Nice post. I think there were a few things that put us down the priority list on vaccine supply. Price was not one of those things as far as I can tell - we paid the same as Israel per dose. My guesses:
1. Our decentralised health system. Israel and Singapore, with much more centralised health systems, were able to offer Pfizer the promise of good early data on vaccine performance (not just against severe disease but also infection and transmission).
2. Lack of an on-going outbreak. Israel was one of the first cabs off the rank with a high disease prevalence at the time. I think this would largely be about its ability to collect relevant performance data and willingness to share it with Pfizer.
3. A more peripheral place in the vaccine supply chain. E.g. I think Singapore actually traded some of its supply with Australia after the Aussie's false start with AZ.
In the end NZ, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan all rolled out vaccinations about the same time. To the extent that state capacity played a role, I think a digitally centralised health and/or vaccination system might have bumped us a bit further up the list. It's probably not realistic for us to develop our own mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, but co-investing with Australia (especially given the current geopolitical situation) might be a good idea!
On RATs - we absolutely should have had these out earlier, particularly for use in MIQ. This was a shocker.
Economics - I was surprised at how befuddled some local economists seemed when our team (TPM) did some cost effectiveness work on lockdowns in 2020. The Australian Treasury did very similar calculations to us and it helped informed their reopening strategy in 2021. It might just have been those who were vocal at the time who were confused but I was still surprised that wasn't taken up or seemingly understood by the economics community here. I was left with the impression that health economics as practised in NZ doesn't really have a good handle on how to deal with infectious disease. These last remarks are, of course, a shameless plug for my article in NZ Economic Papers from last year: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00779954.2024.2399617
This outlines a simple model for exploring these efficiencies.
As a Aussie who was stuck overseas for 2 years during COVID, I love an analysis that ignores the human cost of locking citizens out of their own country (not officially, but deciding on hotel quarantine, then providing far fewer places than needed, while still allowing rich and connected people to go back and forth as they pleased amounted to that). Again, it was a massive failure of state capacity coupled with scapegoating so politicians could deflect blame.
I have always thought that there was an Australasian pattern to the Covid response, with OZ and NZ following much the same pattern in many respects. So this is a useful post. By identifying Australian exceptionalism it also puts the lie to NZ exceptionalism as seen by many critics of the pandemic response (and likely also spawning our political results, which otherwise seems at such odds with the political outcome over the Tasman).
Just a few things. Although commentators are quick to comment on the lockdowns, the truth is that NZ had much less time in lockdowns than almost any other country except the likes of Taiwan. Yes, they were stringent, but they did not last long. Second, the economic costs. As I understand it our principal exports kept chugging along, except of course tourism and international education (but they would have shut down anyway). So, that leaves the economic costs of the lockdowns which were, arguably, a lot less impactful than most other countries. Third, RATs. The problem with RATs is that they give very high rates of false positives when the disease has low incidence (which was the case in NZ). You would then have a lot of people turning up needlessly to health agencies (although, of course, people could undertake multiple RATs, but that is a lot of needless work for a lot of people). Finally, was it really sheer incompetence or whatever that meant NZ introduced its vaccination campaign late? I got the sense at the time that we were at the end of the queue because we had the pandemic well under control. But what other explanation is there? As it happened, it was striking how the vaccination rates around the country responded to disease outbreaks. We achieved a remarkably quick and high uptake, in part because of the threat proximity. While we were in an elimination and suppression stage there was much less threat proximity and I just don't know whether we would have achieved the same alacrity of uptake.
If the second stage of the royal commission is going to look at the economic aspects, I hope they are going to consider realistic counterfactuals and give some credit for Australasian exceptionalism!
Nice post. I think there were a few things that put us down the priority list on vaccine supply. Price was not one of those things as far as I can tell - we paid the same as Israel per dose. My guesses:
1. Our decentralised health system. Israel and Singapore, with much more centralised health systems, were able to offer Pfizer the promise of good early data on vaccine performance (not just against severe disease but also infection and transmission).
2. Lack of an on-going outbreak. Israel was one of the first cabs off the rank with a high disease prevalence at the time. I think this would largely be about its ability to collect relevant performance data and willingness to share it with Pfizer.
3. A more peripheral place in the vaccine supply chain. E.g. I think Singapore actually traded some of its supply with Australia after the Aussie's false start with AZ.
In the end NZ, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan all rolled out vaccinations about the same time. To the extent that state capacity played a role, I think a digitally centralised health and/or vaccination system might have bumped us a bit further up the list. It's probably not realistic for us to develop our own mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, but co-investing with Australia (especially given the current geopolitical situation) might be a good idea!
On RATs - we absolutely should have had these out earlier, particularly for use in MIQ. This was a shocker.
Economics - I was surprised at how befuddled some local economists seemed when our team (TPM) did some cost effectiveness work on lockdowns in 2020. The Australian Treasury did very similar calculations to us and it helped informed their reopening strategy in 2021. It might just have been those who were vocal at the time who were confused but I was still surprised that wasn't taken up or seemingly understood by the economics community here. I was left with the impression that health economics as practised in NZ doesn't really have a good handle on how to deal with infectious disease. These last remarks are, of course, a shameless plug for my article in NZ Economic Papers from last year: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00779954.2024.2399617
This outlines a simple model for exploring these efficiencies.
This is really interesting thank you!
As a Aussie who was stuck overseas for 2 years during COVID, I love an analysis that ignores the human cost of locking citizens out of their own country (not officially, but deciding on hotel quarantine, then providing far fewer places than needed, while still allowing rich and connected people to go back and forth as they pleased amounted to that). Again, it was a massive failure of state capacity coupled with scapegoating so politicians could deflect blame.
I have always thought that there was an Australasian pattern to the Covid response, with OZ and NZ following much the same pattern in many respects. So this is a useful post. By identifying Australian exceptionalism it also puts the lie to NZ exceptionalism as seen by many critics of the pandemic response (and likely also spawning our political results, which otherwise seems at such odds with the political outcome over the Tasman).
Just a few things. Although commentators are quick to comment on the lockdowns, the truth is that NZ had much less time in lockdowns than almost any other country except the likes of Taiwan. Yes, they were stringent, but they did not last long. Second, the economic costs. As I understand it our principal exports kept chugging along, except of course tourism and international education (but they would have shut down anyway). So, that leaves the economic costs of the lockdowns which were, arguably, a lot less impactful than most other countries. Third, RATs. The problem with RATs is that they give very high rates of false positives when the disease has low incidence (which was the case in NZ). You would then have a lot of people turning up needlessly to health agencies (although, of course, people could undertake multiple RATs, but that is a lot of needless work for a lot of people). Finally, was it really sheer incompetence or whatever that meant NZ introduced its vaccination campaign late? I got the sense at the time that we were at the end of the queue because we had the pandemic well under control. But what other explanation is there? As it happened, it was striking how the vaccination rates around the country responded to disease outbreaks. We achieved a remarkably quick and high uptake, in part because of the threat proximity. While we were in an elimination and suppression stage there was much less threat proximity and I just don't know whether we would have achieved the same alacrity of uptake.
If the second stage of the royal commission is going to look at the economic aspects, I hope they are going to consider realistic counterfactuals and give some credit for Australasian exceptionalism!