2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

Forums › Health and fitness › 2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2633554 11-Jan-2021 12:20

PolicyGuy:

From what I've heard, Prof. Hendy says there'd have to be a lockdown, but Prof. Baker said we'd have to go to Level 4 lockdown. My personal opinion is that Prof. Baker is a bit of an alarmist who produces highly click-bait headlines in the MSM.

I expect that if there was a more-transmissible outbreak, the region in which it occurred would go to Level 3 and the rest of the country to Level 2, like last time.
If the outbreak appeared relatively contained, I wouldn't be surprised if the 'uncontaminated' island went back to Level 1 after a fortnight.
There would have to be a widespread outbreak - on the verge of out of control - before we'd go to Level 4

That makes a lot of sense. Although I feel L4 would be better the next time around as we can prepare for it. Stock up, movie up, and prepare things to avoid any stay at home issues that shook some of us last time. L4 would be shorter, than an ongoing L3.

GV27

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#2633561 11-Jan-2021 12:34

PolicyGuy:

My personal opinion is that Prof. Baker is a bit of an alarmist who produces highly click-bait headlines in the MSM.

My personal opinion is I'd trust the expert in the MSM more than I'd trust assurances coming out of the MOH and other bodies, who have been repeatedly shown to make statements that did not line up with reality after the fact; an 'independent review' telling us what was actually in the here and now in three months time is no good if this thing gets away from us like it almost did last time, despite assurances that everything was fine and chill.

tdgeek

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#2633570 11-Jan-2021 12:44

Michael Baker

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/leading-epidemiologist-warns-uk-covid-19-variant-raises-risk-nz-community-outbreak

Short story is more risk, a few ideas to reduce people getting on planes

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/01/block-new-zealand-s-borders-to-us-uk-travellers-to-save-us-from-new-covid-19-strains-dr-michael-baker.html

Short story is block people arriving from US/UK

Its like two different people giving their thoughts.

freitasm

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#2633572 11-Jan-2021 12:47

GV27:

PolicyGuy:

My personal opinion is that Prof. Baker is a bit of an alarmist who produces highly click-bait headlines in the MSM.

My personal opinion is I'd trust the expert in the MSM more than I'd trust assurances coming out of the MOH and other bodies, who have been repeatedly shown to make statements that did not line up with reality after the fact; an 'independent review' telling us what was actually in the here and now in three months time is no good if this thing gets away from us like it almost did last time, despite assurances that everything was fine and chill.

And that's exactly what I hear from anti-vaxxers and covid-denialists. They've done their own "research" and the government is out there to get us.

Oblivian

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#2633587 11-Jan-2021 13:08

For what it's worth. Of the 31 recents

"Most of these people have come into New Zealand from the UK, via the UAE, Qatar or Singapore," the ministry said.

Believe all 3 countries had negative before fly policy. Before our requirements to produce one even kick in.

Appears UAE has option of free test but not required for transit anymore unless high risk locations. While singapore still does and added uk to list. (Presumably result of when they opened up transit and had lots of 'via singapore' cases pointing at them)
So there's incubator or too early tests failing somewhere. Sticking our policy hat in the ring looks good on paper, but still the people factor to contend with it seems.

Sq Travellers who have had a travel history to *India, Indonesia, *Philippines and the *United Kingdom within the last 14 days prior to departure are required to present a valid negative Covid-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result, taken within 72 hours before departure in order to transit through Singapore. This requirement does not apply to Singapore Citizens, Permanent Residents or children aged 6 and below.

KrazyKid

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#2633590 11-Jan-2021 13:10

tdgeek:

Michael Baker

Its like two different people giving their thoughts.

How much of that is the Media? - one sourced the story from RNZ, they other is a commercial network of radio and TV stations.

I personally think the underlying story is similar in both cases - Dr Baker is saying reduce risk because of the new variant or this bad thing could happen.

frankv

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#2633598 11-Jan-2021 13:23

tdgeek:

Its been out there forever it seems. yes, I know the incoming are diluted to stop MIQ overflowing, but Id have thought those that want to leave Dodge would have left Dodge a lot earlier. Perhaps many decided to stay put and over time and have since decided its not working overseas so need to leave now?

I'd guess that many Kiwis were on fixed term contracts for housing and/or work. Some people would suck up the career & financial damage of returning before their contract expired. They're probably pretty much all already in NZ. The rest opted to stay overseas and wait out their contracts. As time has gone by, those contracts have expired, and they've been able to return home.

It hasn't been a year yet since covid became a big issue in Europe & USA, so conceivably a number of Kiwis might have signed one-year contracts in January 2020, and not so many in March and very few in April. Based on this, I'd guess that returnee numbers might be dropping from March.

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wellygary

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#2633599 11-Jan-2021 13:24

Brisbane's lockdown will end tonight after 3 days of no new cases, ...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-11/coronavirus-live-news-covid19-brisbane-lockdown/13046370

So it remains uncertain how much more infectious this new strain actually is...

