Jacinda cautiously kept the country in Red as Auckland and Wellington pass their Omicron peak and everyone was grumpy.
‘How dare Jacinda keep protecting us from a novel virus’, we grumbled on social media, ‘It’s just like Nazi German’ someone you don’t know well chimes in on your comment and you wonder how many fuckwits you’ve accidentally friended on Facebook.
As we jump to over 400 dead, the borders are thrown open, mandates relaxed, smug antivaxxers predict public hangings and Covid hypochondriacs scream that everyone unmasked is an unkind genocidal murderer of the immunocompromised.
Oh and Dr Bloomfield resigned.
There are of course Winners and Losers.
WINNERS:
New Zealand: The success so far of our Covid response is remarkable and this will be considered one of the great public health responses. Labour saved us from as many as 3000 extra deaths over 2 years, that’s amazing social policy. Our collective action saved us all.
Public Health: Our Covid response deserves respect and praise.
Hyper Tourism: With restrictions being removed, hyper tourism is back with freedom campers shitting all over our country side and bus loads of tourists causing infrastructure stress all so a business (that is probably exploiting a backpacker for staff) can sell those tourists Red Bull and V.
Migrant worker exploitation: With restrictions being removed NZ can get back to exploiting migrant workers, undermining local wages and creating more stress on the rental market! Yay!
International Student language scams: With restrictions being removed the International Student language scams will be back pushing up rentals, pretending to create a pathway to residency and rorting the system. Yippee!
Dr Ashley Bloomfield: Few public servants have become household names like Bloomfield. His calm performances, his stable grip of communication and immediate recall of vast tracks of real time information marks him as one of the greatest public servants ever and his results speak for themselves
Covid deaths:
Sweden: 18,365
Australia: 6,425
Denmark: 5,777
Aotearoa: 443
Ashley was part of a public health response that history will hold up as exemplary.
Sure there were mistakes.
Sure there was a challenge to the State where Health trumped all else and many other departments were rubbed up the wring way.
Yes the DHBs were useless in their community outreach and one wonders how a Māori Health Authority could have performed differently, but overall, he did a remarkable job.
The most extraordinary part of his performance was the jaw dropping bile and toxic hate rage that was vomited up upon him every day.
I’m not talking valid criticism or clever social media burns, I’m talking insane asylum sewer level radioactive invective that once read can’t ever be cleaned away.
The vile shit thrown at him for saving our collective lives is bordering on outright lunacy.
He represented our best, the toxic outrage represents our worst.
LOSERS:
David Seymour slagging Blomfield: Whatever points Seymour was making over extending Red he squandered with his classless slagging off of Bloomfield. Look, you might disagree with Ashley but you can’t doubt his intentions or results. Doing so just looked petty.
Double vaxxed boosted Kiwis: All those Kiwis who have done as they were asked, who got double vaccinated and boosted and did all the QR bullshit scanning and masks and etc etc etc etc etc etc, still can’t get their lives back.
Hospo: They don’t want Orange because they are straining at capacity right now, they want Orange so that the Covid freaked out public will start to come back out again. Unfortunately the cost of living crisis is also blunting people’s disposable income so expect a lot of Hospo industry to go belly up with lots of tourism companies.
Men: Men are dying at far greater numbers than women.
Female Journalists at Stuff: With Men dying at far greater numbers than women, how do the Female Journalists at Stuff manage to make it all about them again?
Smug Qanon antivaxxers: Insufferably predicted Bloomfield will be arrested at the solstice by Sovereign Citizen Druids and Clarke Gayford has an electronic ankle bracelet!
Homeless: Watch our kindness evaporate towards the homeless now we need their motel rooms for cheap tourists. The homelessness crisis that has been hidden in Motel rooms is about to explode now restrictions and mandates are off.
Renters: Now the borders are open, international students, desperate migrant workers and tourists will flood the market pushing up rentals, stressing public transport and causing more inflation. Yay, renters get fucked again!
The Economy: We are in so much danger economically now it’s just a matter of time which black swan triggers the meltdown. Brace for impact.
PREDICTIONS:
Red Light
Orange Light
Green Light
I don’t care, stay away from me
I never want social distancing to end. Ever!
Some of you people are terrible and I want as much distance from you as possible!
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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Bomber you do know outside of some authoritarian Asian states nowhere else in the developed world will/has masks and social distancing rules right? You know that the rest of the world has moved on right? You know that every other respiratory virus known to man has got less virulent and more transmissible right?
We are living in a retarded Truman show where utopia is a health fascist state with a good dose of neo-socialism.
Happy fucking days indeed!
Oh and Seymour had the balls to say what most on the right think about Bloomfield. It will pick him up more votes than lose.
Except Seymour also supported the destruction it our human rights for a period of time at least.
He is scarcely better than the rest of the river of filth in parliament.
Yep – his behaviors recently suggest he knows he fucked up by pandering to the covid cultists as opposed to what could have been a sizeable increase to his base. He is the best of a rottenly bad bunch – that is for sure.
