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Yes. For small island countries like New Zealand it works "great." This was never an option for countries like the US, or even most of Europe. Much less so f

Yes. For small island countries like New Zealand it works "great." This was never an option for countries like the US, or even most of Europe. Much less so for countries like India. But we'll see how it goes. If New Zealand and Australia persist in this notion that they're going to stay locked down until the virus goes away, particularly with its endemicity now inevitable, I think you will soon find vast swaths of those countries in open, violent revolt.

abraae 5y ago
I live in NZ and can assure you from the front lines of the revolt that we don't think we're going to stay locked down until the virus goes away. The game has always been to play it by ear. That's been a great call so far, we've lived normal lives for the last year while incredible scientific advances have delivered vaccines. This is a long game, and we've done well in the first quarter. I hope the politicians continue making good calls as the game goes on. Don't assume that because we locked down hard that that will always be the path forward. That's your straw man talking.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  I wish you well. What I feel is a real problem in the makes is that you eventually have to open up again but with not enough folks vaccinated. And suddenly, you are in a situation many other countries have right now.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - account42 5y ago
    Definitely a concern for countries that have been able to lock down. Taiwan also had to rush to get people vaccinated when they had an outbreak recently.
  - jamiepenney 5y ago
    Our vaccination program is ramping up nicely, even with the lockdown they're posting record numbers. Should be done by the end of the year, and if we can get this outbreak under control we'll easily get there before the next one.
- mikedilger 5y ago
  While not disagreeing with that, I think we can continue to eliminate. During level-4, the R value is clearly lower than 1.0 meaning the infection shrinks. And the infection is small since we locked down immediately when a community case was first found. Six weeks will probably do it... so long as we don't have (a) new cases coming in through the border, or (b) infected people flaunting the lockdown rules and spreading it faster than we can contain it. Indeed, if it blows out past a couple thousand or so, we will need to pivot.
  - abraae 5y ago
    I agree, elimination still looks a good strategy, it's too early to give it up yet. If we can punch out the current outbreak (I'd put money on it, but not too much) and get back to zero then that will re-legitimise lockdown as a strategy for a bit longer. We've got a few "open 'er up and let it rip" friends and I just don't get it. There are so many potential game changers when you are an island. If a reliable saliva-based test appeared that produced results in say 2 hours we could reduce MIQ and use waiting booths at the airport. Even if it was only 99% accurate we could pool groups of 20 into rooms together while waiting for results. So many possibilities if we continue to think critically instead of politically.
    - ImaCake 5y ago
      A quick word on test attributes and why we still don't have a more rapid test than PCR. Tests for disease rely on two numbers: 1. "sensitivity" - the proportion of people with COVID who get a positive test 2. "specificity" - the proportion of people without COVID who get a negative test. COVID, despite the media attention, is a rare disease compared to the number of people tested. Say we have 10,000 people tested for COVID at the airport. We have 99% sensitivity and 99% specificity. And we know 100 people have COVID (1% prevalence) in this group. Our test would find 99/100 of the positive cases. But it would also find an additional 99 false positives! It also misses one true positive case. Which would be disasterous for the quarantine measures in place in Australia and NZ. In short, even a gold standard rapid test is not enough, although at 99% specificity and sensitivity it would be somewhat useful. This is a lot less intuitive than it looks. The companies pushing rapid antigen tests at the start of the pandemic would have know better, but they chose to lie to the public about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity
nerdponx 5y ago
You can't really look at the US and say "it doesn't work", because even the slightest restrictions were leveraged into a major political issue.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Agree. I don’t think anywhere in the US did anything that could reasonably be called a lockdown. “Try to gather in groups of no more than six (at a time).” “When you need food, go to the grocery store (as often as you see fit).” Is anyone surprised that a highly contagious virus was able to escape these “lockdown” measures?
  - tdfx 5y ago
    > I don’t think anywhere in the US did anything that could reasonably be called a lockdown. Agreed, yet people still clamor for more of the same ineffective nonsense while dousing their hands in sanitizer and erecting plexiglass barriers in front of everything. We do everything except what would make a difference: fixing indoor ventilation.
  - odessacubbage 5y ago
    the problem is that even those halfhearted measures have proven to be economically disastrous for small to medium scale businesses and virtually everyone without a line to nearly limitless private equity. pairing the rollout of ineffective 'lockdowns' with woefully insufficient safety nets [that were even further stripped down and delayed by politicking] has effectively poisoned the public will towards any further interventions across large segments of the country. you would have been hard-pressed to even deliberately design a containment more guaranteed for failure.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  You can't say it looking at the US, but I think it's hard to find fault with the strength of the initial lockdowns in France or Spain or Italy.
nintendo1889 5y ago
It was an option for China. They allowed international travel but disallowed inter province travel.
peteretep 5y ago
It worked pretty well for Thailand, a country with 3k of land borders that people can and do walk across. Delta seems to have changed the calculus though
strken 5y ago
One guy punching a horse and Queensland putting a hundred or so bored soldiers on the border to check permits of cars that drive past is not a state of open violent revolt.
socialdemocrat 5y ago
Edit: Don’t mean to sound nasty, but this type of reasoning gets repeated so often without much criticism. It worked for China too, so don’t come with this “small countries” crap. The US is “small” relative to China. Okay… now we get the “easy in a dictatorship” response to which I offer Japan. A democracy, with relatively large and dense population, yet have had relative few cases… although I am sure an excuse can be invented for them too…
- JackFr 5y ago
  Hmmmm. Japan, I wonder what’s happening there right now.
  - Cloudef 5y ago
    nothing
    - ryan_lane 5y ago
      We're on a 4th wave, that's currently completely out of control. The hospitals are overwhelmed, and most Covid patients aren't being accepted by the hospitals. Not sure why you'd say nothing.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Japan is having lots of problems with COVID. They are like Sweden in this regard.

