What if we are underestimating Covid? The case to keep the border closed 

ByMartyn Bradbury

It’s possible to reach herd immunity, then lose it. Repeatedly. Here’s what you can do to help prevent that from happening

If you think herd immunity is the finish line to this pandemic, it’s time for a reality check.

Herd immunity with Covid-19 could come and go, scientists say. Or we might never reach it at all.
“There’s a lot of things that have to go our way to actually get to herd immunity,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

The euphoria of the vaccination announcement in late 2020 utterly underplayed the lack of public health infrastructure in America, the new mutation’s contagiousness and the fact that a global 75% herd immunity will need to be an annual immunisation event if it is to mean anything.

The economic whiplash hasn’t hit us yet and the full death count hasn’t begun.

The difference between this pandemic and previous pandemics is that 24 hour air travel can re-infect a country or geographic area over and over again, rather than allow it to slowly die out as previous pandemics have.

What does that mean for us in NZ?

The naked truth is that we don’t have capacity to widen the border safely and if the virus gets through, Labour will be blamed if the track-trace can’t stop us going back into another lockdown.

All that political gratitude to Jacinda for keeping us safe would immediately evaporate if public service incompetence is seen as a conflating factor in any new outbreak.

That all adds up to one thing, the border is NOT opening before 2022.

That means exploited migrant workers, exploited international students and hyper tourism will be banned from returning which is problematic to NZ because much of our economy is based on those flawed economic models.

This in turn demands a vision from the Government that goes well beyond simply keeping the virus out.

Does Labour have that vision?

No. no they do not.

All the Government’s energy is being spent keeping us safe, there is no plan to rebuild, there is no plan to adapt. This would be a problem if any other political party had a vision, but none of them do, so Jacinda’s position is only threatened by another outbreak combined with an incompetent response.

If you think Covid will be dealt with this year, I don’t think you are paying attention.

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10 Comments

  1. Yesterday I was told by someone whose daughter had been working at a university, that universities are now all about money, and that staff are not permitted to designate students who fail to turn up for lectures and fail to complete course ‘requirements’ as failures. Every student passes. The daughter left in disgust. And just in time, it seems, because universities are now at the slash and burn stage [of staff and facilities] in futile attempts to stave off bankruptcy.

    Of course, with all the economic and financial turmoil that has been unleashed around the world as a consequence of decades of neoliberalism, fewer and fewer parents of overseas students have the funds available to feed the NZ gravy train. And international trust has been hammered on numerous fronts. Even supposedly united Europe is in disarray, and the so-called United States is a basket case.

    Within national borders the whole world is dividing into two groups -the corporate raiders and beneficiaries of central bank money-printing versus the rest.

    Being a beneficiary of central bank money-printing and raiding of the commons, Jacinda will do nothing to inhibit either, and being a member of the ‘club of elites’ she will continue to play the dicey (and ultimately futile) game of attempting to keep business-as-usual running by throwing taxpayers’ money at it, whilst continually failing society as a whole.

    ‘Interesting times’ get ever more ‘interesting’ (almost by the day), as the whole caboodle slowly ‘falls off the cliff’.

    With the ‘jugglers already dropping balls’ as interest rates rise, energy supplies deplete and droughts ravage increasing numbers of countries, I’m preparing for the ‘mother of all collapses’ in a matter of six months to 2 years. The system is, after all, self-defeating, and the longer it keeps going the more damage it does to itself and everything else, and the less likely it is to keep going.

    On the matter of Covid-19, research now indicates that the UV causes the virus to become deactivated rather quickly. And we have extremely high UV levels in NZ.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/trump-was-right-sunlight-destroys-covid-8x-faster-scientists-believed-study-shows

    1. When they fired the academics from universities and bought in the bean counters and psycho lecturers after making domestic students pay 10% compounding interest on their student loans in the 1990’s it all went down from there. As they burn the books and fire the specialist librarians at Auckland uni, to spend money on Parnell mansions for the overseas chancellor to take over, and at Christchurch a student body lies undiscovered for 6 weeks while the overseas chancellor again in charge doesn’t notice or even understand what went wrong with privatising universities and their facilities…. something is wrong! Meanwhile who could predict NZ would get a skills shortage, bring in 1 million people with mostly unskilled labour and now can’t even build a house or apartment that lasts 5 minutes before being repaired and has billions of debt because they borrow everything.

  2. The reality is that Covid is some weird way has helped NZ.

    In response to a question on whether they had experienced positive aspects, 64 per cent saw a silver lining to lockdown
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-two-thirds-of-kiwis-found-lockdown-silver-linings-study-shows/V3JFWXOZVSXZFTXAFVT2SAKLXU/

    Apparently we actually had less deaths and suicides that year in NZ.

