Quote:
Originally Posted by tweetiepooh
As as been mentioned many times New Zealand is a 1st world country (good healthcare, level of living) with a smallish population and is in the middle of nowhere.
So it could successfully lockdown for a short period, eliminate local infections and close off new entries. Most of the rest of the world has higher population densities and land borders or close marine borders that are breached.
We would have to arrange something with Eire to combined close our borders, sink incoming illegal boats or just tow them back to the mainland, somehow let food in without infections also getting in and so on. It would likely need to be longer than NZ had to get rid of local infections and we would have to stop rich city dwellers moving out to second homes and other movements within the country. It's not that it couldn't be done but it would be far harder and longer and may not be successful if once we stop it we reopen borders again.
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Is there any evidence, anywhere, that folk crossing the Channel in dinghies contributed to bringing Covid-19 to the UK?
New Zealand have similar challenges importing goods and somehow manage it. The challenge is not insurmountable however we made the political choice to not drive down numbers and decide there was a tolerable level of infections we believed we could maintain and not overwhelm the NHS. Since then it's been antibody testing, rapid testing, operation moonshot and any other "wing and a prayer" options that were anything but the obvious.
Ireland presents a seperate problem yes, but that's a different island from Great Britain and in fact they aren't our problem - we are theirs. Unless we stopped traffic to/from Northern Ireland the land border means they can't pursue an option of elimination via lockdown.
It's a moot point as we are so close to vaccine however the success stories in terms of health and economic recovery will be the ones who pursued elimination. Not herd immunity by stealth - which lets be honest opening schools
at all costs is. Let the kids infect their parents and hope it doesn't reach the grandparents.