Pretty stupid, their citizens will never develop herd immunity. And what then, when they open up, one person will tumble everything down again.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.