NYTimes: New Zealand abandons its "COVID zero" goal of eliminating coronavirus

[Trafalgar Law]

It was never practical
It's an airborne carried disease with fast infection
Maybe it was possible if the entire world had an approach like it in the early stages

 

[MarioW]

Lots of countries had both decent leadership and an impossible border.

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Terrible leadership made a bad situation a lot worse than it had to be in several countries with challenging borders.

 

[Jakenbakin]

I love all these people saying their strategy didn't work when here in the United States we have over 700,000 people dead.

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It's all about sustainability, you see. We can sustain hundreds of thousands of deaths a year, which is, uh, good, whereas NZ is bad.

 

[GYODX]

Imagine being this much of an abhorrent fucking monster to be shitting on a strategy that potentially saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

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I'm not "shitting on their strategy." You're being hysterical. Calm the fuck down.

 

[DoofTroop]

I'm not "shitting on their strategy." You're being hysterical. Calm the fuck down.

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What's this?

Nope. It was a dumb and unworkable strategy from day one,

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How many people have died from COVID-19 in your country?

 

[GYODX]

What's this?



How many people have died from COVID-19 in your country?

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That wasn't my post.

 

[sirap]

Delta changed everything.

Sucks that we ever let it get this far.

 

[Temascos]

It's impressive they were able to keep up the strategy for as long as they did, and it clearly worked and likely saved a ton of lives. Heck, they were able to have concerts and stuff at the end of last year if I recall correctly.

 

[Fergie]

Delta variant is insane.

 

[BarryFishFinger]

Thanks a lot Delta.

It was a great strategy for NZ as an isolated island with a low population. It was unlikely to be a long term solution given the rest of the world's take on how to handle Covid, but they did a spectacular job of keeping infections and deaths low initially. Now with Delta the strategy has to change and they've recognised that and with what appears to be a decent vaccination rate and proven sensible leadership they're well equipped to deal with it.

 

[Cantaim]

Yea it became unworkable once delta came into the equation. But before Delta it was saving a lot of lives.just sad that it's not really possible to hit that Covid 0 goal.

 

[Deleted member 69501]

They're not.

People from the US and Europe talking as if any other country in the planet can follow their lead in vaccinations is a bit absurd.

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Thank you, cannot believe that ppl in late 2021 don't understand that vaccine inequality is a thing...

 

[Tomasoares]

Well, it lasted as long as they could, no reason to keep a 7-week lockdown longer than it is necessary.

 

[beansontoast]

These will never not be the dumbest takes. What the hell does 'unsustainable from the beginning' mean? That it was never going to be a long term solution? Yeah, obviously. Everyone knew that.

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Maybe people in the NZ govt knew that, but many many of the people using the specific phrase 'Zero Covid', especially non-Kiwis who were holding up NZ as some sort of holy grail, did not. The general sentiments of the people using that phrase on places like twitter, throughout the pandemic, has been that it is imperative for a permanent lockdown to exist until the virus was eliminated. This was so prevalent that many of the zero covid people were literally undermining confidency in the vaccine by misrepresenting its efficacy in order to argue against the vaccine allowing us to lift restrictions.

I don't even think it is Delta that put the nail in the coffin to any hope of eliminating covid. I think it's been pretty much apparent that its impossible since March 2020.

Thank you, cannot believe that ppl in late 2021 don't understand that vaccine inequality is a thing...

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It's not at all applicable to NZ though is it? Despite their geography they are obviously part of the global north.

 

[MegaManTrigger]

Yeah, I don't really understand why people are saying it was unsustainable. When you're in a pandemic, you are constantly shifting and adjusting to new information. Sustainability is the least of your worries at this point.

Covid-Zero worked because NZ is basically in its own bubble, and the initial waves of Covid weren't too out of hand compared to Delta. In addition, Arden was swift to use lockdowns whenever necessary to curb the spread. The unfortunate reality is that the Delta variant changed the game. It's spreading too fast that once it entered the country, Covid-Zero cannot work as a sole strategy. It had to be supplemented with another tactic (in this case, vaccinations, and likely added restrictions).

 

[Deleted member 69501]

It's not at all applicable to NZ though is it? Despite their geography they are obviously part of the global north

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No its very applicable, vaccine accesses was ultra limited to a select few countries. Whether or not they're part of the global North or not is irrelevant. The term vaccine Inequality applies because not everyone had equal access Some rich countries had to wait and some poor countries will have to wait longer, in the end its all falls under the same umbrella.

 

[XMonkey]

Their strategy saved a lot of lives, so good on them for that. It's a strategy really only effective for an island nation, but it still takes a lot of courage from their leaders and populace to stick with it.

