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Ah. The ‘it works on an isolated island with 5 million people’ fantasy. Except it doesn’t work on continents with billions of people with multiple governments.

Ah. The ‘it works on an isolated island with 5 million people’ fantasy. Except it doesn’t work on continents with billions of people with multiple governments. And then the magical mask fairytale. If only people had worn masks this would all be over. Except now it turns out people have to wear three masks on top of each other. How could that be if masks had solved all the problems? The answer is clear: they don’t. There is no point in blameshifting to people that ‘didn’t wear the masks and didn’t lock down’. Also it is 100% clear that tons of people can’t wait to be allowed to visit each other. Claiming ‘people aren’t going to congregate’ is simply a lie. In the Netherlands we had one test event with 1500 tickets and over 100000 people applied for a ticket. They can’t wait to congregate.

sudosysgen 6y ago
Is China an isolated island? How about Vietnam? And no, land borders don't matter that much. They aren't a strong infection vector. You can just close the borders. The vast majority of infections come from air travel, not land travel that is essentially zero. Were also not taking about the EU here, the Article is American, and there aren't a billion people neither in Europe nor in North America. Incidentally, the modalities for the Schengen zone allow authorities to close down borders in such circumstances. The island argument is a mirage. We're in 2021, land travel can be brought to ~0 and air travel always was the dominant vector of infection.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  I presume you have never been in Europe. There barely any borders to close and a lot of people live in one country and work in another. You can’t block that for a year. In Baarle Nassau in the Netherlands there is a store, and half of it is in the Netherlands and half of it is in Belgium. By the way, air travel has been ~0 for a year now. Unfortunately it has not in fact stopped the pandemic. Must be the no true lockdown: if it doesn’t work we just say it wasn’t strict enough.
  - retrac 6y ago
    Canada closed some of the internal borders between its provinces; something that has never happened before. Some road blocks, some of its based simply on the honour system. Here in Ontario, I cannot legally visit anywhere east of Quebec right now without quarantining on arrival for 2 weeks. And some remote communities are literally barricaded from entry.
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      Wow! No wonder Canada beat covid-19. Oh wait, they didn’t. But at least they are in the worst economic depression in decades.
      - retrac 6y ago
        The regions that did quarantine themselves like that (the Atlantic provinces) are in fact doing much better than the rest of the country. Newfoundland is in near-total suppression. Though unlike some others in this thread I do believe being an island is helpful, even if just psychologically.
  - chasd00 6y ago
    i don't know why you're being downvoted. This statement is true "Must be the no true lockdown: if it doesn’t work we just say it wasn’t strict enough." any criticism of the lockdowns is met with "you didn't lockdown enough".
    - leesalminen 6y ago
      When someone says "you didn't lockdown enough", I hear “you didn’t destroy enough people’s livelihoods”.
aww_dang 6y ago
>There is no point in blameshifting to people that ‘didn’t wear the masks and didn’t lock down’. If we accept your analysis, we can say this serves a political purpose.
acdha 6y ago
Last time I checked, Australia is a continent with 26 million people, mostly urban, and strong travel ties throughout the world. Taiwan isn’t big but they’d be at the top of the list of countries you’d expect to get hit by an outbreak in China given travel patterns. Nobody is saying masks are 100% effective but the scientific consensus has been clear since last spring that they sharply reduce transmission rates. Epidemics are all about cutting those rates, and a minor inconvenience is about as cheap as you can buy a reduction. Certainly better than getting advice from someone who’s going to claim South Korea is a sparsely-populated island to avoid having to admit credulously repeating untrustworthy sources.
mcguire 6y ago
"Also it is 100% clear that tons of people can’t wait to be allowed to visit each other. Claiming ‘people aren’t going to congregate’ is simply a lie. In the Netherlands we had one test event with 1500 tickets and over 100000 people applied for a ticket. They can’t wait to congregate." I'm not up to date on the situation in the Netherlands. Is it that you can do anything you want if you have a negative test? Because otherwise, I don't think that anecdote means what you want it to mean.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  No, they are going to run an event with 1500 people as a test, a small dance festival. They also had a football match with two low ranked teams playing for a live crowd. The papers proudly proclaimed that that football match had trouble selling its tickets, as proof of the ‘nobody wants to congregate’ theory. It’s unsurprising though, considering this game wouldn’t quite sell out in a normal situation. To those people it did come as quite a surprise that a dance festival that offered 1500 tickets got over 100000 reservations. People can’t wait to get together and while most people do follow the measures many would stop the second it was no longer required. But some people have locked themselves in their home for a year now and think everyone is like that. That’s not quite true.

