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17 June
Labour’s “dream run” of being a competent manager during the Covid19 Crisis may just have come to a crashing end.
Recent revelations that some of the quarantine facilities (hotels converted to the task) have been shambolically mis-managed has raised alarm bells and widespread criticism;
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A day later, on 12 June, former Police Commissioner, Mike Bush – in charge of the Government’s Covid-19 operational taskforce – stated that he was not satisfied with the lax procedures in the TVNZ story and promised to tighten adherence to protocols;
“That’s not good enough. We’ve got to keep those people safe … We need to get that right.
Walking groups have gone. Some hotels can bus people to another location. For others we’ve found another location on site where people can ensure that they’re not near any other members of the public.
We will put a new practice in place to make sure people on day one don’t mingle with people who have been there a lot longer. That is a difficult process.
The smoking area, we’re trying to make improvements there so we don’t have people there from day one with people from day 12.”
He specifically added:
“Now we’re in Alert Level 1, we will be having a new testing regime so people will be tested on day three and then on day 12.”
Yet, we now know that the two women who drove from Auckland to Wellington a day later, on 13 June, were not tested.
When TVNZ ran the story above, I guessed even then that our lax border controls and complacent, half-hearted, quarantining would not end well;
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None of this was unknown to us. We knew flight crews were exempt from mandatory 14 day quarantining – despite travelling to covid-19 hotspots around the world.
This should not have surprised officials or Government ministers. As far back as April – two months ago – it was reported that isolation procedures at these quarantine facilities were being flouted;
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Which makes this random comment I posted on Twitter, on 15 June – the day before the story broke in the media – eerily prescient;
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Little did I realise that my remark about “inept quarantining leading to another C19 infection in Aotearoa” would become an unpleasant reality and headline news the very next day;
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Minister of Health and serial screw-up, Minister David Clark, reassured the public on RNZ’s Checkpoint that evening (16 June);
“They followed all of the instructions given to them and so they haven’t come into contact with a wider group of people … but nonetheless I am disappointed to learn they were out of the facility without testing negative first, because that was my understanding that that would have happened.”
According to Dr Bloomfield, speaking on RNZ’s Morning Report on 17 June;
“There was a, an agreed plan in place. As part of the approval process for the compassionate exemption, and that included for the travel arrangements.
So they had a private vehicle dropped to the hotel. They then drove together all the way to Wellington and had no contact with anybody else during that trip. And, uh, they didn’t use any public facilities and they also have been just with a single family member since they arrived in the Wellington region.”
I call bollicks to both statements.
Minister Clark assures the public that the two women “followed all of the instructions given to them and so they haven’t come into contact with a wider group of people“.
Unless he – or a Ministry staffer was travelling in the same car – how on Earth could he possibly know that they “followed all of the instructions given to them and so they haven’t come into contact with a wider group of people“?! [We now know they didn’t.]
On RNZ’s Morning Report, on 17 June, Minister Clark alluded to the fact that contact tracing was well under way, and he was “waiting for data overnight“. He admitted that he “needed to know how many people” [had to be traced].
That clearly conflicts with his assurance the previous day that the two women “followed all of the instructions given to them and so they haven’t come into contact with a wider group of people“.
At least one of those women was infectious [as at 17 June].
We may see the resurgence of clusters potentially from Auckland to Wellington. It doesn’t get any worse than this.
Even more problematic is Dr Bloomfield’s assurance that “they then drove together all the way to Wellington and had no contact with anybody else during that trip. And, uh, they didn’t use any public facilities“.
Again, how does Dr Bloomfield know for certain that neither women “had no contact with anybody else“? Contact tracing is already under way – so clearly that must have been in contact with someone?
It also defies credulity that on a ten hour-plus drive from Auckland to Wellington that neither women “didn’t use any public facilities“?!
Modern vehicles have developed considerably since their early fuel-guzzling predecessors and are more efficient. A vehicle could make the Auckland-Wellington trip without having to re-fuel along the way.
But not so human beings. We’ve hardly changed much over the last 200,000 years.
I doubt very many human beings could make a ten to twelve hour drive without having to stop along the way to use public toilet facilities, at least once.
