> no offense but nz and other islands are extremely easy to control. as long as you close your border early and don’t allow it to take root in the first place,

> no offense but nz and other islands are extremely easy to control. as long as you close your border early and don’t allow it to take root in the first place, you don’t have to worry. I'm not sure there's actually much of a difference in ability to "close the border" between a island country like NZ and one with land borders like the US. The US probably has equal control over arrivals by air, and most land traffic comes via controlled border crossings. The main difference is basically the greater amount of illegal immigration and other kinds of smuggling. I don't know what the ratio of legal international travel vs. illegal immigration is, but I'd strongly suspect there's orders of magnitude more of the former than the later (at least during normal times). IIRC, the rates of illegal immigration have also dropped significantly during the pandemic.