GUEST BLOG: Pat O’Dea – To preserve New Zealand’s covid free status, we need a plan.

1. I like the plan we have. 2 weeks quarantine , test at 3 and 12 days, no exceptions. Until further notice; like the end of the pandemic. May never happen. Or at least until a full retrospective study determines that the virus is no more deadly than a bad seasonal flu.
   D J S

   • Test test test like WHO said back in March, and we are yet to accomplish this.
     We now can do a quick test for Covid 19 which is far better than the swab test which is only 80% accurate, so we need spot testing with everyone using rapid testing for all. Best test is Roache serology test as it is 99.8% accurate This is the gold standard when used with the standard PCR “swab test..

     Next is this;
     https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/new-quick-test-for-covid-19-approved-20200322-p54cnz
     New quick test for COVID-19 approved
     MD Solutions has applied for fast track approval for a new 15-minute test for COVID-19 that works like home pregnancy test except that it uses blood, not urine.
     A new 15-minute test for COVID-19 has been approved for use in Australia and a half a million kits are due to land in the country this week if all goes well with airfreight space, planes are able to land and they pass border control.

     We need to test everyone from now.

   • Hi David, the plan you like, the plan we have. ie “2 weeks quarantine , test at 3 and 12 days, no exceptions”. Is the plan we are currently implementing to keep the virus out.

     But what if the virus gets past this first line of defence?

     We have been told by the Director of Health Ashley Bloomfield that community transmission of the covid pathogen in this country is “inevitable”. According to Bloomfield it is not a matter of ‘if” but ‘when’.

     https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/matter-not-if-dr-ashley-bloomfield-warns-covid-19-community-transmission-in-nz-inevitable

     If New Zealand wants a travel bubble with Pacific Island countries, then New Zealand has a duty of care to make sure that the virus does not reestablish, here and from here to the covid free Pacific nations.

     We need to have a robust plan able to defeat the virus if it gets past our border defences and into the community.

     Dr Ashley Bloomfield has suggested a tracing app to deal with the reemergence of community transmission.

     Tracing apps are not a robust defence.

     ‘…In Iceland, which deployed its tracing app early and had one of the world’s highest takeup rates at 38%, police have admitted the app wasn’t the game-changer they were hoping for.

     In Singapore, where people are not exactly known for their willingness to disobey orders, the government struggled to get even 25% of citizens to download the app. In Australia, with similar takeup rates to Singapore, health authorities have admitted that their app has found only one close contact of a known case of the virus using the app….’

     ‘….. Jason Bay, of the lead developers on Singapore’s TraceTogether, categorically denied that the app could somehow replace manual tracing efforts: “Any attempt to believe otherwise, [was] an exercise in hubris, and technology triumphalism,” he said in April….’

     ‘…..technological magical thinking has too often proven irresistible to governments seeking cover to avoid grappling with difficult policy problems….’

     https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Failed-COVID-19-tracing-apps-must-be-abandoned-to-restore-public-trust

     Governments need to grapple with difficult policy problems.

     We better have some sort of a plan, more than a patchy app. or we will wind up like Victoria with an unconstrained rampant outbreak.

     I have suggested a one week ‘Shelter in Place’ alert for the whole country at the first evidence of community transmission. During this mini-lockdown all possible resources be put into manual tracing effort to identify and locate of all possible sources of infection to isolate them.

     I welcome any other suggested plans to deal with an outbreak of community transmission.

     Up till now we have none.

     It’s not good enough.

     • Hi Pat
       Thanks for the link. I think if we have an outbreak the control will depend to some extent on how widespread it is and how it came about. If it pops up in the community without any apparent outside connection it will be demoralising. If it is the result of a system failure it will be more demoralising. It’s most likely to be the result of someone else breaking the arrangements put in place . And that’s gong to be hard to prevent.
       The first lockdown worked because we all co-operated willingly. (nearly all) next time there will be more resistance to lockdown especially if the system has failed.
       Lots of the necessary remedies depend on willing public co-operation. There can’t be a law to enforce the app’s use, and a lockdown law is an extreme measure. Also there is a limit to how long the country can be paralysed before it causes more damage than the virus across all priorities .
       Keeping it out is our best hope.
       D J S

2. Hi Pat O’Dea, have you seen this?

   Professor Thomas Borody says Ivermectin used in conjunction with two other drugs can and has cured Covid 19

   https://youtu.be/F6A6RFDprIs

   • Hi The Chairman, have you seen this?

     https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/surgisphere-sows-confusion-about-another-unproven-covid19-drug-67635

     I’ll take that and raise you two.

