I’m all in favour of the State seizing private property but why take crappy RATs?

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
28
1344

Covid-19: RATs send Government skittering

It was a real through-the-looking-glass moment on Wednesday as Ashley Bloomfield hit back at claims that the Ministry of Health was “commandeering” or “requisitioning” supplies of rapid antigen tests – at-home Covid tests – saying that what they were actually doing was “consolidated into Government’s stock”.

The claim came in response to businesses who thought they had tests arriving, only to be told the ministry would be gobbling them up.

Look – I’m all in favour of the State seizing private property for the glory of the people, but why seize shitty tests that are 20% false all the time? –

Why the fuck aren’t we seizing Megalandlord properties or ghost houses or rich peoples money to feed poor kids?

Why must this seizing be of things that embarrass the Government by exposing their glacial bureaucratic incompetence rather than seizing obscene wealth to redistribute?

I’ve seen dead rats swallowed with more grace than this.

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28 COMMENTS

  1. I think this issue has been blown way out of proportion as usual and to use the word confiscated and theft is a step too far.

    • No it’s not blown out of proportion. The government didn’t want them but now they do. Thick. Businesses knew they would need them and ordered them when allowed. Intelligent. But now those orders have gone to the government so they can distribute them because they know best who should have them. It might not be theft but is morally corrupt.

  2. The seizing of RATS is embarrassing because for so long the Government said they didn’t want them, they had no need for them, and other people like critical infrastructure businesses weren’t allowed to import them.

    So now if you want to minimise the labour Government’s embarrassment, you have to argue that the RATs have no real purpose, therefore no harm done!

  3. We dont need RATs at this time as we are still exhausting other tools. RATs are last resort tools for the failed governments around the world who lost control of covid and couldnt stop the deaths. Aotearoa is in a different position. Since those coming back through the border have been pouring in like rats full of omicron it looks like we will be in the same situation. They should be made to bring body bags back with them. The uneducated tory media businessmen and commentators have blown it out of proportion and should listen to the scientists not the Seymores and hoskings.

    • WELL THAT’S THE END POINT OF RIGHTWING UPHILL FLOW OF CAPITAL AND ETERNAL DEBT ANYWAY
      …so what’s the diff…you should be happy nitrium.

  5. Yes Ada they didn’t want them initially due to them being unreliable and that was when we were dealing with Delta, Alpha and Beta we now have Omicron. And due to the share numbers that will get Omicron we are left with no choice but to use the RATS. We already know the other nose tests is more expensive and takes longer for labs to process. Businesses need to stop biting the hand that has been feeding them and work for the greater good not themselves. And the nonsense we have heard about the RATS being confiscation is highly emotive and I thought they were talking about our stolen and confiscated Maori land, now that is theft and confiscation.

  6. Nikorima says “They should be made to bring body bags back with them”
    What? The number of deaths will be minimal according to experts (and I suspect less than those dying of the booster -one already in Wgtn that I know of).

    • name of dead person in wellie name please or a checkable citation please leigh…

      and no a rightard anti masker in florida claiming to be the father of a fictitious dead aussie child will not do…

      just when you think anti-vaxxers can’t get any lower…fake dead kids FFS..
      some people are just a waste of skin.

    • The businesses are complaining about ‘appropriation of their stuff?’ Really? In a global pandemic, to save the population of the team of 5 million, sacrifices must be made.

      And these are the same “businesses” who had their hands out for government 5 million taxpayers’ grants to keep their businesses afloat during lockdowns. Lockdowns which were about saving the livelihoods and lives of population of the team of 5 million.

      Some businesses have very short memories, but very long doses of hypocrisy. These businesses were happy to be part of the team of 5 million when it suited them to have money borrowed on their behalf.

      One of those classic Star Trek Mr Spock moments really: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa6c3OTr6yA

      Suck it up businesses, put on your big boys’ panties and stop whingeing.
      Take one for the team of 5 million, or has Chris Luxon John Key offered you all a better deal for businesses? Add more pressure to Labour, to add to taxpayers’ union; Destiny Church rallies; patsy questions for journos at Covid briefings; or way more rabbithole nutters ringing Magic talk?

      “As H.L. Mencken once pointed out, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.”

      • Well @”One of the team….”, on One Network News tonight, you could not have foreseen South Canterbury wheat farmers signalling “wheat, flour and bread shortages and empty shelves” or “price-rises” because of lack of wheat harvesters .

        The Aertex-collar-up brigade were also wearing heels, and pristine, newly ironed-by-the-help, monogrammed shirts (to get free advertising). Not a drip of sweat, nor dirt on any one of them from doing the harvesting themselves, instead of bleating on about employing slave-wage-Filipinos and Pacifica.

        Aertex brigaders would have been the first in line for handouts for lockdown income and weather emergency handouts. What about giving the Government and taxpayers a reimbursement of the lockdown handouts money, or from the “record milk solids payout”?

        Any surplus will no doubt be going to the ACT Party, New Conservative and TOPS Party and National Party as “donations” for the election warchest.

