Do you think the US should close it’s borders?

Question

New Zealand closed its borders during the 2020 Covid pandemic and they will remain closed until 2022, at which time they will do a soft opening to countries deemed “low risk” and to fully vaccinated travelers. New Zealand has had no new Covid infections for months and officially declared themselves Covid-free last year.

Meanwhile, the US is seeing it’s worst Covid surge yet, due to the Delta variant’s extreme transmissibility and low vaccination rates. 
Do you think the US should temporarily follow New Zealand’s plan of action and close its borders? Why or why not?

Accepted Answer

I mean I feel like the bigger problem is within the US and people not getting vaccinated and not following guidelines... 😬 honestly for the safety of people in other countries, they should avoid coming to the US rn

Answer

Yes I think so, at least temporarily. I also think that we should temporarily suspend international flights (the horror) to combat some spreading internationally. 😭 If I’m not mistaken, didn’t the Delta variant derive in India? I know we can’t predict a variant, but we can try to work around it.

Answer

Aren’t the borders still closed for the most part?
I’m in Canada and we opened our land borders recently to the US, but the US kept them closed to Canada.  Canadians may fly in, but I don’t believe many other countries can…

Answer

No. For one, New Zealand has actually managed community spread with contact tracing, excellent safety compliance, and enforced quarantines.  They've had a cohesive national strategy implemented early.  There is already such significant community spread of Delta within the US, that it's self-sustaining even if it implements air-tight borders. 
Also, New Zealand seems better positioned to take the huge economic hit. Corporate and individual interests in the US would rail against the revenue loss, and we don't really have the same social safety net that New Zealand has. 
And partial/targeted travel bans actually exacerbate international spread. For example, if your country bans travel from Country A, then people will just travel to Country B first and come in that way.  This is a topic I disagree with both Biden and Trump on. It's far more effective to manage travel with a consistent testing and quarantining strategy, but the US has had a bit of a late and inconsistent implementation.

Answer

We should have closed them at the beginning, or at least made travel from certain countries not happen. I live in Los Angeles. LAX gets 2.5 million people every single day that come to LA. A lot of them are foreign tourists traveling on vacation during covid. Even before a vaccination was offered. It was insane how we were put on stay at home orders, restaurants closed even for outdoor dining at some points, yet tourists flocked our beaches.

Answer

The US borders are already closed to EU, Russia, China, Brazil and UK I think? But tbh it doesn’t make much sense to me which countries are included in this ban and which aren’t sometimes. If it was a border close across the board, maybe, but US travelers are still allowed to leave and come back so are they going to ban people from leaving too (not sure if NZ is also doing this)?

Answer

New Zealand actually had Quarantine-free travel between themselves and Australia this year, until very recently. Not exactly closing its boarders until 2022.

Answer

People lose their minds every-time theres any word of a “surge” in cases. Understand that government agencies are the ones saying specifically vaccinated people are more likely to transmit the delta variant because they don’t show symptoms. So to everyone saying “oh it’s because people people won’t get vaccinated” people getting vaccinated and not knowing they’re sick and spreading the virus seems like the worse of the two evils. Not everyone can get the vaccine and I thought the point of getting it was to “protect yourself and those around you”

Answer

That's not a fair comparison at all. New Zealand is about the size of Colorado, and is an island.
Im not sure we even have the ability to close our boarders fully. To do the same here we would have to shut down travel between states, cutting off families for one ...two years? However long the government decides for us? That's not ok. 
I don't have answers on vaccine requirements, it's a complex issue. I can see the main argument in favor. But I don't like that it devides the country and families between those comfortable receiving it and not. 
I'm not ok with the government having the power to oust someone from society for not receiving a medical procedure. It's a slippery slope. Maybe it would be beneficial for now to stop the spread, but once they have that power, what else could they use it for in the future? 
 I don't believe for a second the people at the top actually care about our well being, on either side. 
The power hungry never waste a crisis.

Answer

Much much too late for that strategy. You have too much virus circulating for it to make any difference. I live in Australia and we have also had our boarders shut since the beginning of the pandemic. (Only 3 thousand returning citizens can enter a week) most of the country is now in lockdown because the delta variant escaped hotel lockdown. It worked for New Zealand and Australian (mostly) because they are islands that can secure their borders relatively easily.

Do you think the US should close it’s borders?

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