So if we're going to live with covid

[Lelophants]

And counties like Australia and NZ have a no covid policy, how on earth will we integrate? I know the UK is too far gone. But how will we be allowed to travel if we keep getting vaccinnes but they don't always stop transmission because we have constantly new strains?

Or do you think other countries will give up on no covid policies too?

@GoldenOmber

There’s ‘zero covid’ as a temporary strategy until vaccines arrive, and then there’s ‘zero covid’ as a permanent plan. The second one comes with much less benefit and much higher cost and I don’t think Aus and NZ will want to go down that route.

@GoldenOmber I really am not sure I understand. Why would "zero Covid" be a strategy once population is vaccinated - its clear already that the vaccine technology is excellent and they will progressively be able to be tweaked

People keep mentioning "forever" and "never" perhaps to justify why we've failed so dismally here

People clearly don't understand zero covid. Of course NZ will continue with zero covid. What, people think they will suddenly want more covid?

They are spending very little now, they will just carry on doing as they are now, swapping hotel quarantine for 'vaccinated, negative test before and after arrival'.

I think the half life comment was referring to the lockdown we’re living in here. If you wanted to get to ‘zero covid’ in the UK at the moment, whether that means ‘no cases’ or ‘very few cases’, you’d have to maintain this for months and months and months longer. Say cases are falling 25% per week at the moment, you’d be needing, what, six more months to get daily cases even down to double digits?

I think Aus and NZ (and Isle of Man etc) made the right decision at the time and I’d rather be there than here now. But we are not NZ in March, and pushing for zero covid in the UK at this point feels like fighting the last war. Is the massive cost of months more lockdowns, plus intermittent local lockdowns continuing after that, plus indefinite border closures, worth the benefit of preventing a disease we can largely mitigate with vaccines? Once we’ve reduced the dangers of covid to those of seasonal flu or below through vaccination, what’s the argument for this that isn’t also an argument for ‘zero flu’?

It's giving people false hope and promises, everything comes with a price. There was a phone in on the radio about the ISLE of MAN going covid free.
A guy who lives there said fine but they are now trapped for the foreseeable on the island .The economy relies on tourism and who is going to operate ferries and planes to the island there will be no profit or even able to break even with cost .
There swapping one problem for another.

@rwalker

It's giving people false hope and promises, everything comes with a price. There was a phone in on the radio about the ISLE of MAN going covid free. A guy who lives there said fine but they are now trapped for the foreseeable on the island .The economy relies on tourism and who is going to operate ferries and planes to the island there will be no profit or even able to break even with cost . There swapping one problem for another.

They are swapping a big problem for a smaller problem though.

And they have choices.

Choices are always better than emergencies.

We are at over a quarter of the adult population and the Oxford jab gives around 70% protection 3 weeks after the first jab. This is very high for a vaccine.

We should hit over 80% of the most vulnerable people being vaccinated by the end of today, which is why 9th March (3 weeks away) is being touted as first return to school /open back up society date.

Zero covid countries surely will just vaccinate their populations and id you haven't been vaccinated, you continue with the 2 week quarantine, until its not an issue anymore if 1 or 2 travellers get sick as everyone they meet has been vaccinated.

Tourism will be damaged, but that's the cost they've decided to pay. They have the same final point, with everyone being vaccinated so that covid can't rip through their society anymore, but they didn't do the thousands dead before getting to that and can take their time about the vaccination programme.

Might be interesting/problematic if their population doesn't take up the vaccine in the same numbers as we have.

Pretty amused thinking I'm living a "half life" here in Australia

I know! Rather than sob about my inability to visit overseas relatives my weekend has been pretty “normal”. DD1 went shopping with a friend and then to a party to which 15 girls attended. Today, DD2 had a swim meet, the younger two had nippers (junior lifesavers) and the oldest had beach patrol.

I’m getting organised for their week at school which includes - swim carnivals, drama, music lessons, DS has rugby sign one and a birthday next weekend. One is going on a 3 day school camp tomorrow.

Next weekend, DH and I have a planned nice dinner out, on my day off work this week I’m getting my eyes reviewed and a hair cut.

None of this is massively exciting but everyone is busy and stimulated, it’s not a half-life. If we have to go on holiday within our state at the Easter break it’s not a massive hardship - it’ll still be hot and the children will still spend the whole day swimming.

I think the debate over zero covid as a strategy for the future also gets hopelessly muddled with the debate over how much the UK government cocked up in the past.

