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Originally Posted by Azure
If you go by death rate, they have probably done much better than us, but their vaccination rates are a full 20% behind ours. They also live on an island.
They just recently came out of a level 4 lockdown which includes a lot of businesses that we considered essential and allowed to operate. I have friends there that are completely double vaxxed and their business is being torn apart by the lockdowns.
They are now mandating vaccinations for teachers & health care workers even though a high percentage of them have not been voluntarily vaccinated, which is going to cause a lot of turmoil. For a country where everyone kept saying has people who are 'handling it the right way', the low vaccination rate doesn't exactly make it seem that is actually the case.
Overall their restrictions and lockdowns have been much worse.
At the end of the day the countries that handled it properly are those that got vaccination rates high fast without needing mandates, plus were able to not completely blow up the economy, while still using restrictions to slow spread. Canada & the Liberals, and most provinces have done very well with this. Some of our provinces did very well, some did well at some times, and completely shat the bed at other times.
I really don't want to toot Manitoba's horn, but we are still not dealing with any kind of serious mandate for workers, and we have super high rates in high population areas. I'm sure other provinces are probably similar.
When the mandates have been used, they are either done by private companies, or via restrictions to recreational activities. To me that is a citizenry & country that is handling things the right way.
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Death rate, impact on the healthcare system, economic impact... there are a lot of things one could go by that show NZ in very favourable light. They've done well. They had some tough lockdowns, but they also had extended periods of being absolutely free and clear, living as normal.
Vaccine supply has been an issue, but seems to be resolved now. They've fully vaccinated nearly 40% of the population in the last two months, and are at 80% of eligible with one dose (just 6% behind Canada), 57% with two. In terms of availability, they are roughly 4 months behind Canada, so their numbers are good, given that fact. The percentage of double vaccinated will likely meet ours in a matter of weeks.
As we've seen across the globe, vaccine supply is a difficult thing to manage. Some countries did very well securing it (Canada, the US, the UK, Russia, China) and other countries like Australia and New Zealand struggled. Does it have an effect on their overall handling of the pandemic? Of course. But they are also issues that can be evaluated separately, and outside of the vaccine rollout there is no ground to stand on in saying New Zealand was anything but fantastic in their handling of the pandemic to that point. And honestly, their vaccine rollout, even with the delay, does not change that fact all that much.
I know the crowd who have been anti-lockdown and never seen the need for lockdowns won't have their minds changed now, but there's no denying their effectiveness and overall benefit to a country dealing with COVID (absent of high vaccination rates). COVID-zero was the best approach worldwide.