We have to be honest about a 6 week lockdown 

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
29
4730

I believe a lockdown was inevitable and the only radical option to prevent 80 000 New Zealanders dying within months.

This matters not just for the immediacy of our public health or the looming Greater Depression, but because our values as a Democracy are being tested.

Authoritarian regimes rely on large standing armies harshly enforcing the will of the state to survive crises, in a democracy the good will of fellow citizens bonds a unity that works in solidarity.

That good will can only be maintained by an honest appraisal of where we are, and to that end we must start being honest with New Zealanders over the length of this lockdown so that they are prepared and open eyed to the challenge in front of us.

Preventing 80 000 deaths over the economy by shutting down the nation is not only a priority of immediacy, you can’t seriously expect a shell shocked community in grief to work as a society let alone an economy after a loss of life that large.

That’s not to downplay the economic apocalypse about to hit us, but that’s a monster fought right after we’ve saved as many lives as we can.

So.

4 weeks lockdown is not going to be enough and we need to start admitting that so citizens are prepared.

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We can’t seriously shut down the nation and the economic damage that causes without being 100% sure the bloody virus has been smothered, because if we have to go back into lockdown because we came out of quarantine too soon, the initial sacrifice is wasted.

Incubation time of the virus is 14 days, but there are cases where it has been 19 days and 27 days, so we went into lockdown on Wednesday 25th meaning the majority of infections will appear by April 8th in the second week of the 4 week lockdown, but we need to KNOW the damned virus has been completely eradicated, so that takes us out to April 21st for the last possible incubation date and we would need at least 2 weeks of no new infections to know the sacrifice had been worth it.

So it’s far more likely that we are talking a 6 week minimum lockdown, not 4 weeks, and that’s based on people not spreading the virus during the first 3 weeks of lockdown!

The Government must be prepared to extend rent freezes, wage subsidy and business aid throughout the extended lockdown to keep people from panicking as the reality sinks in.

To this end, Jacinda can be thankful for Trump.

The appalling manner in which he has mishandled the outbreak with a naked incompetence that is excruciating to witness will be our back drop to extending the lockdown.

The full blown pandemic that we are about to see erupt in America will give Jacinda every justification for extending the lockdown and NZers watching in horror as the corpses in America mount will beg her for harsher penalties to anyone caught breaching curfew.

We now have a Pandemic Police State which represents the largest transfer of civil rights to the State we’ve seen outside war or heavy handed responses to Industrial action.

As I go about the limited parameters of my life over the next 4 weeks (which will really be 6 weeks, which will probably be 8 weeks, which might have to be 12 weeks) and I pass Police & Military on my streets, I will nod respectfully as they cruise past in acknowledgement  of the role they are playing in enforcing the absolute necessity of this moment.

But sweet Jesus, the millisecond we are in the clear of this plague, the moment when this oppressive obscenity of State intrusion into our lives in such a profound and needfully draconian manner has passed, this Parliament must restore our collective freedoms unblemished and protected.

This moment of universal experience that is a pandemic isn’t just testing us individually, it is testing the very fabric of our society.

Currently, the brutality of Chinese authoritarianism and its ability via its enormous military might to enforce its will has tamed infection rates, liberal progressive democracies however rely on the collective good will of its citizenship to do what is right.

Our value as a Democracy is being tested and history is watching us.

It is our obligation not only as New Zealanders to protect one another by compliance, it is our sacred duty to the very principles and collective values of our democracy that demands the same valour our forebears have showed.

The restoration of our Democracy with our collective civil liberties in tact and a Government focused on healing and rebuilding in the wake of this pestilence must be our lesson to history.

On the day our Government restores our collective civil rights we will know we have answered this challenge and the sacrifice was worthy of our whakapapa and mana.

Kia kaha.

 

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TDB Team 2020.

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29 COMMENTS

  1. Bloody well said Martyn; we agree 100%

    Our message to Jacinda is; ” BE STRAIGHT WITH US AS WE HAVEW BEEN LIED FOR YEARS BEFORE THIS SO WE NOW NEED AND DESERVE THE TRUTH WITHOUT THE RUN-AROUND”.

