To be shocked at how normal everything looks in New Zealand?

[GoldenLabbie]

Huge crowds seeing the New Year. No masks, no social distancing. You wouldn’t know that the rest of the world is in the grip of a pandemic looking at those scenes. How did we manage to get it so wrong but they got it so right? When you look at that you realise how the rest have screwed up so badly don’t you? I wonder what they make of all?

@thinkingaboutLangCleg

We could have been clear too if we had closed the borders promptly and kept them closed!

Does anyone know why the UK government didn't do this? Everyone I know was expecting it.

Australia has done pretty well too, by closing internal borders (between states) as well as external. It has 25 million people compared with 66 million in the UK. Australia has had 900 deaths compared with 72,000 here.

The WHO was advising against closing borders. Just after they had finished telling everyone that there was no evidence of human-human transmission.

I wouldn't even go down the road of comparing the UK with Australia. They're even less similar than anywhere else put up for comparison.

In Britain, no matter who we had as a Prime Minister you'd still have people wandering around with their masks under their chin

Yet within a few weeks of being told to wear them in late autumn, we all wear them..... i see hardly anyone not doing so in shops.
We had months of the govt saying they don't work... then an about turn.

Its about leadership and Johnson ain't no leader.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/20/vietnam-covid-economic-growth-public-health-coronavirus

Vietnam population 95 million.

@Pootle40 this is specifically for you

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/20/vietnam-covid-economic-growth-public-health-coronavirus

We did delay. Didn’t we get those charts with Whitty saying we need to wait until we’re on the fast part of the curve? Some have criticised North lock down for being too early.

Above is a bit of a separate issue though - By a certain date it was too late to do NZ and this was really early on

Germany were earlier we could have met that date, but it’s still not eliminated there so we’d be suffering too

I’m not really defending it more trying to get to whether we had a chance of doing the closed borders elimination thing

[quote Raaaaaaarr]@Pootle40 this is specifically for you

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/20/vietnam-covid-economic-growth-public-health-coronavirus[/quote]
And that's why some things work in certain cultures and don't in others.

@GetOffYourHighHorse

It's a testament to the isolated location, weather (everyone outside in the sun?), population density and population size.

No-one is saying that those might not have been contributory factors, but I think the point that many are making is that there are other methods that NZ employed that would apply irrespective of population size / density / location that our leaders chose not to, and that in the areas where the two nations differed nothing else was employed that recognised those differences. And on a very basic level I think we're all quite envious of NZ having a leader who shows some humanity.

Incidentally, the climate in NZ is very much like the UK.

@Pootle40 totally agree with you. It's about culture also and how people will generally behave and react toward government instruction

In January, when Wuhan announced the first death, Vietnam tightened its border and airport control of Chinese visitors. This wasn’t an easy decision, given that cross-border trade with China accounts for a significant part of the Vietnamese economy

The UK has stood by, reacting at every stage, incapable of proactive action.
The facts are we have the highest excess death toll in europe and one of the highest per capita death tolls in the world, higher than even the USA, another country that did nothing early on and eased up too soon.

In January, when Wuhan announced the first death, Vietnam tightened its border and airport control of Chinese visitors. This wasn’t an easy decision, given that cross-border trade with China accounts for a significant part of the Vietnamese economy

It wasn’t even a decision that the WHO supported. And everyone listened to them back then. It will be different next time. I know people say not but you only have to look at 40 countries reacting. Oh and the WHO changed its guidance.

Incidentally, the climate in NZ is very much like the UK.

In fact they are were heading into Autumn and then winter when covid kicked off.

Yes the climate is similar to the UK. Most British think it is warmer in NZ but in fact it isn't. It's a bit sunnier however.

[quote Raaaaaaarr]@Pootle40 totally agree with you. It's about culture also and how people will generally behave and react toward government instruction [/quote]
Completely. There is no one strategy that could be applied in a blanket way across multiple countries. Our attitudes and behaviours are ingrained in us. We speak the same language as the US.......feels foreign when I go there

Honestly our personal sacrifices have been huge. It’s not that.

No one in NZ was going on holiday abroad to Greece and Spain in June/July.

In Melbourne our DCs had total 6 months school and childcare closure (while our relatives in the the UK happily ‘ate out to help out’). Add in an 8pm curfew and 5km travel radius - it was a shit show and many people struggled. No social bubbles permitted until later in the year and then only for people living alone. It was intense and there has been little respite here until very recently.

The peer pressure to comply in Melbourne was immense and not always pretty - it was just not acceptable to ever be seen without a mask correctly worn etc (if you couldn’t cope with it you couldn’t leave the house without one or you’d be stared at).

