That New Zealand's strategy has failed

[JudesBiggestFan]

And they will have to start the long and painful process of learning to live with Covid? I spoke to my friend in NZ earlier and he was in shock at being back in lockdown. He said they really felt they'd defeated the virus and this has just come out of nowhere. I feel for him but an airborne virus...it can't be stopped. And the cost of trying is too high. Or do they still have a chance of beating the virus?

@CheekyHobson

I would be interested if any of the NZ posters on here getting very hot under the collar were previously boasting about NZ’s success and “laughing” at the UK at the point we were wading through the worst of it.

OMG why would anyone laugh at the UK when you were going through the worst of it?

The overwhelming reaction of the Kiwis I know here was horror at the widespread death, concern for the physical and mental health of the many friends and family we have in the UK, frustration at the UK government's flip-flopping decisions, poor communication, hypocrisy and tardy responses and relief that NZ's government had been able to implement a different strategy.

There was no laughing on my part or any of the Kiwis I know. I've cried often about the situation over in Europe because I was shielding for 6 months in the UK and didn't see anyone. By the time I left the UK for NZ my mental health was in tatters and I knew I was not the only person who was in that boat. I would describe my feelings about what has happened in the world with this pandemic as a sense of grief and sadness, not jollity and laughter.

I don't like these references to successes and failures. Every country had very different circumstances, got dealt different hands, and had different limitations. The UK's a great example of a country that got some things right and some things wrong.

However, what I would say is that zero covid is obviously an unrealistic goal long term. NZ perhaps took longer than other countries to wake up to that fact.

i honestly don't think a lot of how people feel is feigned though. Noone loves it, sure, but there's a real esprit de corps about it all. It's similar to how the UK was in April 2020 I think in terms of attitude - the sense that we got this, we can do it, let's just work together for an outcome that helps us all.

I know it's hard to understand if you've been through lockdown for a long time but there just isn't the psychological weariness in NZ that you see in the UK. It's certainly there, but it's just not on the same scale. And that's because most people haven't had a hard lockdown in 16 months.

We live in Denmark— we too have pretty low figures , although much higher than NZ — but we do have a big vaccine take up and a successful roll out. We also have a strong female PM and policies were consistent, made sense, non profiteering and based on the science, not on what the Tories thought would appeal to their voters. The big difference is that I think NZ and Aus have been a bit blinkered. NZ has quite a reliance on tourism— keeping a policy of no one in etc at all is not a sustainable long term strategy— unless you also get your population vaccinated and the problem is they have had so little covid that people don’t see it as a priority — they need to address this and smartish— they are lucky that they have few big cities and lots of space but long term it’s just not sustainable— they have a great many non NZ there who will get very restless about never being able to see family as well as the economic issues .

I also do not know any Kiwis who were laughing, many of us have close family and friends in the UK. I have dual nationality and have been in NZ for around 20 years but my heart still partly resides in the UK - why would I laugh, or tolerate any of my friends laughing at the dreadful number of deaths and cases in the UK?

No country has the answer, we are all just trying to deal with this horrible situation as best we can. It s just bloody tough wherever you live.

@AlternativePerspective

There is no comparison to be made in terms of the death rate.

Everyone here lives in close proximity to one another. NZ is a hugely spread out country, people are practically social distancing by default so it’s much much easier never to come into contact with people.

Added to which, NZ has a population of just under 5 million, in a space almost as big as the uK which has a population of 60 million.

I just don’t get this argument at all, yes of course NZ has a much smaller population and more space but most people still live in cities you know? I don’t see how anyone can class only 29 deaths, minimal damage to the economy and education as a failure. More like the rest of the world failed to follow suit and lockdown properly, let Covid run rampant and mutate so now NZ has to make up for everything one else’s failures. Imagine if we’d stopped people coming in and out of the county for a month, or even bothered testing or isolating people coming in? Things would have been so much better. My dad came in from the Philippines, with a detour and a week in hospital in Hong Kong, to Manchester last February without any kind of restrictions or testing at all. It beggars belief. Ironically he was ill with something else then caught Covid in hospital here because they couldn’t even manage to keep covid from spreading between patients. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Zealand_urban_areas_by_population

Sadly if you search old threads there was quite a bit of sneering and laughing. As TheKeatingFive says, it’s not - or shouldn’t be - a competition with winners and losers. In my opinion the real “baddie” in this whole thing was China, but it seems “unapproved” to mention this and we all have to forget who got us into this mess.

[quote HeddaGarbled]@trancepants

Absolutely.

Nasty posts above.[/quote]
No. They are factual posts. Certainly no worse than Arden a few weeks ago smugly announcing they had beaten Covid while other countries citizens were still suffering. Funny how when there is the slightest criticism back (not smugness) people don’t like it.

@DottyHarmer

Sadly if you search old threads there was quite a bit of sneering and laughing. As TheKeatingFive says, it’s not - or shouldn’t be - a competition with winners and losers. In my opinion the real “baddie” in this whole thing was China, but it seems “unapproved” to mention this and we all have to forget who got us into this mess.

Absolutely this.

policies were consistent, made sense, non profiteering and based on the science

I don't think the UK profiteered?

@Cactusandmarshmallows

Can I ask a genuine question for the Kiwis on the thread? Given the current state of vaccine efficacy vs Delta it seems inevitable that once you open the borders your entire population will eventually get Covid 19 and up to 1,000 people will die of it (vs the 20,000 plus who would have died if you’d opened earlier). Is that something that will be politically acceptable to the population?

This is a good question - I'd be interested in unpicking the stats though? I hadn't realised so many vaccinated people were dying of C19?

Peak vaccine efficacy against severe disease and deaths is somewhere in the 90%-95% range. It’s almost miraculous, but one twentieth of a very large number is still a pretty large number.

