Why & when Jacinda will go back into Level 4 lockdown

By
Martyn Bradbury
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76
2407

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.

The posturing by the Opposition that Jacinda should vow to never again go back into Level 4 Lockdown is exactly that, just posturing.

The naked truth is that the grim modeling tells us that even if David Seymour would send NZ back into Level 4 Lockdown while vaccination numbers are so low…

COVID-19 Delta modelling shows 7000 deaths per year in New Zealand with 80 percent vaccination rate

Modelling shows even if New Zealand reaches a COVID-19 vaccination rate of 80 percent, there would still be 60,000 hospitalisations and 7000 deaths per year, without restrictions. 

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Auckland University Professor Shaun Hendy, a disease modeller, says a vaccination rate of “well over” 90 percent of over 12s or into the 5-11 age group would help to control Delta, but some restrictions would need to remain. 

“The modelling tells us that for Delta, population immunity is still out of reach by vaccination alone,” Prof Hendy, who advises the Government on COVID-19, said on Thursday as the Te Pūnaha Matatini data was unveiled. 

…there’s just no way in hell that ANY NZ politician would allow 7000 kiwis to die or shut down our entire hospital system with 60000 sick.

That’s why 90% vaccinations has to be the goal because at that level the annual 500 deaths and 5500 hospitalizations are manageable, 7000 dead and 60000 hospitalizations however are just unsurvivable politically.

That’s why 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.

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76 COMMENTS

  1. I’m an anti-vaxxer, which means of course I also worship Trump, guns, coal, walls and hate migrants. Look I’m more Vaxx-hestitant – I mean why would I want to front up to the head of the queue and get an experimental (yes normal FDA drug development lifecycle is 7-10 yrs not mere months, so it’s experimental) drug pumped into my beautiful body because big-Pharma says it’s safe. I’d rather trust The Wiggles than a US drug outfit run by billionaires.
    Yes ok I will get it, maybe before xmas, but down here on the Mainland we’re free of the covid so what’s the hurry? My wife has been jabbed and said I have to do it, which means I obey, otherwise certain treats maybe withheld.
    It’s just that there is nothing that riles me more than big-government jerk-offs telling me what to do. I just hate bureaucrats and pen-pushing wankers in overpaid jobs doing a tough 9-5 in the office ordering my life, and like a goodie goodie robot we shall all obey! Fook them all.

    • Sounds like you have a case of “Newmonia”–(whinging about the introduction of anything fucking new) which is highly contagious among grumpy middle aged men.

    • Good on you for being so honest.
      Yep it is definitely experimental and rushed.
      A LOT of dodgy stuff is/has happened (quelle surprise) when BIG money is to be made, to make these ‘legal’.
      Any future film about these ‘vaccines’ will make a Ponzis scheme seem immature, the ‘Big short’ seem reasonable and Bernie Madoff look like a decent hard working clever chap.

  2. The models are shit.
    No one has hit 90% and the odds of us getting there are circa zero, but both the UK at 67% vaccinated and Denmark at 75% have far far lower mortality than that suggested in the link.
    It’s easy to check those stats online, do a google.
    Scaremongering by government like this just destroys trust.

    • I don’t what is more depressing. That the government would resort to such petulant behaviour or that the media just parrot it back as undisputed fact. Our functioning 4th estate is dead

      • Oh yes…..we do NOT have a fourth estate by any reasonable definition of the term.
        A SMALL select wealthy elites own/control the media, with a fair bit of Govt (via the spooks) input.

        • Soooooooo much better than Simple Si, Toxic, the breakfast morning goon squad and the rest of the feckless that infect the MSM over here.

          • Oh dear, you really are deluded.

            “Fox News has been described as practicing biased reporting in favor of the Republican Party, its politicians, and conservative causes while portraying the Democratic Party in a negative light.[25] Critics have cited the channel as detrimental to the integrity of news overall”

            They have infected you Fwankie.

      • That would be 5000 here – but I suspect Hendry is factoring in the health system weakness in ICU and population demographic health issues (high rates of diabetes etc).

