Covid-19 Omicron outbreak: 13,606 community cases of Covid; 263 in hospital; 5 in ICU
There were 13,606 new community cases of Covid-19 announced in New Zealand today.
There were five people in intensive care units and 263 people in hospital, the Ministry of Health said.
We are finally seeing the true magnitude of Omicron and it will scare the bejesus out of us.
We’ve spent 2 years in a remarkably protected space, if we had a similar mortality to other comparable countries we would be talking 3000 dead rather than the 56 we have. Worst case scenario is we will add 350 to that number over the next 6 months. This is going to cause shockwaves.
Using such grim math, there are political winners and losers.
WINNERS:
Jacinda & Labour: Politically the lives saved has been banked, the shock wave of sickness and death we are about to experience will do one of two things. It creates a rally around the flag moment where the worst fears of modellers are finally proven correct leaving an electorate that is desperately grateful to Jacinda and Labour OR incompetencies with RATs, confused self isolation rules and supply chain shut down causes fear that becomes anger and quickly avalanches into blame towards Jacinda and Labour. The Sword of Damocles hangs over this Government.
Public Health: To date the remarkable stats have been a public health victory, it will be the next 6months that we are truly tested.
LOSERS:
David Seymour vs Christopher Luxon: Luxon steals everything David suggests, both are fighting for the news oxygen like two bald men fighting over a comb. Their fundamental problem is this…
…those stats are a public health victory and public policy success. They only have impatience and anger to harvest rather than actual alternatives.
Government Advice: Does anyone even know what is going on now? Phase 3 is stay at home and die quietly please? Is that it? Don’t forget to pop those bears in the window.
Economy: Jacinda and Grant poured billions into the housing market and the housing market exploded. They used failed free market dynamics in a market already mutated beyond recognition by free market dynamics and it has resulted in one of the largest transfers of wealth in NZ history…
Wealthy nearly $1 trillion richer since Covid began – Hickey
An economic and political commentator says since the Covid-19 pandemic reached Aotearoa, the rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer – in part due to the Government’s policies.
…the knock on effect of 5% inflation plus mortgage hikes caused by interest rates being forced up over the ocean of private debt is a fucking maelstrom of damage.
Small business owners who have been alphas all their life and have grown attached to the liberty that liquid gives them are about to go belly up and that bitter resentment will feed ACT.
The poor are suffering beyond the financial fears of the middle classes, food banks are spiking 500% more demand and their overcrowded existence is ripe kindling for covid.
Hospitality & Tourism: The psychological impact of 2 years of Covid has the vast majority of people shut in. staying at home and this has become habit now. Hospitality and Tourism will haemorrhage because even past Omicron, people’s shut in habits won’t change. We haven’t had a unique cultural event like this since World War 2, so the magnitude of behavioural changes hasn’t been factored in.
Parliament Lawn Protestors: Omicron will hit their dirt village and move through it like plums through diarrhoea. Their last stand will be surrounded by Ambulances, not riot police. The irony will be that just when Labour lift mandates, it will have already burnt through the protestors.
PSA: Their decision to walk out on strike is just so poorly timed and crass.
CONCLUSION:
The complexities required of moving from ‘Jacinda & Grant will save you, stay home’ has moved to 6 pieces of information for essential workers to navigate during an Omicron Pandemic that shuts down supply chains to get a RAT test so they can go back to work quicker and sicker.
While juggling kittens and chainsaws.
Now we find out what 30 years of the neoliberal experiment has left us with, can the free market amputation of the State protect us or has it all been one giant ideological Frankenstein experiment that has left us with a grotesquely underfunded State too anaemic to protect its people?
Let’s find out over the coming months as the State shrugs in the face of an Omicron Tsunami and says, ‘goodluck’.
After this has hit and passed and destroyed lives, let’s ask why we don’t fund a bigger State with a more progressive tax system eh?
Brace for impact comrades.
