[BostonCard]

Being an island is not a protection from COVID in the days of airplanes.  The United States did not get COVID-19 because of people poring over the border from Mexico or Canada; we got it from people with the disease flying arriving at airports.  And Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, etc. all had planes bringing people with COVID-19 in.  The pandemic was out of control because we mismanaged it; the pandemic was kept under control at other countries because they managed it better.
BC

Not quite true, BC, IMHO. The epidemic never got out of control in Taiwan and New Zealand. Not very many brought COVID-19 in. Taiwan acted quickly and closed down it's airports and isolated the few cases it did have. Lots easier to do when you only have one main airport. It then put in place strict quarantines on entering people. For a long time they had a grand total of 18 cases. Similarly, New Zealand had very few cases when it shut down travel into the country, 4 as I recall.. Obviously it has few ports of entry (airports if you will, but seaports are also an issue), so it can do that easily. We didn't do that. We didn't have a plan to do that.  So, in that sense they managed the situation much better. They were better prepared and had an easier task. How many international ports of entry (airports and seaports if you will) exist in the USA? Lots, and we had neither the plan nor the will to shut them down very early on.

It may be true that the big outbreak in NY was unavoidable because there were already too many positive people in the country by the time we had the cases in Washington state. However, I have also heard it said that there was a big "inoculation" caused by people returning from Europe in response to the China travel restrictions and that this drove the epidemic there. Be that as it may, the US certainly had an out of control situation that these other nations did not experience. We then didn't manage it well, but it is easier to manage a controlled outbreak than one in the "community spread" status, which we never actually exited.

There are four international airports in Taiwan.

There are slightly over 5,000 commercial airports in the United States and over 14,000 airports for private use, along with a little over 300 military airports.  American air carriers transported 111.1 million international passengers, and foreign air carriers transported 122.5 million international passengers to and from the United States in calendar 2018 on 1,621,000 flights, per the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Perhaps a slightly different degree of difficulty to shut down international travel in the USA versus that of Taiwan.

Only 503 airports in the US serve commercial flights:

https://www.world-airport-codes.com/us-t...ports.html

[/url]

[url=https://www.world-airport-codes.com/content/uploads/2013/09/Top-US-Airports.png]lAccording to the 2011-2015 National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS), there are over 19,700 airports in the United States. 5,170 of these airports are open to the general public and 503 of them serve commercial flights.

52 US airports have IATA codes, which are the airports most likely to have regular international flights.

https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/m...rports.htm

The US gets more inbound passengers than any other country in the world, but on a per capita basis, it ranks 22nd, behind countries like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore.

https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/b...ngers.html

BC

[BostonCard]

Being an island is not a protection from COVID in the days of airplanes.  The United States did not get COVID-19 because of people poring over the border from Mexico or Canada; we got it from people with the disease flying arriving at airports.  And Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, etc. all had planes bringing people with COVID-19 in.  The pandemic was out of control because we mismanaged it; the pandemic was kept under control at other countries because they managed it better.
BC

Not quite true, BC, IMHO. The epidemic never got out of control in Taiwan and New Zealand. Not very many brought COVID-19 in. Taiwan acted quickly and closed down it's airports and isolated the few cases it did have. Lots easier to do when you only have one main airport. It then put in place strict quarantines on entering people. For a long time they had a grand total of 18 cases. Similarly, New Zealand had very few cases when it shut down travel into the country, 4 as I recall.. Obviously it has few ports of entry (airports if you will, but seaports are also an issue), so it can do that easily. We didn't do that. We didn't have a plan to do that.  So, in that sense they managed the situation much better. They were better prepared and had an easier task. How many international ports of entry (airports and seaports if you will) exist in the USA? Lots, and we had neither the plan nor the will to shut them down very early on.

It may be true that the big outbreak in NY was unavoidable because there were already too many positive people in the country by the time we had the cases in Washington state. However, I have also heard it said that there was a big "inoculation" caused by people returning from Europe in response to the China travel restrictions and that this drove the epidemic there. Be that as it may, the US certainly had an out of control situation that these other nations did not experience. We then didn't manage it well, but it is easier to manage a controlled outbreak than one in the "community spread" status, which we never actually exited.

There are four international airports in Taiwan.

There are slightly over 5,000 commercial airports in the United States and over 14,000 airports for private use, along with a little over 300 military airports.  American air carriers transported 111.1 million international passengers, and foreign air carriers transported 122.5 million international passengers to and from the United States in calendar 2018 on 1,621,000 flights, per the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Perhaps a slightly different degree of difficulty to shut down international travel in the USA versus that of Taiwan.

Only 503 airports in the US serve commercial flights:

https://www.world-airport-codes.com/us-t...ports.html

[/url]

[url=https://www.world-airport-codes.com/content/uploads/2013/09/Top-US-Airports.png]lAccording to the 2011-2015 National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS), there are over 19,700 airports in the United States. 5,170 of these airports are open to the general public and 503 of them serve commercial flights.

52 US airports have IATA codes, which are the airports most likely to have regular international flights.

https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/m...rports.htm

The US gets more inbound passengers than any other country in the world, but on a per capita basis, it ranks 22nd, behind countries like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore.

https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/b...ngers.html

BC