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Pretty stupid, their citizens will never develop herd immunity. And what then, when they open up, one person will tumble everything down again.

gunn 7y ago
It buys time to prepare, and for vaccines and other treatments.
- y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
  Yes, this point is being strongly overlooked. Worst case scenario they end up like the rest of the world now with a struggling economy and thousands of cases. By closing their borders it gives them time to build up their healthcare infrastructure, wait for vaccines and other experimental treatments to be vetted so by the time their borders open up again it won't devastate the country like it has everywhere else. These are all luxuries every nation wishes it could have taken advantage of. Criticizing New Zealand's response right now is extremely premature.
  - vondur 7y ago
    Isn't tourism a large portion of the economy there? I'd imagine this isn't going to help. Although no one is really traveling now, so maybe the damage is already done.
    - AnotherGoodName 7y ago
      For New Zealand the largest source of tourists are from Australia. The opposite isn't true due to the nations population imbalance but New Zealand is still a large source of tourism for Australia. It may surprise some people but the number of Australians that visit countries overseas is roughly equal to tourists visiting Australia. As wealthy diversified nations tourism for Australia and New Zealand is a net wash in terms of foreign cash flows. Citizens spend as much overseas as tourists coming to Australia. The issue isn't foreign currency gains/losses but a more simple case of the economy and jobs are setup to service a certain number of tourists who are no longer there. Both nations leaders have met and discussed encouraging bilateral tourism. Honeymoons, family overseas trips, etc. will be bilateral and internal for the time being. If the previously external tourism can be directed internally it'll actually more or less be a wash on topline numbers.
logjammin 7y ago
Eh it's just as well, NZ could use an environmental breather from all the tourism. Silver linings.
- xupybd 7y ago
  Maybe. The effects of a weakened economy often mean a switch from caring about the environment to caring about bottom lines. It's harder to push green regulation when compliance costs will cause job losses.
  - mantas 7y ago
    So cause damage and then try to fix it vs don't cause damage in the first place?
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Unfortunately tourism is often what makes the environment justify its opportunity cost when it isn't an effective "local service". It isn't great for economy, workers, or the environment but it is a very workable compromise that is better off than the worst case for all three.
soperj 7y ago
Pretty stupid to develop herd immunity for a virus when you don't even know if herd immunity is possible, or any immunity for that matter.
- Gwypaas 7y ago
  How can a vaccine ever work if it's impossible to develop immunity by reacting to it?
  - BeefySwain 7y ago
    There is no guarantee that a vaccine is possible.
    - Gwypaas 7y ago
      Exactly what I'm getting at. They tend to use similar mechanisms, though vaccine being the more or less completely safe path. What could alter the course though is if some treatment is found which makes it essentially harmless, even if immunity would be impossible.
  - akiselev 7y ago
    If there are many different strains loose in a region that don't confer immunity to each other and immunity only last a year people could be perpetually sick with the virus. A vaccine combines a variety of weak or inactive strains that give your immune system a big picture view of the virus to develop a comprehensive response to COVID-19 instead of COVID-19 Strain 93A. The flu vaccine works the same way: scientists predict which strains are the most likely to spread and create or find weaker strains that are all combined into a single vaccine.
    - Gwypaas 7y ago
      That's an interesting and important point. Luckily it seems to mutate 10x slower than influenza viruses and so far no different strains have been found. Finding new strains would also thwart some of the current work on vaccines being done. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/coronavirus-strains-transmissible/611239/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/coronavir...
halostatue 7y ago
Over thousands of years, no herd immunity has ever been developed for smallpox, measles, chickenpox, or various other diseases. Only vaccine development allowed the creation of any level of herd immunity. There’s no such thing as “natural herd immunity” in the real world.
- learc83 7y ago
  That's absurd. Why do you think that a particular smallpox or measles epidemic dies out? Because enough people have been infected in a given population that it can no longer spread in that population. That doesn't mean the disease will go extinct, but the epidemic will end in that population. Flare ups can still happen among sub groups of people in the population who aren't immune but the disease won't spread rapidly through the population as a whole until the number of people who are immune drops below the herd immunity threshold for that particular disease/community.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Whether or not "herd immunity" is the right term, Europeans were sure a lot better protected against smallpox than the inhabitants of the Americas were when said Europeans arrived and started spreading the disease.
