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I feel bad for the population of New Zealand. The amount of lockdowns and Covid restrictions was one of most restrictive in the world. And after all of that,

I feel bad for the population of New Zealand. The amount of lockdowns and Covid restrictions was one of most restrictive in the world. And after all of that, you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started. What a tough situation there. It like all being locked down for years and having the borders closed for years didn't change a thing.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
All of New Zealand's lockdowns saved a heck of a lot of lives over the course of 2020 and early 2021, and now vaccines are available! It wasn't for nothing!
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  This is a good point. Hopefully the vaccine works against the variants. The protection seems to be waning already in Israel. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628471/highly-vaccinated-israel-is-seeing-a-dramatic-surge-in-new-covid-cases-heres-why https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...
gridspy 5y ago
Thanks for your concern. Our lockdowns might be the most restrictive, but that makes them the most effective. So I'm not too worried about that. I'd prefer a short sharp lockdown and then total freedom (within the borders) over the lingering fear that appears to be happening overseas. Personally I'm happy to be winning another few months or a year free of Delta by staying at home for a while. If there was no official lockdown I would still want to stay at home.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  I'm not sure how long these tactics will work, though. Australia tried, but once covid got a foothold, it's in, and they're past the point of lockdowns stopping it. There also comes a point where New Zealand will either have to accept the risk of covid or continue with a North Korea level of border isolation. The political endgame is pretty messy because opening the borders will introduce covid and people will die--not a lot, but probably more than the entire pandemic for the country.
  - shaoonb 5y ago
    Australia tried, but not as hard as New Zealand.
  - gridspy 5y ago
    "past the point of lockdowns stopping it" You are never past the point of lockdowns stopping it. It just takes 14 days of strict lockdowns and all the people who are currently infected without knowing it have progressed to either known or recovered. Then you just do some testing and contact tracing (while remaining in lockdown) to mop up the rest of your infected population. This applies to any infected population. Note that most lockdowns define "essential" too widely - beyond just supermarkets, doctors & hospitals.
    - dehrmann 5y ago
      > It just takes 14 days of strict lockdowns... The problem is you need to keep utilities running and hospitals open. Then there are slightly less strict lockdowns where people can get limited exercise outdoors, buy groceries, and food production continues. NSW tried this, and it's failing. I suspect it's a combination of delta is too contagious for lockdowns to work in practice, too many people will violate them, 14 days doesn't account for asymptomatic household spread, and 14 days is more like p95 than p999.
      - gridspy 5y ago
        That's why you can't come out of lockdowns after just 14 days. At this point you can really start mopping up with contact tracing and so forth. A further 14 days and any regions with no cases are safe to exit lockdown, as long as you have good border controls. But I imagine that if your hospitals are flooded with patients and Covid is rocking your area, you need those initial 14 days just to reduce the caseload to the point where you can test and contact trace again. That's all it takes to get back from "impossible to eliminate" to "we just need to stamp this out now"
javagram 5y ago
> And after all of that, you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started. I think you need to check the stats again, NZ is finding about 20 covid cases per day. They have had fewer than 4,000 cases of covid since March 2020. It’s one of the lowest rates of infection in the world and appear on track to eliminate the delta variant from their country for now. (I suspect it’s only a matter of time till it escapes their quarantine system though, but they’re successfully buying time to finish a vaccination campaign.) Source: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_cases_smoothed_per_million&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=USA~NZL~JPN~SGP https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
- gridspy 5y ago
  Indeed! And most of those more recent cases are the families of known contacts. Unfortunately Delta is very good at spreading within the household. People enter lockdown, realise they are a case and are moved to quarantine almost immediately. Unfortunately those few days between infection and quarantine are enough now to spread Delta.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Right, but you were only having 20 cases per day in march 2020 at the very start of the pandemic as well before any restrictions were in place. So doesn't look like anything has changed. I feel bad for you all. All of that for an endemic virus that's never going away. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    NZ has had way, way less lockdowns than pretty much anywhere else in the world. This is because they are an island, and they eliminated Covid once and are aiming to do so again.
    - 5y ago
karateka 5y ago
No need for that, we're doing fine. Most of the country is already on it's way back to normality. The most populous city is still locked down but it's better to be locked down for 2 months than to have the hospitals clogged with Covid patients and have everyone you know getting sick. Looking forward to enjoying another long stretch without restrictions after this!
jrochkind1 5y ago
i don't think New Zealand has actually had intense lockdown for the entire last 18 months? I think they had short periods, but over the whole pandemic period I think they've had much less interruption to daily life than here in the USA, with much of that time having few restrictions, no? > you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started. I don't think so?
- gridspy 5y ago
  Here's a nice graph of NZ restrictiveness compared to UK and US. You'll see we peak up higher than either but then drop down to very low restrictions. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index?tab=chart&country=NZL~GBR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index?ta...
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    That graph definitely makes it look like NZ has had a lot less restrictions cummulatively than USA.
    - gridspy 5y ago
      It certianly felt that way from here in NZ. I think part of our successful economic recovery is because it wasn't only OPEN but SAFE. In the US and UK there are families living in fear of infection, leading to less consumer behavior.
shaoonb 5y ago
Don't feel too bad for New Zealand, we're doing alright. We're currently in week 4 of our fourth lockdown (in one city of about 1.5 million people, the rest of the country has much lesser restrictions currently). Before this we had a seven week nationwide lockdown from March 23 to May 13 2020, and a lockdown in one city for two weeks, August 14 to 30 2020, and a lockdown of three days and then one week in one city in February 2021. Other than this, we've spent a few weeks in alert level 2 (large gatherings banned) and most of the last year and a half in alert level 1 (no meaningful restrictions aside from border controls and masks required on public transport). Over this time, 27 people have died of COVID-19. Yes our lockdowns have been harsh, but they worked, and thanks to that, we've spent most of our time with less restrictions than the rest of the world and relatively few deaths. Full details can be found here, (alert levels 3 and 4 are lockdown, level 2 is gathering restrictions and level 1 is no day-to-day restrictions): https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-levels-and-updates/history-of-the-covid-19-alert-system/ https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-levels-and-updates/history-of-...

