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Comment by Thriptic | Hacker News Reader

They presumably mean until coronavirus disappears or a vaccine appears and everyone is innoculated, so indefinitely.

That would be insane. They probably mean until they figure out how to reopen borders and with whom without risking too much. And given how many countries are doing the same thing maybe even an international agreement of some sort will emerge where only people from virus-free countries or recently tested people will be allowed to take flights.

no because that assumes they are calculating the risk. they aren't because disease is already inside the borders. closing them is purely political

The disease is close to eradicated inside the borders of NZ. At this point there are only a couple of hundred active cases and we’ve now had a couple of days with 0 new cases. Australia seems to be on track for the same thing.

Testing border crossers is more realistic.

Not unless they are going to send people home if they are positive or forcibly quarantine them and perform contact tracing and further testing. Thus far most western governments have strongly resisted enacting such measures.

You can't safely open up without employing either highly accurate testing + rapid testing + forced quarantine + contact tracing, or having your population immunized. It's pretty much that simple.

See .. you're speculating on what they mean. Wouldn't it be nice if they provided a bit more information so we wouldn't have to parse out meaning out of ambiguous statements? You know, they could provide some details on what needs to happen to re-open. Are we waiting for a vaccine as a precondition for reopening? Or herd immunity? Or case count to drop below X?

Or maybe the world is an ambiguous place?

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