It's back!

"New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Tuesday that authorities have found four cases of the coronavirus in one Auckland household from an unknown source, the first reported cases of local transmission in the country in 102 days."

https://apnews.com/91f21b7222b544ead4f1a7888d8dcdaa

Looks like it's impossible to completely wipe out, oh well glad they really tried though. But employing common sense and mitigation is still the best way forward. Doing so slows the spread and reduces the severity of the disease, at least the evidence/data suggests so.

It must have come back in from the border

Until Tuesday, the only known cases of the virus in New Zealand were 22 travellers who had recently returned from abroad and were being held in quarantine at the border.

The tests aren't 100% accurate, they must have missed a returning traveler case. Someone could also have been infected just before returning and still in the early incubation time while getting back in the country. Not far enough along to be detected with a nasal swab. If that person only has/had very mild symptoms they might not have bothered to quarantine or still had it after the 2 week period. Even mild to no symptoms can linger on. The incubation period also has outliers, up to 3 weeks. Thus even with a 2 week mandatory quarantine you don't have a 100% guarantee not to get the virus back in. But enough to get 102 days rest!


New Zealand is responding immediately though, unlike most countries that have a wait until it gets bad approach.

Ardern said Auckland, the nation's largest city, will be moved to Alert Level 3 from midday Wednesday through midnight Friday, meaning that people will be asked to stay at home, while bars and many other businesses will be closed. “These three days will give us time to assess the situation, gather information, make sure we have widespread contact tracing so we can find out more about how this case arose and make decisions about how to respond to it once we have further information,” Ardern said at a hastily called news conference late Tuesday.

“I know that this information will be very difficult to receive,” Ardern said. “We had all hoped not to find ourselves in this position again. But we had also prepared for it. And as a team, we have also been here before.” She said that travelling into Auckland will be banned unless people live there and are travelling home. She said the rest of the country will be raised to Level 2 through Friday, meaning that mass gatherings will be limited to 100 attendees and people would need to socially distance themselves from each other.


You can't get rid of it completely unless you close the border completely :/ There are simply too many active infections in the world.

I'd see one exception: Only opening up to countries why have also zero cases. But those are very few and far between.

This is correct. The same states that were spared early on are reaching their peak this month, some have hit it during June or July, while others are over three months past it now. The timing of the lockdown measures and social distancing has been just about the same everywhere, on the other hand, so the states peaking now are just as open as the ones that peaked in May or so.

Also of note is that there are certain places in Brazil and elsewhere, poorer communities, as simulations and now research has shown, where the virus can't be stopped. It literally can't, even with a lockdown. The outbreak only dies out when it has run out of fuel. See what is happening in India for instance.

https://www.ndtv.com/mumbai-news/coronavirus-mumbai-sero-survey-finds-57-have-had-covid-19-in-slums-16-in-other-areas-2270412

That's why there are places, specially in larger cities, where further outbreaks aren't going to be a concern anymore, and numbers have remained very low even as opening proceeds and people continue to irregularly fill up beaches and night bars.

eh they just skipped a testing stage (or two. I don't really care).

There's nothing worth sharing unless the Russian guinea pigs make it through without too many side effects. But at that point there will be more vaccines ready to use.

Yeah New Zealand and Australia are in a tricky situation, We went into lockdown, beat the virus, but as soon as we lifted restrictions, new cases started to pop-up and we don't actually know where they are coming from.

They didn't do Phase 3 (or possibly even Phase 2) trials, they're rushing it out before it's actually been properly tested to prove it works.

There is still no COVID-19 vaccine that has completed all three phases of proper testing. (Though 8 have reached the final stage)

I'm wondering what's going on here atm. We didn't do anything new apart from a couple counties making masks mandatory indoors while opening up nearly everything else. The reported cases suddenly started dropping, today only 33 in Ontario (although still 15K pending tests). Great but how did we go from a 160 average to 33 in 3 weeks while opening up things and mobility trends further increasing. A week ago we were still over 100 average.

Meanwhile the outbreak in our local hospital with at least 2 staff members testing positive, unrelated to each other, only raised the counter for our county by one. A glitch? Did they find yet how they got it... Why is the call center still experiencing high call volumes and delays if everything is suddenly going so well.

The reported cases going down is great and makes opening the schools in 3 weeks look a lot more promising. Yet some things simply don't add up. Either this virus behaves really weird or we're not testing all that efficiently.

And time is ticking...
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/summer-has-been-the-easy-part-of-the-pandemic-it-s-what-comes-next-that-worries-experts-1.5059785

Fall, winter coming here. You guys are going into summer, should get better. (Although I guess you don't really have a winter anyway)

And you're still trying to assert otherwise when it comes to, nothing?

When I, use my gut because the stacks of verified info I've collected doesn't seem/feel right, more often than not, it works out for the best, and it's not like when it doesn't work out it's ever tragic. Could it be better? Could it be worse? Science has it's place, but it's not the only place at the table.

Though if always going with the scientific info at hand works best for you, then by all means, don't worry, just be happy.