Latest Northland Covid Outbreak: The only political test that matters for Labour in 2021

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
42
1236
The only thing lethal enough to kill Coronovirus is bleach and Mike Hosking

The Housing speculation crisis can continue, our nothingness on the climate crisis can continue, inequality and child poverty can continue and beneficiaries still getting nothing can continue.

For the vast chunk of New Zealand who voted Labour in 2020, those problems can all continue AS LONG AS Jacinda protects us from Covid.

This latest outbreak is dangerous for our public health and dangerous for Labour’s popularity.

The Northland outbreak is already exposing the dreadful underfunding of Northland Health to have the capacity to deal with what is happening and it highlights that within the MIQ facilities themselves, these new mutations will turn them into infection vectors rather than preventions.

This has real political dimensions as well as public health and economic ones.

The math doesn’t lie.

The new UK strain is so many times more contagious, that their current level 4 lockdown procedures which would see a 30% reduction of transmission for the older Covid version would in fact see a 30% increase of transmission for the new mutation.

Mathematically for every 1000 Covid patients through our quarantine, 1 is going to get through.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

We aren’t publicly doing enough in the Track and Trace front to give us enough warning when someone comes into a hospital sick and the far quicker transfer of the new strain means it will be well away in the Community before we are even aware of it.

Labour’s political success has been built from Jacinda’s handling of the pandemic, but it will evaporate if the virus gets lose inside NZ and the blame is pinned on incompetence.

Waiting until the end of March for frontline vaccinations when the math tells us there is likely to be an outbreak well before then is a huge gamble.

People will demand to know why the vaccine wasn’t available earlier.

Chippy should be moving heaven and earth to get those bloody early vaccines in as soon as possible and tighten those MIQ facilities for the new reality of these mutations.

Labour voters will allow Jacinda to betray all her progressive promises as long as she protects them from Covid, this dynamic will simply get more shrill as the virus continues to burn around the planet and dominate headlines.

Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.

If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

42 COMMENTS

  1. It was obvious from the outset this person picked up her infection at quarantine, probably through sloppy practice by that hotel. There have been sporadic reports of a less than ideal care in avoiding cross contamination by those managing the sites and with these super infectious varieties.

    What concerns me is the dithering around with vaccination. And the minister/s seem to rely far too much on officials reassurances until it goes wrong rather than looking for themselves.

    But again Jacinda’s radar is well off and she appears to be on last years auto pilot telling us to be kind to the woman infected seemingly oblivious to the fact it was her governments systems or lack thereof that allowed her to get infected in the first place.

    Maybe we really need to review our “kindness” to this virus by importing so much of it with our welcoming border policy and should look at slowing the immigration to next to nothing until we have better procedures. As had been repeatedly suggested and done overseas.

  2. Track and Trace is an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff exercise in butt covering. In most cases the horse has bolted and then you have to engage in expensive lockdown measures that harm the very people you are charged to protect. Then there is the app itself – do you really trust the government with the information or indeed Amazon given the platform is AWS. This is not a conspiracy theory these are just pertinent questions that all need to answer themselves.

    The issue here is proper quarantine and the use of facilities that are anything but on the basis of economic expediency. Of course of feckless and lazy media won’t do any work on the subject and even if a few hardy souls do they will be cancelled immediately. The only brave soul to do so so far was metaphorically crucified by most (but not all – kudos to Bomber).

    The very reason we went “hard and fast” (sic) was our health system was (and still is) unprepared for even a small outbreak. As a parent with a daughter with a condition that (at times) requires admission to Starship this is what truly worries me. Now before the 9 years of neglect stock standard bullshit response gets rolled out:

    – Health system underfunding has happened under both blue and red governments
    – The current mob has been there for 3.5 years so no excuses there.
    – It’s now effectively 12 months since the pandemic started – this is ample time to plan and prepare for an outbreak and indeed post transmission testing
    – We are printing money with Zimbabwe-like vigor so any funding argument is pure and utter bullshit.

