What a silly debate about whether the private sector should be involved in quarantine. The government doesn’t own any of the hotels currently being used to house people or any of the buses used to transport people etc. The private sector is already usefully providing those.

Have “business leaders” who think they can make a bigger profit by providing a parallel quarantine service factored into their business plan the bond required to cover the health/economic costs of any breach? Or will all of that aspect still the public sectors responsibility?

A more interesting question is: what are the constraints to increasing quarantine capacity (firstly for NZers and then potentially for others) and how could those be addressed without increasing the associated risks. I don’t believe “rich Americans” is the answer to that at all!