     But seriously this is not a pissing contest.

     Until a proven cure or vaccine is rolled out and made generally available, we have to plan to deal with what is in front of us right now, a probable uncontained outbreak of community transmission of the novel coronavirus SARS-Cov-2.

     My contention is we don’t have a plan.

     We need one.

     • And with no real resourced plan and no vaccine in sight and with no real understanding of herd immunity nor vaccine possible window of protection, then closed borders and systematised screening tests with also a random test regime across NZ: is a poor option but one we cannot afford to shy away from.
       Second and subsequent waves may present themselves over several years ahead.

       Its well passed the point where we can dream of going back to pre covid19 activity.

       Time must not be lost in forming a local Kiwi economy based on simple needs like food, shelter, caring for our community members and forget travel, globalisation, tourism and consumer junk food and junk stuff.

     • Thomas Borody is the scientist that discovered peptic ulcers are caused by bacteria and his treatment has saved many lives around the world. It was recommended in 2018 to be used in Flu pandemics. Might be good to have some over there right now. Drug companies are pushing new expensive treatments. Why on earth would they endorse a cheap one? The profit motive is the main driver https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6048202/

       • Thomas Borody’s a hero whose break through was not accepted initially but his two or three stage treatment have relieved countless suffers many of whom were routinely treated for, anxiety, alcohol related damage, acidity and food allergies, but with no cures so drug companies had life long customers.
         It makes no sense that billions of resource of drug companies just missed the boat accidental.

     • Also the article you reference does not mention the Monash University’s original research on Ivermectin’s effectiveness. Sounds big pharma spin.

3. Book Review: Corona False Alarm?
   https://gis.blog.ryerson.ca/2020/06/11/book-review-corona-false-alarm/

4. ‘We are at war. To win this war we need a plan.’

   ‘We are a nation at war with a dangerous invisible enemy’

   Yes, we are at war with a dangerous ‘invisible’ enemy but the enemy is not Covid-19.

   The enemy is the globalised central banking system which works hand-in-hand with poorly-educated, inept, corrupt and cowardly politicians to facilitate the agendas of central bankers and corporations that make up the globalised industrial economy in a merry-go-round of self-perpetuating policy failure. And all of it predicated on conversion of natural resources into stuff no one needs (or ever needed) and the generation of pollution that is ‘killing the planet’.

   Another invisible enemy is the entirely false meme firmly established in the minds of the vast majority of wage slaves and debt slaves that there is no alternative to being a wage slave and debt slave.

   The good news is the central bank system and globalised economic system are now on their last legs and a complete unravelling of the system -often referred to as ‘The Endgame’ because of the chess analogy- has commenced, as evidenced by the surge in the price of gold, as fiat money becomes increasingly worthless.

   Far from being ‘an invisible enemy’, coronaviruses are a symptom of the sick global environment (destruction of natural environments, billions of people living cheek-by-jowl on industrially generated ‘food’ etc.), a global environment which has been made sick by the central-bank-induced global industrialism and the gross population overshoot that has resulted from using oil to generate food on a global industrial scale.

   Needless to say, the industrial food system is also on its last legs and it about to go into severe terminal decline.

   Although none of us wants to witness the deaths of millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people, there is a sad inevitability about it all that comes from the gross overshoot of population that now exists. Absent the unsustainable fossil-fuel-driven systems that are destroying life now the world can arguably support about 1 billion humans. One way or another about 6 billion have to go.

   The gross population overshoot we see around the world could have been avoided had the central bankers and industrialists NOT SABOTAGED the ‘Limits to Growth’ narrative of the early-1970s, when all the factors that would lead to the present calamitous predicament were clearly identified.

   However, the banks and corporations and their lapdogs in politics and economics were determined to NOT ALLOW SANITY TO PREVAIL. Hence the current wide-ranging disasters that are going to get a lot worse.