- Taniwha 7y ago
  nor coronaviruses, those pesky colds stay with us because the antibodies don't last
LeifCarrotson 7y ago
Herd immunity isn't a thing for coronavirus yet. Herd immunity only works when you have an effective vaccine/treatment, and it only helps the people who aren't eligible for that treatment. Given the coronavirus R0, you might achieve herd immunity when 75% of the population has been infected. Achieving herd immunity by letting the virus slowly spread until 0.5% or 1% of your people to die is a loss condition, that's millions of deaths. It's certainly better than letting it spread like wildfire and overwhelm hospitals so that 5% of your people die, no question there, but still not good.
- luckylion 7y ago
  The alternative is indefinite lock down and lots of prayers for an effective vaccine?
  - procinct 7y ago
    Not indefinite lock down, but tight border controls. There are only a couple of hundred active cases in NZ currently. We are looking at exiting from our stricter lockdown next week.
legulere 7y ago
Herd immunity hasn't been achieved anywhere and with around a half percent infection fatality rate that doesn't seem like something you would like to get to.
- busymom0 7y ago
  It’s lower than half percent now. Around 0.2-0.3% and probably going to go even more lower.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    any source? I know that many people who have it don't go to hospital unless severe (have few colleagues like that), plus tons of +-asymptomatic folks, but these are just words, no hard data
    - busymom0 7y ago
      Source from April 25: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/2-7-million-in-new-york-may-have-been-infected-study-finds-nj-poised-to-top-100k-cases/2388182/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/2-7-million-in-new-yor... > With 271,000-plus confirmed cases, the mortality rate would be as high as 6 percent. With 2.7 million cases, it would be around 0.5 percent -- much lower, though still much higher than the seasonal flu. 0.5% in New York as of April 25. Since New York is the worst case so far in US, overall, the fatality rate drops to 0.2-0.3%. You say: > I know that many people who have it don't go to hospital unless severe (have few colleagues like that), plus tons of +-asymptomatic folks That's exactly why the true mortality rate is much LOWER. Mortality rate's denominator is supposed to be the true number of infected. So asymptomatic and others with anti-bodies means the true denominator is much higher and thus the true mortality rate is much lower.
  - vkou 7y ago
    It's much higher than than. New York had an ~1% IFR.
    - 7y ago
AnotherGoodName 7y ago
As if herd immunity is the only way. Note that Australians and New Zealanders don't have immunity to a lot of things. We're don't have herd immunity to Ebola. Instead we just don't let it take hold. We have 0 cases of rabies. It no longer exists in any animals. Cholera is almost non-existent. Occasionally a flight will come in that causes some alarm but that's it. Malaria only comes from people who traveled abroad. Our cows aren't immune to mad cow disease. But we don't have any cases here. It's amazing what a bit of distance and quarantine can achieve. The two nations are also close to eliminating COVID-19 internally. Sure international travel will have to remain restricted but it's really not a big deal. Trade is still happening, just not tourism.
- sergiotapia 7y ago
  >The two nations are also close to eliminating COVID-19 internally. And all it takes is one person to coof somewhere in their country and bada bing you're toast. I don't see how this is beneficial, unless moving forward they has no travel period which is completely unrealistic.
  - quixoticelixer- 7y ago
    Except that's not the case at all. It is easy to track and isolate a small number of cases. The New Zealand government listens to its advises who know more than you do.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      New Zealand has had fairly strict lockdown measures even though new cases have been in the single digits for weeks. This suggests that they think contact tracing can't control even a small number of cases without extreme additional measures.
      - pixelbash 7y ago
        Because if we do that now hopefully we won't have to do it again.
Thriptic 7y ago
They wait until a vaccine is available. That is obviously what they are shooting for using this tactic. It's actually very smart. You can try to achieve herd immunity if vaccination proves nearly impossible, but why not wait and see while you can?
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >but why not wait and see while you can? Wait for how long? We've never turned around a vaccine in under 18 months, and some pathogens don't have vaccines and have been around forever. What if it takes 24 months to develop an effective vaccine? Do we lockdown for that long?
  - iso947 7y ago
    You quarantine for that long. NZ is easily isolated, and self sufficient. As long as the deaths keep mounting elsewhere in the world NZ populous might be happy to have no international flights for 24 months.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
daxfohl 7y ago
Even in countries hit hard by it, those will not develop herd immunity because there are enough people able to work from home. This is especially true in affluent tech hub areas like Silicon Valley and Seattle. So even if the country hits the 0.7 infection rate threshold (or whatever), it's still unlikely to be able to open completely.

