Jacinda, under enormous pressure from the economy, domestic violence and all the other stresses our level 4 lockdown has caused has finally cracked and she has loosened Auckland down to Level 3 despite there still being 20+ cases a day.
Aucklanders rejoice while the public health commentators get nervous.
There are of course political winners and losers.
WINNERS:
Auckland – We get it Auckland, you couldn’t get a ‘real’ coffee for 5 weeks, fuck you are brave and noble. You are practically the same as the boys at Gallipoli, such courage and strength.
Death Cult Capitalists & Treasury – They finally spooked Grant with some terrifying graphs that suggest the last level 4 lockdown has set the economy up for a huge plunge if we don’t get back to work now. The sheer cost on the Government’s books is beyond anything we’ve ever seen and Grant is nervous.
Auckland Organized Crime – what the media aren’t really pointing out is how Covid has seeped into the organized crime community and it is their refusal to give track and trace information that is extending the Delta tail and hindering in stamping this current outbreak out. So a win for Organized crime but a curse on the rest of us.
LOSERS:
Anti-Vaxxers – There is a point is there not that after all the attempts to get people vaccinated and all the messaging and promotion – after that, if you still don’t get vaccinated and then you catch it and die, that’s not really on us anymore. If you are too stupid or pig headed to get the vaccination, your death is on you and we shouldn’t have to waste ICU space on you. I will defend your right not to get the vaccine while protecting my right to laugh at you when you die.
Maori, Pacifica, Old & Poor – The problem of course is that the real collateral damage here even at 90% vaccination will be Maori, Pacifica, Old & Poor who will pay the true cost of opening up the borders and moving back to ‘normal’. The traveling rich will spread it, the domestic poor will pay the cost.
Migrants & Stuff columnists – Jacinda will move the country back into level 4 lockdown at any vaccination rate less than 90% and that’s why the Government have welded MIQ shut.
Stuff will run story after story about how cruel we are being to migrants stuck overseas but it all falls in deaf ears politically and electorally when the stakes are this high.
CONCLUSION:
Moving to level 3 is a huge political gamble for Jacinda but one she feels she can make based on her trust of the track trace infrastructure.
If the gamble pays off, Jacinda will be lauded again as our protector and she could eat a kitten live on the Mike Hosking ZB Breakfast Show and Labour voters will blame the kitten for being delicious, if the gamble backfires and Delta spreads in Auckland requiring going back into Level 4, Jacinda will do something no other power on earth has managed, make Judith Collins look good.
At barely 40% of the country fully vaccinated, don’t for one second think we won’t go back to Level 4 if there is another outbreak.
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C’mon Bomber Jacinda has to be a loser here. It is becoming apparent Robertson, Little etc lent on her heavily with regards to this decision. As does St Ash. He looked like a 2yr old with his favorite teddy bear taken away from him when the decision was made. Hosking had free reign/open season in his last interview with him.
Winners – Seymour has to be acknowledged. In a sea of paranoia and misinformation he has been clear, concise and logical when all other politicians can’t seem to know what the plan is post vaccination (whatever number it is)
But let’s be honest there are no true winners or losers for at least 2 weeks.
In the interim do you trust the gangs to:
1). Isolate and get tested
2). Be honest regarding their movements.
If you want to eliminate Delta it cannot get into either the sex industry or organized crime. Our luck has run out. I’d wager its a 30/70 proposition we get back to zero cases.
Frank
Yep. Your assessments have substance.
Except last para: ‘It” cant be eliminated.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/09/21/guest-blog-ross-meurant-target-zero-zero-next-elections/
If you argue against elimination it triggers a few here that have drunken the Jim Jones/Jacinda Koolaid. That is of course until you change the definition of ‘elimination’ like St Ash has done and how the PM changed the definition of ‘hard and fast’
Unfortunately the sex industry and organised crime don’t do click and collect
He who laughs last.
