Covid 19 Omicron: NZ surpasses US death rate for the first time
New Zealand has marked its darkest day of the pandemic with a record 34 deaths, taking the country’s Covid-19 mortality rate past that of the United States for the first time.
Experts say despite daily case numbers starting to plateau, given the lag in hospitalisations and deaths, that rate could climb even higher over the next few weeks.
And with case numbers in our biggest city also dropping, a top health official has warned of a “Mexican wave” of infections and regional spikes, as Canterbury and South Canterbury experience a peak.
University of Otago epidemiologist professor Michael Baker said New Zealand’s daily Covid-related deaths per million over a seven-day rolling average were now higher than in the US, which is about a month out from its Omicron peak.
Covid has exposed the bleeding gums of our inequality in a way bandaids and half measure social policy simply won’t cauterise.
It will seep into the rotten cavities of the societal inequality we have persistently ignored.
Overcrowded cold homes where the middle class work from home privilege doesn’t extend to.
The over stretched food banks, the culture of dumping our old people into lowest cost accomodation and the motel half measures for the homeless all combine with 50 000 households living in poverty, hundreds of thousands of kids in poverty and entire generations now locked out of home ownership.
The user pays neoliberal experiment of the last 30 years has made the speculators and bankers rich beyond imagination while the poor have fought over the crumbs.
The vast majority of Kiwi’s who have died so far are over 70, once it gets into our under resourced retirement industrial complex, deaths will soar over 400.
Turns out fighting Covid means beating poverty.
How did we forget that?
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But 34 people did not die of covid, in fact no one, especially the Ministry of Health will say.
But they did at least note that some simply had covid on top of all their other illnesses but did not die from it. And in reality perhaps none of that 34 did! And by their flawed math, how many are in hospital specifically because of covid and not for another medical problem? Who really knows?
When numbers quoted become fiction, no one listens to them anymore! The question becomes why!
Around 2/3rd of the deaths of those with COVID would not have occurred if they were not infected.
Just as well we have a super safe and super effective vaccine that 95% of people have taken and 75% of those have boosted that totally stops you getting infected. Oh wait.
But many NZers don’t want to get their kids vaccinated (cause apparently Omicron is mild) and it might be for many kids but are they happy for them to pass it on to people who at risks and we are seeing it now.
They do have separate stats for those who died with Covid but not necessarily as the main cause, and for those who died with Covid as the underlying cause.
https://www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-case-demographics#deaths
I think it’s hard to tell with those who died where the main cause was something else, if Covid contributed to the death because it weakened their immune system. Sometimes they do a postmortem to check, but I’m not sure if they always do.
They don’t have stats by economic class, but the fact that Maori are 50% of the deaths compared with European or other are due to Covid as the underlying cause is an indication that the poorest are hardest hit.
My understanding is it is difficult to determine cause of death when a person with comorbidities gets Covid this was what our Aussie epidemiologist have said. If we are underestimating imagine what some other countries have done or are currently doing. As for the fear element one only had to watch tv and see mass graves, burning of the Covid dead in Indian and so on. Give us some credit we are not that fucken stupid when we see what’s happening overseas we are thankful we are far away and have a half decent health system. But never the less Covid is here due to travel and we need to deal with it.
I agree with your thoughts. It seems the anti vax brigade need to prove they have superior intelligence to the majority that are vaxinated and we are being led by the nose . In truth they just look silly and not worth spending time arguing with .I am just pleased the mandates sorted out the teachers medical people who should not be trusted due to being easily swayed by social media
According to an article in the Herald last night, fewer than 50 of the 338 mortalities blamed on covid can be attributed to being caused by covid.
Simply because someone starts to question Mickey Mouse statistics given to us by a bumbling arrogant bureaucracy like the MOH does not make them antivax, which I’m not.
In fact it undermines what’s left of the credibility of the MOH and why the country is currently being strangled by the traffic light restrictions!
Lol. Slowly but surely the sheeple are learning our Glorious Leader didn’t save anyone and just delayed the inevitable. Along the way poor man’s Gordon Brown pissed 100B against the wall of corporate welfare and woke pet projects while Allowing the criminal element of this country a free pass in the name of progressive thinking.
