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U.S. warns against travel to New Zealand due to rising Covid-19 cases

26 points by LittleMoveBig 5y ago

ceejayoz 5y ago
Seems a bit like telling someone in a burning room not to go into the next room because it's a little humid in there.
- LittleMoveBig 5y ago
  New Zealand is reporting the equivalent of 1.2 million daily U.S. cases, while the U.S. is at 30,000.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    New Zealand has 13 deaths per million residents. The US has nearly 3,000 deaths per million. Vaccination decouples case numbers from severe disease and death. The calculus on avoiding cases changes significantly once you get the population well vaccinated.
    - LittleMoveBig 5y ago
      New Zealand is just at the beginning of its first major wave and deaths lag considerably, so it's a bit early to be drawing this comparison. I would agree they're likely to experience a lower death count than the U.S. but not by this magnitude. Also, presumably the epidemiological factors which are causing Americans to die from COVID at higher rates are also likely to apply to Americans who are infected while traveling to New Zealand.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        > New Zealand is just at the beginning of its first major wave... Yes, and they're entering it with a well-vaccinated population, especially in the vulnerable age groups. Even with variants in play, evidence points heavily to that meaning cases won't lead to significant numbers of severe disease and death.
        timr 5y ago
        That's fine, but it has nothing to do with travel warnings. The US state department didn't tell unvaccinated people to avoid travel to NZ, it made a blanket recommendation. You started this subthread by making a comment about "burning rooms", implying that the US situation is somehow worse than New Zealand in the present moment. Historical trends are what they are, but currently, irrespective of aggregate historical death rate, NZ is doing worse than the US. There's probably a greater risk of catching Covid right now in NZ than there is in the US. (But this is all a silly discussion. The horse is out of the barn, Covid is literally everywhere, and these travel restrictions do nothing but cause pain. About the best you can say is that state department "recommendations" are the least absurd of an overall absurd response.)
      - nradov 5y ago
        That would not be a correct presumption. Americans who travel to New Zealand are not at all representative of the general population. For one thing they are significantly more affluent on average. I suspect they're also older, and less likely to be suffering from severe chronic co-morbid conditions. For example, end-stage renal disease patients were heavily overrepresented among US COVID-19 deaths. Not many such people would get on a 16 hour flight to Auckland under any conditions.
        LittleMoveBig 5y ago
        That's all fine and I am broadly in support of the statement "people without major COVID risk factors should not take any special precautions or avoid travel to areas experiencing high case rates." My comment was simply addressed to the claim that the U.S. is currently doing much worse than New Zealand in some way that is relevant to travel advisories.
      - throwaway6532 5y ago
        I think NZ will fare better by orders of magnitude than the US because NZ had one of the best responses in the world and the US had one of the worst responses in the world.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Case numbers are mostly irrelevant and don't mean much one way or another. Official case counts vary a lot based on the extent of testing and reporting. If you test more then you find more cases. In the US, the CDC estimated that only about a quarter of infections were ever counted as cases. What actually matters is the rate of hospitalizations and deaths. And we're all going to be exposed to the virus anyway. Whether that happens at home or abroad hardly matters. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
- Arnt 5y ago
  Well, that's not really what they're saying. They're saying "do get your vaccines if going to NZ", but the same government is also saying "do get your vaccines" without any ifs, so arguably the travel advice is close to a no-op.
josephcsible 5y ago
What was the point of all of New Zealand's draconian lockdowns then? They had all the negative lockdown effects for no reason, and still ended up with just as much of a COVID problem as the rest of the world that didn't have them.
- throwawaymanbot 5y ago
- csdvrx 5y ago
  It provided valuable data points for a denser mapping of the possibility space! At the beginning various strategies were proposed. A few looked utterly bizarre: IIRC the UK plan was to "keep the schools open so the kid can catch it". In retrospect, some start standing out as better - but data is still coming so it's too early to say for sure.
- Imnimo 5y ago
  The alternative interpretation is that New Zealand's lockdowns avoided all the previous waves (which killed hundreds of thousands of people in the US, for example), but did not avoid the Omicron wave. So far, NZ has only reported 65 covid deaths. That number will surely rise with the current wave, but I think it's a wild exaggeration to say that they have had "just as much of a covid problem as the rest of the world".
  - sjg007 5y ago
    Right but vaccination should mitigate omicron... I guess really this is the test of that.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      Vaccination didn't and doesn't reduce transmission. It protects you from serious illness and death if/when you get it. The whole transmission protection meme needs to die. It has a trivial effect at the population level wrt the spread of covid.

