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Kudos to New Zealand, but I'll restate the obvious here: for this strategy it really helps if you're an island - not only with the initial implementation of the strategy, but also with staying virus-free once you reach that state. Because in NZ everyone who enters the country is registered and can be forced to follow the quarantine rules. By contrast, in the EU, we have land borders without border checks. Sure, people returning from another country should get a test and quarantine if it's positive - but does anyone know who travelled where and is required to get a test? No...

A small anecdotal example of why this complicates fighting the pandemic: during the first wave, eastern Germany got off relatively easy, with few cases. Czechia was even better, because they locked their borders and hardly had any cases initially. Then, during the summer/early autumn, Germany had the usual rules with masks, distancing, no large gatherings etc., while Czechia had much laxer/less-enforced rules. So guys from Germany would throw their bachelor party in Czechia, get infected and then infect everyone at their wedding a few days later. Which led not only to Czechia having a catastrophic number of cases in October, but also to eastern Germany (particularly Saxony) being hardest hit in the second wave.

Should not be much of a problem in US with only 2 land borders.

Because the US has had so much success securing its southern border, and because taking the necessary actions to truly close it wouldn't be a total political shitstorm.

If we actually did contact tracing, illegal crossings of infected people would be easy enough to deal with. Infections in the US are not being driven by sick people coming in from Mexico.

Very fallacious reasoning here. No-one is saying that infections are driven by Mexican immigrants.

Rather they’re pointing out the obvious: if you’re trying to get to zero COVID, all it takes is one person to start the chain. Thus you cannot have ANY illegal immigration.

FWIW I strongly oppose the “zero COVID” goal because it’s completely unrealistic. We’ll see if the island nations can maintain it long-term but certainly in the US it’s a non-starter.

It's not fallacious reasoning. See the sentence in my other comment where I addressed your reply: If we actually did contact tracing, illegal crossings of infected people would be easy enough to deal with.

Sure, we'd have to actually do something, but it would take less resources than we are expending on medical care, for instance.

The countries with low infection levels don't need to maintain it for all that much longer, we have effective vaccines. Probably 6 months (At which point they will likely have vaccinated much of their populations).

"By contrast, in the EU, we have land borders without border checks."

That's the thing you change.

Well, that's easier said then done. First, you have lots of people living in one country and commuting to work over the border. Second, the economy is so integrated that closing the borders or even introducing border checks leads to major economic disruptions. Third, in democratic countries you'll have those pesky people asking you if all these limitations are really necessary and not an undue restriction of their constitutional rights, so it will probably end up before the supreme court...

The basic problem i see with "Get to Zero" is that it's an extreme position, and politicians always tend to find a compromise in everything they do. So unless you can get everyone to agree to this goal, it's simply not realistic in a democracy, regardless of the scientific merit.

Sure sure, everybody has heard all those arguments. What's new here is the idea, and it's hard to argue with, that living with waves upon waves of infectious disease, on purpose, for years, is itself an extreme position that unduly restricts the economy and personal freedom, for longer than a proper lockdown would. And it also kills more people, and something ought to be said about their right to life & liberty.

I wonder why the eu didn't suspend the free movement over covid Australia's states did that and it worked out pretty well.

In Europe, the conclusion was that you simply cannot do that, physically. It is so integrated, even for essentials such as food or medication, that you have a huge area, requiring delivery/lorry drivers whizzing around, medical staff in hospitals and care homes, etc. Short sharp shock just can’t happen.

So then, if you’re stuck in shades of gray, you have to weigh the antiviral benefits of the lockdown with just keeping the lights out. That’s a tough one to balance.

Kudos to New Zealand, I’m just not sure it’s a blueprint others can replicate.

Lorry drivers should only live in one city. Anywhere else, they need to "self isolate" - contact-less reception of food, hand-off of documents etc.

On return home, they need to assume they became infected en-route and use PPE suitable for that reality.

Medical staff already know how to avoid taking disease home. They just need the funding and support to access the right PPE, facilites and reasonable hours. If they are in transit, the need a good reason and well thought out measures.

