Unless you step down from mrs obama or nancy pelosi tell us is this nightmare of a presidency is on its last legs november cannot come too soon general says biden has more chance of landing on the moon than winning and then goes on to say the silent majority will turn out for trump the green agrees and says i think you walk it scott and says there is no way to run a pandemic government just save lives and thats right its a president is feeling the American People are feeling this i refused to believe finally norton says i hope to start to wake up from this multiple nightmare in november with a biotin when. Now ellie on unless and dammit lot then i was contacted by a scot who was visiting new zealand he was extremely anxious to get back to scotland and up with a touch of his local member of parliament back without thinking and it is said to me that states may not be better staying on in new zealand since it was pretty clear even early on that new zealand had the virus under control much less clear of what was happening in the United Kingdom and thats as proved with some 50100 cases only 22 deaths in new zealand as one of the best records in the world so why has new zealand succeeded are so many other countries of failed and i joined from Wellington New Zealand by a key government adviser in the fight against the coronavirus professor Michael Baker professor becker welcome to the alec salmon show readings wellington fessor baker of the zone Prime Minister to send a there of him as a save great plaudits for her clear leadership during the pandemic just how important has that been to the success of Public Health policy in new zealand yeah i think speed and salute critical and if you look around the globe the real success it is i think has been very good scientific leadership in the Political Leadership and in taking Decisive Action against a virus and thats exactly what. Dunes government has done. No ever not shell professor back up why has new zealand got to grips with this virus are so many other countries have struggled the 3 things we did basically switching to border quarantine seanie 14 days in supervised quarantine before you allowed into the country the lot dont really extinguish most lines of transmission of the virus and then there to sting entrancing so the context tracing systems got built up so they could if you like mop up some of the remaining cases left over from some big cluster so those 3 missions combined were enough to basically eliminate this virus entirely from new zealand what i think the essence of success in this pandemic has been good scientific leadership good Political Leadership and Decisive Action against the virus and using really the best Available Evidence approaches and i think in particular recognising that this was more like a science cyrus then an influenza virus that everything hasnt been plain sailing even in new zealand and tacking this violence weve seen recently of the resignation of the minister plot that the Health Minister many people around the world will find it surprising that a country with 5100 cases and 22 deaths that the Health Minister ends up resigning while other countries with tens of thousands of fatalities the Health Ministers continue in office can you explain this a pardon anomaly. Well i think our Health Minister did take ministerial responsibility seriously and he times i think you can self down and tins of his stand as a piston behavior during the lockdown and i think this is handling a similar state since the pandemic so and thats why he was signed and i think that was really i mean i know it was very distressing for him to do that because he was very attached to the portfolio and doing effective in many aspects of that and that i think he really took responsibility very seriously and. Has been argued professor baker of that if you compare them to new zealand or the United Kingdom then they in the u. K. Implemented new zealand policy back to front in the sense that new zealand introduced travel restrictions control the violence and then when it was under control opened up the sporting events whereas in the United Kingdom they continued with the sporting events the Cheltenham Festival the rugby internationals and only implemented travel restrictions after the horse and bolted as the a. B. A. Through from that argument to the u. K. Seems to of pursued new zealand policy and reverse. Yes though it does look like that and one of the things that people myself realize when the we were looking at the pandemic was rather than following the influenza model will you gradually increase the intensity of your control measures as the penned in with sense to try and dampen down you do exactly the opposite you throw your strongest control measures at the pendant right at the beginning to extinguish it so you do things in the reverse order from the traditional and through the model and that was one of those i mean for me where was one of the light bulb moments when we saw the pandemic starting to. Take off a museum and if you like the standing of expenditure rheims i mean we did have the benefit of looking at the experience of northern as really and i think that really dont convince many people in new zealand that we did not want this virus in new zealand and that contributed to i think a very high level of it here and with the lock down asians but if youre less done for the 1st stage of this pandemic highly successfully what dangers professor baker do you see for the future since clearly the those low room for complacency in any country. No thats absolutely right and if you look at many of the countries the saying this approach of containment elimination most of them events effects Mainland China with an outbreak in beijing and south korea with an up