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> This would have entailed no one working at grocery stores, no deliveries, no travel, no global trade. I just don't buy that this was ever plausible for however long people suggest: 3 weeks, 6 weeks whatever.
The experiences of (at least) New Zealand and Australia are clear evidence it is absolutely possible, without the absurd extremes you are talking about.
If I had to guess, I would guess that COVID can be transmitted by fomites, especially if kept cold, but that it’s extremely rare. In a place like the US or Europe, this is insignificant: your chance of getting seriously sick due to touching something is negligible, and the rate of additional cases due to this effect is inconsequential for public health. But in AU or NZ, where the background rate is essentially zero, a single reintroduction is a big deal.
Right, so why would the US - with much more porous borders - somehow do better?
But, beyond the fact that the US has large land borders, the US has a genuine problem. We are economically dependent on legal and illegal cross-border seasonal migration. I personally think that, with actual political will, the borders could be made a lot less porous, but this would involve attacking the supply and demand sides. Neither party is interested.
I don't like the previous administration one bit, but this was a really hard problem. By the time covid was taken seriously I think it is confirmed it was a least spreading in Seattle and Bay Area.
This reads like Covid arrived in the US through uncontrolled land crossings from Canada or Mexico? I'm pretty sure like Australia and NZ, it came by land and sea mainly.
> Also US has different states with different rules, but no ability to restrict travel between the states
Also Australia never had seen states close borders before. Yet somehow each of the 6 states and 2 territories managed to get legislation passed to do this, get police mobilised, and just got community buy-in that was going to work.
Just because NZ can demonstrate good COVID control, it cannot just apply at a massive nation. China has done it with authoritarian enforcement. There is no solution to this for USA, EU or large countries. Asian nations such as Japan and Korea are culturally different than the west. It’s impossible to change the culture of 330 million overnight.
And yet the massive USA clearly showed through COVID control that it is simply a collective of hundreds of fiefdoms (states, cities and even corporations) they for the most part were uncoordinated and did what was best for themselves, which turned out to be no good for no one.
Here in Bay Area, there was much stricter control. Counties choose their fate, their path and their citizens want to trade off lockdowns vs. COVID rates. It's their call and I respect that kind of governance.
At the extreme - I would absolutely abhor China style lockdowns in the USA.
Did the USA fared well with COVID response? Not at all. Federal gov could have done a lot better to provide guidance (not enforcement) to states and counties.
Any strategy which depends on complete cooperation of a large number of humans for success, well, I would short that stock.
Our vaccination numbers are terrible: at the rate we are vaccinating all Danes will have started their first vaccination round by July 21st, 2022. [1]
We've had the Moderna vaccine since January 13th [2] of the previous year. This is not people failing, these are our leaders failing.
I was so gung ho about us coming together to make the sacrifices and beat this thing but now a year and a half later I'm done with the colossal failures of our leadership and the promulgation of fear everywhere.
[1] https://hvorlangtervi.dk/english
[2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vac...
The pandemic will pass soon, but countries walling themselves off could have consequences that even our grandchildren might have to deal with.
This idea that if we locked down harder or people "behaved" we'd be done with covid is a complete lie. That was never the intent of these restrictions. Ever.
I find it very curious how even after massive stockpiles of unused ventilators were donated and countless field hospitals were closed up after never seeing a single patient governors extended their stay-at-home orders. Despite it being shown that covid was never a true threat to healthcare, despite the sky-high IFR predictions being shown wrong (thankfully!), we let the goalpost shift to.... well... I still don't know what the goal is. We got very lucky having a vaccine delivered so quickly because without it, we'd have been drifting along aimlessly and things would have got very dark and ugly.
> Americans absolutely refuse to work together
Curious how many of the nations in Europe that "did it right" wound up getting major outbreaks regardless. Also curious how the curves of all regions basically mirror each other regardless of restrictions or "how serious they took it". Maybe, just maybe, humans aren't as in control of a widespread respiratory virus as they'd like to believe.
I believe it is peak human arrogance to think we could somehow control a respiratory virus in this manner. In my opinion history will look upon all this the same way we look at our ancestors performing rain dances and goat sacrifices. They are all examples of meaningless rituals humans perform in order to fool themselves into believing they have more control over mother nature than they actually do.
I don't think humans anywhere are able to "pull in the same direction" to the extent that such a lockdown is possible without an authoritarian government. Italy imposed pretty draconian rules for at least six weeks, and has still had to deal with a second wave and additional lockdowns.
Personally, I think that the principles of personal freedom (that such an authoritarian government is largely incompatible with) are much more valuable in the long run. Working through the disease has been messier in the last year, but the economic system largely based on these principles was also able to produce novel vaccines. While the last year has been rough, I'm much happier overall that I don't live in a place where an authoritarian lockdown is even possible.
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...
The average for island nations like New Zealand was 0.
The chance of stopping it early increases exponentially, if there are fewer ways into your country from countries that are themselves exploding with the virus.