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

All of New Zealand's lockdowns saved a heck of a lot of lives over the course of 2020 and early 2021, and now vaccines are available! It wasn't for nothing!

nickthemagicman 5y ago
This is a good point. Hopefully the vaccine works against the variants. The protection seems to be waning already in Israel. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628471/highly-vaccinated-israel-is-seeing-a-dramatic-surge-in-new-covid-cases-heres-why https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...

gridspy 5y ago

Thanks for your concern. Our lockdowns might be the most restrictive, but that makes them the most effective. So I'm not too worried about that. I'd prefer a short sharp lockdown and then total freedom (within the borders) over the lingering fear that appears to be happening overseas. Personally I'm happy to be winning another few months or a year free of Delta by staying at home for a while. If there was no official lockdown I would still want to stay at home.

dehrmann 5y ago
I'm not sure how long these tactics will work, though. Australia tried, but once covid got a foothold, it's in, and they're past the point of lockdowns stopping it. There also comes a point where New Zealand will either have to accept the risk of covid or continue with a North Korea level of border isolation. The political endgame is pretty messy because opening the borders will introduce covid and people will die--not a lot, but probably more than the entire pandemic for the country.
- shaoonb 5y ago
  Australia tried, but not as hard as New Zealand.
- gridspy 5y ago
  "past the point of lockdowns stopping it" You are never past the point of lockdowns stopping it. It just takes 14 days of strict lockdowns and all the people who are currently infected without knowing it have progressed to either known or recovered. Then you just do some testing and contact tracing (while remaining in lockdown) to mop up the rest of your infected population. This applies to any infected population. Note that most lockdowns define "essential" too widely - beyond just supermarkets, doctors & hospitals.
  - dehrmann 5y ago
    > It just takes 14 days of strict lockdowns... The problem is you need to keep utilities running and hospitals open. Then there are slightly less strict lockdowns where people can get limited exercise outdoors, buy groceries, and food production continues. NSW tried this, and it's failing. I suspect it's a combination of delta is too contagious for lockdowns to work in practice, too many people will violate them, 14 days doesn't account for asymptomatic household spread, and 14 days is more like p95 than p999.
    - gridspy 5y ago
      That's why you can't come out of lockdowns after just 14 days. At this point you can really start mopping up with contact tracing and so forth. A further 14 days and any regions with no cases are safe to exit lockdown, as long as you have good border controls. But I imagine that if your hospitals are flooded with patients and Covid is rocking your area, you need those initial 14 days just to reduce the caseload to the point where you can test and contact trace again. That's all it takes to get back from "impossible to eliminate" to "we just need to stamp this out now"

