5 ms·

My household has had zero cases per capita. Population count and relative isolation make a huge difference. You can't directly compare NZ with places like Germ

My household has had zero cases per capita. Population count and relative isolation make a huge difference. You can't directly compare NZ with places like Germany or the US.

dongping 5y ago
When we talk about population count, maybe China is a country worth mentioning here? The success in New Zealand seems like the elephant in the room, that the Atlantic article failed to refer to. Not to mention China.
- DangsBaldHead 5y ago
  NZ has no cities. Auckland, the country's largest town, consists of 4 or 5 blocks of high density "city". Wellington another 2 or 3 blocks of high density "city". Outside of those few blocks the entire country is low-rise detached apartments, quickly giving way to semi-detached housing, which quickly gives way to endless suburbia. NZ has zero density.
  - agrippanux 5y ago
    A lot of paranormal activity for Wellington given that density
    - thelandofrandom 5y ago
      Hahahahaha. Remember, the door is voice activated
- thorin 5y ago
  Does anyone really believe the reported stats for China?
  - dongping 5y ago
    I'm not saying that Wuhan's number is 100% accurate, feel free to inflate it by 10 times. But even with the censored social media in China, words do get across, and there's no evidence of any big outbreaks like in Wuhan or New York after April last year. Virus cannot teleport from person to person, so why wouldn't NPIs like real lockdowns with full food delivery and mass testing (unlike mockdowns in some other countries) work?
  - vkou 5y ago
    If you don't believe the numbers, ask anyone you know who has relatives in China. Lockdowns, or mass hospitalizations/deaths from Covid are a bit difficult to hide from the people living through it, if either of those two things are happening, everyone would hear about it through the grapevine.
    - bronzeage 5y ago
      The level of control over the media in China is too strong to take anything they say seriously. Everything is so obscured with everyone at every level hiding things that there's simply no one who knows the truth, neither the lower level people nor the higher level people. That's the nature of authoritarian dictatorships. You can't aggregate the truth, you can only hear small anecdotes that leak through massive censorship. And we've seen how massive hospitalizations did in fact manage to soar in Wuhan in the beginning before anyone knew what's going on. (and to be fair, I still don't really know how bad it really was, as opposed to the manufactured numbers they published that in retrospect seem very cooked)
    - nmfisher 5y ago
      I did exactly that (wife’s family lives in Beijing). Various parts of Beijing and Nanjing have been under relative “lockdown” at various points in time in the last year. I’m pretty sure this has been reported in Western media too (and I’m sure that other parts of the country have too). I have no idea where this idea that “China has zero COVID lockdowns” came from. I suppose it may depend on your definition of lockdown.
      - vkou 5y ago
        I don't doubt that lockdowns are happening, which is why I listed the presence or absence of them as one of the two obvious things that can be observed by people living there. I do have doubts that their actual case numbers are too far off from reported case numbers. (Because mass sickness and death, just like lockdowns, would also be obvious to observe.)
megablast 5y ago
Of course you can. They just did compare them.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
It's not just that... NZ is an island, with few people going in and out daily. In europe, you have people living in one country and working in another, and driving across the border daily. You have trucks driving through 10 different countries, with drivers stopping, filling up the gas, eating and sleeping in many of them. You have large cities, where the border goes across the urban areas, and your nearest store is in another country.

My household has had zero cases per capita. Population count and relative isolation make a huge difference. You can't directly compare NZ with places like Germany or the US.

dongping 5y ago

When we talk about population count, maybe China is a country worth mentioning here? The success in New Zealand seems like the elephant in the room, that the Atlantic article failed to refer to. Not to mention China.

DangsBaldHead 5y ago
NZ has no cities. Auckland, the country's largest town, consists of 4 or 5 blocks of high density "city". Wellington another 2 or 3 blocks of high density "city". Outside of those few blocks the entire country is low-rise detached apartments, quickly giving way to semi-detached housing, which quickly gives way to endless suburbia. NZ has zero density.
- agrippanux 5y ago
  A lot of paranormal activity for Wellington given that density
  - thelandofrandom 5y ago
    Hahahahaha. Remember, the door is voice activated
thorin 5y ago
Does anyone really believe the reported stats for China?
- dongping 5y ago
  I'm not saying that Wuhan's number is 100% accurate, feel free to inflate it by 10 times. But even with the censored social media in China, words do get across, and there's no evidence of any big outbreaks like in Wuhan or New York after April last year. Virus cannot teleport from person to person, so why wouldn't NPIs like real lockdowns with full food delivery and mass testing (unlike mockdowns in some other countries) work?
- vkou 5y ago
  If you don't believe the numbers, ask anyone you know who has relatives in China. Lockdowns, or mass hospitalizations/deaths from Covid are a bit difficult to hide from the people living through it, if either of those two things are happening, everyone would hear about it through the grapevine.
  - bronzeage 5y ago
    The level of control over the media in China is too strong to take anything they say seriously. Everything is so obscured with everyone at every level hiding things that there's simply no one who knows the truth, neither the lower level people nor the higher level people. That's the nature of authoritarian dictatorships. You can't aggregate the truth, you can only hear small anecdotes that leak through massive censorship. And we've seen how massive hospitalizations did in fact manage to soar in Wuhan in the beginning before anyone knew what's going on. (and to be fair, I still don't really know how bad it really was, as opposed to the manufactured numbers they published that in retrospect seem very cooked)
  - nmfisher 5y ago
    I did exactly that (wife’s family lives in Beijing). Various parts of Beijing and Nanjing have been under relative “lockdown” at various points in time in the last year. I’m pretty sure this has been reported in Western media too (and I’m sure that other parts of the country have too). I have no idea where this idea that “China has zero COVID lockdowns” came from. I suppose it may depend on your definition of lockdown.
    - vkou 5y ago
      I don't doubt that lockdowns are happening, which is why I listed the presence or absence of them as one of the two obvious things that can be observed by people living there. I do have doubts that their actual case numbers are too far off from reported case numbers. (Because mass sickness and death, just like lockdowns, would also be obvious to observe.)

megablast 5y ago

Of course you can. They just did compare them.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

It's not just that... NZ is an island, with few people going in and out daily. In europe, you have people living in one country and working in another, and driving across the border daily. You have trucks driving through 10 different countries, with drivers stopping, filling up the gas, eating and sleeping in many of them. You have large cities, where the border goes across the urban areas, and your nearest store is in another country.