abraae 5y ago

I live in NZ and can assure you from the front lines of the revolt that we don't think we're going to stay locked down until the virus goes away. The game has always been to play it by ear. That's been a great call so far, we've lived normal lives for the last year while incredible scientific advances have delivered vaccines. This is a long game, and we've done well in the first quarter. I hope the politicians continue making good calls as the game goes on. Don't assume that because we locked down hard that that will always be the path forward. That's your straw man talking.

chinathrow 5y ago
I wish you well. What I feel is a real problem in the makes is that you eventually have to open up again but with not enough folks vaccinated. And suddenly, you are in a situation many other countries have right now.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- account42 5y ago
  Definitely a concern for countries that have been able to lock down. Taiwan also had to rush to get people vaccinated when they had an outbreak recently.
- jamiepenney 5y ago
  Our vaccination program is ramping up nicely, even with the lockdown they're posting record numbers. Should be done by the end of the year, and if we can get this outbreak under control we'll easily get there before the next one.
mikedilger 5y ago
While not disagreeing with that, I think we can continue to eliminate. During level-4, the R value is clearly lower than 1.0 meaning the infection shrinks. And the infection is small since we locked down immediately when a community case was first found. Six weeks will probably do it... so long as we don't have (a) new cases coming in through the border, or (b) infected people flaunting the lockdown rules and spreading it faster than we can contain it. Indeed, if it blows out past a couple thousand or so, we will need to pivot.
- abraae 5y ago
  I agree, elimination still looks a good strategy, it's too early to give it up yet. If we can punch out the current outbreak (I'd put money on it, but not too much) and get back to zero then that will re-legitimise lockdown as a strategy for a bit longer. We've got a few "open 'er up and let it rip" friends and I just don't get it. There are so many potential game changers when you are an island. If a reliable saliva-based test appeared that produced results in say 2 hours we could reduce MIQ and use waiting booths at the airport. Even if it was only 99% accurate we could pool groups of 20 into rooms together while waiting for results. So many possibilities if we continue to think critically instead of politically.
  - ImaCake 5y ago
    A quick word on test attributes and why we still don't have a more rapid test than PCR. Tests for disease rely on two numbers: 1. "sensitivity" - the proportion of people with COVID who get a positive test 2. "specificity" - the proportion of people without COVID who get a negative test. COVID, despite the media attention, is a rare disease compared to the number of people tested. Say we have 10,000 people tested for COVID at the airport. We have 99% sensitivity and 99% specificity. And we know 100 people have COVID (1% prevalence) in this group. Our test would find 99/100 of the positive cases. But it would also find an additional 99 false positives! It also misses one true positive case. Which would be disasterous for the quarantine measures in place in Australia and NZ. In short, even a gold standard rapid test is not enough, although at 99% specificity and sensitivity it would be somewhat useful. This is a lot less intuitive than it looks. The companies pushing rapid antigen tests at the start of the pandemic would have know better, but they chose to lie to the public about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity

nerdponx 5y ago

You can't really look at the US and say "it doesn't work", because even the slightest restrictions were leveraged into a major political issue.

sokoloff 5y ago
Agree. I don’t think anywhere in the US did anything that could reasonably be called a lockdown. “Try to gather in groups of no more than six (at a time).” “When you need food, go to the grocery store (as often as you see fit).” Is anyone surprised that a highly contagious virus was able to escape these “lockdown” measures?
- tdfx 5y ago
  > I don’t think anywhere in the US did anything that could reasonably be called a lockdown. Agreed, yet people still clamor for more of the same ineffective nonsense while dousing their hands in sanitizer and erecting plexiglass barriers in front of everything. We do everything except what would make a difference: fixing indoor ventilation.
- odessacubbage 5y ago
  the problem is that even those halfhearted measures have proven to be economically disastrous for small to medium scale businesses and virtually everyone without a line to nearly limitless private equity. pairing the rollout of ineffective 'lockdowns' with woefully insufficient safety nets [that were even further stripped down and delayed by politicking] has effectively poisoned the public will towards any further interventions across large segments of the country. you would have been hard-pressed to even deliberately design a containment more guaranteed for failure.
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
You can't say it looking at the US, but I think it's hard to find fault with the strength of the initial lockdowns in France or Spain or Italy.

nintendo1889 5y ago

It was an option for China. They allowed international travel but disallowed inter province travel.

peteretep 5y ago

It worked pretty well for Thailand, a country with 3k of land borders that people can and do walk across. Delta seems to have changed the calculus though

strken 5y ago

One guy punching a horse and Queensland putting a hundred or so bored soldiers on the border to check permits of cars that drive past is not a state of open violent revolt.

socialdemocrat 5y ago

Edit: Don’t mean to sound nasty, but this type of reasoning gets repeated so often without much criticism. It worked for China too, so don’t come with this “small countries” crap. The US is “small” relative to China. Okay… now we get the “easy in a dictatorship” response to which I offer Japan. A democracy, with relatively large and dense population, yet have had relative few cases… although I am sure an excuse can be invented for them too…

JackFr 5y ago
Hmmmm. Japan, I wonder what’s happening there right now.
- Cloudef 5y ago
  nothing
  - ryan_lane 5y ago
    We're on a 4th wave, that's currently completely out of control. The hospitals are overwhelmed, and most Covid patients aren't being accepted by the hospitals. Not sure why you'd say nothing.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Japan is having lots of problems with COVID. They are like Sweden in this regard.