I admire the efforts. I admire the efforts of all the health care workers and the developers of the vaccines. Unfortunately, since animals are susceptible to the virus and it mutates the ability to eradicate it seems impossible. Sad thing is, coronavirus isn’t even all that bad compared to some of the stuff that scientists can tinker with.
Large, open countries like the United States are even more vulnerable to interactions with other countries than small countries. If a new variant appears anywhere in the world, there is absolutely no way of preventing it from eventually coming to the U.S. The only way to stop it for good is for every country in the world, not just the large, ones, to do their part, and that’s just not going to happen. There simply aren’t the resources and infrastructure needed to vaccinate and treat the entire world; and while antivax idiocy isn’t usually as politicized as in the United States, it’s unfortunately universal and will never be completely eliminated.
In other words, we can’t win. We can’t beat Covid no matter what we do. We have to accept that, and fight to save as many people as possible. When it finally ends, we’ll count how many of us are still standing, and see how we did.
And yet still, even you can’t keep it out. Even with those stringent restrictions it gets in and it spreads and it kills in every country in the world. There is no avoiding it.
NZ tried for zero covid and that has proved impossible, that’s with the most successful attempt inthe world. Even they are learning to live with it and so must everyone else.
We’re now in a different world and it is pointless to even think about this in terms of “finished”,there is no “finish”.
Covid is endemic and will continue to circulate no matter what the level of vaccination is. People will die from it and the question is what level of restrictions people will bear and for how long?
“Lockdowns” have already fallen out of favour with the latest iterations being watered down and shorter because the public simply won’t take them long term.
The same will be true for all other restrictions. At some point people say (and I already hear it loud and long) What is the point of vaccinations, treatments and restrictions if there is no end in sight?
That is a very valid point and it will be harder and harder for any country to justiify social restrictions as time goes on and there will be more and more rebellion against them.
…less than 50 deaths @Novelty_Bobble. Less than 50 deaths in over two years of the pandemic.
I’m sick of this complete and utter bullshit from people wishing for our deaths. Our stringent restrictions have kept us safe. Its kept our hospital systems from being overrun. Our suicide rates are lower. Our unemployment rates are at record lows. Our economy, in the face of a global pandemic, is robust.
We never tried for zero covid. That’s Northern Hemisphere Bullshit. We’ve had a "stop-as-many-people-from-dying-from-covid-strategy. And it works.
Since you haven’t kept up: New Zealand transitioned away from lockdowns several weeks ago. We now have the Traffic Light Protection Framework, which was designed to minimise spread through a combination of mask and vaccine mandates and vaccine passports. (However, lockdowns are not ruled out in the future if needed because…we aren’t fucking stupid.)
The last thing we need right now is advice from Plague Island. How many people died there today? 172? You lost over 3 times as many people in a single day than we have lost in two years. You don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
I agree. This would be like Winston Churchill giving a speech in September 1941 : “My fellow Britons, we have fought the monster of Nazism for two years now, and we have not conquered. We have not been able to persuade the United States to enter the battle. It is time to give up and just accept whatever terms we are offered.”
No-one is wishing your deaths, that is hyperbolic.
I just praised you, I said that you were the most successful country in the world, what I said was not a criticism in any way of NZ’s approach. Merely a recognising of the hard fact that, no matter what a country does, Covid cannot be avoided. Not a failing of NZ just a fact arising from Covid’s success and it matters because if people are dreaming of an “end” where we don’t have Covid then NZ’s success represents the very best attainable for them (and was never attainable for most countries given the different starting points).
“We’re transitioning from our current strategy into a new way of doing things,” Ms. Ardern told reporters. “With Delta, the return to zero is incredibly difficult, and our restrictions alone are not enough to achieve that quickly. In fact, for this outbreak, it’s clear that long periods of heavy restrictions has not got us to zero cases.”
This all sounds like you were trying to eliminate covid and get to zero cases
Ms Ardern said that from 11:59pm on December 2, New Zealand will adopt a new COVID-19 response that aims to contain the virus, rather than attempting to eliminate it completely.
