Along with other BFD writers, I have for the past week raised the question of whether New Zealand’s draconian lockdowns had actually achieved anything significant.
The conclusion even then was: no. Jacinda Ardern has trashed and burned New Zealand’s economy for nothing.
As more and more data becomes available regarding the Chinese virus, the more and more indisputable it becomes that the panic, the trampling of civil liberties, the obliteration of jobs and businesses – has all been for nothing.
To normalise for an unambiguous comparison of deaths between states at the midpoint of an epidemic, we counted deaths per million population for a fixed 21-day period, measured from when the death rate first hit 1 per million[…]until it ordered businesses shut down.
We ran a simple one-variable correlation of deaths per million and days to shutdown, which ranged from minus-10 days (some states shut down before any sign of COVID-19) to 35 days for South Dakota, one of seven states with limited or no shutdown. The correlation coefficient was 5.5 per cent — so low that the engineers I used to employ would have summarised it as “no correlation” and moved on to find the real cause of the problem.
One solid conclusion is that “hard and early” (whether or not it’s true – and, despite Ardern’s endless bragging, it certainly is not true for New Zealand) had no benefit.
No conclusions can be drawn about the states that sheltered quickly, because their death rates ran the full gamut, from 20 per million in Oregon to 360 in New York. This wide variation means that other variables — like population density or subway use — were more important. Our correlation coefficient for per-capita death rates vs. the population density was 44 per cent. That suggests New York City might have benefited from its shutdown — but blindly copying New York’s policies in places with low COVID-19 death rates, such as my native Wisconsin, doesn’t make sense.
This is absolutely important to New Zealand. New Zealand has low population density and little mass public transit use. Even in New Zealand’s biggest city nearly everyone travels in private cars – mostly self-driven.
So, what may be two of the biggest factors in high rates of COVID-19 infection and death – population density and mass public transport use – simply don’t exist in New Zealand.
Sweden is fighting coronavirus with commonsense guidelines that are much less economically destructive[…]Sweden’s containment measures are less onerous than America’s, so it can keep them in place longer to prevent COVID-19 from recurring. Sweden did not shut down stores, restaurants and most businesses, but did shut down the Volvo automotive plant, which has since reopened, while the Tesla plant in Fremont, California, was shuttered by police and remains closed.
How did the Swedes do? They suffered 80 deaths per million 21 days after crossing the 1 per million threshold level. With 10 million people, Sweden’s death rate without a shutdown and massive unemployment is lower than that of the seven hardest-hit US states — Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Louisiana, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey and New York — all of which, except Louisiana, shut down in three days or less. Despite stories about high death rates, Sweden’s is in the middle of the pack in Europe, comparable to France; better than Italy, Spain and the UK; and worse than Finland, Denmark and Norway. Older people in care homes accounted for half of Sweden’s deaths.
New Zealand crossed the 1 per million threshold on 13 April. Not even 21 days later, its rate is 3.9 per million. Australia crossed the 1 per million mark on 2 April. Nearly four weeks later, its rate remains lower than New Zealand’s. Compared to other island nations, both countries are, like Sweden vs other European countries, in the middle of the pack. Japan has fared much worse, possibly due to its dense population and extensive public transport. Iceland has fared much better. Taiwan, best of all.
The conclusion is unavoidable:
For all her wittering about being guided by science, Ardern has shown that her grasp of actual science is even more tenuous than Siouxsie Wiles’s. Not only has she – like most leaders – ignored pandemic advice released just last year, but she continues to parrot idiotic nostrums and ignore the mounting evidence that she has been just plain wrong.
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