Chinese Government critical of NZs travel restrictions – here’s why they should be extended

The Chinese Government are critical of NZs travel ban and points to the fact WHO haven’t endorsed such bans as proof positive that we should remove them.

We shouldn’t for one moment drop the travel bans and in fact should be expanding them dramatically.

Firstly, just because WHO aren’t endorsing travel bans doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.

WHO are very much in the pocket of China and their bewilderingly lax attitude towards criticising China over lying about the extent and true damage of this virus…

China’s leaders knew of coronavirus dangers weeks before public told

China reported Sunday a drop in new virus cases for the third straight day, as it became apparent that the country’s leadership was aware of the potential gravity of the situation well before the alarm was sounded.

…has been critically scrutinised as deeply biased in favour of China…

The coronavirus crisis is raising questions over China’s relationship with the World Health Organization

The WHO’s praise of China’s response have led critics to question the relationship between the two entities. The UN agency relied on funding and the cooperation of members to function, giving wealthy member states like China considerable influence. Perhaps one of the most overt examples of China’s sway over the WHO is its success in blocking Taiwan’s access to the body, a position that could have very real consequences for the Taiwanese people if the virus takes hold there.

…I’m not sure holding up an international organisation that China has hostage over meets the evidential threshold we would like to adopt for public health purposes.

62 other countries around the world have ignored the WHO on this, so that suspicion of influence is as wide spread as the virus itself.

Secondly China is a repressive regime who now have over 700million in quarantine, that’s 1 in every 10 human beings on the planet in some type of quarantine. To do that suggests a problem of a magnitude far larger than China are being honest about and with their appalling human rights record…

China Uighurs: Detained for beards, veils and internet browsing

A document that appears to give the most powerful insight yet into how China determined the fate of hundreds of thousands of Muslims held in a network of internment camps has been seen by the BBC.

…they haven’t done much to inspire trust in what they have to say.

If anything, we are underestimating the true extent and damage of this virus as  public health risk and as a global financial shockwave.

The bloody thing is incredibly infectious and can go undetected, sure it might only have a low mortality rate, but as Professor Gabriel Leung points out, that’s still 45million deaths globally if it does become a pandemic.

The virus’s economic impact is being felt in China, in Australia (who are also recovering from their own forest fires), here in NZ, Japan and Germany.

This virus and its ability to jump species with such ease is a symptom of the climate crisis. Overpopulation and cheek to jowl intensification consuming animals we shouldn’t be consuming from poorly regulated wet markets is a recipe for disaster.

We are reaping that poisoned harvest in what’s occurring right now.

2020 will be the year when climate change problems begin to cascade. Pandemics, mega droughts, mega fires, mega storms, mega floods will become the norm with all the destabilising effects that accompany them alongside the vast economic depression such disasters fuel.

Not only should we extend the travel bans, we should increase the contacts that are banned while urgently redistributing our economy away from Chinese dependence and start planning for more of these types of events.

This is the future.