5 ms·

New Zealand has done this multiple times

fastball 6y ago
New Zealand is an island with more sheep than people. The pop. density of NZ is 15/km2. The pop. density of France is 119/km2. France also shares land borders with 7 other countries.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  Misleading statistic. You need to look at the density of occupied land.
  - fastball 6y ago
    It's not misleading, it's just not as complete as it could be, because population density is a trivial statistic to determine and density of occupied land is much more difficult (for starters you need to define "occupied"). If you have stats on density of occupied land, I'm happy to work with that.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    That’s a crazy metric. Is this a thing? How do you define it? Per km? Per metre? Or just by the footprints I make in my carpet? Each gives a very different answer.
- jbay808 6y ago
  And South Korea at 510/km2 and Taiwan at 651/km2...
  - fastball 6y ago
    My point is that all of this is devilishly multi-variate, and it will be a while before we can disentangle everything and determine what exactly works and why. People saying "NZ's lockdowns worked" without actually having done the hard part is not helping.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      Said from NZ, we did the hard hard part. How do you think we eradicated community covid several times?
      - fastball 6y ago
        The "hard part" being crunching the numbers and working to falsify your hypotheses, not lockdowns in this context.
    - nimbleal 6y ago
      This would seem to be quite obviously correct. Perhaps this comment’s downvoters could explain why they disagree?
- lostlogin 6y ago
  And the US has just 36 per km/2. What’s your point?
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  And yet the UK is an island, and have done worse than France. I guess my point is that this is a multi-faceted thing, and focusing on one predictor is likely to be misleading.
dx87 6y ago
Not every country is a small island nation with the population of single large city.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  Sure, but that definitely helps, but a big part of it was their leadership and organized action to fight it.
  - fastball 6y ago
    How do you know?
  - mikedilger 6y ago
    As an American living in New Zealand I can attest to the fact that the Labour government led by Jacinda Ardern made mostly good moves by treating COVID seriously and thus winning re-election in a landslide. I cannot say if her decisions helped to squash COVID, but her words and facial expressions were very good politically. I was in favor of one hard lockdown and strict border controls, and that is mostly what happened. I was not in favor of shutting down butchers, bakers, and green grocers because that just crowded everybody into supermarkets making social distancing difficult and creating long lines at supermarkets. It also crushed several businesses into bankruptcy unnecessarily, caused lots of food to go to waste, and propped up the already-too-powerful supermarket conglomerates. NZ had extreme advantages: an island nation with easy to control borders, a large lead time to prepare, a low population density, a unified jurisdiction, no constitutional restrictions on the government's power, first world medical infrastructure, a timid compliant population that overwhelmingly just does as they are told and doesn't makes a fuss, high social cohesion, double helpings of common sense. Cowardly risk-averse and boring people that will never amount to much more than a hill of beans by American standards, but happy nonetheless [this sentence was meant as tongue-in-cheek self-deprecating humor, sorry if anyone was offended or took it seriously]. The US does not have the options NZ had. The federal government does not have jurisdiction to enforce a national lockdown, and even local lockdowns are being ruled as unconstitutional. And if you can't do one coordinated severe lockdown to squash it completely and then strictly close your borders requiring two week quarantines for anyone coming in... then I say don't bother with lockdowns at all. Oh, and stop blaming everything on your president.

New Zealand is an island with more sheep than people. The pop. density of NZ is 15/km2. The pop. density of France is 119/km2. France also shares land borders with 7 other countries.

hanniabu 6y ago
Misleading statistic. You need to look at the density of occupied land.
- fastball 6y ago
  It's not misleading, it's just not as complete as it could be, because population density is a trivial statistic to determine and density of occupied land is much more difficult (for starters you need to define "occupied"). If you have stats on density of occupied land, I'm happy to work with that.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  That’s a crazy metric. Is this a thing? How do you define it? Per km? Per metre? Or just by the footprints I make in my carpet? Each gives a very different answer.
jbay808 6y ago
And South Korea at 510/km2 and Taiwan at 651/km2...
- fastball 6y ago
  My point is that all of this is devilishly multi-variate, and it will be a while before we can disentangle everything and determine what exactly works and why. People saying "NZ's lockdowns worked" without actually having done the hard part is not helping.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Said from NZ, we did the hard hard part. How do you think we eradicated community covid several times?
    - fastball 6y ago
      The "hard part" being crunching the numbers and working to falsify your hypotheses, not lockdowns in this context.
  - nimbleal 6y ago
    This would seem to be quite obviously correct. Perhaps this comment’s downvoters could explain why they disagree?
lostlogin 6y ago
And the US has just 36 per km/2. What’s your point?
disgruntledphd2 6y ago
And yet the UK is an island, and have done worse than France. I guess my point is that this is a multi-faceted thing, and focusing on one predictor is likely to be misleading.

dx87 6y ago

Not every country is a small island nation with the population of single large city.

hanniabu 6y ago
Sure, but that definitely helps, but a big part of it was their leadership and organized action to fight it.
- fastball 6y ago
  How do you know?
- mikedilger 6y ago
  As an American living in New Zealand I can attest to the fact that the Labour government led by Jacinda Ardern made mostly good moves by treating COVID seriously and thus winning re-election in a landslide. I cannot say if her decisions helped to squash COVID, but her words and facial expressions were very good politically. I was in favor of one hard lockdown and strict border controls, and that is mostly what happened. I was not in favor of shutting down butchers, bakers, and green grocers because that just crowded everybody into supermarkets making social distancing difficult and creating long lines at supermarkets. It also crushed several businesses into bankruptcy unnecessarily, caused lots of food to go to waste, and propped up the already-too-powerful supermarket conglomerates. NZ had extreme advantages: an island nation with easy to control borders, a large lead time to prepare, a low population density, a unified jurisdiction, no constitutional restrictions on the government's power, first world medical infrastructure, a timid compliant population that overwhelmingly just does as they are told and doesn't makes a fuss, high social cohesion, double helpings of common sense. Cowardly risk-averse and boring people that will never amount to much more than a hill of beans by American standards, but happy nonetheless [this sentence was meant as tongue-in-cheek self-deprecating humor, sorry if anyone was offended or took it seriously]. The US does not have the options NZ had. The federal government does not have jurisdiction to enforce a national lockdown, and even local lockdowns are being ruled as unconstitutional. And if you can't do one coordinated severe lockdown to squash it completely and then strictly close your borders requiring two week quarantines for anyone coming in... then I say don't bother with lockdowns at all. Oh, and stop blaming everything on your president.