Okay, so we are in Level 3 again. The virus has jumped out of no where into South Auckland, the DNA doesn’t match what we’ve had come through the border quarantine process but the track and trace programme has been very successful in clamping down on all the contacts and the speed with which the cauterisation process has kicked in looks like it has saved us.
Take a small gasp of air, we are doing well NZ. As of this moment. That can change dramatically at any point of course.
But breathe. Preferably with a mask.
There are 6 possible ramifications from Auckland in Lockdown 3.
1: Another mistake saved by luck?
There is anger that workers at the frontline weren’t being tested as regularly as they should have, but the DNA of the Virus isn’t from any of our border quarantine cases, so the virus came back in either off a cold surface at the cold store in South Auckland OR it slipped past the border undetected and immediately went to the cold store in South Auckland.
You can see which option is more likely so that is why all the focus is now on the possibility it has come through on a cold surface because the likelihood that it slipped past the border while making no one sick and then immediately went to the cold store is really, really, really unlikely.
So the lack of testing each week might end up being another mistake that gets saved by luck, but if it has come through on a surface, that actually changes everything.
More about that latter, but if the entry point isn’t the border, then the lack of testing won’t become the great political moment of incompetence that Judith requires to win.
Oh and let’s just remind everyone again, the State can’t compel you to take a medical procedure, remember? Hipkins doesn’t want to get into that intellectual and philosophical debate because the country has no sense of nuance right now, but let’s remember that if the State says it will compel medical tests, just imagine how the Christ that goes down in the conspiracy theory community that National are nurturing.
2: Woke Identity Politics inflaming MAGAtanga
When the virus first broke out earlier this year, woke identity politics activists flooded twitter with accusations that anyone suggesting the virus was dangerous was xenophobic and racist…
…and now the woke are back claiming Barbara Dreaver’s identification of the family in Auckland being a Pacific Island family was somehow racist, that the mandatory quarantining is racist and that the ever increasingly grim wheel of victimhood that is intersectionist politics has been spun and the micro aggressions calculated to conclude that Pacific Islanders are the victims!
I appreciate that there is an intellectual argument to be made here by those Pacifica Island Intellectuals and public health luminaries with historical examples to back them up but the comparisons are shallow and overlook the reality that is poverty in the South Auckland Pacifica community where over crowding IS an issue. Pointing at wealthy white boomers returning with the virus and being able to quarantine in their large warm homes and claiming the mandatory quarantine of over crowded communities is racist manages to ignore the realities a public health campaign needs to navigate while also feeding the MAGAtanga QAnon conspiracy theorists with all the racism ammunition they need to produce more panic and fear.
3: Immediate Amnesty for Overstayers
We know there is a shadow Pacifica Island community of around 5000 overstayers who avoid all interactions with officials for fear of being deported, until we have a vaccine, we must immediately pass an amnesty for all over stayers and encourage them to enrol and connect with their local community health providers to inoculate ourselves from the possibility of an outbreak through all overstayer communities. To deport human beings during a pandemic is unacceptable enough, to deny them health access that will ultimately endanger us all is totally irrational.
4: Labour to gain more gratitude votes
If the track and trace processes have worked and we really have caught this early, the professionalism and speed with which Jacinda has handled it will give her more gratitude votes and Labour will triumph at the election. If they have missed the contact point, and it hasn’t come off a cold surface but doesn’t spread anywhere else, they will still succeed.
The only way this implodes is if the leak is traced to an incompetence that the public genuinely believe is Jacinda’s fault. We haven’t seen any evidence of that.
5: Push out the election to stop Judith Collins destroying NZ Democracy
Since taking over as leader, Judith has displayed a gasp inducing, breath taking ability of malevolence well beyond your average politician. Her ‘what’s wrong with being white’ race baiting, her purposeful side stepping of Falloon so her first weekend of media wasn’t stained, her execution of Iain Lees-Galloway on live TV, her avoidance to act immediately with ‘Merv’, her draconian policies and her promotion of Conspiracy theories to damage the Government have all highlighted why the rest of the National Party never trusted her with the power of leadership until their were forced to by self-destructive despair after Muller imploded.
The conspiracy theory peddling shows that there is no lower level to which Judith won’t stoop and with the realisation that the Party will execute her mercilessly once she loses, her desperation will only push her to feed that dark part pf her psyche which frightens the rest of us.
