Sir Bob Jones: Sanity dawns

On this site in March, 2020 when the coronavirus panic began, I predicted that when it’s all done and dusted, Sweden’s “live with it” approach will have proven the correct path to adopt. It’s not yet totally “done and dusted” globally but the developed world will reach that stage sometime this year.

Meanwhile, increasingly liberal societies have woken to the realities and are adopting the Swedish model, mindful that with widespread vaccinations, restraints are now irrational.

Of course, vaccinations regardless, there are still freakishly rare fatality exceptions, but closing down society at a massive social and economic cost, the consequences of which will be a huge economic upheaval ahead, to prevent “freakish” contingencies, is simply insanity.

Matt Ridley: A vaccine for coronavirus isn't going to ride rapidly to our rescue

In 1934, in their spare time, two American biologists, Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering, developed a vaccine for whooping cough, then the biggest killer of children in the United States. Within four years their vaccine was being used throughout Michigan and within six it was being used nationwide. Whooping cough rapidly retreated.

Since then there have been spectacular advances in biology, including the identification of the genetic material, the ability to read its code, an understanding of the structure of viruses and the proteins from which they are made, plus knowledge of how immunity works. 

So why are we facing a wait of at least a year, maybe much more, for a vaccine for coronavirus? It has been one of the shocks of recent weeks to realise how little progress vaccine development has made. It’s still a bit of an art.

Matt Ridley: We are about to find out how robust civilisation is

The hardships ahead will be like nothing we have ever known.

On Sunday, lonely as a cloud, I wandered across a windswept moor in County Durham and passed a solitary sandstone rock with a small, round hollow in the top, an old penny glued to the base of the hollow. It is called the Butter Stone and it’s where, during the plague in 1665, coins were left in a pool of vinegar by the inhabitants of nearby towns and villages, to be exchanged with farmers for food. The idea was that the farmer or his customer approached the rock only when the other was at a safe distance.

Four modern coins were on the rock, anonymous offerings to the spirits of the moor. Never once in my six decades did I expect to be back in a 17th-century world of social and physical distancing as a matter of life and death.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Get PM and ministers up to speed on coronavirus details

The Government better sit the PM and the health minister down and get them across the details of our coronavirus response.

I am astonished at what these two key ministers don't know.

Our Health Minister doesn't know how many testing kits there are in this country.

We have been asking about this for days, because we're being told behind the scenes we only have limited supplies.

Clive Bibby: Watching on TV isn't the same as being there

Recently, l tuned in to watch the NZ cricket team doing battle with their Aussie counterparts at the 50,000 seat Sydney Cricket Ground, a place steeped in history that usually offers the viewer an experience worth the effort.

Unfortunately, due to the coronavirus restrictions, the two teams were playing in a stadium that was totally empty.  It was a charade but it also quickly became unwatchable irrespective of who was winning at the time.

I quickly switched channels to the Super Rugby game in Hamilton where there were about 10,000 loyal fans in attendance. The difference in atmosphere for anyone who couldn't be there in person was remarkable and the difference was the crowds reaction to the closeness of the scores. You could sense the tenseness.

Matt Ridley: We all need to change how we live our lives to fight this generation of pandemics

In the 19th century Ignaz Semmelweis was vilified and ostracised when he tried to make doctors wash their hands after doing autopsies on women who had died from childbirth fever before going straight upstairs to deliver more babies. We have come a long way since then in public health, but we can go much further still.

The Covid-19 coronavirus must change the way we behave – whether it kills millions or not. The vulnerability to pandemic-panic of world stock markets, the tourism industry, international sport and global trade, even before there is an actual pandemic, tells us that global society, for all its medical know-how, is vulnerable.

NZCPR Weekly: COVID-19

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we look into what is known about the COVID-19 virus, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Dr Matt Ridley explains why bats are the source of so many human diseases, and our poll asks whether you believe there is now too much hysteria around the new virus.

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
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Mike Hosking: Now is not the time for benefit increases

Quietly unveiled at the end of Jacinda Ardern's post-Cabinet press conference on Monday was confirmation of benefit increases based on wage increases, not the consumer price index, as has traditionally been the case.

It was a change made in the 'Wellbeing Budget' and this ironically is in part why the books aren't what they were, or indeed should be. The books were talked of in the same conference by Finance Minister Grant Robertson, who assured us all that we are busy working on three separate coronavirus plans, and we are in good shape to deal with all three.

Eric Crampton: Where do we go from here?

The government this week extended the COVID-19 (coronavirus) travel ban barring foreign nationals from arriving in New Zealand from mainland China and suggesting self-quarantine for Kiwis returning.

The continued ban feels like the right decision for a highly contagious disease with mortality rates that appear to be around twenty times higher than the seasonal flu. But feels are a poor basis for policy.

The disease has some very worrying features.

Mike Hosking: Is coronavirus exposing NZ's over reliance on China?

The obligatory commentary has already started on whether we should continue to be doing business, or the amount of business, we do with China.

The racism is already well entrenched all over the world as Asian restaurants empty out.
It's a funny thing isn't it? For the most part we celebrate our globalness, our connectedness, the fact we are all a village, until it doesn’t suit us or it momentarily appears to get a bit awkward.

The chances of you ordering a dumpling soup and getting coronavirus is, of course, a lot less than it is you getting run over by a car or bus on the way home. But logic it, would appear, has been suspended.