Chat > General Discussion

New Zealand (And Covid)

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zpyder:
So, after Nexus's thread, it became obvious that there's a bit of a knowledge gap in terms of perceptions of whats happening over there and here, and I thought it'd be interesting to continue the discussion without hijacking his thread further.

I also thought it might be interesting for you all to see my view of NZ, almost 5 years into living here. Originally I was going to put that in this thread, but the covid stuff has taken up too much time so I'll do a different thread in a bit, once I've tidied the house up a bit :D

Covid stuff
When it all kicked off 2 years ago, the country pretty much locked itself away from the world from the get go. With our low population density and easy-ish to manage borders, it wasn't too difficult to keep Covid out. With the initial wave we had a few infections that turned into clusters, but those were well contained with almost a Blitz like mentality. That first lockdown lasted about a month or so, but everyone got behind it and we got through it. The first lockdown was also pretty much the only time that I have seen the opposition party actually support Labour (in power) on something (it only lasted about 2 weeks before they were back at it). The country got/gets daily 1pm briefings of cases, vaccine status etc. Most kiwis either listen or watch it, or get the summary on the news pages a little later in the day.

We then had a pretty cruisy 18 months. Life went on almost as normal, just without the overseas tourists. For a country where a massive amount of income is from tourism, that hit the economy fairly hard, but the kiwis have a can-do attitude and it seems that a lot of places found ways to keep going. Our success was also a bit of a curse, as we found ourselves at the bottom of the list for various supplies. Working in a laboratory, we found supplies of things that would be day-to-day consumables for us like gloves, masks, syringes, pipette tips etc, not being in stock, and not being in stock anywhere in the country. With the gloves we were told that the manufacturers literally weren't shipping to NZ as they were prioritising worse hit countries. Some goods that I ordered at the start of Covid took 18 months to arrive, and even then only in partially fulfilled shipments. My work was involved in sampling of wastewater to detect covid. It's an amazing piece of science that works very well in the context of a country where covid isn't common. I imagine in time once it spreads it will be less valuable.

We also had a very late start to vaccinations. I'm not sure if the pharma companies were also prioritising other countries, but we were about a year behind the UK to start.

Towards the end of the 18 months we started to get a lot of calls from different industries, and the opposition party, to reopen the borders. We were in a false sense of security.

Then Delta came.

It started with the odd case in the managed isolation. And then a case in Auckland. To start with everyone was pretty confident that we had stamped it out before, we could do it again. Rather than locking the whole country down, they shut off Auckland. It's got 1/4 of the countries population, but was fairly easy to block the ways in and out. Each day we had a couple new cases, for the first week or so we were in single figures. Then up to 20. 2 weeks in I think we got a couple around 50. And then a case occurred in the region next to auckland. Everyone got uneasy. The hard lockdowns weren't helping, and we were still pretty low on the vaccination rates. There was a massive drive and most of the country rushed to get the jabs when they were eligible.

And now we're roughly up to current times. We're at about 200 cases a day, and are starting to get the occasional death notification. The government is moving away from lockdowns to a traffic-light system, which is kind of like lockdowns but more regional and not quite as restrictive at the highest levels. Given the relatively low cases still, we have the lab capacity and contact tracing capacity that most cases can still be traced back to existing cases, and those unlinked ones are genome sequenced to determine if they at least are part of existing clusters even if we don't know the link.

Almost 90% of the country is fully vaccinated, which means the other 10% are hesitant or anti-vax. The government has recently passed several mandates requiring vaccination for certain professions (teaching, healthcare, police etc) and more to come. My wife is/was a teacher and knows a few science teachers who are protesting the mandate and/or have lost their jobs due to refusing the vaccine. They ask for compassion and empathy but I fail to find any, it's a shame that they are having to leave professions they've been in for years, but if they loved their children as much as they said they'd either take the vaccine or accept being an unvaccinated teacher puts the children at risk, and find a new job.

