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Comment by kennywinker | Hacker News Reader

As someone not in NZ, I gotta say, the half-destruction of my way of life for the foreseeable future seems way worse than total destruction for a short period.

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Total destruction? What are you referring to?

Parent post referred to total destruction, and while I don't actually see "destruction" as the right frame for covid restrictions I was taking their premise and running with it - so if NZ had a period of total destruction, we've got ongoing partial destruction in north america.

It has a chance to work for islands, but not anywhere else except maybe North Korea.

During the last few months it has been about how to manage, while waiting for the vaccine. That plan seems to require the half-destruction of many people’s lives unfortunately.

No. The virus doesn’t travel over land, it travels via human hosts.

Any country could eliminate it, island or not, by closing its borders to international passenger travel.

While in theory true, in practice borders are not 100% effective. Locking the doors encourages people to climb through the windows, even islands can be entered by boat.

Opening the borders with a strict two week quarantine enforcement seems like the only sane way to proceed (as NZ has done)

And then some countries will die because they are majorly dependent to international travel and tourism. Not every country in the world is self-sustainable. Closed borders are an easy strategy, but cannot be applied everywhere in the world. Take a look in EU which is built under the open-borders strategy, take a look at any country which economies depend heavily on tourism, and so on.

I wish every country was like NZ where we could apply such measures, but we aren't. In example, my country Greece with closed border would face a more extreme economic crisis than 10 years ago.

International trade does not require free and open international passenger travel.

I am not talking about trade, but passenger travel. Greece relies heavily on tourism. Closed borders or even 14 days of isolations will kill the tourism industry, all related economic sectors and the whole country will be buried in unemployment. What's a viable strategy for such countries?

You have described New Zealand’s problem. Tourism was the biggest industry, it hurt and it’s going keep hurting for a long time.

Tourism is (was?) our second largest export earner. We've just had to choose which economic hit we take.

It worked in Czech Republic, hell we even opened our borders up back in June and the measures that were in place kept things broadly manageable (note: we're not even an island, we're smack bang in the middle of Central Europe). What sank us was that the government capitulated, patted themselves on the back for a job well done and removed the requirement for masks on public transport, in shops, in offices etc. In the last week they've since had to clamp down severely and it's going to tank the economy where I live. I'm not going to pretend it was rosy under the restrictions, many businesses were hurting but weren't completely crippled, but many had found a way to survive. And we've since gone from being the envy of continental Europe to having some of the highest per-capita new cases per day in the world.

I'm not sure what else you can do other than try to keep things under control while a potential vaccine or at least treatment is developed. Give up and just let it spread through the population, whoever lives wins?

Had the vaccine been available in august or September this year, then the Czech strategy would be best. But vaccines are not made that fast, it looks like 18 months is realistic and locking down countries that long is just not feasible.

And the current half-life is not a good solution.

I think you may be misunderstanding what I am saying. We had:

1. a hard initial lockdown lasting a few weeks, while the virus was exploding throughout Europe. masks everywhere. basically everything closed. borders closed.

2. a subsequent easing of many rules - masks almost everywhere; public transport, shops, offices, and restaurants/bars. international travel possible with quarantine from selected countries.

3. an almost total relaxation of all of the rules

I think the "Czech strategy" you're referring to is #1. I am saying that #2 was an acceptable compromise that caused some grumbles but kept a lid on things while permitting a relatively normal life for most people. #3 is IMO completely responsible for the current state of affairs. If 18 months is a realistic estimate for a vaccine then I genuinely think we could have managed with strategy #2 for that period. If a vaccine is not forthcoming then ... fine we would have given it a shot and without completely tanking our economy by becoming a little hermit republic, and without overwhelming our healthcare system in the meantime.

I mean you can't have your cake and eat it, I know that. But I really believe the balance we struck was sustainable.

edit: btw I hope this doesn't seem like I'm angry at you or anyone here in this thread. This is just a discussion and an interesting one. My tone is just probably influenced by my current cranky mood which is caused by other things unrelated to HN, and re-reading my words I can't tell how it's coming across :-)

Yes, i meant #1 as the Czech strategy. And you did not come across as especially angry.

I get that the current Czech situation seems like wasted effort, but it seems as if even #2 is unrealistic if it will last for more than a few months.

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