New Zealand PM: No open borders for 'a long time'

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52540733

by Reedx • 6 years ago

89 130 6 years ago

daxfohl4• 6 years ago

The irony of this is that the countries who were worst at their handling of the covid problem will be at an advantage at the end of it.

KerryJones2• 6 years ago

How do you mean? They likely will have much higher deaths -- only if they decide to quarantine longer could I imagine that they have a success -- but "not handling covid 19 well" does not mean they will quarantine longer or that they will do a good job after their bang-up job.

ithkuil2• 6 years ago

It feels deeply wrong to cold-heartedly choose a course of action that will result in the death of many people and the resulting suffering of those who survive their loved ones.

But people are resilient. People face death from other causes all the time. Yes, there will be a measurable increase due to covid-19 but in countries that are already ravaged by poverty, crime, disease, wars, etc, it might not significantly alter the emotional balance of those who survive. That's particularly true in those countries whose authorities successfully downplay the effects of covid-19, e.g. by not doing much testing.

From that POV, all other things being equal, one could expect that those countries might grow their economies while the rest of the world loses opportunities.

I'm not sure I buy that argument though. World economy is not entirely a zero sum game

atlasunshrugged• 6 years ago

Why do you say that?

edgefield0• 6 years ago

Herd immunity? Assuming such a thing can exist for Covid and it doesn't mutate every season like influenza.

ApolloFortyNine• 6 years ago

We've already proven you can go from one case to worldwide pandemic in 3 months. So all it takes is one case somewhere in the World, and you'll never be able to reopen borders.

Now if a fully functional vaccine is developed, that'll of course change things. But there's no guarantee one is possible, so only time will tell.

centimeter• 6 years ago

Sure, if you define “worst at handling covid” as “had a relatively small overreaction”. Sweden is looking great now (look at actual total mortality numbers, not the pessimistic “projections” they keep changing). No substantial QALY loss from covid, and substantially less economic devastation, stress, and depression compared to those countries that overreacted.

glangdale3• 6 years ago

You have to be on a different planet to define Sweden's mortality numbers to be "great". They are 5-10x worse than the other Nordics, have one of the highest death rates in the world, and it's not obvious that they will have a long-run advantage despite all the propagandizing for it.

Their approach is highly experimental, which makes it all the more bizarre that they aren't testing very much. They have a "developing world" or "overwhelmed country" cases:deaths ratio (about 1:8) which suggests that they have a huge number of cases they don't know about. It's not clear why a country taking a radically experimental approach to COVID-19 would also test so lightly - it suggests that they don't want to know what's going on.

It's possible that they don't want to have embarrassingly high case numbers, but it's just as possible that their numbers are embarrassing in the other direction - i.e. while they've killed a huge bunch of oldies, they also haven't got nearly enough cases to have herd immunity.

We will also get to see, long term, what the morbidity effects of taking this approach are. They will not look super-intelligent if there is any kind of effective treatment or vaccine developed in the next 6-12 months.

They only look good when you compare them with hard-hit countries. The difference is that Belgians and Spaniards aren't patrolling every goddamn social media site announcing how well they've done with the virus.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...

xupybd2• 6 years ago

Yeah it's likely that could be true. Here in NZ we've not yet been hit by the economic toll as the government is paying wage subsidies. That's a short term fix. Years of high taxes will follow. Job losses will mount as the tourism sector falls over.

It will not be pretty. So was it a wise move to shut down? Maybe, given the information they had at the time. Better to be safe than sorry. In hindsight with all the facts we have now maybe not but they didn't have those facts at the start.

Gibbon12• 6 years ago

The countries that are ruthless in dealing this will be able to reopen their economies quickly, reopen borders with other sane countries. Economically they will recover very quickly.

Countries like the US which have no unified and sane policy are going to take a full decade to recover. Some parts will never recover.

tick_tock_tick• 6 years ago

It's likely going to be the opposite as recent tests in Korea seem to show immunity does happen. The countries that did little to stop the spread will have or be close to immune while the countries that aggressively locked down will not be able to interact with most of the world.

op03• 6 years ago

What advantage?

More likely unintended consequences and costs will keep mounting. And at some point cross covid costs. After that political tunes will change.

It's not like the ant hill can just build a border around itself and survive for ever.

procinct3• 6 years ago

I don’t really understand how so. Countries that have handled it aggressively at least have the option to open borders and allow the virus to spread if they felt like that would for some reason put them in a better position. But this way they can hold off for a vaccine or effective treatment and have a far better outcome.

SpicyLemonZest3• 6 years ago

The concern is that they might not have that option. A politician would have to be extraordinarily brave to get on TV and say "we've decided we should let the Americans come give us coronavirus".

macspoofing5• 6 years ago

What's 'a long time'? Two weeks? Two months? Six months? 2 years?

whycombagator• 6 years ago

"We will not have open borders for the rest of the world for a long time to come."

