alexx:

 

It seems that what you might be proposing, is that at some unspecified vaccination rate, which may or may not be enough to reach herd immunity for the Delta variant, we should open our borders with little or no restrictions.

 

This might result in the deaths of 500+ each year, who will in many cases be the elderly, the poor, Maori and other minorities. Those that do not get sick or die, might still find they are living with greater restrictions than we do now.

 

The main benefit will appear to be gained by business travellers and people that can afford regular overseas holidays and don’t want to be inconvenienced on their way home.

 

Perhaps some political party might like to openly propose this and find our how much support there is for the idea.

 

The government does need to openly propose this, because it's the reality of what is going to happen here over the next ~5 years. The fact they're not is part of the problem here - and hopefully in the not too distant future this will something we can be open about rather than seemingly denying it is going to happen which is the approach we're taking right now.

We know that no vaccine ever created has ever been able to deliver 100% real world effectiveness or 100% efficacy in trials. We know that the world has only ever eliminated two viruses - smallpox and rinderpest.

Whether or not we live with additional restrictions over what we have now is yet to be see - Bloomfield certainly thinks we will do, and has stated that.

We're going to learn a lot in the coming months from the UK, US and Europe which will all basically be open and living in their "new normal" world by the end of the month. It will give us an insight of what things will probably be like here in 12 months time when we likely open up. NZ trying to survive as some sort of independent country holding out from opening up simply isn't going to work - if that's the plan we may as well but the closed sign up now and tell everybody that so those who want to can just leave the country now.