There are two reasons why NZ has successfully dodged the public health nightmare we are seeing erupt in America and Europe, and you won’t like them.
The first is the genuine courage of Jacinda’s Government to go hard and go early with a lockdown that helped smoother the virus…
Covid-19: ‘New Zealand’s response has been one of the strongest’ – WHO
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says New Zealand has been world-leading in its response to Covid-19.
…and this made us one of the safest places around…
Coronavirus: New Zealand third-safest in the world during Covid-19 pandemic
New Zealand has been hailed as a coronavirus safe haven after an international research group ranks it the third-safest country in the world.
The strict lockdown procedures and rapid response to the virus meant New Zealand was better placed than most to deal with whatever was to come, the research found.
…the Right will bitch and scream that she didn’t go fast enough but the numbers of infection clearly state she did and I remind those who wish to be critical that this is a democracy and you need to bring the people with you and at the time there simply wasn’t the belief that there was even a problem to begin with.
So Jacinda’s courage and incredible leadership communication skills have led us through this despite what Hosking and the Death Cult Capitalists have to say.
The second reason we have dodged a public health nightmare however is a lot less celebratory.
Dumb luck folks.
Dumb bloody luck that we have a huge moat to keep this thing out because the actual public health infrastructure was broken.
Decades and decades of gutting the public service thanks to our neoliberal experiment have left a public health service barely able to fart without breaking the entire system.
Report…
NZ wasn’t ready for a pandemic
In November 2019, University of Otago epidemiologist Nick Wilson was already concerned about a pandemic.
He knew nothing of the novel coronavirus that reports indicate had already emerged in Wuhan, China, but had just reviewed an international assessment of pandemic readiness which found New Zealand had barely half of the measures in place that it needed.
Although the new assessment, the Global Health Security Index (GHSI), ranked New Zealand 35th out of 195 countries, this in itself simply reflected how unready the world was for a pandemic threat. New Zealand had a score of just 54 out of 100 points and ranked 30th among the 60 high-income countries reviewed.
…after report…
New Zealand’s health system was so poorly prepared to “keep out” Covid-19 that we have had to endure extraordinary sacrifices to “stamp it out”, the Epidemic Response Committee heard this morning.
“We squandered our major advantage, which was geography,” said University of Auckland Professor Des Gorman, who is advising the committee.
“The hard work we need to do to stamp it out is because we had failed to keep it out.”
New Zealand should have closed its borders in mid-February, not the end of March, he said, but we didn’t have to resources to do so.
…all identify how broken our public health system is and when you look at the utter failure of the measles pandemic last year, does it surprise anyone that we were so under prepared?
The real reason we are looking at extended controls despite such low infection rate is because we simply don’t have the infrastructure for the track-trace-quarantine part of this response.
Dumb luck is not a social policy!
In the rebuild of this country economically we must look at the proper funding of public services we so desperately require when we get an external global shock and in a climate crisis world those external global shocks will become the norm not the exception.
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“…the Right will bitch and scream that she didn’t go fast enough but the numbers of infection clearly state she did and I remind those who wish to be critical that this is a democracy and you need to bring the people with you and at the time there simply wasn’t the belief that there was even a problem to begin with.”
National didn’t believe there was a housing crisis either UNTIL they were no longer in power. They can bitch and moan all they like, they can tell us what they would have done(in hindsight).
We still have that housing crisis Bert. It’s almost become a motel crisis under Labour but…..covid19 saved it!
Amazing what short memories John Keys fun club have. People being housed in motels was resorted to when John Keys band of corporate whores were busy creating their property bubble for the benefit of mainly foreign nationals. At he same time, The social welfare network, public housing sector, and the health system eye being hollowed out to the point of collapse, and staffed with corporate sycophants, that were put here to create barriers to access for the majority of NZers. I suppose that the fact that his government hasn’t been able to “instantly” fix the myriad failings of the last government makes them incompetent? Earth to tory numb brains. This the real world, not the fantasy drivel created by the colonial “news media”. In the real wold, real problems take real time to fix properly. The nats are responsible for the lack of capacity of NZ to look after its on people, and the colonial media have made every move his government makes twice as hard as it needed to b for purely partial political purposes. The tories, and their lapdogs, hangers on, and the vested interests that Key was installed to promote are the real culprits when it comes to apportioning blame for the housing shortage. If you find that too much to bear, then that’s really jut too bd. Reality can be a bit challenge sometimes. Ask anyone who had to live with e results of their behaviour, and blatant attacks on the poorest, and most vulnerable in NZ under tory “rule”.
