undefined | Better HN

0 pointsMediterraneo105y ago0 comments

Australia and New Zealand are islands where the borders can be closed much more tightly than elsewhere and imported goods arrive mainly through container shipping. In the EU, the need to ensure regular freight truck traffic and move hundreds of thousands of seasonal agricultural workers from east to west means that a comparable lockdown could not have been achieved.

0 comments

atweiden5y ago

> Australia and New Zealand are islands where the borders can be closed much more tightly than elsewhere and imported goods arrive mainly through container shipping. In the EU, the need to ensure regular freight truck traffic and move hundreds of thousands of seasonal agricultural workers from east to west means that a comparable lockdown could not have been achieved.

I wonder about this. I'd expect freight truck traffic in China to play at least as big of a role in distribution there that it does in Europe. China is a giant connected piece of land, and if their numbers are to be believed even in the slightest, it's clear China was able to keep Covid under control to a much greater extent than the western world.

Australia never fully halted interstate freight truck traffic, as it was deemed essential. I've heard Covid tests were given to truckies at state borders, but that seems possible for US states or European countries to do, even with limited resources. Is freight truck traffic really to blame for Covid spread, then?

And although Australia largely shut itself off from foreign crop labor, and is struggling to harvest crops given this, there's not all that much appreciable damage that I can see. Perhaps this was really a good season to err on the side of going short handed. Prices will go up, but the juice is worth the squeeze, it seems.

Also, Hawaii is an island, as is the UK. Alaska would seem to have similar advantages to an island state. Yet these islands are doing very much more poorly compared to Australia and New Zealand.

Mediterraneo10OP5y ago

> It's clear China was able to keep Covid under control

China's lockdown involved e.g. welding the doors of apartment blocks shut and forcing the populace to install a spyware app on their phones. Claiming that a Western country "could have just done like China" is basically saying that that Western country could have just junked all its civil liberties.

> And although Australia largely shut itself off from foreign crop labor, and is struggling to harvest crops given this, there's not all that much appreciable damage that I can see.

Things are different in the EU. After decades of the single market, keeping people fed absolutely relies on getting those harvests done with imported labour.

> I've heard Covid tests were given to truckies at state borders, but that seems possible for US states or European countries to do, even with limited resources.

Tests were in short supply for a long time. By the time they were available, it was too late to lock down as effectively as Oz or NZ. Again, you underestimate just how special those two countries are among Western nations.

makomk5y ago

Freight truck traffic definitely did play a role in spreading Covid within China - it's how they ended up with an outbreak in Beijing, the city they'd most aggressively protected against the spread of the disease. That outbreak in turn appears to have been seeded by another outbreak that went entirely undetected until it spread to Beijing. China's apparent success in keeping Covid under control is one of the biggest mysteries of the entire pandemic; their methods don't seem like they should work, and every so often there's a little sign that something isn't right like that undetected outbreak.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse