Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53831063

by canada_random1 • 6 years ago

40 65 6 years ago

bbc.com

Animats• 6 years ago

A drop of only 5-10% in GDP? They won.

They're tiny isolated islands with tourism as a major industry. How's New Zealand doing?

refurb• 6 years ago

“I think they have to start reopening again – maybe have travel bubbles with New Zealand and countries like that,” he says. “Otherwise, no one can survive here.”

Sounds like there might not be much of a tourist industry left if they stay closed entirely.

Looks like Palau lost 40% of it's GDP with the loss of 100% of tourism.

Taniwha• 6 years ago

Our (NZ's) tourist industry is in trouble, but most of the country (except for 1 city for the past 2 weeks due to a new cluster) hasn't been in lockdown for 3 months and people are taking vacations, locally rather than internationally - ski slopes are open - the govt is supporting some tourist stuff that's going into hibernation until after, there will still be bungie jumping and Hobbiton to visit when it's all over.

We've largely beaten the infection (despite what Trump has said recently), except for people coming back from overseas into quarantine, we had no new cases for 3 months, 2 weeks or so ago we had an outbreak in Auckland which is currently locked down (we do lockdown much harder than most other countries), probably until this current weekend. Apart from this the rest of us are out and about, we have some limitations on large crowds, most people are going to work, I went out to a movie on Sat (Tenet), then for a meal at a restaurant. Went to Queenstown for a weekend away a couple of months ago.

Having said that - we expect to have more small outbreaks and associated lockdowns, the quicker we can find them the quicker we can nuke them.

goalieca• 6 years ago

The funny thing about New Zealand is that the new outbreak has genetics unique to New Zealand. It’s very likely that they never actually rid themselves of it and that it had time to mutate. It could be seen as a warning that suppression works only so long as you keep suppressing even under relatively ideal conditions.

crummy• 6 years ago

I think it's unlikely that it's been spreading around undetected for 100 days, and suddenly we've noticed it. We've found nearly 100 new cases in the mass testing that has come out of this outbreak, but they all can be traced back to a single source.

UberMouse• 6 years ago

Provide a source for that? As someone who actually lives in New Zealand that's the exact opposite of what they have said about the outbreaks genetics... iirc it looks like it might have come from the UK or Australia.

vmception• 6 years ago

I don’t understand how people can see a global response and repercussions like this and then politicize their local government’s attempt to keep the R0 below 2.5.

Nasrudith• 6 years ago

It seems to be a messed up human tendency to turn their negatives into an identifier and the identifier into a positive. Essentially because they don't want to face up to the possibility of a mistake or that they could be better. So it is far easier to not only just say 'this is fine' while their house burns down around them but that people with non-flaming houses 'don't know what they are missing'.

LoSboccacc2• 6 years ago

a day ago there were estimate that anout basically everyone in NYC has having been in contact with the virus at some point and the city doesn't look like a wasteland.

lethality was grossly overestimate and subsequent decision built off not only partial and incomplete data, but flat out wrong.

would full lock down have been the best course of action? probably still so. but the extent and duration and especially now follow up actions seem extremely exaggerated.

there's quite a difference in Italy for example from the "hundreds new cases a day" in march, with a unknown size pool of undetected cases, and "hundred new cases a day" but everyone else is fine and contact tracing will find the rest.

the issue is political because the GDP and welfare budget are intertwined. and then there's the big hairy issue with schooling.

the world isn't black and white and fighting the virus can't be the sole priority for six months, let alone one or more years.

but both now and yesterday people with a wide view of the issue were basically ostracized and chased away as if they were flat earther or antivaxxer.

it's about time people start questioning what is the long term plan and if the previous decisions were data driven or scare driven.

joshuahughes4• 6 years ago

“but both now and yesterday people with a wide view of the issue were basically ostracized and chased away as if they were flat earther or antivaxxer”

Agreed. I’ve been quite taken aback, seeing HN’s response to Covid threads. I’ve always assumed the community was willing to ask tough questions and entertain alternative points of view that are backed by data, but with Covid there’s a complete unwillingness to think about anything other than “deaths bad, lockdown good”. It’s a shame that more nuanced comments get voted down so hard as they’re important to discuss too.

