The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe • Hacker News Board

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#171

Post by josephg » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 12:35 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #166

josephg wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also no western nation that tried NZ/Aus's "go early, go hard" policy of lockdowns and didn't reach 0 local cases. Maybe the real difference is that we're an island. But much more likely is our different public policies. And if you need evidence, the UK is an island (like Aus/NZ) with policies more like the US and - surprise! They have case numbers more similar to the US than similar to Aus/NZ. If you really…

I think you have it backwards. I never said being an Island will save you, see the UK. Still the fact remains that there is no other Western country which is no Island that has zero Covid. If you accept this fact we can start discussing the underlying reasons. Maybe it’s because they’re islands, and maybe you’re right and it’s because of the policy in place. I believe it’s the former, because it’s way more difficult…

Yeah I agree there are no other western countries with zero covid except a couple island nations. There's also no other countries which have seriously tried to get covid to 0 except some island nations - which is interesting.

I'm convinced the most important difference is policy, but I wonder if there might be some psychological effect of living on an island all by yourself which makes you think "Well, can we just pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist?". Those thoughts might be harder to think in Europe.

> It’s basically like saying the state of New York could have been able to drive COVID down to zero while other states had it exploding.

I think Canada could drive covid down to zero by closing the US border, then enforcing strict lockdowns. (And apparently they have closed the border to the US.) I think the US or the UK could do the same if they wanted at a national level. Well, at least in theory. I acknowledge it would be much more difficult to do the same in a small european nation. At least, it would be difficult to do it alone.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#172

Post by josephg » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 12:45 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #168

josephg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With closed borders, Canada is basically an island like Australia, NZ and the UK. Lots of posters here seem convinced that being an island makes it easy to control covid. If thats the most important factor, I'd love to hear some theories on why the numbers in canada aren't coming down to 0, like they have in Australia and NZ?

Key detail here is likely that it should have been done early enough. Once the virus is inside it is very hard to contain. Specially when asymptomatic carrier are common. Chain of them can keep virus alive and spreading for weeks or months.

Yeah its much easier to do before the numbers spike. Some analysis I heard recently said if you do a lockdown, delaying by 1 day at the outset leads to locking down a whole extra week at the other end.

The numbers are coming down (slowly) in Montreal now that they have a strict lockdown. I think the process could work; but at this point it might take so long to get the numbers under control that people wouldn't tolerate it. Especially not when the vaccine feels so close. We'd be talking like, 4 months in a row of strict lockdown + business closures.

The other aspect is contact tracing. When numbers are very low, its much easier to do diligent contact tracing around every infected person. In the recent outbreak in Sydney they tracked down and personally contacted everyone they could place in the vicinity of an infected person and asked them to self isolate. By the time a handful of those people tested positive, most of them had already been isolating and as a result didn't infect anyone - which broke the chain of transmission. We could do that because the number of new cases was only around ~10/day. That would be way less feasible at Montreal's 1600 cases/day.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#173

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 12:49 PM UTC

sto_hristo wrote: post #165

mewse wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your source? What geographic region are you counting as “Melbourne”, for example? If we’re talking just about Melbourne’s CBD (which might be a sensible thing to do seeing as we’re talking about people being clustered in the cities and not about the surrounding suburbs, national parks, and rural areas which presumably are included in your “Melbourne” number), then the actual number for Melbourne is around 19,0…

edited post with fix on New York and added sources We're talking about the cities as a whole, not selectively for this or that neighborhood, or that particular bus.

[deleted]

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#174

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 12:51 PM UTC

josephg wrote: post #154

ahepp wrote: post #131

Last spring, we were flattening the curve. Last summer, we were waiting for a vaccine. Last fall, we were solving the logistical challenges for production. Now I'm starting to see headlines that "just because there's a vaccine, doesn't mean it's over"? I'm 25. I've spent the last year in a small apartment alone with my dog. If the problem is that we didn't lock down well enough the first time, why should I believe a…

The problem is that if 80% of the population do their civic duty and stay home while the remaining 20% carry on with life as usual - go to bars and sporting events, protest, and so on then the numbers won't come down. The reality of covid is that a few selfish people can easily ruin the hard work of everyone else. Here in Australia we tried asking people who were infected to just quarantine in their own homes. Eventu…

[deleted]

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#175

Post by prox » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 12:54 PM UTC

mewse wrote: post #129

prox wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good place I could read about how Australia did it?

