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Much is being made of the fact that back in August when Melbourne was reporting over 700 new cases on some days, UK and France were reporting similar new case n

Much is being made of the fact that back in August when Melbourne was reporting over 700 new cases on some days, UK and France were reporting similar new case numbers, yet we are now getting zeroes and those countries have out-of-control spread. Congrats on getting to the magic 0! I know it can seem weird that Europe didn't lock down over the summer, but here we mostly use Health care capacity, not active cases, as the most important number. Being a relatively small island [0] on a remote corner of this planet makes the case for going to the 0 cases a viable one. Going into a 4 month lockdown in Europe would be useless, since it would just pop up again since we don't have a few international airports as only places where you can enter. So we're going into lockdown in Europe to prevent swamping our hospitals, and will resume life when it's okay again. And probably will keep going back and forth until a vaccine. [0](in terms of population)

chaosite 6y ago
Trying to manage healthcare capacity only causes that capacity to be met. And while mainland Europe is not a "relatively small Island", the UK surely is...
yorwba 6y ago
Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those). I don't know much about Australian geography, so I had to check on a map, but it looks like it's possible to travel from Melbourne to other parts of Australia over land. Apparently some measures were taken to prevent the virus from spreading along that route. Driving case counts down to zero isn't useless since any outbreaks that flare up again due to gaps in border security will be localized and can be kept in check with localized lockdowns instead of shutting down the whole country.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those). Not in continental Europe, not without involving the military.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    I mean, France deploys its military internally all the time, lately 4000 to protect churches. And they’ve had in-Schengen passport checks on “temporary for 1-year” bases for several years now without the EU doing too much about it.
  - doubleunplussed 6y ago
    So involve the military? Not seeing the problem here.
- thisrod 6y ago
  > Apparently some measures were taken to prevent the virus from spreading along that route. Police road blocks. Geography no doubt helps: there are only so many bridges across the Murray River, passes through the Australian Alps, and roads across the desert to Adelaide. And it's a bit far to ride a bicycle cross country.
freddie_mercury 6y ago
I live in Vietnam. It is neither a small island nor on a remote corner of the planet. We have a population of 95,000,000 people -- substantially more than any single country in Europe -- and share land borders China, Cambodia, and Laos as well as being within trivial sailing distance of Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Hong Kong. We have had 0 cases for over 2 months. You should stop with the "it is only viable in a small island in a remote corner of the planet" line of argument because it doesn't hold much water in my mind.
- nanna 6y ago
  What would you say is the reason Vietnam has faired so well?
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    This song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtulL3oArQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtulL3oArQw English version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGoodWEtV8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGoodWEtV8c
- apexalpha 6y ago
  That's really great and you did far better than Europe, no doubt about it. But the borders vietnam shares with those countries are hard borders. You need a visa and pass a government controlled checkpoint when you enter. Europe (mainland) has no internal borders. There are no checkpoints, customs agents or chokepoints between countries. There's thousands of roads leading from every country into others. That, plus the fact that both the government and the population have had no experience with this make it very hard to control the virus. I'm open to learn, though, so if you have some time to explain what we could learn from Vietnam I'm all ears.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    If you have enough time to write these kinds of rebuttals on HN, you can certainly just google “Vietnam Covid Success” instead of asking others to explain it for you. Here’s one of the first links you can find by doing so: https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/29/na062920-vietnams-success-in-containing-covid19-offers-roadmap-for-other-developing-countries https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/29/na062920-vie...
_AzMoo 6y ago
Just FYI, in terms of lockdowns, it's only been Victoria and NSW that have done the stage 4 lockdowns over the last few months. In SA, WA, QLD, NT, we've had closed land borders between the states, with police at border crossings and points of entry to stop anybody trying to come in without a valid and allowed reason. This has prevented the cases from Vic and NSW from spreading to the other states, in much the same way that would occur in the European scenario you describe. It's not impossible, it just takes the will of the people to accept a lack of freedom of movement.

chaosite 6y ago

Trying to manage healthcare capacity only causes that capacity to be met. And while mainland Europe is not a "relatively small Island", the UK surely is...

yorwba 6y ago

Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those). I don't know much about Australian geography, so I had to check on a map, but it looks like it's possible to travel from Melbourne to other parts of Australia over land. Apparently some measures were taken to prevent the virus from spreading along that route. Driving case counts down to zero isn't useless since any outbreaks that flare up again due to gaps in border security will be localized and can be kept in check with localized lockdowns instead of shutting down the whole country.

luckylion 6y ago
> Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those). Not in continental Europe, not without involving the military.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  I mean, France deploys its military internally all the time, lately 4000 to protect churches. And they’ve had in-Schengen passport checks on “temporary for 1-year” bases for several years now without the EU doing too much about it.
- doubleunplussed 6y ago
  So involve the military? Not seeing the problem here.
thisrod 6y ago
> Apparently some measures were taken to prevent the virus from spreading along that route. Police road blocks. Geography no doubt helps: there are only so many bridges across the Murray River, passes through the Australian Alps, and roads across the desert to Adelaide. And it's a bit far to ride a bicycle cross country.

freddie_mercury 6y ago

I live in Vietnam. It is neither a small island nor on a remote corner of the planet. We have a population of 95,000,000 people -- substantially more than any single country in Europe -- and share land borders China, Cambodia, and Laos as well as being within trivial sailing distance of Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Hong Kong. We have had 0 cases for over 2 months. You should stop with the "it is only viable in a small island in a remote corner of the planet" line of argument because it doesn't hold much water in my mind.

nanna 6y ago
What would you say is the reason Vietnam has faired so well?
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  This song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtulL3oArQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtulL3oArQw English version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGoodWEtV8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGoodWEtV8c
apexalpha 6y ago
That's really great and you did far better than Europe, no doubt about it. But the borders vietnam shares with those countries are hard borders. You need a visa and pass a government controlled checkpoint when you enter. Europe (mainland) has no internal borders. There are no checkpoints, customs agents or chokepoints between countries. There's thousands of roads leading from every country into others. That, plus the fact that both the government and the population have had no experience with this make it very hard to control the virus. I'm open to learn, though, so if you have some time to explain what we could learn from Vietnam I'm all ears.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  If you have enough time to write these kinds of rebuttals on HN, you can certainly just google “Vietnam Covid Success” instead of asking others to explain it for you. Here’s one of the first links you can find by doing so: https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/29/na062920-vietnams-success-in-containing-covid19-offers-roadmap-for-other-developing-countries https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/29/na062920-vie...

_AzMoo 6y ago

Just FYI, in terms of lockdowns, it's only been Victoria and NSW that have done the stage 4 lockdowns over the last few months. In SA, WA, QLD, NT, we've had closed land borders between the states, with police at border crossings and points of entry to stop anybody trying to come in without a valid and allowed reason. This has prevented the cases from Vic and NSW from spreading to the other states, in much the same way that would occur in the European scenario you describe. It's not impossible, it just takes the will of the people to accept a lack of freedom of movement.