Quarantines don't need to stop all people, just those who are likely to spread the disease.

In Europe, the sad truth is that lorry drivers don't really "live" anywhere, except in the cabs of their trucks. Maybe they get a few weeks of home vacation per year, but other than that, they're permanently on the road.

More generally, these rules are all nice and well, but unless you are you going to give every person his or her own policeman to make sure that they follow them, people will keep stretching, bending and breaking the rules - of course, some (maybe even most?) behave responsibly, but the virus only needs a few who don't...

Maybe now is a good time to see EU as one unit and have strategies at EU levels: i.e the same lockdown for all EU.

Of course this is not working under the current way of how EU works, but I think this is the only pragmatic solution as response to such crisis.

You’re one step away from just advocating for a global world government.

Massive centralized control never ends well.

You’re close to the insight here though: there is a pragmatic solution, and it’s to stop waging war against an endemic respiratory virus of zoonotic origin. It’s like struggling in quicksand; trying to escape just makes it worse. That’s real pragmatism.

New Zealand had it very easy with its geography. Same for other relatively small islands. Place like EU with its own national, often competing goals can't be effectively 100% locked out. That's what happens when you have a federation with strong independent parts.

Not that I disagree with your points, they should be the baseline for any serious covid response. Lockdown measures have so far always been watered down by politicians due to pressures from business. Business is this time acting staggeringly idiotically, prolonging the situation due to fear of complete shutdown. At the end, they get hurt much more.

Some local info - Swiss are faring quite well, while not having that many things closed, ie ski resorts work (since its outdoor activity). Not restricting traveling within country. France on the other hand is going again mental (liberté has long abandoned the place of revolution, but that's happen when you go extreme left in real world). Closing many basic things, but ie annual sales in shopping centres were going very strong till today.

I mean how fucking stupid you can be, close outdoor business giving salaries to significant part of population, and on the other side allowing large indoor gatherings of people so they can buy cheap clothes and stores can clean their stock. Even now they only close those > 20,000m2 surface.

Outdoor activities also keep many people sane and in good health, which at this point is becoming significant negative side effect of this whole situation. Most people I know, including myself, the fitness level declined in last year. That is tightly coupled with mental health. At least spring will fix things up a bit (looking forward to run in the park again, more sun, less rain).

The geography in NZ is I think a secondary factor. Due to its isolation and reliance on agriculture, NZ has always had a very strong bio security policy and the systems in place to effect it. (Try bringing in a apple, pot of honey or muddy shoes. Actually don’t!). So when they had to make the call, they weren’t exactly starting from scratch.

In addition, virtually everyone got behind the lockdown and made it work together- this is nothing to do with geography and all to do with good leadership, and a strong society.

Finally, there was a solid "all of government" pandemic plan. Although it got tidied up and dressed up a bit for the public, the basic structure was already in place (in 2017) well before Covid-19 occurred.

This ensured that the right people had the right terminology when a nationwide mobilization was required.

https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/healthy-living/emerge...

>> I can't wait for other countries to simply copy the New Zealand quarantine rules

When the United States of America can relocate to an island and near-permanently ban travel into the country like NZ has, we'll do that, I guess.

EDIT: Ah yes, HN the libertarian paradise unless it's about COVID, then the recommendations are non-practical authoritarian measures and citing island nation success and hurling downvotes. Keep them coming.

It's possible to close borders without being on an island. I (in NZ) don't think the the island factor is essential. The USA has more active military personnel than almost any other country, enough to make closing borders pretty easy compared with many other places.

It's not clear that it is possible. The obvious point of comparison is China, which has continually had to fight off new waves of infections despite strong lockdowns and strong border restrictions. (A lockdown started just 2 weeks ago covering about as many people as the total population of Australia.)

They do seem to be doing ok with it. Their lockdowns and done properly and actually work. ( speaking from the UK where arrivals still quarantine on the honour system and govt offices are hot spots despite being declared ‘COVID safe’)

I'm not saying they're doing badly, just that they've been unable to fully close their borders to the virus despite being equally committed to doing so.

>> I (in NZ) don't think the the island factor is essential.

