4 ms·

I see nothing in this article that suggests that New Zealand was particularly scientific in their response in contrast with other countries. This idea comes fr

I see nothing in this article that suggests that New Zealand was particularly scientific in their response in contrast with other countries. This idea comes from someone's viewpoint of NZ's relationship with the scientific community, but that doesn't really demonstrate that their leaders responded in line with whatever scientific evidence there is. This comes of as yet another "I f*ing love science" type news story.

notahacker 7y ago
Not sure they were massively more empathetic either. The reality is that because it's an isolated island whose countrymen aren't regularly jetting back and forth it had relatively few cases in mid March and found it completely practical to quarantine everybody who had been overseas for 14 days at that point. Fiji's doing pretty well apart from the tourist industry too, and I'm not sure their government is also outstandingly scientific or empathetic. Certainly, some countries have done much more counterproductive things than NZ and some countries would have had better capacity to respond if they listened to epidemiologists more. But for all the UK government has legitimately been criticised for being slow to respond and poor at communicating, it went into lockdown on exactly the same day as NZ. It just likely had at least two or three orders of magnitude more cases at the time.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I strongly suspect that by the time this is done we will have some handle of things that could have reasonably been done differently in different places without the full benefit of hindsight. And some of the policies that were clearly counterproductive. I also suspect we'll probably find that some things that people have very strong and strident opinions about don't strongly correlate to results across regions. And that the reasons why things were so different between a lot of country or state As and country or state Bs will either be unclear or be the result of factors that couldn't really be mitigated.
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    I think "correlates" already is the wrong way to look at this as it implies a kind linear model, but we know it's much more complicated than that. You can't look at a single policy in isolation, you have to look at it as part of a strategy. Then there is also flawed implementations of fundamentally sound ideas to take into account.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      Oh, I don't disagree. And even if you look at policies, the cultural response to a given policy can significantly affect the overall effectiveness. Things like density matter too. I can leave my house for a walk and not see a person. Hard to do in Manhattan.
- timClicks 7y ago
  There are a few facts missing from your first paragraph. It might look like an "isolated island whose countrymen aren't regularly jetting back" from the outside, but New Zealand is much more connected than that. Inbound, international students, migrant workers (mainly horticulture) and tourists are huge. Outbound, LAX is only a single flight. The quarantine was only imposed fairly recently. Until late March IIRC, self-isolation was require because it would have been impossible to quarantine ~100k arrivals for 2 weeks.
  - notahacker 7y ago
    Sure, before they extended quarantine to everyone and barred all foreign nationals from entering, people who exhibited no symptoms and could demonstrate a 'viable self-isolation plan' were allowed to voluntarily quarantine themselves instead of being put into government approved facilities. That's still something which is considerably easier to impose in New Zealand after only six known cases of a disease than in Western Europe, where people take day trips or even commute to other countries. Sure, NZ isn't [usually] cut off from the outside world, but it isn't a transit hub, somewhere you expect to visit to conclude a business deal or watch the away leg of a football match or a stop on a busy itinerary either. For related reasons NZ only had six known cases by mid March when they imposed that restriction. Italy had 21k cases and 1400 deaths at that point, with a few hundred more dying every day from that point onwards.
timClicks 7y ago
New Zealand is the only country that has a government that full elimination is a viable option. The modelling that drives the belief is 100% based on the best available science. You can read the papers yourself, they've already been released by the underlying institute: https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/2020/04/ https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/2020/04/. In particular "Modelling COVID-19 spread and the effects of Alert Level 4 in New Zealand" was highly persuasive https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/2020/04/09/a-stochastic-model-for-covid-19-spread-and-the-effects-of-alert-level-4-in-aotearoa-new-zealand/ https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/2020/04/09/a-stochastic-m...
- morelisp 7y ago
  > New Zealand is the only country that has a government that [thinks] full elimination is a viable option. Are you sure this isn't because NZ is one of very few countries where full elimination is a viable option?
  - timClicks 7y ago
    It's more expensive for New Zealand to shut its borders than most countries. In a sense, we're least able to eliminate the virus because we're so heavily dependent on our international connectivity. We rely heavily on immigration. Our policy planners expect the population to grow every year because of new arrivals. That movement has other effects, like supporting house price inflation. Which itself impacts the banks' expectations and willingness to lend. And so on. Tourism and international education are very significant industries for us. Tourism employs about 1/7 workers. Even something that appears relatively domestic, such as growing food, relies on migrant workers from the Pacific.
- javagram 7y ago
  > New Zealand is the only country that has a government that full elimination is a viable option. The modelling that drives the belief is 100% based on the best available science. Isn’t Taiwan also on this path?
LatteLazy 7y ago
I don't know about NZs relationship with science (or how to quantify that). But compare them to other countries. The UK ignored the warning for weeks and did nothing until it was in a much worse position than most nations. The US is still struggling. And more widely, other countries are very anti science at the moment. The UK refuses to follow scientific advice on almost any subject. From Brexit to Badger Culls to fracking to emissions to drug policy, the UK gets excellent advice and does the opposite. The USA similarly has climate deniers running the federal government. Being pro science is very easy by comparison. I get where you're coming from, there are too many "isn't science great" articles and people agree with them from their own bias, not sense. But be careful, you may be making the opposite mistake. Or maybe you're right? :)
- subsubsub 7y ago
  What do you mean by scientific advice on Brexit?
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    It is softer science but there were many warnings of the problems to come with the approach including London's financial dependence, their current supppy and demand for workers being fulfilled by it and parts of the legal code left undefined by severed dependencies. Soft as the science may be it may be you just can't get a baby in a full month with any number of volunteer fertile not currently pregnant women and volunteer virile men. Regardless of one's views of the goals or even the geopolitics there were many predictable issues that would need to be addressed before a split that weren't to make the idea look and sound good but make the transition worse.
discreteevent 7y ago
Ireland's approach and results seem to be nearly identical.
procinct 7y ago
New Zealand definitely benefited a lot from being a remote island nation but our response also got a lot of things right. For example, being quick to implement travel restrictions and eventually a closed border. The other example that stood out to me was that the country decided to go into its highest level of lockdown when the first cases of community transmission were detected (I believe when it was decided we had 2 cases of community transmission). So I definitely agree that NZ benefited a lot by being more remote and having no land borders, but we are only doing so well because we didn’t underestimate the virus and took drastic action early.

