Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
The virus doesn't survive very well on objects. New Zealand's only regular contact (non-personal) with other nations is unloading shipping containers. That's not so for Canada. We have all sorts of actual people traveling across the border for non-personal reasons every day.
Another factor to consider is that Canada already had far more cases of Covid than than New Zealand did by the time any sort of lockdowns came into effect.
There wasn't a single nation in Canada's climate zone that managed to get things down to zero. The closest was probably......Iceland, also an island state.
When you're pushing for zero, when it simply isn't possible, you're putting unnecessary restrictions into place and causing economic damage that doesn't need to happen. It's easy to think of the "economy" as some abstract place where greedy people make money. But the reality is that it's actually small businesses, family debt, life savings, etc.. that your affecting.
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Not true, as we've seen that restrictions that keep cases low (in cases where zero is not possible) and allow for limited spread are more beneficial than nothing. We've seen no evidence that restrictions and lockdowns cause more economic damage than COVID spread. We've seen the exact opposite.
The non-bolded isn't particularly relevant to the point. You're trying to discuss why Canada couldn't have been exactly like New Zealand, but that's not an argument that is being made.
I'm not sure what your line about the economy not being an abstract place of greed comes in. That sounds like a nonsense straw man. Who are you speaking to with that? We are all part of the economy if we're working, and many are who are not. The economy, which includes all of us, is worth saving, no? Lockdowns and restrictions helped to protect it. COVID-zero was the ideal state. You seem somewhat confused in thinking our options were either achieving it, or not trying for it, as attempting COVID-zero in an impossible scenario was damaging, but no evidence whatsoever supports that. We know now that lockdown type measures were economically saving compared to the alternative, not damaging. This is no longer a theoretical debate, so if you're treating it that way, you're behind.