2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2465599 19-Apr-2020 18:29

Fred99:
tdgeek:

Even today, someone alerted a large group going to Thompsons Track, wherever that is.

"Back road" route South from Rakaia if you're heading toward Geraldine or Fairlie etc then on to Queenstown

Also a dirt track across the Kaimai ranges near Katikati, built by the US military in WW2.

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#2465602 19-Apr-2020 18:33

vexxxboy:

Singapore is slightly different , they let the immigrant workers back into the country and put them back into dormitories , instant flare up, we wont be letting anyone back into the country without 14 days of quarantine .

It's very different - 500,000 workers (10% of the population) on work visas, mainly living in dormitory accommodation. If there's any "hole" like that - then Covid will surely find a way. You don't even need to accidentally import cases - dorms / living in close confinement with shared facilities are petri dishes (as seen on cruise ships, naval vessels etc), one person could get it from local transmission - and boom.

I hope by now we've repatriated all the backpackers that were staying in hostels in NZ. They were tinderboxes - and should be closed until we're on top of this 100%.

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#2465605 19-Apr-2020 18:39

frankv:
Fred99

"Back road" route South from Rakaia if you're heading toward Geraldine or Fairlie etc then on to Queenstown

Also a dirt track across the Kaimai ranges near Katikati, built by the US military in WW2.

Well I never knew that. I assumed with a question about NZ place names, then first choice should be on the Mainland. They need to rename that "Thompson's Track North" - and then get John Cleese to check it out. :-)

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#2465616 19-Apr-2020 18:58

tdgeek:
Even today, someone alerted a large group going to Thompsons Track, wherever that is.

It's a tramping track going from the edge of nowhere to the middle of nowhere. A totally insane tramp to do in the current conditions, muddy and slippery and difficult if not impossible to get into if someone has an accident.

mattwnz

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#2465617 19-Apr-2020 18:59

tdgeek:

100% L3 is really L3.8. For most individuals, but business gets relief. Supermarkets are not overrun by staff being infected. Not any AFAIK. Flouters need addressing, time to get tough.

Except some schools can reopen in our level 3, which IMO is a bad idea. Essentially they are being used as childcare centres, to allow some people to go back to work, or to give relief, as it's use is not going to be policed. But impossible to physically distance each kid in a classroom, and then physically distance all teachers from one another from each class. Back before the lockdown they were doing some of this already, and it didn't work, based on what has happened with one of the biggest clusters of 90+ that involves a school. You only need a few not to do it right and for it to spread between bubbles. Especially as it is known that coughs and sneezes can spread further the 2m and droplets remain in the air for hours. As we have previously seen, schools can be petrie dishes for this, much like resthomes. I would be far more comfortable if they didn't also reopen schools while in level 3, and some principals and teacher also share this concern based on the same reasons.

NZ really has the choice of eliminating it, which means short perm pain for long term gain, and potentially means being in level 4 for longer. Or flattening the curve, and keeping it flat, which is what we face if we go out of level 4 too early, but that potentially means long term pain. But flattening the curve is a form of herd immunity, and keeping it down to a level that the health system can cope with it, and is just buying time until a vaccine comes along, and we may end up in level 3.5 or 4 several more times at least , to keep the curve flat.

On One News tonight they said that in Europe, they have 4000 ICU beds per million people. So for a country the size of NZ, that would be 20,000 ICU beds. However my understanding is that NZ only has 1000 ICU beds in total. My calculations, that is just 5%. That is a huge difference, so we couldn't afford for our numbers to rise too much anyway, so I can't see any other option but elimination.

Fine need to be increased, which is the best way IMO to deal with flouters, hit them in their pocket where it hurts. I wonder how many people will try to go to their bach in level 3, when they know it is still not allowed.

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#2465619 19-Apr-2020 19:02

neb:
tdgeek:

Even today, someone alerted a large group going to Thompsons Track, wherever that is.
It's a tramping track going from the edge of nowhere to the middle of nowhere. A totally insane tramp to do in the current conditions, muddy and slippery and difficult if not impossible to get into if someone has an accident.

Yep much mud.... Video here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqq8_dZI5Bc

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#2465661 19-Apr-2020 19:14

frednz:

Paul1977: So, what are peoples predictions on whether we’ll go to level 3 at 11:59pm Wednesday?

I think if the goal is elimination then we aren’t at a point where it’s safe to lower restrictions.

Surely we need to be at a point where the only new cases are within fully isolated bubbles before it’s safe to lower the level.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12325831

This is the view of Martin Berka, Professor of Macroeconomics, Head of School of Economics and Finance at Massey University:

I think a strong economic and humane case can be made to relax the rules to level 3 at the end of the current four-week level 4 lockdown, starting from next Thursday.

International epidemiological policy models of Covid-19 predict that countries will go through cycles of easing and tightening restrictions.

It is practically impossible to eliminate Covid-19 in the short term without major social upheaval caused by an economic depression. Level 4 is no longer an optimal policy because it ignores the livelihoods of almost the entire New Zealand population. Nobody is suggesting to open up the economy completely, but I argue that level 3 restrictions are strict enough to protect lives, while also helping people recover their livelihoods.

