14 ms·

Additionally, it didn't take a lot of reading-between-the-lines to infer that they're planning to close the border to Americans in the next few days as well. NA

by burke 7y ago

Additionally, it didn't take a lot of reading-between-the-lines to infer that they're planning to close the border to Americans in the next few days as well. NAFTA must be an impediment here.

mercurysmessage 7y ago
The US seems to have a lot of community cases, so if they don't close that border as well it won't make much of a difference.
jandrewrogers 7y ago
Another issue is that there are many families that span both sides of the border.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  European countries that have closed borders have said "no family visits" unless the relative is critically ill.
rhino369 7y ago
I'd imagine a lot of key pathways of trade don't really stop at the border. I'm sure that trucking, for example, doesn't hand off goods. They probably drive straight through after a short border check. Unless they think they have significantly fewer cases than the United States, it doesn't make sense to block travelers.
- inasio 7y ago
  There is a pretty stark difference between British Columbia and Washington State right now (10x cases, 42 vs 1 death)
  - jamie_ca 7y ago
    BC had 3 more over the weekend, now 4 deaths. And quite an up-tick in cases. :(
    - inasio 7y ago
      Crap, and quite a few of those cases in Vancouver Island (lots of retired people, not a lot of hospital infrastructure). Announced only 1 hour ago it seems, and not yet in the Johns Hopkins tracker
      - fdjlasdfjl 7y ago
        Fortunately we're reacting ahead of time. Universities, rec centers, and public facilities are shutting down. We are also in the process of setting up a Korean-style drive through testing lab. Hopefully we can keep it out of the nursing homes.........
      - hackermailman 7y ago
        Zero social distancing going on either, busses crammed to the hilt and E. Hastings is wall to wall addicts outside right now. Someone I work with his wife is a health worker under potential exposure quarantine and he showed up to work today. I guess we are aiming for the full Italy version of this pandemic.
        munk-a 7y ago
        Be vocal about it and talk out. I spoke out vocally at my workplace and most of us are now remoting - its on every individual to self-quarantine because relying on force (like the mounties or army) simply isn't reasonable - policing people closely defeats quarantining and those transit resources need to keep going to make sure essential employees can get to work. That all said I'm curious what Translink's plans are to restrict access to the skytrain.
  - bawolff 7y ago
    Well if its doubling every 3 days, its only the difference of 10 days...
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Washington State is also an outlier in that one of the first places that got hit was a nursing home and they didn't react quickly enough; several of their residents died fairly quickly. The rest of the state is doing alright, comparatively.
- danudey 7y ago
  > I'd imagine a lot of key pathways of trade don't really stop at the border. I'm sure that trucking, for example, doesn't hand off goods. They probably drive straight through after a short border check. 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.
  - sigstoat 7y ago
    > 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. do canadian hospitals not send foreigners a bill? it seems like this sort of issue would've come up long before now.
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      maybe it has come up before, but there would be a pretty significant difference between doing that with normal conditions and during a pandemic.
    - btilly 7y ago
      do canadian hospitals not send foreigners a bill? 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.
- xutopia 7y ago
  You are right about this. The number of trucks passing the Champlain Bridge every day is huge and many of those truckers are American.
gdilla 7y ago
well that and they can't afford a temper tantrum from the orange idiot. gotta tell him it's his idea or something.
swypych 7y ago
I was actually thinking Trudeau is telegraphing from his talks with other G7 countries, that other countries are going to close borders soon, and if you want to come home you should move now.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  At this point, what is the gain? 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.
  - wenc 7y ago
    You limit imported new infections and can focus on slowing community spread. Due to the exponential growth rate, this absolutely makes a difference. 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.
    - colechristensen 7y ago
      My point being that infected already exist here broadly, presumably in every urban area. The small number of people crossing borders wouldn't seem to make any difference, the goal should be on the more local levels of transmissions (closing restaurants or slashing capacity, hygiene requirements, closing schools/workplaces/events, i.e. venues for transmission) risking adding a few infected individuals to a large population of infected individuals seems to be the wrong step, or much much too late.
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
        If a country had already hit its peak, new infected travelers potentially infecting they came across (customs, transport, at their lodging) might cause new local flareups, no? At which point you might have to wait for a new peak to subside.
multiplegeorges 7y ago
My bet is that the Canadian government wanted to close the border to US tourists, but in discussions with the US government it was made clear that that is unacceptable. 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.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jedberg 7y ago
There is also the issue of NEXUS card holders. Many of them work in one country and live in the other, or have other reasons to cross the border daily. 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.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  There is also the tiny peak in Minnesota which is only accessible by boat or Canadian road.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    There's one of those in Washington too.
    - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
      The folks in Point Roberts are going to have a hard time if the Canadian border is closed to US citizens. If the US does the same, a good number of Vancouver residents will lose access to their US post office boxes. Guess someone will start a ferry between Point Roberts and the rest of Washington.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  The precedent from European countries has been to exempt people who commute across the borders from the shutdown; I imagine that Canada is likely to go the same route here.
- eigenvector 7y ago
  The issue is not sealing off the border entirely, but trying to reduce non-essential travel while keeping supply chains and essential commuter workers flowing. A person who's no longer able to make their weekly milk run to Bellingham, WA from Surrey, BC isn't going to try hiking across the border, but it'd be best if they could be persuaded to stop travel voluntarily without incurring the costs to essential traffic that come from closing border crossings.
DeonPenny 7y ago
That would be insane. You biggest trading partner being block and the only country you share a land border with will drag their economy to the ground. Banning fun-loving travel makes sense. 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.
- natrik 7y ago
  They wouldn't ban trucks carrying cargo, supplies, etc.
  - samatman 7y ago
    Which, due to the closeness of the US/Canada relationship, makes it pretty pointless. Unless they do something involving disinfecting truck cabins then switching from US to Canadian drivers, at the border. Every trucker who goes to Canada pops into a Tim Hortons before heading back to the US, no exceptions.
    - TheRealPomax 7y ago
      Don't let perfect be the enemy of better-than-nothing. Especially when we're talking about individual truckers vs. tens of thousands of close packed poor-environment-suffering groups of people in transit hubs. 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.
      - samatman 7y ago
        I agree with you in general. 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.
dmurray 7y ago
EU countries are finding it easy enough politically to soft-close their borders, and that's normally a much tighter union than NAFTA. It would be surprising if Canada didn't have the right to do this in emergency circumstances.
j45 7y ago
March 22 seems to be the updated data for all international and transcontinental travel.