My theory: There must be something about us tech industry types that makes a ‘germaphobic’ response more likely. For instance, the WHO have said there’s no point wiping down food packaging because it just isn’t a vector for the virus. Yet I’ve seen dozens of HN comments about doing this and/or leaving groceries in quarantine for days. It really isn’t rational or logical and yet it’s this response that gets the support of the community. Very strange.

gassius3• 6 years ago

I find very interesting that this is being downvoted. I mean, is not even a hard negationist opinion.

There is a mix of arguments and opinions in this post, in my view some are totally debatable (ie, very unlikely that everyone in NYC has been in contact with the virus, or the 'flat out wrong' characterization of the initial data), and some are totally agreeable (ie, why the issue, and the discussion of it, is political and should be debated).

But at the end of the day, is a comment that is not insulting or attacking anyone or other political positions, so why the downvotes? If it is because some people dont like any questioning of the goverment's response to the covid-19 pandemic (as vary as it is in the world) then those are just proving the point that some views are "basically ostracized and chased away as if they were flat earther or antivaxxer" which is a very very dangerous path to be in.

joshuamorton• 6 years ago

The issue here is that (in the US), we've ended up with the worst of all the worlds. A case spike in NYC on the scale of Italy's, but without the same level of lockdown, and without similar widespread efforts, so instead of being down to 1 case per 100K people per day, we're 10x higher and dropping more slowly.

Combine that with a refusal to do (or for the government to enforce) simple, easy things that reduce spread even in otherwise relatively normal life (masks), and you get a situation that will require a longer, more painful response than if we did the more invasive stuff early on.

there's quite a difference in Italy for example from the "hundreds new cases a day" in march, with a unknown size pool of undetected cases, and "hundred new cases a day" but everyone else is fine and contact tracing will find the rest.

I think you're also underestimating the difference a bit. It went from 5,000 new cases per day to ~100 per day, although there's since been an uptick to around 1000 cases per day.

But the level of containment in those nations is such that its generally safe to have offices open. Less so in most of the US.

TheButlerian• 6 years ago

Win? What do they plan on doing without a vaccine? Stay shutin forever?

marmshallow• 6 years ago

Seeing as all these terrible economic outcomes would happen whether or not the virus infected the population, I think this is a pretty solid win and a poor article title.

euudheehdy• 6 years ago

Most of the terrible economic outcomes have been due to the lockdowns not the actual deaths. Losing 1% of the population isn't a massive economic blow when that 1% is predominantly composed of no and low income groups, it is however a moral blow. The difference is important however because, while early on total lock-downs made sense, the reality is that if only 1% of the population is at risk of death then the other 99% should be working to minimize the cost of supporting the most vulnerable in countries where a full viral suppression is unlikely.

saiya-jin2• 6 years ago

You don't know exactly who is going to die though. If you would go by the risk factors, then just a single one - obesity, would put tens of millions of americans into risk group.

And similar logic can be applied to many other countries struggling with obesity (latino, south east asians and so on).

Now we put in cardiovascular, lung and immunity issues. Add older people. And suddenly its not 1% but much, much larger group.

bachmeier• 6 years ago

Sorry, but this is a pretty confused post, and your first sentence shows a lot of the problems with it.

Most of the terrible economic outcomes have been due to the lockdowns not the actual deaths.

First, it's not lockdowns vs deaths. The biggest factor by far in the US was the existence of the virus. https://privwww.ssrn.com/abstract=3631180

"While overall consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, legal restrictions explain only 7 percentage points of this. Individual choices were far more important"

But you don't need a fancy study. States that didn't have lockdowns saw similar economic declines to other states, even though they should have experienced a boom on the border as people traveled in to do business if it was the lockdown.

Second, deaths are not the only cost. People get sick, too, and it's a pretty big deal for many of them even if you don't see it on TV. It's possible they'll have permanent organ damage and shorter lives. Those people call in sick, or worse, they go to work and get others sick.