Dr Bloomfield should be fully aware of this – he graduated in medicine in 1990 and so should have a fairly good understanding of the workings of human plumbing.
So please Minister Clark and Dr Bloomfield: stop BSing us.
Neither of you can have any idea what those two did on their drive to Wellington.
It is inconceivable that they did not use public facilities along the way.
What about the other 200 people released from quarantine on “compassionate grounds”? Were they tested before release? Have they recently been re-tested?
Do we even know where they are?!
No wonder Opposition MP, Michael Woodhouse, questioned this government’s fitness to carry out health sector reforms after the Health and Disability System Review was released;
“They haven’t been able to deliver anything else. I dare say a large reform of this nature is certainly beyond them.”
I’m starting to think the same thing.
Up until now, public support for this government has been stratospheric: between 80s and 90s in favourable percentage terms. But watch that support wither and fall away if – due to complacency and mis-management – the virus reappears in the community. And watch it collapse altogether if Aotearoa New Zealand has to go back to Level Alert 3 or – Thor forbid – Level Alert 4. The public will not be happy.
Adulation can turn to animus pretty damn quickly.
When National’s Leader, Todd Muller expressed his anger;
“I’m as furious as I suspect most New Zealanders this morning.
This is clumsy and totally inappropriate when you consider what’s at stake here … we’ve spent a number of months locking our country down, we’ve got ourselves to the point where we’re Covid-free, we have systems in place that we expect to be followed and they simply weren’t.
We can’t have such a lax approach to our border when the stakes are so high.”
— he was reading the room and expressing a reaction shared by about 99% of the population. Unlike his hapless predecessor, Mr Muller got the tone 100% right. People are pissed off.
The incompetence of those managing our quarantine facilities was sheeted home when, on 17 June, Mike Bush was interviewed on RNZ’s Checkpoint. It was a class act of evasion, vagueness, buck-passing, and a startling inability to offer information to some basic questions. It reminded me of former Corrections Minister, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga‘s inept responses when interviewed on TV3’s The Nation, in May 2015 (an interview which, coincidentally, was also done by Lisa Owen).
Minister, Lotu-Iiga‘s responses had to be heard to be believed.
Likewise, when Ms Owen kept repeatedly asking Mike Bush who was responsible for failures, he kept deflecting to Minister Clark, Director General Bloomfield, et al.
He simply could not answer Ms Owen’s questions – because he was obviously ignorant at what was going on in the quarantine facilities. Mr Bush confirmed to listeners what most New Zealanders already suspected: no one was in charge; no one knew what was going on; and the people supposedly carrying out quarantine protocols and testing were not doing their jobs.
No wonder PM Ardern has had a gutsful and appointed Air Commodore Darryn Webb to take over.
However, PM Ardern cannot simply call this colossal clusterf**k “an unacceptable failure of the system“. Assigning responsibility to a mythical creature called “The System” is a cop-out.
It wasn’t “the System” at fault. It wasn’t System Bush, or System Bloomfield, or System Clark, or System Ardern in charge. Human beings were in charge.
The public knows this. When “The System” is blamed, there is a collective eye-rolling of five million pairs of eye-balls. People recognise “Politician Speak” when it is fed to them.
If PM Ardern wants to engage in “Politician Speak”, that’s her mistake to make. Up until now, she has earned the respect of the nation as a Leader, not Just A Politician. Does she really want to be seen as Just Another Politician? I would have thought that was a step down in any person’s career path.
Someone screwed up. Someone in a position of authority where they should have been doing their job. Their. One. Job.
In fact, this government’s astronomical popularity has been predicated on them doing Their One Job: guiding Team Five Million through this crisis; doing the tough calls; ensuring all our resources were targetted at containing and defeating The Enemy.
They had one job. And they’ve been shown up not to have done it very well.
Expect Labour’s popularity to take a nose-dive in the next political poll. They will have earned the bollicking that the public is about to dish out to them.
But if we’re going to dish out the Finger-Pointing Pie, there is plenty to go around.