by burke 7y ago

Additionally, it didn't take a lot of reading-between-the-lines to infer that they're planning to close the border to Americans in the next few days as well. NAFTA must be an impediment here.

mercurysmessage 7y ago

The US seems to have a lot of community cases, so if they don't close that border as well it won't make much of a difference.

jandrewrogers 7y ago

Another issue is that there are many families that span both sides of the border.

Symbiote 7y ago
European countries that have closed borders have said "no family visits" unless the relative is critically ill.

rhino369 7y ago

I'd imagine a lot of key pathways of trade don't really stop at the border. I'm sure that trucking, for example, doesn't hand off goods. They probably drive straight through after a short border check. Unless they think they have significantly fewer cases than the United States, it doesn't make sense to block travelers.

inasio 7y ago
There is a pretty stark difference between British Columbia and Washington State right now (10x cases, 42 vs 1 death)
- jamie_ca 7y ago
  BC had 3 more over the weekend, now 4 deaths. And quite an up-tick in cases. :(
  - inasio 7y ago
    Crap, and quite a few of those cases in Vancouver Island (lots of retired people, not a lot of hospital infrastructure). Announced only 1 hour ago it seems, and not yet in the Johns Hopkins tracker
    - fdjlasdfjl 7y ago
      Fortunately we're reacting ahead of time. Universities, rec centers, and public facilities are shutting down. We are also in the process of setting up a Korean-style drive through testing lab. Hopefully we can keep it out of the nursing homes.........
    - hackermailman 7y ago
      Zero social distancing going on either, busses crammed to the hilt and E. Hastings is wall to wall addicts outside right now. Someone I work with his wife is a health worker under potential exposure quarantine and he showed up to work today. I guess we are aiming for the full Italy version of this pandemic.
      - munk-a 7y ago
        Be vocal about it and talk out. I spoke out vocally at my workplace and most of us are now remoting - its on every individual to self-quarantine because relying on force (like the mounties or army) simply isn't reasonable - policing people closely defeats quarantining and those transit resources need to keep going to make sure essential employees can get to work. That all said I'm curious what Translink's plans are to restrict access to the skytrain.
- bawolff 7y ago
  Well if its doubling every 3 days, its only the difference of 10 days...
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Washington State is also an outlier in that one of the first places that got hit was a nursing home and they didn't react quickly enough; several of their residents died fairly quickly. The rest of the state is doing alright, comparatively.
danudey 7y ago
> I'd imagine a lot of key pathways of trade don't really stop at the border. I'm sure that trucking, for example, doesn't hand off goods. They probably drive straight through after a short border check. 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.
- sigstoat 7y ago
  > 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. do canadian hospitals not send foreigners a bill? it seems like this sort of issue would've come up long before now.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    maybe it has come up before, but there would be a pretty significant difference between doing that with normal conditions and during a pandemic.
  - btilly 7y ago
    do canadian hospitals not send foreigners a bill? 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.
xutopia 7y ago
You are right about this. The number of trucks passing the Champlain Bridge every day is huge and many of those truckers are American.