Oblivian

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#2633609 11-Jan-2021 13:32

When you list the actual ongoing restrictions it still appears to be about a 2.5 on our scale. So not a lockdown as such, but heavy restriction

Dropped the need to work from home but..
Masks in public, limited shop numbers aka queuing, distancing, seated service, no dancing

Just to be sure

frankv

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#2633612 11-Jan-2021 13:37

freitasm:

GV27:

My personal opinion is I'd trust the expert in the MSM more than I'd trust assurances coming out of the MOH and other bodies, who have been repeatedly shown to make statements that did not line up with reality after the fact; an 'independent review' telling us what was actually in the here and now in three months time is no good if this thing gets away from us like it almost did last time, despite assurances that everything was fine and chill.

And that's exactly what I hear from anti-vaxxers and covid-denialists. They've done their own "research" and the government is out there to get us.

It's not *exactly* the same. I'm no anti-vaxxer or covid-denier. But I don't trust the MoH, because (a) all my personal dealings with them have shown them to be incompetent and out of date, (b) they did lie about masks and PPE early on (not to "get" anyone, but to stop people from grabbing the supply when it was needed for health professionals).

So, no governmental malice there, just a bumbling bureaucracy.

GV27

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#2633615 11-Jan-2021 13:42

freitasm:

And that's exactly what I hear from anti-vaxxers and covid-denialists. They've done their own "research" and the government is out there to get us.

The government commissions their own reviews to find out what isn't going well, and it looks like they've acted on a bunch of things that have come out of them.

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/12/coronavirus-govt-releases-simpson-roche-report-into-covid-19-response-funds-another-18-months-of-miq.html

The Simpson-Roche report found a "number of key themes" in New Zealand's response:

consistency and quality of communication, and consultation with relevant stakeholders was suboptimal
inappropriate accountability for various aspects of the strategies and their implementation
border control directives have been difficult to understand and implement
lack of clarity in the testing framework
lack of good forward planning from the perspective of an end-to-end system
underutilisation of health expertise outside the Ministry of Health leading to suboptimal analysis and planning documents
lack of confidence in data being reported to key decision makers.
The report says "exhausted" officials weren't ready for the August outbreak, which sent Auckland back to alert level 3 after 102 days of no community transmission

I have to maintain high professional cynicism in my role, and part of that is planning for the potential for things to go pear shaped faster than officials can get on top of it. We may have significantly smaller margins of error if this variant gets a head start on us.

tdgeek

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#2633619 11-Jan-2021 13:52

Its always been learning on the fly. MIQ are hotels not prisons. Where are we now? We have had one significant outbreak, contained. Our nearest neighbour has rolling outbreaks. UK has no MIQ incoming arrivals are told to self isolate.

Should we have no outbreaks, no news. Should we have one, its a blame game. It would have been a lot easier if we just banned all incoming Kiwi's to NZ, any essentials that had to come here go to prison. Sorted.But we aren't like that, we manage the known risk.

We are streets ahead now, of what we had, and what we had, worked.

sir1963

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#2633663 11-Jan-2021 15:02

As an aside to the actual COVID issues, does anyone think NZ will have issues when covid is gone ?

Just think how many skilled job workers have died in UK, EU, USA. These countries will be grabbing skilled workers from the rest of the world and will be able to pay much higher wages than NZ.

In particular the health sector , overseas so many of the healthcare workers are "burnt-out" and will probably leave their jobs, leaving a whacking great demand for our people to replace them.

Is NZ placed to cope with that ?

In particular when we consider that about 50% of our GPs will retire within 10 years, and it takes about 10 years to become a GP anyway, so even if we start now, we may be too late to stop a national shortage.

Oblivian

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#2633669 11-Jan-2021 15:12

If anything, these clickbait headlines may include some subtle warnings we could be using in the workplace. We saw how Queensland reacted. We saw how UK reacted. Albeit slightly different scenarios - It was swift, a reboot of go-hard and go home, I mean early.

For those of us in the IT sector (and even for those now who consider their employer is taking it a little too easy) it could be a good wakeup call case to use as a reminder to bring up with customers so the pressure isn't as bad as last time!. All factors forbid, there be another sort of oopsy. The probability is a move to WFH aspect is likely to be fast.

Potentially Not the same 2 day grace as previous. But more a if you are on holiday. You have >8 hours to hunker down or get home.

Good chance to encourage checks of the WFH pack distribution plan and PPE stocks to take some of the IT team pressure off! It was a crazy rush last time that's for sure.

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#2633722 11-Jan-2021 16:10

wellygary:

Brisbane's lockdown will end tonight after 3 days of no new cases, ...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-11/coronavirus-live-news-covid19-brisbane-lockdown/13046370

So it remains uncertain how much more infectious this new strain actually is...

While there is uncertainty about exactly how much more Transmissible the UK variant is, there is a consensus that it is substantially more contagious. This article estimates it as 56% more.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/health/coronavirus-uk-variant.html

I don't think you can draw any conclusion from the single Aussie case. Sample size is way to small. There seems to always have been high variability in how transmissible Covid-19, with things like who the host is, or how long they have been infected being possibilities for the reason. We have seen examples of the virus being spread via elevators despite the host riding alone, and I have an extended family member who rode in a car with a person symptomatic with covid-19 who didn't get infected.

Also many media outlets seem to be referring to the B.1.1.7 variant as a "strain". My understanding is that variant is the correct word.

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