[adventured]

> such as immediately closing airports in almost every country which would have keep a lot of places like New Zealand is now, with 0 new daily cases.

That's not what would have happened.

New Zealand has zero new daily cases only because it's an island. The same reason Hawaii has done so well relatively. It has almost been a month since Hawaii has had a Covid death. It's not because their lockdown measures have been magic, it's because they're an island, they got a massive artificial booster to their isolation efforts.

Well before it was understood to lock down all transportation, the virus was already spreading across the US and Europe, it was already too late. Direct experience with the Spanish Flu pandemic would have made zero difference to that. Practically nobody outside of China knew the virus was spreading in Wuhan or how serious it was for the first two months of the outbreak, starting in late October. By the time China stopped aggressively trying to conceal the nature of the virus outbreak (mid January), it had already spread to the US and Europe (in December).

All transportation globally would have had to have been locked down in mid November at the latest to have had a shot at stopping the spread. That's a fantasy scenario.

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We only locked down mid-March, but we're back down to less than 2% of our peak and have been unlocking since end-April. Stopping the spread is easy, but it apparently requires a population that understands and is committed to hygienic measures.