>>>Don’t pretend you know about USSR, just because you visited it twice; and about communists and what they did. When I lived in the USSR, Yugoslavia to me was a wild west :)
>
>Meanwhile at the end of the planet, one C19 case is found and the place locks down completely. Oh, the horror. Give me Stalin and Beria any day.

Australia seems to be still on the climbing side of their winter bell curve. One interesting idea is that "preemptive" quarantine (local and personal) might be one of the reasons some far eastern nations were able to avoid large spikes, as it cuts down on the "symptom free window" and lags in tracing/testing effort. If natural borders allow it, why not aim for 0 Covid to avoid the escalating lockdown/ease mechanism seen everywhere when residual virus population gets benefit of winter driven indoor target sets or group outings / gatherings of science deniers ?

More interesting would be Arden plans for your next winter - vaccinate at least every 50+ or immune compromised or diabetic/overweight and then try without lockdown or rinse and repeat lockdowns ?

Assuming a asymptomatic set 4-6 times of verified infections hard hit countries with ~10% verified infections and 2/3 of population vaccinated should be close to the reachable level of immunity, with soon only breakthrough cases, allowing estimates on efficacy of natural and vaccine immunity over time and age group. Early antibody studies in NY and other places even estimated up to 10 times of undiagnosed / hidden Corona infections, so I don't think my guess is to far off. Unless NZ vaccinates at least those likely to have severe outcomes, your "dry wood" will pile up at later time.

Tin-foil hats already wonder why
- antibody tests, which seem to be better now at recognizing early undiagnosed infections, are discouraged,
- vaccination status is kept out of infection / hospital admission / symptom severity / mortality statistics and
- "long covid" data is kept at anecdotal, not statistical level.

curious
thomas