I've been away from the threads for a bit, trying to get something done In Real Life... But we don't seem to have moved on much from when I was last here, basically!
I do think there may be a move to try to open things up a bit quicker than the provisional dates given. So the 4 adults thing was "scheduled" for 15th March and we're getting it on the 12th (a whole 3 days early!) and I do think the tiers may move forwards a bit in a pre election show of magnanimity... Maybe to mid rather than end of April, when the schools are back properly? Though in the central belt, I don't think that'll be much good for us really, as we still won't be able to do anything. Getting fed up with it now, as I know everyone is. But even with general rule breaking and whatnot, hospitalisations and deaths are still decreasing, and even cases. Likely as a result of the vaccine as much as anything, but even so, I'm not sure how much longer "people" will accept restrictions like we have had. It just seems disproportionate.
On the elimination thing, I looked back at the panel report, and it does say NZ adopted an elimination (not exclusion) strategy, though I assume they kind of used a mixture of the two in practice. But "elimination" as defined in the report is very much "keep it down to basically zero and don't let it in again". So that is long term travel restrictions (presumably from countries without the same strategy, so that would include England, even if "legally" that can't be done) , quarantine hotels and so on, which is a grim thought. I really can't see us locking down the entire country (or council areas?) for a handful of cases as they do in NZ.
In any case, someone really needs to think up a better name for the strategies to "sell" them to the public! I don't really care if elimination is epidemiological jargon for "just at a very low level" (which it may or may not be). That sounds like it should be called suppression to me. Elimination sounds like they are aiming to get rid of it totally, which I think most people will think, and most people will think that is not feasible. And surely all our hands face space/ facts stuff is mitigation against the effects of the virus... And that's not just to protect the vulnerable at all. It just seems they haven't really put much thought into communicating the strategy stuff to the public, and have just cobbled together some public health terms that don't mean what the average person on the street thinks they should mean, and say "right, this is what we're doing". No wonder we're all confused and conflicted and giving up.