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If there was a second wave, what would you do if you were in power?

What would you do if there was a second wave?

  • Another full national lockdown, with same restrictions as those imposed in March

    Votes: 8 7.4%
  • Series of strict local lockdowns targeting the worst affected areas

    Votes: 22 20.4%
  • A less strict version of a national lockdown with schools and more businesses remaining open

    Votes: 7 6.5%
  • An alternative version of a lockdown focused on restricting travel rather than closing businesses

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • Close only a handful of businesses which are likely to generate crowds

    Votes: 5 4.6%
  • Require citizens at risk to shield again for some time, while everything else goes on as normal

    Votes: 48 44.4%
  • Do nothing, and just tell everyone to get on with it!

    Votes: 16 14.8%
  • Other (please specify)

    Votes: 1 0.9%

  • Total voters
    108
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FQTV

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27 Apr 2012
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1,067
"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.
 
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jtuk

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Messages
423
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...

Four whole cases! Ardern probably contemplating nuking the country from orbit just to be sure
 

takno

Established Member
Joined
9 Jul 2016
Messages
5,038
Four whole cases! Ardern probably contemplating nuking the country from orbit just to be sure
If your general policy is to have zero cases, and live completely normally within your country-wide bubble safe from the umm, ravages I guess, of Covid, then 4 cases of community transmission is a lot. In fact, unless the testing and tracing is either absolutely perfect or lucky then it may already be too late. A three day lockdown might be enough if it's perfectly observed and asymptomatic cases don't spread the disease, but it's entirely possible that it won't break the chains of transmission.

All of which is to say that this one-country elimination strategy is a bit of a nonsense really. If they can't make it work there then they certainly can't make it work here.
 

bramling

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Joined
5 Mar 2012
Messages
17,685
Location
Hertfordshire / Teesdale
We need to learn to live with it or we are going to end up with far worse issues such as mental health issues, a population with reduced education, reduced productivity so wealth of country (which remember helps fund the NHS) and people with other medical issues being ignored. When are you going to realise that this virus is not the only thing on the agenda? The reason we can't move forward is due to this. Country and its politicians need to get a grip on reality.

Agree 100%. We desperately need an exit strategy from this rut we’re now stuck in, and we can’t want for a vaccine.

This is now causing severe cohesion issues.
 

AdamWW

Established Member
Joined
6 Nov 2012
Messages
3,602
NZ Lockdown over FOUR cases? I take back everything I've said about Sturgeon.

I presume this is a criticism of the New Zealand strategy of elimination.

Because if that's the strategy, then yes I think you do lock down over four cases if (as I believe is the case here) you don't know where they came from.

Letting it spread further until you have some number that seems more worthy of a lockdown isn't likely to make things better in the long run.
 

Bantamzen

Established Member
Joined
4 Dec 2013
Messages
9,671
Location
Baildon, West Yorkshire
I presume this is a criticism of the New Zealand strategy of elimination.

Because if that's the strategy, then yes I think you do lock down over four cases if (as I believe is the case here) you don't know where they came from.

Letting it spread further until you have some number that seems more worthy of a lockdown isn't likely to make things better in the long run.

And this is the whole reason why elimination strategies don't work (or at least strategies that don't use biological means). As has been long discussed across various threads, the proportion of asymptomatic could be much higher than previous thought, and could even represent the majority of infections. So the virus could quite easily have been bubbling along almost unseen until recently as more people test. And this seems to be the case elsewhere in the road, as more people are tested, more cases emerge particularly among groups not previously under scrutiny.

(Its not clear exactly what the NZ Health Service's policy is on testing, the data seems to show a testing spike around June when some positive cases leaked from quarantine, then dropped markedly again to previous levels:

)

So in theory the virus could pop up just about anywhere, although you may not be able to effectively track them, making elimination just about impossible. That's what you get for billions of years of evolution, these very basic microbes can find ways around our measures, and even lay dormant for years, decades and even millennia. Politicians will never be able to legislate for that!
 
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