It’s also really horrible to have to pay for the hotel quarantine and be locked in a room for 14 days (a lot of understandable MH issues have occurred from that). When you are actually so happy you could get back here at all (and paid a huge airfare for the privilege). Many Australians are still unable to return home because of the entry quotas.

It must be so frustrating for people who have done the right thing in the UK to see their efforts undone by others who didn’t care enough to do the right thing.

I hope things improve in 2021 for everyone wherever you live right now.

It's 100 per cent about poor decision making and leadership, particularly at the beginning. The level of compliance in the first lockdown was incredible, we really were all in it together. We were no different to the population of New Zealand in that regard. If the borders had been shut, if masks wearing had been rapidly introduced, if track and trace had been introduced more rapidly in a more targeted way because cases were at a lower level...we could have done nearly as well. Instead, any advantage was rapidly lost and now people are jaded and defeated and lonely. New Zealanders had to sacrifice so much less than we have had to...the only difference to our outcomes is leadership.

@Pootle40 I am a kiwi living in London. I have struggled culturally with people not doing what the government asks them to do. It's very interesting to experience!

EileenGC

I'm not talking about testing and quarantine in the community. I'm talking about borders closed to all casual travel - including to European citizens. That would be where the difficulty would lie - NZ only has to deal with returning NZ citizens and permanent residents and the odd essential visa holder, whereas we would have a much larger pool of potential arrivals to quarantine (but no longer from 1st Jan).

No doubt the government also wanted to protect the tourism industry, but if we really want to "stop the spread" we'll need to pick some key strategic transport providers to save and unfortunately leave the rest to the market (that sounds so harsh, but it's a pandemic and choices must be made).

Epilating it probably looks like that from afar but after 9 months or more, 6 months no school, now not allowed to see anyone, even sit on a cafe table outside, I’m feeling the sacrifices. And that’s before you get to the worse ones. It’s been tough and still is unfortunately.

But yes here’s to a better new year for everyone

@maggiecate - this!

New Zealand is really conscious of bio security even in normal times - they have strict phytosanitary controls at all points of entry and a population that is very aware of the vulnerability of their native flora and fauna to imported disease. They know that a single microorganism, seed or insect could be devastating. This translated to being very quick to recognise the risk that COVID posed, willing to act, and having the infrastructure to lock down fast and hard. They were ready because they’re always ready - preventing imported disease is a national priority. In most of the world it isn’t.

I’m a New Zealander living in the UK and the above is something that NZers take so seriously.

However, the two countries can’t be compared for reasons already stated on this thread. Watching the UK government handle this compared to NZ is beyond belief. So much indecisiveness and backtracking, failure to take action quick enough - it’s farcical.

An observation though is that NZer are more compliant generally speaking.

An old NZ school friend said a few months ago on Facebook that she was as sick of hearing about the bad Covid situation in the UK & US in the news, and how it’s all their citizens’ fault etc for not complying with government rules etc, and they deserve what they get. Cue much back-slapping comments from fellow NZers - I was horrified and hope this is not a view shared by many

[quote Raaaaaaarr]@Pootle40 I am a kiwi living in London. I have struggled culturally with people not doing what the government asks them to do. It's very interesting to experience! [/quote]
Multiple shit governments in the UK has made us that way

Closing the borders in New Zealand is not remotely analogous to closing the borders in the UK. It's the difference between closing down the train station at the end of the line and closing down King's Cross. We are a nexus for travel. I'm not sure that means that we shouldn't have closed the borders but I can see why it was a totally different equation.

@Pootle40 ha ha that made me laugh! 😂

Germany didn't close its borders and whilst they have high infections now, they also have a death rate we can only look at enviously.

They'll get on top of this too, Merkel locked down in December, no fannying about saying you can have 5 days at xmas...

They react to people with CV with prompt treatment, they could do this because they have a properly funded health service.

If our NHS is in the state its in now, the next time we have a pandemic, we'll be in the same boat, small increase in patient numbers, NHS collapses.

However, credit where credit is due, we have vaccinated almost 1m people and have the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine about to be rolled out.

Look, we're all in this together. Some countries are in a better place than others (How dare they).

However, it's the NY, and I just hope that it all gets better for everyone. (Especially for us that are in the shitfuckingshow that is the UK or the USA).

May we all be here to bitch and carp at each other this time next year. . .

I agree with PPs it’s impossible to compare. Too many variables.

I pray that this time next year I am able to be back in the UK to have a family Christmas

@mbosnz

Look, we're all in this together. Some countries are in a better place than others (How dare they).

However, it's the NY, and I just hope that it all gets better for everyone. (Especially for us that are in the shitfuckingshow that is the UK or the USA).

May we all be here to bitch and carp at each other this time next year. . .

Hope so