The speed of Covid entropy & economic collapse by December will surprise Kiwis

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2063

Covid-19: New cases soar by more than 3000 in a single day, reaching 9629

New cases of Covid-19 have soared by more than 3000 in a single day, rising from 6498 on Monday to 9629 on Tuesday, the Ministry of Health says.

There are also 493 people in hospital, and 24 people with the virus have died in the period since April 14, the ministry said.

The seven-day rolling average of community case numbers on Tuesday is 7246 – a rise of about 32 per cent on the same time last year.

Covid isn’t half way finished with us.

Even if we are to accept a baseline sickness and death rate, the extra capacity required in our Hospital system from space to staff to annual extra resourcing isn’t even ready.

So we have the immediacy of an ongoing second wave of a new variant that is even more bloody spreadable and re-infectable PLUS a health system beyond capacity.

Great.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Here’s why Covid Tsunami Wave 2 could be worse.

1 – Covid Exhaustion:

We are so polarised, so angry, so hurting, so psychologically ill, so economically frightened and grumpy now that any idea of going back into lockdown would be met with near civil disintegration. As cases soar to 20 000 a day, there would need to be actual ambulances gridlocked outside hospitals with dead patients before Kiwis accept going back into lockdown again. We’d need to see mass graves before we begrudgingly listen to Siouxsie Wiles again, which probably doesn’t speak well for us as a people.

2 – Old People:

It’s going to be old people in over crowded underfunded retirement villages thanks to our throw away culture when it comes to the elderly who will bear the brunt ion the mortality. Because we don’t care about old people in NZ, their death rates can soar to stratospheric levels before anyone will do anything.

3 – The bleeding gums of our inequality: 

Covid has exposed the bleeding gums of our engrained inequality. It will feast on that poverty and it will rob communities who have nothing to spare.

Because Covid will hit the poor and vulnerable most, wider society won’t care because their own economic insecurity will be driving their emotional response.

The only safety gauge in this looming reactionary backlash is our high vaccination rates which will blunt an all out collapse.

My point is, we don’t need to go back into red or lockdown for this next wave to be mutilating to the country, both public health wise, economically and politically.

On top of us facing this gridlock panic moment with Covid, comes the economic recession…

US Faces a Fed-Triggered Recession That May Cost Biden a Second Term

Rate hikes to counter inflation lift risk of a downturn to 72% in Bloomberg Economics models — heralding trouble for the White House

…that’s from Bloomberg, when Capitalism’s Pageboy is preaching economic apocalypse, one should listen. With $13 Trillion lost on Stock Markets in the worst start to any year for half a century, shit bout to get real.

Plummeting confidence rates are occurring at a time of near universal low Unemployment in the West with per hour wages at some of their highest rates.

What does that mean?

It means that since 2008, all the global growth has been a debt binged ticking time bomb held together by hope and snot.

That despite holding down a job with the highest pay levels ever, the entire facade has been a hollowed out illusion totally out of synch with the true costs of production.

Sever the global supply chains into the deepest darkest parts of China’s de-unionised work force and prices explode leaving Central Banks with only massive interest rate hikes as an inflation brake-pedal that will cause the event horizon of all that black hole of debt.

In short, we are about to be hit by a second wave of the Covid Tsunami  AT THE SAME TIME as a global economic recession that has a real possibility of being a depression that is worse than the 1929 crash.

I think the speed of the entropy now may surprise some Kiwis.

I do not feel that we are ready for this jelly.

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64 COMMENTS

  1. What to do then? Lockdowns don’t work long term (see China for example) and as pointed out won’t be accepted. NZ is a price taker for global interest rates so whilst the RBNZ can impact domestic mortgages our trading banks are at the mercy of the Fed. So again, what to do?

    NZ is effectively broke, trade is disrupted, inflation is out of control and we are burning through millions of borrowed dollars we don’t have on propping up a welfare state we can’t afford and I’m yet to hear of a realistic way in which to generate tax income that won’t just lead to a massive brain drain and relocation of businesses.

    I don’t think any of us know but I’m not sure that the modern welfare state that exists in the EU, the UK, Australia, NZ, etc. will survive as it is shaped now. There’s just too much debt, too many people supported by the state, etc. for it to be viable.

    • The old, TINA to ending the modern welfare state … . Each crisis used to embed a more neo-liberal right wing regime in economics and more authoritarian security oversight of the population.

