Blog: Jersey’s border - not an open and shut debate
Today is either the day you thank Jersey’s politicians for being able to book a much-needed holiday. Or it’s the day you damn them for letting coronavirus into the island.
For that, in its starkest extremes, seems to be where opinions have been polarised over plans to reopen Jersey’s borders this Friday.
Government ministers, backed by medical advice, say their proposals are safe, risk-based, and strike a balance between the health of the population and the health of the economy.
But, despite their modelling showing, at a rate of 1,000 arrivals a week from the UK it would take seven weeks for a single case of Covid-19 to be imported, they’ve evidently not done enough to quell concerns.
They point out nobody with symptoms would be allowed to fly or sail in anyway, and so there’s no need to isolate asymptomatic people, who will be tested on arrival, while they await their test results. Physical distancing and good hygiene is ample.
For some, they’re wasted words. They simply hear “disease-riddled imports running amok in the island for hours, and maybe days”. Indeed, despite assurances that average test result times are somewhere between 24 and 48 hours, with the aim of getting it down to 12 hours within a few weeks, they’ve decided the worst possible scenario of 72 hours is the only truth in town.
Again facts seem lost in what is a very emotive debate.
Then there’s the Chief Minister, not one prone to dramatics, pointing out that - if we don’t open up this Friday - easyJet will ditch us til September. Whether that’s true or not, it’s not a great look to be effectively saying a private company is dictating border policy.
I did ask easyJet if his assertion was correct. They responded, opaquely, with the one sentence reply: we are watching with interest.
Stuck in the middle?
The island’s dying hospitality trade desperate for visitors
Island-locked individuals desperate to go visit family and friends
And anybody trying to make plans with any degree of certainty at a time of complete uncertainty
Today we’ll be reminded Covid-19 is something we need to live with, that a vaccine could be months or even years away, and that the economy is quickly crumbling as the borders remain closed.
Today we’ll also be reminded that throwing away our now-zero rate of coronavirus by flinging open the doors is putting money before lives.
The truth is that everybody has a point. The truth is that there are upsides and downsides to each outcome.
As debates go, this is about as big as it gets.
Coronavirus: All the information and advice for the Channel Islands