    This ain’t a political issue anymore it’s a competency issue. Are you confident the Blairite and co can manage a major outbreak? At some stage our luck runs out.

    • A conspiracy theory is invariable someone asking questions of a known lair.
      The state propaganda, has CONVENIENTLY and purposely created a negative connotation to the term, so it can get away with NOT being held accountable as often as it should, and LAZY people just shut down any discussion, by HIDING behind the term, conspiracy theory.

      • Spot on.

        And states in the western world create conspiracies -like Russia is to blame for everything- to keep the masses dumbed-down and compliant.

        So when a real emergency arises the [now fairly large] sector that doesn’t believe ANYTHING the government says goes berserk, demanding no masks, no lockdowns, no vaccinations etc.

        Politicians and their agents reap what they sow. As does the corporate media, which now has the lowest credibility ever recorded.

      • Kevin a conspiracy theory is a story without a base of relevant clear testable evidence, and usually based on supposition, mistaken or false logic, ignorance, hearsay or just plain lies.
        Politicians invent them regularly particularly when they wish to capture the gullible.

  3. I feel this Jacinda lead Labour Government seem afraid to be strong in their call for the population to do what is the right think for fear of earning the Nanny State label which spelt disaster for Helen’s government.
    Compelling the use of QR code would take the burden off businesses to enforce this simple process . There are many still not taking this virus seriously .

  4. Just stop letting those at higher risks of having those two new strains in we need to stop now until the counties they are coming from have something decent in place to control it better. We already know our current public health system can’t cope with our own health needs. Tracking after the fact is a bit late, prevention is far better. Our government needs to listen to our experts they called for a stop or limit and neither has happened. So it was only a matter of time these new deadly highly infectious strains were going to make there way into our communities. As for the thousand dollar fine its a bit of a joke will it actually deter people desperate to get here, I doubt it.

    • China has a 14 + 7 + 7 policy.
      14 days on controlled isolation followed by 7 days strictly confinement to home followed by 7 days of limited movement but under strict health checks for symptoms but with testing through out the 28 days
      .
      China has a covid19 death rate per million of 3.2, NZ’s rate is 5.2, the USA/UK rates are over 1200 DPM.

      Vaccine is not a panacea and herd immunity appears to be a well thrashed myth.
      There are more cases appearing where after catching covid19 once and surviving with some resulting immunity, then a while later the virus is caught again or the covid19 symptoms appears again and tests are again positive.
      Asymptomatic cases can cause contagion. Random testing in China is picking up asymptomatic cases. There is a lot more to be known about covid19 and patterns of community infection.
      Some validity has been assigned to Covid19 viruses being transported with frozen foods, so importation into a community of the virus with imported frozen goods is being investigated and some New Zealand frozen exports to china have been blocked from distribution while testing is done.
      Our borders will be leaky until we lock them with more purposeful processes.
      Imported Russian sailor/fishermen appear to be the last source of covid19
      Why are we bringing them in has to be asked and commercial fishing needs to train Kiwis and bring up working condition to suit.
      Business should not dictate to governments nor be prioritised over health.
      Herd immunity was touted by some are a solution without any firm testable evidence. It was a supposition drawn from other diseases. The common cold is a Coronaviruse and typically once a person gets a cold and recovers then if they are healthy it appears a degree of immunity is produced but that can be short lived.
      People catch a cold many times over a period of years. Humans have not developed a herd immunity to the common cold.

  5. ” Labour voters will allow Jacinda to betray all her progressive promises ”
    What progressive promises ? The only thing they have promised to do is continue to protect the neoliberal agenda that is failing so many and protecting the privileged. I guess that is what they meant when they said let’s keep moving more to the right.

  6. The first issue is that the government puts big business Russian Fishers profits and sports teams and then flakey degree market before the rest of the countries health. They need to stop allowing so many people who are not NZ citizens to come to NZ during Covid so they can get someone to make a private $$$$$ – clearly it is very dangerous, risky, expensive strategy.

