Nobody’s saying that Covid can be entirely avoided or that New Zealand somehow magically entirely avoided it. But Banquet_Bear is right that New Zealand used a much more successful approach to containing it.
And no, it wasn’t just New Zealand’s geographical status as a small isolated island nation that made that possible. They were mostly just smarter, faster, more consistent, better with the messaging, better informed, and less politically divisive and manipulative.
Certainly, being an island nation made it easier. Even if we had done everything right, the US or other mainland countries probably couldn’t have done as well as New Zealand. But even allowing for that, they still did better than most of the world, and got better results than, say, the UK or Japan.
…fuck off. Bobble has been trolling me for a very long time, on this topic and others. He is being intentionally disingenuous here. I can’t be bothered with his bullshit any more.
Our response is not “doomed to failure.” We don’t have to accept that people are going to die. We don’t have to recalibrate and realign our expectations. We will continue to do what we have done, and try to stop as many people from dying from Covid as we can.
Bobble fundamentally doesn’t understand what we’ve done, and wants us to give up so we can “join the rest of the world.” We aren’t going to do that.
You have an idiosyncratic concept of “trolling” and are imaging attention from me that simply doesn’t exist.
You extol the virtues of what NZ has done and react with vitriol at anyone daring to comment on it. I’ve been nothing but complimentary and polite, which seems to infuriate you for some reason.
I was purposefully very complimentary about NZ’s response because it has been excellent. The very reason for pointing to it was to use it as an example of the very best response that can be mustered because if people are expecting an end to covid to resemble something better than that then they are bound for dissapointment.
It seems like even praise is now seen as criticism in your eyes. That’s not a fair bar to set for anyone wishing to contribute and to comment on this subject.
But that is not what I said. I said that an expectation of perfection was doomed to failure. here, let me help
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.
You are imagining criticism where none exists and purposefully ignoring freely given and sincerely meant praise.
I’m just glad that the individuals who comprise the Straight Dope community are still able to set aside their differences and support a softball pitting like the OP without devolving into petty squabbling about some odd thing or another. I do believe if the rest of the world could only follow our enlightened example this little virus would truly be history in short order.
The fact that substances exist (biological and otherwise) that are more lethal than SARS-CoV-2 is no reason to treat the coronavirus like it’s no problem.
As noted by famed lyricist and anatomist, Mark Knopfler, “When you point your finger cuz your plan fell through, you’ve got three more fingers pointing back at you.” I don’t see how we could get a more definitive answer than that.
And Horatius’ comment here is a nice synopsis of what I’m ranting about:
And yet, almost two years into this, I still see shitposting from people about, “OMG, I’m soooo confused, last month they said X, now they’re saying Y?!? Whatever am I supposed to do?!?!?”
The epidemiology may be brutally complex but what we, as individuals have to deal with, isn’t:
・Vaccines are much, much more effective than no vaccines; and
・it’s spread as an aerosol.
There it is; it’s not difficult and it doesn’t change, regardless of what the PM, or president, or mayor, or municipal counsellor says.
Until the entire planet is vaccinated every person, and every level of business and government should be assuming that this is permanent and capable of getting far, far worse and acting accordingly.
This doesn’t necessarily mean some permanent lockdown situation either. But it could mean such things as reducing taxes for hospitality businesses, amending bylaws so that restaurants could set up pop-up take-out stands in parks or wherever, or set up terraces and patios year-round, and establishing massive production and stockpiling of good masks, test kits, and whatever other related materiel, instead of going to panic stations at the last minute because everyone assumed, during the last lull, that the pandemic was as good as over.
The vaccinated world should be working to come up with holistic approaches based on the assumption that there are going to be waves and lulls, with some waves being really, really nasty, for a long, long time.
It should be possible to “policy” our way into a position such that some employees don’t have to worry about losing a living wage or possible homelessness every time a wave hits; or so that front-line health care workers don’t have to assume that burn-out and PTSD are now part of the job.
Not true if you hold your arm out at an angle to point; then those three fingers are pointing elsewhere. Or you could practice pointing with three fingers at a ninety-degree angle to the index finger.