Question to Those of you who reckon UK should have closed borders to India long ago

[lljkk]

When should they have closed... on what date, and why on that date?
Plus how "closed" would that mean, onto "red list" or something even stricter -- how strict?

I'm thinking how the "should have closed borders to India sooner" criteria would affect next decisions about which countries to put on red list next.

Whose party*

There is also a huge human rights issue when you refuse entry to your own citizens or make it v difficult for them to return

Nobody made anyone go to India, these are extraordinary times & as such extraordinary measure need to be taken.

Why should the whole country risk being put on to further lockdown measures, more illness & death because some people thought going to a wedding halfway across the world was ok?

Australia has made the right decision to not let people back. As my father in law said yesterday - there were times when if your mother was sick in Queensland & you were in NSW you could go to her, but some people could fly to India.

Typhoid Mary comes to mind: a cook in New York who was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid. She continued to work in households, infecting and killing people. She was incarcerated in Rikers Island to prevent her working.

Today we’d have people demanding that it was her human right to go about her business, no matter that it was perilous to others.

There should have been no travel between countries at all, including India, since last Autumn, when we realised there were variants of concern (including our own Kent version). It should have stayed that way.

And while we are opening up the UK, there should be no overseas travel at all until we know we can be totally opened up and still manage to contain the virus internally (note I said 'contain' rather than eliminate, which I believe is impossible. Only when we can live with it in this country should anyone be going in and out of the UK.

I don't think red-listing India on 2 April have stopped India variant being here now.

How does "no travel between countries at all" work in Northern Ireland?

Or in all-UK which is so dependent on road freight, including for >50% of food supply and just-in-time manufacturing.

Everyone needs to lose weight anyway?
All the factory workers on furlough?
Explosive violence & thousands of tonnes of milk poured down the drain in Northern Ireland?

All acceptable costs to ensure covid control, I guess.

@IrmaFayLear

Typhoid Mary comes to mind: a cook in New York who was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid. She continued to work in households, infecting and killing people. She was incarcerated in Rikers Island to prevent her working.

Today we’d have people demanding that it was her human right to go about her business, no matter that it was perilous to others.

She infected 53 people 3 of whom died. She spent 30 years in forcible isolation. And died still isolated.

I would absolutely have compassion for her situation as a poor immigrant who had to work, and also be concerned for her right to freedom from incarceration without due process.

That doesn't mean she should be able to infect people willy nilly but her rights are not worth nothing.

But if she had not been incarcerated she may have gone on to kill many more people. Isolation was the only solution at that point.

@IrmaFayLear

But if she had not been incarcerated she may have gone on to kill many more people. Isolation was the only solution at that point.

Easy to say when it's not you locked up. Did they try community solutions, like paying her more than she would have earned not to work? Supplying housing so they knew where she was at all times? I don't know BTW but this is the point of rights. So that people in authority are forced to at least try to balance it.