New Zealand relied on science and empathy
bbc.com
bbc.com
This comes of as yet another "I f*ing love science" type news story.
Certainly, some countries have done much more counterproductive things than NZ and some countries would have had better capacity to respond if they listened to epidemiologists more. But for all the UK government has legitimately been criticised for being slow to respond and poor at communicating, it went into lockdown on exactly the same day as NZ. It just likely had at least two or three orders of magnitude more cases at the time.
I also suspect we'll probably find that some things that people have very strong and strident opinions about don't strongly correlate to results across regions. And that the reasons why things were so different between a lot of country or state As and country or state Bs will either be unclear or be the result of factors that couldn't really be mitigated.
It might look like an "isolated island whose countrymen aren't regularly jetting back" from the outside, but New Zealand is much more connected than that. Inbound, international students, migrant workers (mainly horticulture) and tourists are huge. Outbound, LAX is only a single flight.
The quarantine was only imposed fairly recently. Until late March IIRC, self-isolation was require because it would have been impossible to quarantine ~100k arrivals for 2 weeks.
For related reasons NZ only had six known cases by mid March when they imposed that restriction. Italy had 21k cases and 1400 deaths at that point, with a few hundred more dying every day from that point onwards.
Are you sure this isn't because NZ is one of very few countries where full elimination is a viable option?
We rely heavily on immigration. Our policy planners expect the population to grow every year because of new arrivals. That movement has other effects, like supporting house price inflation. Which itself impacts the banks' expectations and willingness to lend. And so on.
Tourism and international education are very significant industries for us. Tourism employs about 1/7 workers. Even something that appears relatively domestic, such as growing food, relies on migrant workers from the Pacific.
Isn’t Taiwan also on this path?
So I definitely agree that NZ benefited a lot by being more remote and having no land borders, but we are only doing so well because we didn’t underestimate the virus and took drastic action early.
If anything Germany is far better case on how to manage an outbreak than New Zealand.
It is very frustrating to hear multinationals opening offices in Sydney and saying "New Zealand people can work there too, it's all the same" when it's not. American companies open Canadian offices all the time because the cultures are different. Australia and New Zealand have the same relationship: same language, different cultures.
It grinds my gears to this day because I would love to return for good, but I can't/won't give up my career, and I don't really want to move to Sydney. I want to move to New Zealand.
EDIT: N/M looks like I can get in easily if I'm offered a job by an NZ employer listed as an "absolute skill shortage", so I guess I answered my own question. I'm using this tool for anyone curious: https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-...
Second female leader to have a baby while in office!
All that in less than 3 years being elected at a young age. Just wow!
Presumably the leader of a small nation has a wider latitude for action to them than the leader of a similarly sized region which is contained in a larger country.
BC dragged its feet on implementing a lockdown, the federal government had to be dragged kicking and screaming into closing its borders. Travelers from China weren't even quarantined throughout February, for instance.
Anecdotally, I have heard that Chinese-Canadian communities took the issue seriously on their own, and started practicing social distancing in February... Which may well have helped.
It's looking better than Ontario and Quebec, but it could have looked even better, had it acted sooner.
One thing BC has in its favour is a reasonably common-sense population that more or less understands the gravity of the situation, particularly the Chinese community. People have been good with social distancing and so forth. But BC Parks should have closed sooner, Bonnie Henry should not have been encouraging people to "continue to go to Whistler", and so forth.
Certainly not perfect, of course.
>Unlike the countries that declared "war on Covid-19", the government's message was that of a country coming together. It urged people to "Unite Against Covid-19". Ms Ardern has repeatedly called the country "our team of five million".
The wonders of having a young woman in charge rather than a testosterone-laden septuagenarian. Being German I'm also glad Merkel is in charge over here and her measured response rather than banging on the war drums reassured me as well.
NZ is highly connected, and it gets a significant number of tourists from China. Summer is the high season for tourism.
So if anything, NZ should be hit harder than many less connected states/countries.
And summer matters because most scientists think hot weather slows the virus' ability to spread.
NZ has temperate weather - it is not a hot country: https://weatherspark.com/m/144837/3/Average-Weather-in-March...
In March in Christchurch (approx 1/10th NZ population) the temperature would be called “cool”. I think you are rationalising.
"Temperate" I'd agree on, but not "warm".
I'm reading Pathway of the Birds, about Polynesian voyaging, navigation and settlement with a focus on NZ, and there's a whole chapter "Settling New Zealand: Adapting to a Cool Land", which was something the early settlers had to do because they came from genuine warm islands in tropical Polynesia.
I dunno, even up in BC here it's been warmer than that these last couple weeks and I would in no way describe where I live as a 'warm place'. At least on the coast. It gets pretty warm in the interior in the summer though.
Australia is the same way at the moment too. 20 new cases total yesterday and there doesn't seem to be a major section of the population undiagnosed. The new cases seem to be coming from known pockets of infection (people living together, etc.).
There's a real chance life may get back to normal in these two nations with the exception of international travel without waiting for a cure/vaccine.
In 2018, 3.82 million people flew into NZ, an increase of 1.2 million over the previous year. Iceland meanwhile received 2.3 million people in 2018, most from the United States, which is in line with historical averages of around 2 million.
They are only doing so much better if you define better solely in terms of deaths (about 14x per capita). The difference is that New Zealand locked down; Iceland had much more modest restrictions (and did very well overall with containing the epidemic - a bit better than say the locked down Bay Area)
The interesting question is if "deaths/capita" is the correct and only metric. Both countries are basically at the end of their curve and Iceland lets say might lose about 200 years of life (using some worse case guesses for currently hospitalized) or about 5 hours a person.
