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New Zealand is an island nation, which gives it a pretty significant advantage when it comes to controlling pandemics.

neilwilson 6y ago
It's a distant island nation at the end of the transport network. One of the reasons New York, London and Brussels have been hit so hard is that they are global hubs in the world transport and financial power networks.
digianarchist 6y ago
So is Britain.
- nxpnsv 6y ago
  There is a tunnel, it’s a transportation hub, lots more people, and boris..
  - te_chris 6y ago
    Was a transportation hub. Brexit should sort that out.
tshaddox 6y ago
Hence a global approach similar to New Zealand’s. The globe has similar advantages to New Zealand when it comes to controlling pandemics.
- vasco 6y ago
  The globe doesn't have an important property of centralized government and decisionmaking.
- toxik 6y ago
  But for the fact that there is no single governing entity... which is an enormous caveat.
- makomk 6y ago
  Not really. There are two basically insurmountable problems with taking New Zealand's success and expanding it to the entire globe. Firstly, the effectiveness of this is limited by wherever it works the least well. Secondly, even if everywhere could implement the same measures as New Zealand as well as they did, over that large a scale there would be places which had much worse success just through random chance alone. You can see a few places where New Zealand got lucky already, like the recent outbreak of unknown origin not spreading as widely as it might've or the infections amongst border workers back when they weren't being widely tested. You can also see this in Australia, which is similar geographically but bigger and has taken many similar measures with slightly worse results. Scale up three orders of magnitude, and I've no doubt fun new failure modes will appear which aren't even visible yet.
  - statstutor 6y ago
    > You can see a few places where New Zealand got lucky already This is a case of "you make your own luck". The UK has presumably been lucky more often, but we have never had the opportunity to observe it.
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    China is the most populous country on Earth, and geographically, one of the largest. It has followed a similar strategy as New Zealand and Australia. That strategy has worked to keep the country essentially CoVID-19-free over the past year.
    - ateesdalejr 6y ago
      That's what you've been told by Chinese authorities; whom we have no reason to trust due to previous events.
      - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
        It's what I've been told by numerous people who live in China. It's what I see on Chinese social media, and it's what Westerners who live in China are saying on Western social media. I'm sure there are many on HN who live in China - they can also tell you what things are like there. If there were a major ongoing epidemic in China, it would be impossible to hide. Hospitals would be under the same sort of pressure that they are in Europe and the US. People would have family members and friends who got sick or who died. That's not happening. China is simply too tightly connected to the rest of the world to keep things like this a secret. In December 2019, the existence of the outbreak in Wuhan was known around the world within days of the first patient test results coming back. Even Western media began grudgingly admitting several months ago the virus was essentially gone from China. For example, German/French public radio did a pretty interesting documentary on post-CoVID-19 Wuhan. The first scene is in a packed discotheque: * German: https://youtu.be/LmsI7lc2_Vg https://youtu.be/LmsI7lc2_Vg * French: https://youtu.be/OyHt7-KmK7Y https://youtu.be/OyHt7-KmK7Y * English subtitles: https://youtu.be/DEOyhN2-kPs https://youtu.be/DEOyhN2-kPs
whatastory 6y ago
Vietnam isn’t, though.
peteretep 6y ago
Thailand isn’t and has had an identical approach work _pretty well_.

It's a distant island nation at the end of the transport network. One of the reasons New York, London and Brussels have been hit so hard is that they are global hubs in the world transport and financial power networks.

digianarchist 6y ago

So is Britain.

nxpnsv 6y ago
There is a tunnel, it’s a transportation hub, lots more people, and boris..
- te_chris 6y ago
  Was a transportation hub. Brexit should sort that out.

tshaddox 6y ago

Hence a global approach similar to New Zealand’s. The globe has similar advantages to New Zealand when it comes to controlling pandemics.

vasco 6y ago
The globe doesn't have an important property of centralized government and decisionmaking.
toxik 6y ago
But for the fact that there is no single governing entity... which is an enormous caveat.
makomk 6y ago
Not really. There are two basically insurmountable problems with taking New Zealand's success and expanding it to the entire globe. Firstly, the effectiveness of this is limited by wherever it works the least well. Secondly, even if everywhere could implement the same measures as New Zealand as well as they did, over that large a scale there would be places which had much worse success just through random chance alone. You can see a few places where New Zealand got lucky already, like the recent outbreak of unknown origin not spreading as widely as it might've or the infections amongst border workers back when they weren't being widely tested. You can also see this in Australia, which is similar geographically but bigger and has taken many similar measures with slightly worse results. Scale up three orders of magnitude, and I've no doubt fun new failure modes will appear which aren't even visible yet.
- statstutor 6y ago
  > You can see a few places where New Zealand got lucky already This is a case of "you make your own luck". The UK has presumably been lucky more often, but we have never had the opportunity to observe it.
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  China is the most populous country on Earth, and geographically, one of the largest. It has followed a similar strategy as New Zealand and Australia. That strategy has worked to keep the country essentially CoVID-19-free over the past year.
  - ateesdalejr 6y ago
    That's what you've been told by Chinese authorities; whom we have no reason to trust due to previous events.
    - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
      It's what I've been told by numerous people who live in China. It's what I see on Chinese social media, and it's what Westerners who live in China are saying on Western social media. I'm sure there are many on HN who live in China - they can also tell you what things are like there. If there were a major ongoing epidemic in China, it would be impossible to hide. Hospitals would be under the same sort of pressure that they are in Europe and the US. People would have family members and friends who got sick or who died. That's not happening. China is simply too tightly connected to the rest of the world to keep things like this a secret. In December 2019, the existence of the outbreak in Wuhan was known around the world within days of the first patient test results coming back. Even Western media began grudgingly admitting several months ago the virus was essentially gone from China. For example, German/French public radio did a pretty interesting documentary on post-CoVID-19 Wuhan. The first scene is in a packed discotheque: * German: https://youtu.be/LmsI7lc2_Vg https://youtu.be/LmsI7lc2_Vg * French: https://youtu.be/OyHt7-KmK7Y https://youtu.be/OyHt7-KmK7Y * English subtitles: https://youtu.be/DEOyhN2-kPs https://youtu.be/DEOyhN2-kPs

whatastory 6y ago

Vietnam isn’t, though.

peteretep 6y ago

Thailand isn’t and has had an identical approach work _pretty well_.