[Politics] Jacinda Arden

[Guinness Boy]

Is that why the UK also has next to no Covid whereas in Germany it.....oh.....hang on.....

Germany is the real example for the UK to look at and go "well maybe we should have....."

What NZ doesn't have (and I claim no credit for this thought, I simply agree with [MENTION=3969]Billy the Fish[/MENTION] ) is a massive hub airport. Our biggest threat of a second wave doesn't come from thirty odd teenagers sat on Hove Lawns smoking dope, nor of people gradually letting their kids see their friends, or even protests in big cities. It comes when we reopen Heathrow to international transport on a large scale. Unless that is timed and quarantine and temperature testing in place and enforced, it'll all be back to the ICU before you can say Boeing 747.

NZ is isolated from that. Paris has the Eurostar and Air France connections, Belguim the Eurostar and flights to its ex colonies, Madrid was a hotspot in Spain. It's a very convincing argument and, as I said, it's not mine originally.

That said Jacinda Ardern was hugely impressive after the mosque killings, has managed to run a country on maternity leave, and seems to have called the slightly easier job she did have correctly. She's no Boris Johnson.

 

[Stat Brother]

You can't argue with her record but I said a while back that NZ was one of the easier countries to protect. In football terms she's kept her composure and buried a tap in.

Tiny population, 4 hours flight to the nearest country, 8 hours to the next nearest, literally on the edge of the world.

Best not forget just how many politicians we've had who in the same circumstances would have:-

Tripped over the ball.
Hit their head on the post.
Had the ball whacked into their goolies, sending it over the bar
Only to hit some poor disabled kid in the face.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Best not forget just how many politicians we've had who in the same circumstances would have:-

Tripped over the ball.
Hit their head on the post.
Had the ball whacked into their goolies, sending it over the bar
Only to hit some poor disabled kid in the face.

Or just done this....

 

[Billy the Fish]

Or just done this....

Or this

https://youtu.be/Tzqe5z1Jy_M

 

[Guinness Boy]

Or this

https://youtu.be/Tzqe5z1Jy_M

I nearly posted both.

I'm glad you, er, tapped that one in.....

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Germany is the real example for the UK to look at and go "well maybe we should have....."

What NZ doesn't have (and I claim no credit for this thought, I simply agree with [MENTION=3969]Billy the Fish[/MENTION] ) is a massive hub airport. Our biggest threat of a second wave doesn't come from thirty odd teenagers sat on Hove Lawns smoking dope, nor of people gradually letting their kids see their friends, or even protests in big cities. It comes when we reopen Heathrow to international transport on a large scale. Unless that is timed and quarantine and temperature testing in place and enforced, it'll all be back to the ICU before you can say Boeing 747.

NZ is isolated from that. Paris has the Eurostar and Air France connections, Belguim the Eurostar and flights to its ex colonies, Madrid was a hotspot in Spain. It's a very convincing argument and, as I said, it's not mine originally.

That said Jacinda Ardern was hugely impressive after the mosque killings, has managed to run a country on maternity leave, and seems to have called the slightly easier job she did have correctly. She's no Boris Johnson.

I don't disagree with most of that (albeit like most of what we all post on the Covid topic, it's speculation) but I'm guessing you've never flown into Auckland. "Auckland Airport is the largest and busiest airport in New Zealand, with over 21 million passengers in the year ended March 2019.". Compare that to Madrid: "Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, Passengers 61 million ". That's a mere three fold.

Also, Madrid airport was closed on March 23, whereas the reports I read online state Auckland airport was still open then, and was not temperature screening passengers.

So there must be some other reason for their good fortune. I have nothing useful to suggest. It's weird.

 

[Rogero]

As a country it could not have been easier as there are lot more sheep than people . We are s tiny island with a large population so we are densely populated . We are a travel hub for the world and have underground railways and buses heaving with people . London on its own has twice as many people as New Zealand so it was never going to be easy here . Certainly the Liverpool game should not have happened but that is in hindsight so it’s easy to criticise .

 

[Giraffe]

Following a comment on another thread and the way New Zealand tackled the virus crisis, Jacinda Arden is now the most popular PM in over a century.
There is a General Election due in September and her Labour Party has a 30% lead in the most recent opinion poll. In addition she has a 50% lead over the new opposition leader as best choice for PM.
Lots of lessons for other politicians to learn on the best way of dealing with a crisis.

Density of population:
New Zealand 46 people per square mile
England 1,349 people per square mile
London 13,210 per square mile
New York 27,000 per square mile

(Germany 623 people per square mile)

Hard to see how she handled it so well...she must be a miracle worker.