Why are the countries consistently being cited for doing good jobs in this thread seem to be island nations? Exclude AUS and NZ from the analysis and there are very few landlocked countries doing a good job without very authoritarian measures that are unlikely to be legal in the countries doing poorly.

Probably because our (NZ) governments are simpler. The entire New Zealand government is probably more similar to a state legislature than it is to the US govt.

The UK could have also succeeded but the government didn't have the will to even try early on. Now they are only willing to take half measures.

Also, we DID (NZ, AUZ) have a small advantage since we had less inbound infected for a few weeks early on due to distance. But then again, other nations (US, UK, ...) didn't even try to pursue an elimination strategy.

Eh. My country, a small EU member having land border with several EU members and other countries did a good job in spring. Next-to-zero cases in summer. Then the public demanded to open up the gates. We ended up #1 in Europe around Christmas...

Sounds like a great example of how a non-island can successfully control the virus and how when the govt stops trying, the virus comes straight back.

Also, I bet that when "the public demanded" it was a loud and public minority who wanted travel (and Covid-19) back.

> Why are the countries consistently being cited for doing good jobs in this thread seem to be island nations?

Because these are western english speaking nations with a similar culture that have people posting on HN.

- Make tests free (fully subsidized)

- Shut down the highway off-ramps into towns with some sort of inter-state quarantine scheme (make this legal)

- Institute financial support for all non-essential businesses, then force them to close (cease in person trading) during lock-down

- Educate the populace on Covid details

It's not just about strong walls or deep oceans. We're not talking about a zombie apocalypse here. Stop making excuses.

>> Shut down the highway off-ramps into towns with some sort of inter-state quarantine scheme (make this legal)

"Make this legal" is a pretty hand-wavy way to say that it isn't legal and isn't likely to become legal. Restricting interstate travel is going to be very difficult to both achieve and to survive federal court challenges.

Some toolkits are not available to some countries. The United States is unlikely to be able to effectively use the authoritarian measures other countries have used.

Pointing this out gets mass downvotes on HN which is a typical libertarian paradise, but when it comes to COVID, is all about authoritarian measures to get it done. I'd be fine with them too if they were at all practical in this country, but they aren't.

I concur it was hand-wavy. I'd hope there was some acceptable measure you could get through the courts here in the name of health.

Such a barrier is only really essential when different states have different rules. If you could get all states to agree on a lock-down it would go a long way. You might be able to set up quarantine barriers as you exit the interstate? I don't know.

Personally, I think it is terms like "libertarian paradise" which lead to down-votes. Talk about the issues, not some made up catch all names like "libertarian"

>> I'd hope there was some acceptable measure you could get through the courts here in the name of health.

Interstate commerce clause is going to be nearly impossible to subvert in courts, much less state autonomy, and non-cooperating governors (primarily Republican, I'm sure, but Gov. Polis likely wouldn't go for it either).

>> Talk about the issues, not some made up catch all names like "libertarian"

My comment was downvoted -3 before I even mentioned the word "libertarian." COVID has a way of bringing out the authoritarians in HN.

I am not either. I see the value in authoritarian measures, I really do. I also realize they won't work in the US because of both compliance and lack of legal purchase.

We Americans are experts on what can't be done. Things that are routinely done in many places around the world, like universal healthcare, free education, and schools without shootings, are routinely declared "impossible" in America. Whenever you suggest even the slightest societal behavioral change to fight some public problem, you have hundreds of thousands of people simply dismissing it because "Americans won't do it, or the law won't allow it, or Wall Street doesn't like it, therefore it's completely impossible."

This is from a country that fought the British Empire, helped turn the tide in WW2, put a man on the moon, and made many scientific and technical achievements in the 20th century. But somehow, now, we can't seem to accomplish anything.

That America died in the 80s unfortunately.

When it comes to scientific and technical achievements, the United States is still leading the remainder of the world and has for an entire century. When it comes to societal change, we're (still) pretty bad. It's almost like they might be related phenomenons.

I don’t think that the ability to enforce the restrictions was the most important success criteria.

