I’ve never heard of this idea that borders are supposed to stay locked shut indefinitely, and the facts suggest otherwise: the international border between Australia and NZ has reopened, there is no quarantine for international travel between our countries.
In the case of Australia and New Zealand, travel has reopened only because both of those two countries managed a successful early lockdown and adopted a "zero COVID" approach. But since most countries in the world did not, those living in the "zero COVID" countries would be prevented from freely traveling to all those countries to see loved ones.
With regard to the proposal that borders stay closed – except for strict hotel quarantine – until some indefinite date a few years from now when COVID has been eradicated not just locally but worldwide and there is no more threat of variants, see, for example, the interviews which Devi Sridhar (one of the main advisors to the Scottish government and a fan of Australia’s approach) gave over the last several months.
> those living in the "zero COVID" countries would be prevented from freely traveling to all those countries to see loved ones
Not true. There's repatriate flights weekly out of both NZ and AU. You just have to quarantine coming back in.
There's a process for approval, but it's fairy straightforward. If you can afford a ticket and the destination country will take you, you can go.
The hard part is - most countries or connecting countries if you can't fly direct require 2 week quarantine or limit people entering. ANY inter-country travel is a bureaucratic nightmare.
> There's repatriate flights weekly out of both NZ and AU.
What if you are not taking a "repatriate flight", but rather you are simply an Australia citizen who wishes to travel abroad e.g. to see family or be with a lover? My understanding is that Australia has forbidden its own citizens from freely leaving the country over the last year.
And having to do a strict hotel quarantine upon reentering definitely does not qualify as being able to freely travel, and as I said in my original post above, many people would not stand for it. Most European countries that require quarantine, for example, allow one to do it at home and it is easily gamed.
Freedom to travel. From my European perspective, COVID deaths suck, but we cannot return to hard borders. It risks reigniting old nationalist conflicts and it undermines Europeans’ ability to join together and meet 21st-century global challenges. We need people frequently crossing the border for work, shopping, and leisure, so that they interact with their neighbors. We need young people starting relationships with people in other countries and raising families. While there have been some restrictions on movement in Europe in the last months, they have generally never been too strict. And thankfully they are being lifted now, much earlier than the aforementioned extreme wing of public-health advisors advocates.
Australia’s policy of a hard lockdown followed by strict hotel quarantines worked for Australia, but it wouldn’t work here, and it is always tone-deaf when Australians recommend it as some kind of universal solution.