and started in one astray similarly didnt extinguish or transmission in victoria and New South Wales and now has a problem that it may have to go into in an out of lockdown for a period and to essentially eliminate in fiction so i think if you want to museum now has i mean we did have a period of maybe feeling a little bit smug after we eliminated the virus and the problem was solved in the end we had a few branches of quarantine in the scene and that didnt fortunately cause outbreaks but i think was a real wake up call for all of us that we still have were living in a world with a huge amount of and in fact growing transmission aspirants and we cannot be at all complacent about it and we need to really keep managing our borders and keep doing large amounts of kissing in new zealand and meant shore out tracing systems on a tracing systems are working well as a backstop measure as a solich can be done worldwide and the Scientific Community joining with the political communities and a renewed vigor and having a collect of approach to a limitation and stomping this virus out. I very much hope so because we seen very diverse countries as you say 6 sicily contain and then eliminate this infection they do have we do have a sit backs occasionally and you expect that i think the numbers speak for themselves all these countries that are pursuing an emanation have very low mortality rates compared with the rest of the world and they were so shown theres no biological area against eliminating this virus it just requires very good leadership and good infrastructure and Decisive Action and the techniques of who are very well established i think you know by the who 2 or countries on earth that have sufficient resources to do them professor back a new destination just how dangerous is this virus still is in terms of the future for the what old health from the world economy. Well i think were underestimating this pandemic i mean we know from its behavior it has the potential of the next one to 2 years to fit maybe 60 percent or more who was population set civil 1000000000 people and alone why may kill one percent of them so that tens of millions of people are going to die from this and in it and in many countries its just Getting Started so i think we have to look at all the available options and in particular doing our best to stamp it out when we can so thats basically the sooner lumination approach and im really horrified in countries like the United States with their actually relaxing the control measures in some areas and this is just like shaking a bottle of wine if you have a sample wine and taking the top of that because only change the transmission will keep going and youre just going to see an overwhelming epidemic and those sittings that will overwhelm the house system so i just find this very depressing the scenario and i hope that our particular our dance economies were in from how the science behaving and take really Decisive Action to protect their populations and also actually to support their economies finally professor baker obviously a viable spine demick has caused enormous human suffering worldwide the economic effects are still being played out and thats also going to cause great suffering new zealand would be insulated from the World Economic effects but can you see any benefits and terms of the new zealand performance the sort of raise the the profile in the steam of its New Zealanders as held in International Terms of a good place to go for a visit i think many people in the world will be thinking at the present moment can you see any any bright side formally the new zealand success and thus far and controlling the pandemic as an epidemiologist and a Public Health professor. The main message the main thing i hope will be that this idea that you can beat the virus will become a global model at least for the countries that have the resources to take that approach and if you look at the countries that are succeeding are i mean i see no reason why the United Kingdom doesnt pursue elimination immediately i know that scotland and ireland are very close to eliminating this virus and i think with a mandate from their leaders and support it could be eliminated ultimately from all of the British Isles i dont see the as in a reason why you cant get rid of it and the problem really is that if you dont we dont know how long well be waiting for that scene or good antivirals it may be months and maybe years and the problem is that the immunity may be short lived and it may not proceed say the most vulnerable alley people so i do wonder why a country like the United Kingdom which is still got huge debt the scientific knowledge and is 50 and a very good infrastructure i mean ian anxious as a model were all very imperious of why youre not pursuing this elimination strategy given all the potential advantages vesa becker from Wellington New Zealand thank you very much indeed for joining me on the alex salmon phil thank you. Join us after the quote im joined by dr marc hahn expire the author of the demick so he runs rule of the come to switch so succeeded in taming coronavirus and the many more who both not join us and. By social class. People in poverty. If youre born into a poor family youre born into a minority family if youre born into a family that only has a single parent that really constrains your life chances people die. Born into generational poverty. Its a. Fight every day so you meet your needs and the needs of your family. Is your media a reflection of reality. In a world transformed. What will make you feel safe from. The isolation of the whole community. Are you going the right way or are you being led so. Directly to what is true what is right. In the world corrupted you need to descend. To