Covid-19 - Resuming Kiting, In Time

[wynnmandy]

You need to look at the actually death rates of the people dying as covid positive. Notice I didn't say dying from covid. If you die from a shark attack and you test positive for covid, guess what goes on your death certificate for cause of death? Covid.

[BenBen]

Ah, sounds reasonable. So how many people of the 500k dead bodies really died from a shark attack and got tested on Covid afterwards?

[Havre]

I'm Norwegian, with close family members in the high risk category, and I wish we did like Sweden (seemingly most of health officials seem to agree that what Norway did was also over the top - and Norway never completely locked down).

This idea that Sweden is the "experiment" is not very nuanced in my opinion - as if there are no cost to whatever most others are doing.

And there is no reason to think that there is a 1 to 1 causation between type of responses and deaths. As an example the average size of nursing homes matter - which has nothing to do with how countries have reacted to Covid-19.

As for staying on topic, somewhat, I unfortunately can't travel to Sweden to kite - as I would have to quarantine coming back.

[pākihiroa]

I wish we did like Sweden.

Really ? You would be willing to sacrifice the lives of your vulnerable family members for the sake of losing a season's kiting ?

seemingly most of health officials seem to agree that what Norway did was also over the top - and Norway never completely locked down).

And therein lies the problem. Not completely locked down. Compare that with New Zealand's 'go early, go hard' approach. Total shutdown for five weeks that was begun early in the outbreak (March, with no deaths, just a few cases, but a scary growth curve) before the contagion really took hold. The result ? Currently NZ has recorded 22 deaths total, has 22 active cases (all from repatriation flights and hopefully safely quarantined at the border), and, most importantly, weeks of 0 cases of community transmission. This means that NZ's domestic economy is now totally wide open (this is the concept that people advocating opening up too early do not seem to grasp), export economy (with the exception of international tourism which is totally shut down) is up and running, kitesurfing possible any where any time (with enough neoprene ), and a trip to the supermarket does not involve masks or risk of dying. Not a bad trade off.

And if cases do slip through the border, then there is a good chance of containing them with aggressive local action. This is what China is now being forced to do with it's current 'spike' in Beijing, and they are not messing around, eg:

Beijing is ~10 new cases per day (0.5 per million population per day) and performing 25 tests/1000 people per day.
US is at 30,000 new cases per day (100 per million population per day) and performing 1.6 tests/1000 people per day. It did not have to be this way.
NZ is at 0 new cases per day (0.0 per million population per day) and performing 1.5 tests/1000 people per day (mainly for anyone with a runny nose or a sore throat).

Admittedly, the NZ strategy is a delaying tactic. It relies on holding out long enough for an effective therapy or vaccine to be developed. But it can always give up and revert to the Swedish model if need be.

[Havre]

I wish we did like Sweden.

Really ? You would be willing to sacrifice the lives of your vulnerable family members for the sake of losing a season's kiting ?

seemingly most of health officials seem to agree that what Norway did was also over the top - and Norway never completely locked down).

And therein lies the problem. Not completely locked down. Compare that with New Zealand's 'go early, go hard' approach. Total shutdown for five weeks that was begun early in the outbreak (March, with no deaths, just a few cases, but a scary growth curve) before the contagion really took hold. The result ? Currently NZ has recorded 22 deaths total, has 22 active cases (all from repatriation flights and hopefully safely quarantined at the border), and, most importantly, weeks of 0 cases of community transmission. This means that NZ's domestic economy is now totally wide open (this is the concept that people advocating opening up too early do not seem to grasp), export economy (with the exception of international tourism which is totally shut down) is up and running, kitesurfing possible any where any time (with enough neoprene ), and a trip to the supermarket does not involve masks or risk of dying. Not a bad trade off.

And if cases do slip through the border, then there is a good chance of containing them with aggressive local action. This is what China is now being forced to do with it's current 'spike' in Beijing, and they are not messing around, eg:

Beijing is ~10 new cases per day (0.5 per million population per day) and performing 25 tests/1000 people per day.
US is at 30,000 new cases per day (100 per million population per day) and performing 1.6 tests/1000 people per day. It did not have to be this way.
NZ is at 0 new cases per day (0.0 per million population per day) and performing 1.5 tests/1000 people per day (mainly for anyone with a runny nose or a sore throat).

Admittedly, the NZ strategy is a delaying tactic. It relies on holding out long enough for an effective therapy or vaccine to be developed. But it can always give up and revert to the Swedish model if need be.

The part in bold is the most important and completely absurd way of looking at things. By that logic we can also get rid of all deaths in traffic by reducing the speed limit to 10kmh. Every single day we accept "sacrificing" lives - Covid-19 is nothing different in that sense.

I wasn't against the "lockdown" in Norway when it first happened because of the uncertainty. Now the virus is better understood so a more balanced approach is most likely better in my opinion - like in Sweden.

I'm not sure how transferable the way things were and are handled in NZ are to the rest of the world. Imports were before Covid-19 already under severe restrictions due to risk of importing insects etc. So in that sense the country was already set up for handling a virus from abroad. And it is a fairly small economy. Doing something similar in for example Europe where you 1) cannot control the border in the same way 2) basically all factories are used to having parts and labour flowing between borders.

As for a general hard lockdown. Obviously if the world was "coordinated" enough to just shut completely off for 2 weeks Covid-19 would have been gone by now. That is not realistic outside of "pockets" like maybe NZ and I'm not sure if we would like to live in a world capable of that (that is another discussion).

[Leon van Bergen]