The Mainstream Media has amplified every “human interest” story of tragedy; people returning to Aotearoa New Zealand desperate to get out of 14 day quarantining to attend to dying relatives or attend funerals. (The six people who absconded from quarantine had attended a tangi in Hamilton.)
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Media amplification of these tragic stories – aka “grief journalism” – has no doubt put inordinate pressure on government ministers and Ministry staff. Whilst these stories are good click-bait and help sell advertising space (or attract listeners in RNZ’s case), they serve no other useful purpose.
Quarantines are not quarantines if people can side-step them because of tragic personal circumstances. (And I write this knowing full well how it feels, as last year someone close to me died. The awful feeling of total helplessness cannot be adequately put into words.)
In one case, the Courts ruled to overturn a Ministry of Health decision to decline an exemption, saying;
“decisions to decline permission are on their face legally flawed” and the “exceptional” case “had the hallmarks of automatic rejection based on circumscribed criteria rather than a proper exercise of discretion.”
The media should take a long, hard look at itself and the role it played in undermining implementation of quarantine protocols.
And the Courts should decline to become involved in pandemic-control policies. Lest it need be repeating: the virus is no respecter of our human-made laws.
Next, the National Party and sundry business lobby groups with their relentless, irresponsible agitation to move down Alert Levels and re-open our borders to foreign students, tourists, Uncle Tom Cobbly, et al;
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In the case of foreign students, National is particularly strident;
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Ms Kaye’s assertion that “…[National] have also proposed that education providers would handle quarantine procedures” did not age well. Four days later…
As I write this, there are over eight million confirmed covid19 cases in the world. The real figure is most likely higher as countries like Brazil have consistently under-reported their infection rate. The global death toll has passed 450,000.
That is the threat that vote-chasers in the National Party and profit-takers in the business world would expose us to.
National’s cynicism is nowhere more apparent than Opposition MP, Michael Woodhouse, who reported the case of two women leaving quarantine whilst infected with covid19 – several days after finding out from “a reliable source”.
As blogger “Mickey Savage” outlined the timeline of events in The Standard;
The timing in interesting. According to this interview on Morning Report Woodhouse found out these details two days ago and yesterday spent time checking the veracity of the story.
He then discussed matters with his leader’s office.
He did not go to the Health Ministry and did not think he should.
He thinks this was necessary for presentation of the story.
In his view his job is not to work to improve the quarantine system but to hold the government to account and show shortcomings.
But as we are fighting a pandemic that has caused huge damage to countries overseas didn’t he have a duty to bring this information to the authorities as soon as possible? So that these operational holes could have been filled?
I heard the interview. Mr Woodhouse did indeed insist it was not his job “to improve the quarantine system“. Also not his job to potentially save lives either, it appears.
So while National Leader Todd Muller was reflecting the anger felt by 99.99% of the country – one of his loyal MPs was reporting to him quarantine failings; potential re-infection throughout the country; and possibly ending in death – all from a “reliable source”. National Party priorities – certainly not saving lives.
But eventually, responsibility for this colossal mistake lies with those people whom we entrusted to safeguard us. We know who they are. Most have appeared nightly in our homes; on our devices; encouraging us to do the right thing. Most New Zealanders followed their lead.
We rewarded them accordingly, singing their praises. And printing t-shirts bearing their image.
Those hymns of praise have stopped, to be replaced by the silent sound of bemusement, if not outright anger. The t-shirts may take a bit longer to sell.
The public will be in no mood to go back into any form of lock-down. In case I have to spell it out for Prime Minister Ardern; Health Minister Clark, Director General Bloomfield; Mike Bush, et al, the good will of the public has mostly evaporated. Faith has been replaced by cold fury.
The problem with being at the top? The only way from there is down.
Regardless of whether anyone takes responsibility for this failure, the ultimate decision will be taken from the hands of this government and its officials on 19 September.
