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I don't think the NZ strategy was ever viable for Europe and the US. They have very integrated economies that rely on massive amounts of travel and freight move

I don't think the NZ strategy was ever viable for Europe and the US. They have very integrated economies that rely on massive amounts of travel and freight movement, at the same time they have very fractured political systems.

vkou 6y ago
NZ relies on an incredible amount of international trade to survive. It's a tiny island nation that is in no way economically independent from its trading partners. And yet, they've figured out how to stop both community spread, and travel-related spread.
- bb123 6y ago
  I mentioned this in a comment above but the U.K. and New Zealand are on Different scales when it comes internationalism. The U.K. ranks 4th worldwide for international travellers per capita, and New Zealand 38th. Looking at the numbers for international trade as a percentage of GDP, NZ quite below the global average, whereas the UK way above it. NZ has the advantage of size and geography too. It’s largest city is 1/10th size of London and it’s overall far, far less densely populated - the UK has pop density of 279/km2 vs 19/km2 for NZ. So while what they have been able to achieve is admirable, if there was one country that should be able to do it, it was New Zealand. Tiny, wealthy and isolated. Expecting other countries to be able to do the same doesn’t make sense.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Have you a source on your travel statistic? I’d been trying to find something like that but the sources have been terrible. In isolation I’m not sure of the relevance of the comparison between NZ and UK regarding travel frequency. New Zealand’s largest economic sector was tourism. Pretty much every tourist flew in, and tourists are in close proximity to each other for 4+ hours. It doesn’t matter how often New Zealanders fly internationally if tourists come in infected. The UK has international flights that last a 15-20 minutes. This could give you covid for sure, but it may avoid infecting the whole plane. A total of about 3.8 million tourists arrived in NZ in 2019, a number equivalent to about 75% of NZs population. The UK had about 38 million tourists in 2018 (most recent numbers available) and that equates to about 56% of the UKs population. NZ had a lot of tourists relative to its population. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_New_Zealand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_New_Zealand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_United_Kingdo... Even now we are getting people fly in with covid every day, usually several cases and this is happening without there being international tourism anymore. The UK doesn’t even require self isolation in all cases and having tried asking people to self isolate in NZ, we know exactly how it doesn’t work. Managed isolation is hard enough to get right. https://www.gov.uk/uk-border-control https://www.gov.uk/uk-border-control Overall, what happened in NZ was impossible in the UK due to a lack of will, not anything else. NZ was willing to sacrifice it’s largest industry. How would you describe the approach used in the UK? It doesn’t appear to have a particular focus or goal.
    - bb123 6y ago
      Sure, source: https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPassengers.html https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPasse... I don’t believe the tourism argument holds up in the slightest either. The UK has the fourth largest number of yearly inbound tourists visitors in the world. New Zealand is 69th. Source: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/ST.INT.ARVL/rankings https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/ST.INT.ARVL/rank... The degree to which the UK is connected to the world is just on a different scale to New Zealand. That’s before you even consider the geography, population density, and wealth distribution sides of the argument. It was always going to be more difficult to control it in the UK. I don’t think lack of will is a valid excuse either. What country doesn’t want to get back to normal as quickly as possible? Why is it that only this tiny island in the Pacific has managed to do it? Is every single other country is simply that incompetent? It just doesn’t make sense. There has to be other factors involved.
      - lostlogin 6y ago
