New Zealand concentration camps

[Mountain Man]

When we are dealing with a deadly, communicable disease, my right to move freely about if I'm infected is necessarily suspended so that I don't put others at risk. There is no conflict between that reality and my right under normal circumstances to move about freely.

If you are infected and acting recklessly in manner that puts the public at risk, sure, but the policy being discussed here is that those who are acting responsibly, and even those who aren't even infected but were simply in contact with someone who was, could be subject to what essentially amounts to imprisonment.

[Esther]

How many people do you want to die from mandatory quarantines and shutdown of the economy before you consider it a bad idea?

If there was sufficient evidence that this was a widespread epidemic in the States and killing a million in obvious fashion, I would agree that people should prefer to self-quarantine. The evidence I have seen and heard was that the high rate and number of deaths have been concentrated to a few areas and for no more than a month or two -- in the States. This did not deserve a shutdown of the other 45 or so states.

The people getting sick would have had to be more numerous than what I saw. (The shape of the so-called death curve would have been higher in March before people quarantined. The data does not match with the fear that was caused. ) The media would have to stop lying -- making up fake activity around hospitals and making fake claims about the number of deaths in certain cities that I examined. I had done the analysis, for example, of Dallas County after it made the news in around June. There were no statistics to support the scary news stories.

Well said Mike Whitney.

[oxmixmudd]

If you are infected and acting recklessly in manner that puts the public at risk, sure, but the policy being discussed here is that those who are acting responsibly, and even those who aren't even infected but were simply in contact with someone who was, could be subject to what essentially amounts to imprisonment.

If you are exposed, you can be infected.

It takes on average 5 days but up to two weeks to show symptoms if you were infected

If you are infected you may not show symptoms, but you can still spread it.

So to protect the community from the danger you present having been exposed, you need to quarantine for that two weeks and be tested if you show symptoms or periodically during that time to determine if you were infected.

The bottom line MM is this. If you have been knowingly exposed to someone infected with COVID-19, if you do not quarantine, you are acting recklessly in manner that puts the public at risk.

[Mountain Man]

The bottom line MM is this. If you have been knowingly exposed to someone infected with COVID-19, if you do not quarantine, you are acting recklessly in manner that puts the public at risk.

That's not the bottom line, that's your own unfounded, paranoid opinion.

[oxmixmudd]

That's not the bottom line, that's your own unfounded, paranoid opinion.

No - that is simply a fact MM. This is basic science. If you are exposed to a communicable virus, then you won't know if you were infected until the incubation period has passed or till a test comes back positive. With a disease that become infectious BEFORE it presents symptoms, or which may not present symptoms at all - which COVID is - you can in fact be infected and infect someone else before you know you have it. So the only way to protect others until you know the outcome of your exposure to the virus is to be isolated from others during the incubation period and get tested during that period of time.

.To willingly put yourself around others knowing you were exposed and knowing you can infect them is reckless behavior behavior that puts the public at risk, by definition. No less so than if you went out into public holding a canister of deadly gas that you knew was unstable and could go off at any time.

[Starlight]

I also have enough faith in people to believe most will voluntarily quarantine themselves in their own homes. Those very few who don't can be handled on a case by case basis. If they are actively endangering the safety of others, then they are interfering with other people's right to be safe and can be forceably quarantined.

How do you identify the "few who don't"? Are you monitoring everyone, thus violating their right to privacy? Are you deploying huge police resources to sit outside their homes to make sure they don't walk out their front door? What then happens if they climb over their back fence?

Your statement assumes the impossible - namely that the government could magically know who was violating the voluntary quarantine and putting others at risk. The government here learned right at the start of the pandemic that asking people to voluntarily quarantine absolutely didn't work because many people just ignored it. The very first rule the government brought in was to ask everyone entering the country to quarantine themselves for 2 weeks once they got here. Tourists said "oh, yes, of course I will totally follow that law" and then proceeded with their pre-planned holidays and infected people with covid.

And since then, repeatedly, every time the government tried to make exceptions for people, and allow potentially-infected people a bit of freedom (e.g. compassionate exemptions for people in inbound-quarantine to be released for a day to attend a funeral or see a dying relative in hospital), it would get burned by those people regularly failing to act as they had agreed to with regard to the safety of the rest of the populace. And then there were the cases of people in quarantine who climbed through the fences (it's temporary fencing cos these are hotels, so a 10 year old or above can climb through/over it) to go to the liquor store because they totally needed more alcohol in their hotel room than the bottle a day they were being provided, etc and the government would have to deploy the police to find them, or try to locate and test for covid every single person they had encountered while AWOL.