But wait Frank. Hot of the heels of a dickhead remark about the DG of Health’s tenure Seymour has had a go at a load of patient groups for signing an open letter to National and Act, asking them not to abolish a Maori Health Authority (should they get in). He called the letter “a stunt” That little grandstander accuses those close to the coal face of pulling a stunt.
Hong Kong is where you should moved to https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.reuters.com/world/china/so-many-bodies-piled-up-hong-kong-funeral-services-overwhelmed-by-covid-2022-04-06/&ved=2ahUKEwiAnLyL44D3AhUYxDgGHSlWDOEQFnoECEwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0V_4wVZg0qshQV1skwB82i
We have a red setting which will probably go down next week, and masks are still necessary. Big f’ing deal. In door gatherings of 200+ are most likely very unpopular anyway because people don’t fancy rolling the dice on being (hopefully) asymptomatic or finding out for them its not so mild.
As for David Seymour that wasn’t balls at all, it was just an idiotic statement. From a health perspective it is ridiculous to claim disaster from start to finish. Perfect no, but nothing good at all……what a stupid thing to say.
If you are scared of your own shadow, stay home.
Leave the people who don’t wet themselves over a virus alone.
I am not scared of my own shadow. My point was having a 200 indoor limit or not makes no difference because there are plenty of people out there who are pragmatic. Go out but avoid big indoor gatherings while you are in the middle of an outbreak.
You should be scared of your own.shadow Jay’s, it’s fuckimg hideous.
https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8912-nz-national-voting-intention-february-2022-202203070501
National/Act NZ (49.5%) now leads Labour/Greens (43%) by 6.5% points
Not far to get to the 20’s for Labour now. When will poor man’s Gordon Brown make his move. He doesn’t want to be a Palmer/Moore does he?
Good riddance Bloomfield you pseudo-scientist
Thank Satan you are a “real” scientist…
Why is Bloomfield fleeing now when the media are reporting record deaths from Omicron? Is there no threat, or is there a threat and he just doesn’t care that his god-like wise council is required at this critical juncture? If the media are spreading fake news about death attribution to Covid then this is unforgivable. For a guy like Bloomfield to get paid the equivalent of a lotto win every year just to go on stage and scare people he is now acting like a non believer, that the pandemic is of no consequence.
so ethan have you downloaded and printed off your diploma from the ‘internet school of magical crystal magnetic 5g waves virology’ yet?
jody…maybe he’s just fed up to the back teeth with kicking against the pricks…can you really blame him for that? seriously?
Here’s how female journos at Stuff manage to make it all about them..
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/300559411/auckland-construction-company-apologises-to-woman-after-wolfwhistling-complaint
This story is about construction workers wolf whistle a women in HER pool.
The construction company has apologised to the women. I am a feminist and understand this sort of experience is unpleasant.
But ffs. Working men versus women with her own pool!
Why is this news. She complained. Company apologised. Some working class men being dicks……and yes more men dying of Covid,
Thank you Dr Bloomfield. You worked your guts out and NZ benefited. Thank you
Did we really or just delay the inevitable? We are rocketing up the covid death stakes with every day and from all accounts are now in the mid-70s per capita. What happens if proportionately we are now further ahead of the game than anyone else in 12 months time but sacrificed our economy and are in a period of prolonged stagflation.
” Thank you Dr Bloomfield. You worked your guts out and NZ benefited. Thank you ”
And Mr Bloomfield benefitted with his enormous salary of 575,000 per year + incentives. $1500 a day gross.
Thank you to all the generous wage slaves out there.
And how much did Luxon get at Air New Zealand for just doing his job.
Dr Bloomfield did his job to keep you alive, I’d say he was paid a pittance.
Most, to a degree I agree with you. Outrageous salaries when nurses and others paid a pittance
Most, to a degree I agree with you. Outrageous salaries when nurses and others paid a pittance
Sadly Bloomfield won’t be able to help us with what’s coming next:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2022/04/independent-economist-warns-new-zealand-will-see-a-different-economic-outlook-at-the-end-of-the-year-as-inflation-hits.html
Bring on Black Death, and be done with it.
What will it take to grasp that there are no winners or losers in this match? The whole idea of winners and losers is defeating.
As the infamous Kamallah Harris once said somewhere near a border, to refugees.
“Go the fuck home! We don’t want you here! Fuck off!”
But, because the Ukrainians are white. “Yes! You can jump the queue. Come!”
So if this pesky virus gathers more steam going into winter and all of these barriers are gone by then. Will those who unfortunately die. Are they going to be recorded as flu victims this winter or covid victims or both?
How will this Crisis play out for the rest of the year?
Or will it disappear like all the other Crisis like the Housing Crisis, the Homelessness Crisis, Poverty Crisis, Terrorism, Health, Educkation, Bullshit Crisis, Environmental Crisis, War Crisis, Inflation & Economic Crisis and the Political Crisis that we have had for the passed 4 years.
tane checkable citation for your kamala quote quote please.
nb–infowars is not an acceptable answer.
but to your point yes ukrainians are white and blonde and yup it’s a double standard for sure.