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Comment by gridspy | Hacker News Reader

Not all health agencies, for instance in New Zealand they have been very honest about the science and what is known.

Regarding the article, I think many people wanted to know that there was an "end" in sight to COVID. This narrative was attached to Vaccines as "the end" by much of the press that I watch in the states.

Here in NZ the press is putting pressure on the Govt. to ease lock-down restrictions as the vaccination rate goes up. But we're still reluctant to allow covid in "and just live with it" even as levels of vaccination rise.

I think the only realistic "end" is when the multiplicative effect of masks, caution (social distancing for eg) and the vaccine reduces R below 1 in each individual country long enough to achieve elimination over time.

It would be a pity if in some communities Covid is never eliminated.

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Wild animals can spread COVID, so I don't see how it can ever be eliminated. We may be able to reduce R temporarily in humans via social distancing measures, but it's going to tick back up as soon as the restrictions are lifted.

One more reason not to let it breed in the human population - That's the easiest way to avoid creating new variants and spreading it to the local ecosystem.

I feel bad for the population of New Zealand.

The amount of lockdowns and Covid restrictions was one of most restrictive in the world.

And after all of that, you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started.

What a tough situation there.

It like all being locked down for years and having the borders closed for years didn't change a thing.

> And after all of that, you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started.

I think you need to check the stats again, NZ is finding about 20 covid cases per day. They have had fewer than 4,000 cases of covid since March 2020. It’s one of the lowest rates of infection in the world and appear on track to eliminate the delta variant from their country for now. (I suspect it’s only a matter of time till it escapes their quarantine system though, but they’re successfully buying time to finish a vaccination campaign.)

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Indeed! And most of those more recent cases are the families of known contacts. Unfortunately Delta is very good at spreading within the household.

People enter lockdown, realise they are a case and are moved to quarantine almost immediately. Unfortunately those few days between infection and quarantine are enough now to spread Delta.

Right, but you were only having 20 cases per day in march 2020 at the very start of the pandemic as well before any restrictions were in place.

So doesn't look like anything has changed.

I feel bad for you all. All of that for an endemic virus that's never going away.

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases

Okay, so we had a couple of cases. Then we went into level 4 lockdown (essentials only, leave house to exercise or supermarket). That happened in 2020.

The spread stopped, though we detected cases for the next two weeks (as normal for Covid) which had been infected pre-lockdown.

Then we spent a whole year with no restrictions, no masks, normal gatherings, no covid. There were a couple of minor lockdowns lasting a few weeks in there from small border breaches.

This time, we did the same thing. Same lockdown, same cases afterwards. The only difference is that Delta spreads now within families post lockdown, otherwise everything is the same.

In a month from now, we'll be back to open with no restrictions or deaths.

Our total deaths so far since Covid began in 2019? 27.

We currently have 4 people in critical condition at hospital.

How do the totals look where you live?

> I feel bad for you all. All of that for an endemic virus that's never going away.

I’m not from NZ. I’m from USA, a country that took the opposite approach and allowed the virus to spread before vaccines were available. Over 600,000 of my fellow citizens died as a result. The NZ approach may not have been effective in the USA for various reasons, but we can’t dispute it was very effective in NZ at preventing the death of their citizens.

Now, even if they reopen to the world without any controls and allow the virus to become endemic in a few months, they’ll have saved many of their citizens’ lives. Vaccination reduces the death rate from Covid-19 by around 10-20x so 90% or 95% of Covid-19 deaths are preventable if you vaccinate before letting the virus become endemic.

NZ has had way, way less lockdowns than pretty much anywhere else in the world.

This is because they are an island, and they eliminated Covid once and are aiming to do so again.

Any nation could do the same. It's less to do with "being an island" so much as "having strong borders"

I feel like "only NZ could have done this, since they are an island" is a cop-out.

Any nation could adopt other pillars of our system also, such as free testing, free healthcare, free vaccinations. Or Contact tracing, quarantine of infected people. Clear scientific communication by those in charge.

It's not magic, it has been well documented what to do in pandemic situations for 20 years. Only the specific tools (the test, the vaccine itself) are specific to Covid-19.

They delayed Covid once. And are going to delay Covid again.

The only way to eliminate it to a basic endemic state, is via the immune system.

And the fact that vaccines just reduce the symptoms and don't stop it's spread....means it's never going away.

The word "Eliminate" has an epidemiological meaning and it is not up to you to interpret it into some other word.

Eliminate revolves around the strategy of stopping viral spread in a given population until there are no new cases. That population in this case is NZ, not the world.

