[jsnell]

Concentrating contact tracing resources on cases of the new variant, where they'll do more good than applied randomly on all Covid cases. Targeted local shutdowns in locales where the new variant appears to have gotten a foothold. Enhanced screening of people with recent ties to the high risk areas. All the stuff we did, or should have done, for Covid itself when that pandemic was in its early stages, but with focus on the new variant.

And sure, border closures too. They're late in that the new variant is probably present at some level in most of Europe. But the fewer cases you have to start with, the longer it'll stay contained at low levels. You might even be able to contain it entirely for a while. All the cases of B.1.1.7 in Denmark (0.4% of their sequencing) appear to be part of the same cluster. They should be able to manage that much better than if the variant was being constantly reintroduced by travelers.

For the UK specifically, they're doing a bunch of things differently for their Tier 4 level vs. Tier 3, which was introduced specifically in response to B.1.1.7. Are you suggesting that all of those measures should have been done everywhere anyway?