      • Perhaps although we are hugely indebted both as a nation and as private individuals. If we do see inflation exceed 10% as Bomber is on record as believing it will then we’re heading one way only and that’s into a very nasty recession.

        In that space, there’s way less tax tax as the economy will be shrinking and compounding this will be the fact that NZ will have to pay significantly more to lenders as interest rates will be sky high so as a nation we will have less income and can’t borrow more as we’re already tapped out.

        Then what? Something will have to give. I don’t have a clue what that is but as a relatively poor western democratic nation we just don’t have the tax base to handle the above scenario without really challenging the accepted status quo

    • “Lockdowns don’t work long term (see China for example)”

      China’s lockdowns have been very effective. While you are bathing in monthly wave after wave of cumulative multi organ damaging next variant reinfections (Hybrid Herd Immunity LOL), China has crushed it. And will continue to do so with Dynamic Zero Covid policy, while you die a lingering slow death from covid’s Pandora’s Box of thrombotic vascularitis triggered diseases.

    • Wrong. Fake lockdowns don’t work- see everything in New Zealand, and Shanghai in China before the Central Committee came in and steamrolled the liberal trash who had been allowed to infiltrate the Party at the city level.

      But if you’re doing a lockdown, it has to be an actual lockdown, and you have to look after people to make sure they don’t violate it (and lock them up if they violate it anyway).

    • 90% versus the 10% versus the 1%. And rest assured the 10 versus the 1 will turn on each other when things get tuff
      Not sure I like your chances @Yeti longer term, in this space, going forward.
      The mathematics of it all have never added up and the longer it goes on, the bigger the chance of a violent outcome.
      The natives are only now just stirring in this lil ‘ole motu called Ao NuZull and will eventually become really restless
      When there aren’t enough essential workers to staff the local Key Eff See or Bottle O, and then when the Mt Vickers and Remmers can’t get their groceries delivered – for which they’ve been royally ripped, and then when those essential workers realise they’re better off in OZ, or Canada, or the USA, or Germany, or Spain, or Portugal, OR even Seth Efrica or Namibia, watch out.
      Roll on the day!
      It’s the shock we obviously need

      • That sounds closer to anarchy than anything else, at least to me. Play it out though and again I ask, what follows?

        If there is a revolution as I think you’re suggesting might happen then what? In this situation I can envisage a collapse of the old order, dismantling of the state apparatus, etc. but then what?

        No one will lend to NZ and probably not even trade in this scenario and without either the welfare state or similar is impossible to sustain.

        • The only thing you need to do with the State apparatus is to reorientate it back to working for the populace rather than for international moneyed interests, as currently is the case. First step along this all important process is getting the populace to understand the wayward situation we are in…..

  2. Well rather than having doom and gloom emotional collapses, lets get ready for “the jelly”–how about that?

    Read Dave Brownz columns, he has laid it out for a long time–working class organisation at community level is what needs to happen, many Māori groups have been doing it in terms of health initiatives and food distribution and even housing for years now.

    New gens, boomers in the elder poverty group, working class pākehā and migrant workers all need to unite to retire the NZ neo liberal state, and support their own infrastructure. The capitalist class are not going to do it for you! Quite the opposite.

    • Rebuild a fighting class left central labour organisation
    • Accelerate the small Aotearoa anti capitalist movement
    • Occupy empty residential and commercial property
    • Organise street by street and suburb by suburb and province by province including food supply

  3. “Who’s that on the front lawn wearing a hockey mask and holding a machete?” “Is it the pool guy?”
    *jazz hands*
    Entropy is a real bitch.

  4. The Blairite has a catch 22 scenario.

    Based off the MOH traffic light model we have to be at red. BUT………
    There is no appetite politically for Red/Lockdowns. (Think sub 25%). Dumb lives matter would swell to hundreds of thousands.

    This is why she has chosen David Jones fashion events over running the country. This is why Grunter the Spider is playing a demented version of game of thrones with Willy Jackson with Hodor Little trying to hold the gate in the health system. When the cat is away the mice play.

    The Health system in New Zimbabwe HAS COLLAPSED. The white walkers of economic stagflation have arrived at the wall with a army of undead (Chinese) dragons in tow. As Ramsay Bolton notes there is no happy ending to this.

    Sadly there is no corporate woketard character in GOT therefore I couldn’t keep the analogy going when talking about Te Reo Luxon. Still struggling 5 mins later……Suggestions welcome.

