TDB was one of the few media outlets in NZ who argued at the beginning that this pandemic was a unique event. When many woke activists were screaming that any criticism of the virus was xenophobic racism and that the flu killed more…
…TDB were arguing that this wasn’t an identity politics issue but a public health nightmare and economic armageddon.
TDB was arguing for a lockdown and massive rethink of our economy while the Alt Right Death Cult Capitalists were screaming the slaves had to return to work to protect their Gold Card air point privileges.
Woke activists screaming racism to the left of me, death cult capitalists to the right of me, and here TDB is, stuck in the middle with you.
Jacinda and her Government arguably make a greater call today than the decision to initially enter lockdown.
I argued the Government would consider a 6 week lockdown, but the extraordinary success of the go hard go early model has paid an enormous dividend…
…this remarkable result which has quickly been heralded globally as a blueprint for other countries is due to the Government’s go hard go early leadership, dedicated essential service workers courage and the good will of all our citizens.
So what will the call be today?
My guess is that Lockdown 4 will be extended and we will enter lockdown 3 as of Tuesday 28th.
Here is my rational for thinking Tuesday 28th.
The Government doesn’t want confusion on ANZAC Day on Saturday.
Mondaynisation means 27th is a public holiday anyway.
But most importantly, the track-trace-quarantine infrastructure required to monitor and police and isolate any outbreak simply is not in place yet. We forget that the 35 year neoliberal gutting of our public service has left a threadbare managerial class who don’t do, they subcontract out. One of the lessons of this pandemic and external shock is that the State’s capacity to deal with them has been eroded and moving forward that will need to be seriously remedied.
I am writing a series at the moment looking at how this pandemic reshapes our culture, politics and economy and will publish those this week.
I’ve suggested that the NZ Left urgently put together a virtual conference to thrash out a basic policy agenda platform as a response to this unprecedented crisis of free market capitalism because the Alt Right Death Cult Capitalists are ramming their agenda through and will throw the working classes who suffer most from this virus under the bus faster than they can say untaxed capital gains.
This pandemic impacts the poorest hardest and the fact that this pandemic is spread by the travelling wealthy, that those wealthy have the luxury of self isolation with well stocked larders and that the health effects destroy the poor and the working classes most tends to get glossed over here.
The service workers who have been so undervalued are the ones who put themselves at risk here, not rich pricks wrapped up in leafy burbs.
I don’t give two shits about your middle class struggles with working from home, I care about those workers who don’t have that privilege.
Of course we need to work out how we get the economy working again, only a fool would underplay the enormity of the economic tsunami rushing towards us, but using intellectually feeble ‘herd immunity’ nonsense as a license to allow a full blown pandemic to erupt is not a solution.
The Left haven’t had a real public economic academic since the passing of Bruce Jesson and the Labour Party was almost ripped to pieces from the ideological fallout of Rogernomics so the experimental neoliberal hegemonic platform has been unchallenged for the entirety of its 35 years.
The current Identity Politics Left in NZ are great at organising petitions on Action Station to free the nipple for PoC vegan cycling mommy bloggers and Trans Allies, not so great at reconstructing the neoliberal hegemonic structures of the economy.
Bruce Jesson would be rolling in his grave at the lack of imagination and ideas being espoused by the Left right now. There has never been a better time to challenge the fraudulent foundations of neoliberalism, we’ve had 35 years to prepare ideologically for this moment, where is everyone?
UPDATE: Jacinda set Level 4 to end on Monday 27th.
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There is rustling in the undergrowth from various leftists but no co-ordinated big splash yet. Lots of video meetings etc. People better get their act together soon, because every weaseling CEO, change manager and lumpen tory imaginable, is vying for the Govt. ear at the moment.
Some Unions seem like stunned mullets and better snap out of it–Collective Employment Agreements are still in force! Govt. bailout procedures are not a replacement for employment law and workers general rights! Or any citizen’s rights when it comes down to it. Gatherings and marches with physical distancing will look bigger anyway…the lockdown may have to be broken in a political way sooner rather than later, if it turns into a lockdown mainly for the benefit of the employing class.
