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'Western health officials say privately that the checks on travellers have mostly been introduced to avert potential variants spreading undetected but that the current measures are not justified by any existing threat. One senior European official, who declined to be named, said it was a “political” decision, citing “governments that want to be seen as protecting their own people”.
https://www.ft.com/content/7623c671-6fc7-4e95-a177-594467a5d65e
There's that layer of optics and politics. It is ridiculous on the face of uncontrolled spread in western countries.
I feel there's also something more sad about this. An implicit calculus of acceptable harm. Let's say a nastier variant emerges in China. Let's assume it gets detected with these border controls and somehow it is recognised as nastier early enough. It will be already spreading inside at that point. How much nastier does it need to be than what we've got now to justify measures to prevent its uncontrolled spread inside? Why doesn't the current (very high) level of harm justify these measures now? How much would be too much?