    The Northland women who was living in Spain, shows that it is necessary to make anybody coming out of quarantine which should just be NZ citizens, stay in one place for a further quarantine period of another 2 weeks because having someone catch the virus when they leave and then go to 30 locations around NZ potentially spreading it far and wide is ludicrous. This is not the ladies fault, but another issue not thought about by government when there are so many breaches in quarantine and it’s a hot bed of Covid cases all together.

  7. We are ‘going medieval’ whether there is a coronavirus outbreak or not. What a coronavirus outbreak does is expose the frailty of current living arrangements, and brings things back to reality a little faster.

    Kunstler has tended to call it too early, as have many observers of, and commentators on, the dismal and dysfunctional performance of governments neoliberal throughout the western world and the humungous misallocation of resources.

    The Chinese have the level of compliance sufficient to impose all sorts of things people in ‘free’ nations would balk at. And more resources than most nations. And even the Chinese are in trouble on all fronts: coronavirus, energy, food, environment…..

    As for the western world, the ‘musical chairs’ sand ‘money=printing’ are still the game. But there are nowhere enough ‘chairs’, and when the music stops -later this year- we are going to witness the biggest scramble in history.

    Kunstler’s reality check:

    https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/flying-blind/

    Meanwhile, Charles Hugh Smith points out getting anything done in America now takes a marathon effort because ‘Everything is Broken’:

    https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan21/everything-broken1-21.html

    In NZ some things are not as broken as in America. But enough things are now broken [by the neoliberal order] to cause chaos and misery to many.

    Undoubtedly Jacinda and company will not admit they are on the wrong track, and undoubtedly the will resist reality as long as they can (as they have been doing since they took office).

    ‘Interesting times’ in not a good way, I’m afraid.

    Warnings given; warnings not heeded.

  8. We need
    1) An independent health inspector at each MIQ facility who’s job is to be an obnoxious nosy bastard looking for faults in the system breaches of the rules and the ability to fine returnees and the hotels.Should be plenty of suitably qualified people in MSD or OT.
    2) Follow 2 weeks at MIQ with 2 weeks home isolation and more testing for all returnees.

  9. I still can’t get any traction or comments on why we don’t use the two KNOWN drugs that work as well as, if not better then the vaccines that are rushed through with unknown side effects, BEFORE we vaccinate/protect our border staff and those who come into the country.
    It’s a NO BRAINER, use Hydroxychloroquine and or Ivermectin, with zinc, vit D, Vit C and a ‘antibiotic’. See the ‘Math protocol’ being used. Check out the Indian police force ‘experiment/trial.
    I’m amazed how we as a country/Govt seem to want to play chicken with a probable deadly pandemic.

    • I am not a doctor or sciencist so cannot answer your question from a professional status but Trump his self proclaimed medical expert and 1 anti vaxer in the whole Australian parliment are the only people who are pushing these solutions to my knowledge. I do not have much time for politicans and government officials but you have to have some confidence that if it was as easy as you say that they would not use it

      • We are missing the ‘top NZ’ people putting their names to the statement that these drugs (allegedly) don’t work, so we can hold them to account, when they are found to be lying, misinformed or conveniently ignorant.

  10. An exact match with the 56 year old woman and an other resident of the QI hotel was announced in media today. How exactly that happened only the scientists know I guess.

    The first anniversary of COVID forcing its way into our lives is coming up–time enough for most people to return to NZ? But it is not comfortable to castigate others whatever their reasons.

    But it is time surely for every one to be vigilant–Use the apps, wear a mask, walk with elbows out (until people start distancing again).

    As for the PM and Labour, keeping COVID largely at bay is NOT enough for the 50% of New Zealanders that are having a crap time of it–many of whom are working in low paid jobs in public contact, while middle class types are fine with home work and comfortable lockdown scenarios.

