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?

One week earlier would not get us to NZ situation.

No one said it would, but this is one example of where the UK failed in a very sad, lengthy list of bad decisions.

Our government has totally failed. We are all paying for that now.

New Zealand's government did not fail. They are all benefiting now.

Everyone and country is reliant on the vaccine actually stopping onwards transmission not just the disease not just NZ.

Tourism is actually only a small part of NZ’s economy.

If everyone stopped eating meat, veggies and fruit then it might collapse the economy.

There’s always a lot of bad feeling towards NZ ( and Aus) for doing so well in terms of dealing with Covid. I can never understand it.

It’s pointless comparing the 2 countries directly, I agree, but compare the action taken by their leaders.
A more decisive Prime minister would have made the world of difference to the uk.

The UK is in a really bad position. It is scary but pretending we are not just makes it worse imo, as it doesn't even put pressure on the government to try to clean up their act going forwards.

@Cyw2018

New Zealand is now 100% reliant on the vaccine working, and more importantly working to stop onward transmission, otherwise their tourist industry and therefore economy will collapse.

Who's going to bother flying 24 hours (or other long haul flights from elsewhere in the world) to then have to isolate for a minimum of 5 days before starting their holiday?!

It's a hell of a gamble, and I imagine they will have some tough times over the next couple of years as a result.

I don't think there is any perfect solution to this mess.

As a PP said the economy will not collapse without tourism (especially if we can bubble with them from Australia and the South Pacific)

And yes we can all carry this on for a long time. We really can. It would have to involve systemic change (e.g we get long service leave so after 10 years work you can take 6 months off at half pay designed when you would get a ship back to the UK to see family and something around increased leave to allow for a foreign holiday and quarantine every 2 years maybe could be introduced), increase our quarantine capacity etc but it is all do-able really. Yes if the vaccine is fully effective and stops spread we will be happy as Larry but even if not there will be ways around it.

@inquietant

One week earlier would not get us to NZ situation.

No one said it would, but this is one example of where the UK failed in a very sad, lengthy list of bad decisions.

Our government has totally failed. We are all paying for that now.

New Zealand's government did not fail. They are all benefiting now.

Yes but this thread is full of posts talking about reasons we are not NZ right now

It’s the reason for the op

By all means we can say where we have messed up but look to say Germany not NZ

Unless someone can use numbers for rationale for saying we could have done NZ

I don't think there is any perfect solution to this mess

New Zealand's response has been very effective. I would have settled for competent here!

We could have done NZ.

The talk of Christmas easing rules post lockdown would be one of the latest nonsensical choices from the UK govt.

Aus federal Govt are useless.
Luckily we have state govts to rely on (except NSW Gladys sucks)

Agree Christmas easing was stupid that annoyed me a lot. It got cancelled here in tier 4 in the end.

@inquietant

We could have done NZ.

Can you say the date?

Sorry, that was to @MarshaBradyo.

We could have done NZ - by which I mean we could have tried our best. NZ got lucky that it worked so completely - but their whole approach was as few deaths as possible.

Our government has gone for 'as many deaths as we can get away with'.

Things got better here in the summer too

The NZ approach was not the single lockdown.

It was choosing to 100% aggressively follow WHO advice on how to tackle a SARS- type event.

The UK went a totally different direction. Presumably because we've had enough of experts

Herd immunity by stealth

@Mypathtriedtokillme

Herd immunity by stealth

If that were the 'plan' they would be even more stupid than they look.

To pursue herd immunity we would see over 500,000 deaths.

There is no herd immunity plan.

There is no plan.

There is just total incompetence and failure

@Dee1975

They locked down at times with just a handful of cases. Can you imagine the outrage here if we did a full lockdown with just a handful of cases??

When are people going to realise govt by what the people want never works. The"people" are fickle and do not have access to the facts to make informed decisions. A leaders job is to tell the people what is going to happen and why, then act.

imho in Feb March, we had a govt that was torn between herd immunity & the science, something Johnson spoke about at the time.

However, as i said, we fucked up in july august onward.

I think Feb was too late. March definitely was. To do a NZ that is.

To do what they did you need 105 cases all asymptomatic included and full lock down / borders closed. Given asymptomatic cases we would have had entry and spread before Feb 8th.

Our equivalent was very early on back when the WHO were misguiding.

I’m not saying this to defend nor am I saying that the government haven’t made some bad decisions (Italy skiers, Christmas etc)

Yes we could have done as low as possible but to do zero?

When would lockdown have been?

@Takethereigns

There’s always a lot of bad feeling towards NZ ( and Aus) for doing so well in terms of dealing with Covid. I can never understand it.

It’s pointless comparing the 2 countries directly, I agree, but compare the action taken by their leaders.
A more decisive Prime minister would have made the world of difference to the uk.

I agree, I’m also surprised by the bad feeling that constantly emerges in these threads.

I’m also surprised by the bad feeling that constantly emerges in these threads

Like what?

@inquietant

The NZ approach was not the single lockdown.

It was choosing to 100% aggressively follow WHO advice on how to tackle a SARS- type event.

The UK went a totally different direction. Presumably because we've had enough of experts

Agreed. It’s amazing how short peoples memories are. The WHO basically tore into the UK (in a diplomatic manner) when it was announced we were just going to wash our hands nothing else.

I’m not sure there is actually animosity against NZ, it’s a mixture of envy and denial - both are coping methods for living in a country that has consistently dragged its feet at times decisive action has been imperative.

'There’s always a lot of bad feeling towards NZ ( and Aus) for doing so well in terms of dealing with Covid. I can never understand it.'

There isn't bad feeling, only pointing out the variables. Our very own Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Man have a very low incidence. Same government. I'm pleased for anyone who isn't struggling and suffering.

We've had 'British exceptionalism', 'arrogance' and constant comments about how nz has done it right whilst the whole of Europe has done it wrong. That is arrogance. Just be pleased your specific set of circumstances mean it is easy to keep the numbers down without looking down your nose on other countries?

Cornetto do you think we could have done the same as NZ? Lockdown by what date?

I’m ready to be convinced just want someone to use numbers to do it.

I think some take 'zero covid' a bit literally as though it is an instant thing. New Zealand has been lucky that zero covid literally resulted in extended zero covid rather quickly.

The real meaning of zero covid is 'constantly reducing levels of covid, to zero if possible'.

Therefore pursuing zero covid is always going to result in lower cases - because when that is your objective you keep going after every case etc. But no single option will get you there.

The UK has not had any strategy. It has wavered, wobbled, dithered, dodged, u-turned, fumbled, fudged, lied, obfuscated and, sadly, fucked up.

What was the UK trying to achieve? No one, not even Johnson, knows. There was utter blether about 'striking a balance between health and the economy'. I guess they gave achieved this because they are both equally fucked

To succeed you need to know what you are trying to achieve.

The UK had no plan. It still has no plan.

We should be pursuing 'aggressively reducing covid as much as possible'. What we are actually doing is 'as little as possible until the vaccine kicks in'. Therefore we will be over 100k deaths before we know it.

It’s incompetent government, nothing more. We got the numbers way down in the summer but from the beginning they refused to shut borders or quarantine arrivals, so it reseeded then grew once lockdown finished. Our government also locked down for far too long initially, forgivable if they were going for eradication but they obviously were not as they allowed people to keep travelling in and out of the country. I wouldn’t blame the population at all. Why would we expect people to keep accepting endless lockdowns when eradication is impossible on the current model this government is choosing? New Zealand have had relative normality back for a long time, we are all lockdown fatigued.