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Within the context of a portfolio of assets, the risk of loss in those assets is decomposed between the Systematic and Non-Systematic (or Idiosyncratic) Risk. As a general rule, you can diversify away the Non-Systematic Risk. But the Systematic Risk is non-diversifiable. Even if you avoid the stock market, your assets are likely correlated with them so you can never avoid that Systematic Risk.

In an identical and very real manner, the same risk elements exist in society. Consider crime: you can diversify away some element of crime (e.g., greater concealed-carry, vigilance in the citizenry) but at some point, crime is gonna happen and you really can't eliminate crime. Indeed, just like with the stock market risk is unavoidable, you can never truly avoid crime. In many cases, society will try to eliminate this Systematic Risk and not only fail, but incur astronomical costs.

This is precisely what is happening in NZ: they are trying to eliminate the systematic risk of COVID19. In the process, they will incur astronomical costs (i.e., destroy the economy, increase personal stress and depression and suicide rates etc.).

I agree - NZ thinks they can manage all the risk away. Based on the two articles I’ve read about their new lockdown and the demographics of the infected, this is clearly not the way to go about it, even though the MSM has hailed them as a success story.

The NZ model could never work here. The island has the population of Brooklyn and Queens on two major islands with a land mass comparable to Colorado or Oregon. Their densest city (Auckland) is comparable to suburbs you would find beyond the typical bedroom suburbs of New York City (like Western Suffolk or parts of Rockland County).

You can’t expect the US to separate families, lock people in their homes (their lockdown only exempted nearby exercise and trips for groceries),and cut off foreign travel with the hopes of beating mother nature.

If you want to argue that Sweden isn’t the answer either, you’re probably right, but the solution looks more like Sweden and less like what we’re doing, and certainly not what New Zealand did and is doing now.

There you go again with that data and logical thinking stuff - you white supremacist, cis-gender, homophobic bigot! /s (hope I really didn’t need the tag...)

So many just can’t wrap their mind around this amazingly simple concept.