    But you’ll all be treating him like the second coming in 2023 given where we would have descended to by that stage. Like John Snow unfortunately he knows nothing……..

      • No the Iron Bank was feared and tough as nails. Bravos was the only free city to hold out against the Dragons. Definitely not Te Reo – the guy is as soft as the Giant Mellowpuff in Ghostbusters 2. Mace Tyrell probably the closest – bumbling Buffon led by a wily old Bint. We know Johnny is lurking with intent in the background……..

    • Adopting the fast follower approach to fashion trends. Which means only changing course when enough of the public demand action.

  5. That is why Govt needs to bring in a UBI ( universal basic income ) for all aged over 18 except the wealthy top 5:%.. With this initiative, you obviously would not need a great number of Government Departments and current policy settings.

  6. In spite of 200,000+ new immigration resident visas already being granted (when only expecting 165,000) ANZ bank leader tells NZ we need to loosen more immigration! Don’t worry about the growing poverty, and nursing and doctor shortages from decades of ‘loose immigration’!

    “By the end of this year, the country will have more new residents than any other year on record.”
    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/05/almost-200-000-people-apply-for-new-fast-track-residency-visa.html

    Banks need more money -inspite of immigration being the largest ever on record in NZ – ANZ bank leader wants Labour to loosen immigration even more than ever recorded! https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/labour-crisis-anz-boss-urges-govt-to-loosen-immigration-settings/HTHIWNNP4MTD3HDPP33P6CJB7A/

    Bank profits need to be maintained!

    Record profit: NZ banks made over $6 billion in 2021, KPMG report
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/record-profit-nz-banks-made-over-6-billion-in-2021-kpmg-report/X3H4KXHZFCFRJUDOU6D564UKTM/

    Are ANZ going to spend their record profits on donating a few billion to NZ hospitals and schools then and employee the 200,000+ new migrants?

    No surprises that John Key is a ANZ Board Member.
    Sir John Key good friend of China’s President Xi Jinping
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018802226/sir-john-key-good-friend-of-china-s-president-xi-jinping

    National party like Chinese donations and a mere $100k can help you become a National list MP.

    Chinese businessman Yikun Zhang’s donations go beyond Simon Bridges
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/107902444/auckland-and-southland-mayors-receive-handouts-from-chinese-businessman-yikun-zhang

    Southland mayor in China with ‘$100k donor’
    https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/southland/southland-mayor-china-100k-donor

    Remember in the National party – “Two Chinese would be nice, but would it be one Chinese or one Filipino, or one – what do we do?

    JLR: Two Chinese would be more valuable than two Indians, I have to say.”
    https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/17-10-2018/the-jami-lee-tapes-a-transcript-of-the-ross-and-bridges-donation-chat

    • ANZ bank leader has a bloody cheek and it is not her job to say open the flood gates and let more Covid and everyman and his dog in our country. And is our government monitoring where these new variants are mainly coming from is there a pattern if so we need to put measures in place to stop new ones from coming in including the monkey poxs. Too many people aren’t bothering to wear a masks they think they are invincible and too many selfish people haven’t bothered to vaccinate their kids who are spreading it like wild fire.

        • Of course profits of ANZ and other foreign banks is up cause they are ripping us of and by the way what happened to Westpac leaving us was a non event it didn’t happen and why would it when they make heaps, it was a threat no more.

          • Nz or the mothership Bertie? Trust me it matters. Johny is just picking up a paycheck and relaying orders.

            A head tilt and sixth form debating skills mean nothing amongst the movers and shakers of Melbourne’s ivory towers.

        • Actually reading many comments here Frankie there is a lot of shit being “made up”, you could use the word crap several times to describe some posts. Apparently you can say whatever you like because it’s an opinion rather than fact.

      • CIP
        Only Jacinda and her govt are allowed opinions on recommendations? Anyone else, you, me and the ANZ Bank leader….we’re not allowed opinions on immigration. Ok that’s good – as long as we know where we stand…we can hold out until the election for relief from all this crap. And boy, is there a lot of crap going down with this crap govt.

        • I think it’s pretty obvious who benefits from immigration, OZ banks already at record profits and responsible for huge profit loss out of NZ, and politicians like John Key would sell his grandma for a dollar.

          In addition totally missinformed echo chambers as usual by media who didn’t point out NZ has already stupidly pushed the biggest amount on record of resident visas EVER over 200,000+ but because the criteria is so pathetic, aka you don’t have to speak English, kids and pensioners are streaming in that need services, not solving the skills crisis, adding to it.

