3283 – NZ (population 5m)
24755 – Sweden (10m)
9162 – Ireland (5m)
191211 – Italy (59m)
Those are the numbers.
That’s how many died from Covid and the population of each nation, compared to Ireland we are talking about 6000 lives difference.
That’s the price we sacrificed to protect as many people as we could, to leave no one behind.
It was expensive and forced a level of borrowing that was unprecedented. Of course there were mistakes made, it was a once in a century pandemic and we were flying blind during it!
There were sacrifices made that generated unequal consequences in an unequal society.
Labour’s mistake was believing society could just go back to how things were when things were so unequal, we needed the transformative change Jacinda promised but couldn’t deliver.
But the decisions made were courageous and righteous and saved 6000 NZers lives.
That’s a price that was worth paying then, and it is a price that any honourable leader would implement again if faced with the same situation!
Too often we ignore what was saved to rage against what went wrong.
Labour need to rouse that universal shared experience that was Covid and remind us all what we saved with those decisions and that the duty now is to see those challenges through.
New Zealanders leaned into Labour in crisis, because they see in Labour someone who wants to help them, where as in National and ACT they see someone who will kick them when they are down.
Chippy is likeable, Luxon wants you to like him.
When the books get opened next month the World will be able to see how significant the China economic slow down is and NZs exposure to that decline.
There is every possibility those numbers spark the sense of an economic crisis with the stock market tanking and voter’s Kiwisavers getting smashed.
Voters will ask themselves in that sense of crisis, ‘who will look after me, Labour or National/ACT’.
Chippy and Grant or David and Chris Luxon.
Who will look after you when you fall over?
Chippy and Grant will help you up on your feet and dust you off while Chris would lecture you about not falling over as David kicks you for being weak.
These are the choices in front of us this election.
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Labour have not made a good job of looking after the financial side of this lovely country. Another 3 years will have us in at a 3rd World level .
Churchill saved England from Germany invasion but the people voted him out of power after the war and while Labour did a good job with covid it does not give them the right to another term .
Trevor, the fact that Air NZ can’t satisfy demand would indicate the economy is not in such bad shape. Yes, a lot of people are suffering, but that’s because of 30+ years of rogernomics and neoliberalism.
Current Trade balance worse in the OECD and economic growth 2nd worst in the world (only behind Equatorial Guinea) say hi.
Robertson and Orr have run this country into the ground and turned a rock star economy into a bag of rocks.
Rock star economy that was unable to improve the lives nor incomes of first home buyers, nurses and teacher etc, that “rockstar economy”?
Jesus wept.
ANZ are short of planes and staff so no story there . Businesses are all suffering due to inflation and poor control of the economy
Businesses that were all on welfare benefits during the pandemic and are now returning record profits from higher prices. It’s not the lack of planes or staff that are the story, it’s the fact that in this so called ‘broken economy’ so many people are able to holiday overseas.
NZ’s current account now worst in the OECD and worse than the GFC
https://thefacts.nz/economy/current-account/
the Facts?
Who?
Could you show the graph/ data for Kiwiblogs stats please?
What impact did the catastrophic impact of cyclones and flooding have on our GDP given the 1 in 100 events that happened twice within 2 months?
Do you really know what a third world Country looks like for us to be heading that way, serious question?
It’s a quite a stretch to say we have oil reserves. More like we have 17 sedimentary basins under our economic zone that “may” hold oil reserves. Some of which are in extremely deep water.
The Adern Government did ban oil exploration as a “Climate Action” but arguably this was just spin taking advantage of the fact that previous data collected demonstrated we don’t have significant deposits to exploit.
The reality is under the Key Government Petrobras obtained exploration rights but pulled out very early after only doing preliminary surveys on the “most likely” reserve. The data they collected demonstrated the pickings were very slim and it was not worth continuing to look in NZ waters.
