You don’t need to be told that there is a lot of shit going on in the world right now. A global pandemic, rioting and widespread socio-economic disruption just to name a few… But at 1pm today, it was announced that there are no known active cases of Covid-19 left in New Zealand. Also, it has been 17 days since we have recorded any new cases. Take that, Covid!
I was elated to hear the news, and I think it calls for a celebration here. While our country has fared well, relatively speaking, I didn’t expect us to actually reach this milestone so soon. As of tomorrow, all restrictions on social distancing and gatherings are going to be lifted. The only restrictions will be at our borders, to stop us re-importing the virus. So if you want to come here you will have to wait a while unfortunately, until the world somehow gets on top of this virus.
I really hope that humanity as a whole can get ontop of this virus soon, and stay safe out there. Do your part to avoid spreading the virus and stay away from others if you’re sick. If enough people did that, if enough people thought beyond themselves just a little bit, who knows? Maybe Covid-19 could be stamped out in your country too… or at least kept under control until a vaccine comes along.
Peace.
Cover Image Source: The Spinoff
The Liberated Atheist 
Yes, excellent news. As JA said “I did a little dance”. NZ leads the way!
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You heard it on the news there too?
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Wow that’s great. However here in the U.S. it’s still touch and go.
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Yeah I hear things aren’t so great in the US at the moment. It’s hard when the economy is at stake.
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Wow!! Congratulations!
What are the steps that took you guys there?
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A number pf factors I think. We went into a strict lockdown early on, when we only had about 100 cases and community transmission was confirmed. Literally everything was closed, you couldn’t order products online unless they were ‘essential’. After about 7 weeks we reopened again, but even then, you had to keep distance from others and public gathering sizes were limited (similar to many places in the states now). I also think that being an isolated country with low population density helped somewhat too. Having said that, things could’ve turned out much differently. Early on, we weren’t that prepared to deal with it, and some medical experts were saying we could’ve ended up like Italy if we had waited even a week later to do lockdown. Timing is crucial.
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So basically…..you did everything we have failed and continue to fail to do in America. Even the blue states have their conservatives to deal with who won’t stay home, wear marks or isolate. It’s a mess over here.
Are your borders still closed?
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I don’t want to say it… but yep. Looking at Covid-19 data for each country , almost all the countries that didn’t do lockdowns early on seemed to have lots of problems. Japan is an exception, and I’m not sure why… perhaps they have really good contact tracing over there.
As for the borders, yes they are still closed to all non residents, and for those who do come back they must be in 2 weeks monitored self-isolation. Although if you are important enough then exemptions apply apparently,, such as an Avatar film crew who came over here from LA. I don’t think we will be opening them up anytime soon, except for select countries that have the pandemic under control.
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I’ve been wondering about Japan as well, but the fact that they’re islands help. Islands have a much better chance of keeping things in check, especially with people not traveling right now.
Jamaica is just reopening and it was a big debate about how testing would go. They didn’t want to quarantine tourists for two weeks because financially that makes no sense. Tourists generally can only afford to be in Jamaica for around 5 to 14 days. Only us returning residents or those with other ties tend to hang on longer than that. They’ve now decided to at least test everyone upon entry. I’m not sure that’s enough, but I guess we’ll see.
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I think the idea behind the 14 day window is that it covers a whole life cycle of the virus, so that they don’t miss out anyone who first caught the virus but doesn’t have symptoms. The way I see it, a country has to choose between maintaining their tourism or keeping the virus out – it’s a bit difficult to have both at the moment. We have kept the virus out but we are dependant on tourism so a lot of people have lost their jobs and our economy will suffer for a while.
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Yes, the 14 day window makes perfect medical sense. But very few tourists can afford to be in Jamaica beyond 14 days.
Also, 80% of Jamaica’s economy is based on tourism, so that’s a big part of our economy that we shut down. That’s 80% of the population in a third world country that needs to eat and pay bills. We don’t have u employment benefits etc. The government was only able to give about 90 USD to some qualifying families in total.
It’s a terrible predicament to be in, but I guess testing is a good start. If it doesn’t work out, I suppose they can try something else. The sad thing is that healthy people can leave their home countries and pick up the virus in the airports. Then, they would pass the test they take just a few hours later.
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Yeah its not a good situation if your country is 80% reliant on tourism! Maybe your country could promote more domestic tourism in the meantime, although that still won’t generate as much revenue.
So I just heard today that after 25 days covid free, 2 people from the UK who came here had it. Now it will be interesting to see how well our border controls go…
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There has been a lot of talk about that at the civilian level. A lot of people felt the government should have pushed for domestic tourism first. But I suppose there’s also the issue of who’s going to pay when local people have bigger fish to fry than taking a vacation.
How did it go? Did it spread or were they able to contain it?
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Things are fine so far, as well as we know, but there was a massive backlash from Kiwis because of it. When people come here they are supposed to be quarantined for 14 days AND tested twice. These two people were granted an exemption to leave early because a loved one had died, but did not receive a test before doing so. After driving down half the country they were later tested and found to be positive. So yeah we were mad because the whole country worked together to get the virus out only to be let down by slack border controls. As far as I know, there have been no positive tests related to these two though, so maybe we got away with it, and since then they have removed the early leaving thing and that you must be tested before you leave quarantine.
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That really sucks! I think what a lot of governments aren’t keeping in mind is that healthy people can leave their countries and pick up the virus in the airport on the way you to theirs.
Fingers crossed that that was the last of it!
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