“We have to ‘live with covid’, by vaccinating everyone and keeping the disease at low levels that way! While Aus and NZ will do much better, because they’ll be able to replace their current strategy by... vaccinating everyone and keeping the disease at low levels that way.”

What's bonkers is looking at countries with no covid death week after week, normal lives, and healthy economies and going "NAH! Who'd want that?!"

@PrincessNutNuts I also wonder about that quite often. To me it's madness. I have close Australian friends and they cannot believe what is going on in the U.K. I'm not sure what it is people are claiming when they describe zero Covid countries as having an "impossible strategy. It's clearly not, it's working quite well.

People seem to understand the risk of vaccine escape, which e.g. NZAus will have far lower risk of.

As soon as UK identifies a variant of concern, other countries will shut us out again presumably. Unless we decide to stop testing entirely which would be insane (and therefore possible with this bunch of charlatans in charge).

"Yess, so do I, so do most people, but at some point all countries will have to decide between keeping borders closed and accepting some risk of covid in the country - the ‘living with covid’ part."

@GoldenOmber but the whole point is to buy time and do that once you have a better understanding of the virus, vaccination, better therapeutics

You buy time so as to avoid mass death.

Already a year in we know so much more about the virus, surely the countries that followed clear and more determined policies were shown to be right.

NZ are in a far far better position than the UK, they have scope to move forward sensibly. The UK has only two bad options - 'live with it' (an admission of failure) or invest (never gonna happen, government do not give a shit about the population).

@PracticingPerson I agree, sadly the U.K. has had the worst possible strategy... can't see an easy way out. For me what it is, at its heart, is a policy of eugenics actually.

Already a year in we know so much more about the virus, surely the countries that followed clear and more determined policies were shown to be right.

I’ve already said, I think those countries made the right decision and I’d rather be there than here now.

If the question is ‘if we could go back in time to Feb 2020 should we do what they did while we wait for vaccines?’ then yes, absolutely.

If the question is ‘should we do this now, for an indefinite period, regardless of having vaccines?’ then that’s a very different question.

@PracticingPerson

People clearly don't understand zero covid. Of course NZ will continue with zero covid. What, people think they will suddenly want more covid?

They are spending very little now, they will just carry on doing as they are now, swapping hotel quarantine for 'vaccinated, negative test before and after arrival'.

@PracticingPerson

Absolutely. What I find bizarre that people don't understand is that it's in everyone's interest to keep a fire from spreading. Then you have the luxury of keeping the few sparks down using various tools. That's how public health works. If you allow the fire to spread (as the "live with it" crowd will have it) you have fewer options or no options

On all levels: financial (because most people, you will find, will not want to "live with it"), health and mental health

"I think the half life comment was referring to the lockdown we’re living in here. If you wanted to get to ‘zero covid’ in the UK at the moment, whether that means ‘no cases’ or ‘very few cases’, you’d have to maintain this for months and months and months longer. Say cases are falling 25% per week at the moment, you’d be needing, what, six more months to get daily cases even down to double digits? "

@GoldenOmber I've read many detailed reports on this- there are some excellent long threads on twitter- that show clearly it would not be "months and months". It would require much more stringent border closures, mitigations at schools for example opening with rotas, and a clearer and more thought out lockdown exit by may

I just posted on another thread on a similar topic - the choices the government are now making are political choices about masking and moving on from their disastrous decisions earlier on.

Of course they want to focus on vaccines - it is their only success. Vaccines alone won't fix this situation but politically it is their only option. And funnily enough as the worst type of politicians (our PM is a flat out liar, his moral principles are well understood) this government care about that a lot more than they care about you, me, or our families.

What I find bizarre that people don't understand is that it's in everyone's interest to keep a fire from spreading.

People understand this perfectly well. People also understand that there are costs and benefits to all ‘fire control’ interventions. Do you think we should close borders indefinitely and keep local travel restrictions and local rolling lockdowns in place to prevent the spread of TB? Did you argue we should have gone into short lockdowns to stop the spread during the 2018 measles outbreaks? When Nigel Farage talked about foreigners bringing HIV into the country a few years ago, did you think “yes, good one Nige, HIV mutates so fast we can’t risk a new variant taking hold here”? I bet you didn’t. I certainly didn’t.

‘Live with covid’ when we don’t have vaccines is a very different thing to ‘live with covid’ when we do have vaccines. The costs and benefits change.

"If the question is ‘should we do this now, for an indefinite period, regardless of having vaccines?’ then that’s a very different question."

