Would you support a lock down NZ style now?

[Bubblesbubblesmybubbles]

Just wondered how people would feel if, say, we were told we will shut borders next tuesday (as an example - gives people time to get home) and we will then lock down hard in order to offer normality after? It wouldnt have worked at the first lock down as i dont think many expected this to go on so long but maybe it could now?!

Personally I find this mid ground frustrating! If we did that then it would be sooner that theatres, sports, everything could resume BUT I am aware I am very lucky that I can work from home so wouldnt be financially impacted. Long term - I feel like our economy would be hit hard initially but recover faster and stronger

I know it wont happen but I just see friends in Australia and NZ and am so very jealous!

@lljkk All citizens and residents are allowed into NZ. I don’t know about AU. Even though certain people on social media are saying don’t let them in with their Covid etc... It’s unlawful to deny entry.

No

I'm in a

[quote metalkprettyoneday]@lljkk All citizens and residents are allowed into NZ. I don’t know about AU. Even though certain people on social media are saying don’t let them in with their Covid etc... It’s unlawful to deny entry.[/quote]
You have to have a (limited) quarantine slot booked otherwise denied boarding at airport.

Limited planes out again - still a lot of foreigners in NZ who arrived before lockdown, are hoping to leave, but can't.

I'm hoping my family are all still alive in 2024 - which is when international travel is expected to be normal again.

@lljkk

Isn't there a quota for letting people back in Aus &/or NZ so random lottery whether they let you back in this is citizens, btw, not allowed in.

Aus allows 6k people in a week. This is not just citizens, it includes permanent residents and anyone with a valid visa. So the citizens are fighting for space with everyone else. The airlines estimate that 100k Aussies are looking to return but that number may be higher. So a lot are experiencing hardship and immense stress in other countries, while having their flights continually cancelled. That's what it will take to emulate Aus or NZ, serious hardship for people outside of the country and people within it, suffering severe lockdowns and being prevented from leaving the country.

I think holidays abroad should be stopped but not imports.
Holidays aren't essential and a luxury the rich can afford.

NZ seem to have gone all in on 'eradicating the virus completely'. Even when a vaccine does become available, there probably won't be enough for every country to effectively vaccinate their entire population, or even vaccinate enough for herd immunity, straight away. It will take months, and NZ will also be well back into their winter by then as well? Or do NZ think that due to their very small population they will be able to get everyone vaccinated really quickly, in which case fair enough, but again, not really comparable to the UK?

An old friend of mine just spent 2 weeks locked in a room with no windows with her baby that was born in lockdown because her Mum is dying from cancer and more or less being kept going on chemo in order to see her daughter. She suffered a couple of flights home being cancelled and she is separated from her husband & 2 young children, whose flight home has been cancelled too. If/when they arrive, they will need to go into quarantine as well. How is that humane?

And then when they are out they can live a normal life with their family, kids playing, eating out. Two weeks of utter misery for freedom. I take that over months and months of endless shutdowns 🤷‍♀️

And then when they are out they can live a normal life with their family, kids playing, eating out. Two weeks of utter misery for freedom. I take that over months and months of endless shutdowns 🤷‍♀️

I sincerely hope that if you ever find yourself in the situation where you don’t know if your Mum will be alive by the time you can (a) get on a flight and (b) pass 2 weeks in an airless quarantine, that you are shown more empathy than you have shown today.

Certainly not.

Holidays aren't essential and a luxury the rich can afford.

You don't have to be rich to afford a cheap Ryan Air flight and a week self catering in Spain.

Rich or not I'm not sure how on Earth you'd stop holidays TBH, without some very draconian controls on what people do with their money.

ATM you can still book a flight/get on a ferry or even a train to many countries for a whole variety of reasons, not just holidays (work, visiting family, maybe a health or care related visit)....

We couldn’t even have effectively done this in March. It was tearing through the U.K. on a daily basis as soon as it started spreading from Wuhan in Dec/ Jan. The U.K. is a global hub. We had daily flights from China and then other affected areas in Europe - students, tourists, business travellers... There was obviously no social distancing so each one of these infected people spread the virus in an exponential chain. It was rampant here in the early months of the year. Estimated 100,000 cases daily or weekly I can’t remember which (disclaimer obviously no one knows this for sure and I can’t quote the research on this but I have seen it multiple times and it makes sense to me given the deaths that followed). THAT’S why so many people died in April. For the U.K. to even have vaguely flirted with the moonshot idea of the NZ option Boris Johnson would have needed to seal all borders (not practical anyway) even before WHO started mumbling that there was a potentially transmissible virus in China...

And no I absolutely wouldn’t support a NZ style lockdown next week.

No not sure it was possible in March. NZ locked down same time as us. Our cases were rocketing, theirs were tiny (102 according to Adern)

We’d have had to have locked down earlier. Feb?

And even if we did do it early not convinced we could keep borders closed in same way

If the UK had locked down with closed borders, the food shortages would have been real (not just caused by a shift in buying patterns because people were eating all their meals at home). The U.K. is a net importer of food. If the lorries can’t get in, the food chain collapses.

At a time when it was ‘that Chinese virus’ and everyone thought it would go the way of previous threatened pandemics, i.e. be no big deal, I can’t imagine people would have been OK with actual ration books and possibly literally not getting enough to eat.

By the time the true scope was recognised here, it was too late anyway.
If the Chinese had been honest in December, it might have worked but they weren’t.

New Zealand had the advantage of being a net exporter of food and using a type of food transport for what they do import that makes transmission far less likely (container ships not lorries on ferries). They were also geographically isolated and it was the middle of Summer / start of Autumn where they were when things kicked off. Their total population in a land mass much the size of the U.K. is half that of the number of people who live in London. Also, they got to see what was happening to the rest of the world before it hit them so had time to do something about it. Basically, the conditions were ideal to close the borders. None of that applies to the U.K.