2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2502470 10-Jun-2020 19:09

mattwnz:

Fred99:

It would be utter madness to open the (Aus) border to the UK. Surely nobody is seriously suggesting that?

Someone previously posted a link to an article about this a few weeks ago. Although I can't find it as the search page has no search box, and it maybe about 100 pages back.

Fair enough - we're being deluged with "information" - the vast majority of it abject BS - posted as opinion or news.

ockel

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#2502473 10-Jun-2020 19:24

Fred99:

mattwnz:

If Australia are wanting to open up the bubble to other countries, including the possibly the uk, where it is obviously not contained, then NZ would be also in that bubble with those other countries if we were to join them.

It would be utter madness to open the (Aus) border to the UK. Surely nobody is seriously suggesting that?

French Polynesia is opening its borders to the US and European travellers from mid July. Seems like they feel they can manage the risks.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/pacific-islands/121763923/coronavirus-french-polynesia-opens-for-tourism-in-midjuly-but-kiwis-must-wait

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#2502514 10-Jun-2020 19:38

I see Air NZ is resuming passenger flights to Japan by the end of the month https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/news/121783111/air-new-zealand-resuming-flights-to-japan
But aren't our borders closed, except for people returning, or travelling back to their country of origin, and other specific cases. Or do they have information that the public doesn't have in terms of our borders opening more?. It will still obviously involve quarantine. Japanese apparently come to NZ for an entire Skiing season, so a 2 week quarantine period, is unlikely to affect them at all, especially if they do quarantine resorts.

The issue with any travelers coming into NZ, is that the entire country wears the risk, for those people who are traveling, which is why any risk needs to be eliminated. One could argue all activities carry a risk, eg driving a car, or even walking down the road carries a risk of death or injury. But the big difference is that those risks are usually restricted to a few people, so those activities won't usually negatively affect the entire population in some way.

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#2502515 10-Jun-2020 19:43

mattwnz:

I see Air NZ is resuming passenger flights to Japan by the end of the month https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/news/121783111/air-new-zealand-resuming-flights-to-japan
But aren't our borders closed, except for people returning, and other specific cases, or do they have information that the public doesn't have. It will obviously involve quarantine. Japanese apparently come to NZ for an entire season, so a 2 week quarantine period, is unlikely to affect them at all, especially if they do quarantine resorts.

The issue with any travelers coming into NZ, is that their entire country wears the risk, for those people who are traveling, which is why any risk needs to be eliminated. One could argue all activities carry a risk, eg driving a car, or even walking down the road carries a risk of death or injury. But the big difference is that those risks are usually restricted to a few people, so those activities won't usually negatively affect the entire population in some way.

I'm just guessing but it's likely a cargo flight using a passenger plane. If they can fly passengers the will. It doesn't mean that anyone can travel, just the same groups that have been able to travel previously.

Emirates currently flys to NZ 3-4 times a week. It's a cargo flight with a passenger plane, subsidised by the NZ government. At some point they will carry passengers again, which will let the government wind back the subsidies.

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#2502541 10-Jun-2020 20:10

Handle9:

I'm just guessing but it's likely a cargo flight using a passenger plane. If they can fly passengers the will. It doesn't mean that anyone can travel, just the same groups that have been able to travel previously.

Emirates currently flys to NZ 3-4 times a week. It's a cargo flight with a passenger plane, subsidised by the NZ government. At some point they will carry passengers again, which will let the government wind back the subsidies.

Yarp. And Singapore started today To Auckland. Christchurch on Mondays.

You only still get on board if you are a NZ Resident or Citizen returning and go into the mandatory. Regardless of where it's flying from. For the most part it's freight rolling again. But with the added bonus of a few dog-legs opening for those who are stuck for getting home

This also meant Kiwis could return home on commercial flights from a major international hub, that is Changi Airport, and not having to rely on repatriation flights.

The border, however, remains closed to tourists and anyone entering New Zealand must be a New Zealand resident or citizen and still require a 14-day managed isolation.

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#2502545 10-Jun-2020 20:23

neb:
Batman:

well it turns out WHO supports bat eating and rhinoceros killing (indirectly)?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2020/05/04/did-the-whos-endorsement-of-tcm-contribute-to-the-covid-19-pandemic/#3ff9cce11c04

You have to go through multiple levels of redirection to get to the original story, and like Chinese whispers it changes a bit on each jump. What the WHO did was recognise TCM, not endorse it. In rural China with no access to evidence-based/Western/whatever medicine, the alternative is TCM. So several hundred million people (figure freely pulled out of thin air) rely on TCM, and what the WHO did was recognise this fact. After about four or five levels of retelling that's turned into "WHO endorses eating baby fur seals" or whatever.

Let's put it this way. They should then include traditional African medicine, traditional Bush medicine, traditional native american medicine, traditional Malay medicine, Russian etc

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#2502583 10-Jun-2020 22:08

Meanwhile in America: 14 states and Puerto Rico hit highest seven-day average of new coronavirus infections.

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#2502587 10-Jun-2020 22:21

It's almost like they needed a warning to not gather en-mass for the past week.

Oh wait.

Handle9

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#2502600 10-Jun-2020 23:22

Fred99:

Handle9:

I doubt it will solely be up to Australia.

The rest of the world has decided Covid will be managed, not eliminated. Sooner or later New Zealand will reopen to the world.

The economy will dictate this. The timing will be interesting, business is already clamouring for it in code. If the economy falls apart it will likely be required by public opinion, as it has in other countries.