javagram 5y ago

> And after all of that, you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started. I think you need to check the stats again, NZ is finding about 20 covid cases per day. They have had fewer than 4,000 cases of covid since March 2020. It’s one of the lowest rates of infection in the world and appear on track to eliminate the delta variant from their country for now. (I suspect it’s only a matter of time till it escapes their quarantine system though, but they’re successfully buying time to finish a vaccination campaign.) Source: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_cases_smoothed_per_million&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=USA~NZL~JPN~SGP https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

gridspy 5y ago
Indeed! And most of those more recent cases are the families of known contacts. Unfortunately Delta is very good at spreading within the household. People enter lockdown, realise they are a case and are moved to quarantine almost immediately. Unfortunately those few days between infection and quarantine are enough now to spread Delta.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
Right, but you were only having 20 cases per day in march 2020 at the very start of the pandemic as well before any restrictions were in place. So doesn't look like anything has changed. I feel bad for you all. All of that for an endemic virus that's never going away. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  NZ has had way, way less lockdowns than pretty much anywhere else in the world. This is because they are an island, and they eliminated Covid once and are aiming to do so again.
  - 5y ago

karateka 5y ago

No need for that, we're doing fine. Most of the country is already on it's way back to normality. The most populous city is still locked down but it's better to be locked down for 2 months than to have the hospitals clogged with Covid patients and have everyone you know getting sick. Looking forward to enjoying another long stretch without restrictions after this!

jrochkind1 5y ago

i don't think New Zealand has actually had intense lockdown for the entire last 18 months? I think they had short periods, but over the whole pandemic period I think they've had much less interruption to daily life than here in the USA, with much of that time having few restrictions, no? > you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started. I don't think so?

gridspy 5y ago
Here's a nice graph of NZ restrictiveness compared to UK and US. You'll see we peak up higher than either but then drop down to very low restrictions. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index?tab=chart&country=NZL~GBR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index?ta...
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  That graph definitely makes it look like NZ has had a lot less restrictions cummulatively than USA.
  - gridspy 5y ago
    It certianly felt that way from here in NZ. I think part of our successful economic recovery is because it wasn't only OPEN but SAFE. In the US and UK there are families living in fear of infection, leading to less consumer behavior.

shaoonb 5y ago

Don't feel too bad for New Zealand, we're doing alright. We're currently in week 4 of our fourth lockdown (in one city of about 1.5 million people, the rest of the country has much lesser restrictions currently). Before this we had a seven week nationwide lockdown from March 23 to May 13 2020, and a lockdown in one city for two weeks, August 14 to 30 2020, and a lockdown of three days and then one week in one city in February 2021. Other than this, we've spent a few weeks in alert level 2 (large gatherings banned) and most of the last year and a half in alert level 1 (no meaningful restrictions aside from border controls and masks required on public transport). Over this time, 27 people have died of COVID-19. Yes our lockdowns have been harsh, but they worked, and thanks to that, we've spent most of our time with less restrictions than the rest of the world and relatively few deaths. Full details can be found here, (alert levels 3 and 4 are lockdown, level 2 is gathering restrictions and level 1 is no day-to-day restrictions): https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-levels-and-updates/history-of-the-covid-19-alert-system/ https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-levels-and-updates/history-of-...