   Have no doubts, there is no recovery of the system from this point, only a recovery of humans from the mind-control systems that have caused them to become so detached from nature and detached from reality many do not know which way is up and literally think that [in environmental and social terms] down is up.

   The good news is that all the aberrations that have characterised life over the past few decades will vanish soon: that will come as a profound shock to many, especially those who are deeply embedded both physically and psychologically in failing systems and will desperately attempt to bargain with reality (as per Elizabeth Kubler-Ross).

   Covid-19 has been the greatest of blessings because it has derailed the destructive behemoth of central banks and corporations, and may just prevent the Earth from becoming completely uninhabitable [for humans] in a few decades. We will have a better idea about that 5 years from now. Five years from now atmospheric CO2 will be around 430 ppm, 200 ppm above normal for the geological age we, as homo sapiens, evolved in.

   In the meantime, with the ‘Endgame’ now underway and the biggest financial crash in history only a matter of weeks or months away, anyone who hasn’t already done so needs to prepare for the ever-worsening economic conditions of the future.

   ‘It’s Time To Position For The Endgame

   Are you, like us, sensing that things are poised to fall apart?’

   https://www.peakprosperity.com/its-time-to-position-for-the-endgame/

   Needless to say, the corporate media will do their very best to keep the masses uninformed, misinformed, distracted and amused, as ‘the ship goes under’.

   As for highly energy intensive, highly polluting airline travel, you can forget that. It will be one of the first aberrations to disappear entirely.

   • How far behind the American collapse do you think NZ is? thank you for the link to the end game as well.

     • As a consequence of historic connections through the UK and Australia, and international bodies like IMF, WTO etc. NZ is extremely vulnerable to a collapse event in and of the US.

       Remembering that oil is traded internationally in US dollars (unless you happen to live in a ‘rogue’ nation like China, Russia, Iran etc. which are rapidly decoupling form the American dollar) there is a distinct possibility that NZ will be unable to import the oil it needs to maintain BAU.

       NZ extracts only about 20% of the oil it consumes, and in practice NZ sells its high quality oil overseas to obtain US dollars, in order to buy and import low quality oil.

       Also note that dairy export prices are quoted in US dollars. And a large portion of the NZ insurance scene is US owned, AIG American Insurance Group) and all that.

       Then we have telecommunications which are totally dependent on people in the US keeping the system going, with a substantial dependence on India -which, in case anyone had not noticed, is suffering an out-of-control pandemic.

       The local financial system is utterly dominated by ‘utter adoration of the US’; hence the frequent updates on how high the Dow has risen in its stratospheric climb ‘to infinity’ on the back of money-printing by the Feder Reserve (which is neither federal nor having any reserves, just the capacity to create phony money). When corporate earnings are being decimated and the only thing supporting the markets is phony money created by the Fed, you can be sure collapse is coming. The question has always been when.

       Well, gold hit a high of around $1900 (US of course! something else that is always quoted in US dollars) in 2011, and was manipulated down to around $1200 or so, where it ‘languished’ for years as the phony markets based on speculation provided magnificent capital gains. The creep up between 2018 and 2020 was slow enough for people to not take too much notice. But in recent weeks gold has ‘erupted’ higher, breaking the record price repeatedly.

       Interestingly, who has been buying the world’s gold? Not us, of course, nor American, nor Britain. But Russia, China and India. Some would say as a hedge against collapse of fiat currencies. And on that matter we have the situation of some currencies headed towards becoming worthless (Turkey) and others appreciating (China).

       In the long run all fiat currencies become worthless, e.g. the US dollar, which required only about $30 to purchase one ounce of gold at the time the US government confiscated the citizens’ gold, and then immediately reset the price at $35 an ounce! effectively stealing from citizens. But isn’t that what governments do?

       So compare the $20 an ounce of the 1920s with the current price of around $2020. Fiat currencies have fallen in purchasing power by 99% over 100 years.

       All that said, when it comes to truth of the matter, you can’t eat gold (king Midas and all that) and probably won’t be ale to trade it if food is in short supply; the price of a loaf of bread or a carrot a piece of meat is much more important.