        > The U.K. ranks 4th worldwide for international travellers per capita, and New Zealand 38th. > Sure, source https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPassengers.html https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPasse... If you order that list by ‘per capita’ NZ is way above the UK, 13th versus 24th. I think you have misread it and got the absolute number of travellers. > The degree to which the UK is connected to the world is just on a different scale to New Zealand. In absolute numbers, yes, per capita, no. With covid the thing that matters is people coming into contact. The ratio tourists/population matters. NZ has a lot of travel and relative to it’s population, a lot more than the UK. And NZs population travel a lot more. > I don’t believe the tourism argument holds up in the slightest either. How so? Tourists bring in covid. If you look at things relative to the population, NZ has a lot of people moving a lot of the time. NZ may be a small, far away islands (it’s bigger than the UK geographically), but the approach NZ used wasn’t invented here and is not novel. It was copied from others that had success. Interestingly, a lot of good policy came from South Korea. South Korea copied it from the NHS. Others have had good results too, NZ is not alone at any stretch and did not pioneer it’s policies. I’m sure there are other factors and many of them. However the UK leaders have not done well and have contributed hugely to the problems. The ignoring of advice from experts is incredible - why set up systems if you don’t want them? They continue to ignore the most basic advice and get exactly the outcome one would expect, covid.
- postingawayonhn 6y ago
  In per capita terms yes, but in absolute terms not so much. Trade in goods is also mostly via very long sea journeys which off course act as a sort of quarantine period. In terms of air travel Auckland is the only hub airport and the number of transit passengers is quite small.
graeme 6y ago
The UK is an island. Scotland and North Ireland were down to pretty much zero transmission by summer. It would have been feasible for the whole UK. Continental europe would have faced a harder time coordinating it.
- bb123 6y ago
  I disagree. The UK’s economy is far more international than New Zealand’s. The U.K. ranks 4th worldwide for international travellers per capita, and New Zealand 38th. Shutting down air travel to the financial centre of the world would have been an incredibly risky move at the time. It may have been the right move in hindsight, but at the time it was far easier for the tiny island on the edge of the world to even consider doing it.
  - graeme 6y ago
    I don’t mean in march necessarily. But the UK never implemented testing at the border or isolation for travellers in any rigorous way. They could have done this sometime over the summer. Going zero covid has huge economic benefits. And with testing you could let business travellers in with a modified isolation.
    - postingawayonhn 6y ago
      It was only worth doing in March. Because there were so few cases NZ got down to zero in about 5 weeks. Once the cases numbers build up the time and economic cost to get to zero is unfeasible.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    > The U.K. ranks 4th worldwide for international travellers per capita, and New Zealand 38th. If the below is the source, you’re citing an absolute, not per capita stat. NZ ranks significantly above the UK for travel per capita, and the UK population do not travel that much. https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPassengers.html https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPasse...
- 6y ago
tialaramex 6y ago
Elimination strategy works, and other strategies don't work. This isn't a novel insight, it's how infectious diseases programmes work regardless, Guinea worm: Elimination strategy. Rinderpest: Elimination strategy. Polio: Elimination strategy. Smallpox: Elimination strategy. It was never a question of whether it was "viable" except in the sense of whether political will existed to act. In the US and to a lesser extent Europe, that will did not exist. The UK absolutely could have chosen to not have tens of thousands of people die for no purpose, but its political leadership were focused, as ever, on what's in it for them. How much can we exploit this to line our own pockets, how many old mates can be rewarded? Sure, people are dying, but isn't this a perfect chance to loot the corpses?