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To state the complete obvious, the numbers will be far far worse. RAT kits, just a few weeks ago deemed illegal by the MOH, are unsurprisingly easy to find as an honest real estate agent so plenty of us are going to have to guess we’ve got it,, or never notice, but in any case reporting that to the deeply bureaucratic moribund MOH, not so much.
It will be next to impossible for the government to plan for, not that they ever did plan and rather get swamped by a health tsunami instead. Having had recent dealings with the MOH the government would have been better and more accurate using a crystal ball reader!
RATS this whole sorry story of mismanagement shows the Labour government up for what they are now . They did a great job for 2 years now they are like headless chickens not knowing which way is up ..Inflation mandates MIQ tourism health all basket cases
In also at at loss why the MIQ system is still in operation. It’s it to prevent travellers from catching Covid from us? I mean, what a waste of money!
Not sure how you want to rebuild the public hospital system. Specialists in NZ can double their salaries simply by flying to Australia. My salary has been given a pay freeze in the face of 6% inflation and the tax rise has seen what I do get reduced. Our hospital system is 1200 specialists short and many of the existing ones exhausted. All this before Covid. Now you want “a more progressive tax” system which will reduce my pay even more. So how much effort do you think I’ll put in, even if I stay in the public system? How do you propose to get on top of the Covid backlog when the people required to do it are looking at that posturing fatuous fool Little and saying Fuck You?
The above also goes for the nurses who are coldly furious at their treatment.
I accept that Little should immediately at least double the salary of specialists.
I’m sure through that he can’t be called a posturing fatuous fool for in 2008-09 not setting up systems which would see us in 2022 have at least 1200 more specialists. How long does it take for a specialist be trained?
We haven’t produced enough doctors and nurses and fruit pickers and builders and truck drivers and crop harvesters. And whatever.
This is the consequence of socialized medicine.
In my system the fat, the addicted and smokers would be triaged out in the carpark and told to go home. I’m fed up of propping up these losers.
Overseas experience tells us that the antivaxxers will learn nothing even as they fall seriously ill, their ranks dwindle and they monopolise the ICU units.
They know its not a virus that is killing them, it is Big Pharma and medical science that is deliberately killing them by denying them their Ivermectin and disinfectant.
Don’t you sometimes wonder though why they have completely stopped reporting the vaccination status of new cases, hospilisations and those in the ICU?
No, But if I did I’d attempt to find out why, I wouldn’t just JAQ off by laying eggs of insinuation.
You on the other hand try to draw some sort of conclusion by pointing to non existence of evidence.
Sigh…very much this.
For those that live down the rabbit hole this is very much their modus operandi.
Not in the reports I read 15 hospitalized 53 not vaccinated
Love your hyperbole Martyn. Kittens and chainsaws, I feel as a citizen in kitten mode; I do want some protection and care. It’s unfortunate that the NZ governments though have settled into a mode that doesn’t want people to die simply at peace, and puts all its efforts into keeping Covid at bay because we are so precious. And then does so little to facilitate those who are ltrying to live and work and don’t spend all their time tapping out notional systems and devising models with coloured graphs about things that might happen, or disasters that have happened (that no-one takes any notice of because that’s not allowed in the Brave New World songbook).
Meantime we can’t get action on other contentious matters. The government has worn a groove in their chairs not allowing them to rise to the cause of enabling reasoned availability of marijuana and euthanasia, because we are too precious to be risked. or given up. Dearie me, am I mad or is it the rest of the country out of step?
2020. Border up and eliminate. Tick.
2021. Mandates to realise high levels of vaccination That would crush Delta in 2022. Tick.
2022. It’s Omicron, not Delta. Adjust plan.
1. Play for time to get people boostered up. Tick.
2. Open up the borders to returning Kiwis (when their rate of infection is probably lower than the domestic population).
3. Slow not obstruct spread. Move to natural immunity amongst the younger healthier, and public facing workforce and the unvaccinated (allow protests) in the Autumn (post summer Vitamin D boost to reduce hospitalisations and pre winter problems for the old and those in poor health). In this phase the work from homies and oldies will play it safe.
4. Bring in the Omicron variant specific vaccination (to protect those yet to have natural immunity).
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