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NZ is already reopened (internally, not to foreign travel) without masks or social distancing. They also reopened travel with most states of Australia. The pop

NZ is already reopened (internally, not to foreign travel) without masks or social distancing. They also reopened travel with most states of Australia. The population got on board with the lockdown so it was short and effective. The US efforts in that regard are ineffectual so the half-assed lockdown and mask wearing will need to continue indefinitely until there is a vaccine, which is the only hope left.

redis_mlc 6y ago
> The US efforts in that regard are ineffectual so the half-assed lockdown and mask wearing will need continue indefinitely until there is a vaccine, which is the only hope left. - The US received 100,000 airline passengers per week from Wuhan and Shanghai, and pax kept arriving after the travel ban via Africa and Canada afterwards - the CDC initially provided non-working test kits for weeks - the CDC and China should have started work on the vaccine after SARS-1 in 2003 - the US has 50 states and thus decentralized mgmt. - the only hope for the US is herd immunity, so hug a stranger today!
repsilat 6y ago
> it was short and effective This raises some questions about the flu though, right? The COVID lockdown effect mostly stopped the virus getting a toehold in the country. Does this imply that the flu is mostly imported too? Maybe the short, sharp lockdown did stop the flu, but it feels more plausible to me that the ongoing severe border controls are what's keeping it down while the country more or less goes about life as normal.
- throwaheyy 6y ago
  The border controls and quarantine stopped importation to the community, the lockdown on gatherings stopped transmission within the community. Both measures together likely stopped the flu just as they stopped the coronavirus. Keep in mind that both the flu and Covid are transmitted in the same way, respiratorily, but the flu is much less contagious, so eliminating transmission of the coronavirus is almost certainly also going to eliminate transmission of the flu. Australia saw a similar effect, the flu season in NSW was one tenth of what it normally is.
  - repsilat 6y ago
    Right, but NZ has had a pretty light lockdown compared to other countries. To use the language of other posts, if the "reservoirs" of influenza were uniformly distributed, we'd expect NZ to have more flu than the United States or Europe where (time-integrated) lockdowns have been stricter. Look at the pre-election videos covering campaigning in New Zealand -- crowds of maskless people, politicians hugging supporters etc. Stadiums full of rugby supporters. Not a COVID transmission risk, but wrt the flu it's obviously no different from a regular season -- except for the borders. In San Francisco people are distancing a lot more. It's understandable why we have more COVID cases, but when winter rolls around it'll be very interesting to see if the same difference in flu cases is seen. A non-uniform distribution of reservoirs might be something we can conclude with borders closed.

redis_mlc 6y ago

> The US efforts in that regard are ineffectual so the half-assed lockdown and mask wearing will need continue indefinitely until there is a vaccine, which is the only hope left. - The US received 100,000 airline passengers per week from Wuhan and Shanghai, and pax kept arriving after the travel ban via Africa and Canada afterwards - the CDC initially provided non-working test kits for weeks - the CDC and China should have started work on the vaccine after SARS-1 in 2003 - the US has 50 states and thus decentralized mgmt. - the only hope for the US is herd immunity, so hug a stranger today!

repsilat 6y ago

> it was short and effective This raises some questions about the flu though, right? The COVID lockdown effect mostly stopped the virus getting a toehold in the country. Does this imply that the flu is mostly imported too? Maybe the short, sharp lockdown did stop the flu, but it feels more plausible to me that the ongoing severe border controls are what's keeping it down while the country more or less goes about life as normal.

throwaheyy 6y ago
The border controls and quarantine stopped importation to the community, the lockdown on gatherings stopped transmission within the community. Both measures together likely stopped the flu just as they stopped the coronavirus. Keep in mind that both the flu and Covid are transmitted in the same way, respiratorily, but the flu is much less contagious, so eliminating transmission of the coronavirus is almost certainly also going to eliminate transmission of the flu. Australia saw a similar effect, the flu season in NSW was one tenth of what it normally is.
- repsilat 6y ago
  Right, but NZ has had a pretty light lockdown compared to other countries. To use the language of other posts, if the "reservoirs" of influenza were uniformly distributed, we'd expect NZ to have more flu than the United States or Europe where (time-integrated) lockdowns have been stricter. Look at the pre-election videos covering campaigning in New Zealand -- crowds of maskless people, politicians hugging supporters etc. Stadiums full of rugby supporters. Not a COVID transmission risk, but wrt the flu it's obviously no different from a regular season -- except for the borders. In San Francisco people are distancing a lot more. It's understandable why we have more COVID cases, but when winter rolls around it'll be very interesting to see if the same difference in flu cases is seen. A non-uniform distribution of reservoirs might be something we can conclude with borders closed.