       All I can say is, keep a very close watch on it all and be prepared.

       NZers, like people everywhere, will go from complacency to panic in about 3 days.

       • Ok so watch the US $ drop once the fed can no longer print money and the looting of the treasury is done and prepare for hyperinflation?

         • We are seeing an interesting dynamic play out right now, whereby operating costs for manufacturers and service suppliers are rising and consumers ability to pay for goods and services is falling. Since everything has been pared down to the bone in the real economy, consumers stop purchasing stuff or services they don’t need, and manufacturers and service providers go broke -leading to an oversupply of buildings and equipment, causing property prices to fall and confidence to decline.

           The ‘markets’ desperately seek any whiff of news that things might not be as bad as they really are, and speculation surges on the back of rumours and fake news.

           Interestingly, The Guardian (the best of a very bad lot when it comes to news reporting) still has its very anti-Russia policy in place. So the prospect of Russia having any viable vaccine ahead of other nations chokes in the throat of the Guardian, and Putin is implied as being unethical for fast-tracking a potential vaccine. If Britain or America had done the same I’m sure it would have all been banner headline accolades. Indeed, according to the Guardian, Russia is not a western nation (geography aside).

           ‘While the approval paves the way for inoculations in Russia, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, it is unlikely to accelerate the pace of efforts to produce a vaccine for use in the west, where licensing requirements are more stringent.’

           That’s just politics.

           Much more interesting is the dire state of large swathes of the industrial economy, with airlines (and tourism) being the poster child for collapse.

           ‘Bailing On Boeing: Order Cancellations Exceed New Sales For Sixth Straight Month’

           ‘Recall, just weeks ago we wrote that Boeing was running out of space to park its Dreamliner aircraft that nobody wanted to buy.

           “It’s not just the company’s ill-fated Boeing 737 MAX which may or may not fly again,” we said. “Boeing is now also running out of space to stash newly-built 787 Dreamliners, as unsold jetliners are now crammed onto every available patch of pavement on airfields near its factories in Washington and South Carolina.”

           “Dozens of the planes are sitting on the company’s premises,” we reported, with Uresh Sheth, a closely followed blogger who meticulously tracks the Dreamliners rolling through Boeing’s factories, putting the total somewhere above 50.’

           https://www.zerohedge.com/bailout/bailing-boeing-order-cancellations-exceed-new-sales-sixth-straight-month

           Obviously companies like Boeing can only keep producing planes that can’t be sold for so long (government bailouts not withstanding)…and then the whole thing goes kaput rather suddenly with a “Don’t come to work on Monday” notice to employees, usually issued late on Friday afternoon.

           By the same token, there are square kilometres of cars piling up in China, as the government there tries to figure out what to do with hundreds of millions of factory workers making stuff that there is declining demand for.

           Charles Hugh Smith summed it up succinctly here:

           …’Even super-duper covid-curing space rays beamed at our planet by helpful Martians couldn’t stop the financial conflagration that is now raging, a conflagration that was inevitable given the monetary deadwood that was piled ever higher for 12 long years, a mountain of dry tinder awaiting a random lightning strike or careless match.

           As a example of second-order effects, consider a sector we are all familiar with as customers: dining out: restaurants, cafes, bistros, brew-pubs, etc. We all understand that when these establishments close, the owners, managers and employees all lose their livelihoods.

           But this isn’t the full extent of the losses. Behind the visible facade of any industry is a long line of dominoes behind what the customer sees.

           When 50% of all dining-out establishments close, that immediately causes equivalent losses in sectors that supplied those establishments with clean linens and uniforms, meats, vegetables, culinary supplies, accounting, advertising, marketing, consulting, specialty magazines, etc., in a nearly endless profusion of businesses dependent on the dining-out sector.

           And then there’s all the retail real estate landlords that depended on these establishments to pay high rents on costly commercial spaces, and those nearby businesses that depended on the foot traffic generated by concentrations of dining-out establishments.

           The cheerleaders don’t dare acknowledge the absence of any sectors that can absorb the 32 million workers drawing unemployment, or those who aren’t in the unemployment system, for example sole proprietors who closed and those in the informal cash economy.’…

           https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

           • There will be huge impacts to the global supply chain and companies that provide inputs. Interesting politics at play re the vaccine and I read big pharma in America will be doing all it can to secure patent / licensing rights for the product and any of its ingredients. Everything is so interconnected and a lot of moving parts thank you for the links. So much to get head around and quickly.

