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Comment by sfusato | Hacker News Reader

Here we go again. What would that achieve? Then, lockdowns incoming in 3, 2, 1.

It's precisely the unwillingness and inability of authorities to implement measures that actually would have worked (such as restricting flights at the beginning of the pandemic for a limited period of time), which gave us prolonged, repeated lockdowns and similar authoritarian measures with little to no benefit.

Should there actually be a another variant with significant immune escape properties due to the current number of new cases in China, some European countries at least will again resort to the only measures they know how to implement, which means, in that event: Lockdown, it is.

Because it is impossible to do that. See, even China did those measures that helped but ultimately they had to give up. They simply lost time unnecessarily.

> See, even China did those measures that helped but ultimately they had to give up.

No, they didn't. They implemented precisely those authoritarian measures that seem to be working at first (like lockdowns) but are neither sustainable nor even effective for any prolonged period of time (> 2 weeks).

Zero covid worked well for 1.5 to 2 years (most of country side), enough time to roll out vax and build out medical infra. ICU beds doubled from 5 to 10/100k, staffing them still issue since 2 years not enough time to train, but they're recruiting students. IMO about 4 months of excess zero covid was wasteful, should have openned up during summer but Xi waited until Oct party congress.

That said, impossible for west/rest to systemically lockdown post delta/omicron, R value too high. PRC travellers already out there, whatever variant is going to go global if borders remotely porous.

Idk if it’ll help dude. You’d have to cancel flights with any country with open borders or flights from China too since folks could just hop a flight. China is a huge country. It’d be too late now anyways. Cats outta the bag

Yes, that's basically the rationale behind not closing borders in case of a pandemic: You can't close all the holes. Someone, and inevitably the pathogen with them, will pass through.

However, and very much absurdly, the same people and organisations opposing closing borders were those supporting prolonged and repeated lockdowns, which pretty much puts you in the same situation, just with no clearly defined perimeter to control.

Closing borders will just buy you additional time. That's it. Imposing lockdowns on the other hand in the end will achieve nothing.

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