The borders arent closed indefinitely. There was a recent plan announced on the reopening of the borders. The current lockdown is the first in 7 months. We have been slow in the vaccination process and that could definitely have been better. Our long term strategy revolves around opening up once the majority of our population is vaccinated, sometime around December. First we will let in more essential workers, then foreign students and then tourists from preferred countries. We also have a plan to allow citizens who go overseas on holiday to self quarantine at home if fully vaccinated when returning. We are just doing things a little slower than everywhere else because we got lucky with certain factors.
They've got a strategy. Vaccinate everyone who wants it with Pfizer in the next few months. They should be getting supplies in time to meet that schedule. Meanwhile they'll try minimising loss of life and then reopen everything again (internally).
I don't like us being compared to NZ. Zero Covid is impossible when you share an open border with a country that probably handled Covid worse than anyone. If we had taken an all island approach then maybe, but even then, we are so interconnected with the UK that it would have been impossible.
Erm????
If serious what are you on about?
We do know that at some point in the near future the virus will rip through the population and those unvaccinated will get hit with it. Someone earlier mentioned a rough 80% vaccination rate leaving 1 million unvaccinated and thats a pretty fair estimate. So we are potentially looking at a decent number of people getting sick and dying from it. However there is a silver lining for us and one where we have got lucky. We have been able to watch what everyone else has done and a lot of our new policy decisions are a direct result of learning from other countries handling of things. If we learn those lessons well enough we have a chance of keeping illnesses and deaths much lower than we initially expected. However its still going to bite us in the arse once it arrives next year.
It depends on whose analysis you read. If you look at some of the interpretations of the early data from Israel, it may be a sign that vaccine efficacy is waning and that people will need boosters soon.
They had pretty much missed the whole pandemic last year, so a pretty susceptible population to begin with. Coupled with events with lots of people coming in from elsewhere and some pretty close interactions - g7, this festival - and it all kicks off.
Our slow vaccine uptake hasnt been due to any hesitancy but because the govt didnt approve the pfizer vaccine until Feb and hadnt preordered any meaning we were down the list on the supply line.
How do you feel about the supposed news that there won't be any more easing of restrictions here til late September? Seems a bit nuts given how many we have vaccinated now, but I know delta is an outlier.
I know, that's a very valid observation. If we were living somewhere else, no doubt people wouldn't have been so compliant - it's easy to get folk to go along with things when everyone knows everyone else.