    We were lied to already by your Government; here’s the proof; – firstly in 2013 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10860706
    “Labour, Greens pledge to reinstate Gisborne rail line”

    Gisborne comunities all are asking Government to finally commit to honouring their pledge and promise from 2016 to restore the Gisborne rail when ‘next in Government’.
    https://www.labour.org.nz/labour_s_transport_plan_will_get_new_zealand_moving

    http://gisborneherald.co.nz/localnews/2535803-135/three-parties-say-fix-rail

    above is the latest pledge later four years ago (2016) before the last election; Labour Party was featured in the Gisborne Herald; again as the Labour party pledged and promised Gisborne HB communities that (quote) “when Labour was next in Government they would restore our Gisborne rail service” that was broken by National Government mishandling; – and we have yet to see this happpen so we are quickly loosing any faith in you if you dont act now.

    • Hear hear.
      All this non sense about how little endemic spread this virus has is insulting and moronic of the Trumpian order.
      If NZ doesn’t test randomly then you CAN NOT know !!
      If we have a shortage of testing and processing, then say so. But DON’T ‘piss up my back and tell me it’s raining’. That’s a TraitorKey and Billshit English move.

    • I totally agree. Other countries are about to roll out a testing programme from 8th April called Solidarity in which there will be much more testing, but so far NZ isn’t expected to be a participant. Seem odd, since our population base is much smaller than most if not all of the participating countries.

  3. John Campbell pressed Jacinda this morning on just who is keeping the government in check about the legality, scope and justification for the Covid martial law. I expected her to say human rights and civil liberty lawyers and academics, but she said ‘you, the media’ (you know that goofy lot we see giggling about in-jokes every morning, the self-proclaimed ‘lighter’ journalists). The other arbiter of government control that the PM mentioned was ‘the opposition’. We’re in real trouble here.

    • Well we have been well and truly fucked over for years with Key being scrutinised by Hosking. So why are we now in trouble Popeye?

  4. My gosh what a beautiful read. I totally enjoyed your brutal honestly but will anyone listen? For Pete’s sake I hope so. I hope we do extend the lockdown as a matter of having too because you’re absolutely right the initial 4 week lockdown will become a complete waste of time. And if the world is still ignoring their responsibility to enforce lockdowns seriously we’ll have to keep our borders closed or risk being infected again. China may have a great military force but it was their health standards and their inability to recognise the danger in that, that has brought the world to its knees well to our backdoor at least. This is only the beginning we will see new pestilences emerging either from this virus or rising out of who knows where. What is going to happen to civilisation as we know it? It will not survive not even with a great militant regime. Governments will fail us all.

  5. I don’t think the 28 or 48 day lockdown clock can be started until every single kiwi returning from overseas is met at the airplane door by officials in full hazmat gear, processed, tested and taken to a completely secure facility for total isolation. Until we start doing that we are wasting our time.
    I have been parked in my taxi on Devon street west a main road for the western suburbs of New Plymouth for 10 minutes and well over 50 cars have passed me. I am 65? risking my health and life to provide an essential service for about $5 an hour in earnings and I see this shit going on.

  6. You’re making an assumption that almost no one in NZ has already had it. It is also a core “oversight” that many of the so-called medical “experts” have been making. We know that many people present very mild or no symptoms at all. Combine that with that it being highly unlikely that this virus wasn’t already long in NZ given it originated since at least October of last year in China with the abundance of Chinese tourists in NZ. Indeed, researchers at Oxford University suggest that as many as 50% of people may have already had the virus(!!!).
    https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/24/coronavirus-may-already-infected-half-uk-population-12451012/
    And here a link to the actual article: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042291v1
    If this is true, the virus may well near to being “burnt out” already via population “herd immunity”. Trump’s “back to work by Easter”, might not be quite as far-fetched as it first seemed. We’ll know far more once serological (antibody) testing begins, which will ascertain how many people have already had the virus and thus give an accurate indication for when this will be over. The UK has already ordered 3.5M of such tests,
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/uk-coronavirus-mass-home-testing-to-be-made-available-within-days

  7. I think your xenobia & prejudice of the Chinese is still showing heir comrade?

    It was by the Americans at the Military World Games in October 2019 in Wuhan, that spread the virus.
    The US military are getting smashed by the virus now. Two of their fleet of aircraft carriers are reporting an epidemic onboard those ships and so at Army and Airforce bases.