   • Hi Afewknowthetruth, I was thinking much the same things.

     But this doesn’t mean we should give up.

     It doesn’t even mean we have the right to give up.

     Amongst our politicall classes I sense a strong sense of fatalism. Even despite their early success in beating back the novel coronavirus Sars-COV-2

     Ashley Bloomfield et al accept that there will be another outbreak of community transmission. But this time nothing can be done about it.

     There will be no nationwide lockdown like last time to contain it.

     Despite the overwhelming success of the last lockdown there will be no repeat, and NZ will join the rest of the world infected with the pathogen, from here we will spread it to the Pacific Island nations.

     But why have those with their fingers on the levers of power given up?

     All politics is pressure.

     At the moment all the pressure is coming from the corporate sector and finance capital not to have another lockdown. The corporate sector financiers were caught off guard by the government’s swift announcement of the first lockdown.

     For a brief moment in time the power of finance capital was suspended. Under the lockdown the whole superstructure of profit and loss that sits on top of the real productive economy was bought to a screeching halt. Meantime the productive economy, the economy that feeds and houses us and keeps us healthy never missed a beat. In fact this ‘essential’ underlying economy worked better than ever. Things we were told were impossible to do were done. Overnight the homeless were housed, in effect a universal basic income was legislated  most workers were paid to stay at home at 85% of their weekly wage, public transport was made fare free. Carbon emissions dropped to near zero. Community transmission of the virus was ended.

     All these things the corporate sector found intolerable, and so has mounted a rear guard action to prevent any repeat.

     The most obvious of course was the hugely expensive high court action taken to try and get the government’s imposition of the lockdown declared illegal.. ‘How dare the elected representatives of the people tell business what to do”.

     This is why there is no plan to deal with another outbreak.

     • I am not one for giving up.

       I gave up talking to the those who were (are) deaf and blind as a matter of principle, i.e. mayors, city, district, regional councils, bureaucrats, business so-called leaders etc., but I am busier than ever with respect to my own preparations for what is coming very soon.

       I agree that vested interests in commercial sector were desperate to keep the cash flowing and would risk anything and everything to make a buck.

       There are aspects of your response which are simply not true. In particular:

       ‘Carbon emissions dropped to near zero.’

       If only that were so.

       In fact emissions have dropped but not enough to make any difference to the disastrous trajectory we are on.

       For a few weeks the logging trucks, and cement manufacturers stopped working but the food distribution trucks, the home heating systems, the milk tankers picking up from the farm gates, and the emissions form manufacturing etc. continued. I have not seen any NZ-specific data but the Guardian suggested the drop in global emissions was around 7% at the time an article on the matter was published several days ago.

       I have come to the conclusion that NZ is utterly corrupt, and that vested interest groups have an enormous say in what happens at the level of district councils, regional councils and central government. Maybe not as rotten as in Lebanon, where the government has collapsed and the PM has declared the country rotten to the core, but not that far off it.

       “I said that corruption is rooted in every part of the state,” the prime minister said. “But I found out that corruption is greater than the state.

       “A political class is using all their dirty tricks to prevent real change. The more we tried to get to them, the bigger the walls became.’

       https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/10/lebanese-pm-to-resign-after-more-than-a-third-of-cabinet-quits

       • agree that we have corruption in councils and govt, I’ve worked in a lot of corporates and observed corrupt behaviors FXNZ being one of them. Worked at Auckland Doctors for a bit too and the management team is v.corrupt full of ex NHS managers. Speaking of corruption this just in from NR https://www.newsroom.co.nz/a-decade-on-super-city-not-so-super

     • Pat you may have noticed a delay between the Covid19 announcement and the coalitions announcement of measure.
       During that time the govt negotiated with banks and then gave them a 31 billion dollar handout with an excuse that it would be needed to keep money supply available. That money went into the financial sector propping up and increasing assets and virtually none of it went to keep money supply afloat.
       A similar move was made in the UK where over time it was shown that less that 8% reached the population on the street.

