New Zealand PM: No open borders for 'a long time'
bbc.com
bbc.com
*I put "essential" in quotes here because I believe the definition of essential changes the longer services are closed. For instance, a dentist isn't really essential when they're closed for a month, but a 3 month closure is going to be increasingly problematic for people needing something more than a standard cleaning.
The UK border, despite their having the highest death toll in Europe, is similarly comparatively open compared to most other anglophone countries.
Everyone else, however, may well have something to fear from the UK...
* 747: 450 passengers; new cases 4400 (5 May)
If the route out of lockdown is to test and trace, though, international travel without quarantine makes that pretty tough.
(Whether those tourists will go on holiday is another question. Tourists may be wary of going far away on holiday, and if social distancing will be compulsory inside planes, and trains, travel likely will become much more expensive)
It also will be hard for countries to withstand the pressure from their population to allow them to go on holiday in other countries.
In the end, the better choice may be to allow some tourist visits, as that may mean people will follow restrictive rules better than when they wouldn’t be allowed to have go on holiday/to make some money from tourism.
As a New Zealander, I'm not sure that there would be much appetite for visiting any country outside this potential trans-tasman bubble for tourism purposes as we would be looking at a two week quarantine on returning home.
pressure is only going to come from inside from the tourism industry that is loosing out on income.
It‘s sad that the article uses the term in such a sloppy way. NZ was aiming for containment and eradication from the beginning.
There are three common strategies to fight the Corona virus:
„Herd immunity“ - Naturally letting it run out of steam. The problem is that your health system might get overwhelmed. Therefore „flatten the curve“. Advantages: new infections imported from abroad don’t matter; cost of the counter measures to society is minimized. Disadvantage: virus damage is maximized. Sweden is the classic example. GB, NYC probably.
„Dancing“ - try to keep the numbers low but live with fact that you cannot eradicate the virus. If necessary bring the cases down by using the „hammer“ first. Advantage: imported cases can be contained; possibly time will bring better treatment/vaccination. Disadvantage: expensive measures for indefinite time. JP, HK
Eradication - Advantage: back to normal if achieved. Disadvantage: not robust against imported cases. Possibly very expensive/unachievable. NZ
As one can imagine, changing from one strategy to another at first gives you the disadvantages without the advantages.
The reason for this is both nations closed the borders early back in February. When that happened the fuckwit Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization came on national TV of Australia and said "There's no reason to restrict travel". This was in February. Listen to the fuckwit say it here: https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/pm/is-closing-borders-... Lawrence Gostin, an official in WHO is also quoted in the above "it is unlawful, unnecessary and in breach of international law".
I normally wouldn't be so harsh on criticism but this was in February. The border closure wasn't some racist Donald Trump style effort. It was two countries doing the right thing but the WHO is so corrupt and fucked up they tried to stop it, even threatening they'd bring the border closures to the international courts.
Speaking of fuckwittery, the Diamond Princess debacle is really in a class of its own. There's some suspicion that it's also linked to (one of?) our worst fatality cluster in that medical personnel from the Diamond Princess may have gone to a eldercare facility straight after. Nice.
As far as I'm concerned, every cruise ship that docks in Australia can pay $1M for the right to not be greeted with an Exocet missile until that industry has paid back the hideous damage it's done.
Diamond Princess was the one in Japan.
If you are a New Zealander are you allowed to go to Italy for a vacation? Or a conference in the USA later on?
New Zealand has a 14 day isolation in a government facility if you enter it.
the reason the border is open for residents is because you can't reasonably stop people from returning home.
But there will be a time before COVID19 and after and they will be different in many ways we can‘t know, yet. I myself have this feeling of “One day the vaccine will be there and everything will be as it was before“. That‘s wrong I think, we already left the known track and while a vaccine-like intervention will come, it will not get us back into the timeline we were in, before.
But people are resilient. People face death from other causes all the time. Yes, there will be a measurable increase due to covid-19 but in countries that are already ravaged by poverty, crime, disease, wars, etc, it might not significantly alter the emotional balance of those who survive. That's particularly true in those countries whose authorities successfully downplay the effects of covid-19, e.g. by not doing much testing.