          Doesn’t help the cost of living and makes it worse, to have another 200,000 new residents who have no incomes or on low wages and a family combo of the two.

          NZ (still) just wonders why productivity is so low in NZ as another 200,000 non English speaking baking/other assistants and their families hit our shores to compete with the other 500,000 baking assistants to hit our shores a few years ago (and suddenly ‘disappear’ from the industry), while they can’t get qualified people to stay and keep working these massive shifts with more and more new patients.

    • The 200,000 immigrant visas you are referring to relate to the people here on work visas when covid struck. Now that travel is possible many New Zealanders have left for Aus. I dare say some of those on work visas have also left.

      That is having an effect on the property market, bit freehold sales and rentals. demand and prices down in both.

      So yes, we need new immigrants. People who aren’t already here. New Zealand might not be the very highest of preferred places for immigrants, but it is pretty near the top. I personally think immigration at 1% of the total population is quite sustainable. Basically 50,000 people per year, particularly for in demand occupations.

  7. Why GDP does not work and why poor economic theories are against healthy people and a healthy environment!

    “A cyclist is a disaster for the country’s economy – He does not buy the car & does not take car loan – Does not buy car insurance – Does not buy Fuel – Does not send his car for servicing & repairs – Does not use paid Parking – Does not become Obese – Yes,…..and well, damn it !! Healthy people are not needed for economy. They do not buy drugs. They do not go to Hospitals & Doctors. They add nothing to country’s GDP.

    On the contrary, every new McDonald outlet creates at least 30 jobs – 10 Cardiologists, 10 Dentists, 10 weight loss experts apart from people working in McDonald outlet.

    Choose wisely: A Cyclist or a McDonald ? Worth thinking.

    PS. walking is even worse. they do not even buy a bicycle.”

    Attributed to Sanjay Thakrar, CEO at Euro Exim Bank Ltd

    • That’s rubbish because cyclists will take the income that they don’t spend on cars, loans, insurance, fuel etc and spend it in a different sector of the economy, invest it or save it (aka defer spending).
      The same is true for health and medical spending whether paid for privately or paid for by the government.
      This is not a pro-economy argument this is an argument for directing spending in very specific areas.
      The subtext is also about forced consumption of products or services. The little people cannot have too many choices or personal autonomy. Instead of the economy serving society which serves the people, this is the kind of thinking that makes people serve economic indices.

  8. I don’t think COVID will make a difference come election. We are a broken society, completely colonized by capitalist filth. The New Zealand people don’t care about protecting granny from dying.

    • Lock down to protect the boomers, get rewarded with seeing them being massively enriched with immoral house price rises and your rent being put up….. been there done that… NEVER AGAIN!!!!!

  9. The rich were given all that free money by the RBNZ to allow them to buy bullet proof glass and razor wire for what’s coming.

  10. I’ll only believe there is a true economic collapse when the big corporations stop posting record profits year after year (as they do and keep doing)

    The only people suffering right now are the middle and working classes. The others are just doing dandy.

    Footstuffs, BP, Z, ANZ, you name it: they are still raking in the dosh.

    Stop the identity politics BS and lets go loot some multi nationals together instead

    Wake up people

  11. The real reason we’re heading into stagflation:

    In the last two years the US federal reserve has created 88% of all dollars in existence.

    Think about that for a moment. This is the Biden administration running amok printing money to hand to favoured friends via various spending bills.

  12. Because we don’t care about old people in NZ

    Well actually the evidence of the last two years is that we very much care about them. In fact my youngest, as watches mates head overseas, especially for Australia where they (and he) have a better shot at higher wages and buying a house to live in, expressly said something along those lines, “Why the hell should I stick around here, Dad? So the Boomers can screw my life over again the next time they crap themselves about finally dying”

    If that sounds excessively bitter to you then you haven’t been listening to the Millennials and Gen Z unload about the Baby Boomers on their social media forums. The hate has shocked me a bit and I thought we Gen X’rs were pretty scathing about Boomers in our youth.

  13. You raise an interesting point Tom Hunter.
    Although I wonder once all the Boomers have left the planet who will the Gen Z’s and Millenials still snipe at ?.
    Sometimes we humans always want to blame someone for our woes.

  14. You never know Bob, one day in the future the younger generation might just target “Granny Chloe”. I don’t know how she will cope.
    ;o)

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