Last October – just one month before the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Wuhan – the World Health Organisation issued advice to governments on “non-pharmaceutical interventions” in the event of a future influenza pandemic.
Conspiracy mongers will have a field day with this, but it really does seem a coincidence. Given that WHO has hardly covered itself in glory lately, its advice must also be taken with a grain of salt.
But what’s really significant about WHO’s advice (which does seem to have been genuinely based on scientific research) is that it flatly contradicts what even its most fervent champions have actually done. In particular, the Ardern government has ignored nearly everything WHO advised.
Hand hygiene and “respiratory etiquette” were recommended at all times. Yet there was precious little evidence for any of the other vast array of interventions governments have enacted[…]
Evidence for the effectiveness of workplace and school closures, in particular, was “very low” and they were ethically problematic given the imposition on parents and a significant fall in “the economy and productivity of a society”, the WHO argued.
One particular surprise is that WHO mostly rejected travel restrictions. Mostly. Here’s where it gets interesting for New Zealand:
“Border closures may be considered only by small island nations in severe pandemics and epidemics but must be weighed against potentially serious economic consequences,” it said.
“Entry and exit screening for infection in travellers is not recommended because of the lack of sensitivity of these measures in identifying infected but asymptomatic travellers,” it added.
The analysis was aware of the possible benefits of such measures, but equally concerned about their economic and social costs.
Taiwan is the perfect example of a small island nation which rapidly closed its borders. Taiwan also screened all travellers with temperature sensors.
While New Zealand, as another small island nation, had a golden opportunity to quickly close its borders, it did not do so with any alacrity. No matter what Jacinda Ardern might say. New Zealand didn’t close its borders until March 20. This was over two months after the world was alerted to the virus, nearly eight weeks after Australia’s first cases were reported, and a month after New Zealand’s first case.
No matter which way you cut it, that’s not “hard and early”.
Where Ardern did go hard – the draconian and economically devastating Level 4 restrictions – she directly contradicted the advice of her beloved WHO.
There was nothing on the benefits of restricting groups to two or 10 people, let alone banning professional sport or outlawing golf[…]
[Australia’s] excellent performance in keeping COVID-19 at bay has blinded some to the lack of evidence for stage-three lockdown restrictions[…]
In New Zealand they didn’t let people outside for more than an hour a day and basically shut all businesses, but it has had more deaths per capita than Australia, and with no Ruby Princess.
That hasn’t stopped Ardern banging her little drum, to adoring coos of delight from the mainstream media. But the economic chickens are yet to come back to roost en masse. Ardern’s claim to “eliminate” COVID-19 is frankly garbage – unless she plans to keep borders sealed until a vaccine is developed months if not years from now. In which case, say goodbye to New Zealand’s critical tourism industry, which contributes approximately 10% of GDP.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared victory this week as her government wound back restrictions to something more akin to Victoria’s. Even if parts of the devastated economy quickly recover, it’s not clear tourism will, which last year was the country’s biggest export earner at 20 per cent of foreign exchange earnings. If everyone has to quarantine for two weeks on arrival in New Zealand, not many will visit. It could be a Pyrrhic victory[…]
Sweden meanwhile, the bete noir of the global lockdown movement, is experiencing the same number of new infections each day as it was a month ago, making a mockery of forecasts of disaster if it didn’t put its people under house arrest for weeks.
So, rather than following scientific advice from the very UN which she constantly lauds, Jacinda Ardern instead relied on her little circle of friends. Trashing New Zealand’s economy and trampling its citizens’ rights in the process – for likely no real advantage.
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