Level 3 guidance: Work from home if possible, businesses can open premises but can't interact with customers face-to-face, regional travel highly limited, children up to Year 10 can go to school

We don't know if we will move to Level 3 yet. We will find out on April 20. 

"Cabinet will on Monday decide whether the country will come out of Level 4 on Wednesday - April 22. Ardern said the information released today shouldn't foreshadow this decision."

Might want to read the article again (i'm assuming you did the first time, just not very well).

Better chance than average SmoKey. From what I heard 80% was geared to staying on L4 for longer but they left a back door out in one sentence.

Soper's Herald article telling... the COL now know they went too hard, too fast, weren't prepared and didn't need to go to level 4. Level 3 is not much different, but VERY different in terms of economic impact.

Ardern looked totally out of her depth - again, rambling away about all the rules for level 3 at today's 1pm briefing.

Jacinda "our go hard and go early elimination strategy" spin really sticks in the craw. Taiwan were boarding inbound China planes and checking passengers in December.

Seriously, thank God for Reddell.
He is one of the very few people questioning the govt's narrative in any informed and intelligent manner.

Waymad, that's the heart of it. Regards the Reddell article. Models for fatalities from Covid in error. More to the point, no debate allowed with these absolutely key issues. The consequences of this will be catastrophic economically and would not stand up to a transparent inquiry. Don't hold your breath.

Good, interesting post. I would raise a couple of questions / issues:

First, why are they trying to talk up a lack of preparation for a global pandemic in the last two years? We have been underfunding health per capita across the entire sector for many years now, and now the argument here is "They should have been investing massively in this particular area of pandemic handling over the last two years - why weren't they!?!" When has that ever been a priority investment in NZ's health sector, that it would be called out in particular with hindsight now?

Second, they compare Korea and Taiwan, two countries that regularly have to deal with outbreaks from China and have prepared in advanced. Same as the above, when has investment in handling the possibility of a rare global pandemic been a priority for an NZ government? And if we attribute this blame, how can we not then also attribute the blame to businesses and investors for not also planning appropriately for such an event?

I do agree entirely that media coverage should have been better. Reporting only one extreme of the range seems bizarre...perhaps symptomatic of the clickbait driven model that much of mainstream media is forced to operate under.

Third, the model is criticised for not including effective tracing and isolation in scenarios in worst cases. Although they do model the reduction effect on R for different control levels, so at that point they're obviously assuming effective control mechanisms including such measures as tracing and isolation?

However, if the argument is that no lockdown should have occurred because we could have done tracing and isolation, didn't we actually need time for the under prepared health sector to ramp up those capabilities with which they were not already equipped due to ongoing under investment? According to the Granny Herald we're now trumpeting the fact we've spun up capacity that is still short of what was estimated to be required for effective contact tracing and testing.

Or is the problem that the didn't model scenarios under which we started without effective controls then worked hard to develop those controls within certain time frames?

In retrospect, yes, ongoing deferral of investment is bad and people should stop yelling "tax cuts!" at every election instead of funding health properly. And perhaps preparation for pandemics is part of that.

Was what I was calling for media to inquire about weeks ago. It’s important to hold them to account and for transparency as there decision affects us all and generations to come.

#5 isn't an option for us - NZ can't twist the WHO arm like China can. Maybe we could reinstate one of Mugabe's children as the goodwill ambassador?

Unusually I agree with you. Of course #5 is difficult since nobody trusts China especially if in any way it is a matter that might reflect badly on them. Clearly Taiwan (a place with a higher density of Han chinese than China) is the gold standard for dealing with this epidemic and I suspect they have achieved their remarkable success by following the first four of your points. I would appreciate our govt bringing a Taiwanese health expert to head the royal commission that must be held after this epidemic comes under control (after our next election).

5. - What, you mean distort and obfuscate any data that might make the party look bad, open up wildlife market butcheries that were clearly a contributing factor to a global pandemic as well as being a moral abomination, blame foreigners (especially black ones) for infecting the Chinese that infected them, and then have our spies post propoganda on foreign websites? I think we can do without those kind of learnings, thank you.

6. Stop eating Exotic animals

Xing, can you explain to me why the wet markets weren't shut down after H1N1 or MERS?

The biggest risk to the human race isn't climate change, nuclear war or an asteroid - it's Asian wet markets where some of the most disease ridden animals on the planet are skinned alive and eaten. We have had a number of shots across the bow and if these markets aren't shut down, it wouldn't be a stretch to interpret that as a declaration of war.

Stuff China, they started this whole thing, then proceeded to try and cover it up. There is NOTHING to learn from China, not anymore

China Started this whole thing!This is a FACT!:https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/christchurch/canterbury-mornings-wi…

I'm guessing an extra two weeks as she said working in 2 week increments. Then a shorter level 3 period.
Not many small businesses will e able to handle it.

