But I can't move past the idea that if the entire world had just locked down, all together, for 2 months or so, we could have stopped this whole thing dead.
The virus would have survived somewhere in the world, and quickly began spreading once the 2 month lockdown ended.
New Zealand has a very low population density, including in its largest city, and is geographically very isolated. What applies there doesn't apply in most places.
New Zealand also has had to close its border completely for over a year, and even recently Auckland had to do another lockdown because there were new cases.
Locking down the entirety of society, to stop a virus with a 99.6% survival rate and with the under 70 cohort severely underrepresented among the fatal cases is not reasonable.
No, because we can still do testing and tracing. A virus infecting a few hundred people that we can detect fast is a lot easier to contain than a virus infecting millions or one that we aren't aware of.
Asian nations (China, Japan, SK) are doing similar to New Zealand and they aren't nearly as isolated. Afaik Auckland's lockdown is going to be a couple weeks at most.
Understand that, had we done this 2-month full lockdown, we would not even be locked down now. Young people wouldn't be nearly as affected as they are now.
If we have effective detection methods, we don't need to lockdown. We just trace and isolate any cases that pop up.
>Asian nations (China, Japan, SK) are doing similar to New Zealand and they aren't nearly as isolated.
China had far more cases than New Zealand, which goes to my point; New Zealand's position as an isolated island made it easier to contain the virus.
AFAIK, Japan and Taiwan never did NZ-style lockdowns. Taiwan had very few deaths relying mostly on contact tracing.
>>Understand that, had we done this 2-month full lockdown, we would not even be locked down now. Young people wouldn't be nearly as affected as they are now.
NZ has been isolated from the world for a whole year and just recently locked down Auckland again.