The journey that COVID-19 will take us on

[nerrrd]

The virus is not harmless, and the risk is certainly not to be scoffed at. That said, by itself it's about as dangerous as one of the nastier variations (for example, the 1968 Hong Kong H3N2 influenza virus which killed 4 million worldwide) of the annual ‘flu virus; and the usual flu killed 500 Kiwis in 2019. Not worth the death and disease that's going to follow, inevitably, from crashing economies and vastly increasing unemployment: unwanted job loss is associated with a 75% percent increase in the probability of death – the equivalent of adding 10 years to a person’s age

What ought to be have been made clear to us all ever since April-May is that the most at risk are those over 70 with severe pre-existing conditions - and so we should do what society has always done with epidemics down the ages because that principle hasn't changed: Quarantine (and care for) the Infected, Isolate (and support and visit ) the Vulnerable, Wash our Hands, Stay Home if Sick, and otherwise Carry On.

I have a feeling though it might be how infectious this one is that sets it apart form the flu. The numbers are higher than most annual illnesses given the short period of time in circulation, even so I would think COVID 19 would have had to be in circulation for a number of years to get any statistically useful numbers for comparison to other established illnesses.

Also it takes time to figure this stuff out, I don’t blame the docs for not immediately knowing everything about COViD 19. I do blame people who criticise the public health services with the benefit of hindsight for decisions that were made months ago, which I think is unfair.

How many families in NZ have loved ones who are over 70 and suffering from pre-existing conditions? My guess would be there’s a lot of them. How much isolation from each other would (or will) we be prepared to tolerate? With people breaking out of managed isolation on a regular basis and the leak of COVID 19 back into the community in Auckland, this suggests to me that sequestering one section of society effectively from the rest might be impossible in practice given the numbers involved.

[RDJ]

The virus don't care about fair.

But, since we are not viruses, let me address your concern about the alleged unfairness of hindsight.

First, and importantly, the pandemic was spreading in January and February. We were generally all in agreement by March to 'flatten the curve'. One would expect good planning and preparation to do that; with solid stocks of PPE, pre-flight checking, after-arrival checking, isolation guidelines for the vulnerable and quarantine locations for the still-allowed-inbound, to be gotten ready and tested.

This didn't happen.

Second and actually more damning: when it became clear that there was no curve to flatten, the curve was not taking off, what did our lords and mistresses decree? No change in the strategy.

But thirdly and this is serious: recall what was bruited and spruiked abroad the land by Ye Media.

Modelling that a professor of physics in New Zealand provided to the Prime Minister was said to convince her that 80,000 people were going to die if she didn't listen to her friends from London and lock New Zealand down now. So, our NZ politicians and technocrats misapplied a completely inaccurate theoretical model developed by a (discredited) professor of mathematical biology in the UK and adapted by a professor of physics in New Zealand, to us humans encountering a variant of a known virus species, using the most scary miscalculated outcome as a stick with which to beat us into our own homes to be imprisoned. At very short notice, and entirely without appropriate planning as outlined above.

Ardern 19th March:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has dismissed speculation on social media that the Government is poised to announce a nationwide lockdown to combat coronavirus.

"We will share with you the most up-to-date information daily. You can trust us as a source of that information," she told reporters in Rotorua. "Do feel free to visit covid19.govt.nz - otherwise dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth."

Bloomfield 19th March:

"A lockdown is not something that I’ve hear discussed by anybody. We've seen other countries do that when they have a very high proportion of cases with committee spread".

Event horizon 24th March 24th:

Level 4 Lockdown.

So, pick your option.

Either they lied about NEVER discussing a lockdown or they changed the ENTIRE response of our country because of a model and a chat with Ardern's 'friends' in Blairland.

When friends overseas painted a bleak picture of the advancing pall of coronavirus, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern listened.

"[They were] saying, 'Go, just shut down, because here I am in lockdown with thousands of people dying. Just shut down'," she tells Stuff's Coronavirus NZ podcast.