At every step of the way the government has tried to be a hands-off as possible, and at every step of the way different people have floated the recommendations and now it's got to the point where the government literally has to have the army patrolling the fences around the quarantine facilities (though they won't be armed, NZ doesn't do armed law enforcement). The government in general in NZ has a culture of assuming voluntary compliance and not bothering to put any effort into law enforcement, very much assuming that the vast majority of citizens will voluntarily follow the vast majority of laws. But on covid they have been burned and burned and burned for this over and over, and they have learned to their cost that in a situation like with covid where they need 100% compliance with the quarantine rules to stop infected people spreading it, that they have to do enforcement, they don't have the luxury of asking politely for voluntary compliance because there will be a small number who don't comply.

[Starlight]

No - that is simply a fact MM. This is basic science. If you are exposed to a communicable virus, then you won't know if you were infected until the incubation period has passed or till a test comes back positive. With a disease that become infectious BEFORE it presents symptoms, or which may not present symptoms at all - which COVID is - you can in fact be infected and infect someone else before you know you have it. So the only way to protect others until you know the outcome of your exposure to the virus is to be isolated from others during the incubation period and get tested during that period of time.

The possible incubation period appears to be up to 24 days.

We had once instance in NZ of a person entering the country, going through the 14 day quarantine during which he twice tested negative, being released and going home, then developing symptoms. Fortunately he quickly self-isolated and reported the case, and then tested positive. Genetic analysis of the strain showed it was one we hadn't seen in the country before, so he had clearly obtained it more than 21 days earlier prior to entering the country and it had simply taken that long to incubate.

To willingly put yourself around others knowing you were exposed and knowing you can infect them is reckless behavior behavior that puts the public at risk, by definition. No less so than if you went out into public holding a canister of deadly gas that you knew was unstable and could go off at any time.

Indeed. To intentionally potentially infect others with a deadly disease is statistical murder. You presence might kill them, it might not, but it's you that's the one deciding to take that risk for them.

[oxmixmudd]

...

I also have enough faith in people to believe most will voluntarily quarantine themselves in their own homes. Those very few who don't can be handled on a case by case basis. If they are actively endangering the safety of others, then they are interfering with other people's right to be safe and can be forceably quarantined.

Come on Sparko. Right here on these pages MM admits to trying to go into a place requiring mask wearing because he doesn't believe the science or respect their policies. Look at this President for who waltzed into the white house after getting out of the hospital without a mask on, or Pence who went off to do campaign work knowing he'd been exposed, or Rand Paul, who after GETTING A POSITIVE RESULT went a swam and worked out at the gym. For 30% of this country - these are their example, these are those whose behavior they model.

The reason not to trust people to do the right thing with respect to self-quarantine and this virus is on display at every single Trump rally, by the majority of Republican senators, and by at least half the people that post here every single day.

[oxmixmudd]

We didn't quarantine AIDs patients, we prosecute those who knowingly spread it. It is a balance between rights and consequences.

If the government doesn't maintain the inalienable rights of the people, then they can do whatever they want with you.

Please - aids does not spread to people in the air. It requires a close exchange of bodily fluids to be transmitted. We dont typically quarantine people unless a disease is transmitted easily, typically through the air.

[Watermelon]

Fascinating.



The first amendment.

So I see an australian trying to explain to me what my country means.



I don't see any wise or smart american lefties when it comes to inalienable rights. In fact I see them wanting to diminish them. Sure, they don't realize or don't care about the consequences.

YOU, have nothing when it comes to America. You should know your place. I'm trying to say this gently. I don't pontificate upon Australia. In fact I have fond ideas about it, large jumping rabbits, outback walkabouts, interesting accents.

I don't see us getting smarter, I see a giant movement to rid us of this old document. Willingly, with idiotic abandon. Is it because you are not on the ground here? I am not steeped in australian history, and I know you are not steeped in American history. So just talk, and don't consider yourself qualified to tell us how we should be.

