Battling Delta, New Zealand Abandons Its Zero-Covid Ambitions
Source: New York Times
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — For a year and a half, New Zealand has pursued a strategy of “Covid zero,” closing its borders and quickly enforcing lockdowns to keep the coronavirus in check, a policy it maintained even as other Asia-Pacific countries transitioned to coexisting with the viral threat. On Monday, New Zealand gave in. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern acknowledged an end to the elimination strategy seven weeks into a lockdown that has failed to halt an outbreak of the Delta variant, announcing that restrictions would be gradually lifted in Auckland, the country’s largest city.
“We’re transitioning from our current strategy into a new way of doing things,” Ms. Ardern told reporters. “With Delta, the return to zero is incredibly difficult, and our restrictions alone are not enough to achieve that quickly. In fact, for this outbreak, it’s clear that long periods of heavy restrictions has not got us to zero cases.” “What we have called a long tail,” she added, “feels more like a tentacle that has been incredibly hard to shake.” Overall, New Zealand’s approach to the virus has been a spectacular success, giving it one of the lowest rates of cases and deaths in the world, and allowing its people to live without restrictions during most of the pandemic.
But the mood among many in Auckland has soured as the most recent lockdown has stretched on, with thousands of people breaking a stay-at-home order on Saturday to demonstrate against the restrictions in the country’s largest such protest of the pandemic. The country’s vaccination program has also been a source of consternation. The campaign began in earnest only last month, and fewer than half of people 12 and older have been fully vaccinated, leaving New Zealand far behind most developed countries. Ms. Ardern began to acknowledge the public discontent two weeks ago, when she announced, after more than a month of a highly restrictive stay-at-home order, that some rules would be relaxed in Auckland even as much of the lockdown order remained in place.
About 200,000 people were allowed to return to work, and restaurants and cafes could reopen for takeout orders. At the time, Ms. Ardern said the country was still trying to eliminate the virus. But to epidemiologists, who believed it was still possible to beat Delta and who were encouraging New Zealand to stick with the zero-Covid strategy, it was a gamble. Now, they say, it is clear that easing restrictions ended any chance of wiping out the virus again. New Zealand is still reporting dozens of new cases a day, almost all of them in Auckland, after the latest outbreak began in mid-August.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/world/australia/new-zealand-covid-zero.html
Country after country arrogantly declared they had the solution but Delta didn't care.
This is going to require a multi-pronged "layered" approach to get it under control and get the more virulent strains out of circulation. A single strategy (whether it is 100% vaccination or 100% lockdowns or 100% masking or 100% devil-may-care like Sweden did with catastrophic results) is not going to work.
Layered mitigation removes many of the extremes but adds back a good level of protection.
This sortof reminds me of the old physics principle of multiple thin/fine strands that when bundled to create a rope of a certain diameter ends up being stronger than a single strand of rope of that same material with a diameter the same as the bundle (tensile strength).
= new reply since forum marked as read
vs the purported "goal" and continual "self promotion" regarding what their strategy was and "how well it was working" as if, like Sweden, it was the panacea for beating the virus.
The U.S. never implemented a complete nationwide lock down nor completely closed all of the borders for travel in/out, and would not be able to do so. And realistically, neither could New Zealand. The same applies to Australia who had a similar situation briefly knocking COVID-19 down to a trickle, and then to few or no reported cases for a period of time, before letting up, and finding Delta didn't care and went rampaging through the big cities and spread out into the country side.
The past year, multiple countries have been lofted into the stratosphere by the national and international media regarding their "practices" and how "successful" they were, only to find that their tunnel-vision solutions would be useless once the variant changed, and mainly because they were not using, as I posted, a "layered" strategy.
Everyone knows that barring whatever the true data is from India, the U.S. has the worst death toll in the world from this virus and trying to get that "layering" going here has been difficult. However places that have done it have at least been able to "flatten the curve" without more draconian complete lockdowns.
I think we all recall the Anthrax-in-the-mail mess and to this day, 20 years later, people are still sending "white powder" through the mail (where ricin became a substance of choice in newer terror-instilling mailings 
).
The CT about that is pretty wild to say the least.
And agree that of all times, to have egomaniac heads of state "in charge" during something like this, was a recipe for disaster. 
But speaking of egomaniacs, I did see a literal "blip" in the news that Duterte was "retiring from politics".
One wonders why? 
