> Doesn't "the west" include Australia? I would think Australia and New Zealand count, and they've done a pretty good job. Politically, yes, but being islands

> Doesn't "the west" include Australia? I would think Australia and New Zealand count, and they've done a pretty good job. Politically, yes, but being islands with a significant distance to other countries does make them very different. It's somewhat easy to restrict travel to NZ or AU, but it's much harder in Europe. Geographic location seems to play a role. Japan and Taiwan are islands, for all intents and purposes, so is South Korea (a mine field inhibits travel). Singapore and Malaysia have much fewer land-borders. Restricting movement in Europe between countries is more comparable to restricting movement within a country. They don't have hard borders, generally no controls etc. Probably doable, but not without very authoritarian policies which I don't see happening (during the migrant crisis in 2015, the general narrative was that it's literally impossible to enforce borders in Europe).