Omicron NZ Surge: Winners & Losers

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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.

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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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32 COMMENTS

  1. 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!

    • the govt have bowed to ‘business’ once again setting up in effect a ‘scares commodity’ situation where their business buddies can cream it by gouging kiwis to the bone…but in a ‘kind’ way

  2. 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

  3. Jacinda/Labour are losing their banked ‘brownie points’ stacked up by NZ not having 80,000 deaths (bad modelling forecast) with the mandates, the ‘we know best’ rubbish (RAT’s theft/confiscation fiasco).
    The ‘Podium of truth’ patsy questions asked by so called journalists to the PM.
    She should just step down before the hard questions are really asked from the so called (bought and paid for) journalists about child poverty/homelessness/houses built from 100,000 kiwibuild policy embarrassement etc etc (she will cite family commitments as reason of course, who cares really!)

    • What utter rubbish “I’m right”. If the media are “bought and paid for” where do you get all of the information about not meeting this target or that target? Are you constantly submitting OIA requests, or endlessly googling this report or that report to work all that out? If you are then well done, but I seriously doubt it.

      I tend to watch a lot of what would be called MSM and I am f’cked if I can find anything positive. Call them shallow or inept but they are not in the governments pocket. If they are I would ask for my money back.

      • @Wheel….are you honestly not on drugs, sober?
        You truly telling me if National were the Govt that the MSM wouldn’t have front page headlines and leading news nightly with child poverty stats (worse now than when St Jacinda took over), Labour and MSM berating and hounding National when motel costs for temp homeless was costing 300,000 a year….Andrew Little especially vocal, under St Jacinda it has hit, and surpassed, a million bucks a DAY!
        Yes Wheel, there is no bias is MSM, but bias by omission?
        What do you think?
        John Campbell doing nightly reports a few months before 2017 election, weeping each night on cue, MSM giving stories of families living in garages/cars….after the election and Winston annoints St Jacinda to the new PM….nothing, no stories/no John Campbell’s tears. Why? Did the ‘crisis’ suddenly get sorted, did the ‘crisis’ vanish overnight?…NO, the MSM is inherently left wing and they only report on what they wish and having a nice 55mil hand out with promise of another…why would you ever bite the hand that feeds you?

        • So ‘I’m right’ what is your definition of “bought and paid for”? First you say there is no bias but bias by omission, then you say its only reporting what they wish.

          You didn’t answer my original question but given you are not happy with the content I assume MSM is not foreign to you. You would have to be blind not to see the countless stories on underperformance. Granted it might be dominated by negative COVID response stories but, duh, there is a global pandemic happening (which wasn’t around when National where in power) so that might dominate content at present.

          If you are unhappy that the questions aren’t tough enough, that is not the same as the MSM not reporting bad performance and enabling the viewer to draw their own conclusions. You will find no argument from me that Labour are doing a bad job on numerous fronts.

          Interesting you bring up John Campbell (check out morning TV and you will still find him doing stories on kiwi’s doing it tough). Is that the same guy that had high ratings with Campbell Live but some how Mediaworks decided to ditch him? Who was the PM then? I am quite sober thanks but you appear to be off your face if you are using him as an example of left wing manipulation of the media (when he lost his show under a centre/right govt)

          • Ahhh Bert…..always waiting in the wings when your beloved St Jacinda is being called out for terrible governing and stats.
            But it’s OK because Bert will mention Key as PM 6yrs ago and everything is fine in his head.
            Seems Key is living rent free in that spacious empty head, you really should evict and move on Bert as it’s not healthy! And at your age too.

  4. The ‘winners’ are those still alive while the ‘losers’ are the 56 surely?
    56 people have died and thousands are sick because the greedy neoliberals lobbying a greedy, neoliberal gubbimint, now on the ropes, opened up the borders into a country well able to isolate.
    What many of you can’t, or refuse, to fathom is that AO/NZ’s economy is agrarian primary industry exporters. We grow food and wool fibre primarily for export. So why did the gubbimint ignore common sense and allow a deadly pathogen in? I can answer that. It’s because our good ol boys have been stealing from our agrarian primary industry via money launderers called ‘producer boards’ for generations and they couldn’t let that particularly nasty mangy old cat out of the bag by having a virus show us as having been far more financially wealthy than could have been imagined. Aye Boys?
    Meet Mr Rat? And he’s not the only Rat.
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4582922/John-Key-reveals-plan-for-asset-sales
    I read that jimbo bolger was giving good advice on rnz
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/462025/political-leaders-should-get-off-their-high-horses-jim-bolger
    But then there’s this courtesy Te Ara
    https://teara.govt.nz/en/cartoon/33892/selling-state-assets
    “The Bolger and Shipley National governments of the 1990s shared this view and sold many state-owned enterprises, including Air New Zealand, New Zealand Rail and Contact Energy. ”
    Why is bolger still being sought for opinion by RNZ? Hmmmm…?
    In my humble opinion, people who die from C-19 and the Delta and Omicron variants are the victims of crimes.