sudosysgen 6y ago

Is China an isolated island? How about Vietnam? And no, land borders don't matter that much. They aren't a strong infection vector. You can just close the borders. The vast majority of infections come from air travel, not land travel that is essentially zero. Were also not taking about the EU here, the Article is American, and there aren't a billion people neither in Europe nor in North America. Incidentally, the modalities for the Schengen zone allow authorities to close down borders in such circumstances. The island argument is a mirage. We're in 2021, land travel can be brought to ~0 and air travel always was the dominant vector of infection.

tinus_hn 6y ago
I presume you have never been in Europe. There barely any borders to close and a lot of people live in one country and work in another. You can’t block that for a year. In Baarle Nassau in the Netherlands there is a store, and half of it is in the Netherlands and half of it is in Belgium. By the way, air travel has been ~0 for a year now. Unfortunately it has not in fact stopped the pandemic. Must be the no true lockdown: if it doesn’t work we just say it wasn’t strict enough.
- retrac 6y ago
  Canada closed some of the internal borders between its provinces; something that has never happened before. Some road blocks, some of its based simply on the honour system. Here in Ontario, I cannot legally visit anywhere east of Quebec right now without quarantining on arrival for 2 weeks. And some remote communities are literally barricaded from entry.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    Wow! No wonder Canada beat covid-19. Oh wait, they didn’t. But at least they are in the worst economic depression in decades.
    - retrac 6y ago
      The regions that did quarantine themselves like that (the Atlantic provinces) are in fact doing much better than the rest of the country. Newfoundland is in near-total suppression. Though unlike some others in this thread I do believe being an island is helpful, even if just psychologically.
- chasd00 6y ago
  i don't know why you're being downvoted. This statement is true "Must be the no true lockdown: if it doesn’t work we just say it wasn’t strict enough." any criticism of the lockdowns is met with "you didn't lockdown enough".
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    When someone says "you didn't lockdown enough", I hear “you didn’t destroy enough people’s livelihoods”.

aww_dang 6y ago

>There is no point in blameshifting to people that ‘didn’t wear the masks and didn’t lock down’. If we accept your analysis, we can say this serves a political purpose.

acdha 6y ago

Last time I checked, Australia is a continent with 26 million people, mostly urban, and strong travel ties throughout the world. Taiwan isn’t big but they’d be at the top of the list of countries you’d expect to get hit by an outbreak in China given travel patterns. Nobody is saying masks are 100% effective but the scientific consensus has been clear since last spring that they sharply reduce transmission rates. Epidemics are all about cutting those rates, and a minor inconvenience is about as cheap as you can buy a reduction. Certainly better than getting advice from someone who’s going to claim South Korea is a sparsely-populated island to avoid having to admit credulously repeating untrustworthy sources.

mcguire 6y ago

"Also it is 100% clear that tons of people can’t wait to be allowed to visit each other. Claiming ‘people aren’t going to congregate’ is simply a lie. In the Netherlands we had one test event with 1500 tickets and over 100000 people applied for a ticket. They can’t wait to congregate." I'm not up to date on the situation in the Netherlands. Is it that you can do anything you want if you have a negative test? Because otherwise, I don't think that anecdote means what you want it to mean.

tinus_hn 6y ago
No, they are going to run an event with 1500 people as a test, a small dance festival. They also had a football match with two low ranked teams playing for a live crowd. The papers proudly proclaimed that that football match had trouble selling its tickets, as proof of the ‘nobody wants to congregate’ theory. It’s unsurprising though, considering this game wouldn’t quite sell out in a normal situation. To those people it did come as quite a surprise that a dance festival that offered 1500 tickets got over 100000 reservations. People can’t wait to get together and while most people do follow the measures many would stop the second it was no longer required. But some people have locked themselves in their home for a year now and think everyone is like that. That’s not quite true.