gunn 7y ago

It buys time to prepare, and for vaccines and other treatments.

y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
Yes, this point is being strongly overlooked. Worst case scenario they end up like the rest of the world now with a struggling economy and thousands of cases. By closing their borders it gives them time to build up their healthcare infrastructure, wait for vaccines and other experimental treatments to be vetted so by the time their borders open up again it won't devastate the country like it has everywhere else. These are all luxuries every nation wishes it could have taken advantage of. Criticizing New Zealand's response right now is extremely premature.
- vondur 7y ago
  Isn't tourism a large portion of the economy there? I'd imagine this isn't going to help. Although no one is really traveling now, so maybe the damage is already done.
  - AnotherGoodName 7y ago
    For New Zealand the largest source of tourists are from Australia. The opposite isn't true due to the nations population imbalance but New Zealand is still a large source of tourism for Australia. It may surprise some people but the number of Australians that visit countries overseas is roughly equal to tourists visiting Australia. As wealthy diversified nations tourism for Australia and New Zealand is a net wash in terms of foreign cash flows. Citizens spend as much overseas as tourists coming to Australia. The issue isn't foreign currency gains/losses but a more simple case of the economy and jobs are setup to service a certain number of tourists who are no longer there. Both nations leaders have met and discussed encouraging bilateral tourism. Honeymoons, family overseas trips, etc. will be bilateral and internal for the time being. If the previously external tourism can be directed internally it'll actually more or less be a wash on topline numbers.

logjammin 7y ago

Eh it's just as well, NZ could use an environmental breather from all the tourism. Silver linings.

xupybd 7y ago
Maybe. The effects of a weakened economy often mean a switch from caring about the environment to caring about bottom lines. It's harder to push green regulation when compliance costs will cause job losses.
- mantas 7y ago
  So cause damage and then try to fix it vs don't cause damage in the first place?
Nasrudith 7y ago
Unfortunately tourism is often what makes the environment justify its opportunity cost when it isn't an effective "local service". It isn't great for economy, workers, or the environment but it is a very workable compromise that is better off than the worst case for all three.

soperj 7y ago

Pretty stupid to develop herd immunity for a virus when you don't even know if herd immunity is possible, or any immunity for that matter.

Gwypaas 7y ago
How can a vaccine ever work if it's impossible to develop immunity by reacting to it?
- BeefySwain 7y ago
  There is no guarantee that a vaccine is possible.
  - Gwypaas 7y ago
    Exactly what I'm getting at. They tend to use similar mechanisms, though vaccine being the more or less completely safe path. What could alter the course though is if some treatment is found which makes it essentially harmless, even if immunity would be impossible.
- akiselev 7y ago
  If there are many different strains loose in a region that don't confer immunity to each other and immunity only last a year people could be perpetually sick with the virus. A vaccine combines a variety of weak or inactive strains that give your immune system a big picture view of the virus to develop a comprehensive response to COVID-19 instead of COVID-19 Strain 93A. The flu vaccine works the same way: scientists predict which strains are the most likely to spread and create or find weaker strains that are all combined into a single vaccine.
  - Gwypaas 7y ago
    That's an interesting and important point. Luckily it seems to mutate 10x slower than influenza viruses and so far no different strains have been found. Finding new strains would also thwart some of the current work on vaccines being done. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/coronavirus-strains-transmissible/611239/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/coronavir...

halostatue 7y ago

Over thousands of years, no herd immunity has ever been developed for smallpox, measles, chickenpox, or various other diseases. Only vaccine development allowed the creation of any level of herd immunity. There’s no such thing as “natural herd immunity” in the real world.

learc83 7y ago
That's absurd. Why do you think that a particular smallpox or measles epidemic dies out? Because enough people have been infected in a given population that it can no longer spread in that population. That doesn't mean the disease will go extinct, but the epidemic will end in that population. Flare ups can still happen among sub groups of people in the population who aren't immune but the disease won't spread rapidly through the population as a whole until the number of people who are immune drops below the herd immunity threshold for that particular disease/community.
ghaff 7y ago
Whether or not "herd immunity" is the right term, Europeans were sure a lot better protected against smallpox than the inhabitants of the Americas were when said Europeans arrived and started spreading the disease.
Taniwha 7y ago
nor coronaviruses, those pesky colds stay with us because the antibodies don't last