Much of the rest of the world seriously stuffed up - and think they now have no choice but to try to manage it.

There's a big difference between living in a country where it's inevitable that you'll eventually get C19, and in a place where it's extremely unlikely and there's time to wait until a vaccine/treatment. "Eventually" may be a long time.

There's no way NZ (or Aus) should open up the borders to travel from infected regions. That's a conscious choice to sacrifice ~1% of the population for the hope of some money that isn't going to put things back the way they were.

NZ also needs to re-assess dependence on tourism. It's a low paid industry by average - and fickle - governments should not invest in it. Thankfully we're not totally dependent on it.

I think the 1% death number is significantly higher than reality. I also think when this finally shakes out the infection rate is going to be massively higher than is currently reported.

We had approximately 80 infections at work here. They were all found by contact tracing (it's a cluster at a work site) and two were symptomatic with mild coughs. All are now recovered.

When you look at somewhere like Qatar, ~71,000 have been found to have the virus but only ~62 reported deaths. They have tested roughly 10% of the population. Even if you assume under reporting of deaths they are different numbers to those in Europe or the US where there are very low test rates. The population there is very different to a normal population due to it being a country with mostly expats workers therefore not as many older people or those with chronic diseases.

There is no doubt that this thing is massively infectious and, if you get a bad case and are a vulnerable person, lethal. How lethal to a wider population I don't think we know. We are still incredibly ignorant about this disease.

mattwnz

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#2502604 10-Jun-2020 23:45

Handle9:

When you look at somewhere like Qatar, ~71,000 have been found to have the virus but only ~62 reported deaths. They have tested roughly 10% of the population. Even if you assume under reporting of deaths they are different numbers to those in Europe or the US where there are very low test rates. The population there is very different to a normal population due to it being a country with mostly expats workers therefore not as many older people or those with chronic diseases.disease.

That is the key difference, and why NZ could have been far more adversely affected, because we do have a significant older population.

If it is mainly infecting workers, and not getting into rest homes, then the death rate is going to be significantly lower. Whereas in London, it has been reported to have already killed 1 in 20 rest home residents. In NZ our health system wouldn't have been able to cope with a large number of cases, because we don't have the ICU resources. Although some younger people did almost die from it in NZ, and quite a lot of younger people (eg younger than 50) were hospitalized, most of the deaths occurred in older people.So IMO NZ made the right decision for NZ, based on the modeling. .

Other countries may find a different approach works better for them, based on their demographics and health system.

Handle9

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#2502605 10-Jun-2020 23:51

mattwnz:

Handle9:

When you look at somewhere like Qatar, ~71,000 have been found to have the virus but only ~62 reported deaths. They have tested roughly 10% of the population. Even if you assume under reporting of deaths they are different numbers to those in Europe or the US where there are very low test rates. The population there is very different to a normal population due to it being a country with mostly expats workers therefore not as many older people or those with chronic diseases.disease.

That is the key difference, and why NZ could have been far more adversely affected, because we do have a significant older population.

If it is mainly infecting workers, and not getting into rest homes, then the death rate is going to be significantly lower. Whereas in London, it has been reported to have already killed 1 in 20 rest home residents. In NZ our health system wouldn't have been able to cope with a large number of cases, because we don't have the ICU resources. Although some younger people did almost die from it in NZ, and quite a lot of younger people (eg younger than 50) were hospitalized, most of the deaths occurred in older people.So IMO NZ made the right decision for NZ, based on the modeling. .

Other countries may find a different approach works better for them, based on their demographics and health system.

Maybe. I don't think we know enough yet. You maybe correct or not, there's still so much unknown.

When there are reliable and cheap antibody tests that will start to give us some idea of the true infection rate.

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mattwnz

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#2502655 11-Jun-2020 01:41

wellygary:

NZ started out with a suppress goal too, it only changed to eliminate when it became clear that elimination was possible....

When we went into level 4, they changed to the Elimination policy. This was discussed at one of the early level 4 media conferences.

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#2502661 11-Jun-2020 05:15

Harvard pointed out some odd satellite traffic data around a hospital in Wuhan, well before the speculated start of the pandemic. Can find it on BBC under the title "Coronavirus: Satellite traffic images may suggest virus hit Wuhan earlier".

Basically there was around a 67% increase from 2018 in car traffic for a major Wuhan hospital from October 2019. So it could suggest a health crisis began earlier.

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#2502682 11-Jun-2020 08:04

WHO sowing more confusion? (again!) they made a statement saying asymptomatic spread is rare. the internet reacted (saying why did we need to lockdown. we've been fooled, etc etc etc), but the doctors say that's not true - WHO is wrong and shouldn't have said that because of the confusion it's caused. something like that.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/09/health/asymptomatic-presymptomatic-coronavirus-spread-explained-wellness/index.html

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#2502684 11-Jun-2020 08:17

Handle9:

When you look at somewhere like Qatar, ~71,000 have been found to have the virus but only ~62 reported deaths.

The other thing about Qatar is that it hasn't finished yet. If you look at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/qatar/ the peak new cases was only about 2 weeks ago. The deaths associated with those new cases won't occur for a while yet, especially if they get good hospital treatment. If you look at the Daily New Deaths graph, you'll see that they're still rising even though Daily New Cases is decreasing. So the fatality rate will rise.

This page shows an Infection Fatality Rate of 1.4% for New York City, on the assumptions that the infection rate is 10 x what is observed, and the actual covid-19 deaths are 2 x what is reported.

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