        There were 26,000 in the past month in the USA, which is slightly lower than the UK per capita. Closer to 3-4000 pa here – but again there is the issue of our limited ICU capacity, lack of monoclonal antibodies, lack of mass testing to control spread.

    • 90 % is of eligible, not total population. Scotland has 4.4 mil pop, 90% fully vaxxed(plus extra case immunity), 7 day average deaths are at 20. That’s 7000 per year. Hendy is realistic.

  3. I was part of the South Auckland Community once. They have a hell of a lot of respect for the labour party. Its not Ashleys job to promote labours policies in the community. The Labour Maori and Pacifica members of Parliament and Jacinda do that work. I havent seen any of the Tory members or PM Collins or Dr Reti in South Auckland supporting the Maori and Pacifica workers at the testing and vaccine stations. Its Dr Ash’s job to get expert advice from Aotearoa and around the world and to articulate and recommend options to the Government to make decisions. All the right wing is promoting is doom and gloom 24/7 in the last 18 months and they have been wrong all along. I say rejoice everyone and thank Jacinda and Ash for our safety.

  4. Just had a look at this – as of today we have 1.7M people (40% of the Pop) fully vaccinated and 75% with one dose. We’re currently pushing out about 50,000 vaccinations a day. To hit 80% of the eligible population we need to dish out another 1.7M jabs which if we can hold the 50,000 a day rate means we will be there by the end of October, Auckland will probably be there sooner.
    I think at that point it’s going to become incredibly difficult for the government to keep such harsh restrictions in place as people just won’t accept them. This will be amplified by the comparative success of other countries who are opening up.
    I really think we’re on the up and if we can just keep the south Auckland outbreaks contained we will be back to normal by December.

  5. 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.

    • Yes there will be a regret at the loss of elimination (because it covered all and allowed Level 1 freedom), it’s also a pity Auckland did not take in 5-10,000 vaccinated people from overseas into home isolation during the month of lock down.

    • But should the Government find reason to reimpose a Level 4 lockdown, you will find yourself having to eat a lot of that considerable load of words.

  7. Misleading modeling. Under the 7000 deaths model 11% of those hospitalised die. By that rate over 100 should be dead from the current outbreak !

  8. Why do people like Donald Trump and Amesh Adalja from John Hopkins University believe they have the right to meddle in New Zealand’s public health policies? Why do they not take the same approach that we do to Sweden, saying “That is an interesting response. Let’s observe the outcomes and see if we can learn anything from the experiment”?
    Why are foreign leaders and “academics” so keen to scuttle an elimination policy which has worked well for the people of Aotearoa?
    The obvious answer is that those who like to call themselves “our traditional allies” do not want Aotearoa to head off in a different direction to the United States and the United Kingdom. They understand that if Aotearoa moves into relative isolation, self sufficiency and mana motuhake as a means of combating the Coronavirus pandemic it may not stop there. Our people could become accustomed to the idea that they can be prosperous and secure as an independent nation. While US and European billionaires are finding it more difficult to jet into their bolt holes at Wanaka or to manage their estates in the Wairarapa, their forests in Tai Tokerau and their industries in Tamaki Makaurau, the people of Aotearoa have been finding that they can actually do very nicely without the presence of such folk in their motu.
    The elimination of coronavirus from Aotearoa is as much a threat to the interests of the US and UK as New Zealand’s nuclear free legislation was to the governments of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and that is why “the rest of the world” deems it necessary to intervene in opposition to the strategy. Jacinda Ardern could not be seen to be yielding to such outside pressures, any more than David Lange could have caved in over the nuclear ships issue, and thus the change from “Elimination” to “Suppression” was undertaken surreptitiously and, not to put too fine point on it, deceitfully. Not for the first time, the colonialists have betrayed our people.

  9. Why we will got back to lockdown 4: Because it’s the only thing covering up Labour’s wider incompetence

    When will we go back to lockdown 4: When her poll numbers start falling

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