What's better for the average person? A 4 week lockdown or life expectancy dropping by 5 hours?
But since you did comment, are you certain that lack of immigration and "warmth" explain the discrepancy between their results and America's? Or Italy's? Or Canada's? Or (as another commentator points out) British Columbia?
Please go into more detail about the relative impact of these factors, and why you think they are more important than the choices New Zealand made.
Chinese immigrants visiting family for Chinese new year were a large source of initial infections in America, Canada, and Italy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_Zealand#Et...
Temperature today: Auckland peaks at 19 C, New Orleans at 25 C
Population: NZ 4.8 million, Lousiana 4.7 million
Density: NZ 18 / sq. km, Lousiana 34 / sq. km
COVID cases (deaths): NZ 1445 (13) , Lousiana 24523 (1328)
By contrast every US city in this table [1] is way above that, with the lowest being 3889.4. (New Orleans, surprisingly, is a mere 783 [2].)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_New_Zealand#...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
Exposure to cross-border travel:
Louisiana: Home to one of the largest commercial shipping ports in the world, serving as an import/export hub for the largest national economy in the world. Has extensive land borders with said nation and large amounts of interstate travel daily.
New Zealand: Has a small export market largely focused on agriculture and a small tourism market. Is an island nation over 1300 miles away from the nearest other significant economy. All movement in/out of the nation has to go through tightly controlled ports or airports.
* The factors described are washed out by the other factors
* These factors don't have a significant impact
* It isn't any of these that determines difference in outcome between NZ and others but action taken
No wonder you guys hate social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram if you run around calling everyone insincere at the first sign of the mildest degree of disagreement.
Denser than America, cooler than Lousiana, closer to Wuhan than any part of America, more travel to/from China, poorer than America, better than America at dealing with this crisis.
New Zealand is amazing. But it also has large mountains with snow. It’s not exactly warm though.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obj...
I don’t have the sequencing, but there is no reason to think NZ would only “catch” one strain.
> The deadliest mutations in the Zhejiang patients had also been found in most patients across Europe, while the milder strains were the predominant varieties found in parts of the United States, such as Washington State, according to their paper.
> A separate study had found that New York strains had been imported from Europe. The death rate in New York was similar to that in many European countries, if not worse.
It's no so much that a particular area only has one strain, but that the predominant strain that takes hold may have more favourable outcomes.
NZ is highly connected because (a) it is a world tourist destination and (b) NZers travel all over the world (including a lot to Europe).
1/3 of NZ infections are returning NZers, making up the vast majority of initial infections detected weeks ago.
The community transmissions are spread around the country, and unlikely to have a single super-spreader as the source. Our health system (including ICU wards) is vastly under-utilised at present, so any cases are getting the best care possible, and we have first world healthcare. There is no elective surgery at present, and our hospitals have been funded by our socialised healthcare. We could do with more PPE gear, but we have sufficient because our health system is not overloaded, because our government listened to good advice.
Let’s pick NY as comparison: confirmed “132,467 cases, including 9,101 confirmed coronavirus deaths and 4,582 probable coronavirus deaths“. Assuming death rate 0.5% after 3 weeks, then actual cases is in the millions. With that sort of community transmission then strains could make a difference. NY state has approx 4x the population of NZ, and 1000x more deaths.
NZ has a few thousand cases, NY has a few million cases. NZ acted fast and hard as soon as community transmission was detected. That explains the difference in deaths, and you can’t jump to any conclusions about death rates because the relevant numbers are too imprecise.
Either way, I expect NZ will sequence the different clusters, so in time we will know
Did you make that up? From 2018 data https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/st.int.arvl?view=map
Tourists to NZ: 3.7M population: 4.9M
Tourists to US: 80M population: 327M
And NZ tourism is mostly during our summer, so Jan/Feb/Mar are busy. “Tourism is New Zealand's biggest export industry, contributing 20.4% of total exports.“
> warm island nation
Irrelevant: compare NZ to states with equivalent temperature and population in say February and then compare your death rates.
About 1/3 of NZ cases are NZers returning from overseas, which makes NZ numbers even better: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/19/1101216/covid-19-in-nz...
We have been very lucky that the govt put incoming people into voluntary lockdown quite early, China first, then everywhere - that means that lots of cases occurred in isolation and didn't spread (seems like we've received probably more cases from the US than elsewhere), of course some people were stupid, we kicked out some tourists who wouldn't do it.
5 new cases yesterday nationwide, and a continuing lowering trend. Still ~400 people with active cases so we have to be careful - we're nominally getting out of "level 4" lockdown next week, our "level 3" is roughly where California is now, that's predicted to last 2 more weeks - then apart from international travel, and at risk people still taking care we will largely be back to normal. Of course one mistake could scupper all of this.
For example JFK international airport alone gets around 30 million international passengers a year.
For example, under the old normal, on the order of 1 out of 1000 people in Britain were Australians! I don't know exactly how New Zealand compares, but they wouldn't be far behind.
I think the differences between, say, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, France, Germany and Singapore are pure dumb luck. The virus spread through mega-churches in France and Korea; they were doing exactly the same things in Rooty Hill, but no one who turned up happened to be infected. New Zealand bogans haven't discovered cruise ships yet. Melbourne's international student accomodation got lucky, Singapore's guest worker dormitories didn't. And so on.
Don't get me started on Australian federalism. The Commonwealth decided to let the virus in and suppress it, ignoring the fact that the states were committed to blowing a trillion dollars on lockdowns the moment it turned up in volume. At least we can blame federalism; what excuse does New Zealand have?