As I wrote on 12 June – four days before the story of the quarantine failure broke;
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As at 16 June 2020:
Current covid19 cases: 1,156
Cases in ICU: nil
Number of deaths: 22
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References
TVNZ: Government to make changes to managed isolation facilities following 1 NEWS investigation
Twitter: @fmacskasy – 10.44PM Jun 11, 2020
Stuff media: Covid-19 – new cases as thousands fly in from Australia, Asia, Pacific Islands and US
Mediaworks/Newshub: Father concerned after quarantined son taken for walk with person with COVID-19
Twitter: @fmacskasy – 1.41PM Jun 15, 2020
RNZ: Covid-19 – Two new cases in New Zealand, both arrivals from UK
RNZ: Two new Covid-19 cases in NZ visited dying parent – Bloomfield
RNZ: Health Minister temporarily suspends compassionate exemptions from quarantine
RNZ: Covid-19 – Exemptions concerning after women test positive outside managed isolation – Baker (audio)
RNZ: No answers yet on why Covid-19 cases weren’t tested leaving isolation – Clark (audio)
The Spinoff: The face of the Covid-19 response – Who is Ashley Bloomfield?
RNZ: Covid-19 – Exemptions concerning after women test positive outside managed isolation – Baker
Mediaworks/Newshub: Health and Disability System Review aims to end racism in New Zealand’s health sector
The Spinoff: Exclusive new poll: public support for Covid response remains sky high
TVNZ: Public sector’s reputation in NZ reaches record high amid Covid-19 crisis, survey shows
RNZ: Government slammed after new Covid-19 cases revealed
RNZ: Mike Bush answers questions over botched Covid-19 isolation
Frankly Speaking: “The Nation” reveals gobsmacking incompetence by Ministers English and Lotu-Iiga
RNZ: Two new cases leaving isolation ‘an unacceptable failure of the system’ – Ardern
ODT: Six people – not two – abscond to go to tangi
Mediaworks/Newhub: Kiwi in quarantine pleads with Government for right to visit dying mother
Mediaworks/Newhub: Coronavirus – Kiwi woman desperate to see her dying mother denied isolation exemption
RNZ: Covid-19 – NZer in quarantine appeals to government compassion to see dying wife
NZ Herald: Covid 19 coronavirus – Kiwi in LA begs for quarantine exemption to see dying dad in Christchurch
Magic Radio: Dr Bloomfield denies ‘blanket approach’ used for quarantine exemptions despite zero approvals
Twitter: @JudithCollinsMP – 12:44 PM · Jun 8, 2020 – Go to level 1
Twitter: @nikkikaye – 12 June 2020 – foreign students
Worldometer: Coronavirus Covid-19 Pandemic
NZ Herald: Covid 19 coronavirus – Brazil stops publishing number of virus deaths
Mediaworks/Newshub: Woman in the same hotel as new coronavirus cases ‘shocked’ at finding out via Ministry of Health press conference
RNZ: National Party on managed isolation bungle
Twitter: @fmacskasy – 9:45AM Jun 12, 2020 – no mood to go back into lockdown
Other Blogs
The Standard: Responsible politics verses Gotcha politics
Previous related blogposts
The Warehouse – where everyone gets a virus
Life in Lock Down: Day 28 – An Open Letter to Prime Minister Ardern
Life in Lock Down: Day 2 of Level 3
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This blogpost will be re-published in five days on “Frankly Speaking“. Reader’s comments may be left here (The Daily Blog) or there (Frankly Speaking).
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= fs =
The real bomb is about to hit if, as it appears people have been let out of quarantine without being tested. It will go positively nuclear if indeed there is even 1 positive covid-19 case out there form this.
Good article – some valid points and very clearly shows up the main problem here
Thanks, Frank.
“Positively nuclear” may not just be one positive covid-19 case out there in the community – it will be if a death results from it.
In which case, if the TAB was taking bets, I wouldn’t put 50 cents on Labour being given a second term. Everything I’m hearing from people around me ranges from annoyance and exasperation, to full on anger. It’s palpable.
If they don’t sort it, covid-19 will claim an entire government.
Bloody good to see you back @Frank.
Thanks, Tim… so many issues to deal with, so little time in the day…
Well researched and presented, as usual, Frank.
I forget who said it but this comes to mind: “Since most people are incapable of governing themselves well, the notion that they can govern others well is preposterous” (or words to that effect).