join us in the depths. Aura maybe in the shallowness. Welcome back so with i have that the detail behind the spectacular success in new zealand but quite generally have some countries succeeded in tackling the covert virus while some clearly have not attempted dr mark konigsberg on the often of their pandemic century he gives us the comparisons internationally dr hartogs welcome back to the alex salmon show. Unless the back of it so lets get to the grips for 1st question why have some countries like new zealand managed to handle extremely well while our other countries countries like the United Kingdom have struggled but others again like america out of the frauds of our amounting pandemic well i think that the countries that have done well the ones that saw what was happening in china in january and took early action in case the same thing happened in their countries new zealand has done very well because its very quickly tested checked people coming into the country you know have a good Contact Tracing and testing system and you know have very clear messages about you know needing to isolate yourself and also you know contacts of contacts so the country that done well is striking how many of them are in Southeast Asia where they had previous experience of sa and therefore knew that sars was different from influenza so i think that was a basic cognitive error a lot of scientists were guilty of thinking about this outbreak in terms of the little you ends up pandemic. Now you can understand to some extent at least why countries perhaps delayed going into a lockdown is much more difficult to explain why or why some countries have been food too fast coming out of a lockdown given all that weve seen internationally and is known about the impact of of this virus and the fact that its quite clear that if you stick your chin note covered 19 its going to hit you very hard indeed. Well yes i mean its been very difficult of course because of the Economic Impacts and the fact that theres only so long the relations will put up with social distancing so i think that you know a lot of pressure is built up as weve gone so she doesnt go on you know 2 months 3 months but you know your play you absolutely right the fundamental problem is and many experts were warning about this that we you know shouldnt be lifting the social distancing measure until we were confident that we had a really good track trace and isolate system in place so that for instance we could have the culprit of the story opens schools d because we knew precisely where that down to granular local level where that those transmission chains were going all and that meant it does if you if you know where the virus is you can very quickly deploy Contact Traces to persuade people to itself isolated to stop the infections ready more widely and getting into places where you dont want it to go soaps schools will be one place you absolutely do not want this group of virus to go the problem is of course that weve got a system for instance in the u. K. Where its so highly centralized and these there are these big delays the tweet of mason getting from a local level to the Contact Trace in central level and then flowing back weve seen that less than where you know only taking 2 weeks for them to really find out where these outbreaks were carrying with it lest. That was seen examples of countries whove got the guts of the virus and by extreme measures in some cases Mainland China taiwan has been a tremendous success other countries such as a stereo such as new zealand seem to have got a a pretty farm grip on situation casting your eye 1st across europe which countries do you think of got this under control and what must they do now to keep it under control well i mean i suppose the the best example of a country that really had an excellent. Traces as it was it was german if they are currently testing Something Like 70000 people every single day that means theyve been doing that for some time by contrast in the u. K. Even in march was only testing about 10000 but they were currently around 40000 so germanys number riess also did quite well i mean portugal also did quite well early on although it all all these countries now were seeing you know resurgence as uk rotavirus and differ. So i think its really important to recognise that some countries did an excellent job of testing and following where the virus was in their communities but even those countries and now facing these challenges of what to do as they have outbreaks coming back as people relax and may be let down their guards like so you know there have been concerns and list that just in the past few weeks in certain areas where theres dense social housing i think this is a pattern were going to see you know were going to see outbreaks in places where people act together you know in these play rises or where you know there are particular plants factories such as Meat Processing plants in germany. We should be no particular sensis of these outbreaks a thing happening United States so were going to have to really keep a wary eye and you know very quickly mobilize people to suppress the affection where. Now there what opec fargas ations spokesperson has compared the stamping out. The virus to their quiver of a campfire in the forests if your system as a fact of you can stamp out the embers of is not a fact of it sets off a forest fire. In your estimation which companies have got their test and traces the end to a shape that allows them to stamp out the embers and whats come to style of what to do well i think i mean the country i mentioned in europe obviously germany is a very good. Igloo and im not talking about the whole United Kingdom because i think scotland and wales of even. Better but in england where