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New Zealand also is a relatively isolated warm island nation with far less international travel to it than literally the rest of the Western World. So please ex

New Zealand also is a relatively isolated warm island nation with far less international travel to it than literally the rest of the Western World. So please excuse me with all of the tribute to it for its performance.

renewiltord 6y ago
Interesting. Lets run a quick comparison between Louisiana and New Zealand. Temperature today: Auckland peaks at 19 C, New Orleans at 25 C Population: NZ 4.8 million, Lousiana 4.7 million Density: NZ 18 / sq. km, Lousiana 34 / sq. km COVID cases (deaths): NZ 1445 (13) , Lousiana 24523 (1328)
- Aaronstotle 6y ago
  Louisiana also had Mardi Gras, which brought in tons of people from around the country to New Orleans, likely spreading Covid
  - mdszy 6y ago
    Which should have obviously been canceled, clearly highlighting incredibly poor response.
    - ced 6y ago
      It was on February 25th. Most of North America didn't do anything until mid-March, no?
      - mdszy 6y ago
        That's part of the bad response.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- rriepe 6y ago
  Cool, can you compare hemispheres next?
- lordgrenville 6y ago
  So Louisiana is more densely populated, and much less isolated. Not sure what point you're making.
  - coughupalung 6y ago
    I agree on the isolation. I lived in NZ. As someone from North America, it was strange how isolated it felt. Especially outside of Auckland. As for density, I disagree. Most of the country is empty but the cities are surprisingly dense by North American standards considering the population size.
    - lordgrenville 6y ago
      I've never been to NZ but the data is utterly against that. The most dense city in NZ (Auckland) has 2418 people/km^2, and Christchurch is about half that. Wellington is 1918. [0] By contrast every US city in this table [1] is way above that, with the lowest being 3889.4. (New Orleans, surprisingly, is a mere 783 [2].) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_New_Zealand#Urban_areas_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_New_Zealand#... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density#Incorporated_places_with_a_density_of_over_10,000_people_per_square_mile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans
      - coughupalung 6y ago
        That's interesting. I wonder how they calculated the area. There's no way Yonkers is twice as dense as Auckland in a practical sense (I would guess it's similar). As for Wellington, there's a very limited amount of space to build on because of the topography. As a result, houses are small, streets are narrow, cars are small (I had a difficult time driving a tiny hatchback). The CBD is unusually big and dense for a city with a metro population smaller than Madison, Wisconsin. The airport is shoehorned in to the only flat space in the region. So why does it have a low density? I'm assuming undeveloped regions are being counted here. I suspect density in terms of "used space" is quite high. Totally anecdotal obviously.
- scottLobster 6y ago
  Pretty disingenuous comparison. You leave out: Exposure to cross-border travel: Louisiana: Home to one of the largest commercial shipping ports in the world, serving as an import/export hub for the largest national economy in the world. Has extensive land borders with said nation and large amounts of interstate travel daily. New Zealand: Has a small export market largely focused on agriculture and a small tourism market. Is an island nation over 1300 miles away from the nearest other significant economy. All movement in/out of the nation has to go through tightly controlled ports or airports.
  - bogomipz 6y ago
    I don't know if I would call New Zealand's tourism market small. Small compared to New York or London maybe but relative to the size of the country, it's GDP and population? 3.8 million people visited New Zealand in 2019[1]. The population of New Zealand is only 4.8 million. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_New_Zealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_New_Zealand
