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Comment by Widdershin | Hacker News Reader

An unfortunate headline, considering that we have yet to eliminate Covid-19 in New Zealand, as the article itself discusses.

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I didn't see the article as disagreeing with the headline. I thought the headline was using "eliminated" in the epidemiological sense: "Elimination to everyone means that it is gone. But in epidemiological terms, it means bringing cases down to zero or near zero in a geographical location."

I see what you're saying but HN is not a community of epidemiologists so I'd also say the headline is misleading and hence, inappropriate.

Although it's generally considered bad form to alter headlines in HN, and the Lancet is a medical journal.

Again, I see what you're saying. However, isn't it bad form because it may alter the meaning and hence, mislead? Then why would the converse - leaving it alone and hence, mislead - also not be bad form?

The link and (HN) title are presented to the HN readership, if it is followed then the article's own title will be presented in the correct context.

Regardless, this is a minor point and I'll quibble no further.

I can appreciate that, there’s just been enough confusion around the meaning of elimination that I feel a lot of people will just assume we’re done with it.

I don’t think the headline should be changed unless the article title changes, more just that if their goal is science communication I think they’ve done a poor job of it.

“New Zealand on the cusp of Covid-19 Elimination” might be a better term.

Also, our government hasn’t specified what threshold would be considered elimination so the latter part of that definition isn’t super helpful.

This is highly misleading for a disease that can exponentially explode from a handful of cases to a national emergency within a span of a few weeks.

Today's numbers if anyone cares

https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/gfjby8/coronavi...

New Zealand is as close to "contained" as is possible to get without a vaccine. Pop the cork, for goodness sake. There's not a lot of good news to go around.

Yes we have cause to celebrate, but as we approach another lowered level of lockdown it’s important to remember that we are still battling this virus.

If the numbers ramp up again because people don’t take the precautions seriously then we won’t be celebrating anymore.

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