"Act as if you have Covid, and as though people around you have Covid."
Dear goodness, my wife has family over in New Zealand and she is wondering if she'll ever see them again. Their PM seems grimly determined to keep them hostage until the virus is literally eradicated, which it will never be. This is what happens when politicians play at science, and set themselves impossible targets.
I've got a bad feeling this may be Sturgeon's approach. Once she's eliminated it, one case pops up and the area is suddenly locked down with everything closed. This is such an impractical and unsustainable approach, we must learn to live with this virus, and right now we're just not doing that.
But surely we've been repeatedly told on here that NZ has eradicated it, and we need to follow their model?!
It does rather demonstrate though that if a country miles from anywhere, with a small population, can't eradicate it even with closed borders then it's futile to try...
To put this into context, there's a general election due in New Zealand on the 19th September, and the current government is a coalition (with the not altogether savoury New Zealand First Party of nationalist populists).
All the polls (up to today) were showing that Jacinda Adern's Labour Party would win a significant majority in September, due in no small part to her handling of things so far with regard to Covid-19. This was presumably always going to be a critical period for her, then, trying to keep the status quo until election day at least. Politically, these community transmissions mean that she has to do something fast and strong.
Strictly-speaking, New Zealand's borders are also not closed. International arrivals are heavily restricted, but not totally banned. Arrivals do have to go into managed quarantine.
They had a number of issues with folks initially not remaining in these quarantine facilities, and put the army in charge rather than the health ministry. There were still at least a couple of escapees after the army took over, however.
In many ways, this could be a good thing for the country; if they can manage a three day lockdown now, lift it again, keep going steadily until the election, and then with a majority in parliament, they can deliver a plan to reopen borders in a controlled manner, probably with 90 minute testing and with a well-publicised strategy for how outbreaks of this and any similar virus will be dealt with in future.