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    I don't understand why HN users always jump into these things like it's a cage fight. The right way for you to respond is to help us collectively arrive at truth (which your qualitative statement aids mildly in) and leave out all the parts that claim bad faith from your fellow users. Jesus Christ, I even included density which points the opposite way. Now because I don't have a preconceived notion of which direction I want the results to show why NZ is performing better, I can conclude that the result is either: * The factors described are washed out by the other factors * These factors don't have a significant impact * It isn't any of these that determines difference in outcome between NZ and others but action taken No wonder you guys hate social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram if you run around calling everyone insincere at the first sign of the mildest degree of disagreement.
abrowne 6y ago
> warm "Temperate" I'd agree on, but not "warm".
- kolikotime 6y ago
  For the past month temps have virtually been in the 60s/70s as it’s their summer/early fall. By Global north standards that’s warm.
  - abrowne 6y ago
    Sure, but you described NZ as a "warm island nation", you didn't say that it's warm there lately. Where I am in Minneapolis it will be in the 70s–90s in a couple months, but I wouldn't call Minneapolis a "warm city". I'm reading Pathway of the Birds, about Polynesian voyaging, navigation and settlement with a focus on NZ, and there's a whole chapter "Settling New Zealand: Adapting to a Cool Land", which was something the early settlers had to do because they came from genuine warm islands in tropical Polynesia.
  - grawprog 6y ago
    >By Global north standards that’s warm. I dunno, even up in BC here it's been warmer than that these last couple weeks and I would in no way describe where I live as a 'warm place'. At least on the coast. It gets pretty warm in the interior in the summer though.
AnotherGoodName 6y ago
Still worth a shoutout for shutting down even with very few cases per day. If you're going to end up with a quarantine regardless that's the best time to completely shut down. There were 5 new cases yesterday and there doesn't seem to be major instances of an undiagnosed population. They have a chance of completely eliminating this internally. Australia is the same way at the moment too. 20 new cases total yesterday and there doesn't seem to be a major section of the population undiagnosed. The new cases seem to be coming from known pockets of infection (people living together, etc.). There's a real chance life may get back to normal in these two nations with the exception of international travel without waiting for a cure/vaccine.
notacoward 6y ago
New Zealand has a healthy tourist industry, and Auckland is effectively the capital of Polynesia, so it has a lot more air travel than you might think. Also, if isolation were such a large factor, why is New Zealand doing so much better than (for example) Iceland? NZ has a lower growth rate than Fiji, Maldives, Saint Kitts and Nevis. Isolation might be a factor, but it seems to have less effect on outcomes than when and how nations responded.
- kaesar14 6y ago
  But Iceland is a part of the Schengen Zone and is open to free travel with Europe, I don't see how New Zealand is NOT more isolated than Iceland
  - rhino369 6y ago
    It's also something of a mini-hub for travel from USA to Europe. A lot of America's do a mini-vacation in Iceland on the end of a trip to Europe.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I'm guessing not so much in January and February.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    We can actually answer these questions rather than just guessing. In 2018, 3.82 million people flew into NZ, an increase of 1.2 million over the previous year. Iceland meanwhile received 2.3 million people in 2018, most from the United States, which is in line with historical averages of around 2 million.
- usaar333 6y ago
  > New Zealand doing so much better than (for example) Iceland? They are only doing so much better if you define better solely in terms of deaths (about 14x per capita). The difference is that New Zealand locked down; Iceland had much more modest restrictions (and did very well overall with containing the epidemic - a bit better than say the locked down Bay Area) The interesting question is if "deaths/capita" is the correct and only metric. Both countries are basically at the end of their curve and Iceland lets say might lose about 200 years of life (using some worse case guesses for currently hospitalized) or about 5 hours a person. What's better for the average person? A 4 week lockdown or life expectancy dropping by 5 hours?
