Originally Posted by
WingNut60
The advantage of being an island nation is the relative ease of controlling international travel.
Controlling ingress of potentially virulent arrivals is the key.
The UK is not exempt from this advantage. And the Chunnel is a poor excuse for not implementing effective movement controls.
Singapore has no Chunnel but it does have a causeway.
And ALL are highly dependent international trade.
In a sense you might even consider Western Australia an island within an island.
We have our Chunnel (the Nullabor highway) but it has been the effective (possibly Draconian and admittedly not perfect) implementation of border controls that has kept WA free of Covid in the wild for the last nine months.
You can't have it both ways.
I can’t tell if you’re agreeing or disagreeing....
The UK is a completely different ball game simply because of its dependence on Europe. The Chunnel
is just one example. The other major one is the lack of international borders within the EU (in normal times). Creating a border from scratch is much harder than simply applying a restriction to something that already exists.
Singapore is highly dependent on the southern part of Malaysia BUT they actually have a competent government that can organise a chook raffle.
Like I said, various natural advantages should dictate a national strategy. For example trying to make Germany an “island” within Europe would not have worked.
Australians have be duped into thinking they have a “world class” quarantine system though. The government has been able to hide this fact for so long because we are an island and the huge advantage that comes with that.