Australian Response

Straw man much?

It is draconian, I agree.

But keeping people in strict isolation is pretty much the definition of "quarantine". It's not a novel idea, nor one that is unique to Australia.

Ireland imposes strict quarantine obligations on people who arrive from designated countries. It's strongly arguable that they pose less of a risk of transmission than people who live, not in the same country, but in the same building as numerous infected people.

What are you on about? Did I mention anything about "rejoicing " in this post? My post was wrong? So they aren't policing peoples alcohol intake in quarantined building? That's good

I was at Ireland Serbia match last week that had 25,000 at it.

Two groups of people on this thread, the Aus based ones who refer to the past as justification for why the Zero Covid was the correct strategy but apart from one or two posters are reluctant to discuss the present and future, or will only address selective parts.

The non-Aus ones who range from rabid Anti-Aus to circumspect/curious, many of whom ignore Australia's successful record until recently, and only want to discuss Australia/NZ's less perfect present/future.

I was at a football game a couple of weeks ago in Australia with 48,000 at it. This week the crowd was 59,000 (though I wasn't there myself).

The point is, the lockdowns are local; lockdowns are only in place where there is infection in the community. Likewise travel restrictions; I cannot travel to New South Wales, but I just got back from two weeks' trekking in the Northern Territory with people from Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia. The travel restrictions are tough, but they are effective in preventing the spread of the infection, and it's because of them that I have been subject to very little in the way of lockdown, and my state has seen only 9 covid deaths since the start of the pandemic.

The future depends crucially on vaccination, and here we have two problems. The first has been widely noted; it's the slow pace of vaccination. But that's not an insoluble problem. The second has been less discussed; what level of vaccination do we need in order to reduce other controls, and still not have a blowout of infections and deaths? The federal government is promoting a plan for phased reduction of restrictions when 70% and 80% targets are reached for adult vaccination; not all of the states are entirely committed to this yet. But what bothers me is that none of the discussion I have seen refers to much (or anything) in the way of epidemiological modelling to justify these particular targets, or to offer any assurance that these levels of vaccination will be enough to avoid the blowout. I'm not saying they won't be, or that modelling on this doesn't exist; just that nobody seems to be talking about this very much, although to me it looks like the central question.

how long has Auckland been in the toughest restrictions in the world outside China now?

Exactly. It might make us feel better looking at Australia and NZ now having their localised lockdowns and stating that Zero Covid doesn't work but at the end of the day we've had Lockdowns and restrictions in some shape or form since March last year

We've also had 5,000 deaths and almost 400,000 recorded cases, 5 times the Australian figures on a fifth of their population

Not sure what you imagine that we or anyone else could have done about that, the physical location and relative isolation of both helped enormously. There was no no magic like this that was available to the rest of the world and these stats add very little to any argument for alternatives.

The reason people continue to look in is that they long remained a rallying call for COVID zero, something that now been shown to be basically ineffective. One can appreciate the parochialism on how things have gone but they need to hit those targets, something we looking in know are quite an ask.

Off the top of my head there are 2 ways to take care of the border issue... Either close it or strike a deal with the assembly/westminster that all external borders to the Island would be closed and controlled

We're not surrounded by 500m other people, we have at least 45km of a sea to the next island... The virus only spreads within 2 meters so that's the equivalent to 22,500 buffers

None of this has any basis in the real world and you actually can't stop this thing spreading.

The man on the moon nearly took a decade and we'll be well past COVID. Anyway moving on and I'll leave you to your happy musings.

It's absurd to say that Covid zero has been shown to be "basically ineffective". It hasn't worked perfectly but, on any measure it has worked better than other strategies that have been tried - fewer and shorter restrictions on people's lives, fewer infections, fewer deaths, a lower economic cost.

The only way to oppose it is (a) to disregard covid deaths as wholly irrelevant to a judgment about the efficacy of covid measures, and (b) to claim, as gral6 does, that it involves permanent travel restrictions and, when people point out that you are lying about this, to ignore them, wait for a while and then repeat the lie.

It's not a very persuasive case, on the whole.

I wouldn't be declaring some major victory yet. Its inevitable that those countries will get a sizeable covid wave when they eventually open up

Hence why the plan is for 70% of population to be vaccinated, which going by current rates is only 2 months away (which isnt too far fetched, everyone in my social/work circles have had at least one if not two doses, so I believe it an achievable target at least by end of year anyway).

Opening before then would just undo all the success from the past 18 months. At least have your population vaccinated BEFORE unleashing the virus, Australia have the luxury of being able to do this. This is the point Peregrinus is constantly making which is constantly ignored. Australia have agreed that covid zero is not sustainable long term, focus is now on vaccination. How on earth can that not be seen as a sensible approach?