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Unlike New Zealand, most countries don’t think indefinite draconian restrictions on travel and ever-present risk of being locked down with little notice are an

Unlike New Zealand, most countries don’t think indefinite draconian restrictions on travel and ever-present risk of being locked down with little notice are an acceptable price to pay for a small increase in life expectancy. I share that viewpoint, and am very happy not to live in New Zealand.

datameta 5y ago
Except there would be no need for an ever present risk of lockdown if every single country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks a year and a half ago. But no, muh freedomᵀᴹ and the economy!! are far more important considerations that certainly didn't turn out to actually be incredibly short-sighted. I'm lucky to live in a place with >70% vaccination rate. So this no longer comes from a place of grievance toward personal inconvenience. I'm shaking my damn head at the collective lack of wisdom that was exhibited in countries' responses, including my own. ̶E̶d̶i̶t̶:̶ ̶P̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶,̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶v̶o̶t̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶p̶o̶n̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶o̶p̶i̶n̶i̶o̶n̶.̶
- umanwizard 5y ago
  > if every country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world. > But no, muh freedom, and but the economy! Your mocking tone is out of place. I do in fact think freedom and the economy are both important. Don’t you?
  - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
    >This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world. China and the countries of Oceania did just this and have largely suppressed COVID without MRNA vaccines. China has a massive, porous land border. They've protected themselves from inbound infection by quarantining all visitors on arrival.
    - umanwizard 5y ago
      > every single country
      - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
        The pandemic is estimated to have cost the world >$16 trillion already. Now politicians are telling us we will have to live with it forever. For that price, we literally could have paid every human on earth $2,000 to shelter in place for 4 weeks.
  - datameta 5y ago
    Yes, my freedom over the course of almost 1.5 years was adversely affected because we couldn't handle a month without it. And yes, the economy was adversely affected because most small businesses were shuttered for half a year and swaths of them went out of business since we could not bear closing everything down for a sixth of that time period. Edit: Please explain to me how swallowing real estate, employee, and supply chain expenses for 30 days would have been more difficult or less preferable to the splintered schedule of mandated closings over a far longer time period.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - Arnt 5y ago
    I'll try with a different tone. The intention of keeping freedom and not harming the economy was IMNSHO not matched by that effect and the discrepancy wasn't really surprising. The authorities where I live decided to keep more open than I considered wise, and not much later closed a lot of sports, for example. The effective choice was freedom now against freedom later, even if the intention was to choose more freedom rather than less.
  - wbl 5y ago
    What others did is not fantasy but possibility. If your leaders cannot deliver that, replace them.
  - mypalmike 5y ago
    The importance of freedom and the economy are not in dispute. The point is that both would have suffered less in the long term if "draconian" lockdowns had been implemented in the short term. It's game theory, and NZ chose the winning strategy while much of the world chose the losing one.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  It's a little more complicated than that. When you live on islands thousands of miles away from anywhere with a fairly homogenous population and diversified economy, it's easier both physically and politically to take isolation action against a pandemic.
  - datameta 5y ago
