> and even more jarring how much airtime those championing unlocking, unmasking and being antivax are getting here

Not everyone agrees "excess deaths" is the ultimate variable society should optimize for at the expense of all other variables.

If election results are to be believed, New Zealanders like the results achieved.

No one is trying to optimize it for.

They're using it as a crude barometer for just how bad it is. We know about how many people die on average for any given period. We expect it to be in a range. When it is wildly outside of that range, then there's something going on.

Wearing a mask and getting a vaccine are not even tradeoffs. The choice is between being willfully obstinate and participating in measures that save lives.

Wearing a cloth mask does nothing. And taking a vaccine might save your life.

Wearing a mask is obviously a massive tradeoff, it's an ongoing "hey, hey, be afraid of me, I might coronise you!" indicator. It makes most people uncomfortable both physically and mentally.

Of course, even if it were free, it's essentially pointless because unless you live in China and they actually remain zero covid forever, you're going to repeatedly get coronavirus anyway cause it ain't ever going anywhere.

Vaccination is not even in the same league, it's an obvious easy win that gives you a far better chance when (not if) you get it.

Wearing a mask is all benefit for me. I'm fine with masking in public being a lifetime rule. I like looking out at masked faces, and I like wearing a mask.

I have no idea why anyone would find it uncomfortable in any way.

And yes, you might corona-ize me. But I'm more afraid that the antimasker idiot will do that than someone wearing a mask.

> I have no idea why anyone would find it uncomfortable in any way.

Your first sentence makes me think you're serious. You don't see how a sea of masked faces could be seen as dystopian? Or that it's a sign that "you're not safe," and people want to feel safe?

> You don't see how a sea of masked faces could be seen as dystopian? Or that it's a sign that "you're not safe," and people want to feel safe?

Not in the slightest, any more than a sea of drivers in seatbelts would feel dystopian or that I'm not safe. (Or a bunch of people in snow gear, if you want a similar aesthetic.) I don't see any dystopian vibe at all, and fail to understand why wearing an article of clothing is dystopian. Do you feel the same way about pants? I think just as many people feel safer with everyone masked up, we've just been less silent throughout the pandemic.

You should wear a hazmat suit with a helmet in public.

I would feel safer, and there would be less pressure on my healthcare service if you fall over.

If you don't, you're scaring me.

As a person who is hard of hearing, please don't wear your mask forever. Wearing a mask is not all benefit for everyone. Studies are showing that everyone wearing masks are also stunting the emotional growth of newborns. A cloth mask doesn't do anything, there isnt much benefit. Society as as whole will benefit more of people don't wear masks.

I understand that other people wearing a mask is a hardship on some people (including the hard of hearing). While I sympathize, and certainly will make an effort to speak slower/louder/crisper, I'm not going to remove my mask in a public space so you can understand me. I wonder if the hearing aid business has been doing gangbusters since the pandemic started.

Nah, you don't give a toss because you've prioritised something which is literally impossible.

Well, you are verifiably insane.

> It makes most people uncomfortable [...] mentally.

Citation needed.

No, citation wanted.

I'm not going to cite the sky being blue, tilt your neck.

If you ban people from driving cars and make them walk everywhere - you could also eliminate car accident deaths, it's not sustainable though...

If you banned cigarettes, you'd save many lives, and it's also pretty much sustainable for everybody except the tobacco industry.

I'm not sure which country (NZ?) implemented a law, that everyone born after some year, will not be able to buy cigarettes anymore, so old smokers can still buy them, but kids just turning 18 can't anymore, and never will be able to.

Yes, NZ is in the process of changing the tobacco retail laws to slowly increment the age at which is it legal to sell a buyer any tobacco product.

The net effect if which is that it will never be legal to sell someone born after ~2006 any tobacco products.

Uncertain if that's true. Prohibition of substances hasn't worked for alcohol or illicit drugs in general. Unlikely to work for tobacco specifically, especially given how easy it is to grow.