Overall the country can be split into a few different camps. A very small but incredibly vocal anti-vax/anti-lockdown minority. I hope/think many of them might change their tune if/when they encounter covid directly. Then it's probably equally split between the rest with people who are getting quite complacent, people who are just waiting for the poop to hit the fan, and people who are still incredibly paranoid and freak out at each new area that has a case, thinking that they can keep avoiding it...

Serious:
There is yet another variant going through Africa, several countries including the UK have severely restricted access to people leaving Africa.

Although knowing Britain it's going to be as covid proof as a teabag is waterproof again.

neXus:
And NZ has come up with one of the most complicated status systems for the lockdowns etc.
Different levels with sub levels and different region parameters based on where cases are, lol.


The other main thing is when it is in lockdown it is a LOCKDOWN.
NZ can not even get take away food like we can here when in lockdown.


vaccinations are still slow really hey, some areas are really good but still slow going.

Clock'd 0Ne:
It sounds like everything over there is happening the same way just in slow motion almost. I'll be surprised if you can get levels down now, unfortunately.

I do disagree on forcing people to have vaccinations though - whatever their reason for choosing they should not have one is - its the thin end of the wedge for authoritarian infringement of our medical and basic human rights. There are other ways to deal with it and I would rather people just keep the hell away from me and wear masks, frankly; vaccinated or not you can still be a spreader/carrier. But masks and distancing are out the window now because the vaccine is considered a panacea. As long as you've got your vaccine passport to go clubbing it's okay, right? :nana:


--- Quote from: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-who-warns-of-half-a-million-more-virus-related-deaths-by-spring-across-europe-12477120 ---"Mandatory vaccination can, but doesn't always increase uptake."
"There are lessons of history here where mandates have come at the expense of trust, social inclusion. So it is very delicate, but we believe it is time to have that conversation, from an individual and population-based perspective."
Dude from the WHO
--- End quote ---

Same article:

--- Quote ---Mr Butler pointed to a study last week in the BMJ which suggested 53% of transmission was prevented by mask use.
He said only 48% of the population on the continent was using masks.
"If we see this go up, we will see a reduction in cases and deaths," he said.
"If we saw 95% universal mask use we can project we could save about 160,000 lives (in Europe)."
--- End quote ---

neXus:

--- Quote from: Clock'd 0Ne on November 29, 2021, 04:46:13 AM ---It sounds like everything over there is happening the same way just in slow motion almost. I'll be surprised if you can get levels down now, unfortunately.

I do disagree on forcing people to have vaccinations though - whatever their reason for choosing they should not have one is - its the thin end of the wedge for authoritarian infringement of our medical and basic human rights. There are other ways to deal with it and I would rather people just keep the hell away from me and wear masks, frankly; vaccinated or not you can still be a spreader/carrier. But masks and distancing are out the window now because the vaccine is considered a panacea. As long as you've got your vaccine passport to go clubbing it's okay, right? :nana:


--- Quote from: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-who-warns-of-half-a-million-more-virus-related-deaths-by-spring-across-europe-12477120 ---"Mandatory vaccination can, but doesn't always increase uptake."
"There are lessons of history here where mandates have come at the expense of trust, social inclusion. So it is very delicate, but we believe it is time to have that conversation, from an individual and population-based perspective."
Dude from the WHO
--- End quote ---

Same article:

--- Quote ---Mr Butler pointed to a study last week in the BMJ which suggested 53% of transmission was prevented by mask use.
He said only 48% of the population on the continent was using masks.
"If we see this go up, we will see a reduction in cases and deaths," he said.
"If we saw 95% universal mask use we can project we could save about 160,000 lives (in Europe)."
--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---


Not quite mate, Why zpyder has made this thread.


More strict here in OZ and NZ compared to UK that is 100% for sure.
You guys basically opened up with 56% vaccination rates while both our countries are aiming for 95%.
Australia is even more complicated with its states and state governments all doing slightly different things as well.


The issue with what the UK has done is that it did not encourage people to get vaccinated enough so people stopped bothering and why so many people are still ending up in hospital and the UK's daily cases and deaths would not be accepted at all in OZ or NZ.
We have the vaccination passport as part of our wallet on IOS and currently have to show it to be able to go into shops etc.

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