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I keep hearing the 'they are islands' thing and it has never made much sense to me. Can you explain why being an island is intrinsically better than not being

by Teever 6y ago

I keep hearing the 'they are islands' thing and it has never made much sense to me. Can you explain why being an island is intrinsically better than not being an island? Does the size of the island matter? Does the location of the island matter? What if there are multiple islands?

867-5309 6y ago
agreed. if anything, being an island would be worse because you have to condense a lot people into confined spaces just to cross the border
corty 6y ago
Islands don't really matter, but closed borders do. Europe has very different policies and rates of spread, but open borders mean that no country in the EU can eradicate Corona if the rest doesn't eradicate it at the same time. Case in point, Germany was at practically zero (around 1% positive tests with a 1% false positive rate) 6 weeks ago, currently it is lagging 3 weeks behind all its neighbors in the number of cases, rising exponentially.
novok 6y ago
Travel into islands is far harder than travel into cities in large land masses. You need to get a ticket on an airplane or a boat, which makes travel time a minimum of 1 hour usually and costs a whole bunch of money. This creates a natural barrier where people on islands don't interact with people on mainlands nearly as much. Look into covid numbers and you'll notice cities even in the same country that are on an island of some sort have significantly less covid numbers, such as Hawaii or Vancouver Island in Canada.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  How do you apply the “islands do better” logic to the UK or Hawaii? Hawaii might have done well by US standards, but it has performed badly compared to other islands. The UK has not done well.
  - josephg 6y ago
    Yes. Also Australia is an island, but Victoria (my state) peaked over 700 cases/day and other states during the same period managed to keep their case numbers controlled at the same time (~10 cases / day in NSW iirc). It wasn't magic. We closed the state borders, making each state basically its own island. Victoria imposed strict lockdowns to get the case numbers down and the rest of the country went about business as usual. I don't see why the same strategy wasn't used in Europe or the US. Its hard to control a virus when there's a constant stream of new cases coming over the border. I suppose its way too late for that now.
  - Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
    The UK is a remarkably un-island-like island in terms of the frequency and ease of travel between it and the mainland.
    - greenyoda 6y ago
      In particular, the UK and France are connected by a high-speed train tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel The travel times quoted by that article: "London to Paris taking 2 hours 15 minutes, to Brussels 1 hour 51 minutes." That's faster than some people's daily commutes into NYC.

by Teever 6y ago

867-5309 6y ago

agreed. if anything, being an island would be worse because you have to condense a lot people into confined spaces just to cross the border

corty 6y ago

Islands don't really matter, but closed borders do. Europe has very different policies and rates of spread, but open borders mean that no country in the EU can eradicate Corona if the rest doesn't eradicate it at the same time. Case in point, Germany was at practically zero (around 1% positive tests with a 1% false positive rate) 6 weeks ago, currently it is lagging 3 weeks behind all its neighbors in the number of cases, rising exponentially.

novok 6y ago

Travel into islands is far harder than travel into cities in large land masses. You need to get a ticket on an airplane or a boat, which makes travel time a minimum of 1 hour usually and costs a whole bunch of money. This creates a natural barrier where people on islands don't interact with people on mainlands nearly as much. Look into covid numbers and you'll notice cities even in the same country that are on an island of some sort have significantly less covid numbers, such as Hawaii or Vancouver Island in Canada.

lostlogin 6y ago
How do you apply the “islands do better” logic to the UK or Hawaii? Hawaii might have done well by US standards, but it has performed badly compared to other islands. The UK has not done well.
- josephg 6y ago
  Yes. Also Australia is an island, but Victoria (my state) peaked over 700 cases/day and other states during the same period managed to keep their case numbers controlled at the same time (~10 cases / day in NSW iirc). It wasn't magic. We closed the state borders, making each state basically its own island. Victoria imposed strict lockdowns to get the case numbers down and the rest of the country went about business as usual. I don't see why the same strategy wasn't used in Europe or the US. Its hard to control a virus when there's a constant stream of new cases coming over the border. I suppose its way too late for that now.
- Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
  The UK is a remarkably un-island-like island in terms of the frequency and ease of travel between it and the mainland.
  - greenyoda 6y ago
    In particular, the UK and France are connected by a high-speed train tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel The travel times quoted by that article: "London to Paris taking 2 hours 15 minutes, to Brussels 1 hour 51 minutes." That's faster than some people's daily commutes into NYC.