The vaccination doesn’t stop you from spreading the virus, vaccines dampen the spread and serious of the illness – it doesn’t stop it.
It’s why I have such doubts about us opening the borders – we will get hit by this variant (and others) and it will still cause enough sickness and death to still jam the hospitals – opening borders requires bigger hospitals, bigger morgues and more cemeteries
And seeing as this virus will harm Maori, Pacifica, the ill, disabled and poor hardest, I just can’t see the morality in them paying the highest price so business and tourism can make a buck – we need a better solution than building more cemeteries.
National and ACT can go on and on about reopening the borders and the Government can cave into business interests and promise it to them, but the millisecond we get an outbreak we will be forced back into lockdown again because we don’t have the capacity for the sick and the dead.
Those communities who will the pay the highest price must be the ones who green light the opening of the borders – it should only be when Maori, Pacifica, the ill, the disabled and the poor feel they have been supported well enough that decides the reopening not business.
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Awesome comment, thank you 🙂
How about we hold Labour and the MoH to account for their complete failure to use the past 18 months to prepare for this moment? Where are the extra ICU beds? Where are the extra Nurses?
This lot have literally blown billions on what? We could have spent some of that money on building preparedness up rather than frittering it away on God knows what? How much did those 5 mental health beds cost?
We can’t stay locked up forever – our economy will crash and then how do we pay for health, education, etc?
Exactly. This bunker mentality is not a long-term solution.
wrong. fortress New Zealand is the ONLY sustainable long term solution while the rest of the world turns to custard
Our isolation was our greatest strength, it is fast becoming our greatest weakness.
Those who seek a Cuba like isolation also seek economic oblivion
They have bought icu beds and ventilators.
The problem is they dont have the staff to staff more negative pressure rooms and the rest that goes with it.
Nz healthcare needs a major new hospital expansion program of new hospitals on top of everything else that is failing in our current 3rd world healthcare system that has been failed for decades.
So are you prepared to die first and “take one for the team”?
So you’re ok with increased RSV deaths and suicide deaths just because “Covid and all that”?
The vaccine does (as far as I’ve been able to glean from statistics) help with mitigating severe illness. As you say here, you can spread the virus regardless of vaccination status. Whether or not you spread it as effectively when vaccinated isn’t yet known (you’d assume it would help though, since you have less symptoms), but you definitely can’t eliminate the virus using the current vaccines. Indeed, given that CoVID-19 has an “animal reservoir” (i.e. it can be carried and spreead by some animals), it will always remain a matter of time before it returns to humans even if sterilising (i.e. non “leaky”) vaccines are developed.
A particular cause for concern with respect to mandating the current vaccines is potential unforeseen consequences. For example, “Marek’s Disease” in chickens was made orders of magnitudes worse by using “leaky” vaccines. What happens is that the virus continues to mutate among the vaccinated (harmlessly), becoming ever more virulent in order to defeat the vaccine. When these “variants” are exposed to unvaccinated people, they cause far greater illness than the original virus. This locks people in ever more powerful vaccines in order to literally not die. Nice for big-pharma but obviously a major cause for security concerns (e.g. maintaining a permanent vaccine supply, even in times of war/natural disasters).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek's_disease (specifically read the “prevention” section for details on why this happened).
It is imo essential that “sterilising” vaccines are developed and deployed ASAP, so this nightmare scenario doesn’t happen or alternatively stop administering the current vaccines to anyone but the vulnerable (i.e. those likely to be severely affected by CoVID).
Good point, these inoculations seem to be palliative rather than preventative, much like morphine treats pain symptoms rather than preventing cancer.
Absolute Risk reduction 1% for phizer
The big detail is – immunity is by infection, being vaccinated increases the chances of surviving infection.
Totally agree.
Also opening the borders, is just posturing by the industry to try to re-drive the lucrative immigration Ponzi where exploitation, people trafficking and Meth are doing great guns with liberal borders and out sourced stupid visas making many in NZ much poorer and homeless and our health system waiting lists out of control.
The tourism and construction industry in particular are so deluded that they can’t seem to comprehend that Covid community outbreaks (as well as death) means more lockdowns, which mean even more delays and costs to their industries!
Save the stupid from themselves.
Labour government did not create Covid and they so far they have been doing a better job than most, keeping it out of NZ.
The people braying for open borders, mostly don’t vote Labour. The people who do vote labour are the ones who think the state has over stepped it’s boundary on telling people what to think and say with the anti freedom of speech, but Love Labour on their risk adverse Covid stance.
Yes absolutely.
…’it should only be when Maori, Pacifica, the ill, the disabled and the poor feel they have been supported well enough that decides the reopening not business’…
Good stuff! Sick and tired of these well to do tits who have the best of diets, the best of medical care and the warmest of houses having such an inordinate amount of say over the rest of us. They can bloody well learn to enjoy taking the back seats when it comes to this. Preferably with a mask on to stifle their selfish wants.
Yep, sounds good as in idea. Sorta like Socialism.
Except that in practice it doesn’t work.
Somebody has to make some money to pay for all this.
Printing money is not the answer. Unless you want outrageous house prices and rampant inflation
The printed money does not pay “for all this”. It pays for the inflated salaries of the paper shufflers and the beaurocrats. Inflation is not rampant. Outrageous house prices and rents are, however, and that is something for this LINO government to take care of. CGT. Tax property speculation and empty houses. Curb immigration. We have added a million people – 20% – in the last ten years. This BS s not sustainable.
