Despite the leadership shown by Jacinda to go hard and early, Delta’s long tail is spoiling things by refusing to play nice.
My guess is that Auckland will remain in level 4 until at least the 20th.
What is exacerbating this fight against Covid is the extreme poverty so prevalent in South Auckland, that poverty is helping spread the virus.
I believe that Covid will be spread by the travelling rich and paid for by the poor.
If we want to combat Covid, you must first combat poverty.
Overcrowding, poor health, poor housing, poor diet and a shadow community of overstayers are all combining to make Covid impossible to defeat.
We should grant amnesty to all overstayers if they agree to vaccinate and we need to urgently fix the housing crisis while boosting free breakfasts and lunches in all South Auckland schools.
If we don’t fight poverty, we can’t beat Covid, but that’s not the only issue here.
The world Auckland returns to as it comes out of level 4, is the world the rest of NZ are facing now – a far less free society.
Masks in public, masks in schools, the mandatory collection of all our locations – this is a less free NZ than we left. This is a NZ that curtails our freedoms despite the increased sacrifice of lockdown.
Battling poverty to stop Covid while being left with a less free society despite our collective sacrifice is going to be frustrating and for many, angering.
With barely 30% vaccinated, there is no way we won’t go back into lockdown even if we beat his current outbreak.
But that’s a glimmer of normalcy we can’t obtain until at least 80% vaccination.
Remember, this pandemic is but the first global shock wave of the climate crisis where overpopulation and jowl to cheek living arrangements make for the perfect pandemic. If we struggle past Covid we enter a world where external shocks caused by extreme weather events become the norm.
We need to start accepting that in a post growth world, 2019 was as good as it got.
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Can we now remove “hard and fast” from our vocabulary. Extremely painful and slow is more apt.
We were smug when the rest of the world went through lockdowns. Doubly so when Sydney got done like a diner. Now the shoe is on the foot and while the rest of the world finishes or at least sees the finish line we aren’t even midway.
Judging by this morning Grunter got some bad economic news over the weekend. Me thinks the pigeons are coming home to roost.
Naw,… the Americans shot all the passenger pigeons last century, – and still developed the Spanish flu. Aint no pigeons flyin’ home this Christmas.
Lol touche
Yes the traveling middle class bringing this disease back here only to hit the least well off the worst in there biggest population concentration in this country, by far.
And despite all the rules of lockdown set by nice Wellington based middle class folk, when the rubber hits the road, they don’t mean much in overcrowded Auckland.
Any regrets yet Chippy for not engaging your brain and having quarantine anywhere but a main center?
One days GST lost in Auckland in this latest lockdown could have paid and built the Taj Mahal of quarantine centers far away from a busy main center. But the dumb arses collectively couldn’t think even that far.
I’m picking level 4, indefinite and not ending the nice way our government thought it might. The questions are though, how long can NZ’s economy tolerate Auckland been offline and how long until Aucklander’s lose faith?
The TDB’s esteemed Editor has laid it out here before–and it is a stark choice with COVID–Public Health vs Death Cult capitalism. That is as blunt as it can be put. At this stage at least two thirds of NZers are still holding out against mass deaths of their friends, family, and neighbours. Long may that last.
Sure many of the whingers in the media day after day are petit bourgeois rather than monopoly capitalists, they are owner operators or running small outfits or SMEs. They seem baffled that running a business is not a right that entitles them to universal love and support! It is a competitive dog eat dog scenario with no guarantees–welcome to what workers have faced forever–uncertainty and intermittent income.
It would be nice to have an equal number of working class people describing trying to live in cramped shit holes on reduced or no wages to complement the hard done by cafe owners. The Overseas Student, Mass Tourism, and Migrant Worker tap has been turned off, get used to it. Anyone else notice unemployment is down and upward pressure on wages is a thing?
The next pressure has to be on the Labour Caucus from a united movement for promptly addressing poverty and a state house mega build. If COVID is not fought to the bitter end, this country will not be worth governing and the doom and gloom merchants will get their wish.
@TM. Yes excellent comments again.
Interesting your view from the NZ goldfish bowl.
I can understand it with the Government/media proganda machine in full swing.
Much is rattled on about the low level of vaccination in NZ and how we are condemned to lockdowns because of the poor (being breeding grounds for Covid spread having low vax rates).
I have recently returned from 6 months in Cambodia(SE Asia), a 3rd world country.
70% of the population are dirt poor and living rural.
The urban poor live on the streets and those working class in urban areas live in tight packed community.
To try and get the feel of it. Imagine an area the size of your lounge. With 5 people (3 generations) living, cooking, sleeping there.
A house in Otara would look like a palace to them.
So definitely the poor you talk about.
But they have VERY high vax rates(90% plus) and already 700k 3rd jabs given
Have they done a Denmark (73% 2 jabbed) and removed all restrictions?
Nope, still a large number of restrictions (including alcohol sales have been banned for over 12 months!)
So vaxing the poor is not the solution.
Maybe NZ will head down the Denmark path with daily cases running around 400 and deaths being 1 or 2 per day and acting like adults.
Yep, I will win lotto on Wednesday as well, fat chance…Oops should I rather say overweight on the negative.
But we shouldn’t have poor people in our country Czar Henare and you shouldn’t compare our level of poverty to a third world countries poverty, they are totally different as are the people. Hasn’t Cambodia been given millions from China?
So if we go by your propaganda we’ll all be fine?
The latest Public Health England data was recently released, and it clearly shows these vaccines kinda work like an anti-vax – specifically in the 40-79 age bracket – in that they seem to actually increase infection rates(!!!). Any notion that we need these vaccines to “stop/slow the spread” is utterly debunked by this report. See pages 14 (raw data) and 18 (chart form):
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1016465/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_36.pdf
So it does look like these vaccines in specific age groups are already exhibiting VEI (Vaccine Enhanced Infection).
No cause for concern just yet – also detailed in this report is that the vax does continue to work well to keep people both out of hospital and from dying, however it is something to keep a close eye on – especially if new COVID Variants make an appearance which might be further aided by the vaccine.
Also noteworthy in this report is that some 97% of England now either have natural-immunity or vaccine-induced antibodies for COVID. So effectively only very few COVID related deaths (given that natural immunity is 13-15x more effective than the vaccines) in England that occur from this point onward can be from the widely demonised unvaxxed group (given it represents just 3% with no antibodies). Again, something to keep in mind going forward.
If the unvaccinated die that will put the IQ in England up. My 84 yr old sister has been told that she will get a booster covid shot when she has her flu shot.. School children are now the biggest area of new cases.
But we shouldn’t have poor people in our country Czar Henare and you shouldn’t compare our level of poverty to a third world countries poverty, they are totally different as are the people. Hasn’t Cambodia been given millions from China?
If the finish line is death Frank who cares what the rest of the world is doing, if its slow, fast or hard whatever death is death and we don’t want any if we can avoid it. The rest of the world is actually in one big f….n mess.
Some races have not developed immunity like other races… and cunning. Then there is pure breed dawgs…
In some villages 80% of people died from the flu, whole families, this is nothing compared to those times.
Many times those diseases were introduced into native populations…
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