Why & when Jacinda will go back into Level 4 lockdown

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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. 

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.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

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. During the measles and Covid outbreaks did anyone see Dr Ash actually working within the South Auckland community…No.
    Dr Ash had two jobs, Quarantine, and Vaccines — failed on both, yet, lectures Kiwis nearly day about doing the right thing, smug shit

    • The powers that be (PTB) will protect their 9% enablers as best they can. with their control/ownership of the propaganda apparatus.

    • What are you talking about , we are in the best position of any country, now all we have to do is get vaccinated its now all up to us

    • I’d like to chip in my 10 point plan for Ashley.
      1. Bring back the T.H.C corporation, to build bespoke MIQ facilities next to international airports, and convert them to hotels between pandemics.
      2. Pre purchase an oral booster for variants, so that even needle phobics get immunized, or equip one of the vax buses with nitrous anaesthetic for the anxious.
      3. Only allow vaccinated people to cross the Auckland border, or enter NZ.
      4. Immunize all children to age five.
      5. Approve a test for covid immunity levels, so anyone who may not be well protected can get their immunity checked.
      6. Approve treatments to address the gap, of people in the community not yet sick enough to go to hospital.
      7. Approve non specific testing at airports for when a pandemic first hits, but international travel is still going. Eg, temperature or acute phase protein checks.
      8. Improved resolution of effluent testing down to postcode level, so that future lockdowns can be restricted to postcodes of cities only.
      9. Fund mrna vax research and manufacture capabilites.
      10. Stockpile long shelf life PPE, in the community.

  2. Modelling schmodelling…it’s all part of spinning the fear….Labour’s lifeblood. There is no way 7000 kiwis would or will die. Utter horseshit. Anyone who buys that hypothesis is a religious Jacinda worshipper.

      • It is difficult to argue with The Krauts hypothesis given the vast research and evidence based practice he put into his comment.

        • Folks, I need to defend myself! Most if not all of Labour’s ‘calculations’, have fucked out – to be blunt. So forgive me for being a bit sceptical.
          Here goes:
          – Our ‘calculations’ will build 100,000 houses – fucked out
          – Our ‘calculations’ will drive down house prices – fucked out
          – Our ‘calculations’ will stop rents going up – fucked out
          – Our ‘calculations’ will lift 100,000 kids out of poverty – fucked out
          – Our ‘calculations’ will have light rail to Mt Roskill in 2021 – fucked out
          – Our ‘calculations’ will build a bike bridge – fucked out
          – Our ‘calculations’ will get the bodies out Pike River – fucked out
          – Our ‘calculations’ will guarantee zero fees study – fucked out
          – Our ‘calculations’ will get rid of illegal guns – fucked out
          – Our ‘calculations’ will have vital infrastructure completed – fucked out
          On the basis of that track record, one can only assume that the ‘7000 deaths’ are based on an extremely far fetched ‘calculation’, and mostly designed to scare the shit out of us. Fear is their strategy to guarantee Labour re-election. It won’t work. And that will be another failure.

      • CNN and a GOP state. Next thing you’ll tell me that the Haitians under the bridge are a Fox News plant…..

      • Both points could be true, they are NOT necessarily linked.
        For your point to be valid, YOU must thus be anti war, anti poverty, anti American/British/Saudi/China etc, etc etc, UNLESS you are willing to ‘stand in a hospital A+E and pick and choose who Dies ‘.

        So IMHO nonsense

      • Medical professionals have to do that every day of the week – socialised heath care equals rationing so there just aren’t enough resources to save everyone hence Doctors have to make calls and people die as a result. Pharmac also restricts what drugs we can get access to arguably leading to the unnecessary death of some.

        • Dead right Yeti.
          Our health system is riding on a knife edge every day due to blatant under funding for decades turning it into a semi privatised system reliant on you being able to afford health insurance and tough shit if you cant.

      • Geoff
        Well, let’s see…I think a good place start is to have a priority queue for ICU & Ventilators. The sign will say: VACCINATED: HAVE PROOF READY.

    • That is rather sour, Kraut…

      …and oafish if I may say so, if you are unfortunate enough to get COVID, try and make sure you get sent to the comments section online rather than a hospital–social media seems to be where all the top medical experts are these days!

    • This seems a trivial estimate to make, given available data.

      UK has close to 90% vaccination rate. Seven days death rate per million population for UK is 11.94.
      So 11.94 * 5 * 52 = 3100 death p.a.

      Which is similar in scale.

      Please tell us how this conclusion is so far off, The Kraut.

      • We are not the UK. Different climate, different vitamen D levels, different commorbidity stats.

        Look to previous illness waves and you will see a difference.

        Sure, we do have one section of our community that feature highly in poor general health stats but they are a tiny proportion of our people. Look to Scotland if you want to see a real spread of poor lifestyle choices.

        • Maori = 16.5% (arguably ethnic idenfication)
          Pasifika= 9%

          Statisically, both these groups “feature highly in poor general health” outcomes. Combined, a quarter. Not really a “tiny proportion” Gazotaki.

  3. 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.

      • So Kevin the vaccination testing has been rushed. So what. How many people do you know have had a problem with it. Without a vaccine world death rates would be of plague proportions. In some places they already are. If you’re to anxious to have the vaccine to support your fellow humans be honest and say so. Just stop the clap trap about the vaccine being untested.

      • No it wasn’t rushed. Covid was different because so many people were fucking infected and seriously ill, that normal clinical trial periods, which take ages just to recruit enough participants, could be accelerated massively. Try and research things instead of blithely repeating urban myths.

    • I wouldn’t be too clever or smug if i were you. You are not living in nirvana just the south island and delta is only one flight and a cough and a sneeze away from you. So best you get vaccinated asap so that you can keep the goal of no Covid alive

  4. 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.

  5. Like it or not, Pandora’s box has been opened.
    There are so many selfish pricks out there detemined to sabotage our collective efforts, and I get the distinct impression another Level 4 scenario will not be nearly as effective as it once was, thanks to them. We’ve already seen it this time around, and the resultant stubborn chains of transmission out in the community.
    Two groups highly represented by sociopathy – namely ‘entitled pricks’ & ‘criminals’ will ensure our collective demise.

    • The ‘entitled pricks’ will get jabs and by-and-large follow the rules (even though they despise them). The gangs will not and that is where at present the majority of infections are centred at present.

      • “…….gangs…..the majority of infections…..”
        I find that bold statement a bit of a stretch Frank. The problem is, yes for sure we now know criminal elements are active vectors for the virus, but by their very nature (secretive and evasive) we simply cannot make the claim they are where the majority of infections currently lie ‘cos we ain’t got actual numbers!

        “….‘entitled pricks’ will get jabs and by-and-large follow the rules….”
        Again, the evidence doesn’t support such an assertion. It was the entitled who insisted they have a right to travel beyond their bubbles. Who wanted holidays to Australia, Wanaka, etc. They are in fact, the worst when it comes to compliance!

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. Come on Martyn, using Shaun Hendry certainly doesn’t help your argument. No one apart from possibly your good self and Jacinda believe a word he says.

    7000? Tell em he’s dreaming!

    • That’s right, vaccine rates are so-so, so let’s wheel out Hendrey (whose track record on modelling is shoddy at best) to come up with a number so large to terrify people into vaccinating.

      FFS People are under enough stress as it is, but to ‘make up’ bullshit numbers to scare people even more is completely irresponsible. Shaun Hendrey should be listed under conspiracy theorist, and I thought the media don’t publish conspiracy theories?

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

  11. 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.

  12. 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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