Never mind, as they say, because the whole caboodle of business-as-usual governance is in the process of collapsing throughout the world, as nation after nation fails to bring the Covid-19 ‘beast’ under control.
Add Indonesia (population 270 million) to the list I previously posted of nations doing very badly.
And add all the ‘stans to the list of those doing badly.
Even worse, apparently much of Africa has abandoned any attempt to control Covid-19.
‘African countries drop Covid-19 curbs in effort to limit economic harm
Fragile economies relax measures despite rapid rise in infections on continent
Governments across Africa are abandoning restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the hope of limiting damage to their fragile economies, despite a rapid rise in the number of cases of the virus across the continent.
Strict lockdowns have inflicted significant suffering on hundreds of millions of people who live without regular employment in overcrowded housing, and undermined public finances in already poor nations.
The World Health Organization recognised last week that restrictions on movement and economic activity had “taken a heavy toll, particularly on the most vulnerable and marginalised communities”. Many also fear the continent’s extensive programmes fighting HIV, tuberculosis and other diseases will be starved of resources.
Nigeria to cut healthcare spending by 40% despite coronavirus cases climbing
The WHO has previously said the Covid-19 pandemic could smoulder in Africa for several years after killing as many as 190,000 people in the coming 12 months.
Even the economies of more developed countries on the continent have been badly hit.
South Africa, one of the most industrialised economies in Africa, will take six years to recover from the lockdown and ongoing restrictions, according to some estimates.’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/18/african-countries-drop-covid-19-curbs-in-effort-to-limit-economic-harm
I think it’s fairly obvious how that is going to work out. Which raises the question: Do black live matter if they are in their places of origin? But that’s another story.
Never mind, the printing presses are churning out plenty of ‘liquidity’ in the latest round in Europe, having the marvelous acronym TLTRO (Targeted Long Term Refinance Operations), and at negative interest rates:
‘Furthermore, as Goldman notes, it is also apparent that the generous financial terms of this facility (-1% for Year 1, -0.5% for Years 2-3), with fixed rate/full allotment, more than offseting any associated stigma. All in, this auction was important from the perspective of overall financial stability, and, on the margin, supportive of bank revenue. The next auction, on the same terms, is on September 24, with subsequent auctions running quarterly until March 2021.
As a reminder, the main benefit to bond markets is the TLTRO “carry trade”, where banks are expected to use the cheap ECB loans – which pay the borrower to take out a loan – to buy higher yielding assets such as short-dated Italian government bonds.’
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/latest-liquidity-flood-ecb-hands-out-record-eu13-trillion-negative-yielding-tltro-iii-loans
So now we get to the crux of the matter: anyone who thinks the globalised financial-economic-social system is anything other than a giant clusterfuck (one of the few American terms I really like) is deluded beyond salvation.
As for National’s screaming from the balcony that we have to get back to ‘normal’ faster, I couldn’t agree more! Only their definition of normal is poles apart from mine. Normal is what our species was doing in the 200,000 years prior to civilisation. National’s normal (mirrorred by Labour)is squandering resources in an orgy of unsustainable consumption, fueled by coal, oil and natural gas, and facilitated by an increasingly unstable Ponzi scheme.
It was an nice fossil-fuel-powered party for some, and it did last a couple of centuries. But now it’s time to turn off the lights and send everyone home to clean up the mess. Or hope that nature will do it for us.
Actually, it’s almost as if nature knows it has to get rid of most humans in order to restore balance. It comes back to Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis -that everything is connected and the Earth operates as a gigantic ‘living’ system. Unfortunately most people just don’t get it and still have the Biblical perspective that humans are not part of nature but are above it and can control it.
The rest of the year is going to be very ‘interesting’, as human capacity to control nature (or even their own affairs) gets severely put to the test.
Thanks, AFKTT…
ReYCTMe: “As for National’s screaming from the balcony that we have to get back to ‘normal’ faster, I couldn’t agree more! Only their definition of normal is poles apart from mine. ”
Agreed.
The only thing worse than this government’s mis-management of quarantine facilities is National’s gleeful eagerness to cast caution to the winds in the name of “normality”. And by “normality”, I mean the *ka-ching* of cash-registers*.