If you come to a conclusion based on limited (biased/slanted) information, dont be surprised when your conclusion is wrong.
Pessimist soothsayer of doom.
Tooth-sayer
Sleuth sayer
Truth sayer
(Political) booth slayer.
Buffy
She had so much potential but threw it all way to be popular with Mike Hosking types who actually despise her.
Losers –
Auckland in general. The economy shit itself.
Covid elimination
Aucklanders were over it. Using Auckland as the gateway to the virus because from Jacinda down, they couldn’t see the risk of an outbreak in crowded poor suburbs, saw us locked down once too often and laugh at coffee’s but theoretically being unable to leave your street is a massive fuck off. Domestic violence never looked so grim. The point is though by week 3, knowing the police weren’t going to much more than warn, such is the passive submission policing model that is Andrew Costers vision, people got moving and mixing anyway. Much to Jacinda’s frustration.
Chances of further effective lockdowns.
Slim to none. Auckland is done with them. All that will be achieved is destruction of NZ’s economy next time, whilst Delta does what Delta does. And Aucklanders give the middle finger to authorities.
Any remaining vestiges of hope Labour had turned a corner and learnt lessons.
Nope. The plan was simple. In the face of months of Delta basically do what we’d done for 18 months. Keep leaky MIQ’s mostly in Auckland, make vaccination optional for front line workers, have no rational plan for vaccination roll outs, hope the opposition kept infighting and impose a level 4 lockdown in Auckland when it happened. But do not beef up the hospitals, do not build purpose built quarantine facilities away from a major centre, do not beg, steal and borrow vaccines to overcome our hopelessly delayed roll put, do not risk model, and most of all, just don’t think.
They might want to lock down Auckland even more but forget it. The horse has bolted, the virus is coming to a town near you and Labour’s reprehensible lack of foresight, risk management and severe inability to organise anything is about to haunt it!
Our government has faked it and got away with it. But now times up!
C’mon Mike. Time you got off your horse, she’s mighty tired.
Leave Andrew Coster out of it XRay – managing our way past hotheads is what we need at present; everything unsure.
Love how ‘gangs’ are the new hate group to pretend they are the problem for the woke and government and Natz supporters – it used to be landlords. They got rid of the landlords so the woke/Greens/Labour/Natz could put the renters on the streets and in motels in 2021.
Maybe by pretending NZ gangs are the problem, the woke can lock up the local gangs and leave the more organised and sophisticated individuals organising the organised crime and bringing in the hundreds of kilos of Meth, people trafficking, cigarettes, not the KFC and $100k drug/takeout runs that our local gangs are good at. Harry Tam could use another 2.7 million, I’m sure to give the government some more advice on drug rehabilitation and domestic abuse issues.
anti vax people are everywhere, and seem to be very middle class. If they offered $100 a jab outside gang and drug houses they would probably make a killing.
illegal immigrants are awash, so maybe just look into a few factories and construction sites in Auckland and orchards in Hawkes Bay. Maybe NZ citizenship worth millions for each jab, could draw them out.
No word on the prosecution and naming of the patient with Covid who refused to stay in their bed and thus potentially spread Covid around in a North Shore hospital, putting the staff at risk and others not being able to access health care as many doctors and nurses are all stood down. Seems like just as bad, if not worse, as the Wanaka wankas making big news are their names are out in the public eye.
I’m sure Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen would be lining up too, if he was alive for his government vaccination, like a good Kiwi resident. Sarcasm.
No mention if vaccination was compulsory for the inmate on remand spreading Covid in Waikato, or if Tarrent has had the jab yet.
Don’t think the scientolists or many religious groups will be keen for the jab.
Seriously, pretending and spreading the message non vaccination and Covid spread, is all due to Gangs!!!!! Wake Up!
The New Zealand Law Society and the New Zealand Bar Association are two of the most powerful gangs in the country with links to Police and Parliament. They get to decide who will be judges and which convicted people get the most severe penalties.