Does not sound like two weeks is likely.

I imagine the statement was purposefully non specific as COVID-19 will likely be a threat for a long, yet undetermined, amount of time.

guidedlight• 6 years ago

The Australian tourism minister is saying overseas travel is not likely until 2021.

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/health-safety/...

iso9478• 6 years ago

I suspect until there’s a proven vaccine.

NZ has always been the best place in the world to survive the end of days.

lukifer2• 6 years ago

...so long as you don't live near the coastline :/

Thriptic3• 6 years ago

They presumably mean until coronavirus disappears or a vaccine appears and everyone is innoculated, so indefinitely.

macspoofing5• 6 years ago

See .. you're speculating on what they mean. Wouldn't it be nice if they provided a bit more information so we wouldn't have to parse out meaning out of ambiguous statements? You know, they could provide some details on what needs to happen to re-open. Are we waiting for a vaccine as a precondition for reopening? Or herd immunity? Or case count to drop below X?

zzzcpan• 6 years ago

That would be insane. They probably mean until they figure out how to reopen borders and with whom without risking too much. And given how many countries are doing the same thing maybe even an international agreement of some sort will emerge where only people from virus-free countries or recently tested people will be allowed to take flights.

m1sta_• 6 years ago

Testing border crossers is more realistic.

Taniwha2• 6 years ago

We'll reopen our borders, probably soon (they're already open to legal residents), but until there's a vaccine we will have 2 weeks quarantine for all incoming travelers

We've had single digit new cases for almost 2 weeks now, 2 new cases in the past 3 days, none in my region for over 2 weeks, there are ~150 active cases nationwide, dropping every day. The goal is for all new cases to be occurring in quarantine.

modzu3• 6 years ago

remember folks, never having a vaccine is quite possible

sergiotapia3• 6 years ago

Pretty stupid, their citizens will never develop herd immunity. And what then, when they open up, one person will tumble everything down again.

gunn• 6 years ago

It buys time to prepare, and for vaccines and other treatments.

y-c-o-m-b• 6 years ago

Yes, this point is being strongly overlooked. Worst case scenario they end up like the rest of the world now with a struggling economy and thousands of cases.

By closing their borders it gives them time to build up their healthcare infrastructure, wait for vaccines and other experimental treatments to be vetted so by the time their borders open up again it won't devastate the country like it has everywhere else. These are all luxuries every nation wishes it could have taken advantage of. Criticizing New Zealand's response right now is extremely premature.

logjammin• 6 years ago

Eh it's just as well, NZ could use an environmental breather from all the tourism. Silver linings.

xupybd2• 6 years ago

Maybe. The effects of a weakened economy often mean a switch from caring about the environment to caring about bottom lines. It's harder to push green regulation when compliance costs will cause job losses.

Nasrudith2• 6 years ago

Unfortunately tourism is often what makes the environment justify its opportunity cost when it isn't an effective "local service". It isn't great for economy, workers, or the environment but it is a very workable compromise that is better off than the worst case for all three.

soperj• 6 years ago

Pretty stupid to develop herd immunity for a virus when you don't even know if herd immunity is possible, or any immunity for that matter.

Gwypaas3• 6 years ago

How can a vaccine ever work if it's impossible to develop immunity by reacting to it?

halostatue• 6 years ago

Over thousands of years, no herd immunity has ever been developed for smallpox, measles, chickenpox, or various other diseases.

Only vaccine development allowed the creation of any level of herd immunity. There’s no such thing as “natural herd immunity” in the real world.

learc83• 6 years ago

That's absurd. Why do you think that a particular smallpox or measles epidemic dies out? Because enough people have been infected in a given population that it can no longer spread in that population.

That doesn't mean the disease will go extinct, but the epidemic will end in that population. Flare ups can still happen among sub groups of people in the population who aren't immune but the disease won't spread rapidly through the population as a whole until the number of people who are immune drops below the herd immunity threshold for that particular disease/community.

ghaff• 6 years ago

Whether or not "herd immunity" is the right term, Europeans were sure a lot better protected against smallpox than the inhabitants of the Americas were when said Europeans arrived and started spreading the disease.

Taniwha2• 6 years ago

nor coronaviruses, those pesky colds stay with us because the antibodies don't last

LeifCarrotson• 6 years ago

Herd immunity isn't a thing for coronavirus yet.