Third, if you let it get out of control, you overwhelm the hospital system. It's hard to see how that helps.

johnwalkr• 6 years ago

Right, if Palau's borders opened, there wouldn't necessarily be cruise ships showing up there.

mcv3• 6 years ago

Covid is a win for nobody, not even the countries who kept it out. It's good that they kept it out, because it saves lives, but the economy takes a hit either way.

taneq2• 6 years ago

In what world is "economy takes a hit" not a win over "economy takes a hit and tens of thousands of people die"?

starfallg• 6 years ago

I agree with you but a part of the problem is seeing this as a zero-sum game which results in the labelling of winners and losers.

Ansil849• 6 years ago

This article's casual collusion of winning in terms of not losing any lives to the virus and winning in terms of the tourist industry taking a hit is crass, at best.

mamon• 6 years ago

You're looking at this from privileged perspective of Bay Area software engineer, who can work from home, or even take few months break from work altoghether.

"Economy taking a hit" is just an euphemism for real tragedies, like people losing their jobs, their homes, not being able to pay for healthcare, etc. I read that there was a spike in suicides since the beginning of the lockdowns for those very reasons.

So now you can weight number of lives saved from COVID vs number of lives destroyed by lockdows, and only then you'll know if they were worth it.

vecinu• 6 years ago

Well, they did the best they could with the hand they were dealt. As the article states, their economy would have been impacted one way or another but dealing with COVID and the lack of tourism would have been devastating.

It sounds to me like the answer to the question is Yes, they won as best as they could have. When most of your GDP depends on tourism and exports, you lose a significant chunk of revenue due to the external effects of COVID-19 on your customers.

nearting• 6 years ago

The ten countries: Palau, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Samoa, Vanuatu, Tonga

sradman2• 6 years ago

Some of these are top scuba diving destinations. They depend on regional air hubs, all presumably closed to non-essential connecting flights.

I wonder if these ten nations, all Melanesian/Polynesian with historical ties to the Anglo sphere, represent a true COVID-19 resistant pattern or are just reporting anomalies.

blaser-waffle• 6 years ago

represent a true COVID-19 resistant pattern or are just reporting anomalies.

Probably anomalies. We're talking small, small population groups on isolated islands.

I mean it's possible there is a Polynesian DNA thing that helps make them resistant, sort of a smallpox-in-reverse advantage, but my money says it's just because 1) super isolated, and 2) because of point 1 they can very effectively filter traffic and quarantine those who are questionable.

shadowprofile772• 6 years ago

Awful lot of privileged software engineer types with relatively cushy lockdown-friendly jobs, good income, savings, covered healthcare and good homes that leap to criticize as selfish, greedy, irresponsible and dumb anyone who insists that economic consequences from lockdown are possibly, just maybe, for many, many hundreds of millions of people all around the world something a bit more than just going short of travel and discretionary income for a few months.

Do any of you even know that a much wider and largely poorer world exists outside your highly developed bubble? Do you not fathom that for billions of people all around the world, the money you don't earn by working today means no food tomorrow and possibly no electricity or capability of paying the doctors visit for your kid next week?

Do you not grasp that for most of these billions of people, the work necessary to get this basic income on a daily and weekly basis absolutely depends on the ability to leave home and engage in external economic activity?

The economic losses that have already been caused by attempts at lockdown are NOT just about some lost income. In so many cases, they literally affect the most fundamental aspects of being able to survive without suffering very badly.

The privileged righteousness that ignores this here is way too common, and awfully foolish. Especially when you consider that we're still in the middle of all this and not even the world's best experts can yet concretely say that lockdowns have done much or that they were the better choice vs trying to keep the economy of so many places from falling so far.

thesizeofa2• 6 years ago

Do you not grasp that in most countries where lockdowns took place people had government support? Do you not fathom that most countries have publicly accessible healthcare? Do you not understand that not all countries ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times? Is it such an alien concept the fact that us, the high earning developers pay tax precisely to help those in need? What a strange view of the world some of you have in a country pretending to be rich, yet it collapses at first sign of real trouble.

joshuahughes4• 6 years ago

Why the extreme response? Thousands and thousands of folks here in the UK are losing their jobs and therefore their homes. I assume the same thing is happening elsewhere. We have safety nets, but payouts are often nowhere near enough to match income that’s been lost. It’s a real disappointment to me that HN has decided there’s only one right way to talk about the Covid response, and every other point of view is idiotic or evil. Whatever happened to nuance?