There could be periodic lockdowns for many months to come, so pressure from the working class “the power down below” for a Basic Income and urgent reform of MSD, need to seriously happen right now.
ramming their agenda through and will throw the working classes who suffer most from this virus under the bus faster than they can say untaxed capital gains.
Yes, I’m worried about that too.
We have this fantastic, rare opportunity to re-shape our approach to …just about everything that matters. It has all been so out of synch for so long. We can re-balance..
I so much hope that we in Aotearoa don’t let this once in a lifetime chance just slip away.
We will let it slip, dont you doubt it. And forget about any climate change debate or “wellness” talk being espoused by our dear leaders for some time. The majority of the public want there jobs saved, and they wont care if we have to burn a tonne of coal to do it.
I am aware there has been no modern central data base that all DHB’s use, they all have their own systems. It’s been an issue for years but one no one had seen fit to change. And I cannot help but guess a public service like health constantly underfunded for years would not have seen this as a priority.
But right here and now I am reading between the lines that immediate data for the government the make decisions on in real time simply is not there. They are flying blind.
It appears the powers that be a rushing forward some sort of IT bandaid but it’s still a week off and even then one wonders, how reliable will it be.
We are a country that had not prepared for that terrible rainy day in all aspects of things, health being a biggy. Not that we’re alone.
Very tough call today, I’m picking a level 4 extension of a week to 10 days.
We didn’t go early but yeah it’s the slogan she says every news conference to make it stick.
Backpacker vans diving around for weeks..
It’s important to look around at others, Australia has done well with a hodge podge of level 3ish measures, allowed more freedom and achieved a similar result as per the graph.
Time to loosen up to level 3 which has enough distancing to keep a lid on, and very soon level 2.
I think the authoritarianism sits a little too comfortably with some in government and the public service.
Level 4 is an extremely restricted level that definitely brings down infection numbers but don’t let the bureaucrats ruin our lives because they can’t organize testing and they want their figures to look good.
As far as reorganizing our economy away from neoliberalism – it’s noteable that immediately the foreign owned supermarkets are huge beneficiaries of lockdown while small local butchers and fruit and vegetables shops go broke.
The small and local are going out of business, it’s the big boys that get bigger out of this.
And our job market is shot and we have to be grateful for the chance to put ourselves in harms way to support our families, while the government has just allowed relaxed visa conditions for thousands of imported workers to keep wages down…
If this is the big reorganizing, then it’s reorganizing to allow neoliberalism to destroy the last of our local owned business and jobs.
“achieved a similar result as per the graph.” You do know it is a logarithmic scale? What looks close on the graph would not fit on the same chart if a standard scale was used. You need to see what is happening 2 or 3 months later to see the real benefit of what NZ has done.
Just when I start to feel happy and positive about the future again, I see a picture of Mike Hosking or his twin brother, Slymon Bridges. I immediately feel unwell. Difficult to describe all the symptoms but the most dominant symptom is always the same. Nausea.
With this is mind, I send a message to all our magnificent health care and aged care workers. Please don’t allow your patients and residents to view images of either man. xx
Well put Martyn. Part of the problem is that the right will continue to scream “but we can’t afford any of this”. This is where an economist from the left would be gold. Unless this narrative can be changed any big plan will be less than it should be. We already have the Reserve Bank buying govt bonds to finance the plan so far. What is needed here is for the RB to take charge of money supply and decide how much money can be supplied to spend and leave the fiscal side i. e. choice of projects to the govt. The general rule of thumb is that money can continue to be supplied until we get somewhere near full capacity which is way over the present horizon. The R B will hold this debt and can retire it if inflation remains under control. In this way the debt is always to ourselves and so long as our dollar retains its worth the money supply can be enlarged to obtain full employment and to build actual infrastructure tbat is useful and serves society. This would include the reintroduction of free tertiary education as we strive to add knowledge and sophistication to the young people who will build our future
Personally? I like closure.
Some, who know me too well who therefore avoid me at all costs, know me well enough to know that vengeance courses through my ever hardening arteries like venomous glue.
Fuck conscience, let vengeance be your guide.
roger douglas and his accomplices must go to prison. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is we must re nationalise all that he and they swindled from us.
