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I got fucked by that indecisiveness. Couldn't get a visa extension in the country I was living in without my country of citizenship closing its borders.

Country of citizenship shut down national airlines but let foreign ones keep flying in and out, banned tourists from flying out, banned foreigners from flying in, instituted a quarantine for people flying in. Absolutely everything they could think to do other than shut the damn border. And they have the gall to have "dont fly" up in a big red notice on all of their travel shit. I didn't want to! You forced me!

Now instead of being at home getting meals dropped off at my closed door and being in complete isolation from the outside world the entire time; I've been in a series of public transports and crowded public locations, stuck in quarantine house sitting for a friend of a friend, with more temporary housing and transportation scheduled to take place in the coming weeks. I'll be more active and in more crowds during this pandemic than I was in the entire previous year. My previous lifestyle was basically "lockdown" anyway. But noooo they have to play games with the borders so some dingus that decided March 10 was a good time to take the wife and kids on vacation doesn't get a chance to kick up a stink in the media.

Kicker is that the country I was living in issued emergency visas to everyone still there a couple days after I left anyway.

>The restriction applies even to Japanese nationals returning from the United States.

That's probably the answer. Some amount of heads-up is owed to Japanese nationals. A Taiwanese friend was in a similar situation w.r.t. Taiwan closing borders. Uncertainty of timeline and parameters can be incredibly disruptive for citizens trying to travel back to their home country. They might not have permanent lodging in the U.S. (students, tourists, visiting scholars/scientists and more).

>That's probably the answer. Some amount of heads-up is owed to Japanese nationals.

Why not ban foreigners immediately, then ban nationals a few days later?

Because some of us foreigners live here.

There's still some groups of people you'd want to let in. For example, someone married to or in a long term relationship with a national who is outside the country right now. Or even foreigners that live there but are nationals yet.

Does the virus care about those groups? Either close the border or don’t. A family member can carry the virus end just as easily as a tourist. If the reasons for closing it are to prevent the spread, then having a bunch or exceptions defeats the purpose.

If it is small numbers, you can test for symptoms on arrival. The problem is leaving people in impossible situations abroad, overstaying their visa, not having the means to pay for accommodations (particularly if hotels close), etc.

You've got asymptomatic super spreades just like in the case of SARS. The impossible situations abroad could be solved through the embassy. My country is flying in citizens from abroad in military planes.

The virus is still quite rare in every country. Unchecked it has a growth factor of around 3 to 4 new infections per case but simply reducing the risk of infection by 80% is enough to eventually reduce the number of active infections as seen in South Korea and China.

The question is mostly what vectors of infections to allow vs eliminate. And in that context banning travel from high risk areas is useful but not that important after community spreading has started. However, this changes based on how widespread the disease is inside each country. Thus, the delayed ban.

PS: Japan is a very interesting case, with the number of new infections being fairly steady over the last 2 weeks.

But extroverted people that travel have a 3.14159265 times higher chance of catching the disease than those who don’t travel.

Can they ban Japanese citizens from entering the country? It would be against Charter rights (what people in the US may call constitutional rights) here in Canada. I would be surprised if it would be different in Japan.

Regardless, if they ban foreigners, it may become a moot point. With not enough people travelling to and from, flights get cancelled and people get stranded, unless the government provides evacuation flights.

EDIT: This was the gist of Canada's plea that everyone gets back home while they can.

> Airlines have cancelled flights. New restrictions may be imposed with little warning. Your travel plans may be severely disrupted and you may be forced to remain outside of Canada longer than expected...We recommend that Canadian travellers return to Canada via commercial means while they remain available.

https://twitter.com/FP_Champagne/status/1238876190460477442

https://globalnews.ca/news/6677983/coronavirus-canada-travel...

India did this two weeks ago, with a 48 hour notice and I was quite furious about it. Closing borders to foreign nationals is one thing, but closing borders to one’s own citizens is violating a fundamental right. I had my brother and mother visiting me and had to rush them to the airport and get them on the next flight back to India to ensure they get back home before the deadline.

Furthermore, the announcement was made by the minister of health on Twitter and hours later an undated announcement appeared on their website. As unprofessional as it gets. Decisions like these are usually made by the Ministry of external affairs, whose twitter account I was following in anticipation of something like this.

because some people hold dual citizenship or are married / have family in both countries in which case you'd probably not want to separate them.

