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?

HB born and bred here, too - kind of funny that there are so many of us on this thread!

My DB and his partner - recently back here permanently from the UK - went up there a couple of days before lockdown and are now ‘trapped’ up there! They are sending me pics of G&Ts on the deck with the sea in the background (on the Hill). I am

Adding insult to injury - not only are we stuck on Level 4, but the weather is crap. Warm and damp and sticky. Level 4 in our usual glorious sunshine and shorts-and-T-shirt weather would make me a lot less grumpy. Going out now to take food parcels to our neighbours who can't go fishing...

It is miserable here in Auckland. Rainy and grey.

There’s a bit of that I think @Cactusandmarshmallows but think as well we are generally quite a compliant people and don’t like making a fuss/drawing attention to ourselves which bucking the rules would do.

I also think we loooooooove “punching above our weight” and are addicted to the idea of New Zealand exceptionalism so anywhere when we are world beaters (rugby, yachting, Covid - until recently 😰) we absolutely lap it up. Not going to lie I was feeling very self congratulatory all summer. Hubris

Cactusandmarshmallows,

I don't think there's a stronger sense of social responsibility in NZ (we're happy about people sleeping in cars and garages while selling social housing and there's still a race system) but it's easy and quick for consensus to form on issues. That's why the lockdowns worked so well. It's easier make an effort when you know everyone around you is doing at least as much.

Compare that to Cummings.

@KowhaiWhy

Opportunities for 🍿🍿 notwithstanding... nearly 900 posts in, this thread could essentially be summarised thusly:

Irrationally overinvested poster: NZ has it all wrong, doom and disaster cometh, you must listen to meeee!

Kiwi MNetters: yeah, there's been a few issues. But here's why Ardern's policies largely work for us (not limited to small, relatively isolated nation; small, not hugely funded health system)... we're mostly fine with what's going on. Cheers.

IOP: no, no ... doom and gloom. Authoritarian state, China!

KMs: no, we really don't feel that. It's mostly all good here. Early issues with vaccines, but fortunately that's ramping up now. Thanks tho.

IOP: but China!!!

KMs: H'OK 🤷🏼‍♀️

IOP: 🤯🤯

KMs:

Nice summary, this exactly

I think the comparisons to China are quite extreme. Most people I know are happy to forego a few liberties (and takeaways!) in the short term on the understanding that it will hopefully be better for everyone in the long term.

Most people I know are stoic but Increasingly fucked off, & crossing fingers the vaccination programme will help build a pathway out.

Valid points about consensus and loving punching above our weight.

Jealous of the HB weather. Wet here. But I have pie so fairly happy plus a virtual drinks event tonight

@Gennz18. Same here. It’s increasingly palpable from the conversations I’m having with colleagues etc.

So much of it is dependent on circumstances I think. If you are in a picturesque part of the country with a secure job that doesn’t require you to wfh, or have no/older children it’s probably a relaxing change of pace, especially as the end is pretty near for the regions.

If you are a small business owner, have insecure work, lived in cramped housing, live by yourself or have young kids st home are required to keep working and live in Auckland its a struggle. It’s nothing like what the UK went through but it’s increasingly stressful, especially as the end could realistically be more months than weeks away.

Also find it interesting that I’ve seen a few people moaning about Aucklanders online. The pp that was calling out people going to their Baches was totally justified but I really hate the use of JAFA. It wouldn’t be acceptable to call any other group of people a fucking anything but seems to be ok if it’s Aucklanders. 98% of us aren’t Cayenne driving, boat towing, paddle board toting dickheads. We are at home obeying the rules. And we are staying home for all of NZ as much as for ourselves. As a healthy 30 something with no health conditions I’m at very little risk but if every young healthy Aucklander thinks only of themselves then big chunks of the country are screwed.

Waving from Canterbury. We had gorgeous weather earlier in the week, but it's damp and cold now. Oh well, I've got lots of inside jobs to do - just need to find the motivation.