26 points by LittleMoveBig 5y ago

ceejayoz 5y ago

Seems a bit like telling someone in a burning room not to go into the next room because it's a little humid in there.

LittleMoveBig 5y ago
New Zealand is reporting the equivalent of 1.2 million daily U.S. cases, while the U.S. is at 30,000.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  New Zealand has 13 deaths per million residents. The US has nearly 3,000 deaths per million. Vaccination decouples case numbers from severe disease and death. The calculus on avoiding cases changes significantly once you get the population well vaccinated.
  - LittleMoveBig 5y ago
    New Zealand is just at the beginning of its first major wave and deaths lag considerably, so it's a bit early to be drawing this comparison. I would agree they're likely to experience a lower death count than the U.S. but not by this magnitude. Also, presumably the epidemiological factors which are causing Americans to die from COVID at higher rates are also likely to apply to Americans who are infected while traveling to New Zealand.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      > New Zealand is just at the beginning of its first major wave... Yes, and they're entering it with a well-vaccinated population, especially in the vulnerable age groups. Even with variants in play, evidence points heavily to that meaning cases won't lead to significant numbers of severe disease and death.
      - timr 5y ago
        That's fine, but it has nothing to do with travel warnings. The US state department didn't tell unvaccinated people to avoid travel to NZ, it made a blanket recommendation. You started this subthread by making a comment about "burning rooms", implying that the US situation is somehow worse than New Zealand in the present moment. Historical trends are what they are, but currently, irrespective of aggregate historical death rate, NZ is doing worse than the US. There's probably a greater risk of catching Covid right now in NZ than there is in the US. (But this is all a silly discussion. The horse is out of the barn, Covid is literally everywhere, and these travel restrictions do nothing but cause pain. About the best you can say is that state department "recommendations" are the least absurd of an overall absurd response.)
    - nradov 5y ago
      That would not be a correct presumption. Americans who travel to New Zealand are not at all representative of the general population. For one thing they are significantly more affluent on average. I suspect they're also older, and less likely to be suffering from severe chronic co-morbid conditions. For example, end-stage renal disease patients were heavily overrepresented among US COVID-19 deaths. Not many such people would get on a 16 hour flight to Auckland under any conditions.
      - LittleMoveBig 5y ago
        That's all fine and I am broadly in support of the statement "people without major COVID risk factors should not take any special precautions or avoid travel to areas experiencing high case rates." My comment was simply addressed to the claim that the U.S. is currently doing much worse than New Zealand in some way that is relevant to travel advisories.
    - throwaway6532 5y ago
      I think NZ will fare better by orders of magnitude than the US because NZ had one of the best responses in the world and the US had one of the worst responses in the world.
- nradov 5y ago
  Case numbers are mostly irrelevant and don't mean much one way or another. Official case counts vary a lot based on the extent of testing and reporting. If you test more then you find more cases. In the US, the CDC estimated that only about a quarter of infections were ever counted as cases. What actually matters is the rate of hospitalizations and deaths. And we're all going to be exposed to the virus anyway. Whether that happens at home or abroad hardly matters. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
Arnt 5y ago
Well, that's not really what they're saying. They're saying "do get your vaccines if going to NZ", but the same government is also saying "do get your vaccines" without any ifs, so arguably the travel advice is close to a no-op.

josephcsible 5y ago

What was the point of all of New Zealand's draconian lockdowns then? They had all the negative lockdown effects for no reason, and still ended up with just as much of a COVID problem as the rest of the world that didn't have them.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago
csdvrx 5y ago
It provided valuable data points for a denser mapping of the possibility space! At the beginning various strategies were proposed. A few looked utterly bizarre: IIRC the UK plan was to "keep the schools open so the kid can catch it". In retrospect, some start standing out as better - but data is still coming so it's too early to say for sure.
Imnimo 5y ago
The alternative interpretation is that New Zealand's lockdowns avoided all the previous waves (which killed hundreds of thousands of people in the US, for example), but did not avoid the Omicron wave. So far, NZ has only reported 65 covid deaths. That number will surely rise with the current wave, but I think it's a wild exaggeration to say that they have had "just as much of a covid problem as the rest of the world".
- sjg007 5y ago
  Right but vaccination should mitigate omicron... I guess really this is the test of that.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Vaccination didn't and doesn't reduce transmission. It protects you from serious illness and death if/when you get it. The whole transmission protection meme needs to die. It has a trivial effect at the population level wrt the spread of covid.