The COVID-19 pandemic

[plam]

I think the Channel Tunnel pretty much makes this untrue. Unless you mean in the sense that there is no long, hard-to-monitor, land border. From that point of view the tunnel isn’t much different from an airplane route. But it’s also true the English Channel is much narrower that the distance from New Zealand to other places so I imagine it’s harder to monitor.

Probably more relevant is Irish border where there are essentially no customs checks as I recall.

The Irish border is a huge concern with Brexit, I understand.

I don't think people swimming across the Channel are making a huge difference in the number of COVID cases. And I think there is now border formalities going from the UK to France in the tunnel, again because of Brexit.

To be fair, the UK is a lot more of a transport hub than NZ. But Boris Johnson also has been terrible, even worse than Ford in most (though not all) ways.