    Lets see how the Americans like been invaded by a foreign ‘element’ that they have no control over! Fuck’m I say.

    PS: If you look at the top 10 nations that are getting hit the hardest, aside from China & Iran.
    They are the nations that are war mongers, regime changes and invading forces of the last 100 years.
    The word ‘Karma’ comes to mind.

  10. “We have to be honest about a 6 week lockdown ”

    Well that’s going to be a fucking hard ask @ Martyn – where even ‘honesty’ has been commodified and is now a tradable commodity.
    I suspect we’ll have to suffer a little more inconvenience before the masses come to realise the way we (‘us”) has been living isn’t sustainable for much longer.
    But, the best of British luck, or whatever the luck is now that’s in vogue

  11. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcidStatus of COVID-19

    As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.

    The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.

  12. If you don’t have reservations over yet more unchecked police powers then you don’t know history.
    Also encouraging people to dob others in for quarantine breaches, or dob supermarkets is corrosive and authoritarian. It’s not for citizens to be judge and jury of each other. There is supposedly a givernmen5 department for anti competitive behaviour.
    Google up what sort of regimes turn citizens against each other.
    If government agencies did their bloody jobs properly and inform people properly and close borders when we should have, we wouldn’t have to encourage people to turn on each other like this.
    This government has form though, hate speech laws incoming.

    • If people cannot abide by the rules they have suffer. This is no different to,calling in about drivers not following the rules .Many women and children have died because we did not like to report their abusers to the police.
      It would have been good to call the lockdown earlier but for it to work there needed to be public support . I am no supporter of this government but they need to be given credit for calling a lockdown before other countries . There are mistakes being made but there is no rule book to follow much like the earthquake follow up in Chch

      • And the driver dobbing number and family violence hotline have solved those problems? Worse now you say?
        Ask a cop about star triple 5 and they will sigh and roll their eyes.
        It just empowers ignorant busybodies to waste Police time.
        The right thing to do is have a word (from a distance) so people know the rules before calling the cops on them.
        It’s very woke though, the automatic assumption that the indignant caller is morally right and anyone one outside is wrong.
        A play on the worst part of people’s self righteous nature to ensure public compliance through fear.
        The politics of kindness

  13. I think you make perfect sense @ Martyn Bradbury.
    To that, I’d write no more arguments from us then.

    I’d also write lets just get on with surviving and stop whining.
    Don’t fuck around trying it on by going here and there.
    I think random testing is a waste of time because we know the vector of the virus so all we have to do essentially is to wait patiently in isolation. If we don’t mingle and show some respectful obedience in this matter to the relevant officials concerned the last virus will show up and that’ll be that.
    This is NOT a time for passive aggression.
    In this instance, passive aggression will fuck your shit right up because devolving into passive aggression blinds you to logic and logic dictates that we must listen to those who advise us on that which we have no knowledge of ourselves. I think that used to be called ‘trust’.

    Adern will be getting good and reliable advice because she doesn’t appear to be a brainless bully. She’ll ask for opinions and get them and those who have an opinion will be confident that they won’t be ridiculed or belittled which is a blood sport charecterised by the behaviour of National.
    Let that be a lesson to us all when the elections come around.

    Humour and kindness. Tell a fucking joke. Not a horror story. Throw fresh fruits at your neighbour. Throw a chicken? They’d get a bonus egg the next day. Lets not forget therapy for the chicken? A pre flight safety video? “Chicken? Stow your luggage in your overhead wattle and if you’re carrying bags please place them under that the flying chicken in front of you. Then, should things go iffy during landing you can blame that chicken.The pushy one. So, sweet.”

    And buy one of these…
    Getting in Squeeze Machine.
    Who’d ever want to get out? I wonder if you can get them for couples ! ?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYB7uA_xVeo

  14. I have grave concerns about the efficacy of this lockdown because of the stupid things people are doing.
    I went to the supermarket Saturday and the majority of people did NOT keep 2m distance with several brushing my arms as they went past.

