The comedy of errors around the government has probably been worse though.

Barnard Castle alone probably killed thousands, the way this government is doing contracts is probably criminal, we fucked up the T&T for months etc. etc. etc. etc.

A comedy of errors assumes some level of ignorance or carelessness, but we have 10 years (and counting) of empirical evidence that this government is acting out of nothing but self-preservation and malice.

Voting Mr Bean into office would constitute a comedy of errors; but what we have now (when you also throw Brexit into the mix) is far from funny.

It'd also have meant severing food supply chains (and probably also medical supply chains and a bunch of others). The UK relies on trucks coming across from the continent and continuing on to destinations throughout the country with their original drivers. Ending that would make Brexit look like a walk in the park by comparison. Also, you've got to remember that the time period during which the UK would've had to do this for it to be effective was one where the WHO and all the right-thinking people were insisting that border restrictions were counterproductive, xenophobic and made things worse, something Trump would do, and when Italy still incorrectly believed they had zero cases.

Only if you assume the worst implementation without thinking of the necessary exemptions. Obviously don't cut off the food supply chain.

> time period during which the UK would've had to do this for it to be effective

.. lies roughly from Feburary to the present day. No reason to allow travel from countries with significant prevalence.

> all the right-thinking people were insisting that border restrictions were counterproductive, xenophobic and made things worse

[citation needed]

   [citation needed]

How about this: https://www.containcovid-pan.eu/? Choice quote: Given open borders within Europe, a single country alone cannot keep the number of COVID-19 cases low

Let's reverse the burden of evidence, and request [citation needed] for your implicit claim that the open borders lobby is not relevant here?

It wouldn't have been that hard to implement quarantine for truck drivers (cleaning cabs and switching drivers at the crossing, etc). Not trivial. But not that hard either. There would be no need to shut down the supply chains.

> the WHO and all the right-thinking people were insisting that border restrictions were counterproductive,

I'd argue that these were very much the wrong-thinking people. And that the WHO advice has been pretty terrible throughout. It seems obvious to me that closing borders is appropriate in a pandemic. The UK still hasn't done this. Lots of people were going abroad on holiday between lockdowns.

> The UK relies on trucks coming across from the continent and continuing on to destinations throughout the country with their original drivers.

I'm not familiar with freight in Europe, so please excuse the diversion.

They drive freight vehicles onto the Eurotunnel Shuttle or on ferries? I'm guessing this isn't containerized freight, which would seem to make sense to transfer to freight rail (at least to cross the channel).

All of them (there is also plenty of containerized freight on ships).

With the very porous border, there is little lost time through checks -- it was easy to send the driver all the way from Germany to Manchester. I think from leaving the French motorway to driving onto the British one takes about an hour by lorry-on-train.

By ferry, it's little different than going from Germany to Denmark by ferry. They will glance at the passport as well as the ticket.

Boarding the train : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8r0kjJvvIY

(Cars go on a different train, enclosed and you stay in your car.)

> They drive freight vehicles onto the Eurotunnel Shuttle or on ferries?

Both, although more volume goes through the ferries. (tunnel trains is 1.5 million trucks a year or something in that ballpark if I remember correctly)

Now that France has closed the border (first time ever?) we have some numbers:

“To put this into context, there are about 6,000 vehicles we would expect, just under in Dover today, probably I’d say 4,000 would have gone across from Dover, just under 2,000 on the Eurotunnel,” he said.

“But there’s probably something like 32,000 units that would have been the daily total so the vast majority including virtually all the vaccine actually comes via container.”

Containers will mostly be on ships, but some will come on normal freight trains. (Eurotunnel is the lorries-on-trains service.)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/21/france-ban-uk-...