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What I do not see anyone talking about is the economic and social effects of having closed borders for 1.5+ years (until the population is sufficiently vaccinat

by koyote 6y ago

What I do not see anyone talking about is the economic and social effects of having closed borders for 1.5+ years (until the population is sufficiently vaccinated). NZ's tourism industry is a large chunk of their GDP and will be reduced significantly until borders are open again. Re-opening borders after elimination is political suicide as all you need is one person to start the whole thing again.

zapzupnz 6y ago
I thought the borders would reopen once we exit alert level 1? They're not planning to drop out of level 1 for 1.5 years? I hadn't heard this.
- koyote 6y ago
  I don't think there's any information on how long level 1 would last. I am just wondering what the strategy on borders would be if you are going for elimination. Surely once you have opened the borders it is only a matter of time for a new case to be imported (if you look at NSW right now, we've had a week of no local transmission but near-daily new cases for returned travellers, who are luckily in forced quarantine). You could force-quarantine everyone for 14 days but I would not call that an 'open' border and it wouldn't do much to help the tourism industry.
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    Once the number of cases falls below a certain level it becomes feasible to test every visitor, contact-trace every infection, and only quarantine the people who need it. This is a strategy that has worked well to fight other communicable diseases for which there is no vaccine.
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    > near-daily new cases for returned travellers, who are luckily in forced quarantine How do you do that though? People arrive at the airport and take a taxi or train to a hotel? Thst's how a lot of the early spread started in Sweden: tourists returned from skiing in the italian alps in the last week of February, and infected taxi drivers.
    - koyote 6y ago
      I am not quite sure how the transport works here (Australia) but it's most definitely not a random taxi. The hotels are paid for and organised by the government and are guarded to ensure no one goes in/leaves, so I assume the transport to the hotels is also tightly monitored and the safety of drivers is ensured. I believe China has similar procedures. Before the hotels we had self-quarantine and that actually caused an Uber driver to become infected when he drove a cruise ship passenger home.
roca 6y ago
NZ tourist spending was 60% domestic pre-COVID. A lot of outbound tourism also happens that will be going domestic now. We also expect to have a "travel bubble" with Australia and possibly other countries where COVID is effectively eliminated --- Australia was 50% of international visitors pre-COVID. Other affected industries are international students and TV/film production. We will be admitting people for those with at least a 14-day quarantine and testing. That's not much fun but if you're a student or a media producer NZ looks like a particularly good destination at this time. All assuming we can keep COVID down, of course, which we shouldn't take for granted. Yeah, our economy's going to hurt, but countries wracked by ongoing COVID and various levels of lockdown for the forseeable future will suffer worse.

by koyote 6y ago

zapzupnz 6y ago

I thought the borders would reopen once we exit alert level 1? They're not planning to drop out of level 1 for 1.5 years? I hadn't heard this.

koyote 6y ago
I don't think there's any information on how long level 1 would last. I am just wondering what the strategy on borders would be if you are going for elimination. Surely once you have opened the borders it is only a matter of time for a new case to be imported (if you look at NSW right now, we've had a week of no local transmission but near-daily new cases for returned travellers, who are luckily in forced quarantine). You could force-quarantine everyone for 14 days but I would not call that an 'open' border and it wouldn't do much to help the tourism industry.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  Once the number of cases falls below a certain level it becomes feasible to test every visitor, contact-trace every infection, and only quarantine the people who need it. This is a strategy that has worked well to fight other communicable diseases for which there is no vaccine.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  > near-daily new cases for returned travellers, who are luckily in forced quarantine How do you do that though? People arrive at the airport and take a taxi or train to a hotel? Thst's how a lot of the early spread started in Sweden: tourists returned from skiing in the italian alps in the last week of February, and infected taxi drivers.
  - koyote 6y ago
    I am not quite sure how the transport works here (Australia) but it's most definitely not a random taxi. The hotels are paid for and organised by the government and are guarded to ensure no one goes in/leaves, so I assume the transport to the hotels is also tightly monitored and the safety of drivers is ensured. I believe China has similar procedures. Before the hotels we had self-quarantine and that actually caused an Uber driver to become infected when he drove a cruise ship passenger home.

roca 6y ago

NZ tourist spending was 60% domestic pre-COVID. A lot of outbound tourism also happens that will be going domestic now. We also expect to have a "travel bubble" with Australia and possibly other countries where COVID is effectively eliminated --- Australia was 50% of international visitors pre-COVID. Other affected industries are international students and TV/film production. We will be admitting people for those with at least a 14-day quarantine and testing. That's not much fun but if you're a student or a media producer NZ looks like a particularly good destination at this time. All assuming we can keep COVID down, of course, which we shouldn't take for granted. Yeah, our economy's going to hurt, but countries wracked by ongoing COVID and various levels of lockdown for the forseeable future will suffer worse.