What happens next? Delta has taught us that there is no getting back to normal
Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins says the Government’s bold “reopening” plan for the world will have to be completely reworked in the light of the new outbreak.
The plan, unveiled last month, would have seen select vaccinated Kiwis able to self-isolate at home in the latter parts of this year after travelling overseas, and a more gradual reopening in 2022.
Key to the plan was a risk-profiling of other countries, so places with high rates of vaccination and low levels of Covid-19 could be treated differently to places where the virus was rampant.
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, probably 2023 or even 2024.
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.
We are barely able to deal with Delta, the next mutations will be vastly more problematic.
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Will the boomer replacement generations get politically active? That is the only road to finally burying the NZ neo liberal state. They will have the numbers from 2023 in a parliamentary sense.
“Someone” needs to put up the demands that will get support from generation renter and generation student loan and generation alienated. The 70 NGOs are one group that can play a role, various Iwi groups and no doubt a few of the older leftists too.
This is the basic platform;
• state house/apartment mega build from flat packs and modular (including emergency housing and tiny houses for homeless)
• Basic Income paid to all citizens via IRD, with new agency for special needs groups, retire WINZ/MSD
• Fare free public transport and free Wifi nationwide
• All senior public servants to reapply for their jobs
• State Sector Act, Reserve Bank Act, and all other neo lib legislation to be repealed and replaced
• NZ manufacturing, tech and medical industries set up
• Power generation and supply restored to full public ownership and control (cheap fucking power)
• Legalise It! kick off the Cannabis and hemp industries
Sounds like a revolution! And a fully functioning mental health system that doesn’t criminalise people with an illness. Incentivise green technologies and assist farmers to transition to sustainable practises.
Fantastic comment Tiger Mountain, and your comments too Steve. Neo liberalism has failed us all for the last 40 years.
TM and Steve have some great thoughts but can you see any of them coming into practice. Those that are property owners or on a good wage now will see no need for a change and those at the other end of the prosperity scale have no real voice as their needs are diverse that they do not speak with one voice so they drown each other out
Yep, its a dream alright
100% sadly Trevor. Meanwhile nature progresses in ways that plough on through the ignorance and regressiveness that is in abundance – nature will out against the cult of the individual, wokeness, conspiracy theories, you name it.
We have some chances to turn it around through cooperation and belief, but sadly I don’t see that happening at all.
+100
Plus one or two other things – like strengthening the OIA and making those that seek to subvert it more accountable, and do something meaningful about public service broadcasting.
It also struck me this morning when the trucking industry was having difficulties with inter-region transport where they’re at different levels, how much easier it’d have been to manage had we not destroyed our rail system (i.e. getting through from points south, through Auckland to Northland)
Absolutely correct Martyn!
Where’s Labour’s end game? They have been thoroughly captured by medical academics in their approach to the virus. It sounds so logical to ‘minimize harm’ doesn’t it? But if we apply that to our lives in general we wouldn’t drink wine, ride bikes, eat burgers, use chain saws, play footie and a host of other normal activities.
Nobody gets out of here alive and a pandemic passing through the population every century or so IS the norm (although it seems this one is not of natural causes). Those taken by it are the weak and infirmed. So what if you Gran is killed by it at age 98? She was due to cash her chips in soon anyway. The average life expectancy in NZ is 81 years and the average Covid 19 death is higher than that. Think about that.
What a dick comment
Yep
Cross party consensus. That’s the only way forward on this.
Many are pleased that Covid save NZ from itself, with sunset industries, illegal labour and ghost jobs, completely out of control.
Exports are up… which seems to be the only way NZ can see itself these days.
Yes, and a different way of farming and food production.
I disagree, whilst it is true that the ongoing lockdowns would “be a problem if any other political party had a vision, but none of them do”. The reality is that there is plenty of time for this to still happen in 2021 as we steadily increase our vax rates and I am certain that alternative views will be getting developed.
Once we’re above 80% vax rate the pressure from the bulk of the pop for a change in strategy will be immense. There is already a slight majority in favour of change if the Herald poll is to believed and this will only increase as the AKL lockdown drags on
We are definitely going to return to normal. It’s just that the vast majority of people living in industrialised nations like NZ are grossly uninformed/misinformed.
Normal is NO USE OF FOSSIL FUELS, as was the case for about 200,000 of our existence as a species.
The weird aberration -of industrial living- that has taken over the world over the past 200 years, but particularly the extremely weird aberration of the past 50 years- is totally unsustainable and about to disappear forever.
The downslope is going to be mighty ugly, which is why ‘no one’ wants to talk about it. And the longer this refusal to talk about continues, the worse the predicament becomes:
‘The vast majority of fossil fuel reserves owned today by countries and companies must remain in the ground if the climate crisis is to be ended, an analysis has found.
The research found 90% of coal and 60% of oil and gas reserves could not be extracted if there was to be even a 50% chance of keeping global heating below 1.5C, the temperature beyond which the worst climate impacts hit.
The scientific study is the first such assessment and lays bare the huge disconnect between the Paris agreement’s climate goals and the expansion plans of the fossil fuel industry. The researchers described the situation as “absolutely desperate”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/08/climate-crisis-fossil-fuels-ground
Absolutely agree. Sequestering carbon is the imperative. And the best way to do this is simply to leave it where it is. As you often point out its a dilemma since (almost) everything we know and accept as ‘normal’ derives from carbon-based energy. I read just a few day ago that after the Fukushima Daiichi incident in 2011 Germany (and France??) moth-balled their nuclear energy plants and switched to coal. I wonder if this is still happening, a decade later. Our very existance rests on the ‘real cost’ of carbon-derived energy. Even here in Godzone we are still burning the stuff!
So true. Check out feel good movie Kiss The Earth…well, it made me feel good. About a different way of farming, food production that nurtures soil and puts carbon back into it, where it belongs. Status quo needs to change all agree, even the US president…..but, action not words.
Makes you think the ‘Take that!’ covid ads on TV were a little premature. Should be interesting if they reinstate them- if /when the latest outbreak is dealt with. Will we be less bolshy in out attitude to more outbreaks- probably. I always thought there was too much swagger in those ads and added to our complacency over the previous few months.
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.
Words of wisdom Maryn, but I think that Jacinda et al are threatened already. Once the news about Delta’s transmission speed got out, there should have been immediate shrinking of groups, inside to say 30, and that would have made contact tracing mush easier. It would also have meant that the whole of the economy didn’t have to suffer for weeks because of NZ being over-exposed to the Auckland gargantuan that wants to swallow us all in the super-shitty. We look at complacent government now with narrowed gaze. But is anyone else there with the right mix of trained brain, humanity and objectivity and general knowledge? National are virtual stoats wiling to eat anything that moves, ACT is for people who have shit for brains and have acquired enough money to permanently envelop themselves in air freshener, the Greens think the answer Lies in the Soil, and have given up on normal human sexuality and instead are studying earthworms for the way forward:
It might sound counterintuitive, but according to a new study published Thursday in PLOS Genetics, it’s true, at least for parasitic worms. Although nearly all animals reproduce sexually, there’s a small percentage that’s managed to procreate without sex and the root-knot nematode is one of them.6/10/2017
These Worms Chose Celibacy to Improve Their Species
https://www.inverse.com › article › 32799-nematode-stud…