braythwayt 6y ago
But you are excused, you don't have to comment at all. But since you did comment, are you certain that lack of immigration and "warmth" explain the discrepancy between their results and America's? Or Italy's? Or Canada's? Or (as another commentator points out) British Columbia? Please go into more detail about the relative impact of these factors, and why you think they are more important than the choices New Zealand made.
- jgon 6y ago
  British Columbia is part of Canada and thus borders America. It has a city of ~3 million people (Vancouver), which is an hour's drive from Seattle (pop ~4 million) and the US west coast. It has one of the most active ports in North America and is a jumping off point for cruise ships, overseas travel to Asia and numerous other flows of people and good. The other user is making a fairly dishonest comparison of BC and New Zealand by looking just at population and none of the other factors that have led to the differing results during the pandemic.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - braythwayt 6y ago
    Accusing people of dishonesty is not aligned with the HN guidelines. If you disagree with their point of view, perhaps criticize the comment on its merits, rather than accusing a fellow contributor of dishonesty.
    - TylerE 6y ago
      There's a difference between accusing the contributor of being dishonest and saying the argument is dishonest - e.g. ignoring central contridictory facts.
- rriepe 6y ago
  It's not "warmth" but Summer. Drop the smug attitude and fairly compare it to other places in the Southern hemisphere. It's not a simple climate difference but an inversion of seasons.
animalCrax0rz 6y ago
We are witnessing great success due to the leadership acumen of certain female heads of state (Merkel, included) which in this case (and Germany's) is rooted in science and driven by data. Why be so dismissive?
- animalCrax0rz 6y ago
  Current stats: upvoted 3 times and downvoted 4 times, which is one way of proving that we suffer empathy deficiency on HN. In fact, I don't think many on HN know what empathy is. Proves the point that commenters that say NZ is not special in its handling of the crisis don't understand what empathy is or its role in successful leadership during a life/death emergency. EDIT: It could also be 1 user using 4 different accounts that they've accumulated some time and karma under (so they look like legitimate user accounts) ... HN makes it impossible to tell if that's the case since they hide stats on who up votes and who downvotes.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Doesn’t NZ depend heavily on tourism to run its economy?
renewiltord 6y ago
Fortunately, Taiwan exists and is better than everyone else so we have a high-water mark for competence to compare to. Denser than America, cooler than Lousiana, closer to Wuhan than any part of America, more travel to/from China, poorer than America, better than America at dealing with this crisis.
onetimeusename 6y ago
As a reference, here is a map that shows international tourism arrivals per country from 2018. I don't know if it proves any causes in relation to your point about international travel but it shows some correlation. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/st.int.arvl?view=map https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/st.int.arvl?view=map
AbrahamParangi 6y ago
New Zealand is warm?
- karmelapple 6y ago
  Yeah, I don’t understand that comment. New Zealand is amazing. But it also has large mountains with snow. It’s not exactly warm though.
  - Taniwha 6y ago
    Not so much right now, winter is just starting
goatforce5 6y ago
Apparently there are different strains of Covid-19 floating around. There has been speculation that NZ (and Australia) may have largely been hit by a less aggressive version of the virus than, say, Europe. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12326324 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obj...
- robocat 6y ago
  NZ gets tourists from everywhere (3.6M tourists in nation with 5M population), and 1/3 of cases are NZers returning home from all over the world (we travel internationally a lot). I don’t have the sequencing, but there is no reason to think NZ would only “catch” one strain.
  - goatforce5 6y ago
