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Comment by wjp3 | Hacker News Reader

He's been isolating on an island in Fiji since last summer.

If rumours are true and he and his family have been doing that because of Covid that is a very stupid strategy, especially coming from a billionaire. First of all because in medical emergencies you have to travel 1000+ miles to the closest decent hospital (or to the hospital that can save your child's life), even if you have the fastest jet always on call that takes time.

And second, apart from living in the middle of Siberia [1] or in the Amazon jungle with literally no contact with anyone, believing that you won't get Covid in Fiji because it's more isolated is just a wrong premise. Unless they are airlifted all your supplies get, well, supplied to you via direct human contact, no matter how much you try just one small slip/moment of not paying attention can make the difference between being infected and not being infected. And if you do get infected it's better to be located close to a hospital, not literally on an island in the middle of the Pacific.

Just bad decisions all around.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-rus...

The pacific islands seem to have done rather well in preventing Covid to take hold. Because they basically closed all borders early on. Fiji seems to have gotten quickly rid of covid with the first wave and ever since had no cases. Besides Fiji being said to be an overall nice place to be in, it certainly was pleseant as there were no restrictions for those on the island.

I am of the opinion that they are delaying the inevitable considering the likelihood that COVID-19 will be with us for the next decade.

That’s my point, too, the inevitable will come, at one point or another. Countries like Thailand or Vietnam used to be relatively Covid-free until a few months ago and were given as positive examples.

Vaccines are definitely making a difference at this point. But I think we'll find, to the degree we can make sense of a lot of noisy data, that a lot of what people ascribed to cultural, behavioral, and political differences based on their own leanings will be seen as largely happenstance.

There is a vaccination now. So to the degree that some locations were able to get through the pre-vaccine timeline, presumably (assuming people get vaccinated there) they'll end up with better--although not perfect--outcomes overall.

It does make a huge difference to keep it out until the population could be vaccinated. No casualties, no sick. And that despite of no masks or other precautions.

Am I missing something? I looked it up and it says Fiji has not just one, but 25 hospitals. Some of them are small and can't handle anything too severe, but they do still have a large number of hospitals it seems. Are you saying none of these hospitals are capable of saving somebody's life if they have covid?

Hasn't NZ been isolating itself? AFAIK they have had overall 26 deaths. I ll consider that evidence conclusive

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