The third thing is we must deploy a commission of inquiry to find generations of stolen/sequestered/diverted/reinvested/lent out cheap to mates/hidden off-shore/trust-funded, agrarian export derived revenue.
The fourth and most important thing is we must shut our borders to incoming tighter than a ducks bum. Forever!
I love travellers coming to AO /NZ, don’t get me wrong. But in order to be able to roam about our place you must first prove you’re not carrying. Drugs? Great! But no viruses thanks all the same.
That must mean quarantine hotels on arrival or perhaps not being allowed to leave a country of origin until tests are passed?
( @ Maori? Do you know why Measly Beach in Sou East Otago is called ‘Measly Beach’ ? It’s because many Maori there caught then died of the measels there after a white trader sold soiled blankets. “THE STORY OF MEASLY BEACH”.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19181129.2.47 )
It’s weirdly unnerving that customs will stop and rubber glove your arsehole looking for condoms full of cocaine but if you’re sneezing and looking sickly ? You’re good to go!
Party hard then Chinese person with coughs and sweats!
Speaking of cocaine… You’ve got to to see this one.
‘A true account’.
The Mule. ( No. Not the Clint Eastwood one. )
Based on actual events. Is brilliant.
“The Mule is a 2014 Australian comedy crime drama film directed by Tony Mahony and Angus Sampson.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mule_(2014_film)
Pity is sometimes better than revenge though @CB. I mean….why waste your energy on fucked up little specimens like Roger, or Ruthenasia, or any number of them.
If they don’t fuck themselves up before they pop their clogs, they don’t seem to have worked out they can’t take it with them, and there’ll always be the likes of you and me lining up to piss on their graves in their after-life.
And if by chance they do get held to account beforehand – its a benefit.
Don’t waste you energy on ’em. But if happenstance allows you to give it all a little nudge – by all means give it a push instead.
And as much as TDB matters, as much as its under-rated; and as much as the remnants of the 4th Estate sometimes use it as a crib sheet – really @ Martyn! Its not a fucking competition as to who predicted right and who predicted wrong.
..and yet you still believe that Trump is somehow worse than Xi, Wokester… because he’s white? Aren’t you a woke activist? You’re not class Left if you think that anyone should be allowed even one single investment property…
Our press release requesting that mass testing to be done before any exiting from mCovid 19 lockdown ends.
CEAC- Gov’t don’t go to level three until doing mass testing.
Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre. Environmental Press report
20/4/20
CEAC – Gov’t don’t go to level three until doing mass testing.
We solidly support Dr Mike Bedford Early Childhood Education in NZ: Child & teacher health …
Mike Bedford is a specialist in (ECE Wellbeing and Design, and doctoral fellow, Past Otago university)
Mike has claimed today, that NZ has still got a serious overcrowded problem at our NZ child early learning centres (compared to overseas) that safe from virus passing health practice cannot be controlled currently.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/19-03-2020/covid-19-an-urgent-need-to-enable-voluntary-absence-from-ece/
Facts;
For many years since the 1980’s (“Roger-nomics Economics Rationalising Era)
Since then, we have seen in NZ a slow reduction of public services practices.
So now that we have a serious pandemic emergency health issue of Covid 19 at our doors, due to the ‘erosion’ of health practices, we must use caution here.
Firstly now we and government must listen to the experts, and the teachers, both who are at the ‘coal face’ and are fully aware of the serious deficiencies inside the early learning centres, and now who are requesting to Government that we should all stay at ‘level four’ until the overseas levels of controls for our early learning centres has been sorted.
Message to Government; ‘Be wise and be forewarned is the statement today to Government’.
• Be wise and be forewarned is the statement today to Government.
• Do not be pressured by the business interests ahead of public health and wellbeing.
• Conduct full Covid 19 testing of all our citizens firstly and complete a full assessment of solid controlled ‘tracing of the Covid 19’.
• Allow it’s support for voluntary withdrawal of children from early education and care. And to ensure immediate financial support for staff, businesses and community organisations, writes Dr Mike Bedford, a specialist in health and wellbeing in early childhood education.