Banning cigarettes is not something that is comparable to banning people from traveling and gathering with their friends...

But it saves lives.

In my country (Slovenia), cigarettes kill more people than covid did (in the last 2 years)... we had huge lockdowns, and pointed the fingers at anyone who ignored some of the rules (even though our constitutional court ruled afterwards that most of the lockdowns were unconstitutional), but just banning smoking would save more lives than covid took away.

> but just banning smoking would save more lives than covid took away.

... Assuming people wouldn't buy on the black market, drive down to Croatia, Italy or Austria to replenish their supply, etc.

If you did an age-ban (anyone born after 2003 can't buy them), there'd probably be less younger smokers, because driving across the border takes time and money.

You may know this, but smoking is being banned in New Zealand.

People can travel without cars just fine. Feet, bicycles, public transit, there are tons of options for every scenario.

Not in most places. If you don't live in a big city, it's probably too far to walk or bike, and there is no public transit.

That only goes for countries that consider public transit to be for the poor or extremely dense urban environments where cars couldn't work. It's far from the case worldwide. ( Of course I'm not talking about small villages with a population in the hundreds, but towns in the thousands should have public transit connections).

It goes for most of the US, and the US is too big to just ignore.

We can travel and see friends. It’s harder, but we can.

… that’s us here in New Zealand too.

It's pretty sustainable on cities witth proper public transport. And I say that living on a city with pretty much subpar public transport, but on which I manage to go everyday just walking, save for a few trips from time to time where I definitely need to move by car (it's a bit under once per week, think 30-40 times a year).

What do you mean not sustainable???

If we limited and regulated car use pretty extremely and stuck with trains, bikes, and walking, we would be half the way there toward a completely sustainable society.

Cars are a major source of the least sustainable aspects of humanity on earth today.

I can’t wait to bike 12 miles to the nearest town in -20 degree weather to catch a train that doesn’t exist so I can get groceries.

You might as well say, “Well, if we just invented teleporters…”

I would suggest you try and see how countries that aren’t as car centered as the US operate. Trains, buses, trams all can make it very easy to lose the car addiction. And it can be done today, no teleportation required.

Those countries are usually heavily urbanized, though so is the USA. Those not living in urban areas generally have more dependence on cars (eg in Australia or New Zealand).

I’ve been to Japan (and NYC and…), so I have a pretty good idea. The system works great in Tokyo, and obviously the bullet train is amazing. In rural areas though, you’re dealing with long train rides and waiting on bus schedules. It can be done, but it seems like a lot of people in those areas just had cars.

It should be done where it’s practical, but in most of the US geographically it isn’t.

Most of the US lives in urban areas.

I don't suppose you are suggesting that nobody was able to live a decent life 12 miles out of town until we had cars, are you?

But I suppose your point is more like: we've built lots of completely car-dependent situations in which people live very far from core necessities in life with no way to get them except by car. And that's clearly true. But the answer isn't teleporters or biking in -20 to got 12 miles. The answer is to stop living so far from essential resources. And that doesn't have to mean everyone moving to crazy-dense living around existing resources like grocery stores. It could just as well (better really) mean modest density in mixed areas where we have more medium-size grocery stores so that more people are close to them.

I'm not suggesting individuals just live in car DEPENDENT contexts and then forgo the thing you DEPEND on. I'm suggesting we have drastically fewer car-dependent places.

I’m sorry, but I like that I basically don’t have neighbors and my little girl has 15 acres to play on and explore. A lot of other people feel the same way.

I don't know what you're sorry about. There's nothing wrong with that idea. It just isn't feasible to have 8 billion people all living like that. If cars were only used by a sustainably small number of people who live like you, then it's fine enough.

The problem is the "lot of other people" issue. Your way of life works well only if most people forgo it. There's nothing inherently wrong with it in and of itself.

> A lot of other people feel the same way.

