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Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

In Europe, the conclusion was that you simply cannot do that, physically. It is so integrated, even for essentials such as food or medication, that you have a huge area, requiring delivery/lorry drivers whizzing around, medical staff in hospitals and care homes, etc. Short sharp shock just can’t happen.

So then, if you’re stuck in shades of gray, you have to weigh the antiviral benefits of the lockdown with just keeping the lights out. That’s a tough one to balance.

Kudos to New Zealand, I’m just not sure it’s a blueprint others can replicate.

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Maybe now is a good time to see EU as one unit and have strategies at EU levels: i.e the same lockdown for all EU.

Of course this is not working under the current way of how EU works, but I think this is the only pragmatic solution as response to such crisis.

You’re one step away from just advocating for a global world government.

Massive centralized control never ends well.

You’re close to the insight here though: there is a pragmatic solution, and it’s to stop waging war against an endemic respiratory virus of zoonotic origin. It’s like struggling in quicksand; trying to escape just makes it worse. That’s real pragmatism.

Lorry drivers should only live in one city. Anywhere else, they need to "self isolate" - contact-less reception of food, hand-off of documents etc.

On return home, they need to assume they became infected en-route and use PPE suitable for that reality.

Medical staff already know how to avoid taking disease home. They just need the funding and support to access the right PPE, facilites and reasonable hours. If they are in transit, the need a good reason and well thought out measures.

Quarantines don't need to stop all people, just those who are likely to spread the disease.

In Europe, the sad truth is that lorry drivers don't really "live" anywhere, except in the cabs of their trucks. Maybe they get a few weeks of home vacation per year, but other than that, they're permanently on the road.

More generally, these rules are all nice and well, but unless you are you going to give every person his or her own policeman to make sure that they follow them, people will keep stretching, bending and breaking the rules - of course, some (maybe even most?) behave responsibly, but the virus only needs a few who don't...

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