New Zealand PM Ardern Puts Nation in Lockdown on Single Covid Case | Hacker News Reader

New Zealand PM Ardern Puts Nation in Lockdown on Single Covid Case

bloomberg.com

26 pointsmrfusion26 comments

Now 148

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/30038963...

The article says that they found one Covid case since Feb and that once Covid case prompted the lockdown. Did I read that correctly because that is absolutely crazy.

> that is absolutely crazy.

Which bit?

> they found one Covid case since Feb or > one Covid case prompted the lockdown

They've gone into lockdown because the man "is deemed to have been infectious since Aug. 12" and "visited a crowded pub on Saturday night [Aug 14th]" and "the probability of it being delta". I should imagine they don't want a superspreader event coming from that when they've been C19-free since February...

You’ll find that the vast majority of the country is on board. This approach won’t last forever. Once the population is deemed sufficiently vaccinated (which is still supply-constrained) we will transition to “living with it.” Until then, zero tolerance is saving thousands of lives.

This isn't all that crazy in the context of a place like Australia or NZ.

In my state in Australia we have only had two very brief lockdowns of several days since the pandemic started and they were to let contact tracers get out ahead of a small outbreak when they were concerned that circumstances were not in their favour.

They found one case, and knew that there would be more. They're now up to 4.

You lock down at one so that you can limit the spread of the already in the community cases.

Yes, it's crazy good that one of the few places in the world that has established protocols that have prevented the spread of and death from COVID-19 has not gone off of the idealogical deep end. They continue to follow policy that has prevented countless deaths.

Up to 11 cases now, and traced the originating case.

now 31

Now 51.

Do you still think crazy?

up to 277 cases: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300391456/covid19-live-gove...

https://archive.ph/mT6Ip

I wonder if covid was imported on a googlers private jet

Off their rocker.

This move is necessary to keep their medical system from collapse. The ICU capacity in NZ is pathetic and can't meet demand in normal times, most USA cities have more ICU capacity than all of NZ as a country.

New Zealand has 4.6 ICU beds for every 100,000 people. A State like Texas has over 25 (as of 2018) for every 100k people.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300374794/new-zealan...

Following graph is for every 10k people in the USA.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/05/18/icu-be...

Also, a state like Texas has no currently available child ICU beds, and is still have legal fights over if anyone can issue a mask mandate at the local level. ICU bed capacity only does so much.

I am under the impression it is staff related and not physical capacity and one of the reasons is a high level of RSV. The state deals with a lot of folks from Mexico and Central/South America that are not vaccinated and bring waves of controllable disease. A few years back they had to deal with a wave of Whooping Cough that was imported from unvaccinated children from Mexico.

> This move is necessary to keep their medical system from collapse

Were we reading the same article? According to the article

> after the discovery of the first community case of Covid-19 since February.

They found one, ONE Covid case and that is somehow justification for shutting down a country of almost 5M people.

> They found one, ONE Covid case

Since February, yes, because their lockdowns and controls worked to get the country free of it. Why would they change a clearly winning formula?

I'd rather live in a country not free of COVID-19 than live in a country where lockdowns like this are indefinitely possible over a single, probably unsignificant case.

There are always going to be COVID-19 cases/hospitalizations/deaths from this point forward, whether populations are vaccinated or not, just as is the case with the Flu.

Every case of covid in an unvaccinated community is significant.

And now there's 6 more, all linked to the same fella. Looks like it was a superspreader event after all.

Imagine getting downvoted for this idea in 2019. We’ve lost our minds.

My intention was not to justify it but to state the probable reason it happened. I agree it's insane to shut the entire country down. The gov in NZ is panicked because it means the end for them when the population figures out their medical system is shit and costs them a fortune. It's the same story in Canada, the lock downs were to prevent a garbage medical system from collapsing after 100's of billions in tax payer dollars. It would have exposed how little the people get for their money and a system that can't handle emergencies. I'm sure the Governments of both those countries have other excuses for the ridiculous lock downs.

Not sure why you’re being downvoted, as this is one of the major reasons we had lockdowns around the world even before Delta — our healthcare systems are not designed for the capacities that are pushed through when something like a pandemic occurs. This problem will only get worse in the coming decades, as shifting demographics means we will not have as many young people available to take on jobs as essential health workers for the ever-growing percentage of elderly and at-risk.

We are really lucky to have this pandemic happen now, rather than 30 years from now, as it gives us all an opportunity to prepare for the shifting demand / resource patterns in healthcare. New ways of administering healthcare will be needed.

Yes, because they know if there is one that they've detected, it probably means there are others. And this individual travelled, and went to crowded events.

As of now they've found 4 additional cases. Thanks to the wonders of exponential spread you need to stop the spreading when the numbers are still small.

Otherwise you fail miserably and kill more than half a million people.

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