Hopefully they can avoid more serious consequences as they get their vaccination levels higher. Given that there's barely any natural immunity that's going to need to be a pretty high number.

 

[Gunny T Highway]

Yeah, Delta changed the game for everybody. I commend them for trying prior, but we are dealing with a variant that is a whole other beast.

 

[Det]

Nope. It was a dumb and unworkable strategy from day one, and it's left them lagging behind in actually useful and workable measures like vaccination.

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This was unsustainable from the beginning.

Vietnam has also announced that they will shift away from that strategy.

Vietnam's biggest city to start lifting COVID-19 curbs to spur business

Vietnam's commercial hub Ho Chi Minh City will start relaxing its coronavirus curbs from later on Thursday, officials said, allowing more business and social activities after four months of measures aimed at arresting a spiralling death rate.

www.reuters.com

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It was never practical
It's an airborne carried disease with fast infection
Maybe it was possible if the entire world had an approach like it in the early stages

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Except it was sustainable with months of zero community cases and no lock down measures nor other restrictive requirements; with the goal of domestic vaccination + vaccination as a pre-requisite to re-open the country in a staged manner. Let alone the countless lives saved that otherwise would have succumbed to COVID, along with our poor ICU capacity essentially requiring this approach to not completely overwhelm the healthcare system. Delta changed that, it changed it everywhere by (1) massively increasing the R value to a point where hard-lockdowns wouldn't necessarily allow contact tracing + isolation to catch up with un-linked case spread, and (2) large increase in break through cases in vaccinated individuals.

So please, kindly piss of with these drive-by retrospective takes with zero understanding of the local situation, context, and lives already saved from this strategy. You adapt to the new situation and up-to-date information, which is the case here.

 

[danm999]

Once Delta gets in, if you don't stamp it out immediately you're living with it. Australia, Vietnam and New Zealand all discovered this.

 

[Deleted member 9207]

New Zealand has a population of five million and yet barely has infections in the two digits. They've had less infected in all the time of the pandemic than deaths the US has in a couple of days.

I do not understand why they suddenly believe what they've done so succesfully doesn't work anymore.

 

[Pandaman]

New Zealand has a population of five million and yet barely has infections in the two digits. They've had less infected in all the time of the pandemic than deaths the US has in a couple of days.

I do not understand why they suddenly believe what they've done so succesfully doesn't work anymore.

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Because they don't think their existing strategy will adequately combat Delta, so they're shifting gears to more heavily push vaccination. it's not like they're throwing their hands up in despair and saying they wasted time, they're just adapting to new circumstance.

 

[Jokerman]

Surely they aren't going to ease restrictions until they have a vast percentage of the population vaccinated? That will literally reduce all their good work up to this point.

Edit - just read the second quote in the OP. They are talking months before this happens.

 

[Leveean]

New Zealand has a population of five million and yet barely has infections in the two digits. They've had less infected in all the time of the pandemic than deaths the US has in a couple of days.

I do not understand why they suddenly believe what they've done so succesfully doesn't work anymore.

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There's usually a couple dozen new cases every day even though there's been a strict lockdown for 7 weeks. Delta can't be eliminated like it was last year.

 

[AncientReptileBrain]

i think it's an unfair characterisation to say they're "shifting to vaccination" -- vaccination has always been the goal to the extent that a country like nz has access to the vaccine. you can't inject people with good intentions -- if you're waiting on vaccines to be delivered, good luck.

 

[Book One]

Delta's a real POS

 

[Crazymoogle]

New Zealand had indeed done very well, but their vaccination rates are not as directly a comparable metric given that they have such little group immunity from prior infections. I can imagine that an exit wave could be significantly more severe than you might expect given comparable vaccination rates in Europe, for example.

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This is what's happening in Singapore right now, FYI. Case numbers up more than 100x, - 3500 yesterday - but ICU numbers still super low (<40 ICU beds in use). Delta is an inevitability, absolutely; the govt is planning to handle 5000+ cases a day. But as long as the hospital system remains healthy and the vaccination rate remains high (80+%) it's sustainable without lockdowns.

 

[killerrin]

It was a good goal. It would have worked, if only the rest of the world wasn't so fucking batshit insane, with major countries having a Conservative leadership that would rather point fingers, put the needs of corporations to earn profit and stoke the flames of division and anti-science rhetoric over solving the fucking problem.

 

[BumbaT BrowN]

Why are they so far behind with vaccinations?

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They waited until black Friday to buy their shots.

 

[Lastbroadcast]

Few things need to be said here.

1. Everyone misunderstands what "covid-zero" actually meant.

Australia and New Zealand were never intending for covid zero to be a permanent arrangement. That would have required permanent border closures and permanent social controls. Everyone knew it wasn't possible forever. The point was to give us time to live mostly normally until the vaccines turned up.

