It’s normal here in NZ and with the exception of borders, restrictions were removed a fair while ago. The economy is considerably better off than most expected too.
However, Stats NZ national accounts manager Paul Pascoe said the effects of Covid-19 on different industries had varied “and for some industries these may persist for some time”.
The rebound was not enough to make up for the lost activity during the lockdown period, with GDP in the 12 months ended on September 30 down 2.2 per cent on the prior year.
I am certain GDP has been nobody’s primary concern in NZ during this time, but -2.2 % is not bad considering how international NZ’s economy is. For comparison, UK is at -9.6 for the same period US -2.9 with a far higher human cost.
There are many who argue against lockdowns, but I haven’t yet seen an argument for that approach with an example of how it could look (for death toll and the economy). Has any country managed both those things without a lockdown?
A hand waving “that approach could never work in X country because it’s so different there” seems the standard response to any strategy that has been proven to work.
Sweeden is one example, the death toll is still manageable and the life is pretty much still normal.
Not a country: florida, it is one of the state in the usa that has the least covid related restriction. They are doing very well. Went there myself to visit recently.
Its not hard to see why lockdown is not worth it. According to cdc, covid has very very low ifr :
It gets real dark real fast. The Post link suggests that their approach has worked, as long as you value a human life at no more than $1.1m. They are approaching 8k deaths and their approach is suggested to have added 5k to that.
“ Assume that the differential Swedish approach dampens the GDP fall this year by 1 percentage point. This represents a gain of approximately $5.6 billion. Also suppose that the approach has caused 5,000 extra deaths — a reasonable guess from comparisons with other Nordic countries. How could one estimate that loss of life in economic terms? The value of a statistical life, used by the Swedish Transport Administration in its cost-benefit analyses of investment in traffic security, is approximately $4.6 million. Using this number, the economic cost of lost lives would be as high as $22.9 billion — clearly outweighing the benefits from the smaller GDP fall. One might argue that the value of lost lives should be set much lower, as the vast majority of deaths have been among elderly people, with fewer years left to enjoy life: 89 percent of the dead in Sweden have been above 70 years of age, and 67 percent above 80. One reaches the break-even point in my calculation if one lowers the value of an average life lost to $1.12 million. For the Swedish approach to be “profitable,” the average life lost must be valued lower than that.”
That this is not some uncontrollable inevitability is the whole point. Places that were proactive have less economic harm and far less death and illness. I suppose people aren't going to change, so the ship has sailed for much of the world, but it wasn't inevitable for vast numbers of people to get infected.
As far as 1/200 being subjectively low, if something had a 1/200 chance in killing you, would you do it 5 times a day? We can answer probably not of course, because you probably wouldn't do it once a week (or you wouldn't be).
The point is, even without any precaution, they might never be infected in the first place, so probably death from covid for this specific age group is : probability of getting infected * 1/200. So even less than 1/200.
If I'm in this age group, obviously I would happily take this chance, if the alternative is lockdown/restriction.
> As far as 1/200 being subjectively low, if something had a 1/200 chance in killing you, would you do it 5 times a day?
It would probably be considerably more fun to self isolate while taking up drinking, smoking, motor biking without a helmet and a variety of other risky activities. At least those are interesting, and they are probably less risky.
That is his opinion, which I disagree. I myself would not consider it 'failed'. Sweeden total death this year is not significantly different compared to previous year.
What are you taking about? Sweden reported that this November was the deadliest in the last 100 years since the Spanish flu in 1918. Compared to Norway, Sweden has 20x more deaths from covid (Sweden 8000 vs Norway 400 deaths) and Sweden has only 2x population (10M vs 5M). And Norway has a better GDP than Sweden despite stricter lockdown policies.
Searching about I see data like yours and ones like those I include below, which show an excess. Why these differ, I don’t understand.
In your link, if you assume the death rate for the remainder of the year will remain static and calculate the end of year total (it’s roughly adding 5%) you get a number that looks like it spikes, but not hugely.
The below show a clear excess and a long tail after the spike in deaths.
A conspiracy theorist acquaintance of my sisters sent her data in our country that was wrong, same argument - look COVID-19 isn't killing anybody, it's a plot, blah bah. The raw data (weekly mortality) is published by government on a weekly basis and I just explained to my sister how to download it into Calc or Excel or whatever and see for herself.