Australia, NZ and the other countries that have succeeded have a pro-social culture of collective effort.

The US, and increasingly Canada as well, do not - they have an “everyone for themselves” culture.

In the end if people are not going to follow the rules it won’t matter what you try to do - you will fail. In the US and Canada people only halfheartedly follow the rules when the situation is grim, the ERs are filled and freezer trucks parked in the hospital parking lot.

> - Make tests free (fully subsidized)

Florida has free tests. I tried two places (giant parks filled with hundreds of cars waiting), the cops told me 3+ hours wait each, I went to a private clinic and was done in 20 min. But yeah, they have free and fully subsidized tests.

Apparently the logistics of it is not that simple.

You can't have just one measure. You really need all the measures mentioned in the grandparent comment.

Kind of no point having the population get tested now in the US. Without contact tracing and quarantine a positive result arrives too late to help anyone.

First you need to lock down the entire state until the daily infected is only 1% of the testing capacity. 4 weeks of level 4 lock-down would do that. Then with contact-tracing you can start to get ahead of the virus by quarantining infected people (close contacts of the positive test) before they even transmit Covid further.

Also, I'm sorry that you are experiencing life in a state as infected as Florida. It sounds terrifying. I hope you get well soon and stay safe.

The other poster obviously means sufficient free testing, not advertising free tests and failing to supply them.

Have a look at Vietnam then, they have handled this really well. Or for ans even better comparison to the US, China. There’s a lot to criticise about the CCP including their initial response and transparency, but it seems pretty clear they are now on top of it using similar tactics.

Vietnam banned international inbound travel without a 14-day quarantine and extinguished local transmission via test and trace. These are both very good ideas and both impractical for the United States.

The former is a logistical nightmare in a collection of states that basically is not possible to carry out due to our incompetent government and the scale of international travel in the US being several orders of magnitude higher than Vietnam's per capita (and gross rates of course) and the latter won't work (and hasn't worked when we tried it) because our population is inherently distrustful of our government(s) and generally have the right to be that way.

Again, not all tools smaller countries have are available to larger ones, and vice versa (America/EU/etc have better access to vaccines as a plus, for example).

Vietnam also put vietnamese in "prison" like quarantine for every suspicion.. that can't be done in the US/EU. It won't be accepted, and there is already too many cases.

The distrust of government is a major obstacle. In NZ we have a government that took a science-based and very transparent approach, and is pretty well trusted (it helped that opposition parties mostly agreed with the measures). The government basically said "Here is the situation. Here is what we need to do to fix it. Because of that, here's the rules. And here's how we'll help." And most of the population just went "Well, okay then.", and complied, with some grumbles.

I believe the uniform nationwide response, free tests and healthcare and the rapid 80% wage subsidy were a huge part of this.

Apart from sectors like tourism, there wasn't anyone who truly felt "screwed over" by arbitrary rules.

I don't see why the USA or Canada can't do what NZ did. If you are serious about stopping travel into the country by closing the border to travellers - and actually quarantining the residents who come back home - then you only have the relatively minor flow of illegal land crossing. Neither Canada nor the US have even tried.

This article is about zero COVID. “Relatively minor flow” (btw I’m not convinced it’s even minor...) means you never eradicate the virus (which is why I oppose the idea of zero covid categorically)

The outbreak in Victoria in May-Sep 2020 was the source of the majority of all COVID cases in Australia.

Sharing a land border with Victoria did not make it impossible for New South Wales or Victoria to get back to zero - and that's states, not countries, so the extent of the border infrastructure is a few "Welcome to Victoria" signs.

Yes, the holes in the "lockdowns" elsewhere are kind of unbelievable. If the lockdown is hard enough, and the financial support is there for those who need it, then it can be short and effective.

Indeed. And then the "consumers" are free to head straight back out to enjoy society and participate in the economy again once it's safe.

It isn't a choice of Health vs Economy, it's Health for Economy

Yep. Life in NZ has been almost completely normal for ~10 of the last 12 months (one hard ~6 week lockdown, one short mostly-region-specific one followed by a couple of weeks of mask-wearing).