The plan was never "covid zero forever" - it was always "covid-zero until mass vaccination".

2. Anyone who says it was a failure is talking nonsense.

Consider this - Large parts of Australia and New Zealand haven't had a major covid outbreak since April 2020. Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territory and the South Island of New Zealand are all in this boat. Everyone there has been living unbelievably freely since basically the beginning.

Auckland and Sydney are the next worst hit - we both had a first wave in April 2020, but then managed to basically skip the second wave between October and June. We're now in a very big third wave due to Delta (but luckily the vaccines turned up just in time).

The only place in either country that had a first, second and third wave of the virus like the rest of the world is Melbourne.

 

[Benzychenz]

The only place in either country that had a first, second and third wave of the virus like the rest of the world is Melbourne.

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And even then we successfully stamped it out entirely and went to life as normal twice.

And now we're coasting along to an easy 85-90% vaccination rate and once again showing the world how it's done 🕺

 

[Lastbroadcast]

And even then we successfully stamped it out entirely and went to life as normal twice.

And now we're coasting along to an easy 85-90% vaccination rate and once again showing the world how it's done 🕺

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Indeed you are, legends.

Sydney is about to hit 70pc double dose tomorrow (and probably 90% first dose by the end of the next week or two). We will end up with some of the world's highest vaccination rates.

 

[A More Normal Bird]

Good to see the end of this bad and unsustainable strategy. You might think that that's a very stupid thing to say, and you might be right; I'm very tired at the moment so my brain's not operating at 100%. I would get some sleep to alleviate this, but that is a bad and unsustainable strategy, as I have to get up in the morning. Honestly I can't believe you suggested sleeping forever. What a bad idea.

 

[Deleted member 14518]

This is some first-worldism if I ever seen one. Your wording makes it look like NA and EU lead this and ROW doesn't. Look at this chart https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

- First place, not in NA or EU
- Third place, not in NA or EU
- Fifth place, not in NA or EU

etc.

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Your graph is broken. Ireland is at 87.4%, not 79%.

 

[behOemoth]

New Zealand has survived its winter without a vaccinated population. Now it is spring, and vaccination protection has already reached the level of Germany, Austria or Switzerland, which are heading into the winter season.

New Zealand absolutely nailed it and their negative records would be sold as massive success stories in the US or EU.

 

[Adventureracing]

There's a lot of fucking awful tales in this thread, no surprise to see that none of those posters actually bothered to follow up on them. Just dump your shit post in the thread and move on. Not only does it lower the overall quality posts but it totally derails the discussion as everyone just dunks on the troll posts (rightfully so mind you).

 

[Dremorak]

Nope. It was a dumb and unworkable strategy from day one, and it's left them lagging behind in actually useful and workable measures like vaccination.

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We defeated it 3 times and would have done it a fourth time if Delta wasn't such an ass combined with people being over it and businesses struggling after 7 weeks in lockdown.
We've been living life 2019 style for 90% of the time since March 2020 so we would say it was worth it and it worked really well.
Also we have 80% with one jab and soon it'll be 80+ with 2 because it only opened up to everyone in the last month or so.

 

[DryCreek]

.

 

[Psittacus]

It was never practical
It's an airborne carried disease with fast infection
Maybe it was possible if the entire world had an approach like it in the early stages

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It worked for over 18 months how much more practical do you want?

Once Delta gets in, if you don't stamp it out immediately you're living with it. Australia, Vietnam and New Zealand all discovered this.

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Everybody outside of the Sydney metro knew this but unfortunately those folks like to try to speak for all of us.

 

[Daphne]

I blame the NSW government. The outbreaks in VIC, ACT and NZ (and QLD, which thankfully have been stamped out to date) all came from there, and was a result of a single case (resulting from poor practices with international flight crews) and the fateful, atrocious decision not to lockdown and follow the covid zero strategy.

Still, that strategy was incredibly successful and saved so many lives and prevented countless infections, and allowed a greater degree of freedom, strangely enough. It's a shame they won't continue it for a bit longer but they are in a great position to move on to relying on vaccines and lighter precautions. It did its job.

One of the ultimate lessons of covid is that we must work together, be responsible for others and care for each other, and if we don't we're fucked. Depressingly, the outcome of that lesson is that there will always be assholes and idiots that won't do that, deliberately, and will fuck us all over. As always, it only takes one bad actor to ruin everything. Still, you have to try.

Jesus, some of the bad takes in this thread. "Unsustainable" is such a red flag at this point, and shows the poster knows nothing or is posting in bad faith.