    From the above article: > The deadliest mutations in the Zhejiang patients had also been found in most patients across Europe, while the milder strains were the predominant varieties found in parts of the United States, such as Washington State, according to their paper. > A separate study had found that New York strains had been imported from Europe. The death rate in New York was similar to that in many European countries, if not worse. It's no so much that a particular area only has one strain, but that the predominant strain that takes hold may have more favourable outcomes.
    - robocat 6y ago
      There is zero reason to think there is a “predominant strain that takes hold” in NZ. We get a lot of tourists from Asia, Europe and the US. Early on, the majority of cases in NZ were returning kiwis, who returned from all over the world. NZ is highly connected because (a) it is a world tourist destination and (b) NZers travel all over the world (including a lot to Europe).
      - goatforce5 6y ago
        And yet the article i've linked to has researchers saying different areas (which are as well, if not, far better connected than NZ) have predominant strains with differing characteristics.
robocat 6y ago
> with far less international travel to it than literally the rest of the Western World Did you make that up? From 2018 data https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/st.int.arvl?view=map https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/st.int.arvl?view=map Tourists to NZ: 3.7M population: 4.9M Tourists to US: 80M population: 327M And NZ tourism is mostly during our summer, so Jan/Feb/Mar are busy. “Tourism is New Zealand's biggest export industry, contributing 20.4% of total exports.“ > warm island nation Irrelevant: compare NZ to states with equivalent temperature and population in say February and then compare your death rates. About 1/3 of NZ cases are NZers returning from overseas, which makes NZ numbers even better: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/19/1101216/covid-19-in-nz-the-numbers https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/19/1101216/covid-19-in-nz...
- Taniwha 6y ago
  Yeah - people have to remember that they've grown up with maps where the northern hemisphere is twice the size of the southern. In reality NZ is roughly as long as the west coast of the US and covers roughly the same latitudes (and range of climates, though they're not as continental). We have been very lucky that the govt put incoming people into voluntary lockdown quite early, China first, then everywhere - that means that lots of cases occurred in isolation and didn't spread (seems like we've received probably more cases from the US than elsewhere), of course some people were stupid, we kicked out some tourists who wouldn't do it. 5 new cases yesterday nationwide, and a continuing lowering trend. Still ~400 people with active cases so we have to be careful - we're nominally getting out of "level 4" lockdown next week, our "level 3" is roughly where California is now, that's predicted to last 2 more weeks - then apart from international travel, and at risk people still taking care we will largely be back to normal. Of course one mistake could scupper all of this.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  You are only looking at tourism - now add in business and personal travel. For example JFK international airport alone gets around 30 million international passengers a year.
thisrod 6y ago
In both Australia and New Zealand, the number of visitors from overseas is a red herring. The world didn't bring the novel coronavirus to us: we went there and brought it back. For example, under the old normal, on the order of 1 out of 1000 people in Britain were Australians! I don't know exactly how New Zealand compares, but they wouldn't be far behind. I think the differences between, say, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, France, Germany and Singapore are pure dumb luck. The virus spread through mega-churches in France and Korea; they were doing exactly the same things in Rooty Hill, but no one who turned up happened to be infected. New Zealand bogans haven't discovered cruise ships yet. Melbourne's international student accomodation got lucky, Singapore's guest worker dormitories didn't. And so on. Don't get me started on Australian federalism. The Commonwealth decided to let the virus in and suppress it, ignoring the fact that the states were committed to blowing a trillion dollars on lockdowns the moment it turned up in volume. At least we can blame federalism; what excuse does New Zealand have?