It helped make the decision to "go hard and go early", to close New Zealand's borders and enforce a lockdown.

***

Where are we now? Still pursuing the same economy-killing strategy.

And what is the disease like now we know more?

On September 23, the new best estimate infection fatality rate by the CDC in the for the ages 20 to 49 is 0.02%.

That's a 99.98% survival rate.

Estimated survival rates by all ages from the CDC
Ages 0 to 19: 99.997%
20-49: 99.98%
50-69: 99.5%
70+: 94.6%.

This is not the Global Killer we were locked down for.

We should be able to Go About Our Lives with washing, distancing, isolation and quarantine in proportionate measure.

[pritch]

The virus is not harmless, and the risk is certainly not to be scoffed at. That said, by itself it's about as dangerous as one of the nastier variations (for example, the 1968 Hong Kong H3N2 influenza virus which killed 4 million worldwide) of the annual ‘flu virus; and the usual flu killed 500 Kiwis in 2019. Not worth the death and disease that's going to follow, inevitably, from crashing economies and vastly increasing unemployment: unwanted job loss is associated with a 75% percent increase in the probability of death – the equivalent of adding 10 years to a person’s age

What ought to be have been made clear to us all ever since April-May is that the most at risk are those over 70 with severe pre-existing conditions - and so we should do what society has always done with epidemics down the ages because that principle hasn't changed: Quarantine (and care for) the Infected, Isolate (and support and visit ) the Vulnerable, Wash our Hands, Stay Home if Sick, and otherwise Carry On.

You've been mislead to an extent. It's true that most of the fatalities are older with other problems, and that was always made clear, but that's ot the whole story. Young fit college football players "recovered" but now have heart problems. Others listed as receovered find themselves on the waiting list for a lung transplant. While the main problem was the interstitial pneumonia, the virus attacks different people in different ways. The experts are still learning. It would be dangerous to join Trump in describing it as flu.

[RDJ]

You've been mislead to an extent. It's true that most of the fatalities are older with other problems, and that was always made clear, but that's ot the whole story. Young fit college football players "recovered" but now have heart problems. Others listed as receovered find themselves on the waiting list for a lung transplant. While the main problem was the interstitial pneumonia, the virus attacks different people in different ways. The experts are still learning. It would be dangerous to join Trump in describing it as flu.

500 people a year die from the usual flu in NZ in other years. That does not mean all the rest do well with the usual flu either. There is a reason we encourage people to get yearly / seasonal flu shots = to avoid the "recovered" you refer to having life-long problems. That does not mean this virus is worth beggaring a generation of Kiwis for. And WTF does Trump have to do with this?

[Katman]

And WTF does Trump have to do with this?

I think he means you're as dumb as him.

[nerrrd]

The virus don't care about fair.

But, since we are not viruses, let me address your concern about the alleged unfairness of hindsight...

Wow you’ve obviously gone over all this with a fine tooth comb, good for you. I can’t speak to any political machinations that may or may not have gone on in the background as I don’t scrutinise every single statement made by those involved in such minute detail.

So speaking in generalities as is my wont, the number of cases in NZ went up steeply towards the end of March, we went into lockdown, they started to go down. I don’t see how that can be dismissed as there being no curve to flatten. Again, cases started popping up in the community in Auckland again, we went into lockdown again, the number of cases declined again. So maybe the strategy of locking down does work, at least in curbing transmission.

As for the numbers suggested in the original modelling, 80,000 people is only 1.6 percent of the total NZ population, which does not seem all that outlandish to me when you put it in those terms as a possible risk factor for a largely unknown (at the time) and extremely virulent disease.

Even using that current 0.02% fatality figure which you quote from the CDC, that’s 1000 people - twice the number you quote for the annual number of flu deaths in NZ. Given that there should be a great deal of immunity already in the community for flu thanks to yearly outbreaks and widespread vaccination, I don’t blame anyone for being concerned that the number of deaths from COVID 19, for which there is no immunity, could blow out to levels that would be unacceptable to the general population.

