I don't think thinking of these places as "islands" really makes sense. The USA could do the same for all people flying or driving in. It just has chosen not to. The US could close its boarders if it wanted to.

Just because we have two neighboring countries on north and south borders doesn't mean we couldn't lockdown people from coming in...

Literally do not get this argument.

> Just because we have two neighboring countries on north and south borders doesn't mean we couldn't lockdown people from coming in...

If there was one thing Trump was all in on, it was closing the southern border. His motivations were obviously not COVID for most of that, but the fact is he was nowhere near able to control that border (let alone close it) despite his best efforts.

Before you downvote me, I'm not saying I agree with Trump's policy on the matter, just pointing out that he did try.

> If there was one thing Trump was all in on, it was closing the southern border.

Is there any source that even suggests that the US's "southern border" played a remotely relevant role in the US's pandemic?

I mean, COVID spread like wildfire in the US throughout a timespan where the US's central government was quite militant in either denying or downplaying it's gravity. Even today we see states and cities taking militant stances in refusing to implement basic public health precautions. Why is the US's "southern border" suddenly relevant regarding covid-19?

It wasn’t relevant in the course we took. But had we locked down until there were 0 cases-like AZ or NZ—then new cases would walk across our borders.

Which states are taking militant stances against public health precautions?

How about China itself?

I'm not sure it's fair to compare an authoritarian country to a western country that's nominally free.

What western government could pull off welding doors shut the way they did in China? Even if the government had emergency powers that "allowed" it, would they have had willing workers to do it?

>What western government could pull off welding doors shut the way they did in China?

Western governments have pulled all kinds of restrictions themselves, from curfews, closed borders, and "let's close all retail businesses" restrictions, to mandatory movement monitoring.

Heck, Italy might not have welded doors, but had the Army patrol to enforce strict lockdown, and citizens in northerns cities stay inside.

Sometimes this even meant closing them in-house with the corpses of their dead (from covid) relatives for several days. There were several such reported cases, e.g.:

https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-...

https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-...

Announcing restrictions and enforcing them are two separate animals.

There are not enough police in most of the US to actually enforce closing businesses, let alone confining people to their homes. Especially not when half the populace sees it as a political infringement of their rights.

I'm not sure about there not being "enough police in most of the US to actually enforce closing businesses".

There's not enough police to enforce no traffic violations at all either (what would that be, a traffic cop for every street or car?). That's not how laws work, you just need to make a law/rule and collect fines from the businesses that violated it. If there wasn't the political will to do so in the states, that's another thing.

But in at least a couple of countries in the EU I know of, all businesses were closed (by government decree) except explicitly whitelisted "necessary" shopping (like groceries, drugstores, and such) for months on end.

You say that's not how laws work and then you basically say he's rihght.

You say you "just need to... collect fines". And that is the OP's point.

Without enforcement you do not get relevant levels of compliance. Just upping the fines seems easy but if your enforcement percentage is 0 (or close enough to 0 as felt by citizens) you will not get compliance.

Theres a balance if you ask me. If it costs $5000 to be caught after curfew but police go home when curfew hits too instead of patrolling the streets, you will likely have no compliance. If you get caught at least 50% of the time then $5000 probably isn't even necessary and say $1000 will be 'enough' for most people.

I believe in those instances they welded backdoors while the front door was monitored by the community enforcement people to make sure each family only sent one member to the grocery store a week, etc. It was also at the outbreak, so you would hope we would have some strong measures at the very beginning when there is highest risk and greatest benefit to the rest of the country and world from strict quarantine.

I don't know that we would have done anything similar for this one if we were ground zero, but hopefully we would have for something like aerosolized Ebola with a contagious yet symptom-free incubation time.

We did come close to doing some similar things to welding to the Grand Princess cruise ship early on.

China might be fine, or it might not be. But only a fool would trust CCP numbers.

There are a large number of Western people in China for business reasons, and major Western countries have diplomatic offices throughout China. The US has a Consulate General post in Wuhan itself.

That gives the West an independent source of information about what is going on in China. China can still fudge the numbers, but those independent observations place a limit on how far China can fudge without getting caught.

I don't think you have to trust their numbers, but could they hide extensive outbreaks like the OP is talking about (all numbers being roughly the same and measures having little observable effect)? It would be something like 4 million+ excess deaths.

It should be noted that this is the same CCP that until recently have been simultaneously accusing Spain and Italy and the US of being the origin of the pandemic outbreak, instead of Wuhan.