We must be ensured firstly that NZ Ministry of Health is capable of full diagnostic tools are available to understand the spreading of this unknown virus is given them, to be in a far better position to fight the Covid 19 pandemic as you requested of us at the beginning of the fight against Covid 19 as now PM Ardern is requesting QUOTE; ‘If you even have a sniffle or the slightest sore throat’ get tested for Covid-19, PM urges
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/content/tvnz/onenews/story/2020/04/19/contact-tracing.html?auto=6150550268001
‘If you even have a sniffle or the slightest sore throat’ get tested for Covid-19, PM urges
• Conduct full Covid 19 testing of all our citizens firstly and complete a full assessment of solid controlled ‘tracing of the Covid 19’.
We must have mass testing of all our community firstly to have a solid ‘robust tracing process’ to fight Covid 19.
END.
IT”S ALRIGHT I’m Here NOW ..
Yup, Level 3 Us – To quote the official “Our plan – the four Alert Levels”:
Level 3 – Restrict:
Risk Assessment
– Community transmission occurring OR
– Multiple clusters break out
Sound like we should be at level 3 to me. Adults devise a plan and follow it, children do what feels good. Level 3 ME BaaaaBeeeeeEEE
IT”S ALRIGHT I’m Here NOW ..
Yup, Level 3 Us – To quote the official “Our plan – the four Alert Levels”:
Level 3 – Restrict:
Risk Assessment
– Community transmission occurring OR
– Multiple clusters break out
Sound like we should be at level 3 to me. Adults devise a plan and follow it, children do what feels good. Level 3 ME BaaaaBeeeeeEEE
That graph having an unzeroed y-axis seems a bizarre choice by the Financial Times. It’s not like it would have taken that much more space; maybe one line of text.
Still, there is the important caveat that these are only detected cases of COVID19. Different testing regimens in different countries may not produce directly comparable results. I’d still rather be here than anywhere else (even Palau).
What do we do if there is no hope for prophylaxis except perpetual physical distancing?
Herd immunity only works if antibody production is a shield rather than a magnet. And no one has ever produced a coronavirus vaccine that didn’t just make infection more lethal – not for; the common cold, nor for SARS-COV-1, nor MERS-CoV & SARS-COV-2 really isn’t looking promising.
It’s a logarithmic graph, it doesn’t have a zero 🙂
Well, yes Aaron; strictly speaking, you are correct. But I couldn’t think what it’s called (“calibration”?) when one; sets the y-axis range of a logarithmic chart to ensure that no data points lie below the x-axis.
You are obviously concerned with finicky details, and devoted to revealing the truth no matter who you may offend. Traits I wholeheartedly approve of; keep it up!
Regarding the implementation of lockdown, Ardern and Robertson talked of working in two-week blocks to mimic the transmission cycle of the virus. If they stay with that logic, an extension of Level 4 will be until midnight of 6 May.
If we are committed to elimination, it is better to stay at Level 4 longer than exit too early. The pile-up awaiting us on the other side keeps growing, but if we retreat from the initial strategy now, then it should never have been embarked upon.
I don’t envy Ardern today. It is going to be a big call, and she is working with blunt instruments.
It seems that another week on Level 4 would enable the tracing system, the testing system to be ready to go and testing should be used to ensure that people getting out and about are safe. People who want to step out of their imposed isolation to do something that is useful, either commercially, or socially for support or mental health etc should be able to ask for a check. And get quick as possible responses.
Ease the door open but we can’t rush through like a herd, which reminds of the herd immunity thing.
I’m watching for Sweden’s result, I can’t believe they can bring off what they say they can, and I don’t expect them to fudge like China did At First. Why is Sweden not on the Financial Times graph – it should be there to see how an outlier from the norm fares?
And I want us to cancel all our no-visa arrangements in conjunction with the countries concerned, though assuring them that we are not going to become a fortress. And bring in visas between us and Australia. If that slows movement down between us it will be no greater problem than just another change to adjust to, and is likely to have useful, to us, implications. And of course it will apply to China, and special arrangements with them will have to be changed so we have more control over entries.
Also we need to up our control on visiting boats from the footloose of the world, and all boats will have to be checked, and the personnel on board. I heard on Radionz that a NZ has been involved in drug smuggling from a yacht off Australia. This from Newshub:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/04/new-zealander-arrested-after-hundreds-of-kgs-intercepted-in-australian-meth-bust.html
The right of the political spectrum are chomping at the bit for L3. Why? Because they’ve been out of the headlines for nearly a month in the run-up to the election.