 

[Guinness Boy]

I don't disagree with most of that (albeit like most of what we all post on the Covid topic, it's speculation) but I'm guessing you've never flown into Auckland. "Auckland Airport is the largest and busiest airport in New Zealand, with over 21 million passengers in the year ended March 2019.". Compare that to Madrid: "Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, Passengers 61 million ". That's a mere three fold.

Also, Madrid airport was closed on March 23, whereas the reports I read online state Auckland airport was still open then, and was not temperature screening passengers.

So there must be some other reason for their good fortune. I have nothing useful to suggest. It's weird.

The funny thing is I have been to Auckland airport, albeit back in 2002. It was no Heathrow.

We're talking a comparison of 5 terminals, people flying to Heathrow to fly to other places (it's a transit hub, Auckland is a destination) people flying in from China and Milan even as we locked down. And (yes, more speculation), if the R rate in Madrid was even around 2, having three times as many people travelling through the airport, well, you do the math as they say.

And that's before you account for open Schengen travel throughout Europe, final destination unknown. NZ was easier to handle and also lucky that they were at the end of a Vitamin D soaked Southern Hemisphere summer.

 

[Justice]

Would you

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

As a country it could not have been easier as there are lot more sheep than people . We are s tiny island with a large population so we are densely populated . We are a travel hub for the world and have underground railways and buses heaving with people . London on its own has twice as many people as New Zealand so it was never going to be easy here . Certainly the Liverpool game should not have happened but that is in hindsight so it’s easy to criticise .

The population density of Auckland is 1,210 people per square kilometer
The population density of London is 1,510 inhabitants per square kilometre

I posted on the number of passengers in Auckland versus Madrid above.

The reason for NZ's extreme success vs ours remains baffling, but I suspect sheep have nothing to do with it.

I'm increasing of a mind that working out the spread and lethality of this virus is a fool's errand. There is a fair chance that doing certain things would have had good results, but you only have to look at the graphs on the Johns Hopkins site to realise there is no pattern with obvious explanation.

Here's a suggestion: kiwis don't socialise much and are descended in the main from pointy-nosed ginger jocks and are far too austere to engage with hugging and kissing, in contrast to the Spanish who are all over each other like a rash at the drop of a sombrero cordobés.

 

[Gwylan]

Can you imagine Johnson on a TV interview.

Fixed it for you

 

[Biscuit Barrel]

Yes indeed, lock it down at the earliest possible opportunity.

UK lock down 23rd March.
NZ lock down 25th March.

 

[WilburySeagull]

Of course its difficult to compare NZ and UK and many of the points made are valid. However the disparity in airports just points up the mistakes we made. With a huge hub airport near a densly populated city why did we not stop flights sooner. And then we let people return to the UK and travel from airports on public transport. If the people who were desparate to get back here from NZ knew then what we know now thay would have stayed put.

 

[arewethereyet?]

But hugely reliant on tourism and so would have had loads of people visit in Jan and Feb and would have had huge pressure on her to keep everything open. She didn't and look at the results

Absolutely this, me and the misses were there in Feb also having gone via Singapore, got home just before they closed their borders.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

You can't argue with her record but I said a while back that NZ was one of the easier countries to protect. In football terms she's kept her composure and buried a tap in.

Tiny population, 4 hours flight to the nearest country, 8 hours to the next nearest, literally on the edge of the world.

We have an advantage in that we are an island..... not as big an advantage, obviously..... but it hasn't done us much good. Would Jacinda Arden have allowed 3,000 Real Madrid fans to come over to Liverpool for a football match from one of the worst affected countries in Europe? Would she have allowed the Cheltenham Festival to go ahead?

 

[SeagullinExile]

Sorry. Can't let a NZ thread go by without a bit of this.....

 

[A1X]

Surely we could pay more than New Zealand to sign her? NZ and BJ compensation can't be that much?

The problem with Boris Johnson is he's done a Benteke on us. Utterly useless but we're lumbered with him as somehow he's made himself bulletproof.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Density of population:
New Zealand 46 people per square mile
England 1,349 people per square mile
London 13,210 per square mile
New York 27,000 per square mile

(Germany 623 people per square mile)

Hard to see how she handled it so well...she must be a miracle worker.

Stoke has a very dense population.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

Surely we could pay more than New Zealand to sign her? NZ and BJ compensation can't be that much?

Or we could just elect a decent human being of our own, and stop voting for self-interested ****s.