At present lack of discipline among its members has demonstrated these gangs disregard for the law as applying to themselves. Specificially breaches of quarantine.
Obviously the captains of these gangs will demonstrate their even-handed approach to quarantine breakers by applying the maximum penalties( imprisonment) to their members who breach quarantine.
STOP LAUGHING!
I’d say anyone who thinks a proper coffee comes in a paper cup consumed on the run, is the loser sucked into spending for the sake of consumption, there is so much more to a real coffee, conversation and the scent of the roses.
The “deadly delta variant” has infected over 1100 people, some got sick, some barely noticed it, one old lady in her nineties (and with multiple co-morbidities) passed away.
Listening to “the podium of truth’s” message to the flock of five million you’d think we were going through a combination of the black plague, Spanish flu, mad cow disease, swine flu, bird flu and Ebola.
Hear hear David, but as Upton Sincliar said…………“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
1900 deaths a day in the US because they didn’t have an elimination strategy proves you wrong.
Why did we go into lockdown when community cases started to manifest? Cases are still manifesting but we are going down levels? If we just wait long enough then will the government ease restrictions for no other reason that they can? While making stuff up and changing definitions?
The answer to that question is vaccinations.
The government will ease up on the totalitarianism if the Wiles-Baker-Hendy-et al doctrine (“the science”) starts to contradict itself, starts to harm instead of help, or causes the government poll numbers to fall. Sister Ardern has evolved throughout this endemic, initially wanting zero deaths, then zero covid, then zero cases and then today, “zero tolerance for Covid”. Forget “jab, jab, jab”, sister’s got spin, spin, spin.
If the sun is out tomorrow it will be warm, if I get six numbers in the lotto, I’m a winner, if, if, if. If it doesn’t contradict itself it’ll be Sister Jody’s spin, spin, spin!
Imagine wanting zero death’s how appalling.
All other countries over 5 million are still experiencing raging covid-19 infections resulting in exceptional demand on hospitals and ICU’s, and unacceptable deaths. The grim-reapers of the right wing are sad that Covid-19 is under control and that widespread deaths with streets full of body bags is not happening. I was initially surprised that Tamaki moved to level 3 like the ill-informed tory followers were however after Bloomfields explanations last Monday and today it is now clear that Delta can be reigned in. Thank you Jacinda and Ashley.
“All other countries over 5 million are still experiencing raging covid-19 infections resulting in exceptional demand on hospitals and ICU’s, and unacceptable deaths”.
Yes. You’d think here in Godzone some people have no idea what is happening elsewhere. Where does their horizon end? Cape Reinga?
The decision to move Auckland out of Alert Level 4 while new cases of Covid were still being notified in the community signaled an end of the New Zealand government’s previously successful Covid elimination strategy.
The government has not openly announced the change. It has almost gone so far as to deny that there has been a change, but the evidence showing that it has is so strong as to be almost conclusive.
Firstly, if the tough measures (Level 4) have failed to achieve the object (elimination of community cases) logically you do not turn to less rigid measures (Level 3) to achieve the same object. You would either continue with the rigorous controls as long as necessary, or introduce even more rigorous measures. The abandonment of Level 4 before the object of Level 4 had been achieved was tantamount to both an admission of failure and a change of strategy.
Secondly, the Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield has stated that zero community cases is no longer the goal. Since zero community cases is the definition of elimination, that also is tantamount to a change of strategy from “elimination” to “suppression” or “containment”.
Thirdly, the New Zealand government has been quietly renaming its alert levels. Alert Level 4 was originally named “Elimination”. It is now “Lockdown”. The word “elimination” is being slowly phased out of public discourse.
Fourthly the shift of emphasis to “vaccination” is an implicit admission that the elimination strategy has been shelved. Vaccination was the backstop to elimination. It is now the alternative to elimination.
Like the boy who said “The Emperor has no clothes” some New Zealand public health experts are now daring to state the obvious, which is that the government has moved away from elimination.