mcntsh• 6 years ago

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply here... that in around the world people are not suffering directly because of the quarantines, because they have "publicly accessible healthcare" and they don't "ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times"? Forgive me but you'd be wrong.

shadowprofile772• 6 years ago

If lockdowns only occur in highly developed countries, then by their own logic they are nearly worthless, since the thing they're trying to avoid will spread just as much in the majority part of the world that isn't highly developed. Thus, there have been strong pushes for lockdowns globally, regardless of development level. In some developing countries, they have been applied (in others no).

In these cases or many others where a developing country shied away from heavy-handed lockdown, government support of the type you mention is nearly nonexistent. That you take its existence for granted suggests to me that you yourself live in a place where there is support and simply assume it should be the case anywhere (it's not).

The same for the taxes you mention for social support. Sure, the taxes some developer pays in California, or the UK, or New York or X developed place might be used to help social benefits programs in that place. In many if not most other places in the world though, any collected taxes for social programs are mismanaged, often stolen or simply don't exist in the first place. Again, that's how much of the world actually is, most of its people very definitely don't have much access to government support or public healthcare.

I speak from experience here by the way, living in a large developing country with a famously corrupt government at all levels, and 60% of its 130 million person population living day to day, hand-to mouth. I can't even begin to image the social and even humanitarian catastrophe of full lockdown here had it been applied (fortunately it wasn't despite the pressures of COVID deaths). Even partial quarantine has been damaging enough.

I don't even understand the meaning of your last sentence. This isn't about "weakly collapsing" at the first sign of trouble, it's about the hard math of what inevitably happens if you force-stop daily outdoor economic activity in any country with a majority population that must engage in exactly such activity in order to keep from literally going hungry.

gassius3• 6 years ago

Just a friendly remainder that "government support" cost money, and governments usually[0] don't have any other source of money than taxation and borrowing, both put the burden in the productive citizens of a country, and had their limits. Very hard to see where the support will be paid off without traumatic consequences.

Of course, almost every economy is printing money as there is no tomorrow, diluting current assets dramatically, and who will suffer that most are those with fixed income like pensionist. Is a very very bad scenario that we are getting into it.

In the US, people wonder how markets are growing since the beggining of the pandemic despite the colossal impact in the real economy, there are many reasons but my contention is that people should take that growth as the new baseline of value, and see how their assets compare with that growth. The difference is how much value your assets lost in that timeframe. Printing money is the magic invisible taxation that most people don't see or complain until its too late.

[0] Maybe Norway and its massive sovereing fund is an exception, but the fund took an over 100B USD loss in the first quarter of 2020, and it will be a lot worse in the second. Even that sovereing fund, which is the gold global standard for a rainy day state fund, can be depleted very quickly with the current scenario

ImaCake2• 6 years ago

Third world countries have first world problems as well. They just have them on top of their third world problems. Something tells me they would rather be hungry rather than both hungry and dying. Palau having open borders wouldn't have stopped the end of tourism, but it would have let the virus in.

bosswipe• 6 years ago

Privileged software engineers do not set lockdown policies. Go rage at somebody else.

wdb• 6 years ago

The problem is that with your developer job, in the U.K., you won’t be eligible for government help because your last salary after loosing your job causes you to go over the maximum savings limit. That happened to me

LargoLasskhyfv• 6 years ago

Consider it a cleansing fire, setting in motion the actions needed to reach the goal inscribed in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

/me shrugs

edit: Take it like a man! https://youtu.be/7tve5qbEkv4?t=170

INTPenis• 6 years ago

40% of GDP from tourism. So in a perfect world now it would be time for the government to take that saved tourism money and support their citizens so they survive/stay until the next tourist season. Or borrow money from other nations to do so.

And is it really sane to stay 100% covid free? I mean I would assume that when tourism starts up again it will start a wave of covid infections in these countries.

LittlePeter• 6 years ago

40% seems very high. Is that a worldwide average?

I found that it is around 10%: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1099933/travel-and-touri...

Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

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