5 ms·

> This was avoidable. Tens of thousands of deaths were avoidable. This is not really accurate. Also, looking at NZ is misleading -- they're a waterlocked islan

by dvt 7y ago

> This was avoidable. Tens of thousands of deaths were avoidable. This is not really accurate. Also, looking at NZ is misleading -- they're a waterlocked island with fairly restrictive travel even prior to COVID-19. It would have been very difficult to contain something as contagious as COVID-19 even with better leadership from the WHO, US, China, Trump, Obama (insert whomever you blame the most). In fact, there may be some evidence that it was spreading in France as early as December 2019.

EdwardDiego 7y ago
Multiple islands, two of them are pretty big even. And what do you mean by restrictive travel? We were a prominent tourist destination.
- blululu 7y ago
  Being a tourist destination and having tight travel restrictions are not mutually exclusive by any stretch. Relative to any other western country I New Zealand has very strict customs (Only the US could compete and our our border screening is pretty pathetic when you start to look at it). Most of New Zealand's restrictions center around bio-controls/plant inspection, but consequently the country maintains a pretty comprehensive screening process. Also being surrounded by 1000 miles of Ocean means that it is pretty easy to monitor the three international airports in the country. (Relative to say the Netherlands which has trains arriving in from 5 different countries in the same custom's union every day).
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
    > Three international airports 5 :) 3 of them are limited in destinations, only Christchurch and Auckland go direct to places other than Australia or the Pacific islands (Wellington Airport's runway isn't long enough for the bigger planes), but a lot of people coming here will fly via Aussie anyway. But I agree, we're definitely better placed in that regard, except we initially relied on self-isolation and well, that didn't work very well for us. If we'd actually implemented stringent testing at the airports, or mandatory and enforced quarantine (not that we had the facilities to do so), then we possibly could have avoided the lockdowns altogether. We closed the borders to all but citizens and permanent residents when we realised a fair proportion of tourists were ignoring the self-isolation requirements. One helicopter pilot at Franz Josef Glacier flew his passengers to the Police when they told him they'd just arrived in the country.
ImaCake 7y ago
Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea pulled off similar stunts. It's a repeatable success.
roca 7y ago
Not only did NZ get a lot of tourists, we also had a large diaspora who ran for home when the pandemic hit. In fact it's mostly the latter who imported COVID19 into NZ.
totetsu 7y ago
New Zealand had over 250,000 foreign visitors(excluding Oceania) in Jan 2020, and over 2.1 million in the Year ending December. How does this compare with the countries that didn't avoid mass deaths? Here is a list of places visitor came from: Asia China, People's Republic of Hong Kong (SAR) Indonesia India Japan Korea, Republic of Malaysia Philippines Singapore Thailand Taiwan Viet Nam Europe Austria Belgium Switzerland Germany Denmark Spain France United Kingdom Ireland Italy Netherlands Russia Sweden Americas Argentina Brazil Canada Chile United States of America Africa and the Middle East United Arab Emirates Israel South Africa I see this said a lot "New Zealand is a small island nation far from the world, so what works there is not applicable to other places" I never see anyone giving any evidence to this claim that there was not much travel to New Zealand. As far as I can see there was a lot of international visitors. https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/international-travel-january-2020 https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/international... https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/?filters=Tourism https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/?filters=Tour...

by dvt 7y ago

EdwardDiego 7y ago

Multiple islands, two of them are pretty big even. And what do you mean by restrictive travel? We were a prominent tourist destination.

blululu 7y ago
Being a tourist destination and having tight travel restrictions are not mutually exclusive by any stretch. Relative to any other western country I New Zealand has very strict customs (Only the US could compete and our our border screening is pretty pathetic when you start to look at it). Most of New Zealand's restrictions center around bio-controls/plant inspection, but consequently the country maintains a pretty comprehensive screening process. Also being surrounded by 1000 miles of Ocean means that it is pretty easy to monitor the three international airports in the country. (Relative to say the Netherlands which has trains arriving in from 5 different countries in the same custom's union every day).
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  > Three international airports 5 :) 3 of them are limited in destinations, only Christchurch and Auckland go direct to places other than Australia or the Pacific islands (Wellington Airport's runway isn't long enough for the bigger planes), but a lot of people coming here will fly via Aussie anyway. But I agree, we're definitely better placed in that regard, except we initially relied on self-isolation and well, that didn't work very well for us. If we'd actually implemented stringent testing at the airports, or mandatory and enforced quarantine (not that we had the facilities to do so), then we possibly could have avoided the lockdowns altogether. We closed the borders to all but citizens and permanent residents when we realised a fair proportion of tourists were ignoring the self-isolation requirements. One helicopter pilot at Franz Josef Glacier flew his passengers to the Police when they told him they'd just arrived in the country.

ImaCake 7y ago

Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea pulled off similar stunts. It's a repeatable success.

roca 7y ago

Not only did NZ get a lot of tourists, we also had a large diaspora who ran for home when the pandemic hit. In fact it's mostly the latter who imported COVID19 into NZ.

totetsu 7y ago

New Zealand had over 250,000 foreign visitors(excluding Oceania) in Jan 2020, and over 2.1 million in the Year ending December. How does this compare with the countries that didn't avoid mass deaths? Here is a list of places visitor came from: Asia China, People's Republic of Hong Kong (SAR) Indonesia India Japan Korea, Republic of Malaysia Philippines Singapore Thailand Taiwan Viet Nam Europe Austria Belgium Switzerland Germany Denmark Spain France United Kingdom Ireland Italy Netherlands Russia Sweden Americas Argentina Brazil Canada Chile United States of America Africa and the Middle East United Arab Emirates Israel South Africa I see this said a lot "New Zealand is a small island nation far from the world, so what works there is not applicable to other places" I never see anyone giving any evidence to this claim that there was not much travel to New Zealand. As far as I can see there was a lot of international visitors. https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/international-travel-january-2020 https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/international... https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/?filters=Tourism https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/?filters=Tour...