But that’s all irrelevant to my point that there will not be a formal “end” to this and we all need to learn how to live with it.
Yes, I saw what happened and was keeping a close eye on it because I predicted it. Keeping to that elimination strategy was never feasible in the long term and NZ will continue on a path to looser restrictions in the future and will continue to have cases and deaths. That’s what every country will do sooner or later. Again, not a criticism of NZ just the reality of the world as it stands.
I don’t know why you are so dismissive in your response.
Nothing I said in my post is critical of NZ, deliberately the opposite in fact.
You managed to be “excellent” in a world where “perfect” is unobtainable and if that “perfect” is the considered the marker by which we judge the end of this then that is ultimately doomed to failure. People’s expectations need recalibration.
As for knowing what I’m talking about, I’ve followed the NZ success story very closely and my experience of living with strict restrictions and lockdowns is at least as valid as yours and just sees it from a perspective that you don’t have (seeing as I have lived through high levels of infection and faced a much greater immediate possibility of death and disease for my friends and family).
And “plague island” seems unnecessary dismissive seeing as many similarly-placed European countries started from similar points and tried differing approaches and ended up in much the same place, endemic Covid and high numbers of deaths.
One element of good planning seems to be the ordering by the UK government of 2.5 million courses of Pfizer’s oral anti-viral.
That makes really good sense. One key path out of this will be through at-home treatments of the vulnerable.
That’s a good balance of pragmatism (that it is with us for the long term) and proactivity (having the tools ready to stop the majority of deaths) and is in line with a policy of a return to normal.
…but appropriate.
I mean…its a global pandemic that has killed millions of people. Of course its hard to avoid. It’s a fucking pandemic. We’ve had people with Covid arriving every single day. Why do you think we’ve developed layers of protection?
Meanwhile, back here in New Zealand, we aren’t “dreaming of an end to covid.” We know its going to be lasting a very long time, because countries like yours are failing to manage the pandemic effectively. More importantly, unlike countries like the UK and the US, we haven’t started to pretend that the pandemic is over.
That cite doesn’t look like a link to official government policy. That looks like a link to a New York Times article that was heavily criticised locally when it was published at the time because it was seriously lacking in context.
That doesn’t look like a cite to New Zealand government policy either. That looks like a link to an Australian News Website.
Here’s the truth about “zero covid.” It was a term that originated in the UK several months after New Zealand introduced our elimination strategy. It was used by pundits to advocate for NZ-style policies, but it was quickly co-opted by “covid skeptics” and used as a talking point to make it sound like our elimination strategy only had a single goal: zero cases.
That isn’t true.
From the strategy aims:
So from the outset it’s clear that zero is the preferred target, but zero cases didn’t define the strategy. Instead:
You will note that “zero cases” is not part of the strategy objectives. In fact at the time the strategy was put together we didn’t even know we were going to get to zero. But we did. And we fought like hell to keep it that way.
Zero-covid was a Northern Hemisphere construct. It was never our strategy.
A month before “your prediction” the government had already announced the plan to move away from the elimination strategy. We never expected it to last forever. We never thought we were immune to cases or deaths. The entire point of our strategy before the pivot was to stop people from dying from covid. The entire point of our new strategy is to stop people from dying from covid.
So sorry to burst your bubble. But you didn’t have any unique insight to what is happening here. Even with your “close eye.”
Because your response deserves to be dismissed. You aren’t adding anything to the conversation.
You don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Not about our response. Not about our elimination strategy. Not about our recent pivot.
We absolutely, 100%, do not need your advice. Our strategy worked because we didn’t listen to the likes of you. Nothing is inevitable. We can all do better. That is the entire point of this thread.
Wow. You completely misinterpreted the post you replied too, IMO.
Unnecessarily and ludicrously hostile. Rude as fuck, too.
You should apologize.
ETA: I see you chose to double down instead.
I think I’ll just leave this hijack here.