New Zealand's level 3 rules are more stringent than Singapore, Hong Kong or South Korea, and could still cause an unprecedented recession. New Zealand shouldn't return to level 4 unless there's a threat of our health system being overrun.

Looks like what they are talking about is going down the herd immunity route and flattening the curve, and not actually eliminating it. I don't think there has ever been any suggestion of level 4 being 6 months, the PM has never indicated that. But if we eliminate it, then potentially we can return to a normal domestic economy alot sooner. . I understand a lot of the modeling hasn't been based on actually eliminating it from NZ, but just flattening the curve.

This report has graphs showing how cases can rise if we haven't eliminated it, after going from level 4 to level 3 https://cpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.auckland.ac.nz/dist/d/75/files/2017/01/Stochastic-Model-FINAL-RELEASE.pdf The way we have tracked under level 4 seems a lot better than the report shows, and figure 7 is potentially what NZ could achieve far sooner, and almost looks like elimination, with the odd case popping up.

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#2465664 19-Apr-2020 19:17

Fred99:

I hope by now we've repatriated all the backpackers that were staying in hostels in NZ. They were tinderboxes - and should be closed until we're on top of this 100%.

I haven't seen any recent news on these, and thy had some very big bubbles, but I doubt they have all gone back.I know there are people from the UK still in NZ, as it would have cost them 50k to get a plane trip back to the UK.

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#2465665 19-Apr-2020 19:21

Interesting reading the original pages of this thread after it got popular as cases arrived here, how some people have changed.

We may mock the damed if you do, Damned if you don't bell curve but we have our own fair share of 'too little too late/not enough done' swayed persons that now appear as firmly 'working well let's not wreck it yet/ the lvl3 plan mooted is bad' camp

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#2465670 19-Apr-2020 19:33

mattwnz:

Looks like what they are talking about is going down the herd immunity route and flattening the curve, and not actually eliminating it.

"Herd Immunity" was looked at in the UK. I believe that epidemiologists, virologists, and public health experts looked at the data and concluded that they'd need to "flatten the curve" for 8 years if they weren't going to overwhelm their health system.

It's a crazy idea.

Fred99

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#2465671 19-Apr-2020 19:36

mattwnz:

Fred99:

I hope by now we've repatriated all the backpackers that were staying in hostels in NZ. They were tinderboxes - and should be closed until we're on top of this 100%.

I haven't seen any recent news on these, and thy had some very big bubbles, but I doubt they have all gone back.I know there are people from the UK still in NZ, as it would have cost them 50k to get a plane trip back to the UK.

I haven't see any data either - there's no clusters >10 people looking like hostels.

Why didn't Boris repatriate them? We've done it, Aus has done it, Germany, Holland etc etc.

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#2465672 19-Apr-2020 19:36

Oblivian: Interesting reading the original pages of this thread after it got popular as cases arrived here, how some people have changed.

We may mock the damed if you do, Damned if you don't bell curve but we have our own fair share of 'too little too late/not enough done' swayed persons that now appear as firmly 'working well let's not wreck it yet/ the lvl3 plan mooted is bad' camp

I wouldn't see that as a change but more the fact we're here now lets not waste what we've done. That being whether or not it was loo little/too late, or the timing and level of action was exactly right..

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#2465674 19-Apr-2020 19:39

mattwnz:

Except some schools can reopen in our level 3, which IMO is a bad idea. Essentially they are being used as childcare centres, to allow some people to go back to work, or to give relief, as it's use is not going to be policed. But impossible to physically distance each kid in a classroom, and then physically distance all teachers from one another from each class.

This point of view is also discussed here:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12325834

News a baby boy is among New Zealand's latest Covid-19 cases has further dispelled the myth children can't catch the virus at a time when parents contemplate a potential return to school for some youngsters.

Three boys aged under 1-year-old have now caught the virus in New Zealand, including two infants in the country's far south and one in the Waikato.

Further muddying the waters about children and the coronavirus outbreak is their potential role as spreaders.

"For so many viruses children are often a spreader because of the nature of the fact they are less careful with their secretions and coughing and sneezing," Baker said.

"So I think that is the reason why there are a lot of concerns from the education sector and early childhood sector about how realistic this is going to be."

Then there was the potential for children to be asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19, taking it into the formerly safe bubbles of elderly relatives.

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#2465681 19-Apr-2020 19:46

Discussion is all well and good, but at some point decisions are made that do not end well for everyone. What I'm saying is that you can't turn the wheel back. When the health system runs full, it runs full and stays there for a while before it can return to normal. I am concerned that you have just half as many ICUs for all of NZ as we have for our city alone. Our government has decided to make the reliefs dependent on the number of inpatients on the ICUs and to close them (the reliefs) immediately if capacities decrease too much. This is only intended to be an indication with a request to weigh this up very carefully. Tomorrow we have the first, small step too and we will wait 14 days to see whether these measures settle down safely.

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#2465690 19-Apr-2020 20:12

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