notahacker 7y ago

Not sure they were massively more empathetic either. The reality is that because it's an isolated island whose countrymen aren't regularly jetting back and forth it had relatively few cases in mid March and found it completely practical to quarantine everybody who had been overseas for 14 days at that point. Fiji's doing pretty well apart from the tourist industry too, and I'm not sure their government is also outstandingly scientific or empathetic. Certainly, some countries have done much more counterproductive things than NZ and some countries would have had better capacity to respond if they listened to epidemiologists more. But for all the UK government has legitimately been criticised for being slow to respond and poor at communicating, it went into lockdown on exactly the same day as NZ. It just likely had at least two or three orders of magnitude more cases at the time.

ghaff 7y ago
I strongly suspect that by the time this is done we will have some handle of things that could have reasonably been done differently in different places without the full benefit of hindsight. And some of the policies that were clearly counterproductive. I also suspect we'll probably find that some things that people have very strong and strident opinions about don't strongly correlate to results across regions. And that the reasons why things were so different between a lot of country or state As and country or state Bs will either be unclear or be the result of factors that couldn't really be mitigated.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  I think "correlates" already is the wrong way to look at this as it implies a kind linear model, but we know it's much more complicated than that. You can't look at a single policy in isolation, you have to look at it as part of a strategy. Then there is also flawed implementations of fundamentally sound ideas to take into account.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Oh, I don't disagree. And even if you look at policies, the cultural response to a given policy can significantly affect the overall effectiveness. Things like density matter too. I can leave my house for a walk and not see a person. Hard to do in Manhattan.
timClicks 7y ago
There are a few facts missing from your first paragraph. It might look like an "isolated island whose countrymen aren't regularly jetting back" from the outside, but New Zealand is much more connected than that. Inbound, international students, migrant workers (mainly horticulture) and tourists are huge. Outbound, LAX is only a single flight. The quarantine was only imposed fairly recently. Until late March IIRC, self-isolation was require because it would have been impossible to quarantine ~100k arrivals for 2 weeks.
- notahacker 7y ago
  Sure, before they extended quarantine to everyone and barred all foreign nationals from entering, people who exhibited no symptoms and could demonstrate a 'viable self-isolation plan' were allowed to voluntarily quarantine themselves instead of being put into government approved facilities. That's still something which is considerably easier to impose in New Zealand after only six known cases of a disease than in Western Europe, where people take day trips or even commute to other countries. Sure, NZ isn't [usually] cut off from the outside world, but it isn't a transit hub, somewhere you expect to visit to conclude a business deal or watch the away leg of a football match or a stop on a busy itinerary either. For related reasons NZ only had six known cases by mid March when they imposed that restriction. Italy had 21k cases and 1400 deaths at that point, with a few hundred more dying every day from that point onwards.

