<
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/499516/new-zealand-s-covid-19-response-saved-20-000-lives-research>
'New Zealand's restrictions during the pandemic saved the lives of about 20,000
people, according to new research.
The paper by 16 leading doctors and scientists, published in the
New Zealand
Medical Journal on Friday, is calling for all serious respiratory infections -
including influenza and RSV - to be treated the same way.
Lead author and Otago University public health professor Michael Baker said it
was a "strange paradox" of preventative medicine that its success could work
against it in people's minds.
"We have an expression in public health: 'A public health triumph: nothing
happened'.
"If you stop a pandemic, or greatly blunt it, people may say 'well, what was
all the fuss about?'"
More than 3000 New Zealanders have died from Covid-19, and it is on track to
kill 1000 people this year, making it the country's most deadly infectious
disease at the moment.
However, compared with other nations, New Zealand has got off extremely
lightly.
Globally, there have been about 29 million deaths in the past three years,
Baker said.
"I've recently been overseas for the first time in three years, and colleagues
in Europe were talking about how miserable and horrible that time was, when
they were seeing even healthy, middle-aged colleagues dying of this infection,
that is frontline health workers.
"We were spared that.
"If we'd had the mortality rate of the United States, for instance, we would
have had 20,000 people die over that period."
As the report noted, the key to New Zealand's success was keeping the virus out
for two years until most people could be vaccinated and the health system was
ready for it, he said.'
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: October 12, 2023
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-90829145
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