From that POV, all other things being equal, one could expect that those countries might grow their economies while the rest of the world loses opportunities.
I'm not sure I buy that argument though. World economy is not entirely a zero sum game
Most countries in the world rely on global supply chains, and many countries are now closing their borders to external trade, meaning that their own prices will sky-rocket, likely causing layoffs and bankruptcies, causing stimulus packages and therefore inflation. The world is very interconnected (as I'm sure you know)
In addition, I believe that many people would suffer significantly _more_ if many more people were dying around them. They would have friends and family who died or who were tied to people who died. I don't think it would be something as simple as "eh, someone else's problem". In addition, it's not just deaths -- there is a lot of data showing that there are long-term lung issues that develop if you do survive.
Which countries, exactly, are closing their borders to trade? There are definitely a lot of restrictions being placed on travel and tourism, but banning cargo makes no sense in this context.
If anything, things will probably just get lonelier for merchant seamen.
Of course this assumes
1. some kind of immunity (which I'd think indications are pointing toward, or I'd expect to have seen more repeat contractions by now)
2. the response was dorked up down to the individual level (which is most decidedly not the case -- plenty of individuals (especially among highish-income) are choosing to self isolate and take precautions, and thus will not contract the virus for quite some time no matter how bad the government response was, so immunity within these groups will never form, so the government will not be able to reopen anyway)
So even in the absence of other considerations, the 2nd point above pretty much cancels out my original post.
Not necessarily, you can have a short-term immunization that only last a year or two. This is why the "herd immunity" might be a poor idea when we don't know much about this virus.
Anyway, i demanded a work/vacation visa to NZ for this October, i fear this won't be possible :/
That was a more extreme case of 20% to 25% of the population but losing a sizable percentage of productivity with the population is very expensive in ways apparent both on and off the balance sheets. It is the epitome of penny wise pound foolish to make such a trade - the bloody gains will fade away in time while the loss echoes.
* how much does it mutate?
* does exposure to one mutation lend immunity to another mutation?
* does exposure to one mutation lend immunity to the same mutation?
Higher the true R0 value for the virus, higher the threshold for reaching herd immunity and the eventual point the infection rate reaching 0.0; globally, without a vaccine, very possible corona will continue to exist years, if not longer.
Yes, but fewer of them, which is the point.
Now if a fully functional vaccine is developed, that'll of course change things. But there's no guarantee one is possible, so only time will tell.
* most cases are asymptomatic
* most people with respiratory infections (outside of a known pandemic) are never tested for anything
* most people who are tested for infections are tested with standard panels, not studied for novel viruses
Their approach is highly experimental, which makes it all the more bizarre that they aren't testing very much. They have a "developing world" or "overwhelmed country" cases:deaths ratio (about 1:8) which suggests that they have a huge number of cases they don't know about. It's not clear why a country taking a radically experimental approach to COVID-19 would also test so lightly - it suggests that they don't want to know what's going on.
It's possible that they don't want to have embarrassingly high case numbers, but it's just as possible that their numbers are embarrassing in the other direction - i.e. while they've killed a huge bunch of oldies, they also haven't got nearly enough cases to have herd immunity.
We will also get to see, long term, what the morbidity effects of taking this approach are. They will not look super-intelligent if there is any kind of effective treatment or vaccine developed in the next 6-12 months.
They only look good when you compare them with hard-hit countries. The difference is that Belgians and Spaniards aren't patrolling every goddamn social media site announcing how well they've done with the virus.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...
Getting the death rate is tricky, what you need to look at is the increase in mortality over the 5 year average.
This gives a number of covid deaths at 40-80k, and thus an infection of 3-15 million depending on the actual fatality rate.
That means letting it run free, assuming immunity once you have it, and a 65% herd immunity level, would mean at least another 100k deaths and possibly as high as 1 million. Most likely 250k more. There is no appetite in the UK currently for that.