One of the recurring things with conspiracy theorists is that they aren't in the least interested in fact checking. They're engaged in a search only for reassurance that they're correct, if you give conflicting data they keep searching but if any source will agree with them it must be right.
You probably shouldn't add only 5% based on the remaining days. Deaths stats are frequently preliminary for weeks or even a few months as reporting itself may be delayed (in particular right now if you're quarantined and a sick person passes peacefully regardless of cause what's the point of breaking quarantine to do paperwork more quickly? They aren't any more or less dead if you do the December 1st death paperwork on December 15th)
We'll see what the number end up, covid has spread since the beginning of this year, highly unlikely that in next 2 weeks suddenly the death jump significantly.
Also keep in mind that the excess death may or may not be due to covid alone.
> highly unlikely that in next 2 weeks suddenly the death jump significantly.
Is it? Cases have been spiking but deaths are going in the other direction or are flat lining. There is usually an increase in deaths about a month after covid cases go up.
Even conservative modelling predicts a lot more deaths (+50%) and less conservative models see a doubling or more.
The entire country only locked down once, starting March, reducing to milder conditions in April and totally ending (going to "Alert Level 1" which isn't the same as before COVID but it's pretty much normality in everyday life) on June 9th. But Auckland (their biggest city), locked back down after another cluster of unknown origin was detected, perhaps related to an import business, for several weeks from August, and the rest of the country was at "Alert Level 2" in that period until the first week of October.
Subsequent small outbreaks have not triggered a lockdown because their government remained confident it understood the scope of the infection although one leak got close, they asked people not to travel into central Auckland for a day or two at one point and sealed off a residential building while they tested everybody who lives there.
They anticipate continuing to have occasional small outbreaks detected, e.g. a border worker gets infected, infects a family member before a test spots it - and their plans assume they will either quickly achieve confidence they've contained the outbreak or they'll lock a region or if necessary the entire country back down to eliminate.
For example at a press conference the press basically wanted to know if the government was imagining people should prepare to pay for an extra week's accommodation on vacation in case they can't return home (obviously unaffordable to many families) but the government seemed to be more thinking about if you've left a week's cat food and instructions for a neighbour, do you have a way to tell them they need to feed your cat for an extra week? So, personal anxieties rather than population scale ones, the government can pick up a hotel bill but it can't bring your pets back to life.
Just last night on the news they announced we were actually out of recession. The bounce back has been pretty good. Tourism is still fairly impacted. Most everything else feels pretty normal.
The lockdowns were worth it IMO. Especially now we see it ravaging the rest of the world becoming more and more severe. That just feels totally foreign to me since we only experienced a very mild outbreak initially, followed by a tiny one a bit later on.
At the of the day how it is received is down to the individual. Our family is healthy and we've all kept our jobs and none of us are suffering any form of hardship. Lockdown was temporary.
Some people have lost businesses, jobs or careers and they're going to be less happy about that.
From my day to day perspective my life is very normal. I remember the level of background anxiety grew rapidly the more it spread into the community in the initial outbreak. The second and third waves around the world look increasingly terrifying.
Can you explain your preference for no-lockdown?
NZ is covid free, the economy is rebounding fast and we have had very few deaths and (relative to others) short lockdowns. Unemployment is considerably less than expected. Christmas is shaping up to be normal.
The results in NZ are only subjective if you pull some elaborate contortions, NZ has done well.
Few months lockdown is not short at all. Even then they still not allowing international visitor.
My preference is simply based on cost/benefit analysis.
I'm not opposed of covid free at all, as long as whatever method you choose doesn't cause problem that outweight the risk.
Here is some example that is not a lockdown:
Increasing health care capacity
Developing better treatment
Use more accurate test
Sweeden, florida has done very well too without lockdown. Although there is still possibility that their politician succumb to pressure and enact lockdown in the future.
Downside of lockdown: unemployment, bankruptcy, mental health issue, delayed treatment of other illness, kids can't attend in person school, etc.
You can say that all of these is not big deal. I still respect you while I disagree with you, after all its subjective preference.
>elaborate contortions
Please don't use these words just because we have different value.
You give Florida as an example. If we scaled up New Zealand's population to Florida's their total COVID-19 fatalities would be about 100. But Florida's policy approach has killed over 20 thousand people already, and shows no sign of stopping.