    I think the crux of the matter is that I speak with the benefit of hindsight whereas governments had no such luxury. I think, perhaps, if we truly knew with certainty that the pandemic was a more prolonged situation than one could hope for (despite being warned of such), that a more organized and simultaneous effort to shutter economies and travel for a temporary short-term would have been an easier position to argue politically.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      Perhaps. In the United States, the Federal government lacks the power or manpower to make such a decisions, and given that there are 50 states, you’ll always have exceptions.
      - datameta 5y ago
        Valid point. That's a whole extra tier of cooperation necessary. I suppose in this case it would not be unfair to treat each state similarly to a country on the global level, but it does complicate the path to the success condition.
- refurb 5y ago
  The very fact you’re suggesting every country locks down for 3-4 weeks” as a solution shows youre ignoring reality. All it would take is for 1 person to travel for the epidemic to continue. Maybe developed nations could do it but developing nations are still dealing with illegal border crossers even 1 year into the epidemic. So great theory but it falls flat in reality.
  - datameta 5y ago
    In my scenario travel in both directions would be disallowed for the time period. This also requires neighboring nations to do the same, as well as farther off countries to implement checks at the airport. All this was somewhat done regardless but in a haphazard manner devoid of full international cooperation. So we suffered the major drawbacks anyway all while reaping a partial reward.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Just because something is disallowed doesn't mean people stop doing it.
      - datameta 5y ago
        The insinuation is that in such a scenario there would be a strong enough disincentive. And perhaps also the incentive of not having a years long pandemic.
        nradov 5y ago
        What is a strong enough disincentive? Would you recommend building physical walls along our borders and using violence against people who attempt to cross without authorization?
        datameta 5y ago
        No, I wouldn't. Gosh, and if I didn't respond it would almost look like I did support that wouldn't it? Toss out these cheap tactics... There are obviously many levels on the spectrum of what could be done to sufficiently increase compliance without falling back on martial law and giving the governments more reason to erode our freedoms.
aunty_helen 5y ago
Describing the covid pandemic as simply a small decrease in life expectancy is a little on the nose. Also, as a vaccinated New Zealander who after spending 5 months at home is now traveling again, I can assure you people there are happy and mostly oblivious to what has gone on overseas. The travel restrictions whilst draconian, aren’t absolute and are being eased when needed. The travel bubble with Australia being a good example of this.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Sounds worse than many places, ie Switzerland which is completely landlocked with diverse neighbors and open borders. Very few travel restrictions, mostly in spring 2020, just do your part and do the right choices in ie hygiene and travel destinations.
  - aunty_helen 5y ago
    Switzerland has had just under 11,000 people die, NZ 26 (twenty-six). Not to mention, NZ had complete lockdown for all of two months. The rest of the time peoples daily lives were unchanged. No masks (generally), concerts with 10,000+ people no problem. Summer holidays etc etc.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      New Zealand was exceptionally successful, and other areas which tried that strategy weren't so lucky. Some parts of Australia were shut down for something like 9 of the past 18 months. (Sydney is under lockdown orders today!) And I think it's hard to find fault with the strength of lockdowns in France, Spain, or Italy - their lockdowns just didn't fully eliminate transition, so we put them in the "weak lockdown" bucket, even though as a matter of government policy they were doing the same thing.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  > Describing the covid pandemic as simply a small decrease in life expectancy is a little on the nose. How so? The first result I could find[1] estimates that life expectancy decreased by 1.18 years in the US due to the pandemic, which doesn't strike me as extreme. 1: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/5/e2014746118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/5/e2014746118