It will not be pretty. So was it a wise move to shut down? Maybe, given the information they had at the time. Better to be safe than sorry. In hindsight with all the facts we have now maybe not but they didn't have those facts at the start.
Countries like the US which have no unified and sane policy are going to take a full decade to recover. Some parts will never recover.
Consider. Lets say that because people are terrified of the virus they protect themselves. Which to their credit most people are. And the growth rate drops from 35% to 5% a week. So how long does it take to get from 2% infected to 60%? Do the math and you find out it's 70 weeks or 18 months.
More likely unintended consequences and costs will keep mounting. And at some point cross covid costs. After that political tunes will change.
It's not like the ant hill can just build a border around itself and survive for ever.
Does not sound like two weeks is likely.
I imagine the statement was purposefully non specific as COVID-19 will likely be a threat for a long, yet undetermined, amount of time.
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/health-safety/...
NZ has always been the best place in the world to survive the end of days.
You can't safely open up without employing either highly accurate testing + rapid testing + forced quarantine + contact tracing, or having your population immunized. It's pretty much that simple.
We've had single digit new cases for almost 2 weeks now, 2 new cases in the past 3 days, none in my region for over 2 weeks, there are ~150 active cases nationwide, dropping every day. The goal is for all new cases to be occurring in quarantine.
We‘re currently doing a lot of very advanced science in all related fields in parallel and I think that we can be very sure that we‘ll come up with multiple useful solutions within two years or so. And with a lot of general advancements to scale out processes that have been done on small scales until now.
That does not mean that we‘ll be back to what used to be “normal“, though.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-havent-we-cur...
By closing their borders it gives them time to build up their healthcare infrastructure, wait for vaccines and other experimental treatments to be vetted so by the time their borders open up again it won't devastate the country like it has everywhere else. These are all luxuries every nation wishes it could have taken advantage of. Criticizing New Zealand's response right now is extremely premature.
It may surprise some people but the number of Australians that visit countries overseas is roughly equal to tourists visiting Australia. As wealthy diversified nations tourism for Australia and New Zealand is a net wash in terms of foreign cash flows. Citizens spend as much overseas as tourists coming to Australia. The issue isn't foreign currency gains/losses but a more simple case of the economy and jobs are setup to service a certain number of tourists who are no longer there.
Both nations leaders have met and discussed encouraging bilateral tourism. Honeymoons, family overseas trips, etc. will be bilateral and internal for the time being. If the previously external tourism can be directed internally it'll actually more or less be a wash on topline numbers.
What could alter the course though is if some treatment is found which makes it essentially harmless, even if immunity would be impossible.
The flu vaccine works the same way: scientists predict which strains are the most likely to spread and create or find weaker strains that are all combined into a single vaccine.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/coronavir...
COVID vaccine work is still in its infancy so we don't know yet whether the non-functional mutations we're seeing in COVID's phylogeny will effect how effective vaccines are.
> Unlike many infectious diseases, recovery from naturally acquired tetanus _does not usually result in immunity to tetanus_. This is due to the extreme potency of the tetanospasmin toxin. Tetanospasmin will likely be lethal before it will provoke an immune response.
Quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetanus. Emphasis is mine.
Only vaccine development allowed the creation of any level of herd immunity. There’s no such thing as “natural herd immunity” in the real world.
That doesn't mean the disease will go extinct, but the epidemic will end in that population. Flare ups can still happen among sub groups of people in the population who aren't immune but the disease won't spread rapidly through the population as a whole until the number of people who are immune drops below the herd immunity threshold for that particular disease/community.
Herd immunity only works when you have an effective vaccine/treatment, and it only helps the people who aren't eligible for that treatment. Given the coronavirus R0, you might achieve herd immunity when 75% of the population has been infected. Achieving herd immunity by letting the virus slowly spread until 0.5% or 1% of your people to die is a loss condition, that's millions of deaths. It's certainly better than letting it spread like wildfire and overwhelm hospitals so that 5% of your people die, no question there, but still not good.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/2-7-million-in-new-yor...