were still really suffering because 2 reasons really one is that we have still a very centralized system so the countries are done well such as germany have succeeded because of a lot of the work of the tracing is done at a regional or local level and that means you dont have these long delays between you know the test going off and then coming back and then the information flowing back down to local level so the local Contact Traces and seems to be mobilized to bring those messages make sure that theres actually shutdowns in the communities where you need it. Looking worldwide taiwan which is mentioned japan has been quite successful in japan is interesting it seems to be not so much because of their Contact Tracing perhaps because theyre much more used to social distancing anyway theres less handshaking its a more full full culture where people dont hug and kiss the braces much so theyd be quite successful there and also be countries like thailand south korea all countries where there was a certain mistrust early on of. Data coming out of china but also they have this experience of sellers want so they knew you could suppress coronaviruses if you took rapid early action and had like a really big response act receipt system and. A professor Michael Becker from new zealand one. Of the last countries where for experience in handling the virus find a way to improve their knowledge and to those countries which are still struggling because the 2nd wave of of this virus could be deadlier than the fast as the that sort of thing is what the World Health Organization is designed to do the must be a method surely of getting the argument a cost for containment and eradication well i mean i think thats right but the problem is whats missing is a Global Leadership of the political level a good example historically very quite recently is the bowler outbreak how do we suppress the vote or outbreak because president obama in that case stepped up a lot World Leaders together you know a bolo was debated on the floor of the United Nations and as a result there was a coup or the native military and humanitarian responsible United States. United kingdom and france flying in a military expertise to west africa. And finally mark you know as sad human kind in terms of. The warfare and waste of of life as incapable of learning from history as possible even the most centrally of Communications Worldwide that the same might apply to pestilence that we are incapable of leveling the lessons of history and applying them for the good of humanity the big danger i really see is yes i still think that there is a large section the population who dont listen to historians but actually dont listen to any kind of experts so my wife really years that there is a lot of people who dont really believe in the critical virus they dont think it is real they think its a hoax and you know a ruse to. You know in slave human populations of you know deny them their liberties and freedom of movement im i did worry is that you know for those entrenched people who just dont believe anything that big told by science will they even take a backseat it was made available if they dont then they will present a risk to everybody else who does because as long as you know we dont achieve this early beauty either naturally or d through vaccination theres always a chance that the virus will come back dr mark konigsberg author of the pandemic century thank you so much for joining me once again on the alex salmon show thank you so much also having me always a pleasure to talk to. The epicenter of this pandemic has moved progressively from asia to europe now to the americas the theaters africa is yet to come in each continent some countries of handled it well some badly and some very badly these differences do not depend on size nor the system of government New Zealanders are a small liberal democracy and as one of the lowest deficits in the world the United Kingdom is a well loved liberal democracy and as one of the highest within the United Kingdom england has performed significantly worse than the other nations characteristic which distinguishes success from failure is the effectiveness of Public Health policy banning diving upon the disease countries which havent a stop please test and trace system have done well those who havent struggled badly one thing is certain if you stick your chin out with this virus it will hit you hard and then hit you again perhaps more countries should have looks over to new zealand for an example of Public Health policy and operation certainly the United Kingdom to hear an example from his old dominion would be the world coming up side down but nonetheless that is exactly what should be done and i know from me that myself and all of the show its good bye for now stay safe well see you again next week. But underneath the nose you know born is just the life of another tease. We dont. Beat. People. We can do better we should be. Everyone is contributing way but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenges create the response has been so many good people are helping us. It makes us feel very proud that we are in it together. Oh my god im using my. Name because it was a big. One when when the fight. Scene but im before. The. Headline stories this hour the British Foreign secretary accuses russia of meddling in last years u. K. General election but admits the government is not 100 percent sure. Also ahead on the Program Study in germany so hes Vulnerable Children were fostered by sex abusers for decades. Probably knew about some of the victims to see what they lived through. Every day was mental and physical mistreatment we were forced to do things we wouldnt normally do because we were threatened with being destroyed