One has to wonder to what extent the new strain is really responsible for this, versus being a convenient excuse for the government's failure to manage the normal variant.
Totally my experiences, but London looks like it hasn't given a shit for weeks.
California, Germany, Korea, Japan...
We don’t consider whether the reaction has been worse than the virus, but that’s because there’s so much political reputation, ego, and identity staked on having been “level-headed” about all this.
We have the solutions, we just refuse to do what it takes to solve it.
Western nations are taking half measures with poor enforcement, and blaming individuals for failures that should be attributed to institutions.
China welds people in their houses and forcibly enters homes and drags family to some location. I have no desire to emulate them.
If you want to get rid of the virus, you can, but you have to suck up the costs: shut down your borders and do whatever it takes. Close down internal travel: domestic flights were virtually shutdown in NZ; Ozzie’s had other overland travel restrictions between states etcetera. Stay at home: fuck the economy for a while, but then you all can relax.
NZ is about the same size and population as Oregon, so a single state could choose to do it, if they were willing to face up to the implications of the choice.
There is still time to do it now, to give yourselves enough time to vaccinate people that would be network nodes in the transmission graph, and health workers, and the at-risk population.
Or be honest like Sweden and decide that some deaths and chronic repercussions are acceptable costs (versus the alternative economic and human damage.)
But don’t give lame just-right excuses like “Australia is an island with a population almost half California.” Oz has a higher population than every other state except Texas, so....
[1] https://tia.org.nz/about-the-industry/quick-facts-and-figure...
In other words immiserate anyone who’s not a comfortable white-collar person that can hole up in their home, Zoom to work, and dispatch immigrants to deliver food
I personally don’t know of any restaurant that had to close due to Covid (and most restaurants are close to the edge during normal times).
My friends on unemployment benefits and requiring state healthcare would prefer not to be, in other circumstances, but they muddle through e.g. one friend needed emergency care the other day (free), and another friend needs their gall-bladder removed (free). And Covid is low (or no) risk even for the most unlucky jobs.
Unemployment benefits and the aged pension were raised significantly, employers were paid a subsidy to continue to employ people of income dropped by 30% or more from the jan quarter 12 months earlier - and the support is clacheduled to continue until March at present.
This was also exceptionally well distributed and applied in almost no time.
NZ is not a state, but instead has a precarious relationship with the USA and other countries, which can ban-hammer us for things it really shouldn’t have any say in.
A better example: “Since Canberra pointedly demanded an investigation into the origins and spread of the coronavirus, the number of Aussie businesses being squeezed in China has exploded. Crates of Australian rock lobsters have been left to rot at a Chinese airport, and mountains of coal have been stuck in Chinese ports. Beijing turned the screw again, hitting Australian wine exports with punitive tariffs of up to 212 percent, essentially closing off a US$1 billion market.” “Australia's virus-weakened economy is being targeted for political retribution and the two countries may be sliding into a shadow trade war.”
The federal government certainly could have done a lot better. But frankly, even a federal government that didn’t do anything would have been better than the current one which was promoting snake oil, and not promoting wearing masks or social distancing but working actively against them.
In the US, some of the relevant choices have to be made at the Federal level.
For example, Oregon does not have authority to close state borders to travellers from other states or countries.
Sure, with actual army deployment we could get somewhere (it seems we have about 20 soldiers per kilometer of border). But the massive difference in effort between "police airports and the coast with radar" and "Mobilize the army" is huge.
The issue is not whether it's possible - it is - it's whether the cost of doing so is too high. It's a fair consideration to make, but it should be clear that that's the consideration being made, rather than pretending that only island nations have this option.
I don't know why everyone keeps going on about other countries not getting the same results - no other rich country has even talked about trying, as far as I know.
At risk of being labelled “anti-lockdown” or whatever, i’ll clarify my point is we should have done MORE. Strict lockdowns, tracing, etc... AND providing direct relief and freezes.
You might want to check the news on South Korea. They're hitting daily records right now. This isn't to say they're at US levels, but with their current measures, they don't have control of the virus.
The standard is keeping the virus well under control for the majority of the time, ans when you do have a flare up, bringing it back under control before it becomes too bad.
