Our PM and Director General of health have just finished a one hour televised press conference (No journos abused)
To summarise I would like to quote the late great Sir Edmond Hillary as he topped Everest.
"we've knocked the ******* off Sherpa" Not quite out of the woods but feeling a whole lot better about being old in NZ. Watch this space..............:) Damn I forgot about the censor I meant to say bast----ard

I am happy to report that NO new cases of the virus occurred in this country for the first time in 49 days
We have less than two hundred cases in total. Come on over Aussie brothers the skiing is great. We have already sent our league team over to get the ball rolling (pun intended)

I'm self-employed, work from home, and am single, living alone. Essentially, I've been self-quarantined for over a decade. All this just means less dates.

I'm in a relatively small town ~30k people. And in my county (area) a total of 20 people have been diagnosed (up 4 from last week) and 11 have recovered. So.. in general, there's more panic than necessary.

But I understand concerns for the elderly or those with health conditions. I have almost zero concern about getting anything myself, but I always err on the safe side for others when I do have to go out and be among others (grocery shopping, etc).

Talking to some people, they are under the impression hundreds are infected and dying in this area. That's just not the case. In America I'm always amazed at how the bureaucracy and media seem to think the ENTIRE country is the same as New York. New York is really being hit dramatically hard... and in general... all you hear is relative to THAT area and not consistent with many other areas in the country. I don't mean to make light of anything.. I just heard today that apparently COVID has now killed more Americans (+65,000) than the Viet Nam war did.

My growing concern is about herd immunity if everyone is always locked down. Without herd immunity this could go on for quite some time.

Here's hoping you all stay safe and healthy!!!

It's not an "asteroid" yet.. but.. we'll see...

I don't want to put the wind up you, but in this country a town of ~30k people would have zero cases.

Do they know how so many became infected? Has the contact tracing been done?

The large numbers here are in the bigger cities, with clusters in some work places and others in nursing homes. It would seem that in these cases one person got it, sometimes asymptotically, went to work and infected other who passed it on to still more in the same place.

Nursing home staff are now checked as they arrive to work at the start of each shift.

Just announced in this state that home schooling to end and kids back in class in three weeks provided there is not a large increase in infections in that time.

On another tack the NZ PM Jacinda Ardern is to join the Australian National Cabinet, (Australian PM, all State Premiers, top health officials) which meets regularly, (now by video conference) to discuss tactics and plan for a concerted attack on the problems. Commentators have remarked that having her join has just raised the average IQ quite a few points.

Two further points Buzz. We do not get individual states information. The grim stats simply tell us that one million plus cases exist in the USA nothing about the various states/areas.
I thought the British PM mooted the herd immunity concept prior to his infection and Great Britain becoming the fourth most affected nation in the world.
Apologies to Joan Baez " We shall overcome"

It's actually sort of difficult to get exact local numbers. You may find individual state numbers.. but they aren't typically broken down to a specific area within the state, barring major metropolitan areas.

All you can really hope is that the local news networks are reporting that data.. Unfortunately, local news is notorious for just parroting what national news reports if something is nation-wide.

As posted, In my county, there have been 20 cases.. 11 have recovered but there's no data anywhere on antibody tests. But they are now reporting that antibodies may do nothing to prevent reoccurrence by another Covid strain. And the national news is now reporting by the end of June we could see the death tolls double or worse.

Things are starting to reopen here this week. Apparently people hate themselves so much they don't want to stay home and be alone with their own minds........ so.. yeah death tolls are going to climb.

The information on antibodies is not encouraging, tests on some people who have recovered suggest that they have very few to nil antibodies, which suggests that 1) they are prone to another infection and 2) it is going to be almost impossible to create a vaccine.

News report.

I hope they buggered up those tests and this is not the case.

There is still a steady increase in cases here in Queensland, population 5+ million, present situation:

Cases to date 1043
Recovered 980
Active 57
Deaths 6

After what seems to be an age in lock-down, here in good old NZ we have now less than 100 cases of covid-19. Our PM (the better looking one) has announced that we can now travel within the country see relatives that have been unavailable for the past seven weeks and we can congregate in groups of a maximum of ten people. We can go to restaurants, movie theatres, shopping malls, etc as long as we are spaced out. I wonder if some one close by can help me with this new concept. Ned. Do you have any spare electric pineapples left??

Spaced out? Like Benny and the Jets spaced out? Cool!

Best I can do John- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edoONcu8zaY

Many thanks Ned I feel well spaced already.....

The NZ PM has such a following here in Australia that a negative comment about her by a most objectionable radio Shock Jock, Alan Jones has cause him to lose his $4 million a year job at top Australian Radio station 2GB. He said he's resigning for health reasons. see https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/bus...12-p54s2s.html

Smiling tigers bite very hard..:hmm:

These are the news reports that I love to read.
New Zealand has recorded its third day without a new Covid-19 case.
Dr Bloomfield gave the latest figures on New Zealand's response to Covid-19.
Today's third zero case day means New Zealand's combined total of confirmed and probable cases remains at 1497, with 94 per cent now considered to have recovered from the virus.
With no additional deaths to report, the death toll remains at 21.
Only 64 active cases exist in NZ.