@PersonaNonGarter

Well, it’s not looking good for them is it? They need to get their vaccine game up.

But the ‘zero Covid’ thing was folly for sure.

Zero covid was never a folly if we didn't have clueless cucks refusing to comply with measures or wearing their mask under their noses.

@KowhaiWhy

Opportunities for 🍿🍿 notwithstanding... nearly 900 posts in, this thread could essentially be summarised thusly:

Irrationally overinvested poster: NZ has it all wrong, doom and disaster cometh, you must listen to meeee!

Kiwi MNetters: yeah, there's been a few issues. But here's why Ardern's policies largely work for us (not limited to small, relatively isolated nation; small, not hugely funded health system)... we're mostly fine with what's going on. Cheers.

IOP: no, no ... doom and gloom. Authoritarian state, China!

KMs: no, we really don't feel that. It's mostly all good here. Early issues with vaccines, but fortunately that's ramping up now. Thanks tho.

IOP: but China!!!

KMs: H'OK 🤷🏼‍♀️

IOP: 🤯🤯

KMs:

You are either intentionally forgetting or disingenuously believe that despite ramping up vaccines, which are clearly slow and inadequate in your country, once you open up you can survive on vaccine immunity alone. That will not happen and many NZ's are projected to die from covid once you reopen.

You are either intentionally forgetting or disingenuously believe that despite ramping up vaccines, which are clearly slow and inadequate in your country, once you open up you can survive on vaccine immunity alone. That will not happen and many NZ's are projected to die from covid once you reopen

But a lot less than If they had opened with vaccines. It is not rocket science. I am entirely bemused why people think kiwis anticipate zero cases and zero deaths when they finally open. It is just because of sensible decision making they are trying to make that number as low as possible. I genuinely don’t understand how people can’t see that!

Without vaccines. Sorry

@mrbob because that is what Jacinda Ardern is saying. She says it won't be zeeo covid but that any cases of the virus will be squashed. That is surely incompatible with opening up and letting covid play out in a vaccinated population as we know vaccinated people can catch and transmit the virus. www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/12/new-zealand-covid-ardern-quarantine-free-travel-vaccine-reopening

Exactly @Ticklyrain

And I’m not going to criticise Aucklanders who left the city to L4 somewhere else. One of my team did - she is a young single person in a flat and her flatmates decided to bubble up with respective partners in other households. Rather than spend weeks housebound and alone, before the midnight deadline she went home to her mum and dad in another region. By the beach! Shock horror. I’m not going to criticise her for that, or anyone who moved location if they needed to. The tropes about flashy Aucklander fleeing to their baches are just not borne out by reality. Neither is the “oh we’re all so happy and chilled in lockdown”. I am not - I have two small kids and a full
in full-time job, as does my husband. Materially we are fine, we have a nice enough house (def not big enough for us all to be in 24/7 but fine), reasonably secure jobs but it’s still extremely stressful. I can’t even fathom how much tougher other families are doing it. Our school is sending out emails to the community asking for any donations of food or money because some families are really struggling.

Of course we will comply, it’s our only option right now and I am encouraged by the vax numbers but I’m still annoyed.

We were always going to have to pivot to living with Covid at some stage, but politically it would have been a very hard decision to make so this has probably forced our hand. Which is maybe not a bad thing.

You are either intentionally forgetting or disingenuously believe that despite ramping up vaccines, which are clearly slow and inadequate in your country, once you open up you can survive on vaccine immunity alone. That will not happen and many NZ's are projected to die from covid once you reopen.

And you make a number of assumptions - chief among them that I live in New Zealand. I don't.

I hope you have been watching One News just now. It's morally reprehensible to condone what is reported as "hundreds of" refugees escaping lockdown in Auckland to stay in their baches in the North. It's very sad for your friend left alone in her flat, had she considered that she might be carrying infection back to her parents, and the residents of the seaside settlement? Presumably she had not been vaccinated or tested? You evidently are not familiar with the unique problems faced by our region, of inadequate medical facilities, distance from hospitals, poverty, poor housing, poor connectivity, fragile economy. Just one carrier from Auckland would be catastrophic. Any one of those "hundreds" could be that carrier.