vkou 6y ago

NZ relies on an incredible amount of international trade to survive. It's a tiny island nation that is in no way economically independent from its trading partners. And yet, they've figured out how to stop both community spread, and travel-related spread.

bb123 6y ago
I mentioned this in a comment above but the U.K. and New Zealand are on Different scales when it comes internationalism. The U.K. ranks 4th worldwide for international travellers per capita, and New Zealand 38th. Looking at the numbers for international trade as a percentage of GDP, NZ quite below the global average, whereas the UK way above it. NZ has the advantage of size and geography too. It’s largest city is 1/10th size of London and it’s overall far, far less densely populated - the UK has pop density of 279/km2 vs 19/km2 for NZ. So while what they have been able to achieve is admirable, if there was one country that should be able to do it, it was New Zealand. Tiny, wealthy and isolated. Expecting other countries to be able to do the same doesn’t make sense.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Have you a source on your travel statistic? I’d been trying to find something like that but the sources have been terrible. In isolation I’m not sure of the relevance of the comparison between NZ and UK regarding travel frequency. New Zealand’s largest economic sector was tourism. Pretty much every tourist flew in, and tourists are in close proximity to each other for 4+ hours. It doesn’t matter how often New Zealanders fly internationally if tourists come in infected. The UK has international flights that last a 15-20 minutes. This could give you covid for sure, but it may avoid infecting the whole plane. A total of about 3.8 million tourists arrived in NZ in 2019, a number equivalent to about 75% of NZs population. The UK had about 38 million tourists in 2018 (most recent numbers available) and that equates to about 56% of the UKs population. NZ had a lot of tourists relative to its population. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_New_Zealand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_New_Zealand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_United_Kingdo... Even now we are getting people fly in with covid every day, usually several cases and this is happening without there being international tourism anymore. The UK doesn’t even require self isolation in all cases and having tried asking people to self isolate in NZ, we know exactly how it doesn’t work. Managed isolation is hard enough to get right. https://www.gov.uk/uk-border-control https://www.gov.uk/uk-border-control Overall, what happened in NZ was impossible in the UK due to a lack of will, not anything else. NZ was willing to sacrifice it’s largest industry. How would you describe the approach used in the UK? It doesn’t appear to have a particular focus or goal.
  - bb123 6y ago
    Sure, source: https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPassengers.html https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPasse... I don’t believe the tourism argument holds up in the slightest either. The UK has the fourth largest number of yearly inbound tourists visitors in the world. New Zealand is 69th. Source: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/ST.INT.ARVL/rankings https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/ST.INT.ARVL/rank... The degree to which the UK is connected to the world is just on a different scale to New Zealand. That’s before you even consider the geography, population density, and wealth distribution sides of the argument. It was always going to be more difficult to control it in the UK. I don’t think lack of will is a valid excuse either. What country doesn’t want to get back to normal as quickly as possible? Why is it that only this tiny island in the Pacific has managed to do it? Is every single other country is simply that incompetent? It just doesn’t make sense. There has to be other factors involved.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      > The U.K. ranks 4th worldwide for international travellers per capita, and New Zealand 38th. > Sure, source https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPassengers.html https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPasse... If you order that list by ‘per capita’ NZ is way above the UK, 13th versus 24th. I think you have misread it and got the absolute number of travellers. > The degree to which the UK is connected to the world is just on a different scale to New Zealand. In absolute numbers, yes, per capita, no. With covid the thing that matters is people coming into contact. The ratio tourists/population matters. NZ has a lot of travel and relative to it’s population, a lot more than the UK. And NZs population travel a lot more. > I don’t believe the tourism argument holds up in the slightest either. How so? Tourists bring in covid. If you look at things relative to the population, NZ has a lot of people moving a lot of the time. NZ may be a small, far away islands (it’s bigger than the UK geographically), but the approach NZ used wasn’t invented here and is not novel. It was copied from others that had success. Interestingly, a lot of good policy came from South Korea. South Korea copied it from the NHS. Others have had good results too, NZ is not alone at any stretch and did not pioneer it’s policies. I’m sure there are other factors and many of them. However the UK leaders have not done well and have contributed hugely to the problems. The ignoring of advice from experts is incredible - why set up systems if you don’t want them? They continue to ignore the most basic advice and get exactly the outcome one would expect, covid.
postingawayonhn 6y ago
In per capita terms yes, but in absolute terms not so much. Trade in goods is also mostly via very long sea journeys which off course act as a sort of quarantine period. In terms of air travel Auckland is the only hub airport and the number of transit passengers is quite small.

graeme 6y ago

The UK is an island. Scotland and North Ireland were down to pretty much zero transmission by summer. It would have been feasible for the whole UK. Continental europe would have faced a harder time coordinating it.

bb123 6y ago
I disagree. The UK’s economy is far more international than New Zealand’s. The U.K. ranks 4th worldwide for international travellers per capita, and New Zealand 38th. Shutting down air travel to the financial centre of the world would have been an incredibly risky move at the time. It may have been the right move in hindsight, but at the time it was far easier for the tiny island on the edge of the world to even consider doing it.
- graeme 6y ago
  I don’t mean in march necessarily. But the UK never implemented testing at the border or isolation for travellers in any rigorous way. They could have done this sometime over the summer. Going zero covid has huge economic benefits. And with testing you could let business travellers in with a modified isolation.
  - postingawayonhn 6y ago
    It was only worth doing in March. Because there were so few cases NZ got down to zero in about 5 weeks. Once the cases numbers build up the time and economic cost to get to zero is unfeasible.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  > The U.K. ranks 4th worldwide for international travellers per capita, and New Zealand 38th. If the below is the source, you’re citing an absolute, not per capita stat. NZ ranks significantly above the UK for travel per capita, and the UK population do not travel that much. https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPassengers.html https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPasse...
6y ago

tialaramex 6y ago

Elimination strategy works, and other strategies don't work. This isn't a novel insight, it's how infectious diseases programmes work regardless, Guinea worm: Elimination strategy. Rinderpest: Elimination strategy. Polio: Elimination strategy. Smallpox: Elimination strategy. It was never a question of whether it was "viable" except in the sense of whether political will existed to act. In the US and to a lesser extent Europe, that will did not exist. The UK absolutely could have chosen to not have tens of thousands of people die for no purpose, but its political leadership were focused, as ever, on what's in it for them. How much can we exploit this to line our own pockets, how many old mates can be rewarded? Sure, people are dying, but isn't this a perfect chance to loot the corpses?