Test and trace never worked nearly as effectively against Covid as the media claimed. I don't know about the Netherlands, but here in the UK the media coverage was pretty much outright lying about how well it worked in South Korea to convince us our government was incompetent and had failed, saying it let them achieve things like lifting social distancing restrictions and reopening bars and clubs pre-vaccine when in reality every time they tried that cases immediately went exponential and they had to reimpose the restrictions. Even the countries which were pursuing zero covid with some success had to rely on repeated, strict lockdowns to achieve that (and most of them have given up on that now).

And it's been much more effective pretty much everywhere at preventing Covid getting in than it has once it's endemic in a country - reducing the number of cases doesn't help much if there are undetected infections, and the difficulty of finding those doesn't really scale down much with the number of cases or infections since they could be almost anywhere in the population.

We don't have to resort to draconian measures. Those are purely a political choice.

> Ask Taiwan?

I don't need to. I'm well aware of how Taiwan achieves this; near absolute control of travel to and from the island, implemented early and with no meaningful political opposition. That window closed for the US by Jan. 2019 while certain parties were still screaming "Xenophobe!" at modest and insufficient travel restrictions.

The question at hand is how NPR -- or anyone else for that matter -- imagines this happening in the US. Large numbers of people literally sneak into this country on foot every day and impeding them (for any reason at all, never mind COVID) is a monumental political issue, as just one example of what separates the US from Taiwan.

I live in Taiwan and while there's much to be lauded about the way the government here has handled the pandemic, the current situation is not sustainable.

Taiwan's case numbers are low because the borders are effectively sealed shut. With few exceptions, only citizens and residents can enter the country. Upon return, everyone is required to do 14 days of quarantine in a centralized quarantine facility or in a quarantine hotel at their own expense. When I did it, I paid close to $2,000 USD for the 14 days.

Chinese New Year is coming up and there isn't enough quarantine hotel capacity, so the government is preparing to announce some loosening of the restrictions, like 7 days of quarantine in a centralized facility plus 7 at home for the fully vaccinated.

Economically, many local businesses have been hurt by almost 2 years of closed borders. Some have gone out of business. Save for the quarantine hotels, which are making a killing, tourism has been devastated at a time when it would be really helpful for Taiwan to be not isolated from the rest of the world.

The big problem is that, looking at highly-vaccinated countries like Singapore and Israel, it's clear that once the borders open, the virus will get in. Fully vaccinated people will get and spread the virus and some percentage of individuals in high-risk groups are likely to get very sick and die even if they've been vaccinated. Taiwan had a very high CFR when it had its mini outbreak in May, which reflects the fact that there are a lot of old, not so healthy people here for the virus to run through.

I wouldn't suggest that Taiwan should have just thrown caution to the wind and opened the borders before vaccination rates were higher, but at some point, continuing with a 0 COVID strategy is just delaying the inevitable at a higher and higher cost.

Shakes fist. Why can't my government be as good as those of $ISLAND_NATION?!

Seriously though, we went over this with Australia and New Zealand. It's much easier to control your borders and keep cases low when there are fewer points of entry with existing screening infrastructure.