If Judith were forced to fight a September 19th election and failed I fear she would pull a Trump, that she would claim the election was biased, unfair and rigged. Now, at any normal time that would be laughed off as the hysterical ravings of someone who fought and was found lacking in every possible category and in their bitter defeat have turned on the process to eclipse their own terminal short comings.
Sadly these are not normal times.
Rump National voters are already a brutal lot who feed and celebrate spite, give them a justification to question the legitimacy of a Labour led Government and they will turn septic. Include the conspiracy theorists who have spread like herpes on Facebook and you have the toxic ingredients of treason and insurrection fed on a poisonous political lie of the election being corrupt.
Judith is more than capable of attempting to burn the entire system if she doesn’t win, that is her nature.
6: Reminder that we aren’t actually talking about the reality of Mordor outside the Shire
If the virus has come through on a cold surface, this will have an enormous impact on freight in and out of the country, no one is thinking about that right now and it highlights what the true danger here really is.
We have a Government too busy to fight the pandemic to see over the horizon and we have a desperate Opposition who can only win if the virus wins so have no incentive to provide solutions.
We urgently need a cross segment of civil society to meet and discuss what the new normal looks like until a vaccine is available because our political system can’t fight the crisis and create solutions at the same time.
The reality of this pandemic is that it is going to get far worse.
It took 10 months to get to 10million global infections, 50 days to get to another 10million. You think things are bad with 20 million infected, imagine how bad 100 million global infections will be.
500million.
A billion.
Mordor is raging beyond the shores of the Shire, but it’s always trying to get in. We need an urgent revamp of what living through this looks like to all business and all citizens and we need that debate urgently to try and find a consensus while urgently robbing the conspiracy theorists of oxygen.
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7: The virus mutates into something worse.
Don’t be scared.
That’s theoretically possible but very unlikely. The ultimate aim of all viruses is to propagate themselves within their host species. They don’t achieve this by killing off their hosts faster. The long term trend for most viruses, especially highly contagious viruses like Covid that spread quickly, is to become less deadly to their hosts over time.
Agree with the last part. But not the first.
Viruses don’t have an aim. When they reproduce variations in genetic makeup might make the virus more virulent, more deadly, and no less successful until all hosts are dead, or hosts are scarce enough to make the second part of your comment true. That is how evolution works.
Now whether that actually happens is a matter of chance. Not of decision making by the virus.
OR THIS:
CEAC wants Gov’t To Test All Road Freight Workers For Covid 19.
Friday 16th August 2020
Political/Environmental – Press Release: Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre
NZ Ministry of Health/Minister need to test all road freight workers for Covid 19 now to fully secure our borders, as any infected transport workers could freely move around the country to spread the pandemic widely and destroy our community health and economic future.
TVNZ Q+A Jack Tame interviewed Professor Tony Blakely a scientist at Melbourne University about how best could NZ fight the new outbreak of Covid 19 this last week, and during the interview, Professor Blakely stated clearly that all who are in contact with our borders, including the Ports must be tested fully for present infections with the PCR (swab test) and if the infection was over two weeks ago, he recommends testing with the serology antibody test for finding any past infections after two weeks.
Dr Blakely reminded Jack Tame that the PCR (Swab test) was not “perfect” and 20% failed to be accurate, showing false negative results after two weeks out from infection. This was Dr Blakely’s reason for recommending the serology antibody test as well was to have complete accurate results.
Ministry of Health clearly should be doing this now or we risk the case that we do not have adequate data to understand ‘how and why’ the latest community Covid cluster has emerged this week, so they are concentrating at the cold store site where containers are transported by trucks, CEAC assume all drivers are tested, – If not we must now test all our freight transport drivers and incorporate this with the current ‘swab test’- and “the antibody test (also called a serology test.) which confirm all who develop immunity to Covid 19 for true accurate test results.
Transport operations
Most freight drivers manually touch the freight as it is offloaded from trucks so if any driver has Covid 19 it will be easily spread widely around the country, so CEAC calls on Government to have all truck freight operators to be tested now and every two weeks for Covid 19 to reduce community spread of Covid 19.
Review;
Ministry of Health must conduct full Covid 19 testing of all our citizens firstly and complete a full assessment of any presence of Covid 19 infections using both the PCR (swab test) and the serology antibody test.
We must have mass testing of all our community firstly then use a solid controlled ‘tracing of the Covid 19’ to have a ‘robust tracing process’ to fight Covid 19.
