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Unfortunately the report by the @NZprocom referred to in this story seems to have been based on a misunderstanding of disease dynamics. I am glad their advice wasn’t followed. 1/N https://nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12354255
This misunderstanding meant that @NZprocom neglected to factor in the benefits of avoiding a second lockdown that the Level 4 extension provided. 2/N
This seems to be because the @NZprocom was confused about elimination - they seem to have mistook “how do we tell that the disease is gone” for “when does disease transmission stop”. Our @PunahaMatatini model showed that the extension had a significant effect on the latter 3/N
Therefore, we would argue that the Level 4 extension helped avoid a second outbreak and these benefits, which are large, should have been taken into account by @NZprocom 4/N
It’s disappointing that @NZprocom doesn’t seem to have sought peer review or comment on from health experts or anyone involved in disease modelling. It needs to take a look at its processes and should look at publishing some sort of retraction. 5/N
We actually approached @NZprocom after some blogging they did around the time they were working on this paper, but we were told they were too busy to talk to us. 6/N