You list as a downside of New Zealand's approach unemployment. Scaled up, New Zealand would have about 600k unemployed people. But Florida actually has 650k. So that seems like instead of avoid unemployment, an economy devastated by pandemic but unwilling to lockdown has shrunk anyway.
So so far your cost is twenty thousand extra friends and relatives dead, and your "benefit" is fifty thousand extra unemployed.
Did you actually perform a cost/benefit analysis? I don't think you did.
>But Florida's policy approach has killed over 20 thousand people already, and shows no sign of stopping.
Keep in mind that the 20000 death number is highly inflated because it include death with covid not just due to covid. People who happen to be covid positive during the death is included in the number.
Most importantly with the current death number, i didn't say florida government handling it perfectly but I much much rather to live in this place if I have choice.
If you think its a horrible way to live then only thing i can say: to each their own.
>and shows no sign of stopping
as more and more the virus spread, more people develop natural immunity
as times go the treatment method improve
and then there is vaccine coming
>But Florida actually has 650k.
Keep in mind that unemployment number is not all solely caused by lockdown
But for sure some unemployment is caused by lockdown due to simple logic: if you don't allow business to open due to lockdown, the worker wouldn't have job.
My simple cost-benefit analysis:
The risk/cost of covid :
less than 1% death rate and mostly skewed to older population
The lockdown risk/cost:
Some unemployment, some bankruptcy, some mental health issue, some delayed treatment of other illness, kids can't attend in person school, etc
At least for me The lockdown risk/cost is much more than the risk/cost of covid
>So so far your cost is twenty thousand extra friends and relatives dead, and your "benefit" is fifty thousand extra unemployed.
More accurate example would be: 1 people I know dead due to covid, benefit : life continue as normal for the rest of people.
Pretty damn worth it to me.
> Keep in mind that the 20000 death number is highly inflated because it include death with covid not just due to covid.
Although 20 thousand people's cause of death is listed as COVID-19, about 27 thousand excess deaths occurred already in Florida, and that'll probably be closer to 30 thousand by New Year.
So, rather than 20 thousand being "highly inflated" as you propose it's likely a considerable undercount.
> But for sure some unemployment is caused by lockdown due to simple logic: if you don't allow business to open due to lockdown, the worker wouldn't have job.
Unemployment is being caused largely by the economic slowdown, and by significantly reduced footfall, driven by inability to control a pandemic.
Of course in New Zealand that's largely restricted to just one sector: International tourism, whereas in Florida their whole economy is constantly being kicked in the head by the policies you admire and will be for months to come.
>27 thousand excess deaths occurred already in Florida
Are the excess death is solely caused by covid ?
>Unemployment is being caused largely by the economic slowdown, and by significantly reduced footfall, driven by inability to control a pandemic.
I'm not saying I agree with all Florida government policies. The unemployment issue exist even without pandemic, but here I'm specifically taking about the unemployment that is caused by lockdown.
if you don't allow business to open, then some extra unemployment bound to happen. Assuming the lockdown do work, Is it worth it for a virus that have less than 1% death rate ? for me its very very not worth it. Furthermore unemployment is just one of the many of problem caused by lockdown.
> Are the excess death is solely caused by covid ?
Not all of them, I'm sure plenty of people in Florida committed suicide out of despair, drank themselves to death and so on as a result of the pandemic virus as well. It would be easy to become hopeless somewhere with tens of thousands of needless deaths while idiots cheer it on from a safe distance.
> if you don't allow business to open, then some extra unemployment bound to happen
If all your businesses are "open" but potential customers sensibly choose to reduce their exposure by staying away, unemploymentment sky-rockets anyway, as it has in Florida. Then you'd need substantial government action to prevent the worst effects of that, and of course that was never likely under Trump whereas Ardern's government in New Zealand immediately began programmes to try to prevent employers going bankrupt during Level 3 and to protect individuals from the economic impact, as well as pursuing elimination strategy for the virus itself.
As a result New Zealand was able to largely re-open and is already well into its economic recovery - aside from international tourism. They're having a pretty good summer.
Your problem is that you started with a belief you wanted to justify and then you've embarrassed yourself by pretending you've proceeded rationally when actually you were just making excuses. Just admit to people how it is, you're a selfish asshole who doesn't want to obey restrictions that keep other people safe. Just say it, if it makes you feel bad that is, after all, your problem.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/123696832/gdp-jump-of-14-per-...