Opinion | Half-measures won’t protect us from the new covid-19 variant
As bad as covid-19 has been, you can imagine it being worse.
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washingtonpost.com/opinions/half-…
As bad as covid-19 has been, you can imagine it being worse.
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washingtonpost.com/opinions/half-…
If we ever run into such a bug, covid-19 may prove to have been our training exercise... Maybe next time, the rest of us will also be ready to take decisive action before the new pathogen can get a foothold.
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"It’s a nice theory, but like any theory, it needs a real-world test. Unfortunately, we might be getting one as London goes into lockdown and as nation after nation closes its borders to British travelers. All because a new variant..may be as much as 70% more contagious
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"it complicates life for officials who undoubtedly wish they could go back to January and close their borders, limit internal movement, test the hell out of their population and quarantine the sick.
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"It’s pleasant to wish yourself back there with them, then spin forward to a world where America was like Australia, with perhaps occasional lockdowns but longer stretches of relative normalcy.
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"Eventually, though, you come back to the reality where they didn’t act more forcefully, and wonder whether they ever really could have.
"For those precautions to work, most countries needed to take them before they could be sure they were necessary.
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"For those precautions to work, most countries needed to take them before they could be sure they were necessary.
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"All I can do is suggest they avoid repeating one..spring folly: thinking a binary uncertainty — here or not, bad or not — can somehow be resolved by compromising on half-measures. A partial response that breeds either complaceny or resentment might be worse than nothing
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The current bans on British travelers, for example, are all too reminiscent of America closing her border to China while the virus changed planes in Italy. The new variant is already known to be in other countries,..
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"and we should assume the same of a South African variant that reportedly may cause more serious illness in young people. If you think these new variants are bad enough to warrant travel restrictions, then you should.keep everyone out.rather than messing with.half-measures.
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"That won’t keep the new variants at bay if they’re already inside your borders, but by preventing new introductions, it might keep them rare enough to control through testing and contact tracing..
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