gdilla 7y ago

well that and they can't afford a temper tantrum from the orange idiot. gotta tell him it's his idea or something.

swypych 7y ago

I was actually thinking Trudeau is telegraphing from his talks with other G7 countries, that other countries are going to close borders soon, and if you want to come home you should move now.

colechristensen 7y ago
At this point, what is the gain? 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.
- wenc 7y ago
  You limit imported new infections and can focus on slowing community spread. Due to the exponential growth rate, this absolutely makes a difference. 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.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    My point being that infected already exist here broadly, presumably in every urban area. The small number of people crossing borders wouldn't seem to make any difference, the goal should be on the more local levels of transmissions (closing restaurants or slashing capacity, hygiene requirements, closing schools/workplaces/events, i.e. venues for transmission) risking adding a few infected individuals to a large population of infected individuals seems to be the wrong step, or much much too late.
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      If a country had already hit its peak, new infected travelers potentially infecting they came across (customs, transport, at their lodging) might cause new local flareups, no? At which point you might have to wait for a new peak to subside.

multiplegeorges 7y ago

My bet is that the Canadian government wanted to close the border to US tourists, but in discussions with the US government it was made clear that that is unacceptable. 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.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jedberg 7y ago

There is also the issue of NEXUS card holders. Many of them work in one country and live in the other, or have other reasons to cross the border daily. 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.

colechristensen 7y ago
There is also the tiny peak in Minnesota which is only accessible by boat or Canadian road.
- jedberg 7y ago
  There's one of those in Washington too.
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    The folks in Point Roberts are going to have a hard time if the Canadian border is closed to US citizens. If the US does the same, a good number of Vancouver residents will lose access to their US post office boxes. Guess someone will start a ferry between Point Roberts and the rest of Washington.
jcranmer 7y ago
The precedent from European countries has been to exempt people who commute across the borders from the shutdown; I imagine that Canada is likely to go the same route here.
eigenvector 7y ago
The issue is not sealing off the border entirely, but trying to reduce non-essential travel while keeping supply chains and essential commuter workers flowing. A person who's no longer able to make their weekly milk run to Bellingham, WA from Surrey, BC isn't going to try hiking across the border, but it'd be best if they could be persuaded to stop travel voluntarily without incurring the costs to essential traffic that come from closing border crossings.

DeonPenny 7y ago

That would be insane. You biggest trading partner being block and the only country you share a land border with will drag their economy to the ground. Banning fun-loving travel makes sense. 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.

natrik 7y ago
They wouldn't ban trucks carrying cargo, supplies, etc.
- samatman 7y ago
  Which, due to the closeness of the US/Canada relationship, makes it pretty pointless. Unless they do something involving disinfecting truck cabins then switching from US to Canadian drivers, at the border. Every trucker who goes to Canada pops into a Tim Hortons before heading back to the US, no exceptions.
  - TheRealPomax 7y ago
    Don't let perfect be the enemy of better-than-nothing. Especially when we're talking about individual truckers vs. tens of thousands of close packed poor-environment-suffering groups of people in transit hubs. 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.
    - samatman 7y ago
      I agree with you in general. 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.

dmurray 7y ago

EU countries are finding it easy enough politically to soft-close their borders, and that's normally a much tighter union than NAFTA. It would be surprising if Canada didn't have the right to do this in emergency circumstances.

j45 7y ago

March 22 seems to be the updated data for all international and transcontinental travel.