renewiltord 6y ago

Interesting. Lets run a quick comparison between Louisiana and New Zealand. Temperature today: Auckland peaks at 19 C, New Orleans at 25 C Population: NZ 4.8 million, Lousiana 4.7 million Density: NZ 18 / sq. km, Lousiana 34 / sq. km COVID cases (deaths): NZ 1445 (13) , Lousiana 24523 (1328)

Aaronstotle 6y ago
Louisiana also had Mardi Gras, which brought in tons of people from around the country to New Orleans, likely spreading Covid
- mdszy 6y ago
  Which should have obviously been canceled, clearly highlighting incredibly poor response.
  - ced 6y ago
    It was on February 25th. Most of North America didn't do anything until mid-March, no?
    - mdszy 6y ago
      That's part of the bad response.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
rriepe 6y ago
Cool, can you compare hemispheres next?
lordgrenville 6y ago
So Louisiana is more densely populated, and much less isolated. Not sure what point you're making.
- coughupalung 6y ago
  I agree on the isolation. I lived in NZ. As someone from North America, it was strange how isolated it felt. Especially outside of Auckland. As for density, I disagree. Most of the country is empty but the cities are surprisingly dense by North American standards considering the population size.
  - lordgrenville 6y ago
    I've never been to NZ but the data is utterly against that. The most dense city in NZ (Auckland) has 2418 people/km^2, and Christchurch is about half that. Wellington is 1918. [0] By contrast every US city in this table [1] is way above that, with the lowest being 3889.4. (New Orleans, surprisingly, is a mere 783 [2].) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_New_Zealand#Urban_areas_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_New_Zealand#... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density#Incorporated_places_with_a_density_of_over_10,000_people_per_square_mile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans
    - coughupalung 6y ago
      That's interesting. I wonder how they calculated the area. There's no way Yonkers is twice as dense as Auckland in a practical sense (I would guess it's similar). As for Wellington, there's a very limited amount of space to build on because of the topography. As a result, houses are small, streets are narrow, cars are small (I had a difficult time driving a tiny hatchback). The CBD is unusually big and dense for a city with a metro population smaller than Madison, Wisconsin. The airport is shoehorned in to the only flat space in the region. So why does it have a low density? I'm assuming undeveloped regions are being counted here. I suspect density in terms of "used space" is quite high. Totally anecdotal obviously.
scottLobster 6y ago
Pretty disingenuous comparison. You leave out: Exposure to cross-border travel: Louisiana: Home to one of the largest commercial shipping ports in the world, serving as an import/export hub for the largest national economy in the world. Has extensive land borders with said nation and large amounts of interstate travel daily. New Zealand: Has a small export market largely focused on agriculture and a small tourism market. Is an island nation over 1300 miles away from the nearest other significant economy. All movement in/out of the nation has to go through tightly controlled ports or airports.
- bogomipz 6y ago
  I don't know if I would call New Zealand's tourism market small. Small compared to New York or London maybe but relative to the size of the country, it's GDP and population? 3.8 million people visited New Zealand in 2019[1]. The population of New Zealand is only 4.8 million. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_New_Zealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_New_Zealand
- renewiltord 6y ago
  I don't understand why HN users always jump into these things like it's a cage fight. The right way for you to respond is to help us collectively arrive at truth (which your qualitative statement aids mildly in) and leave out all the parts that claim bad faith from your fellow users. Jesus Christ, I even included density which points the opposite way. Now because I don't have a preconceived notion of which direction I want the results to show why NZ is performing better, I can conclude that the result is either: * The factors described are washed out by the other factors * These factors don't have a significant impact * It isn't any of these that determines difference in outcome between NZ and others but action taken No wonder you guys hate social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram if you run around calling everyone insincere at the first sign of the mildest degree of disagreement.

abrowne 6y ago

> warm "Temperate" I'd agree on, but not "warm".

kolikotime 6y ago
For the past month temps have virtually been in the 60s/70s as it’s their summer/early fall. By Global north standards that’s warm.
- abrowne 6y ago
  Sure, but you described NZ as a "warm island nation", you didn't say that it's warm there lately. Where I am in Minneapolis it will be in the 70s–90s in a couple months, but I wouldn't call Minneapolis a "warm city". I'm reading Pathway of the Birds, about Polynesian voyaging, navigation and settlement with a focus on NZ, and there's a whole chapter "Settling New Zealand: Adapting to a Cool Land", which was something the early settlers had to do because they came from genuine warm islands in tropical Polynesia.
- grawprog 6y ago
  >By Global north standards that’s warm. I dunno, even up in BC here it's been warmer than that these last couple weeks and I would in no way describe where I live as a 'warm place'. At least on the coast. It gets pretty warm in the interior in the summer though.

AnotherGoodName 6y ago

Still worth a shoutout for shutting down even with very few cases per day. If you're going to end up with a quarantine regardless that's the best time to completely shut down. There were 5 new cases yesterday and there doesn't seem to be major instances of an undiagnosed population. They have a chance of completely eliminating this internally. Australia is the same way at the moment too. 20 new cases total yesterday and there doesn't seem to be a major section of the population undiagnosed. The new cases seem to be coming from known pockets of infection (people living together, etc.). There's a real chance life may get back to normal in these two nations with the exception of international travel without waiting for a cure/vaccine.

notacoward 6y ago

New Zealand has a healthy tourist industry, and Auckland is effectively the capital of Polynesia, so it has a lot more air travel than you might think. Also, if isolation were such a large factor, why is New Zealand doing so much better than (for example) Iceland? NZ has a lower growth rate than Fiji, Maldives, Saint Kitts and Nevis. Isolation might be a factor, but it seems to have less effect on outcomes than when and how nations responded.