For more info on "Keep it out, Prepare for it, Stamp it out," read https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/...

> the strategy of stopping viral spread in a given population until there are no new case

Will never happen happen except temporarily. That's just fundamental epidemiology.

Well, naturally we won't eliminate Covid globally until we globally pursue an elimination strategy.

It's a pity that more nations aren't doing so.

Has there ever been an airborne disease that's been elimated globally?

Don't feel too bad for New Zealand, we're doing alright. We're currently in week 4 of our fourth lockdown (in one city of about 1.5 million people, the rest of the country has much lesser restrictions currently).

Before this we had a seven week nationwide lockdown from March 23 to May 13 2020, and a lockdown in one city for two weeks, August 14 to 30 2020, and a lockdown of three days and then one week in one city in February 2021. Other than this, we've spent a few weeks in alert level 2 (large gatherings banned) and most of the last year and a half in alert level 1 (no meaningful restrictions aside from border controls and masks required on public transport). Over this time, 27 people have died of COVID-19.

Yes our lockdowns have been harsh, but they worked, and thanks to that, we've spent most of our time with less restrictions than the rest of the world and relatively few deaths.

Full details can be found here, (alert levels 3 and 4 are lockdown, level 2 is gathering restrictions and level 1 is no day-to-day restrictions): https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-levels-and-updates/history-of-...

Thanks for your concern.

Our lockdowns might be the most restrictive, but that makes them the most effective. So I'm not too worried about that. I'd prefer a short sharp lockdown and then total freedom (within the borders) over the lingering fear that appears to be happening overseas.

Personally I'm happy to be winning another few months or a year free of Delta by staying at home for a while. If there was no official lockdown I would still want to stay at home.

I'm not sure how long these tactics will work, though. Australia tried, but once covid got a foothold, it's in, and they're past the point of lockdowns stopping it. There also comes a point where New Zealand will either have to accept the risk of covid or continue with a North Korea level of border isolation. The political endgame is pretty messy because opening the borders will introduce covid and people will die--not a lot, but probably more than the entire pandemic for the country.

"past the point of lockdowns stopping it"

You are never past the point of lockdowns stopping it. It just takes 14 days of strict lockdowns and all the people who are currently infected without knowing it have progressed to either known or recovered.

Then you just do some testing and contact tracing (while remaining in lockdown) to mop up the rest of your infected population.

This applies to any infected population. Note that most lockdowns define "essential" too widely - beyond just supermarkets, doctors & hospitals.

> It just takes 14 days of strict lockdowns...

The problem is you need to keep utilities running and hospitals open. Then there are slightly less strict lockdowns where people can get limited exercise outdoors, buy groceries, and food production continues. NSW tried this, and it's failing. I suspect it's a combination of delta is too contagious for lockdowns to work in practice, too many people will violate them, 14 days doesn't account for asymptomatic household spread, and 14 days is more like p95 than p999.

That's why you can't come out of lockdowns after just 14 days. At this point you can really start mopping up with contact tracing and so forth.

A further 14 days and any regions with no cases are safe to exit lockdown, as long as you have good border controls.

But I imagine that if your hospitals are flooded with patients and Covid is rocking your area, you need those initial 14 days just to reduce the caseload to the point where you can test and contact trace again. That's all it takes to get back from "impossible to eliminate" to "we just need to stamp this out now"

Australia tried, but not as hard as New Zealand.

All of New Zealand's lockdowns saved a heck of a lot of lives over the course of 2020 and early 2021, and now vaccines are available! It wasn't for nothing!

This is a good point.

Hopefully the vaccine works against the variants.

The protection seems to be waning already in Israel.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...

No need for that, we're doing fine. Most of the country is already on it's way back to normality. The most populous city is still locked down but it's better to be locked down for 2 months than to have the hospitals clogged with Covid patients and have everyone you know getting sick. Looking forward to enjoying another long stretch without restrictions after this!

i don't think New Zealand has actually had intense lockdown for the entire last 18 months? I think they had short periods, but over the whole pandemic period I think they've had much less interruption to daily life than here in the USA, with much of that time having few restrictions, no?

> you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started.

I don't think so?

Here's a nice graph of NZ restrictiveness compared to UK and US. You'll see we peak up higher than either but then drop down to very low restrictions.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index?ta...

That graph definitely makes it look like NZ has had a lot less restrictions cummulatively than USA.

It certianly felt that way from here in NZ.

I think part of our successful economic recovery is because it wasn't only OPEN but SAFE. In the US and UK there are families living in fear of infection, leading to less consumer behavior.

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