So can we please stop banging on about NZ sitting on a vast wealth of fossil resource. The data clearly suggests we are not
Well said Sleek.
Middle NZ is being squeezed, don’t ya know! The medical evidence suggests such collective squeezing is likely to induce memory loss.
You aren’t getting any more votes from that source, Covid-19 is gone & forgotten apparently, only the anger & resentment remains.
Only partly right Rat. Moved on, yes, but angry and resentful, no.
The population size is one factor, but population density is another factor when considering the impact of a communicable infection. Italy has approx 200 citizens per sqm. NZ has approx 19 citizens per sqm. (Ireland has approx 70 citizens per sqm.) Whoever was in charge of NZ’s response to Covid had a very different playing field to European nations. Added to that, NZ did not have to consider ground access to our country via busses, cars, lorries, trains, motorbikes or hitchhiking etc. One figure bandied around in 2020 was that 65,000 kiwis were going to die. Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but even so, NZ as a Pacific Island was uniquely positioned to deal with Covid compared to the European countries.
Overall population density is irrelevant. It’s the density of the places where people actually live, ie the main cities.
Disingenuous to say the least Pete.
Get some detail of where NZ had the highest infection rates and stack that up against the population density.
I think you will find we were still way ahead of Italy.
Just because we have vast areas of unpopulated land it doesn’t mean we did no better and I’m sure you wouldn’t consider that to be a factor when you talk about poor roads in Auckland or ED waiting times in Manukau as opposed to Palmerston North. They all stink but. NZ population density overall doesn’t mean diddly squat.
New Zealand’s CIVID response started well, but after the initial success it ossified, up to and beyond the inane lunacy of the kindergarten chook raffle of the MIQ lottery.
The premise of locking Auckland down like North Korea for 4 months was a complete and utter overkill and an appalling overreach of government.
I recall clearly the terror and hysteria from our government accompanied by university backed mathematicians and virologists with modelling showing how apocalyptic life was going to be under Omicron if we didn’t hide away. It was agreed to by scientists almost unanimously. Anyone who dared disagree was pronouced a witch with mental health problems. Guess what, it was bullshit. It spread wildfire anyway, we all went what the fuck was this bloody scare campaign all about and the government had to surrender. And then the horror stories of the end of mankind ever so coincidentally faded away too.
I would have to say the Covid era undermined government credibility hugely for at least a generation.
Labour do NOT want to go anywhere near their Covid days. It sure either in 2020 but it’s the polar opposite now. Its a good part of the reason Ardern is now not PM and one of a hundred reasons they will lose! But hey they’re so desperate, who knows?
Sorry but I think you’re delusional.
From a what I’m seeing and hearing, it doesn’t matter what Labour says. Kiwis want to move on and have had a gutsful of them.
As my years have advanced I have grown more cynical about governments and political parties. Nothing is ever done for those most in need. The focus is always on the group most likely to ensure election to the government benches. It inevitably means a focus on the so called middle classes. Why waste promises on the haves and the have nots? We know how they will vote. The sad reality is that those most in need of help can ‘go to hell’ in the scramble for votes. Any real change is coincidental to the ruling government and under the current system real change is even less likely.
Sadly, I pretty much agree with you Charlie.
You sound old enough to have grandchildren and what I find disturbing is that the Greens don’t poll much higher than about 10% max. (and I guess they’ll never get the vote at 16 – (certainly not when NatACT are in power)
The 100-year storms that we suffer about every second year; the planet is burning with temperatures in the 40 50C in summer… and we ignore, forget or …. is it that everyone of us is basically only voting in our own selfish interests?
Grandchildren can look after themselves – if they survive the increasing dystopian future that climate change will inevitably bring.
But wait, there’s more…. there’s PEFU, China et al sabre-rattling, the world economy in bad shape, Rogernomics still has a following (but not Roger himself,) division and hatred within NZ etc etc …mmmmm not a pretty picture.