Anyway from my perspective it is far too early to be saying we should have done this or that differently and it was obvious all along that only certain people were at risk etc etc. I don’t see any conclusive evidence yet that the measures taken were unreasonable or ineffective, or that the health authorities are not taking note of new information and adjusting their strategy to suit. So we disagree.

[RDJ]

Hmmm. Let me put it another way.

If the pandemic was / is a lethal and as contagious as advertised we would not be debating its severity.

Many people would be sick, a large number would be in hospital and a lot more would be dead or in Intensive Care.

The unpoliced Burn-Loot-Murder protests would have spread contagion throughout the Auckland isthmus, and the Sturgis motorcycle rally would have done the same throughout the states contiguous with and adjacent to South Dakota.

Hospitals would be full and large percentages of health care workers inside and outside the hospitals would be ill, and / or quarantining themselves from their families and others; their occupational mortality rate would be in double figures. (Many senior medical staff are like me - well over 60, overweight, and with co-morbidities).

Supermarket workers would, sadly, have made up a large % of casualties so far as would hotel staff in quarantine hotels.

You and I would know personally people in hospital, in ICU, or in the funeral home as a result of WuFlu.

And if we used the same methodology of assigning deaths to the yearly StandardFlu as we are doing with the ChiWuFlu, the annual flu death rate (i.e. by counting everybody who died with flu-like symptoms, or from other causes but with a positive flu test in the last 30, 60, or 90 days, and so on) then our annual seasonal flu death rate in 2019 would have been at least 2 orders of magnitude greater. i.e. 50,000 not 500.

And of course if Ardern and Bloomfield and PieWatts and Hipkisser & Co really believed their rhetoric of risk, they would distancing themselves from each other, let alone getting selfies up close and personal with the great unwashed.

None of the above is happening.

***

The reason I have kept tabs on both the science and the spruiking from the beginning i.e. January, is because at the outset, I said to myself, "Self, WTF. This must be serious. Because the ChiComs just trashed the economy of their whole province. They've locked down first 5, then 9, then 15 million people in a couple of weeks! What are they so scared of? What do they know that they are not telling?"

Also, I worked in Asia during the first SARS outbreak; and in Africa during the last-but-one Ebola outbreak; and I thought "Oh F, here we go, the Full Captain Trips experience is possible."

Then as I watched and listened and read - lo and behold, it came to pass that...

1. The ChiComs forbade domestic travel from Wuhan while letting all international travel out of Wuhan continue for the CNY global dispora. Q.E.D.
2. The initially frighteningly high CFR (case fatality rate) kept going down as more tests were done.
3. Major political, financial and PR incentives were globally put in place to assign deaths to ChiVirus whenever possible.
4. The old people were disproportionately hit (Italy, New York, Belgium etc). But the annualized death rate for the over-70s remained relatively flat.
5. Politicians loved them their new controls over normies - but did not try anything with BLM, iwi, gangs etc.
...there's more of course.


You don't, you know, need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows.

[nerrrd]

Hmmm. Let me put it another way...

I may have missed a memo somewhere along the way, but I don’t remember being told we were all going to die.

What I do remember being told is that if nothing was done COVID 19 would spread quickly throughout the population, a significant number of people would become ill enough to require hospital treatment, which would overwhelm the limited resources available and likely lead to a very large number of deaths which would not have occurred otherwise.

So we did the lockdown, broke the chain of transmission, and the number of deaths ends up being very small. That seems like a successful strategy to me. I don’t see how anyone can claim categorically that a different, less restrictive approach would have had the same successful result - the evidence overseas seems to be do nothing, really bad things happen, do something, not so bad.

So I was never expecting the nightmare scenario you describe, but maybe I’m just an optimist. Whether the cost to the country of achieving that successful outcome was ‘worth it’ is definitely up for debate.

[RDJ]

We were told 80,000 Kiwis would die if we were not locked down. If you missed that, no worries, a lot of other people heard it and read it.

In other, yet relevant news: in the UK...