As a fact, a lot of people may feel that way, but not a large percentage. That's just a small percentage of a large number is still a large number. But tell me again why I have to subsidize your lifestyle by paying for your roads and inadequate federal gas laws recapturing the costs of pollution from your cars?

Meanwhile, most people raised like your little girl will end up moving to urban areas as an adult.

Presumably because you need to eat. Farmers are in the area. My wife does accounting for the food producer they sell to. I photograph their weddings. My wife’s mom helps run the healthcare for the area. My friend sells them equipment.

People generally don’t live where it doesn’t make at least some economic sense, and those farmers would probably stop farming if they didn’t have at least some basic necessities and amenities nearby.

Accounting and heathcare management can trivially be done remotely.

But it might not really matter. Do small farms produce a noticeable amount of food in our food supply? I thought it all was giant farms with giant machinery, not family farms, that actually produced food.

(Edited to try to make it more clear that was a real question. Maybe family farms are important for the food supply?)

Family farms large are “giant farms” nowadays, at least in my area. Nobody is farming 50 acres, they all have hundreds or even thousands. You can only really be born in to it when farmland is $10,000 an acre and the equipment will run you hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

And they’re all stupidly wealthy for the amount of work they do, but that’s another matter.

Note: that’s all for crops. Raising animals seems to be another matter with plenty of smaller farms - and they do more work too.

While all large farms are family farms as well, the total number of such large farms is, what, 10,000 in the USA? By a bunch of very rich people? The exact people who don't need their lifestyle subsidized by people in urban areas to keep living in the country otherwise they'll move away and stop growing our food.

Then you would know what it looks like to live in the Alaskan bush (not many roads, so cars aren’t that useful).

Of course, where Alaska does have roads, they have a super high death rate. An uncle who I never knew being one of them (though in this case, and as usual, alcohol was also involved).

I don't own a car, neither does anyone around me. We all rely on public transport and bicycles. I live near the Artic circle and the temperature is routinely near -20º. If Aury knew what he was talking about, he'd know that weather is generally nice and sunny at that temperature and that snow and wind are more common when it's warmer.

I’m looking out my window at snow falling right now. You’re right that snow below 0 degrees in uncommon, but I’ve never noticed much of a difference in wind. That could be because where I live temperatures 20 below or worse aren’t common and are transient, so another front is probably nearby and creating wind.

I still wouldn’t want to bike in it, if only because of ice.

For the record I live in Minnesota, one of the coldest and snowiest states in the US.

You need spiked tires for your bike, just like for your car.

A larger percentage of the population lived in rural areas before mass production of cars.

Sure, and most of those people raised their own food and had a wife that could raise the children and cook all day. You could essentially live off of farming just what you needed, with maybe a little extra for spending money. That doesn’t work now unless you outlaw everything more advanced than a horse as farming equipment.

Most people don't live so far away from stores, or anything else. The vast majority of the population in any modern society is urban. And urban people can get by just fine on public transit anywhere that decides to put it in.

Most of America needs cars. Society would collapse if you just "limited and regulated car use pretty extremely". If there's a solution to that, then let's just do that, and skip the authoritarian part afterward.

You mean most of America is designed to be car-dependent. So, yes, in the current design it needs cars.

I wasn't saying we could just suddenly ban them tomorrow.

The solution is hard because of how bad we've gotten things. But the solution has little authoritarian about it. We just change our priorities for the design of public infrastructure. We don't even need to actually ban cars at all. Make it practical and enjoyable to do everything by train, bike, or walking whenever possible and most people will happily do it. The result is a huge decrease in deaths both through healthier living and less cars.

https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/videos describes things pretty well and accessibly. In short: the Netherlands was on track 40 years ago to be nearly as car-dependent as the U.S. and yet protesters blocked some highway proposals and the country went in a different direction. Today, it's the best designed place in the world, and its even better for drivers too.

> But the solution has little authoritarian about it.

The authoritarian part was limiting/regulating car use pretty extremely. I'm perfectly fine with making alternatives to cars more practical, just not with making cars less practical.