        The taxpayer shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for the Aertex-brigade to grow a social conscience. All they can think of is cheap overseas labour, higher commodity prices, anti-Cindy-Marxist banners and lower taxes for farmers under a NACT (National Act coalition). And a diesel-ute rebate under NACT!

        Item 2, was a “Three waters”, yet another litany of “Dirty-politics-Tea-Party” attacks on the Govt, as Steve Bannon-style Breibart attacks on the government continue, now that Covid is about to tsunami through our team of 5 million. But, we are 95% vaccinated now, so a 3 day extreme flu can be expected, and up to 400 deaths, if modellers are correct.

        Groundswell, and the Freedumb Coalition, is just another iteration of the Roger Kerr’s Business Round Table, Dirty Politics, ACT neoliberal ‘I’ve-been-thinking” gobshite.

        Gird your loins Labour, the paru paru is about to hit the fan, and the stench of National, ACT and Dirty Politics lingers closely around them, like sandflies around my fruit bowl.

        Will the Taxpayers Union, National and ACT demand that the social welfare given to the farmers and businesses supported by the government during lockdowns be refunded? Don’t holdr your breath waiting for that to happen? Will Chris Luxon extract himself from being John Key’s glove-puppet and tell farmers to pull their heads in and pay back the social welfare handouts they got? Don’t hold your breath!

        Don’t hold your breath trying to stop Covid, or waiting for National, ACT and the Taxpayers Union to turn on their poolitical (sic.) right-wing, neoliberal mentors.

        We should forget toilet paper and stock up on manure and dildos to throw at these hypocritical harbingers of woe right-whingers (sic.). Don’t hold your breath about that style of protest, because manure and dildos will be in short supply.

        You heard it here first!

  9. Yep and the uniformed comments on how awful RATs are is really depressing – including from our host.
    Anytime clinical medicine becomes political it becomes impossible to have an adult informed conversation.
    RATs have a role. That role has been down played in NZ largely for political reasons. There are about 20 different manufacturers with variable sensitivity and specificity and to make these generic – “RATs are useless” comments is partisan and uninformed. The ball was dropped here.

  10. Let me ask some heretical questions: Do we really need testing in this stage of pandemia? What for? So that we can publish the number of cases? There were no testing in the times of previous epidemias like Hong Kong flu. You became sick, you visited or called your doctor, got advice and treatment, when you became too bad you called the ambulance. Everybody knew that when you got these and these symptoms you had it.

    • @Alexandra …. Minimising a deadly pandemic? Really? Are you vaxxed?
      Dekanova … Djokovic? Did your alleged second test Code number have a lower Code number than the first?
      Are you Whispering Kate again?
      Please give us your real name, so we can charge you and your fellow conspiracy QANON nutters with manslaughter for peddling your Covid misinformation and fake news?

      ACD? Another wannabe Trumper or MAGA hat collector Todd Muller? Trump-loving AOC hater?
      Part of the Coalition of Freedumbers and Destiny klingons, or the Dirty Politics Nats like Muller, Collins at it again? Will you lot never learn about the consequences of dirty politics? It seems Luxon is learning from his mentor John Key though, when asked what National would differently, ducked for cover ‘Well the reality is we’ve got a lot of time, so we’ll tell you later’ Only another 434 lies to go to emulate the best PM that National could put up for New Zealand? https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/06/04/435-lies-by-john-key/

      If you want to spread you minimising virus lies, or attack the left, stick to being in the Taxpayers Union, Harete Hipango’s right-wing nutfest faction, Density Church and their rentacrowd

      Here’s the real Alexandra’s actual web presence. Hopefully her web presence will help fight the anti-democratic liars like you. https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/

      How can you tell when QANON nutters like ACD are lying?
      When their lips are moving, or their fingers typing @Alexandra.

      • Hello, Bullshit detector, unlike you and many others in this blog I am here under my own proper name.
        Other things that you wrote on my address do not qualify for an answer.

  12. My flatmate and myself were sick with the Hongkong flu in London in the second wave of 1969 and we were really sick, it was shitty. We had our little radio on all the time and all we got for encouragement by the gov was to stay at home, use plenty of pillows to prop yourself upright, drink plenty of fluids, the hospitals were overloaded etc. It was hell but we got over it in the end. To use the toilet we literally were crawling to get to the pan. The landlord downstairs was dropping off saucepans of soup outside our door bless his heart. I think it will come to this with Omicron. People will just use their judgment and endure as best they can. Personally I think you are safer being out of hospital, its the last place you want to be. Good luck everyone over the next couple of months. Kia kaha.

    • @Kate. 50 years later, we all know that The Hong Kong flu and the moon landing were both West vs East conspiracies. Soup was left outside the ‘accommodation’ in both fake news events.

      Covid, The Springbok Tour, The Falklands War, and the recent Pittsburg Bridge collapse, were all about political manipulation of a gullible public by politically left-leaning Fake News media outlets.

      • You need to get back on to your medication. What I experienced during the Hong Kong Flu pandemic was bloody true. Take your meds right now and have a lie down. You may have come and seen but you are deluded all the same.

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