I think overseas experience has taught us the consequences of opening up the economy too soon, whilst the virus is still circulating.
So I trust National and its business mates even further down the “food chain” in terms of responsible decision-making.
National MP, Michael Woodhouse’s decision to delay advising MoH as to what had been revealed to him, so he could make political capital from it, was disturbing. Especially when he replied, “It’s not my job to make government function better”.
He is less fit to be a future Minister of Health than David Clark.
*Ok, cash registers haven’t gone *ka-ching* since the 1970s. A bit of poetic licence, methinks.
That is an incredibly good article Frank!
A bunch of us (mostly National leaning voters) were discussing this yesterday, and sadly we concluded that:
If this should blow out, and the public turned on Labour and punished them at the election, and National somehow scraped in with the help of NZ1st…it would NOT be because they have any decent policies or any better people than what’s there now.
To us it would almost be a worse result than the last election. Better to have one party win outright so thatv at least some of their big plans get realised without all this MMP ‘handbrake’ crap. What’s holding NZ back is that real important shit just never gets done! We aren’t interest in these ‘popularity politics’ as witnessed these days – we want NZ to move forward! That’s half the problem here – Jacinda just worries about the ‘Likes’ too much. Shge doesn’t want to be the ‘bad guy’ that carries a ‘big stick’. She needs to be!!!! If she was, if she had fired Clark back then for ‘f@%$$g’ with her directives, this would have not happened.
‘What’s holding NZ back is that real important shit just never gets done! We aren’t interest in these ‘popularity politics’ as witnessed these days – we want NZ to move forward! ‘
How do you define ‘move forward’, Herman Shovel Ready?
I define it as preparing for the inevitable meltdown of existing financial-economic-social arrangements and preparing, as much as that is possible, for real world consequences of the environmental meltdown that is underway. So moving forward means putting a stop to all infrastructure ‘development’ associated with fossil-fuel-powered systems and commencing the depaving of the huge areas of land currently under concrete and asphalt. It also entails lot of planting of fruit trees and establishment of local food-growing systems.
Anything of than those kinds of strategies is perpetuation of the insanity that has got us into the current mess.
Anything other than those kinds of strategies is perpetuation of the insanity that has got us into the current mess.
You are right to ask about the way forward. We had the oppetunity in Chch to move forward as we rebuilt our damaged city . There was much said about a chance to build better more enviromentally but there is little sign of any radical change.
Labour changed their leader but were still selling the same message and it was the leader that carried them to power. It is now a stuff up by the same leader that could lose them the next election. This is not a good way of choosing how the country is run.No wonder so many are left behind.
Hi Herman, thank you your comments, re my article.
Re directives to quarantine facilities. Since my article was published I’ve had sources relay certain things to me that I’ll be following up with OIA requests. Like an iceberg, there is way more under the surface than even the msm has been reporting to us.
Given that Ms Kaye doesn’t now the difference between Maori and Pakeha heritage and given she is 2ic of the National party, I don’t hold out much hope for the intelligence pool of the National party.
“National Party priorities – certainly not saving lives.”
If this is Nationals election let alone Woodhouses slogan, why on earth would anyone vote for them, as any one of their policies would then have to be questioned regards their motives.
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The lack of testing is concerning but secondary to the failure of isolation. The move to level one was predicated on all new arrivals spending 14 days in isolation. 14 days in an isolation facility is not 14 days in isolation. If people have not been sticking to their bubbles in the border facilities, we must assume that there are multiple clusters in our community. There may not be but we don’t know.
NZ must return to Level 2 alert immediately, fix the border and wait for clusters to emerge in order to trace test and isolate.
Well put and researched Frank. You are still the Level 4 King with your “steady cam” day by day blog–what did happen to the white motorhome?
This Govt. has now had it’s final warning, quarantine has to mean quarantine, not a bloody taxpayer funded holiday. Some of us are health compromised and it is not acceptable in the least to blow the great effort millions of people put in.
Cheers, Tiger Mountain.