Nothing authoritarian about that if the majority of the population agrees that’s the best way to move forward.

We already regulate where cars are allowed to go (e.g. which direction in which lane on which streets). All anyone means around "banning" cars is to have changes (reductions) in which places we allow cars. There's no increase in authoritarianism with that.

Ok here’s what we can do: pass laws significantly reducing the places cars can go. Tax automobiles. Buy up used cars and destroy them to keep prices high and ensure cars use recent environment technology.

Then create public transit districts, which operate like school districts. Real estate is taxed, and the proceeds go to busses.

Areas with high real estate values will have excellent public transit. Those with lower real estate values will have worse transit.

The advantage is (1) support by middle and upper class voters, who are traditionally opposed to public transit, (2) funding sustainability, (3) money is kept in local communities.

The downside is a drastic increase in inequality.

I’m obviously joking … but do you see how discouraging cars would increase inequality unless it was combine with an extremely equitable political system? A political system America doesn’t have?

I see effort at nuance here, but the conclusion is both almost right and also not at all right.

America's deeply unequal political system WILL NOT ever get us better equality. It's *incidental*, a symptom of the political reality that discouraging cars would be done in a way that exacerbates inequality.

Almost any policy can be done in ways that exacerbate inequality. And a more equitable political system would be needed in order to have more equitable policies.

There's nothing specific to cars about this stuff. So, there's no point in focusing on discouraging cars as inherently part of this trend. Gentrification is a real issue. But don't blame yoga for gentrification just because yoga studios are in gentrified areas. Policies that encourage healthy tree canopy also exacerbate inequality because richer areas can hire urban foresters and so on. I mean, every single worthwhile thing you can think of exacerbates inequality if the policies are set up to make the worthwhile thing go along with already-wealthier places. None of the worthwhile things are themselves the cause of inequality.

I currently live in a nice wealthy suburb. The folks who run the place go through great effort to ensure we do *not* have access to public transit.

Public transit attracts people who can’t afford cars. It also allows the “wrong element” to pass through our neighborhood.

Politically, how do you propose forcing public transit into communities that actively campaign against it?

I mean maybe you’re onto something and don’t realize it.

Banning cars would be more akin to totally locking down rather than incentivizing vaccination, masks and other public health measures that aren’t as invasive. Maybe, similarly discouraging car y use and encouraging walking is a good thing.

So basically destroy rural populations which are also the source of all our food? Unless I’m mistaken in that cities are actually the source of all life sustaining industries.

Enough with the hyperbole. Discouraging car use won’t destroy rural populations; it would improve the QoL of urban ones.

You can’t survive in a rural area without a car

The parent said:

> Maybe, similarly discouraging car y use and encouraging walking is a good thing.

That policy won’t take cars away from the rural populace.

Is discouraging synonymous with destroying in your lexicon?

Most people don’t live in rural areas and most deadly accidents don’t occur in rural areas either. Discouraging car use in cities has next to no effect on rural populations.

Approx 19.3% of Americans live in rural areas, and a higher proportion of rural residents are in poverty. Therefore, measures to discourage car use are likely to disproportionally adversely impact some of the poorest in society. Unless those measures somehow completely avoid affecting rural populations.

I’d support city only measures like a city income tax to fund public transportation and conversion of stroads to pedestrian friendly streets. But what is likely to happen are general taxations on car users such as fuel duty and onerous regulations which push up the cost of car ownership.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_areas_in_the_United_Stat...

You’re making a lot of assumptions as to what “discouraging car use” entails.

We both agreed that rural areas would not be a good place to target such policies, so why assume I was saying we should push policies that are overly broad?

How would you discourage car use? Taxes?

Realistically? Changing planning rules that require tons of extra parking, wide roads, and overbuilt freeways.

Current policies induce demand and make it difficult to promote transit and other modes.

Nationwide mandates are oppressive and don’t allow people freedom to choose their own level of acceptable risk. Regional level variations are probably more tolerable allowing people to choose what type of society they want to live in.