Guess you’re glad you’re the age that you are, Charlie?
Many of our Māori kids didn’t get the computers they needed during covid lockdown were you in that boat Ada? yet most of us still know what side our bread is buttered on, and it isn’t with National or Act. National tax cuts have hairs on them they are giving with one hand and taking with the other. There is too much at stake to let them win this election and I can see trickery in this 14 billion tax policy. I had a good look at it and the rich benefit the most when it should be the poor working people. National cannot deliver without cutting and adding more tax to pay for their taxes its simply not possible. And it’s not what they had said that troubles me it’s what they have left out.
So Labour did not do a good job of getting computers to Maori but you say then that they are the party that looks after Maori.
I am sure many Pakeha did not get computers iether so all were treated badly that is why so many have decided that because under Labour they can no longer afford butter they will vote National.
What Willis has said cip,( previously) she HAS left out and that is the tax cuts( it’s all National knows)will be paid for through Kiwisaver and the Superfund. This indicates we in fact will pay for our own tax cuts and they will raise the retirement age to 67. Trust and National should never ever be used in the same sentence.
What a load of bollocks this opinion piece is.
I respect your right to voice your opinion but don’t agree with you one bit.
I saw you on maori tv the other night and lost complete respect for you.
Who the fuck are you
ooooh…. spot the superior regular commenter
Comments hit different when they’re said with a bit more wisdom and advice.
He Is a Toadstool aren’t they poisonous.
The covid response delayed a lot of 80+ year olds from dying for a year or two but at what cost ! Sweden did a lot better job , kept the schools open and people working . Didn’t take on billions of debt and ruin their economy or disrupt education to the extent that kids lives have been permanently damaged by lockdowns –
I’m afraid I do, to a degree, agree with you. The lockdowns saved many of my age (80s), and for that we should be grateful.
But I saw my grandson having to be “at school” at home, being “in class” on a laptop. He’s OK; but I fear many are not. Once these young people with a less secure family base were forced into schoollessness, that may have become the norm, as they saw it. What are we to make of the extraordinary degrees of truancy, especially, as I gather, up north? Are such events as children as ram raiders the collateral damage of the covid policy of the time?
Labour may have been wielding a double-edged sword in the fight against covid. Gratitude towards them should not be uncritical.
But how many people had to die for Sweden to do better artemis you obviously don’t value someone’s life.
Weren’t we supposed to be at the front of the que for everything according to the covid peep Hipy
Thomas (who quoted kiwi blog) Fitch credit rating agency gave us a AAt with a stable outlook this followed Moodys credit rating agency analysis who said we also have a stable outlook rating us Aaa and saying our debt level as a % of GDP remains lower than many of our international peers. So, someone is telling porkies me thinks it kiwi Blog and you repeating the porkies.
Covid was a dark time, no one wants to be reminded of it. Best we offer solutions to today’s problems. Champion our solutions and only attack the other mob when they try to poke holes in our solutions. We need to be proactive, we need to be positive. Championing our solutions, defending our solutions, this to me is being proactive and positive. Attacking their solutions, this to me, when we are apparently behind in the polls, is a losing game. Front foot please, and front foot the issues that matter to boot!
The Labour/Greens/TPM would continue our slide to the bottom of the OECD.
When over 2/3 of the country think we’re going in the wrong direction the 50% of Labour MP’s that are going to lose their jobs should be planning their 3 months taxpayer funded holiday!
This is last year’s news! Labour and Jacinda did a great job protecting us from covid and were rewarded in the last election. This coming election is all about how they betrayed their voters and just totally f#$%&*d up. Different situation altogether.
Sorry Martin but bullshit. Singapore population 5m deaths 1870. No need to cripple the economy or borrow a billion dollars a a month. Labour’s student politicians have destroyed the economy.
Singapore went full Vax first. Like what are you trying to say that because 1870 deaths out of population proves or disproves Singapore’s corona response?
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