Ra
There you go again spoiling the fun with some practical realism! Can’t have that! Must print money, must tax everyone to death, must have the most wasteful and expensive govt ever.
Billy TK’s out in Ak! Need to lock that fuck up for at least 30 days.
Him and Mrs Tamaki they both need to be sentenced to community service in the covid ward with no PPE .
Ha! Excellent call out! Cudos
Yes Trevor!
Plus Vinney Eastwood both got arrested.
Plus Vinney Eastwood both got arrested.
Absolutely. The fact this happened mere days after the govt said nz would be ready for safe international travel is kinda hilarious to an extent.
the problem labour now has is that keeping covid out was all they have going to them, Jacinda is so connected to this that if delta becomes anything like Australia, she’s going to be the one everyone blames Cos she’s front and center and a “throw the bums out” mentality in middle nz will kick in. Doesn’t matter that national would be worse it only matters to Joe public that it happened on Labours watch.
Has any country successfully stopped delta?
The people are ok and only kinda grumpy when they think it’s a three day lockdown oh boy… And whose dumb idea was the Aussie bubble…. They should start putting hipkins on and keep Ardern away from the daily briefings if she’s front and center and people turn on her well … I don’t see Grant winning an election
Goodbye pork pie. The problem with a massive caucus is if you go down in the polls you’ve got a lot of ambitious climbers ready to knife you.
What about Kiwis who would like to come home as most of the people coming in are from overseas rather then ‘tourists’.
Interesting to read the spin on the success story the UK now is, more or less got over it, adapted, learnied to live with Covid and have moved on, thank you very much. The latest promo is from business guru Andrew Barnes in the Herald says as much, where he opines NZ is looking progressively more backward.
Andrew Barnes: What it’s like living with Delta in the UK
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12465909
And yet, an article in the Daily Mail suggests quite the opposite, and that it is now worse in the UK than this time last year, (lockdowns then vs high vaccination rates now), and getting worse.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9901925/Britain-records-170-Covid-fatalities-deadliest-daily-toll-MARCH.html
What seems consistent is winter is a prime breeding time for this virus and the UK is approaching winter.
As per Martin’s belief, I’m not entirely sure we can abandon strict border controls anytime in the foreseeable future, vaccinated or not!
Also somewhat weird is the new mask mandates that the PM has forced on everyone whenever we go outside. They must know full well that the sort of masks most people have, have a relatively negligible effect on spreading/protecting against the virus – <2% after 100 days according to the US CDC's research:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm?s_cid=mm7010e3_w
They will probably be even less effective for the Delta Variant, but that data isn't out yet as far as I am aware. I'm guessing the masks are being used (globally) more as a sort of sign of solidarity that you're taking the pandemic seriously rather than genuinely trying to attenuate the spread to a significant extent(?). Anyone know?
Martyn
We’ll do what Jacinda says, we’ll all be compliant, we’ll all stay at home, we all won’t see our kids who are flatting with others, our business will take a hit, no problem…all good. We’re doing this! But you know, sometimes, like today, one feels what is the point ? What’s the point of being in Jacinda’s mysterious team of 5 million? We may as well open the borders because already there are border links to the cases, and there will be more. No surprise really. We all knew it would happen and we’re not even in govt. What is the point of having a border workers not vaccinated, frontline workers not vaccinated, first responders not vaccinated. The list goes on. The shit will come down heavy, soon as we have 500 or 1000 cases, give it two weeks or less. Then the heat will go on all that complacency, that arrogance and that incompetency displayed by this govt. The vaccine programme will be labelled stone age, and rightfully so. It should have been done and dusted long ago – simply by being mandatory. Or at least with consequences for not chosing the vaccine. What’s more, weeks ago they were advised and told to set up drive-through vaxxing, to speed up things. No! said govt, we know best…as with everything. So while we sit here and kid ourselves that govt knows best, and as we see the chaos unfold and the ‘elimination dream’ go poof, I’ll can tell you that already we are all doing our job a lot better than this govt has ever done theirs. Jacinda’s ‘kindness kontrol’ could seriously back-fire this time.
Do worry another $55 million to the media and they will find someone else to blame, because it is never Jacinda’s fault. Just like the Communists in the Gulags believed it was never Stalin’s fault they were there, even though he signed off their death quotas
Kraut how are vaxx;s working out in Israel
Well, the Hoskings and National/ACT’s of this world thought, nagged, bitched and moaned we could go back to normal and have a trans Tasman bubble. Because we just want to be normal. Yet with low vaccination rates in both countries it was stupid.
Well we did it. Where are these critics now?
@Xray Where are these critics now?
Still whining about not opening the borders while claiming it is all Jacinda’s fault that the travel bubble was opened and we need to go into lockdown. Logic isn’t a strong point.
Agree Yeti & The Kraut.
A closed New Zealand is not a strategy it will lead to an economic collapse.
Labour cannot do anything if you look at their abysmal record.( Must admit though they are the masters of theatrics and spin.)
We need real people to design a strategy to get us through this pandemic not people who cannot manage the basics of governing.
John, our economy boomed with Labours oversight of covid, it would have bombed under National/ACT, Hosking strategy, why, because they put business before lives. You just don’t get it, or more so, you just don’t want to.
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