datameta 5y ago

Except there would be no need for an ever present risk of lockdown if every single country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks a year and a half ago. But no, muh freedomᵀᴹ and the economy!! are far more important considerations that certainly didn't turn out to actually be incredibly short-sighted. I'm lucky to live in a place with >70% vaccination rate. So this no longer comes from a place of grievance toward personal inconvenience. I'm shaking my damn head at the collective lack of wisdom that was exhibited in countries' responses, including my own. ̶E̶d̶i̶t̶:̶ ̶P̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶,̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶v̶o̶t̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶p̶o̶n̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶o̶p̶i̶n̶i̶o̶n̶.̶

umanwizard 5y ago
> if every country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world. > But no, muh freedom, and but the economy! Your mocking tone is out of place. I do in fact think freedom and the economy are both important. Don’t you?
- jasonlaramburu 5y ago
  >This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world. China and the countries of Oceania did just this and have largely suppressed COVID without MRNA vaccines. China has a massive, porous land border. They've protected themselves from inbound infection by quarantining all visitors on arrival.
  - umanwizard 5y ago
    > every single country
    - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
      The pandemic is estimated to have cost the world >$16 trillion already. Now politicians are telling us we will have to live with it forever. For that price, we literally could have paid every human on earth $2,000 to shelter in place for 4 weeks.
- datameta 5y ago
  Yes, my freedom over the course of almost 1.5 years was adversely affected because we couldn't handle a month without it. And yes, the economy was adversely affected because most small businesses were shuttered for half a year and swaths of them went out of business since we could not bear closing everything down for a sixth of that time period. Edit: Please explain to me how swallowing real estate, employee, and supply chain expenses for 30 days would have been more difficult or less preferable to the splintered schedule of mandated closings over a far longer time period.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Arnt 5y ago
  I'll try with a different tone. The intention of keeping freedom and not harming the economy was IMNSHO not matched by that effect and the discrepancy wasn't really surprising. The authorities where I live decided to keep more open than I considered wise, and not much later closed a lot of sports, for example. The effective choice was freedom now against freedom later, even if the intention was to choose more freedom rather than less.
- wbl 5y ago
  What others did is not fantasy but possibility. If your leaders cannot deliver that, replace them.
- mypalmike 5y ago
  The importance of freedom and the economy are not in dispute. The point is that both would have suffered less in the long term if "draconian" lockdowns had been implemented in the short term. It's game theory, and NZ chose the winning strategy while much of the world chose the losing one.
Spooky23 5y ago
It's a little more complicated than that. When you live on islands thousands of miles away from anywhere with a fairly homogenous population and diversified economy, it's easier both physically and politically to take isolation action against a pandemic.
- datameta 5y ago
  I think the crux of the matter is that I speak with the benefit of hindsight whereas governments had no such luxury. I think, perhaps, if we truly knew with certainty that the pandemic was a more prolonged situation than one could hope for (despite being warned of such), that a more organized and simultaneous effort to shutter economies and travel for a temporary short-term would have been an easier position to argue politically.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Perhaps. In the United States, the Federal government lacks the power or manpower to make such a decisions, and given that there are 50 states, you’ll always have exceptions.
    - datameta 5y ago
      Valid point. That's a whole extra tier of cooperation necessary. I suppose in this case it would not be unfair to treat each state similarly to a country on the global level, but it does complicate the path to the success condition.
refurb 5y ago
The very fact you’re suggesting every country locks down for 3-4 weeks” as a solution shows youre ignoring reality. All it would take is for 1 person to travel for the epidemic to continue. Maybe developed nations could do it but developing nations are still dealing with illegal border crossers even 1 year into the epidemic. So great theory but it falls flat in reality.
- datameta 5y ago
  In my scenario travel in both directions would be disallowed for the time period. This also requires neighboring nations to do the same, as well as farther off countries to implement checks at the airport. All this was somewhat done regardless but in a haphazard manner devoid of full international cooperation. So we suffered the major drawbacks anyway all while reaping a partial reward.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Just because something is disallowed doesn't mean people stop doing it.
    - datameta 5y ago
      The insinuation is that in such a scenario there would be a strong enough disincentive. And perhaps also the incentive of not having a years long pandemic.
      - nradov 5y ago
        What is a strong enough disincentive? Would you recommend building physical walls along our borders and using violence against people who attempt to cross without authorization?
        datameta 5y ago
        No, I wouldn't. Gosh, and if I didn't respond it would almost look like I did support that wouldn't it? Toss out these cheap tactics... There are obviously many levels on the spectrum of what could be done to sufficiently increase compliance without falling back on martial law and giving the governments more reason to erode our freedoms.

aunty_helen 5y ago

Describing the covid pandemic as simply a small decrease in life expectancy is a little on the nose. Also, as a vaccinated New Zealander who after spending 5 months at home is now traveling again, I can assure you people there are happy and mostly oblivious to what has gone on overseas. The travel restrictions whilst draconian, aren’t absolute and are being eased when needed. The travel bubble with Australia being a good example of this.

saiya-jin 5y ago
Sounds worse than many places, ie Switzerland which is completely landlocked with diverse neighbors and open borders. Very few travel restrictions, mostly in spring 2020, just do your part and do the right choices in ie hygiene and travel destinations.
- aunty_helen 5y ago
  Switzerland has had just under 11,000 people die, NZ 26 (twenty-six). Not to mention, NZ had complete lockdown for all of two months. The rest of the time peoples daily lives were unchanged. No masks (generally), concerts with 10,000+ people no problem. Summer holidays etc etc.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    New Zealand was exceptionally successful, and other areas which tried that strategy weren't so lucky. Some parts of Australia were shut down for something like 9 of the past 18 months. (Sydney is under lockdown orders today!) And I think it's hard to find fault with the strength of lockdowns in France, Spain, or Italy - their lockdowns just didn't fully eliminate transition, so we put them in the "weak lockdown" bucket, even though as a matter of government policy they were doing the same thing.
umanwizard 5y ago
> Describing the covid pandemic as simply a small decrease in life expectancy is a little on the nose. How so? The first result I could find[1] estimates that life expectancy decreased by 1.18 years in the US due to the pandemic, which doesn't strike me as extreme. 1: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/5/e2014746118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/5/e2014746118