"How close is the NHS to being 'overwhelmed'? Just 1,800 out of 110,000 occupied beds are taken up by Covid-19 patients as thousands more than normal die at home of other causes."


The choice was never binary: do nothing or do everything. There was a range of choices and trade-offs to be made but the Princess of the Pestilence took us down a one-way cul-de-sac and won't back out of it.

[F5 Dave]

And the UK and the US and most others have had far worse economic consequences than NZ. Should we try get in on that action?

[RDJ]

And the UK and the US and most others have had far worse economic consequences than NZ. Should we try get in on that action?

Sure, Dave, sure.

The OECD estimates that New Zealand’s GDP will fall by 8.9 per cent this year, worse than the OECD average of 7.5 per cent.

The U.S. economy is forecast to contract 6.1% this year.

New Zealand had huge advantages in terms of isolation, distance and small population, yet our extremely heavy lockdown has resulted in a worse economic outcome than most.

Two thirds of OECD countries expected to fare better economically than New Zealand. Australia and South Korea are only expected to contract by 5 per cent and 1.2 per cent this year respectively.

You were saying, Dave?

[Viking01]

Sure, Dave, sure.

The OECD estimates that New Zealand’s GDP will fall by 8.9 per cent this year, worse than the OECD average of 7.5 per cent.

The U.S. economy is forecast to contract 6.1% this year.

New Zealand had huge advantages in terms of isolation, distance and small population, yet our extremely heavy lockdown has resulted in a worse economic outcome than most.

Two thirds of OECD countries expected to fare better economically than New Zealand. Australia and South Korea are only expected to contract by 5 per cent and 1.2 per cent this year respectively.

You were saying, Dave?

Morning.

Could you provide a link to the data that you presented?

So, given that you said earlier that there were options in-between (i) do nothing (ii) lockdown borders, what were you proposing?

Cheers,
Viking

[nerrrd]

We were told 80,000 Kiwis would die if we were not locked down. If you missed that, no worries, a lot of other people heard it and read it.

I know I may be quibbling, but I think the modelling said 80,000 could die if nothing were done. I’m pretty sure the official communications were only talking in general terms (thousands, maybe tens of thousands) at the time.

The government were subsequently quizzed by journalists about the modelling when it became public knowledge and conceded that it influenced their decision making.

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/covid-19-...new-zealanders

[pritch]

I was listening to Hosking (briefly) this morning and basically he rates the NZ response an over raaction.

In the early days we were receiving reports of what was happening in Italy. People were lying in hospital corridors, there were no beds or ventilators available. It was a nightmare scenario, and that being the information available at the time, that's what the government prepared for.

Should we open up the borders too soon, we could still experience that situation.

[RDJ]

I was listening to Hosking (briefly) this morning and basically he rates the NZ response an over raaction.

In the early days we were receiving reports of what was happening in Italy. People were lying in hospital corridors, there were no beds or ventilators available. It was a nightmare scenario, and that being the information available at the time, that's what the government prepared for.

Should we open up the borders too soon, we could still experience that situation.

In Italy early on, there were daily flights into Milan direct from Virus Epicenter Wuhan.

There are approx 100,000 of Chinese workers in the fashion and automotive industries in Lombardy and Milan.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/74694266.cms

Also Italy has an unusually high number of elderly living with multiple generations in the same house.

Then, Xi shut down domestic travel out of Wuhan but left international travel open for CNY.

Plus, early on it was unclear that people could be asymptomatic and still contagious i.e. Italian hospital staff did not know people could transmit infection while asymptomatic.

That was then, this is now. Yet in NZ we still "go lockdown".

Also the NZ government did NOT prepare at all adequately, either for ICUs being full and staff getting infected*, nor for a secure border.

*I along with many others had to buy my own PPE. Fortunately I still had enough to share as after SARS and Ebola I decided not to get caught out.

I know that is not the 'hard and fast' paid-for-with-$50-million-of our-tax-dollars narrative that the Princess of the Pestilence would like the country to believe; hence the importance of doing one's own research.