Originally Posted by
doctoravios
Yes, it is rather ironic that it is now the US and Europe which are the riskiest places to be right now and yet there are still several countries enforcing travel restrictions to Singapore, which is probably one of the safest places to be right now! But that's politics for you.
In a few weeks time, Europe will be asking what plausible rationale could there be to not exclude US travellers. Well, the answer is once you have established community transmission, travel restrictions and quarantine are increasingly futile. I can't help but think the world leaders in countries with established community transmission are placing too much emphasis on travel restriction, case finding and quarantine instead of ploughing resources into effective social distancing and boosting medical infrastructure. Everyone seems to be too scared to admit we are now well into the pandemic phase of COVID-19 and will be in this position for several months before (in my opinion) we end up with a new endemic coronavirus.
COVID-19 isn't going away. It is here to stay. The question is what route do we want to take from pandemic to endemic because even if containment is not possible we still have the capacity to greatly slow down transmission which will save many lives as we ration precious medical resources. But the key to doing this will be effective social distancing measures which everyone adopts (i.e. assume everyone is infectious until proven otherwise and act accordingly), not travel restriction and quarantine.
Yep...travel restrictions per se will become less effective. My only caveat is that I've been saying this for 6 weeks now...and I've been proven wrong. COVID-19, once established, seems to spread quickly, and I include the US as one of those places now since they just didn't do enough testing early on to really get a handle on things (it may have taken root anyway, no point crying over spilt milk). But stringent control measures a la Singapore are appearing to be effective, at least in delaying things considerably. And whilst there is significant global inequity in prevalence, travel restrictions may still play some limited role.
That's not the same as self-imposed cancellation of travel. For one thing, even in most countries with established COVID-19, it's still very patchy: limiting spread between communities allows governments to focus resources, at least for the time being.
tb