I would, perhaps because I've paid attention to the news showing army trucks racing around the city with people in biohazard gear and military units setting up emergency hospitals with capacity for thousands of beds and, in case of Madrid, commandeering an ice rink to serve as emergency morgue.
Staying at home for a couple of weeks is easy least in comparison. All it takes is a dash of political leadership.
Not a direct counterargument to anything you wrote, but I just wanted to mention that a lot of people seem to fixate on a makeshift ice rink morgue in Spain, as if it's the only one. I'd bet there are ice rink morgues in many countries that have a high death toll. For example, here is an ice rink that was being used as a morgue in Maryland.[1] I doubt it's the only example in the US.
Here in Norway we haven't had one, if by that you mean being forbidden to leave our houses except for essential purposes.
We have been free to travel, to meet people, to go to bars, restaurants, cafés. My grown children have not had a single day off work.
The only people forbidden from leaving home are those who have tested positive for COVID-19.
Of course a lot of shops, bars, cafés, etc. have closed but that was for a combination of lack of customers and a desire to protect their staff together with, in some case,an inability or unwillingness to comply with distancing rules.
Schools were closed but that was a bit of an overreaction on the part of the government and against the advice of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, https://www.fhi.no/en/ and they have been open again now for several weeks.
So what happens as soon as people want to start visiting NZ? Seems like you will forever have to be scared of corona entering your country again, it must be a huge blow long-term to the tourism sector? Not trying to be snarky, genuinely trying to understad the plan.
The plan is basically that the tourism sector takes a beating and nobody is allowed to come to NZ without a 2 week quarantine. Possibly for years.
Under the theory that NZ citizens can’t go anywhere else, supposedly if all the people who would have gone overseas instead travel internally then it should recover up to 60%. If Australia can get thier shit together then it’s apparently 95%.
I guess it’s just a question of priorities. Most of the NZ population is feeling pretty good about life being normal and are willing to pitch the tourism sector into the fire to that end.
NZ tourism spending (excluding international airfares) was ~60% domestic before COVID19. (Yes I know it sounds high, but that's the number.) Shifting outbound tourism to domestic will boost domestic considerably higher than that even without Australia.
The plan for the next couple of months at least seems to be to require a 2-3 week quarantine for people coming into the country, which is definitely going to cause continued harm to the tourism sector.
I think the hope from the govt right now is that a vaccine becomes an option sooner rather than later...there is no guarantee of that even being possible of course, but its looking more hopeful as the data comes in.
OTOH within the country itself, as of right now, we are one of the least-shutdown economies in the world and have lost only 21 people to covid, which is a pretty solid place to be.
The longer we can keep covid out, the better the virus is understood and the more effective the treatments that are available, even without a vaccine.
It seems likely to be true that eventually we will need to shrug and let the virus have its way with our people, with or without a vaccine, but everyone with vulnerable dependents is grateful to have had more time with them, and already the treatment outcomes for covid have improved from 6 weeks ago.
Lives sacrificed by opening up too soon (or never closing) would be lost forever, while the economy is driven by people, and people are endlessly resilient, so the economy will recover.
Was it worth it for the lives saved? Clearly opinions are going to vary, but Im comfortable with the choices our govt has made so far.
I think we'll be admitting international students soon, with testing and at least a 14-day quarantine.
We are already admitting film crews for certain TV and film productions, with a 14-day quarantine.
If we can sustain being COVID-free, that makes NZ pretty attractive for those activities.
I don't think we'll be admitting tourists unconditionally until we have vaccinated most of our population. But our tourism sector will probably limp along OK with outbound tourism switching to domestic. Also we will hopefully be opening a "travel bubble" with other countries that have beaten COVID19, probably Australia first.
We had 1.5 months of partly lockdown. We were blocked from leaving our cities of residence except for work for two weekends. We closed pretty much everything until a few weeks ago.
And with all that, we had almost 1/2 the deaths of Sweden. Not 5% or 10%, but close to half (3800 vs 1450).
And we 'reopened' the country and right now have more cases per day (yesterday 350) as at the beginning when gov. decided to shut down everything. (State of emergency was declared on 18 of March where our cases were around 200 per day)
Portugal's state of emergency consisted of imposing the duty of home confinement only to risk cohorts, comprised of sick and actively monitored patients. Everyone else was only subjected to "social duty to home confinement" and was obligated to wear protective masks on public transportation, customer service, and services open to the public.
> We closed pretty much everything until a few weeks ago.
That assertion is somewhere between disingenuous and confused. There was a healthy general attitude towards the civic duty of home confinement, but it was primary self-imposed restrictions. The Portuguese government ceased to impose general confinement restrictions after they revised the first declaration of state of emergency, which were downgraded to mandatory facemasks in public transportation and public services.
The state of Emergency (we had 3) lasted 6 weeks and during this time, bars, restaurants, car stands and a bunch of other stores were closed. They closed lojas do cidadao (?still many aren't open) and essential services were by appointment only.
'Que estabelecimentos encerram obrigatoriamente?
Todos os estabelecimentos que não prestem serviços essenciais ou forneçam bens de primeira necessidade são obrigados a fechar portas. O diploma do Governo é exaustivo na lista que inclui: todos os locais de atividades de lazer e diversão, como bares, discotecas, zoos ou parques de diversões; locais de atividades culturais, como auditórios, cinemas, teatros, bibliotecas, galerias ou praças de touros; locais de atividades desportivas, como campos de futebol, courts de ténis, ringues de patinagem ou ginásios e academias; termas, casinos, salões de jogos, bares, esplanadas e restauração em geral.'
Layoff (furlough for other countries) was used to around one million people. 10% of the population and about 25% of the active population, and you are telling me that people just decided to stay at home and gov didn't ordered anything?
Please, I don't know where the fuck you lived during the State of Emergency, but saying it was just 'social duty to home confinement' is a joke to what really happened here. The economic and social damage done was huge.
> we 'reopened' the country and right now have more cases per day (yesterday 350) as at the beginning
That's probably the bigger problem for your country than the absolute number of deaths: the "reopening" happened too early compared to some countries of equivalent size where the cases per day became lower before the "reopening."
Even after the "reopening" the war is not won.
Also, looking at the graphs of daily cases and comparing it with some other European countries, the measures were obviously less effective than in these other countries. Given that 10 million of people are involved, it's much more nuanced than "we had X for Y days."
Edit: To answer: "I don't know how we got the good press": deaths per million: Portugal: 142, Switzerland: 222, Sweden: 450, Spain: 580. It's easy to see that's how Portugal looks obviously better, statically. What I point to with "probably the bigger problem" (that it's not over) is that e.g. new daily cases in Switzerland are now 19, v.s. Portugal's 350.
I'm not defending my country at all. I don't know how we got the good press of being the 'miracle' country in international news where other countries did much better but are seemingly ignored.
We did ok, not a miracle. As mentioned, we had about half the deaths of Sweden, which is touted as the worst possible thing they could have done, and have triple or more than other countries (listed above).
Seems either people had very low expectations of Portugal, or are just using the Portugal is almost the same as Spain idea and expected the same results (even though we were affected later, if we were first, we would probably see something similar)
Staying at home for a couple of weeks is easy least in comparison. All it takes is a dash of political leadership.
So yeah, op is right on the money.