was much, much lower than it would be in the US, but certainly not trivial.
Source: Live in BC, foreign relatives had medical treatment while visiting.
Canada would probably need to build a wall to prevent this.
That all said I'm curious what Translink's plans are to restrict access to the skytrain.
The rest of the state is doing alright, comparatively.
Or it could be the fact that it is a huge mostly unprotected border.
Sure you can stop people at the main highways, but there are a ton of lakes where you can just row across to Canada.
This isn't a police action to prevent dirty immigrants from getting across the border, it's a quarantine measure.
99% of those travelers aren't going to row across a lake to get into Canada; if they are chances are they're doing something sketchy and would have been rowing across lakes anyway regardless of the enforcement regime.
More importantly disease transmission is one of herds and numbers -- a tiny handful getting across isn't a huge deal, it's the influx coming through ports and via plane.
I feel like I just slid under the door in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I think it's fair to assume that's because of internal US politics, ie. Trump wouldn't like it and it would make him look bad.
There's no reason Canada couldn't close to US tourism, but remain open to commerce.
Banning the country that supplies most of your produce, electronics, cars, etc seems crazy just to prevent health care centers from being overrun. Cause thats really the issue. Everyone will get sick they just don't want people getting at once.
Every trucker who goes to Canada pops into a Tim Hortons before heading back to the US, no exceptions.
Disallowing close-packed passenger travel while still allowing essential logistics _curbs_ even if it does not halt. Just because it's not the solution doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
I'm saying that, epidemiologically speaking, Canada and the US should be treated as one entity. This is probably the case for border regions of Mexico as well, though I see no reason to allow flights to or from D.F. at the moment.
If (it's probably when) we start to see domestic travel restrictions, curbing transport between states, that's a good time to restrict the border as well.