Another thought, we asked all people over 70 to self isolate 6 days before the full lockdown started. So when our numbers were at 39. So we may actually have kept them safe from the beginning.

Hadn't thought of that. Yes, all early cases were linked to international travel, so yes a healthier subset of the population. Thanks!

How can we have more recovered today than cases from 14 days ago? You only know someone is recovered if they were known to have it, so clearly they are recovering faster than 14 days. I'm unclear then why the rate should be deaths today compared to cases 14 days ago. Is it that healthy people are recovering faster, and sick people take a long time?

Ok, so 14 days. Like a posted above, I'll have to wait then because we have more recoveries today (92) than cases 14 days ago (28), so the numbers won't work. We are not doing randomized tests -- all tests were from contact tracing and required (up until yesterday) that the person be both symptomatic and have contacts to infected person. So targeted testing for the purpose of controlling spread. Yes, age distribution numbers are here: https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/01-04-2020/covid-19-new-zealand-cases-mapped-and-charted-april-1/.

Yup. I've already asked this question a few pages back. I've been listening to the daily press briefings, and my understanding of the plan is that there is no plan B. Eradication is the plan, and we will stay in lockdown until it happens. Then, they will reopen one region at a time and see how it goes, and lockdown again if the virus reappears. The borders will stay closed to visitors until there is a vaccine or some way to prove immunity - so we are talking 12 to 18 months. Testing throughout the community will continue to ensure the virus doesn't creep back in through shipping, as international shipping of goods will continue. The economy will reopen minus tourism, which accounts for about 20% of our GDP. So the plan is to retrain tourism workers to do infrastructure jobs. NZ citizens will be allowed to continue to return during the 12-18 month border closure, but will be quarantined for 14 days. So in about 6 - 8 weeks, eradication is expected, the national economy will restart, and the borders will stay closed.

I'm getting a bit muddled comparing our data to the cruise ship. Can you explain our 92 recovered as of yesterday, with numbers 7 days ago of 283 cases, and 14 days ago of 28 cases? Is it because 14 days ago cases were still all linked to overseas travel, so they were already into the incubation period, so the resolution is faster? My understanding is that 14 days ago, we had only 2 cases that were actually symptomatic on the planes (it made news).

Well, NZ had no community spread 14 days ago, and all cases were still from overseas travel. So any calculations using that time period will make no sense. I guess I will just have to wait 7 more days to redo the numbers. Currently our hospitals are only at half capacity because they cancelled all elective surgery last week. We have a very low number of ICU beds per population compared to most other developed countries.

I found the actual data at the individual level here in NZ! https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-current-situation/covid-19-current-cases/covid-19-current-cases-details

So walk me through this. Taking our case number from 7 days ago (300ish people), we currently have 16 in hospital (2 of which are in ICU) and 1 death. That means our rate is around 5% in hospital and 0.3% death (obviously, low sample size). How do these percentages go up over time? Is 7 days not long enough? So I need to take, for example, cases from 14 days ago and compare to hospital today? I was assuming that because we have a positive test rate of 3%, it shows that we picking up a lot of cases that would never need to go to the hospital, so our rate is way lower than in other countries because our data is more accurate. In addition, we have only been testing symptomatic people, so all asymptomatic people are excluded from the figures, so the numbers will be lower still when they are included. It seems to me the high rate of death currently being reported in many countries is due to 1) low testing so only counting people who have a severe case and end up in the hospital. 2) inability to treat everyone effectively because of an overwhelmed health system.

I just heard 750,000 people have applied for wage support in NZ. With a population of 4.7 million, that is 16% of the TOTAL population. The labor force is 2.6 million, we are talking 29% currently on wage support. This will grow because they have just opened up wage support to those in essential services who are either in the risk groups or living with someone in the risk groups.

Here in NZ, the numbers are 723 cases, 2 in ICU, 14 more in hospital, and one death. A good half of the 723 cases are from the past 7 days, so they may still end up in ICU. But it seems that we are testing way way more than most countries, and we are just not seeing any where close to those types of percentages here. Even if you go with only 300 cases from 7 days ago, the math is still quite low for both ICU, hospitalization, and death. These numbers suggest that a LOT of people in the USA and elsewhere in the world have had it, recovered, and never known. We increased our testing yesterday, switching from testing only people with symptoms who had ALSO been in contact with positive cases TO testing anyone with symptoms. So we will know in a couple of days more about community spread. Our current positive testing rate is 3%, and that is testing those with symptoms and contacts. The stated government plan is still complete eradication and border control.