What are the consequences of the change in strategy from “Elimination” to “Vaccination”?
First, as the government has pointed out, elimination is still possible, but it can only happen through good luck since it will not now happen by design. People and governments are free to trust to their luck against a highly contagious disease such as Covid, but if they do they cannot claim to be taking a cautionary approach.
Second, vaccination does nothing like what elimination can do. Covid vaccines may be relatively safe but the evidence suggests that they are also relatively ineffective. Furthermore they will never cover the entire population as elimination did. Many will remain unvaccinated because they are considered too young, have medical contra-indications, or choose not to be vaccinated on other grounds. So there will be Covid-related illness and there will be deaths and there will be long term adverse effects even among those who have been “fully vaccinated”. The public health system will be under strain even if it is not completely overwhelmed, and in the short term at least the economy will suffer more than it did under elimination.
Elimination has given New Zealanders domestic freedom of movement and social interaction. It benefited public health, not just with respect to Covid, but with respect to continued access to medical treatment for all types of non-Covid related conditions. The productive economy by any standard functioned well.
However elimination was not Jacinda’s first choice and despite appearances it has not had her full commitment. She originally planned to follow Britain down the track of suppression, but just in the nick of time yielded to the weight of public and epidemiological opinion. Even then the trans-Tasman bubble, instituted against epidemiological advice, greatly increased the risk of Covid here, and has now left thousands of New Zealanders stranded in Australia. Without the trans-Tasman bubble, New Zealand might not be facing its current dilemma.
Some argue that it was inevitable that there would be outbreaks of Covid in New Zealand and, in effect, that the elimination strategy would fail, yet there was no inevitability about it. If the strategy succeeded in the beginning, it could have succeeded over the longer term. It just required commitment and sound decisions. Putting MIQ under the administration of the New Zealand military which has not managed to win a war any time in the past sixty years was not a good decision. Neither was opening the trans-Tasman bubble to indulge the desires of a narrow section of New Zealand business and the most affluent section of New Zealand society at the expense of virtually everyone else.
So what now is the prospect ahead of us?
“With luck” Covid may be eliminated once again.
Otherwise individuals will have to make some decisions of our own. First whether to become vaccinated and second to what lengths if any they should go in order to avoid infection by the virus. For some the answer will be strict isolation regardless of vaccination status. For others avoidance of high risk situations such as large public gatherings, or meetings with strangers, social distancing, mask wearing etc, will suffice. The foreign advisors who successfully, and against the mass of local opinion, urged Jacinda Ardern’s government to drop its elimination strategy are saying that the answer is to “teach people how to risk calculate” which is a classic neoliberal argument. Put people in an unpredictable situations where there are many unknowns, they are saying, and you can still expect them to make the decisions which have good outcomes for themselves and others. The truth is that some will do better than others, but overall this strategy will come at a high social and public health cost.
Further down the track we should consider the wider risks of persisting with a colonialist government for which pragmatism so easily degenerates into political expediency, a government which is never completely open about its strategies, and a government which works on the assumption that if only the right sentiment is conveyed persuasively and with conviction, the need for practical action may be avoided. Whether with regard to poverty, housing, public health, or foreign relations, and now Covid, the walk and the talk of the New Zealand government lead in very different directions.
The state which lacked the will to defend New Zealand’s border against Covid will in all likelihood fail to defend its people against other potentially more deadly threats.
As PM Jacinda says – ‘Speaking at today’s briefing, after the release of new modelling which suggests lockdowns may still be needed if the country achieved an 80 percent vaccination rate, Ardern said vaccine certificates, better ventilation, some mask use, and the possibility of changing border restrictions so a full 14-day quarantine isn’t required could used in the future.
But for now vaccination is the main tool.
“It all comes down to vaccination.”‘https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/452126/covid-19-briefing-it-all-comes-down-to-vaccination-pm
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