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People always use New Zealand and Australia as a shining example, but as an average joe, my first though is that they're already isolated which gives them a tre
by xeromal 6y ago
People always use New Zealand and Australia as a shining example, but as an average joe, my first though is that they're already isolated which gives them a tremendous advantage.
I think the more valuable examples are in asian countries where they share close land borders. I'd assume that their cultural differences enable to comply with the rules a bit more than western countries so I don't know if it was even possible to prevent something like that in countries like the US. There's just too much resistance to control like that and the amount of land border that'd we'd have to police
- ghaff 6y ago>the amount of land border that'd we'd have to police In all fairness, the US could seal its borders pretty tightly if it wanted to. But the land borders were kept open for commercial purposes and we allowed passenger flights in and out. And there are lots of reasons why shutting all that down would have been politically and economically challenging. But we could have done so (which is not to say we should have).
- xeromal 6y agoYeah, I appreciate your comment and agree with you. They weighed the options and clearly though covid was easier to deal with than shut borders. For a time, I remember being reported or downvoted for even suggesting the economic impacts of a true, complete shutdown. I still don't know what the better strategy was.
- ghaff 6y agoEspecially with Canada, shutting the border would have been untenable in all probability, perhaps to the degree of creating real food issues. Certainly the two countries are very intertwined economically. Air travel could have been shutdown for a bit, at least other than to let Americans get back home. But no way it would ever have been sealed for months.
- jdavis703 6y agoThey could have allowed food and medical shipments through while banning any other land trade.
- ghaff 6y agoThey could have done a lot of things but mostly IMO keeping the border open for commercial travel was almost certainly the right decision, especially given that most of Canada is close to the US border anyway. They're not really that distinct geographically.