       But the very expensive and unnecessary gift to the bankers gave the govt a short time to cobble together a package for the people.
       The banks have done well.
       That money should have gone straight from the reserve bank into govt coffers to be spent on the nation as needed to promote employment, create infrastructure, bolstered the health system and got rid of poverty.
       Instead the banksters indulged themselves. You may have noticed stocks rose.

     • The bankers and corporate sector were consulted before lock down which they went along with when the banks were given 31 billion to play with in the financial markets. Much less than 10% of that money will get into local circulation.
       A deal was done and that may well extend into further lockdowns as we have at teh moment and await announcements this evening 14 Aug, about how long level 3 and level 2 will be extended and where.

       But I agree that Business NZ or the NZ Initiative as they call themselves ( sneaky bastards) have finger in the parliamentary pie and run discussions with MPs behind closed doors.

5. We can learn from overseas examples.

   One thing we can learn from overseas is the need to have our hospitals and entire health system completely ready to deal with sudden surges of large numbers of patients, whether from this or a future pandemic, or from other disasters. Are we ready? I read this morning where we are NOT at the point where our hospitals could safely handle a large scale outbreak (but for the moment I cannot find that link).

   We really need to accept that we are now in the Age of Disasters, because that is what is ahead, whether virus-caused or climate related or other, eg from apparent accidents as in Beirut. There are an increasing number of emergencies up ahead. Are we prepared?

   Every moment of our government’s time should be spent on addressing this. The more we are prepared, the less harm these events will cause. [Thanks to Nitrium for reminding me of this.]

   • ‘We really need to accept that we are now in the Age of Disasters, because that is what is ahead, whether virus-caused or climate related or other, eg from apparent accidents as in Beirut. There are an increasing number of emergencies up ahead. Are we prepared?’

     I prefer to call it The Age of Consequences because almost all of the disasters we are witnessing are a direct consequences of the outlandish behaviour of [industrial] humans. The only exceptions are volcanic eruptions and earthquakes…and even some of those may well be induced of exacerbated by human activity

     ‘Are are we prepared?’

     Trick question???!!!

     We are not even talking about the cause of all the mayhem we are witnessing, let alone preparing for the consequences!

     When I say ‘we are not talking about the cause’, I am referring to politicians and the corporate media -who set the agenda for the national so-called debate and cause the general public to not talk about them.

     Some of us have been talking about all the life-threatening issues for decades, and have already prepared. And continue to upgrade preparations, as much as that is possible in a society controlled by eco-vandals and closet fascists.

     Never forget that the narratives of ALL political parties (including the so-called Greens) are dependent on NOT mentioning any of the factors -collapse of the environment, collapse of the energy system and collapse of Ponzi economics -that WILL determine the future of the people who live on this land mass. The advertising-dependent corporate will obligingly never mention them either.

     If that’s not a recipe for disaster, what is?

     As far as the mainstream is concerned, the closest we get to truth is The Guardian’s reporting of planetary meltdown, e.g.

     ‘Last decade was Earth’s hottest on record as climate crisis accelerates’

     https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/12/hottest-decade-climate-crisis-2019

     Devastating as Covid-19 appears to be, it is a picnic in the park compared to everything else that is coming, as the Earth overheats at an ever-faster pace and global and local environments collapse.

6. It’s happened.

7. One family South Auckland. Four individuals infected.

   No history of overseas travel. No known source of infection.

   A number of workplaces involved.

   “Please consider a mask” Dr Ashley Bloomfield

8. One family South Auckland. Four individuals infected.

   No history of overseas travel. No known source of infection.

   A number of workplaces involved.

   “Please consider a mask” Dr Ashley Bloomfield

   Mini Three day lockdown while tracing is carried out.

   • This latest outbreak is actually a blessing in disguise, as it disrupts so many of the systems that have kept NZ society headed in completely the wrong direction.

     • Agreed.
       We need to reorganise our economy around what basics people may need and plan for an environmental restoration.
       Sovereign money can provide a resource to achieve that with careful intelligent management overseen by independent scientist advising along with some of our best radical green visionaries.
       Corporates are not our masters neither are private banks unless we let them dictate.

Comments are closed.