This might be a bit low-level, but the Wikipedia page [1] has a pretty good blow-by-blow description of events. I recommend looking at the Victoria section of that page, as Victoria had by far the largest outbreak to cope with. For a more high-level overview, I like the BBC’s article, which talks about their opinions on the most important steps taken by the government, as well as the most critical mistakes. Note that…

Thanks! Checking those links now.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#176

Post by irq11 » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

gridspy wrote: post #142

icelancer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The New Zealand borders are open and accepting citizen and essential arrivals into quarantine with a long waiting list. This effectively reads "closed."

Strong borders are the price you have to pay for very little restriction inside them when most of the world is busy infecting its populace. But yes, tourism or business trips are now infeasible. Fortunately it turns out that they were never essential.

> Fortunately, it turns out that they were never essential.

HN user doesn’t see the need for something, therefore it must not be essential.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#177

Post by irq11 » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

mkl wrote: post #65

irq11 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they open their borders.

The NZ border is unlikely to be open to non-citizens this year. We'll wait until we've vaccinated ~everyone, and since we have no community transmission, we're sitting back in the queue a bit.

That’s great for tiny New Zealand, but the suggestion was that this path will lead to eradication.

It will not.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#178

Post by votepaunchy » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

gridspy wrote: post #54

baxtr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, agreed. It’s embarrassing for the UK... my point was that there is no example of a western, liberal country not being an island that was able to reach zero Covid. It’s just way easier as an island state.

New Zealand is about as large as Europe. Larger than the UK. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/08/map-how-n...

The EU is 16x the size of NZ.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#179

Post by jjgreen » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

josephg wrote: post #59

zpeti wrote: post #12

China and Vietnam get the virus under control by using centralised quarantines. I wonder how many people supporting the sentiments of this article would be ok with someone arriving at their doorstep, taking you to a prison basically whether you agree or not, and quaranteening you there for at least 10 days with other covid people. Perhaps they also take your family too, in case they are also infected. Are you willing…

Australian here, living in Victoria (where we had a second wave and a strict lockdown that took us to 0). They didn't round up the whole country and put us in prison (!?). The rules we had were: - Stay home. The only allowed reasons to leave our homes were essential supplies (eg visiting the supermarket), caring for family, going to work (if you couldn't work from home) or exercise (eg going for a walk). Or if you ne…

> On the spot fines from police

Shouldn't it be the courts who issue fines?

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#180

Post by stonith » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #166

josephg wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also no western nation that tried NZ/Aus's "go early, go hard" policy of lockdowns and didn't reach 0 local cases. Maybe the real difference is that we're an island. But much more likely is our different public policies. And if you need evidence, the UK is an island (like Aus/NZ) with policies more like the US and - surprise! They have case numbers more similar to the US than similar to Aus/NZ. If you really…

I think you have it backwards. I never said being an Island will save you, see the UK. Still the fact remains that there is no other Western country which is no Island that has zero Covid. If you accept this fact we can start discussing the underlying reasons. Maybe it’s because they’re islands, and maybe you’re right and it’s because of the policy in place. I believe it’s the former, because it’s way more difficult…

> It’s basically like saying the state of New York could have been able to drive COVID down to zero while other states had it exploding.

This is exactly what Western Australia did. The Australian response was not nationally coordinated and each state has been doing their own thing. They have land borders between each other and yet the Victorian outbreak didn't spread to either NSW or SA because they implemented border checks by lining the roads with police and fining people who attempted to circumvent them, while WA implemented a hard border even earlier as soon as there was a non-zero number of cases.

The Australian states are geographically larger than many European countries, so I don't think it's that it's an island. The only effect nationally was hotel quarantine for arriving flights which is possible for landlocked countries as well.