Well Martyn, I agree with your comments sort of, but let’s be realistic here. It doesn’t matter whether it be a right or left Government that runs this country you are never going to to have the financial resources to keep everyone happy. If we pay for a good health system we can’t afford to fix the roads. If we pay the scientists to save us the teachers miss out. If we build a fabulous public transport system the sewers don’t get fixed. There just isn’t the population to generate the finance required to do it, in my opinion. Both Melbourne and Sydney have populations greater than NZ. We’re too small for all the big ideas and demands that we have. Yes we can be smarter I agree, but with the epidemic the Government did as well as it could with the health services we have available. but there is just not enough money for all our demands. The other part of the epidemic that is not controllable no matter how good your system might be is us. Dumb us. You only have to look at the retarded antics of our mainly younger population cramming themselves together in the hope of getting an Big Mac or similar, and in doing so putting themselves and everyone else at risk. Money and resources won’t fix stupidity. Our hope is a vaccine because we can’t keep the borders closed indefinitely and the virus will get in again.
“It doesn’t matter whether it be a right or left Government that runs this country you are never going to to have the financial resources to keep everyone happy.”
That statement can be challenged on several grounds. Firstly, at 34.5% of GDP our tax take is low compared with most developed countries – in the most successful European democracies tax is > 40% of GDP, and the wealthy pay a lot more tax than they do here.
Second, we can spend smarter. For example, I’m not sure why we need a Ministry for Women in a country where most statistics show women are doing better on average than men. And if we moved back to direct taxation (reducing or removing GST) the cost of living would be lower, reducing the need for welfare spending. The cost of living in NZ is too high for those on low incomes, and this is only partly due to GST on basic needs – another factor is the privatization and deregulation of electricity, user-pays tertiary education etc. People now spend a larger fraction of their income on electricity, despite the promise of free-market “efficiency”.
Bingo. And one only has to look at pre 1984 NZ to know WE COULD AND DID afford a world class health and education system.
It is neo liberalism itself that has impoverished this nation , – that and NOTHING ELSE !
Sorry Bomber, but when when you said that the Government does not have the money to keep everyone happy, you kind of lost me there. I agreed with much of what you said in the article, but you are wrong on the aforementioned count.
No Bomber. Neoliberalism is to blame. Your assertion can be challenged as Pope stated. We *grow the tax pie* instead of re-slicing it for the umpteenth time.
How?
We invest in science and research, which we make a great and viable thing again at school; we have a fully funded trades apprenticeship programme. Instead of just roads and the odd railway, infrastructure is grown to include hospitals, schools and key assets like the electricity grid; whatever we replace petroleum with.
But also we cut the G.S.T.; we bite the bullet and introduce a wealth/luxury goods/C.G.T. or similar and close all the loopholes in our tax system. Will it be enough? Don’t know, but its better than the fiddling around the edges crap that passes for progress as the moment.
Going back to COVID19, we introduce perspex shields at every supermarket counter. Gloves become mandatory for everyone on checkouts, handling produce, moving trolleys; sanitizing of hands on entry to bakeries, restaurants, cafes, bars, supermarkets. No sanitize no entry.
Funny how there was always money available for to construct hotels and sports stadiums, and to dig tunnels under Auckland etc. Funny how there was always money for race tracks and America’s Cup type of activities. And never enough money for hospitals and schools. There was always plenty of money available to spend on advertising, and putting up flags and promoting ostentatious consumption, and never any available to promote permaculture or any other sane response to our collective predicament.
Having spent decades, and multi-billions of dollars, on mal-investments and boondoggles, I suppose we can look forward to further investment in projects/activities that have no future, rather than investments that are appropriate to the phase in human history we have entered.
Even as we progress through early stages of the Age of Consequences [of overconsumption and over-population], the majority of the populace attempt to hang on to the Age of Entitlement, and politicians pander to the ridiculous in order to improve election/re-election prospects (and not rock the boats of their corporate sponsors and masters).
I’m still awaiting the moment when the bulk of the populace recognise that the economy is the problem, not the answer; that the economy makes everything that matters -air quality, water quality, soil quality, biodiversity, climate stability, human living conditions etc.- worse.
I’m still waiting for the moment when it is generally recognised that the choice is between having an industrial global economy for a little longer and our children/grandchildren having a future. As things stand, the majority would rather pass on a grossly overheated planet that is depleted of resources and depleted of biodiversity than change the way they live. And politicians are fully committed to making everything that matters worse.
I’m sure I have a while longer to wait for the much-needed paradigm shift, and that it will come via utter catastrophe the bulk of the populace and those who ‘plan for the future’ are totally unprepared for.