Act,NZF & the Nats are all gagging for some space to get in the media to push out,”I woulda dun this and wouldnt of dun that …. bla bla bla!” The political Weaponisation of C19 for the ‘Trump-Humpers’ is an imperative, for them to be relevent.
They’re fuck’d if it remains at level 4 as it should do for at least another 2 weeks.
Winter is the kicker so politically the optics will be the best position to have is to have a safe one because if it all goes sideways during winter and with the pending election coming up, guess who’ll get the blame and labour doesnt have the numbers for an out right victory.
So I say, box the fuckers in! L4!! That’ll do it! Let them out of their misery just before the election if there is still going to be one?
I still believe that there is still time for,“Never allow a good crisis go to waste. It’s an opportunity to do the things you once thought were impossible.”
There is still time for Labour to redeem themselves for the sins of their forefathers in the 1980’s ffs.
Amen.
Cult Herd Immunisation starts Monday next week!
Let the Death Cultists go nuts! Just like C19!
Tino Rangatiratanga Time! Bloody pakeha!
“Citizens Handbook”? The humour, nuance & delivery of a Harvey Norman ad. Worse: presented like we know better than the past (as if!).
Perhaps a little off-topic… or not ??
This on RNZ now.
‘Estimated power bills may be a shock for some – Consumer NZ’
“People faced with higher power bills during the lockdown need to approach their power companies to discuss payment options, Consumer NZ says.”
Do we…? We need to grovel, cap in hand to rorting power companies for some small mercy, do we?
Perhaps we should approach the power companies with a can of gas and a box of matches instead?
Perhaps consumer nz is all about running defence for the indefensible?
Perhaps consumer nz is less for consumers and more for rorting parasites?
Perhaps we could start asking what it is exactly that power companies in fact, do?
What do they ‘do’?
‘Power companies’ are the rude end of a neoliberal swindle along with retail banking, various insurance scams, house prices, building regulations, less than public, public transport and the complete destruction of our passenger rail infrastructure not to mention the near destruction of our rail freight services.
Been tailgated by a big fucking truck recently? Now you know why.
I say ” Fuck the power companies! You’re fired! Bring back the MoE ( And make very sure the fuckers do their jobs and not self sabotage to justify ‘privatisation’ to some future rogernome clone ! ) .”
Is this tomb explaining why you have horrendously high electricity bills?
If this document was edited of its logical fallacies it’d be a two page read.
https://www.mbie.govt.nz/assets/2ba6419674/chronology-of-nz-electricity-reform.pdf
Could we have a “Referendum” please! Sign your name to one of two choices.
1. Death Cultists – Level 3
2. The Conscientious Peoples Republic of Aotearoa! – Level 4
In June!
Someone’s woke activism is another’s holding government to account. Not challenging information or the government narrative would be a dereliction of professionalism and ethics; it is neither science nor journalism. Citizens should be questioning every piece of data they receive, to enable knowledge building and decision making. Recent reports are saying the virus may have been around for a lot longer than was previously suggested. This means that we should have expected there to be much more New Zealanders to have been infected, that being before the lockdown, and therefore an infection rate that is much higher. The population infection rates in one study are said to be a hundred times what is reported, meaning the death rates supposedly from Covid would be similarly decreased by the same proportion. Other causes of death far outnumber this disease but this lockdown has set a precedent. Do we need to shut down the country now for seasonal influenza or even a gastroenteritis outbreak? Disrupt society and give away privacy and civil liberties because of the threat of death from cancer, heart failure, diseases of poverty or road death? The death rates from various countries are also so variable that questions need to be asked if these figures are at all accurate and who had a hand in producing the data. Certainly the recent episode where people were assigned a diagnosis of Coronavirus without even being tested for it surely throws the whole pandemic case into disrepute.
I guess the small population and authoritarian culture explains the lack of dissenting voices in New Zealand compared with a more civilised country like Germany which has respect for Science and rational thought. For many on the left this event is both proof of the obvious failure of neoliberal capitalism and an opportunity for more state control over the economy in the future.