timClicks 7y ago

New Zealand is the only country that has a government that full elimination is a viable option. The modelling that drives the belief is 100% based on the best available science. You can read the papers yourself, they've already been released by the underlying institute: https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/2020/04/ https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/2020/04/. In particular "Modelling COVID-19 spread and the effects of Alert Level 4 in New Zealand" was highly persuasive https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/2020/04/09/a-stochastic-model-for-covid-19-spread-and-the-effects-of-alert-level-4-in-aotearoa-new-zealand/ https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/2020/04/09/a-stochastic-m...

morelisp 7y ago
> New Zealand is the only country that has a government that [thinks] full elimination is a viable option. Are you sure this isn't because NZ is one of very few countries where full elimination is a viable option?
- timClicks 7y ago
  It's more expensive for New Zealand to shut its borders than most countries. In a sense, we're least able to eliminate the virus because we're so heavily dependent on our international connectivity. We rely heavily on immigration. Our policy planners expect the population to grow every year because of new arrivals. That movement has other effects, like supporting house price inflation. Which itself impacts the banks' expectations and willingness to lend. And so on. Tourism and international education are very significant industries for us. Tourism employs about 1/7 workers. Even something that appears relatively domestic, such as growing food, relies on migrant workers from the Pacific.
javagram 7y ago
> New Zealand is the only country that has a government that full elimination is a viable option. The modelling that drives the belief is 100% based on the best available science. Isn’t Taiwan also on this path?

LatteLazy 7y ago

I don't know about NZs relationship with science (or how to quantify that). But compare them to other countries. The UK ignored the warning for weeks and did nothing until it was in a much worse position than most nations. The US is still struggling. And more widely, other countries are very anti science at the moment. The UK refuses to follow scientific advice on almost any subject. From Brexit to Badger Culls to fracking to emissions to drug policy, the UK gets excellent advice and does the opposite. The USA similarly has climate deniers running the federal government. Being pro science is very easy by comparison. I get where you're coming from, there are too many "isn't science great" articles and people agree with them from their own bias, not sense. But be careful, you may be making the opposite mistake. Or maybe you're right? :)

subsubsub 7y ago
What do you mean by scientific advice on Brexit?
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  It is softer science but there were many warnings of the problems to come with the approach including London's financial dependence, their current supppy and demand for workers being fulfilled by it and parts of the legal code left undefined by severed dependencies. Soft as the science may be it may be you just can't get a baby in a full month with any number of volunteer fertile not currently pregnant women and volunteer virile men. Regardless of one's views of the goals or even the geopolitics there were many predictable issues that would need to be addressed before a split that weren't to make the idea look and sound good but make the transition worse.

discreteevent 7y ago

Ireland's approach and results seem to be nearly identical.

procinct 7y ago

New Zealand definitely benefited a lot from being a remote island nation but our response also got a lot of things right. For example, being quick to implement travel restrictions and eventually a closed border. The other example that stood out to me was that the country decided to go into its highest level of lockdown when the first cases of community transmission were detected (I believe when it was decided we had 2 cases of community transmission). So I definitely agree that NZ benefited a lot by being more remote and having no land borders, but we are only doing so well because we didn’t underestimate the virus and took drastic action early.