They're still in a better position than we were if covid takes hold. Now there's the vaccines, more is understood about how it spreads etc, and more research has been done on treatments and how to manage cases. I hope for them that by some miracle they can contain this one and then roll out the vaccines super speedily, but fear it might not be the case. It does feel a bit like the can has just been kicked down the road, although we are in a better place now there was a huge cost to that (financially, life wise and monetary); but I'm glad we aren't that side of it again.

no worse than Arden a few weeks ago smugly announcing they had beaten Covid while other countries citizens were still suffering

No-one in their right mind thought NZ had beaten Covid, everyday there are reports of how many cases had been detected in the quarantine facilities. We knew it just a matter of time before it got out into the community and there is not a plan of what will happen when the borders open.

The closure of the borders was done because our health service is under tremendous pressure with no covid cases and will just fall over if we have many serious cases. I think NZ has one of the lowest levels of ICU beds to number of population.

I think it must be easier to have learned from other countries (absolutely not saying we handled it well but you could see our mistakes as well as successes - no border closing/vaccines). We were almost completely in the dark about what to do. It's clear NZ know what they are supposed to do - vaccines and accept that there's no such thing as zero covid.

I don't understand this desire to turn this into some kind of weird covid olympics, with every country wanting to be "the best", it's really odd.

As with almost everything in life there are likely to be pros and cons to every approach. A suppression strategy (as per the U.K. and Europe) was always going to have its toughest stage early on, an elimination strategy (as per Aus and NZ) was always likely to find the exit more challenging.

Add to that the wildly varying characteristics (location, population density, supply chain set up, etc) of each country and a bit/not a lot of good old fashioned luck and it becomes pretty apparent that comparisons (especially ones undertaken slap bang in the middle of completely different strategies) are a fool's errand.

I suspect when every leader looks back with the benefit of hindsight there will be things they might have done differently if they had the chance again. That's sort of life isn't it?

Covid has been a total shit show for the whole world, I'm not sure what the benefit of kicking each other when we're down is to be honest.

I've always thought that zero covid was unworkable as a strategy in the U.K. but it was completely logical for Aus and NZ to choose that route. They are having a tough time now which is shit and I hope things improve quickly over there.

We have had tough times in the U.K. too and my only real message to Aussies and Kiwis is one of solidarity, we've been there, it's awful but hold on as best you can and it won't always be this way.

no worse than Arden a few weeks ago smugly announcing they had beaten Covid while other countries citizens were still suffering

Did she do this?

Good god JA over the idiotic buffoon and his cronyism that we have any day. NZ handled things far better than us and I've never thought they were laughing at us, so many there have relatives in Europe- and why would you laugh at people dying? They need to sort out their vaccines now but I certainly don't feel smug that we have higher vaccine rates than them, why would anyone feel smug about anything to do with this awful virus? I don't know why anyone would think a virus was defeated if it's still at large in the world - and from what I can find JA has only ever said it was defeated 'for the present' and that vigilance was needed.

I feel much more that people over here are smug when they hear that NZ cases are up and that they have low vaccine rates and they're trying to justify it by saying 'well the kiwis were smug first'.

'I know many people who live in Aus and NZ and who say that vaccination take-up is so low because people are complacent. They were essentially led to believe that they were untouchable by COVID because of how hard they had responded and how quickly they had brought the virus under control.'

So I've skimmed it again and see a few comments like this about complacency but no actual facts from New Zealanders about procurement and organisation.

Are jabs being offered but being refused or is availability that is the problem? (apologies @TheStoic if it has been mentioned I couldn't see it but granted I can't find my glasses so may have missed it)

As with almost everything in life there are likely to be pros and cons to every approach. A suppression strategy (as per the U.K. and Europe) was always going to have its toughest stage early on, an elimination strategy (as per Aus and NZ) was always likely to find the exit more challenging

Spot on

@DottyHarmer

Sadly if you search old threads there was quite a bit of sneering and laughing. As TheKeatingFive says, it’s not - or shouldn’t be - a competition with winners and losers. In my opinion the real “baddie” in this whole thing was China, but it seems “unapproved” to mention this and we all have to forget who got us into this mess.

Did you watch the channel4 program last night? The crux of it is, we need China on board to keep our world bio secure. If we finger point they shut down communication and there’s no point any countries trying to do anything to keep safe. It’s an all or nothing approach. Which is part of the reason weve continued this charade.

It does feel a bit like the can has just been kicked down the road

That might be the best anyone could hope for. If a country can prevent as many deaths and serious long-term illnesses as possible, while working on getting people vaccinated, that can only be a good thing.

'I feel much more that people over here are smug when they hear that NZ cases are up '

Absolutely not, it is and always will be an ever changing situation. Every country has its own unique set of circumstances and we are all doing the best we can.

The point is we had a lot of crass back slaps from New Zealanders on mn at Christmas so perhaps this may make them think twice before being so arrogant in the future?

The crux of it is, we need China on board to keep our world bio secure

This, particularly now the US is so completely useless under Biden.

We might say that the UK is the “arse end of the planet” rather than the other way around

@JaniieJones

'I know many people who live in Aus and NZ and who say that vaccination take-up is so low because people are complacent. They were essentially led to believe that they were untouchable by COVID because of how hard they had responded and how quickly they had brought the virus under control.'

So I've skimmed it again and see a few comments like this about complacency but no actual facts from New Zealanders about procurement and organisation.

Are jabs being offered but being refused or is availability that is the problem? (apologies @TheStoic if it has been mentioned I couldn't see it but granted I can't find my glasses so may have missed it)

We were incredibly late starting vaccination and it is only over the last couple of weeks that the number being vaccinated has ramped up. There are people refusing to be vaccinated but most of us were desperate to get the jab and could not wait for the roll out.