Doubt it. Its not like the next covid is going to happen next year. By the time its relavent people would have forgotten all about it just like how right now the spanish flu is a distant chapter in the history books.
We still have a culture of "us", it simply wasn't fully tapped into in 2020.
In September 2001, it felt as if "we" had been attacked. Just as in 2020, people began signing up and volunteering to take on the cause. New Yorkers, in particular, suddenly noticed their neighbors and pulled together as a community. I saw the same from within the mask-donation and mask-manufacturing movement this year. Thousands of people, in an entirely grassroots way, stepped up to find one another and address a grave and essential problem.
What stymied the response to Covid in the United States most seems to have been a lack of engaged, concerned, and coordinated epidemiological response at the federal level. That it failed is ultimately not "the government's" fault, it is ours, as citizens. That public-safety measures designed to protect us, our neighbors, and our most-vulnerable became political footballs is our fault. We need to find ways to grow our national sense of responsibility toward others -- it is a challenge that each of us can take on.
2020 has been a championship opportunity for all of us. 2021 will be, too.
Becoming a small island with strict immigration controls is a little difficult for the US.
If the US had done those things from the beginning, we'd be much better off.
To be blunt about it: politicians in other jurisdictions were not up to the task. I was shocked to hear that many provinces did not impose self-isolation requirements upon entry. I was shocked to hear how few public health restrictions were imposed upon their businesses, even when things started spiralling out of control. When you have a virus to contain, you need someone who will make tough decisions and deliver clear messaging so things can recover in four weeks instead of dragging on for four months (and counting). While local attitudes may have helped to improve compliance with public health measures, it can only play a role when there is something to comply with.
The one thing that did work well early on is restrictions on travel, which the WHO, China and the press in Western countries campaigned against. The only Western country I know of that applied reasonably sensible travel restrictions early on is the US, and very soon it's going to get a new president who campaigned on the extremely dubious claim that those restrictions made things worse which went basically unchallenged by the press. (In particular, Italy's travel restrictions - which are often pointed to as proof the US ones were stupid and pointless - only blocked people from travelling directly from China, so they could just travel via other countries and Italy had no record of where they came form. I know the UK's government-funded experts concluded that was much less effective than banning people who'd visited China recently.)
Those travel restrictions also wouldn't work for any country geographically or geopolitically close to Italy - they were still reporting basically zero cases at a point when a substantial proportion of the population was infected. This probably put countries which were closer to China than Italy at something of an inherent advantage.
We also moved early and controlled travel to and from the region with a quarantine.
The travel restrictions are essential. But....if you only did that you would fail miserably. Contact tracing works very well! SARS-COV-2 spreads in clusters.
We were at zero cases for months, and we’re back down to 0-3 local cases a day in most of our provinces and dropping.
You’re completely wrong that this can’t be contained through isolation and tracing. The issue was most of the rest of north america basically only tried tracing (doesn’t work), didn’t scale tracing, and also never seriously tried to eliminate the virus despite the clear evidence that their tracing systems were incapable alone. (I’m including the rest of canada here)
I agree with you that travel restrictions are vital but you’re underestimating the importance of other tools. Also the Us restrictions weren’t very effective: people still got through! In Atlantic Canada everyone arriving from outside the region has to quarantine for 14 days.
Where contact tracing fails, incidentally, is if you have an undetected case cluster. SARS-COV-2 can spread asymptomatically, so if you miss one it can grow quite a bit. But once you find evidence of a cluster you can move backwards and forwards through the transmission chain and quite effectively. The province of new brunswick has beaten about seven small outbreaks back down to zero with this method. But it only works if case numbers are manageable: the rest of north america let them grow out of control and didn’t scale tracing to match.
Travel restrictions work great. Test and quarantine everyone who comes in to the country. But you won't have perfect containment, and maybe you choose to make a tradeoff and say you just need the test, which has X% accuracy. So then there must be follow-up behavior, and that's where contact tracing, quarantines, and masks come in. If you reach the point where you can't get a handle with such techniques, then you lockdown and test until they're sustainable.
There are countries who have done much better, and other countries that have done much worse with Covid. And you see that with East Asian countries who experienced Sars, and African countries who experienced Ebola. So, it might behoove the leaders of countries with much more dead to take a look at what others might be doing different.
As far as we know, Taiwan has had 0 cases since April. All cases in Taiwan are cases that are found in border quarantines. I'd call that a perfect containment.
They have had basically perfect containment, but even then you need some backup systems.
It worked very well in Asian countries with relevant experience (and perhaps more obedient cultures). The UK didn't have comparable relevant experience and may even have used it counterproductively (a relative with very early symptoms contacted the relevant helpline to be advised there were no known cases in their area so they shouldn't worry...)
> The only Western country I know of that applied reasonably sensible travel restrictions early on is the US
New Zealand imposed a travel ban on people from the region at the same time but also required its own returning nationals to self isolate. NZ has certain geographical advantages relative to other Western nations which made it easier for them to subsequently expand that scope to the entire world and eliminate the disease in their country altogether, but even before that the NZ administration wasn't accused of focusing its containment efforts on foreign nonresidents whilst loudly downplaying the risk of community spread from returnees amongst its own population because this isn't what it did.