1. The decision to close can lag behind rapidly developing facts on the ground, or worse the decision to close borders to a particular area could leak. This actually happened in Italy.
2. Mixing + uncertainty is bad. Even if you think the rates are equal, they might actually not be.
3. At this stage everyone should be on local lockdown, so for most people there is no benefit to traveling anyway.
One more idea: “Synchronised pulsing closing everywhere”. Simultaneous closing of everywhere in the world is more important than desynchronised closing of everything. If all the world will close for 6 weeks simultaneously, it will kill the virus wave without destroying the economy. The world then will open again for 2 months and then may close again, if a new wave appears. Such pulsing closing could control the epidemic, but will be predictable for economic activity and could happen several times until vaccine (and ubiquitous UV) appear.
Even across a single country there will be variation in the effectiveness of local measures. When you have this dispersion in R0 what happens is most places go to 0 like you hoped, but some places don’t.
Since that dispersion is unavoidable, you need a fractal system of borders—strong borders around countries, medium borders around states and cities, and weaker social distancing measures locally. Then the problem areas don’t spread much, and they can be defeated in detail.
1. The decision to close can lag behind rapidly developing facts on the ground, or worse the decision to close borders to a particular area could leak. This actually happened in Italy.
2. Mixing + uncertainty is bad. Even if you think the rates are equal, they might actually not be.
3. At this stage everyone should be on local lockdown, so for most people there is no benefit to traveling anyway.
One more idea: “Synchronised pulsing closing everywhere”.
Simultaneous closing of everywhere in the world is more important than desynchronised closing of everything. If all the world will close for 6 weeks simultaneously, it will kill the virus wave without destroying the economy. The world then will open again for 2 months and then may close again, if a new wave appears. Such pulsing closing could control the epidemic, but will be predictable for economic activity and could happen several times until vaccine (and ubiquitous UV) appear.
Even across a single country there will be variation in the effectiveness of local measures. When you have this dispersion in R0 what happens is most places go to 0 like you hoped, but some places don’t.
Since that dispersion is unavoidable, you need a fractal system of borders—strong borders around countries, medium borders around states and cities, and weaker social distancing measures locally. Then the problem areas don’t spread much, and they can be defeated in detail.
Look at the map of South korea after the superspreading event: https://imgur.com/l7RD345
98 cases in Seoul (pop: 10 million) and frickin’ 4000 in Daegu (pop 2 million).