This despite the fact that this event is brought to us by the same people who brought us the babies grabbed from Kuwaiti hospital incubators, the WMD, the Swine Flu of 2009, the Russians destroying American “democracy”, Assad’s chemical weapons, the Skirpal farce, Julian Assange etc etc. But this time they are telling the truth!
It is not a matter of lives vs the economy. It is lives vs lives. The lockdown will result in more deaths than the corona virus.
The Swiss Propaganda Research site has a wealth of referenced articles from experts calling for a halt to the lockdown:https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
The Off Guardian website is an oasis of sanity at the moment. See in particular the articles reporting on the experts questioning the official narrative:(1) https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/24/12-experts-questioning-the-coronavirus-panic/ (2)https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/28/10-more-experts-criticising-the-coronavirus-panic/ (3) https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/17/8-more-experts-questioning-the-coronavirus-panic/
A small population and authoritarian culture explains the lack of dissenting voices in New Zealand compared with a more civilised country like Germany which has respect for Science and rational thought?
Respect for rational thought? Rational thought is what we get from everyone isn’t it? On here, on Kiwiblog, on very site. Rational thought is what we think and say and write. Irrational thought is what someone else has if it’s different than what we think.
Respect for science? In a couple of weeks we had people who’d never seen the words or heard them before become microbiologists and epidemiologists. They knew better that those with a lifetime of involvement with them.
Those phenomena aren’t down to a small population and authoritarian culture, they’re down to an arrogant ‘I know everything’ mentality.
Will ‘she’, “Stay Hard!” or “Go Soft!?”
The ozzies just got another 4 weeks lockdown because their soft lockdown has failed. Soft lockdown similar to our level 3.
Just what is Ardern’s endgame here?
Create Nation Zealandia, an island oasis free of one variant of one type of viral infection?
Track the movements and habits of every human in the country just in case someone gets sick (is she willing to be tracked by GPS sensor so that the public knows exactly where she is within a metre at any time, accessible via public internet)?
Institute compulsory contact tracing so that a faceless voyeur in the bowels of government can assess who you have ‘met’ in the past (whatever the hell that means) and decide if you are a threat in the future?
Cease free movement of people between this country and every other, or even our citizens between provinces?
Prop up every business in the country until we are bankrupt?
Vow not to say anything public about leaders such as Trump, who is openly encouraging citizens to revolt against lockdown, while she publicly shows solidarity with the Easter bunny?
Avoid talking about the militarisation of communities including unlawful vigilante roadblocks, severe restrictions on accessing food as a human right, and the wasting of police resources on duties such as making sure only a certain number of products are purchased by someone at a supermarket?
Continue despotism by not releasing information related to the pandemic decision making or any other information in the public interest which might make her look weak/bad/a hypocrite/not woke/not saintly enough?
Continue controlling the apocalypse narrative via these lightweights in MSM and now it seems through her pseudocelebrity mates who have infected television with endless ‘kia kahas’ and my favourite, “love your bubble” (TVNZ).
Reimpose martial law on the country whenever she sees fit based on a disease which hasn’t been absolutely defined, that affects everyone differently, which cannot be accurately tested for, whose lethality has not been properly established, where international statistics differ wildly, and on whose idea of eradication has become a crusade where outcomes may be worst than the disease itself?
I’d say she delays It by a week, firstly to stop idiots travelling over the long weekend and secondly to get the contact tracing testing right.
Of course there is no cure that is the virus Mike Hosking. Unless they come up with a dumb tablet.
…’ Of course there is no cure that is the virus Mike Hosking. Unless they come up with a dumb tablet’…
Its already been tried. Its called a double lobotomy. But it still didn’t work. Neo liberalism needs more than both dumb tablets and lobotomy’s to get rid of it. I’d suggest straight jackets and incarceration to remove them from the sane public face. And paid for by their bountiful assets and wealth which they stole from us.
Btw ….. there is no such thing as “Breaking News” (although I realise after the commodification of all and everything over 3 decades of the neo-libe agenda there’s an inherent need to ‘compete’)
There’s just N E W S – as in les actualities. The things that happen historically – as in just one damn thing after another. It’s more the way we deal with it all that matters, and what it is that matters to us
Those still applauding Jacinda after today’s backdown to the winston peters ‘capitalism must be saved’ crew, are about to cop a big shock in about 4 weeks.