Ahhh, the white motorhome. It stayed put for Level 3, if I recall correctly. So, apart from moving for short periods of time – to recharge batteries? – the owner seemed to be following lockdown protocols. The same can’t be said for some motorhomes I saw on the road (SH1), heading north. Or the ever changing number at the Evans Bay Marina carpark.
Curiously, as a follow-up, I saw vastly fewer police cars on the empty roads during L4 than I’m seeing currently. That’s with about 80kms travelled per day (I kid you not). So there appeared to be more police cars around now, than before. Go figure.
I was never stopped once to enquire why I was on the road. My identification letter from my employer – stating who I worked for, and that I was in an essential health sector-related role – was never pulled out of my wallet. (I’ll keep it as a souvinir.)
ReYCTMe: “Some of us are health compromised and it is not acceptable in the least to blow the great effort millions of people put in.”
Amen, Tiger, amen. Two of my clients would be dead from the virus – 100% guaranteed. And as I diabetic myself, I’m also in the dodgy demographic.
So those people complaining of not being given exemptions need to understand that we could be having more funerals if this bastard virus got away from us again.
I understand how people want to be with dying relatives. God knows I went through a death of a person very close to me last year. God knows I screamed and cursed and abused an unforgiving, unfair Universe. But I sure as hell wouldn’t have it on my conscience to (potentially) infect others so I could do what I wanted. I couldn’t live with that.
With a fatality rate of around 0.2% and an average age of victims over 80, the real kryponite is the lack of consequences of letting the virus in.
Instead Labour has put the country into a depression
More people will commit suicide because of the lock-down than those that died of the virus
ReYCTMe: “More people will commit suicide because of the lock-down than those that died of the virus”
Hasn’t happened, Andrew…
‘Irresponsible, dangerous and untrue’ – Mental Health Foundation slams suicide rate increase rumours
The Mental Health Foundation has dismissed rumours spread online that New Zealand’s suicide rate has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, calling them “irresponsible, dangerous and untrue”.
ref: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/irresponsible-dangerous-and-untrue-mental-health-foundation-slams-suicide-rate-increase-rumours
I would suggest that with health sector services fully operational during L4 and L3, anyone in need of support would have hopefully gotten it.
Correct Frank. We continued to work on as essential workers.
“More people will commit suicide because of the lock-down than those that died of the virus”
This comments lacks credibility. A statement without evidence is very shortsighted without evidence. Andrew appears to use the right wing fear mantra, which I may add is appalling when talking on the subject of suicide.
Bring back the public stockade. Oh for a bucket of rotten eggs.
I think, GB, Mr Bloomfield and Mr Bush may have just experienced the 21st century version of a metaphorical stockades & rotten eggs experience…
I’m just very very concerned at what an alternative National government would have done. Given your detail on what Collins and in particular Kaye would have done, we would now now have a country with the numbers of covid similar to the high numbers of other countries. It appears Kaye is not that bright.
You put forward a careful thorough case Frank. A pity you’ve given Andrew the opportunity to back you with morbid glee, but you’re not responsible for sick minds.
Your points on our need for elimination (pass water or the bulky stuff) are well put. Relief is elemental. I have to add that these points illustrate why Robin Bain could not have murdered his family while carrying a full overnight bladder.
Thanks, Janio…
ReYCTMe; ” I have to add that these points illustrate why Robin Bain could not have murdered his family while carrying a full overnight bladder.”
The significant difference that the car trip from Auckland to Wellington takes eight to twelves hours (depending on driving style and willingness to “overlook” some speed limits) whereas Robin Bain was up for a couple of hours before the shootings. Plus with an enlarged prostate…
But yes, a long drive like that demands “elemental relief”, as you put it. I’m still surprised Mr Bloomfield even thought that was remotely possible, given his medical training?
I am so angry – I have just read a FB posting from a relative who is quarantined at Pullman Hotel Auckland – she has flown in from Brisbane for a family funeral – but last night she was out partying and checked back in to the Pullman this morning – I can tell you she is not welcome amongst the family for this sad occasion. But how was she able to go out of quarantine??????????? WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING.
Comments are closed.