We are all in this together.
OK so now we need some compulsion. PPE for cold store workers from the ports to the markets until that possible vector is nailed down. And compulsory regular testing of all entry points. Masks for all of us in public spaces in case the bastard sneaks through again. That is compatible with Level 2 and 1 which keeps the economy alive. All done by a Labour Govt that gets re-elected in Sept 19 because no one else is in the position to administer a science-led approach that can work based on on the centrist ideology of Aotearoa as a classless, team of 5 million. That team will pound the life out of the anti-science conspiracies. When we get out the other side we will understand what has to be done to fight the greater scourge of climate change and the capitalocene which is its cause.
Dave and friends; please view this expert advice from Kiwi scientist Dr Tony Blakely that was on Q+A interviewed by Jack Tame today then we will win against this bloody evil virus.He is brilliant.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/q-and-a/clips/melbourne-based-epidemiologist-says-his-city-should-have-adopted-new-zealand-s-strategy-of-going-harder-and-faster-into-lockdown
Q + A with Jack Tame – Melbourne-based epidemiologist says his city should have adopted New Zealand’s strategy of going harder and faster into lockdown.
Sunday 16 Aug
G Professor Tony Blakely says Melbourne should have immediately gone into a NZ-style level 3 lockdown to combat its second wave
Yeah I heard him, and he is very good. All about the practice of science and no useless blaming. I agree that better border surveillance is needed for elimination and I think that Labour has proved it can up its game to do that and avoid the need for repeated lockdowns and more subsidies to businesses. Which is why I don’t agree that we Labour should make concessions to the opposition pressure to delay the election.
An election delayed is democracy denied. But! It works against labour if they delay the election because it gives them more time to f&%k this up even more, giving the Nats some oxygen.
As soon as the writs handed over, the electoral commission kicks in and will be inundated will calls of a bias, unfair election cause, the widdle princess has been hodding airtime in all the platforms of the media because of Covid. That’ll hurt labour either way.
$50 no government formed until December!
Yep. Now they’ve asked 12000 border staff to be tested by Monday when that’s not possible. Another well thought-out plan.
From bustling to ghost-town in just 6 months (watch the video)
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ghost-town-shocking-dystopian-video-nyc-shows-abandoned-and-boarded-5th-avenue
Meanwhile at the ‘other end’ of the dis-US it’s sweltering heat, [electrical[ blackouts and out-of-control fires on top of surging Covid-19 cases.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ghost-town-shocking-dystopian-video-nyc-shows-abandoned-and-boarded-5th-avenue
NZ is certainly the best of a very bad lot. But without a dramatic change in culture (i.e. Greed is not good!) the path ahead looks increasingly grim.
The amnesty is a good idea . Many of those effected in Melbourne avoided testing because they were there illegally and we’re scared of being exposed. It would be good as well because often they are exploited as workers. The amnesty needs to encompass all nationalities we could make this the one chance for them to become legal.
Trevor – Well said.
Good, good. Let the Corona flow through us, so that we become strong against it.
Predicting anything is difficult when many variables remain unknown, particularly the means of egress into Aotearoa for this particular version of the coronavirus.
It is easy to say that the government are too busy to put more resources into uncovering the means of entry but the airhead Ardern was not too busy or distracted to hose down suggestions of cold surface via cold store transmission with totally unfounded, unproven & unmeasured ‘guarantees’ that Aotearoa’s food hygiene systems made coronavirus transmission via kiwi foodstuffs impossible at her corona press conference last Wednesday when the issue was first raised.
Maybe many are feeling smug that at least we know the name of the coldstore from official sources, a situaiion that as I’m sure many are aware would not have occurred under a Natz administration.
A national government ever mindful of keeping it easy for the wealthy, would have been at pains to state that revealing the coldstore would be unfair to that business. We would still have learned it was Americold – most likely via social networks, then the media but that knowledge would be unofficial so officials & politicians would have refused all comment on it.
Most here remember the drill from the Key government – whenever a big business was caught ‘at it’ name suppression would run right through any investigation, then through the courts, suppression would only be lifted well after any public furore had ceased.
There is no reason to feel smug. Evidence that this virus can survive for extended periods months, even years is compelling. ergo:
(if that above is a mess I apologise as I’m still unsure of what html works on this site)
Should the government comes clean & admit that the virus most probably arrived on a cold surface, yes there may be a small backlash against our food products for a time, but that ignores the fact that Aotearoa’s virus free status is the main reason this mode of transmission would have been proven to be real.