We are coming out of level 4 lockdown without having nailed down the vectors of all the Covid 19 infections we know about, let alone the 5 times as many that remain unrecorde d(right through the course of this pandemic, all over the planet, the numbers of covid 19 cases revealed by way of reactive testing such as Aotearoa has been doing, amount to 20% of actual cases). Households full of asymptomatic covid 19 cases – mainly aged between 16 and 45, are about to be given permission to go out and start producing for the economy once more.
Now we know how difficult it is to maintain the 2 meter space in the supermarket, multiply that by a couple of degrees of magnitude for a workplace where humans have been indoctrinated into believing money is the number one priority and increased efficiency = increased money, then watch Covid 19 explode across Aotearoa just as the weather is becoming colder, so the virus can stay intact for several days longer.
It is madness, but the worst insanity is yet to come, as there is a review planned after 14 days on the proviso that if there hasn’t been evidence of a big uptick in cases, the threat level or whatever it is called, will be lowered to lvl 2.
Bloomfield and Co have been spouting for weeks that there is a two week lag between a shift in infection rates and that shift being reflected in their statistics.
So the first day after a weekend when, as we have learned from overseas, covid 19 cases ‘enjoy’ a further 1-2 day ‘weekend lag’, Ardern and here merry band of forelock tuggers for capitalism are planning on dropping the lockdown even further? When there is absolutely no way that anyone, scientist or politician, can have the vaguest idea of the effect of moving from 4 to 3?
This has got to be a deliberate attempt to sentence Aotearoa’s over 70’s to death. Get ’em off the super, out of the subsidised & sadly misnamed care-homes and into the incinerators where they belong, eh?
This will kill more kiwis than rogernomics did – remember that wasted hundreds of thousands.
Winston Peters & NZ First in particular must be held accountable for this, for too long that gang of crooks has been packaging the votes of aging kiwis, then flogging them off to a cadre of some of the sleaziest business-people Aotearoa has ever engendered.
So when the elderly begin dying in droves, as they will, we have to ensure their deaths are counted & that Peters is held responsible. There will be a huge effort by the herald & the rest of the spruikers for the wealthy, to quietly play down what is about to happen in Aotearoa this winter. We must all stand against them.
Which reminds me of the last part of Martyn’s piece, When socialism? Never – well not under that banner.
A move to more equitable wealth distribution where the citizens once again own the bulk of the assets cannot occur until a younger generation has full control of the movement. For too long frustrated, bitter and worst of all, incompetent old farts like us have tried to push change.
Occupy Aotearoa was when I had my road to damascus wake up. The thing was being run by the same old faces which meant there had been no spontaneous awakening among the young, consequently losing any chance of a fairer society has been the punishment.
The best we can do is document what is about to happen & leave the push for change to younger generations unfamiliar with das capital or its author.
Whatever the result they are aiming for gets called, it must not be socialism, because as that two-faced nitwit sanders, showed, socialism is now a negative label – thanks to the forces of darkness, in the minds of too many of the humans whom we need to be on the side of equity & justice.
We were so close.
Now Jacinda Ardern has thrown it all away, and what for? To please the Nats and the business community, who hated her administration anyway.
As the graph begins its grim upward turn and the deaths mount up Jacinda Ardern has ended her political career. When the first Dr or Nurse dies I expect she will resign.
Well I would expect plenty of resignations. The whole National party would have to resign. They all wanted to go the Aussie way. Imagine the death count then, Drs nurses, babies.
This is the biggest perhaps even bigger sell out since Rogernomics.
Like Rogernomics the less well off, the marginalised, the discriminated against, will bear the brunt of it.
Many will lay the blame for the coming disaster at Winston Peters feet, But it is the Premier herself who is ultimately responsible for the decision to abandon her original plan to keep this bug out of the community to prevent community transmission.
The Ministry of Health is checking with the GCSB to enable full tracing & tracking of NZ’ders!
Then again, they couldn’t find a terrorist!
Labour scores another own goal, again!!
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