    • Not too late to put Roger Douglas, Ruth Richardson and Mrs Shipley “up against the wall”, along with Michael Bassett and many others. Alternately for the squeamish, they could be exiled to the Chatham Islands to the end of their days, and supplied with a generous monthly stipend equivalent to the Minimum Wage.

      The new gens need to wake up politically pronto and organise to retire the NZ neo liberal state.

  5. 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!

  6. 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.

      • and the american the poor can die system?

        in my system the unvaxxed who turn up would be triaged to the parliament lawn…..

        see andy anyone can do the ‘edgelord thing’ it’s not big or clever and very much last years thing.

        • I wouldn’t want the American system either. It’s grossly inefficient thanks to regulations that give Big Pharma and Big Insurance a free ride.
          All those morbidly obese people we see wandering around malls on a Saturday mornings know perfectly well that the stuff they shove in their fat faces is harmful, but as humans they have both rights and agency: It’s their choice and I’m the last person to want to tell people what to eat. But ultimately they should wear the consequences, not you and I.

          • joggers and mountain bikers are prone to leg and hip problems in later life..a known fact so should we deny them treatment ‘the damned running bastidz it’s their own fault”….the damage alcohol does, anyone with a beer fridge should lose their healthcare.

            you are right that the obese are self indulgent and their own worst enemy…as are we ALL, our behaviors cause shit…it’s just that the middle class approve of some and condemn others on a ‘what’s hip this year basis’

  7. I’ve been drawn into a morbid way of thinking and today’s a Sunday and I love Sundays so enough of that.
    I’m going to tell you a joke told to me by a dear old friend who’s now dead. In this particular life anyway. He was the headmaster of St Peters Colledge somewhere, I can’t remember, Whanganui I think it was, and who was responsible for the abolitshion of corporal punishment in schools. He was, and likely still is, a lovely fellow.
    He once told me with a wry smile that if he had to write my biography it’d have to be on asbestos paper.
    His daughter and I think now one of his sons lives in Ireland and it was when my old friend was visiting them once where he met an even older Irishman smoking a pipe while leaning on a sleeping Hereford bull out in the middle of a paddock. It was that old bugger who told my friend this joke.
    ” There was this travelin salesman feller headin’ just down that road over there when his car started to misfire”. He gets out and lifts the bonnet to have no idea what he was lookin at.
    A voice from through that thick Hawthorne hedge right beside that gate there said in a kind tone
    ” I heard ya comin’ and oi bet it’s dirt in the carburettor…, that’d be it, I bet. Take a look, it’s easy enough. Remove that pipe and blow down it. No not that one, the odder one. Dat’s it. Dat’s the fashion, you’re doin’ well.” And sure enough, with barely a try the engine started and ran better that it’d done in ages.
    The traveling salesman was gleeful as he could be and walked briskly to that gate to lean round to thank the kind gentleman for his patience and good advice but all he could see was an old white horse gallopin’ off with it’s tail up to show it’s arse. The salesman was more than slightly rattled at that. Who was that man and where was he now? He can’t be in that spiky hedge, there’s nowhere else he could be and he certainly wasn’t on that damn old horse runnin’ about, fartin’ like a soldier…? What da fuck’s going on…!? Oi Need a drink.”
    And with that, he drove off down into that valley to the Tickle and Feather for a curative whiskey.
    He walked in, pulled up a stool and sat there looking somewhat like he’d seen, or rather heard, a ghost. One that knew about cars, for Christ’s sake!
    The barman was steadily looking at the salesman when he duly came over to take the order and once received, he began to pour two fingers into a wee glass then he asked ” So? You’re not from here abouts and you look like you seen a ghost? You ok Mr? ” The salesman began to regale his story with a shiver in his voice about how he was given good advice which saved the day and only to discover there wasn’t another fellow about.
    The barman eyed the salesman up with a quisical look then asked seriously ” Did ya see a whoite horse then? ”
    The salesman said ” Why you ask? Yes I did? It ran off with a fart and a snort! ”
    That barman said ” Ah… just as well it was the whoite horse then, the black horse knows nuthin about cars. “

  8. 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.

      • probably because the majority of actual cases are vaxed because most kiwis are…now if you wanna talk hospitalised or ICU that’s a different kettle of stupids.

        where did you ‘read’ that trev if it wasn’t in the reports…covidisntrealbutemfis.net

    • naw son it’s soros jewish space lasers, the symptoms of which are cunningly designed to mimic a ‘non-existant’ virus

  9. 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?

  10. 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).

  11. Arrrh! There are 67,968 cases in total. That’s the only number that matters. The daily figures change by the hour, especially when they’ve just been released.

    This puts Hootons calculations slightly ahead of the curve. It seems to increase by 20% a day.

    • … the only number that matters.

      Numbers don’t matter any more Denny. Reluctance to get tested, self-reporting if postive, those who are asymptomatic – all this makes a mockery of the daily count.

  12. well it increases their chance of not dying andy, so that’s a purpose,
    or are you ok with the thought of dead kids?

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