  15. Blah, blah.
    I want to.see the look on white faces when whites become a NZ minority. Only then will they realize pretending diversity is a strength is Lunacy.

  16. New Zealand, the whole world, will NEVER be the same again.

    Whatsoever may come to become the new normal at the other side, we will have state and corporate control and observation that will be here to stay, supposedly for our own ‘wellbeing’.

    I could not believe it that the majority of Germans now support the government to follow mobile phone traffic and movements of the carriers of the phones, so to keep an eye on whether persons who are infected are actually isolating themselves.

    Similar views are now common in many populations, so stern is the matter, the challenge, so great the fear of being struck down by COVID 19.

    People are now prepared to hand over their last bit of privacy, so to stay healthy and alive.

    But thank God, one good thing that has come out of this, that is the death of mass tourism in this country, the world all over, where often ignorant tourists trampled over the environment, left their rubbish, faeces, bad habits and corrupted people with their money.

    Good riddance. So now the future can be reshaped, that is if the government or the next one will be serious about transformation.

    I fear though, they will be so desperate to get the economy back on its feet, they will allow the fossil fuel age to continue unabated, bringing back the burning and slashing of what is left of resources and the environment we live in.

    Jacinda may be good at leading us in moments of crisis, and in communicating what may need to be said and done, she has though not shown much in the way of real transformation, there is little talk about the climate crisis, about limited resources and the environment as a whole.

    All we hear and see is stuff relating to Coronavirus, and how people and the economy need to be bailed out with lots of printed and already existing money, so to restart the economy as it was.

    But international travel and trade will become very controlled, so to avoid a new outbreak in future.

  17. I like the vigilant spirit of TDB. Never thought lockdown would finish in April, certainly not Easter. It lasted 2 months in Wuhan, so that would be a hopeful measure. I think what we all want is that lockdown lasts as long as it needs to – measured by experts such as Prof. Michael Baker.

  19. It certainly looks like New Zealand is on track to beat Covid and countries like Uk and USA are struggling but in a couple of months it may be all over in those countries and we will be looking at another 2 or more months of lock down

  20. The government say there is no plan B.
    There is no vaccine
    There is no antiviral that works
    The only thing that works is the lockdown.

    The government must hold their nerve,

    And resist all the pressure to lift the lockdown.

    Countries that can keep the lockdown on will be well placed to recover.

    Countries that lift the lockdown too early, or apply it only half heartedly, will be ruined.

    The government’s task is simple,

    Keep essential services operating.

    That’s it.

    Keep the farms producing food.

    Keep the trucks shipping the food to the supermarkets

    Keep the lights on.

    Keep the internet on

    Keep the water on and the toilets flushing.

    Announce a full moratorium on all mortgages and rents.

    No redundancies,

    No sackings,

    No evictions

    Do what it takes Prime Minister;
    to keep the lights on, to keep the internet on, to keep the farms producing, to keep the trucks supplying the supermarkets.

    Coronavirus: Government says it has no plan B if lockdown fails to stamp out Covid-19
    Henry Cooke
    16:45, Apr 02 2020

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120770940/coronavirus-government-says-it-has-no-plan-b-if-lockdown-fails-to-stamp-out-covid19

  21. How can landlords pay their mortgages if tenants won’t (or can’t), pay their rent?

    The government need to immediately announce a total nation wide moratorium on all rents and mortgages for the length of the Lock-Down.

    If it is good enough for billion dollar company Harvey Norman not to pay rent……..

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/120728348/harvey-norman-tells-landlords-it-wont-pay-rent?fbclid=IwAR3CemUZ4KmU6srZQrJ42d5ZmQVy_7Y3oOS0cJT75S4CyP0yE6prfP-c_Rc

    Homeware giant Harvey Norman is refusing to pay rent on some stores during the level 4 lockdown.

    The Australian-owned company sent the letter to a number of landlords around New Zealand on March 25 telling them that it would not pay rent while its stores were closed.

    Harvey Norman leases stores as well as warehouses.

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