I have said that NZ was the best response in the world but that they were unable to achieve the impossible (i.e. keeping covid out of circulation).
If you choose to take that as criticism then that’s on you, I’m not sure there is anywhere to go from there and it is all a sidetrack to my point which…to summarise and de-nationalise it is…
that the very best responses cannot get rid of covid and any expectation around the world that it only ends when we do achieve that is doomed to failure and never-ending rainbow-chasing. Recalibration and realignment of expectations is needed.
But it wouldn’t have been better if he had said, in September 1941: “My fellow Britons, we can win this, and we can win this now! If we put our minds to it and we all work together, we’ll never suffer any more defeats, no more people will be killed, and we’ll end this war by Christmas!”
Churchill was a pragmatist. He knew that no matter what his country did, the war wouldn’t be over for a long, long time, and millions more people would die. Just like Covid.
Pose deleted at author’s request…
I saw the quote. I agree with you completely that we need to keep on fighting, and fight harder - but I also think that no matter what we do, we still won’t end this quickly or easily, and we shouldn’t delude ourselves about that.
Having a vaccine was not the end. It was not even the beginning of the end. But it was, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
The thread title is giving me Spiro Agnew vibes. 
I offer you two words - “Doug Ford”. Our Medical Officer of Health talked about further restricting PCR tests due to capacity constraints. What in hell have they been doing over the last 24 months if not building testing capacity???
Half assed public health recommendations like “we discourage non-essential travel” don’t help. Get off your ass and issue an alert, require airlines and travel companies to provide refunds.
I was supposed to have woken up today in New York City, but we cancelled last week because we didn’t a) want to risk it and b) deal with the testing logistics. Meanwhile, my brother and his family are vacationing in Florida. Guess what the family activity was yesterday? PCR tests, they are all sick even with 2 or 3 shots for each of them. If they are positive, they have to rebook their flights because you can’t fly for 15 days after a positive test.
Yet again, eradication isn’t the goal. It’d be nice if it were possible, but it isn’t. And that doesn’t matter much, because we don’t need to eradicate the disease to beat it.
Have you ever played Oregon Trail? Remember all of those diseases your family dies from on the trail? We haven’t eradicated any of those diseases, either. How many people die nowadays from dysentery, or diphtheria, or scarlet fever, or cholera? That’s the goal for covid, and it is achievable.
A heathy, functioning, educated population and government could have beaten it. I don’t know if the US ever fit that description, but it absolutely hasn’t since 2016 and probably never will. We’re essentially a banana republic with nukes now.
So, the US is never going to beat any crisis that requires a coordinated social response. And given that a scary pathogen seems to come out of the Pacific Rim every 10-20 years, we’re destined to keep doing this again and again.
Oh, and we’ll be blaming China for it every single time.
I’m hoping next time it’ll be the Hormel Hamfluenza.
Around a million a year, more than half are children under 5, sadly. It’s the second-leading cause of death for children under 5, in fact (according to the WHO). It’s still a problem. But that’s almost exclusively in the developing world.
I don’t know what the current death rate is, but over 2,000 died in 2015 worldwide. In the US, the death rate has averaged 2 a year since 1990 so it’s basically gone there.
Sadly, scarlet fever is on the rise of late, and it’s not known why. Though even as incidences are rising, the death rate remains low. Here is an article on the rising levels of scarlet fever in China:
But deaths are indeed rare.
It’s difficult to say but the WHO estimates between 21,000-143,000 deaths a year. It’s considered a local pandemic in some areas (see this 2010 PDF from the WHO).
Your point is well-made. All of those diseases are no longer a threat in the developed world. They were a big deal in the United States centuries ago, and are mostly history today. But in much of the world, they are still problems and they are deadly.
That should also demonstrate, though, that for some diseases at least it is possible (if not probable) that they can go from being global problems to a local ones, which while not ideal is still a massive improvement and far more manageable.
Mostly though since this is the Straight Dope I felt that even a rhetorical question deserved an answer. 