Restricting the freedom of movement is usually associated with authoritarian, as would be xenophobia. However in term of effectiveness to combat a pandemic, res

Restricting the freedom of movement is usually associated with authoritarian, as would be xenophobia. However in term of effectiveness to combat a pandemic, restricting movement in places of high population density is a very effective measure. A specific issue with covid was also that the virus survived and distributed well in places with air recycling, such as planes, trains and buses (as well as trams and subways). The initial theory that spread were limited to droplets from infected individuals was found to be completely false. Sadly, this fact of the virus was mostly forgotten in the following political discussion. It is also why virus researchers view on masks was different (and generally ignored by everyone) compared to the two political camps. If you want to prevent an airborne virus, you got to either separate the air or have good enough filters, and studies done in the Swedish Karolinska medical university showed that even their hospital filtered AC system was not able to kill the virus. Live virus particles could be detected in every place where the AC system was connected. One can hope those kind of lessons will carry over to future pandemics if they are of similar nature as covid.