Well at the very least you would leave 24h to account for people that are in a flight on their way to Japan or in a connection.

There are always corner cases like (1) a Japan-based non-PR/citizen professional who's on a work trip to the US who needs a couple days to get back to Japan, or (2) someone's partner who again is based in Japan but is currently in the US traveling temporarily for work/family/leisure. Typically spouses of citizens/PRs can tag along through travel restrictions but a romantic/domestic partner will not have this avenue available (also spouses traveling alone without their PR/Citizen partner)

I missed that bit in the announcement. Thanks for calling it out!

The article is somewhat unclear but it says the new measures apply to foreign nationals. The part about Japanese nationals seems to refer to an earlier restriction (14 day self-quarantine).

This restriction ("The restriction applies even to Japanese nationals returning from the United States.") isn't the restriction on entry that the headline is about.

This is an existing restriction which requires self-isolation:

The government had already started moving from March 26 to restrict entry for those entering from anywhere in the United States.

The restriction applies even to Japanese nationals returning from the United States.

All new arrivals are required to self-quarantine themselves for two weeks at their homes or hotels and other accommodation under provisions laid down by the head of the local quarantine office.

The new restriction applies to "all foreign nationals travelling on U.S. passports or who have been in the United States for the past two weeks."

> Unless they are magically different from every other country

Maybe being a conscientious nation-state, with a culture that prioritises the collective, cleanliness and mask usage, is close enough to magic.

Maybe, but SK, Taiwan, and Singapore all are as well and it wasn't enough in any of those countries. Widespread testing, border closing, and, at least in the case of SK, some measure of lockdown were also required.

Not sure why this is downvoted; Japan isn't significantly different from any of the places you mentioned

I would say Japan is a bit cleaner than SK. Also a lot of the cult-religions seemed to have played a big part in spreading the disease.

> why not do it now?

I'm guessing to give people time to alter their plans etc.

> Unless they are magically different from every other country

They seem to be! Nobody really knows why, but even if their testing is inadequate you'd still expect to be seeing a lot more deaths if the virus was rapidly spreading. More info: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/20/national/corona...

That's a week old story. Now it seemed to be not the case.

I’m going to say it’s not effect immediately because it was severely impact people who are already in transit ?

I also think that while the case rate is on the up there, people were being much more careful then in other countries and everyone was wearing masks. I think the mask and hand sanitiser thing helps.

Japan seems to be making a rather large number of masks domestically (tens of millions) and has secured 600 million already, so it’s a luxury they can afford it seems. Here is the source: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/covid-19/mask.html

Edit: I’m going to go out on a limb and say, it seems very probable that wearing a mask is helping stop the spread of the disease pretty dramatically. We will find out in later studies I guess

Announcing a blockade with aircraft in flight could easily make things far worse.

Travellers, and carriers, now have at least a couple of days to change plans.

Some time ought to be given to people have a chance to get "home" before they close entry. Some countries have closed borders rather abruptly that thousands were stuck in transit.

It seems like you could close the border except to those returning home. It doesn't seem like a delay of implementation is required to accomplish repatriation.

>they should have done it yesterday.

The visa waiver program was canceled a week ago, so in pratice there is a ban already. This doesnt change much.

> If it's a good idea now, it's going to be twice as good of an idea in three days.

If I had a crystal ball, six months ago we could’ve picked a good date. But that doesn’t mean I should have shut things down sixth months ago. We’re asking our governments to look ahead and make decisions.

Shutting things down six months ago would have had no beneficial effect. Closing national borders globally in January would have had an extremely beneficial effect, in that domestic economies could have proceeded normally while China eradicated the infection. At the current point, there's really nothing to balance. Every extra day you're open is an extra several days you'll need to remain closed, and an extra 1.2-1.4x lives lost. Closing later is strictly worse than closing now.

You posted this late Saturday night (article is from Saturday afternoon), "next week" starts Sunday (they don't mean in 7 days), literally 1-2 hours away. What much faster do you want?

Anything is better than nothing and as far as the time frame goes... I'm sure they have bureaucracy like anybody else. Sometimes it takes time to get things done.

They've been quarantining US arrivals for some time already.

I think there may be an important cultural difference in play here.