5 ms·

Comparing an island nation of 5 million people, that can effectively close it's borders and "avoid" new focuses of infection, to countries of 100+ million of pe

Comparing an island nation of 5 million people, that can effectively close it's borders and "avoid" new focuses of infection, to countries of 100+ million of people, where the difficulties of border closing are effectively unsurmountable, is extremely disingenuous. The whole approach governments took in facing this pandemic needs to be studied in the next decades. It's an eye opening thing to see how viruses spread pretty much the way they do, and there is almost nothing we can do to stop it. It's really humbling to see that if you keep everything open (i.e. Florida) you get the same results as if you make your population effectively stop to live for one year (i.e. California).

dragontamer 6y ago
Its likely illegal for California to close its borders to Florida. But that probably would have slowed the spread significantly, at least in the 3rd wave where the Mid-Western / anti-mask states led the 3rd wave. This country was in this together. For better or for worse. Closing the borders of states was never an option.
- viraptor 6y ago
  > Its likely illegal for California to close its borders to Florida. I wonder if that's really the case. A year ago I'd say the same for Australia. Yet most Australian states closed their borders at some point as a response to local cases spiking. (I agree it's less practical in the US, but I do wonder about the legality)
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Whatever the answer I feel like it would take the courts a few weeks at least to figure it out. California (or more realistically Hawaii) could have had a full three week border closure before anyone settled the case law.
    - refurb 6y ago
      They certainly could have “closed” the border but how effective would it have been? How many road cross into CA? How many open fields? You’d need an army of hundreds of thousands to ensure nobody crosses.
      - mewse 6y ago
        Maybe they could build a wall.
      - labster 6y ago
        Not very many roads enter California, as it has natural geological borders. An ocean to the west, hilly forest to the north. On the east, a 3 km high mountain range which leads into a hot desert, cut by the mighty Colorado. The terrain is a lot more forgiving to the south, but there’s an artificial border with Baja California there. Plus, most of the infrastructure is there for the agricultural inspection stations. Just use it to stop human disease instead of plant disease.
        refurb 6y ago
        Logically that makes sense but we can't even seem to secure our southern border with Mexico. And interestingly there are only 16 agricultural stations for all of California. They are only in place at major highways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Border_Protection_Stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Border_Protection_S... And if I kind of zoom into Google maps I count 36 crossing between the Oregon/California border just between the Pacific ocean and I-5. Sure, a lot of those are probably logging roads and such, but that's just a 60 mile stretch.
      - girvo 6y ago
        I mean it’s not like the inter state borders in Australia aren’t absolutely huge, too...
- kikokikokiko 6y ago
  I do not live in the US, but I love that your system allows you guys to have effectively 51 experiments on how to deal with the spread of a virus, and see the results of every strategy. Do you really think that, if you can't even control your borders between states, your border on the south with Mexico for instance, would ever be effectively controlled to avoid the virus to come through it? The complete failure of California (even when compared to states where the demographics tend more to the older generations) tells me everything that is needed to understand if the lockdown approach works or not.
  - sdenton4 6y ago
    California is far from a monolith, though. Alameda County, where I live, hasn't been that bad, and has had a strong lockdown policy. Other parts of california have larger populations of anti-maskers. And the California prison system has been a complete disaster, largely because of incompetence and inhumanity in the administration.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
the_cat_kittles 6y ago
well vietnam also did extremely well. and new zealands managed isolation (which i just went through) could easily be replicated anywhere there are hotels
- Leherenn 6y ago
  In Europe, a lot of people (including many essential workers) commute across a border every day to work. What do you do with them?
- jokteur 6y ago
  In my country of 8 millions (Switzerland), about 340'000 people commute to Switzerland each day to work [1]. These people come from Italy, France, Germany and a bit from Austria. A lot of these people do important work, such as working in hospitals, administration, services, ... Locking down the borders completely would just have been impossible. You would be suddendly in need of nurses and doctors. Sometimes, more than 50% of the personal in bordering hospitals are cross-border commuters [2]. Yes, you could discuss on how Switzerland is taking advantage of "cheap" labor from neighboring countries, but it does not change the fact that for Switzerland, closing completely the borders (with 14 days isolation) is just an impossible task. [1] https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/work-income/employment-working-hours/employed-persons/swiss-foreign-nationals/cross-border-commuters.html https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/work-income/... [2] https://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/fran%C3%A7ais-et-italiens-dans-les-soins_-sans-frontaliers--plusieurs-de-nos-cliniques-ne-tourneraient-pas-/44126324 https://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/fran%C3%A7ais-et-italiens-dans-...
peteretep 6y ago
Thailand’s 50m people with 3,000km of mostly unpoliced border, they made it work. Vietnam made it work. Locking borders early and moving to quarantined entry apparently works, and when some knobs walk over the border with Covid, as has happened with both countries, you can unleash an almighty track-and-trace and isolated lockdowns because the health system isn’t already on its knees.
- tim333 6y ago
  Track and trace works way better when you have 20 or so people infected than when you have 100,000. It's not even the health system, just the logistics of tracking everyone down. I kind of experienced both - the first in Koh Lanta and the second in London.
- throwaway-8c93 6y ago
  They're not islands in a strict geographical sense, but there are a dozen or so countries which are de-facto islands for any practical purposes - accessible only through large bodies of water, with land borders mostly impassable or crossed so infrequently that they don't matter. South Korea, North Korea, Finland, Vietnam, several central American countries and others. Even China fits the bill. Not sure how frequent traffic across Thai borders are, but my impression is that SE Asian countries are not very well integrated.

