Unbelievable, after 12 months of running our NHS into the ground, thousands of unnecessary deaths, the penny has eventually dropped. arrivals into the UK now have to produce evidence of a negative covid test. New Zealand has made our government look infantile, whereas they undertook these stringent measures from virtually day one and are now covid clear.
Negative Covid test is not enough. What New Zealand has done from day one was the borders shut down with 14 day mandatory quarantine for all who cross the border, without exemptions. Once when you are in quarantine they test you several times before they let you enter the country. And it was not only New Zealand. Taiwan, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Timor-Leste, Tailand etc. have all accepted elimination strategy with great success. Now they can gradually vaccinate their people without being pressured.
What is happening in Britain, and, unfortunatelly, in the vast majority of other countries, is the result of their mitigation strategy. Not elimination, but mitigation. They have never wanted to protect people and eradicate the virus, their goal has always been to postpone infection and deaths so the statistics look nicer. They call it "flattening the curve". With other words: we'll get the same number of deaths, but over a longer period of time. They say the main goal of their strategy is to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed. We know that it didn't work, the hospitals in Britain and in other countries who implemented mitigation strategy are being overwhelmed. And protecting hospitals should not been the main objective for epidemiologists - their job is to prevent and eradicate epidemics and pandemics.
Why have they chosen this strategy? Money on the one hand, and taking this virus lightly on the other. But from the day one it was clear that this strategy would cost much, much more than elimination strategy. New Zealand has been Covid free since August, and they also had a Covid free period in June and July. So, apart from a six-weeks lockdown of their capital Auckland in August 2020. they have been Covid free since the beginning of June 2020. More than seven months. They haven't had any turists from abroad, but their domestic tourism has been booming. For seven months now they have lived a perfectly normal life, and they have avoided all the bad things these continuous lockdowns inevitably bring with them: poverty, unemployment, bunkruptcies, suicides, cancers and other serious conditions not being diagnosed, domestic violence, young generations totally lost and confused, poor mental health of the whole population etc. Their economy has already recovered.
This is from Bloomberg:
"New Zealand’s economy bounced back strongly from recession in the third quarter, achieving a so-called V-shaped recovery as massive fiscal and monetary stimulus fueled consumer spending. Gross domestic product surged 14% from the second quarter, when it contracted a revised 11%, Statistics New Zealand said Thursday in Wellington. Economists forecast a 12.9% gain.
From a year earlier, the economy grew 0.4%, confounding the consensus forecast for a 1.8% decline."
The same has happened in Taiwan. Taiwan, with population of 23 million, has had 7 deaths so far. If we extrapolated this number and applied it to Britain then Britain would have had 21 deaths so far had it implemented the same strategy as Taiwan. New Zealand has had 25 deaths. 25 x 13 (corrected for population) = 325 deaths in Britain. So far Britain has had approx. 85.000 deaths and counting. Only yesterday there were 1.554 Covid deaths during the third national lockdown.
Someone should be hanged for this.
These are the arguments many stupid "scientists" repeat in order to defend their mitigation strategy:
1. You can't eliminate viruses
2. Britain is a global travel hub
3. New Zealand's approach would destroy the economy
4. Britain has a high population density.
5. New Zealand is an island
From 1. to 5. it's all bullshit.
1. Of course you can eliminate viruses. New Zealand has proved it. You don't even need to eliminate it if you react early and shut the borders down, just like Taiwan did. You just keep it out. People in medieval Europe knew how to keep it out. The practice of
quarantine, as we know it, began during the 14th century in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics. Ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing.
2. So what if Britain is a global travel hub? Who cares? And had all other countries in the world shut their borders down, then Britain would not be a global travel hub but a totally isolated country now.
3. New Zealand and Taiwan's approaches haven't destroyed their economies. On the contrary.
4. Population density in Britain is 275 people per square kilometer, and in Taiwan 652 people per square kilometer. In Singapore, another country who is doing well, population density is 8.000 people per square kilometer. Population density is higher in Vietnam and South Korea as well.
5. So is Britain. But you don't need to be an island to beat this virus: Vietnam, Tailand, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore, South Korea, Uruguay, Hong Kong etc. are not islands.