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If you are an isolated island then at least you have a chance to do something like what Australia is trying . You don’t have hundreds of thousands of border cr
by alkonaut 5y ago
If you are an isolated island then at least you have a chance to do something like what Australia is trying
. You don’t have hundreds of thousands of border crossing work commuters and truck drivers who would drive through any “closed” border like e.g in the EU or between US states.
And given the less-than-spectacular vaccine rollout, you can probably justify lockdowns that just delay the pandemic by a month or so, since a month is a huge number of vaccinated people. Also since Australia didn’t get a round of natural infection from the previous virus variants, they are looking at the full R of the delta variant without the reduction multiplier of e.g 0.7 that a country with 30% antibodies would have a (assuming no reinfections and neutralizing immunity which is optimistic). Delta could easily overwhelm healthcare without lockdowns there.
That said, I’d expect there to be a pretty vivid debate about what the cost (in lives, and money which is also eventually lives if it’s public money) is of the lockdowns.
Because other than the delay argument - which is valid - locking down to prevent a few thousand dead isn’t sensible or logical unless the same should happen for a bad flu season.
- Youden 5y ago> You don’t have hundreds of thousands of border crossing work commuters and truck drivers who would drive through any “closed” border like e.g in the EU or between US states. I hear this assumption a lot but actually, you do. Australia's lockdowns and quarantines aren't limited to the international borders. Victoria is currently quarantined from South Australia and New South Wales. Victoria's granularity [0] is what I'd say is approximately equivalent to US counties. That "county" granularity isn't just theoretical. During one of the longest lockdowns, Melbourne, Victoria's capital city, was cut off from the rest of the state. Imagine cutting off LA or the Bay Area from the rest of California and that's essentially what happened. This also happened briefly in the EU. Despite Schengen, free travel was suspended and most of the national borders were closed. In both cases (Australian states and Schengen), cross-border commuters and freight were generally permitted to continue but were regulated. [0]: https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/victorian-travel-permit-system https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/victorian-travel-permit-s...