I think we are suffering a collective delusion if we believe Covid is over.
There are a number of issues that are still ticking time bombs waiting to detonate that go beyond the mandates we are all gnawing at like a hungry dog trying to bite through its leash.
The Government today will signal which of the mandates are being relaxed while trying to reassure Covid cultural hypochondria.
On the one side are people struggling with the economic ramifications of the last 2 years while on the other side are people who have had a 24/7 media environment of doom scrolling about a virus that has psychologically terrified them.
Neither side will be happy with Labour’s solutions.
Beyond the immediacy of the mandates, there are so many problems mutating as rapidly as the virus itself – INCLUDING the virus mutating!
CHINA ECONOMIC CRUNCH: China’s continued zero tolerance towards Covid infection continues to shut down Ports and supply chains causing immense bottlenecks which are causing intense economic pain. This is going to be felt by NZ most actually because we are so economically dependent upon China. If China’s economy contracts, so will ours.
COVID MUTATES INTO SOMETHING FAR WORSE: To date the virus has been able to spend all its evolutionary energy on mutating to be as spreadable as possible because we have had no immunity to a novel virus, but as vaccination rates and people catching it grows, the virus starts spending more evolutionary power on bypassing our immunity. This could result in a new pandemic with higher mortality rates. With 80% of the planet not vaccinated, that is an enormous reservoir for Covid to mutate in.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE: We are not even close to understanding the true magnitude of a universal unique event that has caused intense social dislocation. From the Qanon conspiracy radicalisation to basic depression and isolation, we will see domestic violence soar, violent crime rise and people shut themselves away at home which in turn will impact hospitality and retail. Think of the psychological damage as radioactive fall out that will stain our culture for decades.
FLARE UPS: We are simply assuming that the current rate of Covid will stay static when it can easily flare up and over run our hospital system at any time we let our guard down.
I think masks, social distancing and a culture of social hesitancy will become the norm for the remainder of 2022 combined with the psychological fall out and the economic damage.
And that’s the best case scenario.
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If we drop the worthless Covid restrictions Jacinda won’t get to torture NZ anymore with her drawn out podium theatrics and Michael Baker will lose his status as world’s most important man.
I am no fan if Jacinda but only a flat earth Destiny church Christian and complete knob would knock the present restrictions. Not every move was perfect but most were made on the hoof so errors were bound to be made.
If I could only listen to one person or advise I rather it be Micheal Bakers wise words than the venom and hate that comes out of antivaxers which I am assuming includes our good self
Yeah, I don’t get medical or political advice from either of these two. Funny how the vaccination rates stopped being reported once the population stopped getting boosted, once they realised the government was leading them on and breaking promises, once they realised the rules they were following were just virtue performance, once they realised they would have to commit to vaccines and reliance on big pharma forever, and once they realised their freedoms could be taken away on a whim even after reaching the government’s arbitrary goals. Championed by the likes of these two actors.
Or you vaccinated or not? If not you are in for a nasty surprise one day – probably sooner than later.
What a hero! You do realise that the most vulnerable in society have just been “mandated” to hibernate with a potential death sentence hanging over their heads if they don’t. Good for you though – nothing like self-entitlement saving a few minutes of scanning each day.
Those worthless covid restrictions have saved thousands of lives. If you want to see theatre Ethan look at what Luxon said about bottom feeders and his recent comment on encouraging investors to build rent to owns when he owns seven homes so he is actually part of the problem.
Our rights have been trampled on for 180 years off white so what are your complaining about you need to handle the jandal mate.
Covid is pa. There you go again, racial profiling, and achieving nothing useful in doing so.
A re,evant read for now is The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham – read it for the first time or reread it. The journey of someone trying to retain good things from the past in a state of collapse of the old practices of human society on earth. The narrator holds to good human values in the story of a struggle of adjustment, hope and rescue with a pragmatic and moral basis. Hard decisions to make, and sorrow, and abandoning what are unviable measures in an attempt to survive but not at the lowest, meanest level. John Wyndham had his own difficulties in life and managed to retain sensitivity and an agile and practical mind in this story.
So now unvaccinated teachers can pass on covid to their students and our Police can go and make an arrest and give them and their whanau covid who will take responsibility if this occurs, the blame lies with our government. Many teachers and police work with vulnerable populations. Do we not have a responsibility to ensure this does not and should not happen.
“unvaccinated teachers can pass on covid to their students”
So can the vaccinated, there’s no real difference in transmissibility, a little less severity perhaps but that wanes pretty dramatically a few months after the jab.
Vaccines absolutely reduced transmission for the initial variants (when we were really pushing getting vaccinated) but seem to have less transmission impact against omicron. But “a little less severity” is certainly understating the impact of vaccination on hospital admission rates
The Oxford university did a study way before omicron involving 602 covid cases covering alfa and delta period. Published in the lancet. It found that though vaccinated co habitants to the primary case caught the virus one third more often if they were unvaxed than if they were vaxed; the primary cases passed the virus on just as reliably if they were vaxed as not. This is something that has been comprehensively miss reported.
Vaccination has reduced the severity of the illness in the vaccinated individual but once that individual is invected he/she can pass the virus on to someone else exactly as effectively as a carrier who has not been vaccinated.This has always been the case.
D J S
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There have only ever been two options with Covid.
1. Eliminate
2. Co-exist.
China, Taiwan and North Korea took the first option.
Three of New Zealand’s four Five Eyes partners and most of the rest of the world took the second option.
New Zealand also took the second, then the hastily switched to the first (along with and its Polynesian neighbor states) and lastly returned to the second option.
Specific vaccine mandates only made sense when Elimination was the chosen strategy. Vaccine passes never made any sense at all, and the other mandates make no sense when borders are open and the virus is endemic in the community.
“Co-existence” comes down to the state saying to the public. “We are no longer trying to control this pandemic. What you do to protect your own health is now up to you”.
You are quite right Martyn. The risks have not gone away. The responsibility for managing those risks have just been abdicated by the state and must now be taken up by the public as individuals and communities.
We now have to take care of ourselves our whanau and our hapori as well as we can by following simple rules of infection control and more generic approaches to physical well-being. At the individual level elimination amounts to a well person, and co-existence amounts to a sick person. We want as many of our people to stay well for as long as they can.
Meanwhile, all eyes will be on China and Korea. If they can manage to achieve elimination on a scale 2000 times greater than New Zealand, then we might conclude that Jacinda, Chris and Ashley gave in too easily. That is by the way. Now there is no question but that we have to take care of ourselves.
My point is lUXON is a hypocrite and has slipped by showing his true beliefs despite saying he deeply cares about everyone. Did he not pay for his houses using his big fat airy NZ salary and who owned airy nz, us the tax payer. Top aren’t in parliament so what do they have to do with it. And governments are currently trying to deter people from buying up our multiple houses as an investment as it reduces housing stock for those trying to buy a home.
B4 has arrived!
“Omicron: BA4—Looks like a new recombination sub-variant/possibly variant has been found: believed to be a recombination of BA1 and BA3 at the moment: sequences found in South Africa, US and Puerto Rico so far…:For reasons that have never been made clear the fact that Sars2 is capable of breeding with any other RNA virus is never talked about: surely the risk is not just recombination of Sars 2 variants, but recombination with other RNA viruses too?”
https://twitter.com/EnemyInAState/status/1506340380702294019
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