BEVS

Quite. It is day by day; week by week. Be flexible and do the best with whatever info is available at that precise time.

Charismatic

Pfizer approved, immunisation to start "within days".

Justcol

It took 185 years to eradicate smallpox, let's hope whatever the plan is, it's got a shorter timescale

BEVS

Panic and desperation.

Charismatic

The most recent update from Germany was interesting, they have a population of 83 million and they will take delivery of 73m doses of Pfizer vaccine in Q1 so they'll pretty much get half the population done at least.

I heard the Prime Minister speaking on radio the other day and she was still surprisingly circumspect about the question of international travel even with vaccines and testing available.

BEVS

Good.

Justcol

Testing hasnt proved to be a very good indicator, hence the need for quarantine.
Fighting covid is all queen Jacinda has to keep her going, she's not going to let a little thing like the economy blot her copybook

BEVS

Ums. The testing type done here is actually quite accurate. It is the virus incubation period that is a bit of a problemo hence the need to double test . Even then every virus in every person will be a bit different in the way it behaves. I see some countries have buckled re quarantine requirements both for people entering from without and to control outbreaks from within. It needs to be a good two weeks.

Now if you were talking of the antigen tests then I would agree , that seems to be rather hit and miss.

I realise you have a bee in your bonnet over JA as PM for whatever reason as she does seem to engender rage in ,mostly , midde aged men; or perhaps it is the entire Labour party. Whichever , it really doesn't matter. We all have our differing outlook politically. What everyone in NZ should be very pleased with though is that borders were shut; outbreaks contained. It could have been very very different for this small community based island nation.

As for the economy - now is the time to rethink . Too many eggs in one or two baskets is never going to be OK overall as NZ saw when the UK joined the Common Market.

Look. International travel has been changed & that might not be such a bad thing from what has been seen re mass tourism and environmental damage. It might be better if people stopped railing against that .

The vaccine? I can wait.

Charismatic

Housing is our economy now. We dont need to make things people want to buy or worry about issues as crass as productivity, we can just sell houses to each other at ever increasing prices.

BEVS

*sigh*

Justcol

Aah, the return of the good old kiwi ¼ acre dream. Of course there'll have to be more treaty talks and compensation payments as much of the affordable land is in Maori hands.

​​​​​​As for travel, give it time and normal service will be resumed, money will flow and all the talk of diversifying the economy will be forgotten. Kiwis will remember their place and pull their head down from the parapet We'll settle back into our happy little world selling our souls to the Chinese but complaining endlessly about it

BEVS

You blokes make me chuckle.

Charismatic

And it's lights out on the race to vaccinate. Hopefully any bottlenecking is in production and not administration of vaccines, it would be terrible if a Governments cost lived by fumbling the rollout.

Charismatic

Less of your apathy BEVS. Even our Prime Minister has given up and got on board with the program. You can more or less draw a straight line between expensive and infinity.

Interestingly this now impacting peoples behaviours. For example the fertility rate fell from just over 2.1, where it had been stable for many years, to 1.6 over less than a decade. So much for all of our forecasts about a Covid baby boom, New Zealanders can't afford to have children any more.

LittleGreyCat

Hoping that travel will gradually open up at least in time for Xmas 2021.
By that time there should have been significant vaccination and proof of a vaccination plus a negative Covid test should be enough to classify people as safe to travel.
I think that if initial travellers were quarantined to confirm that they didn't import Covid, then after 3 months the restrictions could be eased.