There have been numerous, sometimes huge clusters in coldstores, abattoirs & food processing plants all across the world, but because covid 19 was already thriving in those communities, there was little investigation of the initial vector of transmission.
If coldstores are such a vector, it is vital, not just for Aotearoa, but the entire world, that this becomes widely known & acted upon, otherwise there is no chance of getting this currently raging pandemic under control – short of a vaccine. A vaccine may never happen but even if it does, complete roll out is at least 12 months away – meaning billions more cases unless every identified transmission vector is closed.
As soon as the truth around coldstores is known, the world will learn the only way this was proven was because Aotearoa was covid 19 free.
For those who imagine economics drives a society rather than just being a tool of that society, that means Aotearoa products will garner a premium on price. ie greasy lamb chops are going to get more expensive, cockies are going to become even better off.
Americold etc will lobby lobby lobby to try and show black is white, but the ensuing dialogue is going to generate far more investigation of the issue. It will be possible to find results of experiments on coronavirus’ long term viability in european & us publications.
Very good blog there debsisdead 100% CORRECT.
Its only a stuffy nose, let!s go and see the rellies, no don!t go see the rellies in these days of stuffy noses it!s not probable the cold, could also be the bigger bug, so swab and test at a designated testing station or your Doctors, it!s not only the sniffles today, any continues sniffle or stuffy noses should be isolated tested and if only the sniffles ok, get the treatment from your Doc or medical care. It!s just the sniffles anymore, no all be alert, don!t let your paranoia get in the way of your health care. If between 50 and onwards and experience winter cold symptoms get tested, younger if flue like also get tested, if not if you are in a lockdown stay locked down and elsewhere don!t be queueing out of paranoia if you are not experiencing symptoms, of flu, like symptom!s stay away from the queues of paranoia it only overloads the structured health care diagnostic.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/coronavirus-found-on-food-packaging-but-likely-of-little-concern-67825
The positives of Covid, include that farms are now looking to upskill farming students to do farm work… unfortunately they still seem to think that working 60 – 80 hours a week, 6 days a week, is something normal for employees… and that short term work (when you look at cost of flying in, working and living in what is probably dorm accomodation) might not be what the average Kiwi wants out of work either with no guarantees of the work or conditions and being fired at will after spending thousands on getting there and finding out all is not what is being promised …
Time that NZ industry is forced to improve their game, take responsibility to attract full time workers locally and ‘job share’ them around farms and industry.
NZ industry needs to start to actually provide a lifestyle that attracts permanent people to the industry, aka decent accomodation and permanent pay and conditions going forward to encourage people to move to the area and into the industry.
Horticulture, farming and construction need to stop thinking about doing as little as possible themselves for recruitment (lazily relying on the government and taxpayers to continue to subsidise their poor behaviour to employees and conditions and thus rely on foreign worker Ponzi’s to keep their low wages and lack of innovation, going).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/122406571/high-20hour-jobs-available-but-where-are-the-workers
Talked to a friend who worked in transport. After 20 years he got out of the trucking industry as he was being expected to work long hours on $20 p/h and his employer were not inclined to pay any more when they were used to bringing in foreign workers and students who would do what they were told on $18 p/h … fake hours, etc That was about 5 years ago, it is even worse now, apparently.
The government also need to make it easier for locals students and beneficiaries to earn more money than $200 p/w to get their student allowances….. or benefits cut by working.
Many single people with kids now are better off on a benefit that attempting to try to work and get their benefits cut… they also find out that working can be lower than benefits…. Yep $1000 p/w in Auckland on DBP…. when the minimum wages just come in on $600 p/w… and living wages can be the same as benefits..
Employers struggle to find workers, while beneficiaries and working poor struggle to survive on benefits… Overhall is needed in NZ to encourage poorer people in NZ like students and underemployed receiving income, to work more hours and not have their benefit top ups, cut by working.
Awesomely said.
Farmers and more specifically, wine growers and horticulturists, almost exclusively use contracting firms to supply their workforce. Most of these contracting firms are run by people with close connections to cheap and subservient labour supplies.
Getting rid of that loophole in the employee/employer relationship would fix many of the issues kiwis unable to find work and farmers unable to find staff face, a better outcome for all.
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