Herd immunity only works when you have an effective vaccine/treatment, and it only helps the people who aren't eligible for that treatment. Given the coronavirus R0, you might achieve herd immunity when 75% of the population has been infected. Achieving herd immunity by letting the virus slowly spread until 0.5% or 1% of your people to die is a loss condition, that's millions of deaths. It's certainly better than letting it spread like wildfire and overwhelm hospitals so that 5% of your people die, no question there, but still not good.

luckylion• 6 years ago

The alternative is indefinite lock down and lots of prayers for an effective vaccine?

legulere• 6 years ago

Herd immunity hasn't been achieved anywhere and with around a half percent infection fatality rate that doesn't seem like something you would like to get to.

busymom03• 6 years ago

It’s lower than half percent now. Around 0.2-0.3% and probably going to go even more lower.

sergiotapia3• 6 years ago

It's much much lower than that now. The numbers we've been fed to justify this quarantine are not real.

AnotherGoodName6• 6 years ago

As if herd immunity is the only way. Note that Australians and New Zealanders don't have immunity to a lot of things.

We're don't have herd immunity to Ebola. Instead we just don't let it take hold. We have 0 cases of rabies. It no longer exists in any animals. Cholera is almost non-existent. Occasionally a flight will come in that causes some alarm but that's it. Malaria only comes from people who traveled abroad. Our cows aren't immune to mad cow disease. But we don't have any cases here.

It's amazing what a bit of distance and quarantine can achieve. The two nations are also close to eliminating COVID-19 internally. Sure international travel will have to remain restricted but it's really not a big deal. Trade is still happening, just not tourism.

sergiotapia3• 6 years ago

The two nations are also close to eliminating COVID-19 internally.

And all it takes is one person to coof somewhere in their country and bada bing you're toast. I don't see how this is beneficial, unless moving forward they has no travel period which is completely unrealistic.

macspoofing5• 6 years ago

We're don't have herd immunity to Ebola. Instead we just don't let it take hold.

Well, COVID-19 isn't Ebola, and it has taken hold, and we are under lockdown. So what are the conditions for reopening? Vaccine?

augustt• 6 years ago

Those examples are either not very contagious or not contagious at all.

Thriptic3• 6 years ago

They wait until a vaccine is available. That is obviously what they are shooting for using this tactic.

It's actually very smart. You can try to achieve herd immunity if vaccination proves nearly impossible, but why not wait and see while you can?

macspoofing5• 6 years ago

but why not wait and see while you can?

Wait for how long? We've never turned around a vaccine in under 18 months, and some pathogens don't have vaccines and have been around forever. What if it takes 24 months to develop an effective vaccine? Do we lockdown for that long?

daxfohl4• 6 years ago

Even in countries hit hard by it, those will not develop herd immunity because there are enough people able to work from home.

This is especially true in affluent tech hub areas like Silicon Valley and Seattle. So even if the country hits the 0.7 infection rate threshold (or whatever), it's still unlikely to be able to open completely.

AnotherGoodName6• 6 years ago

For reference both Australia and New Zealand each have fewer than 1000 active COVID cases right now, many from a cruise ship, The Diamond Princess that was allowed to dock in Australia. There's very few new cases appearing each day and of those new cases there's no surprises and they are traceable to the source. It makes sense for these two nations to trade and have tourism internally and bilaterally. A source of current numbers of active/new cases: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ It's quite clear that both nations are close to extinguishing COVID-19 within their own borders.

The reason for this is both nations closed the borders early back in February. When that happened the fuckwit Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization came on national TV of Australia and said "There's no reason to restrict travel". This was in February. Listen to the fuckwit say it here: https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/pm/is-closing-borders-... Lawrence Gostin, an official in WHO is also quoted in the above "it is unlawful, unnecessary and in breach of international law".

I normally wouldn't be so harsh on criticism but this was in February. The border closure wasn't some racist Donald Trump style effort. It was two countries doing the right thing but the WHO is so corrupt and fucked up they tried to stop it, even threatening they'd bring the border closures to the international courts.

glangdale3• 6 years ago

Entertainingly, the Chinese government also tut-tutted about our border closures as being racist. Since then they have implemented border closings of their own.

Speaking of fuckwittery, the Diamond Princess debacle is really in a class of its own. There's some suspicion that it's also linked to (one of?) our worst fatality cluster in that medical personnel from the Diamond Princess may have gone to a eldercare facility straight after. Nice.

As far as I'm concerned, every cruise ship that docks in Australia can pay $1M for the right to not be greeted with an Exocet missile until that industry has paid back the hideous damage it's done.

pixelbash4• 6 years ago

We (NZ) had -1 new cases a couple of days ago, it's working pretty well.

sonofgod2• 6 years ago

Did someone realise that one of the cases wasn't actually a case?

healsjnr1• 6 years ago

Just to be clear, it was the Ruby Princess in Australia.

Diamond Princess was the one in Japan.