kaesar14 6y ago
But Iceland is a part of the Schengen Zone and is open to free travel with Europe, I don't see how New Zealand is NOT more isolated than Iceland
- rhino369 6y ago
  It's also something of a mini-hub for travel from USA to Europe. A lot of America's do a mini-vacation in Iceland on the end of a trip to Europe.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I'm guessing not so much in January and February.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  We can actually answer these questions rather than just guessing. In 2018, 3.82 million people flew into NZ, an increase of 1.2 million over the previous year. Iceland meanwhile received 2.3 million people in 2018, most from the United States, which is in line with historical averages of around 2 million.
usaar333 6y ago
> New Zealand doing so much better than (for example) Iceland? They are only doing so much better if you define better solely in terms of deaths (about 14x per capita). The difference is that New Zealand locked down; Iceland had much more modest restrictions (and did very well overall with containing the epidemic - a bit better than say the locked down Bay Area) The interesting question is if "deaths/capita" is the correct and only metric. Both countries are basically at the end of their curve and Iceland lets say might lose about 200 years of life (using some worse case guesses for currently hospitalized) or about 5 hours a person. What's better for the average person? A 4 week lockdown or life expectancy dropping by 5 hours?

braythwayt 6y ago

But you are excused, you don't have to comment at all. But since you did comment, are you certain that lack of immigration and "warmth" explain the discrepancy between their results and America's? Or Italy's? Or Canada's? Or (as another commentator points out) British Columbia? Please go into more detail about the relative impact of these factors, and why you think they are more important than the choices New Zealand made.

jgon 6y ago
British Columbia is part of Canada and thus borders America. It has a city of ~3 million people (Vancouver), which is an hour's drive from Seattle (pop ~4 million) and the US west coast. It has one of the most active ports in North America and is a jumping off point for cruise ships, overseas travel to Asia and numerous other flows of people and good. The other user is making a fairly dishonest comparison of BC and New Zealand by looking just at population and none of the other factors that have led to the differing results during the pandemic.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- braythwayt 6y ago
  Accusing people of dishonesty is not aligned with the HN guidelines. If you disagree with their point of view, perhaps criticize the comment on its merits, rather than accusing a fellow contributor of dishonesty.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    There's a difference between accusing the contributor of being dishonest and saying the argument is dishonest - e.g. ignoring central contridictory facts.
rriepe 6y ago
It's not "warmth" but Summer. Drop the smug attitude and fairly compare it to other places in the Southern hemisphere. It's not a simple climate difference but an inversion of seasons.

animalCrax0rz 6y ago

We are witnessing great success due to the leadership acumen of certain female heads of state (Merkel, included) which in this case (and Germany's) is rooted in science and driven by data. Why be so dismissive?

animalCrax0rz 6y ago
Current stats: upvoted 3 times and downvoted 4 times, which is one way of proving that we suffer empathy deficiency on HN. In fact, I don't think many on HN know what empathy is. Proves the point that commenters that say NZ is not special in its handling of the crisis don't understand what empathy is or its role in successful leadership during a life/death emergency. EDIT: It could also be 1 user using 4 different accounts that they've accumulated some time and karma under (so they look like legitimate user accounts) ... HN makes it impossible to tell if that's the case since they hide stats on who up votes and who downvotes.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Doesn’t NZ depend heavily on tourism to run its economy?

renewiltord 6y ago

Fortunately, Taiwan exists and is better than everyone else so we have a high-water mark for competence to compare to. Denser than America, cooler than Lousiana, closer to Wuhan than any part of America, more travel to/from China, poorer than America, better than America at dealing with this crisis.

onetimeusename 6y ago

As a reference, here is a map that shows international tourism arrivals per country from 2018. I don't know if it proves any causes in relation to your point about international travel but it shows some correlation. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/st.int.arvl?view=map https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/st.int.arvl?view=map

AbrahamParangi 6y ago

New Zealand is warm?

karmelapple 6y ago
Yeah, I don’t understand that comment. New Zealand is amazing. But it also has large mountains with snow. It’s not exactly warm though.
- Taniwha 6y ago
  Not so much right now, winter is just starting

goatforce5 6y ago

Apparently there are different strains of Covid-19 floating around. There has been speculation that NZ (and Australia) may have largely been hit by a less aggressive version of the virus than, say, Europe. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12326324 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obj...

