I live in Atlantic Canada and we’ve beaten back several outbreaks with contact tracing, testing and isolation. We also moved early and controlled travel to and

I live in Atlantic Canada and we’ve beaten back several outbreaks with contact tracing, testing and isolation. We also moved early and controlled travel to and from the region with a quarantine. The travel restrictions are essential. But....if you only did that you would fail miserably. Contact tracing works very well! SARS-COV-2 spreads in clusters. We were at zero cases for months, and we’re back down to 0-3 local cases a day in most of our provinces and dropping. You’re completely wrong that this can’t be contained through isolation and tracing. The issue was most of the rest of north america basically only tried tracing (doesn’t work), didn’t scale tracing, and also never seriously tried to eliminate the virus despite the clear evidence that their tracing systems were incapable alone. (I’m including the rest of canada here) I agree with you that travel restrictions are vital but you’re underestimating the importance of other tools. Also the Us restrictions weren’t very effective: people still got through! In Atlantic Canada everyone arriving from outside the region has to quarantine for 14 days. Where contact tracing fails, incidentally, is if you have an undetected case cluster. SARS-COV-2 can spread asymptomatically, so if you miss one it can grow quite a bit. But once you find evidence of a cluster you can move backwards and forwards through the transmission chain and quite effectively. The province of new brunswick has beaten about seven small outbreaks back down to zero with this method. But it only works if case numbers are manageable: the rest of north america let them grow out of control and didn’t scale tracing to match.