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New podcast alert! Could curbing international travel prevent future pandemics? Nope, only delay a little and at staggering cost, say @m_clem and @ThomasGinnDC in the latest episode of Moving Beyond Pandemic …https://migrationpolicymovingbeyondpandemic.podbean.com/e/could-curbing-globalization-prevent-future-pandemics/ 1/
Michael and Thomas spoke with me about their recent paper which meticulously trawls through the data on four flu pandemics https://www.cgdev.org/publication/global-mobility-and-threat-pandemics-evidence-three-centuries 2/
Globalization has been blamed for the speed of COVID spread. See e.g. this @nytimes piece: 'the ease and expansion of global travel is why “super spreader” events helped accelerate the pandemic’. 3/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/world/europe/ski-party-pandemic-travel-coronavirus.html
So should we think twice about returning to a world of cheap flights, 2-day transatlantic trips, mass global tourism? Michael &Thomas argue COVID spread slower (controlling for other factors) than previous pandemics. If restrictions bought some delay, this was not used wisely 4/
What makes the difference, rather, is domestic measures - tracing, testing, isolating. (You know the drill.) So February's travel bans were mostly distracting bluster; crowd-pleasing measures. We argued something less sophisticated but similar back then 5/ https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/coronavirus-not-a-migration-problem
But Michael and Thomas do allow that emergency measures could be useful, either for countries that have got on top of the virus Ă la New Zealand, or as part of a raft of lockdown measures. The evidence on travel restrictions in different phases of pandemic is still limited.. 6/
But this @TheLancet piece by @AdamJKucharski et al helps. Restrictions help for countries with v. small numbers of cases or where epidemics are close to tipping points for exponential growth. This is key if we end up with several New Zealands mid-2021 7/ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30144-4/fulltext#seccestitle70
We at @MigrationPolicy are trying to work out the roadmap for 2021. Countries will be at wildly different points in their COVID caseload & vaccine rollout. What role for vaccination, testing, digital health records, sniffer dogs? Get in touch if you're working on this! FIN