I have no issue with people from Australia or New Zealand. But when I see them come into this forum, telling Americans how wrong/incompetent/racist/bigoted/etc they are, I don't feel any sympathy when people smack you upside the head.

That's just my opinion, I don't speak for this board or anyone else here.

You’re ability to be equally arrogant and ignorant at the same time is rather impressive.

I’m ‘steeped’ in the history of the British legal system so I can explain what rights are in the legal sense.

[Watermelon]

On the one hand, you say that rights are inherently limited; on the other hand, you imply that freedom of the press is an effectively unlimited right. How do you reconcile this contradiction?

Freedom of the press means freedom from government control. They are still bound by any laws that limit what/how they operate or print.

[mikewhitney]

You should make sure you understand the topic before telling people they are confused.

Rights are entirely constructs of society. You don’t have any rights without society, you have freedom.

This has nothing to do with communism, I am actually confused as to your point with that.

Your conception of rights is communist, that the rights come as part of society. There is no sort of right that is gained by being in society -- in a group. Do see it this way is to make that group the determiner of what you can do -- of what is right and wrong -- rather than of God. To put the rights as part of a group is to make relativistic rights and responsibilities. This interrupts our responsibility and relationship with God. How does one lose or gain the right to breathe the air surrounding him? This does not change whether you are in a cave or on a city block.

[mikewhitney]

Because the evidence shows quite clearly that when we locked down, when later we quarantined our COVID numbers declined as other nations which did neither of these things had theirs rise. We are not afraid of Covid 19 just seriously intent that it will not kill if we can avoid it happening. To that end NZers are generally very satisfied with the work the Ardern Government has done and most of us agree that a temporary suspension of our rights in order to meet our responsibilities to our fellows is acceptable.

I'm saying you don't have anything to compare against. You don't know what would have been the same or different had you not quarantined. There never has been a recommendation to quarantine healthy people -- or did those who were unhealthy end up dying during the quarantine period? that is to say that those who were infected should have died because they were sick before the quarantine.

You cannot say that the quarantines saved countries who did it since this did not happen in the US states that did this. Sometimes it could be said to have done nothing. Sometimes the quarantines resulted in people still getting sick.

[mikewhitney]

The OP's linked article was insane, so you'll have to be more specific.

Did the NZ government once pay for 50 people who'd caught Covid to stay in a hotel for 2 weeks to stop them spreading it to the rest of the country where there is no covid, after the chief doctor equivalent to Fauci asked for them to be moved there for the safety of others? Yes. Did they die? No.

Does the NZ government operate death camps? No. Is the idea that the freest and least corrupt country in the world might be operating death camps absolutely hilarious? Yes.

If getting free room and board in a 5 star hotel which you leave after 2 weeks, and being put in a death camp and executed, sound the same to you and you have trouble distinguishing between the two, seek urgent psychiatric help.

All increased measures in NZ were taken in response to the number of detected cases increasing. Once the number of detected cases decreased, the measures were relaxed.

The number of cases is meaningless. We can note specific problems with the popular PCR test. This just multiples the RNA until it is detectable and able to be analyzed. This test does not give a valid test to see if someone is sick or contagious. The number of cycles can be changed to get a high probability of a positive result or can be reduced to get more negative results. We cannot depend on this type of testing to determine what happens to a people or nation. nor can we determine the success of a quarantine. For even the less-superficial significance, the number of cycles would have to be known and would have to remain constant. I'm hoping people will be aware of this level of the science.

[Starlight]

We can note specific problems with the popular PCR test. This just multiples the RNA until it is detectable and able to be analyzed. This test does not give a valid test to see if someone is sick or contagious. The number of cycles can be changed to get a high probability of a positive result or can be reduced to get more negative results. We cannot depend on this type of testing to determine what happens to a people or nation. nor can we determine the success of a quarantine. For even the less-superficial significance, the number of cycles would have to be known and would have to remain constant. I'm hoping people will be aware of this level of the science.

Your logic, as usual, is unclear here.

Yes, no test is 100% accurate all the time, and the testing methodology can be adjusted to either limit the number of false positives or limit the number of false negatives. PCR testing in general is a very high quality very accurate testing method and it has been around for a decent amount of time now and is well-understood and widely used for all sorts of things.

Why should small inaccuracies in test methodology have an impact on political policies? Why would the general public care?