 

[electroshockwave]

Except it was sustainable with months of zero community cases and no lock down measures nor other restrictive requirements; with the goal of domestic vaccination + vaccination as a pre-requisite to re-open the country in a staged manner. Let alone the countless lives saved that otherwise would have succumbed to COVID, along with our poor ICU capacity essentially requiring this approach to not completely overwhelm the healthcare system. Delta changed that, it changed it everywhere by (1) massively increasing the R value to a point where hard-lockdowns wouldn't necessarily allow contact tracing + isolation to catch up with un-linked case spread, and (2) large increase in break through cases in vaccinated individuals.

So please, kindly piss of with these drive-by retrospective takes with zero understanding of the local situation, context, and lives already saved from this strategy. You adapt to the new situation and up-to-date information, which is the case here.

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Thanks for posting this. There probably wouldn't have even been a Delta variant if other countries had taken the same approach as New Zealand. In UK there's been multiple waves, extended lockdowns, loss of business for hospitality and events, massive strain on the health service, school closures without GCSE and A level exams taking place. And that's sustainable just because the UK had a head start on vaccines?

 

[Psittacus]

I blame the NSW government.

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You should, it's 100% their fault and judging from the pressers the last few months there's a non-zero chance they wanted this to happen.

 

[CampFreddie]

We defeated it 3 times and would have done it a fourth time if Delta wasn't such an ass combined with people being over it and businesses struggling after 7 weeks in lockdown.
We've been living life 2019 style for 90% of the time since March 2020 so we would say it was worth it and it worked really well.
Also we have 80% with one jab and soon it'll be 80+ with 2 because it only opened up to everyone in the last month or so.

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Meanwhile, here in the UK, we spent Spring, Autumn and Winter 2020, and Spring 2021 locked down to varying degrees. ANd it's not like you could do much in Summer 2020 either (eat outside with up to 6 people and go to the beach, erm... that was all I remember)
But at least we're now in a huge position of advantage due to our natural immunity and high vaccination rates, right?
I mean, only 166 people died in the UK yesterday, and New Zealand was on 27 and it's a much smaller... wait.... TWENTY SEVEN TOTAL? Like for all of 2020-2021? Wow!

I hope NZ can quickly vaccinate the rest of their population. It won't stay at 27 for long, but with vaccination it will be way lower than the 160,000 deaths that we've suffered (which would be over 10,000 in NZ considering the population differences).

 

[New Username]

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[Dremorak]

Meanwhile, here in the UK, we spent Spring, Autumn and Winter 2020, and Spring 2021 locked down to varying degrees. ANd it's not like you could do much in Summer 2020 either (eat outside with up to 6 people and go to the beach, erm... that was all I remember)
But at least we're now in a huge position of advantage due to our natural immunity and high vaccination rates, right?
I mean, only 166 people died in the UK yesterday, and New Zealand was on 27 and it's a much smaller... wait.... TWENTY SEVEN TOTAL? Like for all of 2020-2021? Wow!

I hope NZ can quickly vaccinate the rest of their population. It won't stay at 27 for long, but with vaccination it will be way lower than the 160,000 deaths that we've suffered (which would be over 10,000 in NZ considering the population differences).

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yeah exactly. It also gave us a year and a half to bolster our hospitals and prepare...Although from the sounds of things we probably haven't prepared enough but I guess we'll see :\

 

[BreakAtmo]

I blame the NSW government. The outbreaks in VIC, ACT and NZ (and QLD, which thankfully have been stamped out to date) all came from there, and was a result of a single case (resulting from poor practices with international flight crews) and the fateful, atrocious decision not to lockdown and follow the covid zero strategy.

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Yep. And now they're pushing the idea that Delta is simply impossible to eliminate via lockdowns, so actually their selfish refusal to lock down totally didn't matter or whatever.

Lockdowns only don't work if you're unlucky enough to be hit by a super-outbreak that spreads wildly before you even have a chance to do anything, which is exactly what our current Victoria situation and the NZ outbreak started as. The NSW outbreak was much slower, similar to the prior VIC outbreak that we stamped out in less than 2 weeks. Locking down would almost certainly have worked, yet here we are.

 

[MrHealthy]

Worth noting that the fully vaxxed rate is only 41% because they only just opened up vaccines to the full population (minus under 12) on September 1st.

 

[OtakuCoder]

Yeah, terrible strategy. All it achieved was saving thousands of lives and freeing the country of the virus for over a year while the rest of the planet had to pray to whatever deity they believed in that the dude stood next to them didn't pass it on to them.

 

[Deleted member 14518]

You're listing share of eligible population, that chart is listing share of total population. There are people under age 12 who live in every country.

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Whats the point. They cant get the vaccine.

 

[New Username]

Edit: Deleted post