It appears there is finally a reopening date for the US-Canadian border and it’s close, Australia… not so much.
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Canada’s Policy Heretofore
Beginning in March of 2020, Canada officially closed its land borders with the United States. Each month since, the border closure has remained in place preventing Americans from entering Canada without specific waivers; the current pause is in place until July 21, 2021.
Just two months ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shed light on the metrics required to reopen the Canadian border with the US and much of the world. He initially drew a bright line:
“We’re all eager to get back to normal, but we know that before we get back to normal, cases need to be under control and over 75 percent of people need to be vaccinated. We’ll see what framework we apply to ensure we’re keeping Canadians safe, even as we look to eventually changing the restrictions and the posture at the border,” – Forbes
However, as the disparity between partially vaccinated (one shot of a two-shot treatment) and fully vaccinated widened, other governments began to lift travel restrictions. The Canadian government also observed the UK which has aimed to achieve at least one dose for eligible recipients to provide some level of coverage to as much of the population as possible.
When the PM set the benchmarks, just 4% of eligible Canadians were fully vaccinated, though a far higher percentage had at least one shot. Whether it was a clarification or a policy change, the new definition of “vaccinated” was at least one shot of an approved vaccine which moved the country far closer to achieving reopening along the lines of other western nations.
Why It Appears Canada’s Reopening Is Imminent
As of July 2, 2021, 68.7% of Canadians had at least one shot and 33.5% had been fully inoculated. With the policy clarification/change, simple math and new access to COVID-19 vaccines from US companies, it appears that Canada may reach its goal prior to July 21st allowing travel to Canada.
Currently, only permanent residents and those on essential travel are permitted to cross the border. If the trend line continues, it appears as though the border will once again reopen to nonessential travel allowing Americans to enter the country and visit Canada.
It is widely held that Canada will forgo their usual mid-month statement on the closure if it appears the threshold will be crossed imminently.
Australia Has Taken Exceedingly Drastic Measures
Australia has taken a different approach. Through the entire pandemic, Australia has restricted not only international travelers but its own citizenry from re-entering the country without a mandatory quarantine and in some cases, at all. Concerned about the Delta variant, Australia is heading in the opposite direction from the rest of the world by further restricting entry from 6,000 per week to just 3,000. To give some context, that’s less than one A380 of passengers per day allowed to enter the continent.
Just 6.8% of the country has been fully vaccinated, and just 24.6% have had at least one shot. However, Australia has also had a severe approach to the virus cutting off nearly all countries and its own people from entry. In the entire country on July 2nd (most recent reported totals at the time of publication), there were just 15 new cases.
Some have suggested that it will be 2024 before foreign business and tourism is welcomed back to the beautiful shores of Australia.
When Is It Too Cautious?
Every life is precious, every life is valuable, and as much as a government can protect its people, it should do so. However, this seems extreme. The last recorded fatality was October 19, 2020 – 8.5 months ago, the worst day during the entirety of the pandemic was September 4, 2020 with just 59 total deaths, an aspirational number by US standards.
What’s confounding is that Australia has announced a further regression of international travel policy despite the low case number, very few deaths, and positive progress toward vaccination. It’s worth repeating: while the situation is improving on nearly all fronts, and the country has one of the fewest case totals and deaths with improved access to vaccines, they are further closing the country.
Is there a point when one can be too careful? At a minimum, with no current spike in cases, no deaths in 8.5 months, is there a scientific justification to halving the current allowance of entrants? Is there a level on which this can still be classified as “following the science?”
If locking down humans despite no new medical concern hadn’t gone far enough, one county is even locking down cats. Knox county has issued a cat curfew:
The rule was introduced after a trial period last year which required cats to be confined overnight. It will come into force Oct. 1.
“When allowed to roam, cats are at a much higher risk of illness and injury,” Mayor Lisa Cooper said in a statement. “Keeping cats within their owners’ property also protects wildlife and prevents them causing nuisance for neighbors and their pets.” – NBC
…The rule was introduced after a trial period last year which required cats to be confined overnight. It will come into force Oct. 1.”
Fewer Australians are contracting the virus, more are vaccinated, no one has died in close to a year and yet this is cause for further concern. It seems fearless Australians are ignoring fact and reason in favor of protecting themselves against their own shadows, or the alley felines.
