Jacinda Ardern has announced:
- All incoming travellers to NZ (except from Pacific Islands) after midnight Sunday must self-quarantine for 14 days. Nothing stated as to how this will be enforced or if there will be any legal obligation to do so or even any penalties for non-compliance. This includes returning NZ citizens. This is not the toughest ban in the world as the PM stated, it is more a soft ban.
- People travelling to the Pacific Islands will need to be medically checked
- Cruise ships asked not to come here until after 30 June
- Economic package to be announced Tuesday
- Restrictions on public gatherings will be announced at some stage also
This has all the air of blind panic from the Government. They have been caught like startled rabbits in the headlights.
The PM stated that they had a cabinet meeting today, that is highly unusual. Things must be worse than admitted to in order to necessitate a cabinet meeting on a Saturday.
It looks and feels like it is too little, too late. If one person fails to self isolate that could infect thousands like “patient 31” in Korea.
There was constant talk of flattening the curve. If you want to understand what that means and how pointless it is then read this article.
This is one of the most important charts.
It shows in orange bars the daily official number of cases in the Hubei province: How many people were diagnosed that day.
The grey bars show the true daily coronavirus cases. The Chinese CDC found these by asking patients during the diagnostic when their symptoms started.
Crucially, these true cases weren’t known at the time. We can only figure them out looking backwards: The authorities don’t know that somebody just started having symptoms. They know when somebody goes to the doctor and gets diagnosed.
What this means is that the orange bars show you what authorities knew, and the grey ones what was really happening.
On January 21st, the number of new diagnosed cases (orange) is exploding: there are around 100 new cases. In reality, there were 1,500 new cases that day, growing exponentially. But the authorities didn’t know that. What they knew was that suddenly there were 100 new cases of this new illness.
Two days later, authorities shut down Wuhan. At that point, the number of diagnosed daily new cases was ~400. Note that number: they made a decision to close the city with just 400 new cases in a day. In reality, there were 2,500 new cases that day, but they didn’t know that.
The day after, another 15 cities in Hubei shut down.
Up until Jan 23rd, when Wuhan closes, you can look at the grey graph: it’s growing exponentially. True cases were exploding. As soon as Wuhan shuts down, cases slow down. On Jan 24th, when another 15 cities shut down, the number of true cases (again, grey) grinds to a halt. Two days later, the maximum number of true cases was reached, and it has gone down ever since.
Note that the orange (official) cases were still growing exponentially: For 12 more days, it looked like this thing was still exploding. But it wasn’t. It’s just that the cases were getting stronger symptoms and going to the doctor more, and the system to identify them was stronger.
This concept of official and true cases is important.
The Government is not telling us the true picture. They are only telling us what they know. There will be far more than six cases, and the indicator of this is the sixth case who has been in the hospital for a week but was only announced today.
This plan relies on people’s honesty. Self-isolation is not going to work. How is it even going to be enforced? Will people have to register where they self-quarantine? Will they be checked up on? Will there be sanctions for non-compliance?
There are way more questions to be asked and answered, but it is highly likely that we are not going to flatten the curve as stated. The borders have been open for weeks longer than they should have. Even yesterday there were three flights from China landing at Auckland airport.
The PM is trying to look like a leader, and she will convince many, but the live cross to her press conference showed a leader under immense pressure.