But what about the ~3 months of lockdown and massive Economic disruption that we had to go through? Don’t you that that could have been avoided by closing our borders tightly in January? Do we have evidence to either confirm or exclude that now?
If every country in the world had closed their borders well enough to stop all movement before it left China, yes, spread would have been prevented. But that’s unfeasible even if there was political will, since border closures are never complete, and there was already spread outside of China by mid-January.
Once there is spread somewhere, you can’t reopen borders. And even if you keep them closed, no border closure is 100% effective—unless you have magical borders, spread will inevitably end up in your country. And at that point, countries are either ready to suppress domestic spread without closures, or they aren’t, and end up closing later instead of earlier.
But what about the ~3 months of lockdown and massive Economic disruption that we had to go through? Don’t you that that could have been avoided by closing our borders tightly in January? Do we have evidence to either confirm or exclude that now?
I don’t understand the hypothetical.
If every country in the world had closed their borders well enough to stop all movement before it left China, yes, spread would have been prevented. But that’s unfeasible even if there was political will, since border closures are never complete, and there was already spread outside of China by mid-January.
Once there is spread somewhere, you can’t reopen borders. And even if you keep them closed, no border closure is 100% effective—unless you have magical borders, spread will inevitably end up in your country. And at that point, countries are either ready to suppress domestic spread without closures, or they aren’t, and end up closing later instead of earlier.