I think you might be missing the fact that it's an airborne virus at pandemic levels. Regional restrictions can't work because people can just move and spread it everywhere, including places where local inhabitants don't want to "accept the risk".

Why would anyone who wants freedom move into an area where people are forced into isolation?

They don't need to move there to spread risk, just move through, and as such tourism is one factor.

Early in the pandemic, I had an assignment to photograph in a particular area that was actively dissuading visitors, had signage up as such, etc. I had to stop to refuel the car, but that was the extent of my contact with people and interiors otherwise.

I live in a state that had closed borders for most of the pandemic until recently (when our adult vax rate hit 80%). They're now open and cases are predictably rising. Opening the borders seems to have had a political backlash because while families can move in/out of the state, the rising cases has brought about business lockdowns but without the support/stimulus from last year.

Because their family is there, or because there's better work there, or they like the weather better or any number of reasons.

We don't have the "freedom to choose [our] own level of acceptable risk" in a lot of areas. So that's obviously not a point anybody is really, honestly concerned about.

How long do you want the country to isolate itself from the rest of the world? Your view of managing COVID seems extremely conservative.

Well it resulted in one of the lowest restrictions on people in any country besides international travel. Giving people freedom to meet people and work is good

We have strong restrictions relative to our COVID cases. Majority of the country has practically no cases, yet they are at the middle alert level rather than the lowest one.

Auckland previously had a very strict lockdown based on very low case numbers relative to the rest of the world.

Of course there is the argument that if we didn't have such restrictions we wouldn't have dealt with COVID as well, but even taking that into account I think the government has been very conservative.

One perspective to consider is the length of these restrictions. Other countries have had years of lockdowns and restrictions. New Zealanders were going to concerts while the world was in lockdown. Even if New Zealand's restrictions have been strict the restrictions have been intermittent and only in some regions

This is true, but again I would compare restrictions relative to the severity of COVID outbreak.

Other countries have much longer/stronger restrictions, but they have also had much more severe outbreaks.

The government seems to be very slow to come around on changing their COVID strategy, especially given that the stakes are pretty low in NZ relative to other countries.

Isn’t the point to avoid severe outbreaks in the first place, and thereby not needing extensive periods of restrictions.

I think the perfect time would be when effective oral anti-virals are readily available, they are just around the corner. The average daily cases are increasing and the 4th/5th wave (depending on location) is ramping up now - exactly the wrong time for a country like NZ to change international quarantine.

I can travel if I want. I don’t want to.

Others not coming in needs to change at some point, but I don’t see that it is serving us badly.

We can't really travel because getting a quarantine spot for your return is very difficult.

Opening up the floodgates seems unwise, but our restrictions seem quite strict given how few cases we have had.

It might be even more jarring when a population two years from now is hit by a flu they didn't get almost any exposure to this year. There is a complexity here that is hard to wrap your head fully around.

NZ is an island at the edge of the world, and their population is a fraction of most major cities, let alone states, provinces, and countries. Policies that work for them might not work for others.

Further, its a bit early to call victory if perpetual lockdowns are the only thing holding back the disease. What happens once they open the flood gates and covid is still active?

The 95%+ vaccinations rates (12+) in the three major cities and 92% overall (also 12+) would somewhat help. Along with the fact community spread is already present and has been for a few months, the measures in place have kept uncontrolled spread in check.

NZ keeps new introductions to a minimum to ensure that contact tracing is not overwhelmed and this adds to the effective decrease in reproduction offered by vaccinations. New Zealand being a season behind also allows the Northern hemisphere to burn through a wave and NZ can then decide when to lift international arrival restrictions to a time when the incidence levels are low from common arrival locales (UK, US etc).

If anything, the story will be that those who have the choice are happy not being in the office all the time, and that road deaths and deaths from other infectious diseases will be down due to anti-COVID measures.

Imagine the amount of disease, death and suffering we could prevent if we lived in pods like in The Matrix.

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