No you can't pickup because you're supposed to only undertake essential travel still. /s

Sorry, I made a mistake in the headline. Regional travel is "highly limited (e.g. for essential workers, with limited exemptions for others)". 

Where is the information about PPE, Testing & contact tracing and, managing the border.

The plan, who does what (moh v dhb) the resources (we got now, we need, where they come from).

The performance of this supports the economic activity.
Or, the definition of level3.

Nar, two more weeks of lvl 4 lock down. At least 4 of level 3 maybe 6 and then lvl 2. They will go hard to wipe it out and wipe it out for good is what I heard.

The lack of international tourism takes out a big chunk of GDP no matter the level we're under for the next months.

Yeah I think they need to introduce as much freedom as they can while still keeping the steady drop in numbers - like taiwan and south korea have done. Realistically that means schools need to stay shut.

I believe they measured it in the last budget?

Agree.
Although I can stand her and think she should have gone earlier and harder, she is still doing a hell of a lot better than I ever thought she was capable of.

Printer - have read of Waymad's cracker of link above and reassess "exceptionally well.'
" Taiwan recorded their first case of Covid-19 on 21 January, a full month before New Zealand’s first case
Taiwan has not had a lock-down
Yet despite earlier exposure and much greater risk due to more travel to and from China, Taiwan has just 373 cases (16 per million) of Covid-19 while the rate in New Zealand is currently 17 times higher (266 cases per million)
Taiwan usually has about three million visitors a year from China, while New Zealand gets about 400,000. The gap is even bigger in terms of visitors to China (who posed a risk of spreading the disease upon their return)"

Head off to a tangi?
I live a stones throw from four Marae. It's quite weird to see no activity there day in day out. Definitely not bau.

I'll vote for anyone other than Full Scoff however I like to drive my Prius on Sundays. Will these cars be allowed?

Helicopter money, or as it is known in polite socialist circles MMT (Magic Money Tree,)

I know some are passionate advocates of MMT ("That's what we already have today! So we need to do more for it to work property" etc) but I'm not one of them.
Simply. If it works, and we have it already, then why are we here? ( And no. It's not The Virus!)

What do you think we should do today?
And, now, let's "fast-forward" to tomorrow - And it looks like the Second Wave is far deadlier than the first. NZ has followed the Australian Model and now has 20,000 dead and it's looking grim.
Did you make the right call, today?
No one knows! That's the point. It's easy to say " We should have done, this or that" but at the time, just like the call I am asking to you to make now, no one knows what's going to happen. You can only make the calls that you think are right at the time and change them as required.

So what is effectively being proposed in Level 3 is exactly what Australia have now

Federally, yes.

Individual states and cities have gone much further and most schools and universities have closed voluntarily.

If you're just looking at the official policy then their lockdown is indeed weaker than ours. But if you look at what is actually happening on the ground, in some parts of the country it is roughly on par with what we're doing.

Burger King's suffered from pre-existing underlying health conditions. The owners were looking at options already, as far as I've seen.

Jacinda has already moved to the stage to defend her record. And this is not Australia's level 3. It's more like level 3.5. Significant more restrictions. Grant Robertson needs more time to transform the economy.

Exactly!

send them on a cruise?

I nominate solardb.

solardb, you don't think we should have some border control a bit earlier? I mean we pay these people to think isn't it? And it's said we pay people to run the covidsim model, and making that the input for our public policy.

That's right and the general public should see these models and scenarios., because the reality now is that these are the models that will more than likely reflect the reality of what is going to happen....not just the CV19 ones.

BigDaddy absolutely correct. Infact globally there has been no more deaths than usual despite covid 19. The families that suffer due to economic collapse will not be a priority unfortunately.

The govt should release the suicide stats during the lockdown and those directly attributable to the lockdown.

Having unsustainable debt and record droughts could have been a catalyst even without the arrival of Covid.

Don't forget to add in the positives like the road toll.

There's a weeks old french trial with Hydroxychloroquine with 2500 treated so far and just 0.4% death rate when taken at an early stage. If those numbers are for real then I think we should consider the herd immunity route using lowest risk 60-70% of population. Would only kill a few 1000s, and would be possible to work through to herd immunity without overwhelming hospitals within a few months.

1. Schools are going to become a shared bubble. The children at school will be segregated into small groups so the infection will not be able to spread through a whole school.
2. The point of workers in businesses staying 2m away from customers is because the customers are generally strangers. If COVID-19 gets into a school, the government knows exactly who the students are that are attending the school so they know who to test and put self-isolation orders on. A McDonald's that serves 100 customers at their tills in a lunch hour is not going to be able to contact all of the potentially affected customers.
3. The whole point of level 3 as opposed to level 4 is to balance the cost of health measures against the economy, to shift more in favour of the economy. We are taking extra health risks as a result, but given the case load at present, this seems like a reasonable risk to take. Thus sending children back to school so their parents can get back into their jobs is a sensible step to take - it's not like the children are being sent to school just for funsies.