> With 271,000-plus confirmed cases, the mortality rate would be as high as 6 percent. With 2.7 million cases, it would be around 0.5 percent -- much lower, though still much higher than the seasonal flu.
0.5% in New York as of April 25. Since New York is the worst case so far in US, overall, the fatality rate drops to 0.2-0.3%.
You say:
> I know that many people who have it don't go to hospital unless severe (have few colleagues like that), plus tons of +-asymptomatic folks
That's exactly why the true mortality rate is much LOWER. Mortality rate's denominator is supposed to be the true number of infected. So asymptomatic and others with anti-bodies means the true denominator is much higher and thus the true mortality rate is much lower.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/2-7-million-in-new-yor...
> With 271,000-plus confirmed cases, the mortality rate would be as high as 6 percent. With 2.7 million cases, it would be around 0.5 percent -- much lower, though still much higher than the seasonal flu.
0.5% in New York as of April 25. Since New York is the worst case so far in US, overall, the fatality rate drops to 0.2-0.3%.
You say:
> I know that many people who have it don't go to hospital unless severe (have few colleagues like that), plus tons of +-asymptomatic folks
That's exactly why the true mortality rate is much LOWER. Mortality rate's denominator is supposed to be the true number of infected. So asymptomatic and others with anti-bodies means the true denominator is much higher and thus the true mortality rate is much lower.
We're don't have herd immunity to Ebola. Instead we just don't let it take hold. We have 0 cases of rabies. It no longer exists in any animals. Cholera is almost non-existent. Occasionally a flight will come in that causes some alarm but that's it. Malaria only comes from people who traveled abroad. Our cows aren't immune to mad cow disease. But we don't have any cases here.
It's amazing what a bit of distance and quarantine can achieve. The two nations are also close to eliminating COVID-19 internally. Sure international travel will have to remain restricted but it's really not a big deal. Trade is still happening, just not tourism.
And all it takes is one person to coof somewhere in their country and bada bing you're toast. I don't see how this is beneficial, unless moving forward they has no travel period which is completely unrealistic.
>The meeting discussed a possible "trans-Tasman bubble", where people could go between Australia and New Zealand freely, and without quarantine. But she said visitors from further afield were not possible any time soon.
Trade will still occur of course. There doesn't seem to be a documented risk of COVID spreading via cargo ships. Tourism is the issue.
The hope is that since AU/NZ have more or less as much outgoing tourism as they do incoming tourism the economic damage from border closures can be mitigated by directing tourism internally and bilaterally. New Zealand has been at 0 new cases for days now and Australia seems to be just a couple of weeks behind on getting COVID-19 to zero new cases. There were 24 new cases in Australia yesterday but that's far away from the peak 500+ they had in March. So it's a possibility.
The only risk to these two nations is foreign travel sparking a new wave of infections. So foreign travel will have to be restricted. In all other respects life will go back to normal. I don't think the same is true of any other nations in the world right now. Nowhere else will you be able to live normally without that risk.
Seriously if the best negative anyone has against the quarantine is you'll have to continue to restrict international travel now that you've literally got the number to 0 new cases you've lost me. That's such a small price to pay.
Well, COVID-19 isn't Ebola, and it has taken hold, and we are under lockdown. So what are the conditions for reopening? Vaccine?
New Zealand had zero new cases yesterday. Zero. Australia had 24 new cases and trending to zero.
We still have a ways to go before we're out of the woods. We have some reassuring signs though (many consecutive days of < 10 cases detected).
It's actually very smart. You can try to achieve herd immunity if vaccination proves nearly impossible, but why not wait and see while you can?
Wait for how long? We've never turned around a vaccine in under 18 months, and some pathogens don't have vaccines and have been around forever. What if it takes 24 months to develop an effective vaccine? Do we lockdown for that long?
This is especially true in affluent tech hub areas like Silicon Valley and Seattle. So even if the country hits the 0.7 infection rate threshold (or whatever), it's still unlikely to be able to open completely.