I would assume this is a new generation (new wild-type) which has been reintroduced from the West. As such, Korea did succeed at containing the virus: their only problem is that Western countries didn't bother and made the problem magnitudes more difficult for everyone.
More generally, the press here almost exclusively report the facts that make the UK look like a failure and South Korea look like a success. So for example, the BBC reported on the removal of those social distancing measures, framing it as proof that South Korea's test and trace was so effective they could even reopen nightclubs... like, the day after they did, but making it sound like something they'd done a while ago with no ill effects. They then ran loads of reports on important topics like BTS whilst ignoring the explosion in cases. So everyone who gets their news from the British press is convinced that our government is incompetent, keeps on doing U-turns that damage businesses and the economy, recklessly reopened knowing it would result in the virus spreading, is behind the rest of the world in Covid testing, etc when we should've acted like South Korea... when in reality South Korea was even more like that and if the UK government had taken the same actions they'd have been described in that exact same negative way rather than glossed over and omitted. It's a complete and utter media illusion.
The U.K. government is beyond contempt, but these comparisons don’t help.
NZ is not an international flight hub. Heathrow was the busiest airport in Europe prior to COVID (it is not anymore).
NZ has done exceptionally well and I don't want to take away from it at all! But it would be dishonest to say that they faced challenges of the same magnitude.
They haven't faced challenges of the same magnitude only because they took action to stop an outbreak from starting, at the earliest opportunity. That's the only meaningful difference in how things have played out.
They passed the same challenges that the UK failed.
It is remote, but the UK is an island too, with complete control over who enters.
"How’s Sweden doing, you ask? More people have died of COVID-19 in the past 5 days than have died altogether in Norway throughout the entire pandemic.
Tegnell still hasn’t been fired."
(Sweden and Norway have similar populations, climate, and even language and culture, but very different COVID approaches)
It has denser and bigger cities.
Norway has had severe flu seasons, with high fatality rates that may have reduced the number of vulnerable people in the pop.
Cultural similarities are debatable; many in Sweden have complained about that outdated comparison.
Finally: minimising lives lost is not the only goal in a pandemic, or even in the day to day management of a country.
I'm not saying the Swedish approach is the most preferable, I'm saying cherry-picking Norway on some hand-wavy "all nordic countries are entirely alike wrt pandemics and you cannot compare them to other countries" manner is not scientific. And selecting one part of that country is not going to work unless you match on all important factors.
The rigorous way to do this is: form a list of parameters that affect the pandemic, and then match on a large pool of countries to compare outcomes. Calibrate your system. You can't just cherry pick either way. I can say - well, Sweden has similar pop densities to Germany, and Stockholm is denser than Berlin so Swedish should be worse. But that's not rigorous, it's just confirmation bias at work.
In truth, we'll only know the outcomes when the pandemic is over - probably by 2022 for most countries - and then it'll be an extended argument over whether it was worth say the economic damage, mental health consequences, etc. etc. for any actual reduction in excess deaths.
It's complicated.
Regardless of the recent uptick in London, the rules needed to be changed, everyone knew it, Boris didn’t do it, and then to mask another U turn they seized on this.
Chris Witty said today the idea that the new strain is more contagious is “just a theory”.
Travel ban is advisory, overnight stay is banned by law.
> You must not leave or be outside of your home except for where you have a specific purpose, or a ‘reasonable excuse’
> If you live in a tier 4 area, you must stay at home. You must not leave your home to travel unless for work, education or other legally permitted reasons
So when Boris says "should" I believe he means "must unless you are in one of the excluded categories".
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tier-4-stay-at-home#stay-at-home
(steady stream of traffic leaving London:
https://twitter.com/Keyboar58668342/status/13403788744594022...
Fining people could arguably create a higher risk, as people would feel they had permission to break the ban if they accept a low risk of being caught and fined, and enforcement would involve more interaction between strangers.
I've heard it said that this mutation increases the replication rate by 0.4.
If we can keep this under control, we could have instead originally had a replication rate of 0.6 and the pandemic would be long over - with no mutated strain.