If the new strain is showing up in the UK now, and you haven’t had the borders closed for the past 2-4 weeks, there is little point to starting now (in terms of stopping it from getting to the US entirely anyway).

And the new strain was first recorded on September 16th. It's laughable to think it hasn't spread further (although hopefully I'm wrong on this).

There must be some very special political reason for keeping borders with UK open, so even Fauci seem to approve it. I wonder what is it?

This variant is already widespread. It is very unlikely that it is not already spreading in the US.

It is very likely it is not spreading in US at all, otherwise it would have long been found. US also does fair amount of genomic surveillance, a new strain would not be unnoticed. Anyway, there must be proof that it is already spreading in US before, before keeping the borders open.

What I’ve seen discussed is that closing borders only works if it’s done totally and immediately. Otherwise, it just slows response and causes super spreader events like we saw early this year in the US.

The UK also teed-up a super spreader event with its rushed lockdown last week. India did the same thing back in ~April, and it ended up encouraging traveling and dispersed people across the country.

How does closing a border cause super spreader events?

The haphazard closure in March caused multi-hour long, crowded backups at airports as people tried to get back.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/trumps-coronavirus-t...

I’ve been thinking about this as well, they also kept their borders open to US citizens despite most countries closing them.

Perhaps Brexit closing trade doors with the EU could be resulting in a stronger relationship between the US & UK?

Britain has closed one trade door but opened a new one with the EU. Specifically they have reached a “zero tariff-zero quota deal”. Not ratified by the British Parliament but no one supposes this won't be done in the next few days before the final break with the EU on the 31st December.

Yeah, from a bit over a year ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-boris-johnson-brexit-t...

Though AFAIK it's kinda up in the air if Biden would go for the same thing.

Makes it harder for doctors to get supplies if all the borders are closed.

The UK has an upcoming COVID vaccine (the Astra-Zeneca/Oxford one) that may prove useful in the near future. Cut off the UK from the rest of the world and the rest of the world can't benefit from it.

Also, it's almost certain that the UK strain is in the US already, and the US is shit at dealing with pandemics once they're on our soil. Border closures only work if your test/trace/isolate institutions and compliance with social distancing is good enough to eradicate the virus from within your borders; they prevent reinfection in that case. The US has shown we're completely incapable of that, so it really doesn't matter.

Nobody is talking about closing borders to cargo.

Actually they are:

https://news.sky.com/story/emergency-talks-to-prevent-christ...

Don't people and goods mostly travel separately?

They do, but many of the border closures apply to both.

Any new precedent for completely closing borders between developed nations for any reason is bad. Because it creates a “we did this before.”

Even if the scale or details of circumstance are different—such as Clinton’s pardoning of his brother in minimizing Trump’s choices.

Another reason is exceptions cause outrage. And there may be many instances of diplomatic or other government travel that needs to happen or happen in the slipstream of limited public travel.

Could you elaborate by which moral principle you come to the conclusion that a vague slippery slope and even more vague outrage is more important than stopping a pandemic with hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths?

Most moral systems of my acquantance are based on a hierachy of values that puts saving human lives over just about anything.

>"Most moral systems of my acquantance are based on a hierachy of values that puts saving human lives over just about anything. "

False. While not explicitly stated there is a threshold usually measurable in money spent after which saving life is considered of being "not worth it". Ford Pinto case that went through the courts I think can serve as a very good particular example where cost analysis made it legal to allow otherwise preventable deaths.

I don't necessarily subscribe to this point of view (I don't know what I believe; I need to think more), but allow me to play devil's advocate consider: most of the people who die from this disease are old people who have already lived their lives. The young are giving up the opportunity to live their lives by staying home to stop the spread, when they predominately aren't at risk of death. Should the young give up their lives to save the old? The young already sacrifice substantially for the old - in the United States by way of Medicare for example. The lives of many young people are completely on hold: they cannot go to school, cannot have weddings, cannot have fun, all to stop a disease that for most not-old healthy people is similar to the flu or even milder. If you're a young person you might not find this to be a worthwhile sacrifice - sacrificing years of your life to save people who have already lived "full" lives (that would be longer if not for COVID, but have made it to old age).

The vast majority of deaths are people over age 55: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Ag...

If you get COVID and survive it some of the side effects you can look forward to are: motor control issues, traumatic brain injury, lung scarring, heart tissue scarring, and even limb amputation. It is not “milder than the flu.”

We’re asking people to stay home to help mitigate the collapse of health care systems, at which point the young will find that car crashes, heart attacks and strokes that they may have otherwise survive now become far more deadly.

What a bullshit argument.

Yea, slippery slope works both way, "we did not do this before", do not you think so? Remember that phrase about "the came after Jews, commies then after me"?

> Remember that phrase about "the came after Jews, commies then after me"?

Possibly better known as "first they came for", apparently officially titled "First they came..."

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

FWIW, the US is now requiring negative covid tests from UK travelers - announced <24 hours after this comment was posted.