Exmoor2• 6 years ago

As insane as it seems I imagine we'll see closed borders in many countries for a long, long time (months, maybe years?). It's going to be very hard to justify risking even a small chance of introducing additional virus cases if you've just spent the last few months trying to get a point where even minimal non-"essential"* can begin to reopen there's going to be very little support for any increased risk of any kind.

*I put "essential" in quotes here because I believe the definition of essential changes the longer services are closed. For instance, a dentist isn't really essential when they're closed for a month, but a 3 month closure is going to be increasingly problematic for people needing something more than a standard cleaning.

jddj2• 6 years ago

You'd think so, but France has recently come out and said that they don't even plan to require 14 day quarantines for arrivals from the EU or UK.

The UK border, despite their having the highest death toll in Europe, is similarly comparatively open compared to most other anglophone countries.

sonofgod2• 6 years ago

The UK currently has nothing to fear from open borders: why worry about the risk of a planeload of cases when there's ten new planeloads* of homegrown coronavirus every day?

Everyone else, however, may well have something to fear from the UK...

* 747: 450 passengers; new cases 4400 (5 May)

Someone• 6 years ago

Years? IMO, looking at the stats of Western European countries, who are all slowly lessening restrictions, typically showing both carrot and stick (“we think x will be allowed again in w weeks, if you all keep following the rules”), unlikely, at least not for countries with significant tourist industries. They will feel pressure to allow tourist visits, certainly from ‘safe’ regions such as Australia and New Zealand.

(Whether those tourists will go on holiday is another question. Tourists may be wary of going far away on holiday, and if social distancing will be compulsory inside planes, and trains, travel likely will become much more expensive)

It also will be hard for countries to withstand the pressure from their population to allow them to go on holiday in other countries.

In the end, the better choice may be to allow some tourist visits, as that may mean people will follow restrictive rules better than when they wouldn’t be allowed to have go on holiday/to make some money from tourism.

davesmylie• 6 years ago

They will feel pressure to allow tourist visits, certainly from ‘safe’ regions such as Australia and New Zealand.

As a New Zealander, I'm not sure that there would be much appetite for visiting any country outside this potential trans-tasman bubble for tourism purposes as we would be looking at a two week quarantine on returning home.

em-bee4• 6 years ago

i don't think there will be much pressure from people wanting to leave. there are plenty of alternatives to go on holiday. how would that work anyways? people could complain or protest against local issues, but against a foreign country? which one? everyone wants to go somewhere different. rally up, pick a target and stage a demo infront of that country's embassy?

pressure is only going to come from inside from the tourism industry that is loosing out on income.

lixtra• 6 years ago

But it, too, has "flattened the curve" of infections.

It‘s sad that the article uses the term in such a sloppy way. NZ was aiming for containment and eradication from the beginning.

There are three common strategies to fight the Corona virus:

„Herd immunity“ - Naturally letting it run out of steam. The problem is that your health system might get overwhelmed. Therefore „flatten the curve“. Advantages: new infections imported from abroad don’t matter; cost of the counter measures to society is minimized. Disadvantage: virus damage is maximized. Sweden is the classic example. GB, NYC probably.

„Dancing“ - try to keep the numbers low but live with fact that you cannot eradicate the virus. If necessary bring the cases down by using the „hammer“ first. Advantage: imported cases can be contained; possibly time will bring better treatment/vaccination. Disadvantage: expensive measures for indefinite time. JP, HK

Eradication - Advantage: back to normal if achieved. Disadvantage: not robust against imported cases. Possibly very expensive/unachievable. NZ

As one can imagine, changing from one strategy to another at first gives you the disadvantages without the advantages.

daxfohl4• 6 years ago

If this goes on for years, I imagine the increased number of suicides due to depression will surpass the covid-19 deaths.

ashildr2• 6 years ago

We will adapt.

But there will be a time before COVID19 and after and they will be different in many ways we can‘t know, yet. I myself have this feeling of “One day the vaccine will be there and everything will be as it was before“. That‘s wrong I think, we already left the known track and while a vaccine-like intervention will come, it will not get us back into the timeline we were in, before.

thinkingemote3• 6 years ago

Given the NZ borders are open to residents does that mean they are open for NZ tourists elsewhere? Or is it a one way border?

If you are a New Zealander are you allowed to go to Italy for a vacation? Or a conference in the USA later on?

Erwin• 6 years ago

According to https://www.iatatravelcentre.com/international-travel-docume...

New Zealand has a 14 day isolation in a government facility if you enter it.

thinkingemote3• 6 years ago

So if you lived in NZ and went to Australia for a week?

em-bee4• 6 years ago

i don't think any country is concerned about people leaving, only people arriving.

the reason the border is open for residents is because you can't reasonably stop people from returning home.

thinkingemote3• 6 years ago

So those residents returning home have to go into quarantine? Or only non residents?

New Zealand PM: No open borders for 'a long time'

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