In Europe, all countries broke down eventually and all these cases are ultimately imported from crisis areas. Many were never caught.
Keeping borders open - in the EU sadly not something that could have been realistically changed, if ever - is the reason.
Look at the facts: NZ caught all cases early. Full stop. So did Germany - at the beginning. It worked in either case. But NZ also kept cases low by limiting travel. Germany did not do this - least of all because the EU literally sued Germany when it started (very recently) to lock borders.
Australia not only can limit travel easily, but is also huge and barely populated. When there was a significant outbreak, it was physically possible to cordon off the state in question.
In Europe, once the spread began, it was already present in every locality - since Europe is tiny and entire countries have higher population densities than Sidney or Melbourne! And, this is also important, there is significantly more travel of people and goods, and it is far less concentrated on a few areas. Many people in Europe go to work in a different country from where they live, every day. There are literally no borders where you could test people. It is being tried. It does very little. Look at the spread in areas bordering high incidence regions. The borders are as closed as EU laws allows. It simply does nothing.
This is it. If you closed borders, then you made it. If you did not, then nothing much helps except trying to reduce incidence rate such that hospitals do not collapse.
We all dreamed of containing non-regionalized outbreak clusters by contact tracing. In reality all health services, even the very best ones in the world, eventually got rolled. Some sooner, some later. Sometimes contact tracing worked up until the mutation showed up. But it never worked consistently, except with closed borders.
Which countries contained the spread while having a high density and without being an island? Vietnam. However, cross border traffic between Laos and China is either strictly controlled or not economically significant - in either case, Vietnam is also an example of a country that managed to lock down borders - even tourism - almost entirely.
Conclusion: Covid has to be geographically contained with maximum force. If that is not realistic, for example if your country has the density of a city, then you need to stop it from getting in in the first place.
And unsurprisingly, being an Island and not 100% dependent and interconnected with daily border-less traffic helps a lot. Being a huge country with less population density or other ways to cordon off locally also helps.
In Europe, several countries were doing fine. They had lockdowns, contained local spreads and did contact tracing. They did not do less than NZ or Australia - except they were still surrounded by dozens of other highly populated areas with entirely different policies, all with different timings. The result was the same everywhere - eventually.
So, theoretically the EU could have been saved, if border would have been closed off immediately after the first cases appeared in Italy. Despite the fact that people believed contact tracing was viable - an option that does not shatter the political and economic fabric of the region.
This post is already too long, but you can read up on the discussions at the time and the political, geographical, economical and demographic situation in the EU to convince yourself that the chance of early border closings was close to zero.
FWIW I'm from Australia (Melbourne), which mostly eradicated the virus last May, then had a resurgence in Jun-Aug, and it took hard lockdown from early August to November to get the outbreak fully under control - effectively four months of pretty strict lockdown. We managed to beat it but it was hugely costly.
Australia, like NZ, is an island with a relatively (compared to US and Europe) small, compliant population, so it's much easier for our governments to control our international borders and internal movement. But it was still incredibly hard, and slow.
We did it, which I'm pleased about, but I understand why what Australia and NZ have done is not possible in the US and Europe; they have much denser populations and many different jurisdictions and cultures all meshed together, so it's much harder to restrict movement and apply restrictions consistently enough from one place to another.
So, sure, take comfort that we live in places that were able to avoid major outbreaks, but resist preaching that any other country/continent could have done it just as easily, as it really isn't that simple.
One of the hardest challenges of leadership is resisting the urge to DO SOMETHING when crisis happens.
> Fair to say what you're doing didn't work.
And yet western nations keep trying the same failed policies over and over again and getting the same results.
https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/countries-nor...
How is this a fair comparison?
Lockdowns are not about islands. It helps, kinda, but not completely. Vietnam completely sacrificed the tourist industry, unlike US or Europe. Quarantine is at a designated facility, not at home, unchecked, like in US or Europe. And dissent is suppressed.
The last part is a bit unfortunate, but the former ones are really just a matter of decision. And it works.
That said, I want people from island countries to stop saying "being an island country has nothing to do with it", when all evidence and logic says being an island country has a lot to do with it.
I'll happily take criticism from Vietnam, even if I think it's of questionable utility to say "you just did it wrong" when the overwhelming majority of countries seem to have "done it wrong"
And islands still have to watch for random boats from any direction. Right now in Vietnam there is a little outbreak where a group of Vietnamese nationals illegally crossed the border by a fishing boat from Cambodia to Phu Quoc island, trying to avoid the mandatory two-week quarantine. Then they boarded a plane, arrived at their homeland and tested positive. Immediately their steps were traced by police, whole Phu Quoc is under a mask mandate, 3 levels of contacts are tested and in quarantine. It really isn't about being an island. That's a myth, you've been lied to. If you want an example closer to your home, look how hard it is to seal a land border with Mexico. They actually cross by rivers, so water makes it easier.
Lockdowns and people immediately willing be a part of the contract tracing part.
https://www.businessinsider.com/vietnam-coronavirus-measures...