The UK is saying how broken their health system. What is broken in NZ that we should be concerned about is our education system, and how we perceive our country and each other. We need to know what is going on, have an informed say in everything and not just act like entitled spoiled children as modelled by National and ACT. The childish way we think pervades the whole society, and this at a time when knowledge about everything is out there in heaps. We need to cut a lot of our educational time from some stuff we can look up on line. get a grasp of everything, and then concentrate on understanding our personal position in the world, our country’s position in the world, and what the world is. Understand that at home and not go round gazing at it for something to do that you can skite about to your peer group. And up the EQ Emotional Quotient and down the entitlement quotient.
Des Gorman was the nats go to man when they finished demolishing our health system … perhaps we can rebuild as a proper health service
Yes. We AO/NZ’ers are lucky. Very, very lucky.
Despite the sociopathic overtures of a greedy, linear right wing ( i.e. The socially, emotionally and intellectually half cooked) … we still have good luck on our side and there’s a lot to be said for that. We should give thanks and we should be prepared to defend our good luck when next a wuhan-like virus is spread-ing.
And? Are we lucky enough to know, now from experience, that a second wave of some other virus will happen? It’s a not an ‘if’ thing but a ‘when’ thing surely?
So. What did we learn from the virus? Individually and collectively… what did you and me and us learn from Wuhan?
Because, as sure as God made little green apples, there will be those too who will be learning many things from the Wuhan virus and we must ask, will their findings be used for defence against the virus, or offence against us?
It’s one thing to have a weirdy virus allegedly popping up in some poor hapless bastards cooking pot. It’s entirely another thing to ponder that on top of that, we humans are wearing out our biosphere while breeding like flies. No disrespect to actual fly babies.
When the critical elements of human overpopulation, artificial climate heating as a result of us and a cluster fuck global financial system coalescing with an alien-like virus which has meant that all we can do in defence of it is to hide and keep hidden then I bet there are those who are glad they fucked our farmers over to fund their empire building ( RNZ called them, somewhat nauseatingly ‘Titans of Industry’) then aided and abetted in having millions of tourists crawl over AO/NZ like the aforementioned flies but without the class.
How lucky are we that we allowed perverted Titans to do that to us. Especially in these times of great peril?
Based upon what I know, this is what I’m going to do.
Buy a good quality, zippy little boat.
Buy a couple of 200 L drums and fill them with diesel.
( And a diesel bug disinfectant. Yep. Is a thing. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=diesel+bug )
Buy a good quality CB radio. My hope is that my boat will come with one.
I’m building a hothouse. I’m doing that by buying second hand alloy house windows and repurposing them on a sound ring foundation.
Buy a small diesel generator, ( You don’t need big horsepower genies. ) solar panels and a collection of large, deep cycle batteries at, say, 2 volt each and run that electricity through an inverter into your house.
A water heating califont. I bought new one on-line for $299.00 and ran LPG to it via a barbecue bottle. Cheap, simple device and very effecient. I used a 12/24 volt DC water pump at about 8 litres a minute out of a rain water tank.
The above seems paranoid but I don’t care. What I do know, having learned from doing, which led to experience is that when I was living in a bus as I renovated my old country house the above worked very well and I was absolutely comfortable over a couple of winters.
I ask myself? What if the Wuhan virus was going around and the internet dropped out and we had no idea what was going on? Or if supply lines of basic foods stalled? What if we ran out of diesel fuel for truck and train transport? If international shipping ground to a halt? How would be help each other out? At what point would we became less those in this together and more those in competition for the same resources?
What if the Wuhan virus was trying to tell us something?
Is the virus telling as, by example, that the near miss it was is just the beginning of a potential and almost unimaginable future of a boiling planet where millions are dying of starvation and disease and who can’t communicate or travel?
Maybe the ‘mad preppers’ are on to something…?
Just as well then that we have Big Business doing Big Business dahlings as corporate directors drive about in Bentley’s and Rangies while scoffing less foods than they waste as they demonise farmers while handing our farmers heads on plates to the foreign banksters then?
Mind you, we can always eat the fat Scunthorpe’s.
An oldie but a goodie
Aerosmith.
Eat the Rich.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-0lAhnoDlU
Had National still been in office they would not have put the money into the health service that the coalition government has and our health system would have mirrored the U.K where after years of austerity the system is collapsing and can’t cope with the emergency.
The death toll would have been huge as they would have reluctantly eventually closed the borders after being pressured by their corporate donors that we must keep trading and our lives are expendable when it comes too their profit driven conglomerates
English Colemen , joyce and Bennett dispensing the medicine instead of Jacinda , just think about that for a moment.
Thankyou Andrew Little and Winston.
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