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Comment by apexalpha | Hacker News Reader

Much is being made of the fact that back in August when Melbourne was reporting over 700 new cases on some days, UK and France were reporting similar new case numbers, yet we are now getting zeroes and those countries have out-of-control spread.

Congrats on getting to the magic 0!

I know it can seem weird that Europe didn't lock down over the summer, but here we mostly use Health care capacity, not active cases, as the most important number.

Being a relatively small island [0] on a remote corner of this planet makes the case for going to the 0 cases a viable one.

Going into a 4 month lockdown in Europe would be useless, since it would just pop up again since we don't have a few international airports as only places where you can enter.

So we're going into lockdown in Europe to prevent swamping our hospitals, and will resume life when it's okay again. And probably will keep going back and forth until a vaccine.

[0](in terms of population)

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I live in Vietnam. It is neither a small island nor on a remote corner of the planet. We have a population of 95,000,000 people -- substantially more than any single country in Europe -- and share land borders China, Cambodia, and Laos as well as being within trivial sailing distance of Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

We have had 0 cases for over 2 months.

You should stop with the "it is only viable in a small island in a remote corner of the planet" line of argument because it doesn't hold much water in my mind.

What would you say is the reason Vietnam has faired so well?

This song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtulL3oArQw

English version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGoodWEtV8c

That's really great and you did far better than Europe, no doubt about it.

But the borders vietnam shares with those countries are hard borders. You need a visa and pass a government controlled checkpoint when you enter.

Europe (mainland) has no internal borders. There are no checkpoints, customs agents or chokepoints between countries.

There's thousands of roads leading from every country into others.

That, plus the fact that both the government and the population have had no experience with this make it very hard to control the virus.

I'm open to learn, though, so if you have some time to explain what we could learn from Vietnam I'm all ears.

If you have enough time to write these kinds of rebuttals on HN, you can certainly just google “Vietnam Covid Success” instead of asking others to explain it for you. Here’s one of the first links you can find by doing so:

https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/29/na062920-vie...

And the US has hard borders with Canada and Mexico... both of which have been closed for 7 months now.

... but somehow cases are still not under control.

US Canadian border is only closed for non essential services. There are thousands of people flying in and more driving commercial trucks

I'm an Australian living in Europe, it's painful to keep hearing people say "it will never work in Europe", when it's been shown to work elsewhere in countries small to large, with borders or without.

Borders can be shut, it was done earlier this year. Lockdowns can be enforced, it was done earlier this year. Governments can provide financial support, it's been happening all year.

All this could be over in 4-6 months, and were going into the miserable 4-6 months of the year anyway.

But somehow it's all too hard and the economic damage would be too severe.

What people won't put up with, and rightly so, is an incoherent strategy across Europe. Why make sacrifices if everyone is then encouraged to go on their summer holiday to save the economy and undo everything?

Its frankly disappointing.

As you say, all of Europe went into lockdown earlier this year. Only for it to come back and keep growing.

What makes you think another lockdown would eradicate it entirely in stead of it just coming back again?

It would take an actual eradication strategy to eradicate it entirely. The first lock down was all about lowering the curve, which i think now is plainly a mistake.

I also don't believe europe would be capable of implementing an eradication strategy. The required social capital has already been burned, and at no point has europe demonstrated it's ability to work together on this. Now we can only wait for the technocrats to deliver us salvation in the form of a vaccine.

I agree that it wouldn't work.

Even if the entire EU would agree to do it, we're still surrounded by other countries who might not do the same. And who's people will come into the EU whether we close the border or not.

(the guy who beheaded someone in France came to the EU illegally over the Mediterranean 2 or 3 days prior.)

Thinking an eridication strategy would've worked would've been a worse plan than lowering the curve I think.

We couldn't keep it out even if we wanted to. And yes, on that aspect, it's a huge difference to be an island far away from other countries.

> But the borders vietnam shares with those countries are hard borders. You need a visa and pass a government controlled checkpoint when you enter.

As someone who lives in Vietnam, I think your conception of the hardness of the borders is mistaken. The land border with Vietnam-China is 1,300 kilometers long. That's longer than Germany's combined border with the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France.

"The 1,400km border between Vietnam and China is extremely porous, with a complicated geography characterised by mountains and rivers – especially in the north – that makes it difficult to monitor cross-border traffic, according to Mimi Vu, an independent Vietnamese-American anti-trafficking expert based in Saigon."

> Europe (mainland) has no internal borders. There are no checkpoints, customs agents or chokepoints between countries.

Yes it does. Germany closed its borders on March 16.

https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/germany-introduces-bor...

France, Spain, and Italy also closed their borders. Something like a dozen countries in the EU closed their borders.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/12/vietnam-coronavirus-pan...

One thing we have learned is that it is easier for authoritarian regimes to deal with pandemics, because having a police state that knows everything about you makes it a lot easier.

So, the answer is, a number of things matter, and it will take many years to parse these things out.

Being a small island helps, being remote helps, having less public transportation helps, living in a police state helps, etc. etc.

Trying to manage healthcare capacity only causes that capacity to be met.

And while mainland Europe is not a "relatively small Island", the UK surely is...

Just FYI, in terms of lockdowns, it's only been Victoria and NSW that have done the stage 4 lockdowns over the last few months. In SA, WA, QLD, NT, we've had closed land borders between the states, with police at border crossings and points of entry to stop anybody trying to come in without a valid and allowed reason. This has prevented the cases from Vic and NSW from spreading to the other states, in much the same way that would occur in the European scenario you describe. It's not impossible, it just takes the will of the people to accept a lack of freedom of movement.

Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those). I don't know much about Australian geography, so I had to check on a map, but it looks like it's possible to travel from Melbourne to other parts of Australia over land. Apparently some measures were taken to prevent the virus from spreading along that route.

Driving case counts down to zero isn't useless since any outbreaks that flare up again due to gaps in border security will be localized and can be kept in check with localized lockdowns instead of shutting down the whole country.

> Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those).

Not in continental Europe, not without involving the military.

I mean, France deploys its military internally all the time, lately 4000 to protect churches.

And they’ve had in-Schengen passport checks on “temporary for 1-year” bases for several years now without the EU doing too much about it.

So involve the military? Not seeing the problem here.

> Apparently some measures were taken to prevent the virus from spreading along that route.

Police road blocks. Geography no doubt helps: there are only so many bridges across the Murray River, passes through the Australian Alps, and roads across the desert to Adelaide. And it's a bit far to ride a bicycle cross country.

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