dragontamer 6y ago

Its likely illegal for California to close its borders to Florida. But that probably would have slowed the spread significantly, at least in the 3rd wave where the Mid-Western / anti-mask states led the 3rd wave. This country was in this together. For better or for worse. Closing the borders of states was never an option.

viraptor 6y ago
> Its likely illegal for California to close its borders to Florida. I wonder if that's really the case. A year ago I'd say the same for Australia. Yet most Australian states closed their borders at some point as a response to local cases spiking. (I agree it's less practical in the US, but I do wonder about the legality)
- jedberg 6y ago
  Whatever the answer I feel like it would take the courts a few weeks at least to figure it out. California (or more realistically Hawaii) could have had a full three week border closure before anyone settled the case law.
  - refurb 6y ago
    They certainly could have “closed” the border but how effective would it have been? How many road cross into CA? How many open fields? You’d need an army of hundreds of thousands to ensure nobody crosses.
    - mewse 6y ago
      Maybe they could build a wall.
    - labster 6y ago
      Not very many roads enter California, as it has natural geological borders. An ocean to the west, hilly forest to the north. On the east, a 3 km high mountain range which leads into a hot desert, cut by the mighty Colorado. The terrain is a lot more forgiving to the south, but there’s an artificial border with Baja California there. Plus, most of the infrastructure is there for the agricultural inspection stations. Just use it to stop human disease instead of plant disease.
      - refurb 6y ago
        Logically that makes sense but we can't even seem to secure our southern border with Mexico. And interestingly there are only 16 agricultural stations for all of California. They are only in place at major highways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Border_Protection_Stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Border_Protection_S... And if I kind of zoom into Google maps I count 36 crossing between the Oregon/California border just between the Pacific ocean and I-5. Sure, a lot of those are probably logging roads and such, but that's just a 60 mile stretch.
    - girvo 6y ago
      I mean it’s not like the inter state borders in Australia aren’t absolutely huge, too...
kikokikokiko 6y ago
I do not live in the US, but I love that your system allows you guys to have effectively 51 experiments on how to deal with the spread of a virus, and see the results of every strategy. Do you really think that, if you can't even control your borders between states, your border on the south with Mexico for instance, would ever be effectively controlled to avoid the virus to come through it? The complete failure of California (even when compared to states where the demographics tend more to the older generations) tells me everything that is needed to understand if the lockdown approach works or not.
- sdenton4 6y ago
  California is far from a monolith, though. Alameda County, where I live, hasn't been that bad, and has had a strong lockdown policy. Other parts of california have larger populations of anti-maskers. And the California prison system has been a complete disaster, largely because of incompetence and inhumanity in the administration.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

the_cat_kittles 6y ago

well vietnam also did extremely well. and new zealands managed isolation (which i just went through) could easily be replicated anywhere there are hotels

Leherenn 6y ago
In Europe, a lot of people (including many essential workers) commute across a border every day to work. What do you do with them?
jokteur 6y ago
In my country of 8 millions (Switzerland), about 340'000 people commute to Switzerland each day to work [1]. These people come from Italy, France, Germany and a bit from Austria. A lot of these people do important work, such as working in hospitals, administration, services, ... Locking down the borders completely would just have been impossible. You would be suddendly in need of nurses and doctors. Sometimes, more than 50% of the personal in bordering hospitals are cross-border commuters [2]. Yes, you could discuss on how Switzerland is taking advantage of "cheap" labor from neighboring countries, but it does not change the fact that for Switzerland, closing completely the borders (with 14 days isolation) is just an impossible task. [1] https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/work-income/employment-working-hours/employed-persons/swiss-foreign-nationals/cross-border-commuters.html https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/work-income/... [2] https://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/fran%C3%A7ais-et-italiens-dans-les-soins_-sans-frontaliers--plusieurs-de-nos-cliniques-ne-tourneraient-pas-/44126324 https://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/fran%C3%A7ais-et-italiens-dans-...

peteretep 6y ago

Thailand’s 50m people with 3,000km of mostly unpoliced border, they made it work. Vietnam made it work. Locking borders early and moving to quarantined entry apparently works, and when some knobs walk over the border with Covid, as has happened with both countries, you can unleash an almighty track-and-trace and isolated lockdowns because the health system isn’t already on its knees.

tim333 6y ago
Track and trace works way better when you have 20 or so people infected than when you have 100,000. It's not even the health system, just the logistics of tracking everyone down. I kind of experienced both - the first in Koh Lanta and the second in London.
throwaway-8c93 6y ago
They're not islands in a strict geographical sense, but there are a dozen or so countries which are de-facto islands for any practical purposes - accessible only through large bodies of water, with land borders mostly impassable or crossed so infrequently that they don't matter. South Korea, North Korea, Finland, Vietnam, several central American countries and others. Even China fits the bill. Not sure how frequent traffic across Thai borders are, but my impression is that SE Asian countries are not very well integrated.