The stay-home L4 order came into effect on 11.59pm on Tuesday 17 August. Anyone who relocated before that time was perfectly entitled to do so.

Agree that Northland is very vulnerable - but surely the proper target for your ire is failure by successive Governments to invest in health infrastructure and address social deprivation in the region.

Every country has "failed" in that there is probably no great way to deal with COVID, just a choice of different bad options.

The NZ strategy has downsides--as does every other way of dealing with this virus.

She says it won't be zeeo covid but that any cases of the virus will be squashed.

This will not work. COVIC, esp Delta, is very different to measles and TB. The whole "OK, we won't actually be zero COVID but every outbreak will be traced and crushed" appears to be a bargaining stage that people go through when it's beginning to dawn on them that keeping the virus out forever isn't viable. I remember Devi Sridhar (or whatever her name is) going on about "treating COVID like measles" a few months ago. She's stopped saying that now.

COVID will be endemic everywhere. Including New Zealand. And that's fine, honestly. The Spanish Flu virus also went endemic and became regular old seasonal flu. It's how pandemics of this kind generally end.

Long-term, all countries will end up in the same position.

NZ will probably have a lot fewer deaths overall than almost any other country, per million of population, when the sums are done at the end.

It's possible that the other effects of COVID, like effects on international openness and trade, may drag on longer in NZ, however, as fear of the virus is much stronger which will make it harder to adjust to living to the virus as it become endemic.

Trade offs, basically. Pick your poison.

Agree that Northland is very vulnerable - but surely the proper target for your ire is failure by successive Governments to invest in health infrastructure and address social deprivation in the region.

Why on earth would anyone’s ‘ire’ be directed at successive Governments, cycling in and out Nat/Lab? And not at the selfish, entitled fuckers people driving in, in their 4x4s with their boats and their option to go to a second home?

And I say this as someone with a second home, not with some chip on my shoulder.

If you’re an Auckland - stay in Auckland. Everyone else is staying where they are.

The weather’s looking lovely in Hawke’s Bay, why don’t I just head up there?

The stay-home L4 order came into effect on 11.59pm on Tuesday 17 August. Anyone who relocated before that time was perfectly entitled to do so.

You were supposed to go to your home in that window of opportunity - NOT your holiday home. Selfish pricks.

The stay-home L4 order came into effect on 11.59pm on Tuesday 17 August. Anyone who relocated before that time was perfectly entitled to do so.

This seems to be deliberately missing the point that the reason there is a lag before the stay-at-home order comes into place is for people to get back to their homes from work/supermarket etc and not for people to hive off to their holiday houses hours away.

There was 6 hours’ lag. Last time there was 48 hours. The short time-frame between announcement and enforcement was why so many people got stuck away from home,

There are all sorts of reasons why people located in Auckland in a Tuesday evening might consider their home out of Auckland their home base, and wish to get back there for an indefinite lockdown.

The reason Northland is locked down is because Covid was found in the wastewater in Warkworth - now connected to a rest home worker there - not because of mythical JAFA typhoid Marys spreading the plague up and down the motu.

Most people I know are stoic but Increasingly fucked off, & crossing fingers the vaccination programme will help build a pathway out

But the vaccine has not provided the UK with a way out, or any other country in the world. So why would it provide one for NZ? Every single adult that wants a vaccine in the UK, and there is a high take up - has been double vaccinated and we are still living with 32,000-38,000 infections PER day. In reality it is mostly fine, as they are young and recover without an issue.

You can still catch up covid with the vaccine.

So I am wondering what your pathway actually looks like?

I am genuinely interested in how you feel it will work in reality, with the elimination strategy.

It is now known that covid will still spread with or without a vaccine
The power of the vaccine only lasts for six months