Conclusion
Canada has been very cautious, but set forth a reasonable plan too reopen, clarified that plan and has mostly aligned itself with the rest of the world as it pertains to vaccinated Canadians. Australia has lost its mind and grip on reality. While they may have virtually no cases and very few deaths, they are alienating themselves from the rest of the world and to the detriment of not only its economy but also to the people of Australia.
What do you think? Will Canada reopen its border on July 21, 2021? Is Australia being careful or overly cautious?
I just don’t get how Australia is handling this. Why do they need exit controls at all? And if the current quarantine requirements for inbound individuals are effective why do they need to reduce the numbers of people coming in? Some of the stories of people who can’t exit the country and therefore can’t see family or be present for major life events are heartbreaking. The other thing which confuses me is the lack of urgency in getting people vaccinated given these utterly draconian controls.
Lower rates of Covid discourages vaccination. Same thing happened in Tawian. Nobody wanted the vaccine until May when everyone wanted it.
Australia has a smaller population so its 59 daily deaths is equal to about 800. On the other hand, the worse days of the pandemic saw 5000 deaths a day.
Why are you bothered that much by Australia?
Their country, their rules. They’ve had one of the best track records in the world when it comes to COVID response.
I just love how Americans need to measure every other country against their own, you’re not the benchmark for much and certainly not for COVID (as 600,000 Americans would attest).
If anything, it should be America following Australia’s lead not the other way around.
I agree.
Plus, this post is repetitive of Matt’s post on Australia. It’s like Kyle doesn’t read this blog.
Agreed.
I do find it telling that the Toronto Blue Jays are showing home games in Buffalo through the homestand ending July 21st but not for the next home stand starting July 30th.
0 illegal aliens enter Australia per day. Thousands of illegal aliens enter the US daily, flouting vaccination and testing guidelines.
I agree that Biden is an anti-American fool that invites illegals to enter the US without testing but demands that fully vaccinated US citizens provide test results given in foreign countries before we are allowed back into our own country.
What vaccine guidelines are they flouting? There are no vaccine guidelines to enter the country.
@GetReal
I wrote “…illegals to enter the US without testing”.
Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said Biden has made it clear that undocumented non-US citizens are welcome in the US. There is no penalty for them not providing testing proof.
Biden bans US citizens from returning to the US unless we “present a negative COVID-19 test, taken within three (3) calendar days of departure,”
Biden rejects and hates Americans but he loves and welcomes untested illegal invaders.
The testing requirements for US citizens to reenter the country were put in place by the former Administration’s CDC chief not the Biden Administration. But I do believe fully vaccinated Americans should be allowed to return home by simply showing their vaccination card if they are not vaccinated or do not wish to disclose that information then I think requiring a negative test is the way to go. But requiring fully vaccinated Americans get tested in a foreign country just to come home is ridiculous.
I think you overstate the damage to the Australian economy. Just how is it affected? Trade in goods continues, almost unabated. Sure, Ma and Pa Dundee are unable to go to Bali, and the usual suspects loudmouth marketing sleazebags are unable to travel to flog their wares (…for those oh-so-vital-nothing-can-replace face to face meetings, aka point junkies living high on the hog on someone else’s money). But travel restrictions are a net gain to the economy, to the tune of tens of billions per year.
The real damage is longer term: fewer migrants = lower growth. Fewer international students = poorer universities, weaker research output ( even though the universities pay scandalously high salaries to senior staff, including the very worst of the aforementioned lowlife marketers)
The border is closed because the Trumpist loons in the national government completely effed-up the vaccination program: currently the lowest rate of all developed countries, and well down the overall list. Utterly woeful and abysmal mismanagement. They make Jared Kushner look sharp in comparison.
The buffoons in Canberra want to open but know that if there’s a major outbreak as a consequence, they’ll be crucified at the forthcoming election. For now , the public still supports the travel restrictions.
Australia’s approach made sense at first to slow the blow to health care and try to head it off until a vaccine can be found but to have such low vaccination numbers now makes no sense. They should be at 50%+ by now. In the case of Canada, it might work out for them but to what damage? They have jailed church pastors for holding services and restricting freedoms. Heck, even Joe Biden loosed up the masks of oppression but then again we did have “operation warp speed” to thank for some of that. In the case of 2021 tourism, that ship has sailed.
I am curious about how many people die in car accidents in Australia? Oh well, the data say 1125 deaths in the past 12 months. Have they already limited cars in usage to about 100 on the road in the continent? No? How about speed limit? Is it no more than 30 km/h ?