Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
The New Zealand option was never an option for us. A country of 5 million at the bottom of the world and close to nowhere is no comparison to the UK, which has a massive economy, 12 times the population and a high volume of inbound and outbound travel through one of the busiest international airports in the world. The disruption of a no-deal Brexit will be as nothing compared to the sheer chaos of closing ourselves down completely for long enough to make a difference, yet the mere possibility of No Deal has been raising ever more hysterical objections for many months.
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I just think we didn’t want to try hard enough and always saw Sweden or the next pipe dream and clung to it. Antibody testing, Operation Moonshot, whatever.
International travel ground to a halt in lockdown 1 and we survived. It remains significantly down now. Measures like testing, screening and quarantine could all be used to reduce risk.
We wouldn’t be closing ourselves entirely down - New Zealand still receives goods from abroad. As would we. It’s the people who are the problem and we’d need to mitigate that. Surely it’d be less economic harm in the long run to get all of our non-travel economy up and running?