robocat 6y ago
NZ gets tourists from everywhere (3.6M tourists in nation with 5M population), and 1/3 of cases are NZers returning home from all over the world (we travel internationally a lot). I don’t have the sequencing, but there is no reason to think NZ would only “catch” one strain.
- goatforce5 6y ago
  From the above article: > The deadliest mutations in the Zhejiang patients had also been found in most patients across Europe, while the milder strains were the predominant varieties found in parts of the United States, such as Washington State, according to their paper. > A separate study had found that New York strains had been imported from Europe. The death rate in New York was similar to that in many European countries, if not worse. It's no so much that a particular area only has one strain, but that the predominant strain that takes hold may have more favourable outcomes.
  - robocat 6y ago
    There is zero reason to think there is a “predominant strain that takes hold” in NZ. We get a lot of tourists from Asia, Europe and the US. Early on, the majority of cases in NZ were returning kiwis, who returned from all over the world. NZ is highly connected because (a) it is a world tourist destination and (b) NZers travel all over the world (including a lot to Europe).
    - goatforce5 6y ago
      And yet the article i've linked to has researchers saying different areas (which are as well, if not, far better connected than NZ) have predominant strains with differing characteristics.

robocat 6y ago

> with far less international travel to it than literally the rest of the Western World Did you make that up? From 2018 data https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/st.int.arvl?view=map https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/st.int.arvl?view=map Tourists to NZ: 3.7M population: 4.9M Tourists to US: 80M population: 327M And NZ tourism is mostly during our summer, so Jan/Feb/Mar are busy. “Tourism is New Zealand's biggest export industry, contributing 20.4% of total exports.“ > warm island nation Irrelevant: compare NZ to states with equivalent temperature and population in say February and then compare your death rates. About 1/3 of NZ cases are NZers returning from overseas, which makes NZ numbers even better: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/19/1101216/covid-19-in-nz-the-numbers https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/19/1101216/covid-19-in-nz...

Taniwha 6y ago
Yeah - people have to remember that they've grown up with maps where the northern hemisphere is twice the size of the southern. In reality NZ is roughly as long as the west coast of the US and covers roughly the same latitudes (and range of climates, though they're not as continental). We have been very lucky that the govt put incoming people into voluntary lockdown quite early, China first, then everywhere - that means that lots of cases occurred in isolation and didn't spread (seems like we've received probably more cases from the US than elsewhere), of course some people were stupid, we kicked out some tourists who wouldn't do it. 5 new cases yesterday nationwide, and a continuing lowering trend. Still ~400 people with active cases so we have to be careful - we're nominally getting out of "level 4" lockdown next week, our "level 3" is roughly where California is now, that's predicted to last 2 more weeks - then apart from international travel, and at risk people still taking care we will largely be back to normal. Of course one mistake could scupper all of this.
iateanapple 6y ago
You are only looking at tourism - now add in business and personal travel. For example JFK international airport alone gets around 30 million international passengers a year.

thisrod 6y ago

In both Australia and New Zealand, the number of visitors from overseas is a red herring. The world didn't bring the novel coronavirus to us: we went there and brought it back. For example, under the old normal, on the order of 1 out of 1000 people in Britain were Australians! I don't know exactly how New Zealand compares, but they wouldn't be far behind. I think the differences between, say, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, France, Germany and Singapore are pure dumb luck. The virus spread through mega-churches in France and Korea; they were doing exactly the same things in Rooty Hill, but no one who turned up happened to be infected. New Zealand bogans haven't discovered cruise ships yet. Melbourne's international student accomodation got lucky, Singapore's guest worker dormitories didn't. And so on. Don't get me started on Australian federalism. The Commonwealth decided to let the virus in and suppress it, ignoring the fact that the states were committed to blowing a trillion dollars on lockdowns the moment it turned up in volume. At least we can blame federalism; what excuse does New Zealand have?