    Not clamping down on MSD & raising benefits, or building enough houses and apartments will blow back on this Govt. sooner rather than later in a number of ways.

  11. But but but …
    Just to be plain
    Covid means death to folks
    U don’t want covid?
    U don’t want to die?
    Funny that
    Have u heard the latest?

    U gonna die
    But but ! You say
    But not right now
    No buts bud
    U choose
    Covid or death
    Either way
    U loose
    So wise up
    Bud
    Don’t snooze
    U may never
    Wake up

  13. Lots of negative comments here, the alternative is to hop on a plane and travel anywhere around the world and play Russian roulette..no I’m more than happy with our response and the occasional mistake. It’s almost like Jacinda personally coughed on someone such is the vile labelled at her.

    • Good on Jacinda for making the correct 50/50 call to close the borders early. Forget all the arguments why she had to close them, other countries I’m sure had similar scenarios, but chose to wait longer before closing their borders. Agreed we’re an island so that has helped etc etc. But SHE DID close the borders, so good on her !!!! NACT would probably still be arguing for keeping the borders open for the sake of the rich people.
      But since then she’s been nearly as bad as the NACT lot for the previous 10 years. She’s seemingly only reacting to issues that could have been found out with a sensible honest look at whats-what beforehand. So IMHO she deserves the criticism and needs to bloody do something positive rather than just constantly hide behind her NeoKindness. Which though is nicer than the NACT-nastiness and corruption, this alone will NOT suffice.
      Yes I’m glad she’s in power versus nasty Collins etc. But that fact can only go so far. Then it starts to looks like, she’s as shit as the previous lot, though with a lovely smile, great PR and kindness, but SIMPLY NOT GOOD enough to competently run NZ in such trying times.

    • Happy new year Bertie – hope your summer break was great. Good to see you back

      P.s. Bertie isn’t the first lady

      • Happy new year Frankie, sunning it in the balmy 29 degrees of whakatane! Unlike those of the covid infested countries, were able to have a summer holiday thanks to our swift and intelligent covid response. Lifestyle good and Trumps gone a bit like the first lady . You heard it here first.

  14. “Labour voters will allow Jacinda to betray all her progressive promises as long as she protects them from Covid”

    And how absolutely pathetic is that. We all deserve better.

  15. BTW – so far in NZ, Covid controls, aka border controls, more focus on health, less people on roads, more hygiene, less suicides, housing the homeless in hotels, extra welfare payments etc have saved more lives than normal.

    Covid seems to have saved lives last year in NZ as we had significantly less deaths last year than previous years. Go figure. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/how-nzs-covid-19-response-led-to-dramatic-drop-in-deaths-last-year/DMI6FUFVCUY6LSLMUVWTBAL5YE/

  16. It’s not either/or.
    The covid thing has to be managed efficiently from the health point of view. That’s a given.
    But the most urgent thing this socalled Labour government needs to deal with is the housing crisis and rents, and they are fiddling while Rome burns.

  17. It’s not either/or.
    The covid thing has to be managed efficiently from the health point of view. That’s a given.
    But the most urgent thing this socalled Labour government needs to deal with is the housing crisis and rents, and they are fiddling while Rome burns.

  19. So how much are we going to spend on these rushed vaccines, when there are ‘non patented’ drugs that seem to work, and have decades of use with non-little side effects, the equivalent of paracetamol level side effects, i.e. there’s always someone who’ll react badly.
    It’s not like we have lots of money to throw away. And why haven’t we been using the time to test/prove to ourselves that Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine work here like elsewhere, except when big pharma don’t control the Govt, trials and the presstitute media

  20. “math”? We’re NZers, it’s fucking “maths” with an S. Bomber needs to stop watching US trash TV.

  21. “This latest outbreak…”

    Say what? What outbreak? Last I heard, none of that woman’s contacts had tested positive. Nor have any other cases been reported from that area.

    Sounds like overstatement. Unless there are more cases that we haven’t heard about.

Comments are closed.