Fourth day of lower numbers here in NZ. Only 58 new cases -- still mostly linked to international travellers. We are still hoping for elimination not containment. We have 14 clusters that they are keeping a close eye on. A number of cool graphs in this link, including when we started lockdown (level 3) and implemented full lockdown (level 4) compared to number of cases. Also a cut by age, with the largest group in their 20s; and a cut by probable transmission (they are doing hard core contact tracing here). https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/31-03-2020/coronavirus-charts-and-graphics/ I found data saying there have been 21,384 tests with 647 positives. That is 3% positive testing rate.

Was the service held in an area with a lockdown order? If so, doesn't it apply to all organizations whether profit or nonprofit? If that is true, shouldn't we cheer *equal* enforcement of the law, regardless of who is the group/individual being detained? I'm in a lockdown area (stricter than most of you, here in NZ). People here who are sacrificing and following the rules, want those who aren't to be prosecuted. Our sacrifices should not be undermined by those who think the rules don't apply to them.

Boy did I get it wrong. haha. In NZ: "Bloomfield said 200,000 masks were being produced locally each day."

Yup, NZ has now restricted all prescriptions to 1 month because although we are a food exporter, we are a drug importer. I think this pandemic is going to have governments rethinking complete global interconnectedness for business processes. So we have apparently lots and lots of masks (4 million in the storehouse) and a producer that can make 60,000/month for a population of 4 million. But we have only a limited number of ventilators and ICU beds A Ministry of Health (MOE) audit showed there were currently 153 intensive care beds in public hospitals and that could be expanded to just over 560 by co-opting space from other units. ....The 520 ventilators in the audit includes repurposing anaesthetic machines which have ventilators built into them, ....the current beds available in New Zealand ICUs aren't empty and waiting for patients to get Covid-19, they are 80-90 percent full at all times so the amount of spare, available beds is low.

I am horrified at how political this has become in America.

Time to go talk to Elon Musk. Sounds like he is the only one finding ways to buy these things from overseas markets.

So I did some digging. We get about 450,000 Chinese tourists each year, which is about 10% of the population of NZ. Does Italy get 6 million Chinese tourists a year? That would be an equivalent percent of population compared to NZ. However, we locked the border to mainland China on February 2nd. So I'm not convinced Dr. Fauci is right. I think NZ acted faster than Italy.

She is 39

People are starting to worry about Jacinda. Since coming into office, she has had to deal with 1) having a baby 2) The Christchurch mass shootings 3) A volcanic eruption 4) A pandemic That is a lot to handle in 2.5 years. She is looking kind of haggard.

The worst hit will be India. 😞

There is some indication that NZ can actually *eradicate* the virus in the next 6 weeks. But at that point I am not clear what we do. The world gets herd immunity (and lots of people die) and we do what? Stay in our bubble and wait for a vaccine that may or may not happen? Keep the borders shut for how long? Or let the population get it very very slowly -- like over 3 years so we don't overwhelm the system? And if so, how do we manage that? In and out of self-isolation as we allow some people to get it over time? I'm just not clear on the longer term plan.

No delivery services. Even online grocery shopping in drying up because they can't find people willing to do the job. They stay home and stay safe and get a wage subsidy. The clerks at the grocery stores now are required to have a very high plexiglass shield between them and the customers. Any cash purchases must be a self check out as clerks are not allowed to touch money. All the stock boys have gloves and welder's helmets that completely cover their faces. Only 100 people are allowed in a typical grocery store at any one time and only 1 person per family can shop. Pharmacies are only allowing 1 person in the store at a time and the clerk at our store had a proper mask. The buses are running on a reduced schedule for essential workers and for those who can't otherwise get to their grocery store. The bus drivers I have seen have masks. We have no online services and we have no restaurants in operation right now. We have no domestic flights or intercity travel allowed. No driving is allowed unless it is to your local store. I have actually just found out that NZ is a producer of masks!

I'm glad to hear that. Here in NZ, we have fewer low end people working because there is no online shopping (except groceries although even that has been cut by some stores) and there are no restaurants operating. Without these 2 industries, there are no chefs, wait-staff, Amazon store workers, or delivery people out and about. All people staying home because of job cuts are getting about $500/week in wage subsidy. People who are working from home do not. It is just interesting to see how the two governments are doing things differently.

His self isolation is over TODAY! But of course now the entire country is in self-isolation. Haha. So here in NZ, we can only shop at our local grocery store and pharmacy, and we can go for walks in our local area. We are not allowed to drive except to the local grocery store and pharmacy. There is NO carry out food of any sort available, there is also no online shopping of any sort except groceries because all transport is for essential services only. So we are hunkering down in a 600sq foot apartment with three rooms with 2 teens and 2 parents working from home and heading into winter. Good thing we like each other!