The Czech Republic, here smack in the middle of Europe did something similar - pretty strict lockdown, hospitals cleared of non essential procedures to keep cap

The Czech Republic, here smack in the middle of Europe did something similar - pretty strict lockdown, hospitals cleared of non essential procedures to keep capacity, most shops closed & mandatory masks everywhere. Seems to have worked fine, as the average number of cases has been around 50 daily for a couple of weeks, all that while most of the restrictions have been lifted. So where is the difference ? I think in two aspects: - all the neighboring countries did similar strict lockdown and achieved similar levels of success - we closed our borders to everyone, including preventing residents from going out - the Prague international airport was deserted for month and a half, all international bus and train connections have been shut down & border crossing were guarded by police with army helping out, letting only trucks through I think this really helped as each country could apply their lockdown separately for a limited period, without worrying about international travel bringing it right back in. While from what I've read and even been told by people in the US - even is a single US state did a very strict lockdown with potentially huge economical cost - the neighboring state (or in some cases even the next city!) will do hardly anything at all. Combined with no state border lockdown, the strict state will get infections back in from the less responsible areas. The Czech Republic border is no longer closed, buses and trains go over the borders again & local flights have been reestablished. Still, a version of the border lockdown is still going on, with the Czech Ministry of health maintaining a list of "red" countries, such as for example Sweden or Portugal, that you should not visit but if you do you should go to quarantine and get tested.