Happy times indeed
Having got the Bug (Covid 19) at present myself this will definitely hit people with underlying health conditions hard. I have had a dry cough for 4 weeks now, which is a symptom of Long Covid. Note I have been a casual smoker over the past 50 years, health average, mixed caucasian middle class, healthy diet.
We sort of needed the Pfizer anti-viral here last month.
And when it arrives in April we need to use it well – identifying the infections of those at risk asap and getting the treatment to them early.
Yep, we definitely need more of the awesome totally not corrupt Big Pharma to solve the pandemic with more untested drugs.
We will have a fairly high death rate because of the appalling health standard of so many of our citizens.
It stands to reason that the poorer the diet and the fitness, the lower the immunity. These are factors our governments over the years have deliberately refused to ameliorate.
Agree but also to an extent, genetics and behaviour play a part. Behaviour as in, anti or no vax. I note PI deaths are lower than Maori particularly amongst younger folk. (PI have high vax rates across the board and equal or higher health risk than Maori)
When parents refuse to vaccinate their kids (and its there right) there is nothing we can do but let them spread it and unfortunately someone else usually bears the brunt this is the hard reality.
Yep the immediate death statistics don’t make for pleasant reading, but somehow me thinks this is only the beginning as we move on from covid and the imposed mandates the true mortality rates alongside other collateral damage imposed on society will truly manifest itself in the coming years.
Interesting read in the NZ herald over the weekend on the toll it has taken on the people, mainly the NZ defence force personnel who have managed the various MIQ facilities around NZ/AO.
My understanding is it is difficult to determine cause of death when a person with comorbidities gets Covid this was what our Aussie epidemiologist have said. If we are underestimating imagine what some other countries have done or are currently doing. As for the fear element one only had to watch tv and see mass graves, burning of the Covid dead in Indian and so on. Give us some credit we are not that fucken stupid when we see what’s happening overseas we are thankful we are far away and have a half decent health system. But never the less Covid is here due to travel and we need to deal with it.
Fear hasn’t come from our government, people need to stop blaming we only had to watch TV and see mass graves in South America, cremating in India and bodies stacked in makeshift morgues (namely vehicles) in America that is enough to make anyone fearful. Covid has had and continues to have a toll on the entire world not just little NZ. Lets hope the new anti viral drug is distributed more equitably as the vaccine rollout wasn’t. We should have vaccinated our youngest first as they were and remain more reluctant instead we vaccinated our elderly who are more likely to get vaccinated without too much coercion.
You mean “we’re all in this together”, was nothing more than propaganda!!?!
We have a sick broken system, which makes it impossible for democracy to flourish.
Sars-Covid19 is showing up all the faults and all the fickleness of late stage capitalism.
The Greedy just can’t be stopped from their unquenched desires – to the detriment of us all.
We have a broken country with some broken people with warped views and ideology.
Like this guy…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/parliament-protest-donations-went-into-bank-account-of-man-with-history-of-unpaid-debt/R42YDV3EMXIGHEF2CR25L6XZM4/
Man who threatens to kill our PM gets one year in prison, man who deals meth gets 15 years in prison and man who has sexually abused young men gets 6 months home detention, something is seriously wrong here.
Austin Petersen and Eric Draitser are just fabulous in this 2013 debate. I usually re-watch it every couple of years to see whose arguments I’m now leaning towards. Lots of entertaining clapbacks too.
https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/mcdonalds-us-american-dream-725/
McDonaldization:
Has the American dream come to an end? What does the recent McDonald’s minimum wage guide say about the nature of labor in the US? And, is there a way to improve income disparity? CrossTalking with Austin Petersen and Eric Draitser.
I thought this article summed it up succinctly: https://www.rt.com/news/552626-ukraine-conflict-living-standard/
because: https://www.rt.com/business/553002-us-russia-oil-imports/
hypocrisy at it’s finest if rt is correct
When parents refuse to vaccinate their kids (and its there right) there is nothing we can do but let them spread it and unfortunately someone else usually bears the brunt, this is the hard reality.
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