    The economy is going great guns in many areas, (so many people who can’t easily spend their money overseas are going crazy and spending in NZ apparently).

    So nope this idea that we need foreign students and cheap workers here for our flawed economy for sunset industry that returns little back to society is yet another right wing woke brainwash not based on reality. We are doing better without them, in every way.

    Keep NZ border closed as long as possible the worst casualties in a Covid pandemic here are predicted to be the Maori and Pacific Island community.

  3. I have two words for you.. “Cottage Industry”… This is a heaven sent opportunity to develop our own technologies, produce our own clothing, food, appliances(and allow appliance repair shops to make a comeback), machinery, cars, boats, electronics, etc… Kiwis used to be famous for being self sufficient, and adaptable, to the point of creating World beating doohickeys that made the inventors a lot of money… After Douglas, Richardson, Shipley, and the great traitor Key, we have become nothing but drones, utterly helpless without imports to sustain us… The behavior of the moneyed classes in NZ between the years 1984- present day defines short sighted stupidity…. And it’s not looking like they are going to wise up any time soon… Those who are saying that this is a once in a generation opportunity to reset our dying economy/infrastructure are absolutely right, but have we the collective courage, and maturity to do the right thing whether we make profits out of it immediately or not? I have my doubts.. My money ATM is on me going back overseas when It’s feasible, and getting on with having an actual life, and not the pointless and unnecessary struggle everything is here.. To me, that is truly depressing and disappointing…

    1. Good points Stefan.

      Roger’n’Ruth basically closed basic manufacturing in this country, and opened NZ up to penetration by global capital. They monetised everything else that moved–SOEs, market rents for state housing, public asset sales, a fake electricity generation and supply market, NZ Refinery privatised, user pays tertiary education with influx of offshore paying students, and on it went.

      So yes, if shock horror, NZ could manufacture clothing, shoes, medical supplies (F&P export loads of hi-tech health care product already), and recycle and keep stuff running it would certainly help working class people.

      The one thing above all that could be this silver bullet people keep mentioning that does not exist; would be a giant public house and apartment build. Keep logs in NZ, train, manufacture, assemble/build, create jobs and house people at affordable rents and rent to buy deals.

  4. If we banned cars there would be no road deaths . At some stage we will need to open the boarders as I would have thought the economy will only carry on for so long trading with ourselves .
    The UK has stated no more lockdowns and covid will be treated in the same way as the flu. In a bad year they expect 25000 to die.
    We all die of something and at the end of the day there is no point in staving off the covid and dying because we cannot afford to run the hospitals.
    I wonder why we are only looking at Australia as a bubble partner when Tiewan with the same population has had only 10 deaths compared to Australia’s 900 odd.

  5. With you Stefan.
    Many years ago a clever economist, Dr Bill Sutch, drew up a plan for New Zealand’s self contained economy.
    He pointed out that New Zealand economy was repeatedly wrecked by overseas events over which we had no control.
    His plan was to isolate us from the vagaries of overseas markets. Our own factories could supply us with clothes made from native textiles, made by New Zealand workers. Surplus production could be exported. We could use our own ironsands to produce steel and our huge supplies of coal could be refined into petroleum instead of being exported over long distances to supply other people’s industries.
    Of course the problem with Sutch was that he was a fully signed up member of the New Zealand Communist Party who had visited the Soviet Union.
    This meant there could not be any rational discussion of his vision for New Zealand because he was a ‘stinkin’ commie who should be fuckin” shot’ ( redneck speak) and this was a convenient reason for dismissing his ideas.
    Eventually, of course, he was put on trial for SPYING FOR THE RUSSIANS and this is the only thing most people remember about him( he was acquitted). People still tell me how Bill Sutch gave secret information to the Russians( the trial revealed he had no secrets to give – as a known communist he was never allowed access to secret files) and his vision for New Zealand died with him.
    Time to resurrect them.

  6. Counter view – the rest of the world will begin opening up across the northern hemisphere summer. There are states in the US that are already effectively open (Texas / Florida) and it looks like the UK will have its shit together enough and also open up to the world again in June / July.

    It’s my view that we are running a massive risk of getting left well behind unless there are rapid increases in the numbers being vaccinated and I don’t think middle NZ will be so accepting of this.

    I’m also not sure the wider population will put up with being told that we need to be locked away from the rest of the world much longer, especially if major trading partners start opening up.

    In many ways COVID saved the current government’s electoral chances last year but I can see that it might also be what damns them in the long run.

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