The policy for testing Chinese arrivals poses three fundamental questions.
Is this the start of further “lockdown laws”?
The re-introduction of tests for those travelling from China shows that nothing has been learned and authoritarianism is waiting around the corner. Tests are helpful only if they can identify contagious cases, which can be isolated and slow or interrupt transmission. If you have a few cases, that is. Not if you have 100,000 “positives” daily and most of the population is vaccinated or had Covid, often more than once.
What evidence do we have that “test, test, test” has made any difference in identifying the number of cases, i.e. transmission or mortality? Even the WHO consider travel bans are “usually not effective,” and that may only be justified at the beginning of an outbreak, as they may allow countries to gain time.”
Putting aside whether the strategy works (we will discuss that in tomorrow’s post), the reintroduction of travel restrictions poses three contradictory questions.
If we now don’t trust Chinese data, why did we trust it so much at the beginning of the pandemic?
Chair o…