LeifCarrotson 7y ago

Herd immunity isn't a thing for coronavirus yet. Herd immunity only works when you have an effective vaccine/treatment, and it only helps the people who aren't eligible for that treatment. Given the coronavirus R0, you might achieve herd immunity when 75% of the population has been infected. Achieving herd immunity by letting the virus slowly spread until 0.5% or 1% of your people to die is a loss condition, that's millions of deaths. It's certainly better than letting it spread like wildfire and overwhelm hospitals so that 5% of your people die, no question there, but still not good.

luckylion 7y ago
The alternative is indefinite lock down and lots of prayers for an effective vaccine?
- procinct 7y ago
  Not indefinite lock down, but tight border controls. There are only a couple of hundred active cases in NZ currently. We are looking at exiting from our stricter lockdown next week.

legulere 7y ago

Herd immunity hasn't been achieved anywhere and with around a half percent infection fatality rate that doesn't seem like something you would like to get to.

busymom0 7y ago
It’s lower than half percent now. Around 0.2-0.3% and probably going to go even more lower.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  any source? I know that many people who have it don't go to hospital unless severe (have few colleagues like that), plus tons of +-asymptomatic folks, but these are just words, no hard data
  - busymom0 7y ago
    Source from April 25: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/2-7-million-in-new-york-may-have-been-infected-study-finds-nj-poised-to-top-100k-cases/2388182/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/2-7-million-in-new-yor... > With 271,000-plus confirmed cases, the mortality rate would be as high as 6 percent. With 2.7 million cases, it would be around 0.5 percent -- much lower, though still much higher than the seasonal flu. 0.5% in New York as of April 25. Since New York is the worst case so far in US, overall, the fatality rate drops to 0.2-0.3%. You say: > I know that many people who have it don't go to hospital unless severe (have few colleagues like that), plus tons of +-asymptomatic folks That's exactly why the true mortality rate is much LOWER. Mortality rate's denominator is supposed to be the true number of infected. So asymptomatic and others with anti-bodies means the true denominator is much higher and thus the true mortality rate is much lower.
- vkou 7y ago
  It's much higher than than. New York had an ~1% IFR.
  - 7y ago

AnotherGoodName 7y ago

As if herd immunity is the only way. Note that Australians and New Zealanders don't have immunity to a lot of things. We're don't have herd immunity to Ebola. Instead we just don't let it take hold. We have 0 cases of rabies. It no longer exists in any animals. Cholera is almost non-existent. Occasionally a flight will come in that causes some alarm but that's it. Malaria only comes from people who traveled abroad. Our cows aren't immune to mad cow disease. But we don't have any cases here. It's amazing what a bit of distance and quarantine can achieve. The two nations are also close to eliminating COVID-19 internally. Sure international travel will have to remain restricted but it's really not a big deal. Trade is still happening, just not tourism.

sergiotapia 7y ago
>The two nations are also close to eliminating COVID-19 internally. And all it takes is one person to coof somewhere in their country and bada bing you're toast. I don't see how this is beneficial, unless moving forward they has no travel period which is completely unrealistic.
- quixoticelixer- 7y ago
  Except that's not the case at all. It is easy to track and isolate a small number of cases. The New Zealand government listens to its advises who know more than you do.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    New Zealand has had fairly strict lockdown measures even though new cases have been in the single digits for weeks. This suggests that they think contact tracing can't control even a small number of cases without extreme additional measures.
    - pixelbash 7y ago
      Because if we do that now hopefully we won't have to do it again.

Thriptic 7y ago

They wait until a vaccine is available. That is obviously what they are shooting for using this tactic. It's actually very smart. You can try to achieve herd immunity if vaccination proves nearly impossible, but why not wait and see while you can?

macspoofing 7y ago
>but why not wait and see while you can? Wait for how long? We've never turned around a vaccine in under 18 months, and some pathogens don't have vaccines and have been around forever. What if it takes 24 months to develop an effective vaccine? Do we lockdown for that long?
- iso947 7y ago
  You quarantine for that long. NZ is easily isolated, and self sufficient. As long as the deaths keep mounting elsewhere in the world NZ populous might be happy to have no international flights for 24 months.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

daxfohl 7y ago

Even in countries hit hard by it, those will not develop herd immunity because there are enough people able to work from home. This is especially true in affluent tech hub areas like Silicon Valley and Seattle. So even if the country hits the 0.7 infection rate threshold (or whatever), it's still unlikely to be able to open completely.