@GoldenOmber if anything though, reaching near zero Covid now would surely be easier because we have vaccines? Making it even more an attractive and doable strategy? I'm not sure what the benefit of suddenly opening everything up would be, if we end up taking huge steps backward.

And yes of course about last year. But of course the U.K. did have forewarning last year, and they have it now. It's just they are choosing what amounts to a policy of eugenics instead, survival of the fittest.

I've always wondered: would people be so anti zero Covid if Covid was killing children at the rate it's killing older people?

If the answer is no, then why not?

@GoldenOmber I've read many detailed reports on this- there are some excellent long threads on twitter- that show clearly it would not be "months and months".

Yes, it would, at current rate of decline. So you’re saying we would have to put new, more severe restrictions in to make it decline faster. Which again, carries costs along with benefits, and where there is still massive uncertainty because despite what Twitter threads may have set our, we don’t actually know exactly what we need to do to get the R number to any particular level.

"Do you think we should close borders indefinitely and keep local travel restrictions and local rolling lockdowns in place to prevent the spread of TB?"

@GoldenOmber
TB is not spreading exponentially in our countries and killing or making ill this number of people. If it was stringent quarantines would be put in place very quickly. As has happened with every pandemic in history. This is not the first one.

There is no serious illness that has been dealt with properly with a "live with it" policy. People would like it for it to be so but it's simply not true. Think of "living with polio" etc

Of course vaccinations hugely improve the picture and that in itself makes it clear that this will not be "indefinitely" so I'm not sure why people keep referring to "indefinitely"?

@stilllovingmysleep because the vaccines aren’t 100% effective, nor will there be 100% take up, nor are kids able to be vax yet. U.K. has potentially 30% natural infection to aid vax immunity. So herd immunity isn’t achievable in NZ and having to deal with Covid fresh will create (to a far lesser degree) the issues we’ve had. Yes what they did originally attempting zero Covid before vax was correct, now we have vaccines and they’ll open up their problems dealing with the disease will emerge. Unless of course a pre hospital treatment is discovered/developed.

I don't believe that having closed borders is a half life, that comment refers to the lockdowns we've been enduring for the past year now and the lack of focus on anything other than the pandemic.

I don't think that we should be prevented from living normal lives longer than is absolutely necessary to prevent health services being overwhelmed. When cases are at the levels they were in summer AND large proportions of the country are vaccinated AND hospital admissions are at manageable levels then living with restrictions we have now would be very wrong.

Yes it is easier to do it now.

The problem we have is - if the government admits they can control covid now, then they also admit they could have controlled it before, thus taking responsibility for the death toll, especially the >30k in January 2021.

We must pretend covid is uncontrollable, to protect our government. And many will support them, as emotionally that is less gruesome than facing the havoc the decision-making has wreaked. A lot of people just want to move on.

[quote GoldenOmber]**@GoldenOmber I've read many detailed reports on this- there are some excellent long threads on twitter- that show clearly it would not be "months and months".

Yes, it would, at current rate of decline. So you’re saying we would have to put new, more severe restrictions in to make it decline faster. Which again, carries costs along with benefits, and where there is still massive uncertainty because despite what Twitter threads may have set our, we don’t actually know exactly what we need to do to get the R number to any particular level.[/quote]
@GoldenOmber what I'm saying is the strategy we have had this year has failed dismally at all levels

And I think it shows prudence and "learning from experience " to admit when a policy isn't working and look to others who have done things better

Everything of course has huge costs. We are in a pandemic. Nothing is easy anyway in such a context.

We can of course continue on our current path. Not sure what the benefits of that are. I haven't seen any, almost all year we have been semi locked down

[quote Oaktree55]@stilllovingmysleep because the vaccines aren’t 100% effective, nor will there be 100% take up, nor are kids able to be vax yet. U.K. has potentially 30% natural infection to aid vax immunity. So herd immunity isn’t achievable in NZ and having to deal with Covid fresh will create (to a far lesser degree) the issues we’ve had. Yes what they did originally attempting zero Covid before vax was correct, now we have vaccines and they’ll open up their problems dealing with the disease will emerge. Unless of course a pre hospital treatment is discovered/developed.[/quote]
This is scientifically incorrect, the single biggest factor in how hard cover is to control is the amount of virus circulating.

There is no reason at all why NZ is more likely to have high circulating levels than the UK.

They will allow only those vaccinated and testing negative in.

The UK has very high circulating levels already, mutating constantly.