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Comment by imeron | Hacker News Reader

https://twitter.com/The_Soup_Dragon/status/13403496399466291...

If this chart is true EU countries announcing the closing borders the last couple of days is waaay to late to prevent the spread of the new strain in Europe.

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Yeah, all the evidence seems to point to the border closures being a stupid, counterproductive attempt to close the stable doors after the horse has bolted and maybe shoot the messenger in the process. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bit of a push here in the UK to spin this as a necessary and inevitable measure that the government should have anticipated, including the closure of the border to road freight - which I think is a siginificant escalation compared to the previous EU border closures - for, basically, Brexit-related partistan political reasons.

I think it may be too late, but if it isn’t, bordering of a population where it is more widespread will help. Even if it is too late to prevent this variant from leaving Britain, it will lower the speed at which it spreads, giving time to prepare (assuming it is more widespread in Britain than elsewhere)

Because of that, I think this move may be overcautious, but I don’t see how it can be stupid or counterproductive.

It makes sense to stop further introduction.

Being a little more cynical, the strain probably started somewhere else in Europe and came across the border.

It's probably not a coincidence that this strain was first detected as spreading right next to the Dover crossing.

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