How Jacinda should appear at the NZF Anti-vaxx witch hunt

Fran O’Sullivan is no card carrying member of the Communist Party and when she is calling the feral Right out for the viciousness of their anti-vaxx witch-hunt, you know shit just got real…

Covid inquiry: Time to cut Dame Jacinda Ardern a break – Fran O’Sullivan

…Colin Peacock notes the only person getting excited about the anti-vaxx witch hunt is Paddy Gower, Ian Taylor and Ryan Bridge…

Mediawatch: Pandemic probe media focus flipped to politicians

“It’s the big one. The inquiry into the Covid response kicks off this morning. It looks at lockdowns. It looks at all of the things you hated most,” Ryan Bridge told viewers of NZME’s streaming show Herald Now last Monday morning.

But the public hearings which ran all week turned out not to be such a ‘big one’ for the media.

“I saw the Covid inquiry in the news this morning and I just thought: how long does this have to go on for?” an exasperated Lara Greaves – an associate professor in politics – told Bridge later in the same show.

She’s not the only one who feels that way.

But the hearings were barely in the news after they got under way on Monday.

On Tuesday the inquiry was well down the running order in morning and evening news shows, long after coverage of the mushroom poisoning trial in Australia. On Wednesday the possibility of moa being regenerated with the backing of Sir Peter Jackson was a bigger story for most outlets.

There was a little more coverage on Thursday when anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown groups appeared, ahead of anti-conspiracy theory group FACT and immunologist Professor Graeme LeGros later on.

But by the time they wrapped up on Friday the hearings had virtually vanished from bulletins. And what was said over the five days generated less coverage than questions about whether politicians would appear at hearings in future.

…those wanting to hang the Front Bench of the Labour Party for vaccine crimes against humanity is as tedious as they are tiny.

I hope Jacinda does front, she’s said she would, but I don’t want her to bring her kindness or reasonableness, I want her to bring the incandescent wrath of the wronged.

The feral anti vax lunatics scream the vaccine was made by a shadowy one world government child molesting Satanic cult who used 5G technology to weaken our immune systems.

Sure they did.

The truth is Jacinda and Labour’s political courage and Covid leadership saved 20 000 lives…

New Zealand’s Covid-19 response saved 20,000 lives – research

New Zealand’s restrictions during the pandemic saved the lives of about 20,000 people, according to new research.

The paper by 16 leading doctors and scientists, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal on Friday, is calling for all serious respiratory infections – including influenza and RSV – to be treated the same way.

…and it resulted in NZ bucking life expectancy trend during COVID-19…

NZ bucked life expectancy trend during COVID-19 – study

“These findings provide further evidence supporting the effectiveness of the elimination strategy for minimising mortality from the pandemic,” Otago University epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker told RNZ.

New Zealand has been praised for its elimination strategy in the early stages of the pandemic. It kept Covid numbers down until vaccines became widely available.

New Zealand in 2020 and 2021 also experienced very little influenza.

By the end of 2021, 90 percent of the eligible population had been double vaccinated.

It was not until 2022, after the government had relaxed pandemic controls, that the country had its first major outbreak, fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

In 2022, deaths in New Zealand were up 10.4 percent on the previous year – the biggest annual increase since 1918 (following the influenza pandemic).

There were two obvious contributors to the increase: the pandemic and the country’s ageing population, according to Statistics New Zealand.

In total, nearly 6000 New Zealanders have died with Covid, according to the latest Te Whatu Ora data.

But compared with other nations, New Zealand is said to have got off lightly.

“[The paper] reinforces other evidence that New Zealand’s response was extremely effective at minimising mortality during the pandemic,” Baker said.

…the feral anti vaxxers who have been tricked led and manipulated by Social Media Hate algorithms scream NZ has had excess mortality when that is just garbage.

Economically, Jacinda’s leadership was far better than the Right pretend it is…

Shutting down the engines of growth

Greg Sheridan writing in The Australian wailed,

“All her economic instincts were bad, all her strategic instincts were bad. She had a great desire to undo productive economic reform and remove or shut down the engines of economic growth for what should be a nation of limitless opportunity.”

James Macpherson on the Bolt Report claimed, 

“Jacinda Ardern wants to be remembered for being empathetic and kind. Well, she won’t be remembered for building a strong economy.”

The Daily Mail’s Guy Adams opined that,

“Back in New Zealand, where this progressive superstar has never been quite so popular as she has overseas, voters are facing a cost-of-living crisis, spiralling crime rates and soaring inflation. Housing is increasingly unaffordable and the economy is on the verge of a recession …”

The Flat White column at The Spectator asserted,

“Labour is aware that a failing economy is bad for the polls, with Ardern previously overseeing a pay-cut in solidarity.”

We now have annual GDP growth for all 38 wealthy OECD members. New Zealand now ranks fourth, the highest ranking since records have been kept. See grey chart, below.

At 6.4 per cent, New Zealand’s annual economic growth, far from being “on the verge of a recession” is double the rate of the Netherlands, South Korea, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It is three times that of the USA and four times Japan, Germany, France and Switzerland.

When Ardern became prime minister in October 2017, New Zealand’s annual GDP growth was a modest 3.0 per cent which ranked 19th in the OECD. 

Employment

The jobless rate has been at 3.4 per cent or lower since June 2021. Between September 2021 and March 2022, the rate was 3.2 per cent, the lowest since records have been kept.

That ranks fifth in the OECD, beaten only by Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Japan.

Job participation had reached an all-time high of 71.2 per cent just before Ardern took office. She kept this within what seems to be an optimum band between 69.9 and 71.2 per cent throughout her tenure, until the third quarter last year, when it reached a new record high of 71.7 per cent.

Labour productivity was a modest 124.1 when Ardern took office. This has increased steadily since then, except for a blip during the Covid recession, and hit a new peak of 132.02 in the latest quarter.

Wages have increased satisfactorily from NZ$30.51 per hour in Ardern’s first quarter to NZ$37.93 in the last measure published. 

Further fun facts and figures

New Zealand’s current inflation rate is 7.2 per cent, just below the peak of 7.3 in the previous quarter. This is well below the OECD average of 11.6 per cent, ranking around eleventh. Given the global challenges, it is quite false to characterise this as “soaring”.

Ardern’s Government has shone in budget discipline, with healthy budget surpluses in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The pandemic recession year caused a deficit of 7.3 per cent of GDP, with that improving substantially in 2021 to just 1.3 per cent of GDP. 

Housing approvals

The Australian’s Greg Sheridan wrote:

“In substance, Ardern was a flop … She promised the government would build 100,000 homes, it built barely 1000.”

We read earlier the Daily Mail hack bemoaning “Housing is increasingly unaffordable …”

Well, according to Stats NZ, total housing starts have risen in every Ardern year and boomed over the last two. In the first five years of the previous National Government, housing approvals averaged 3.7 per year per one thousand residents. Through Ardern’s five years, they averaged 8.2 per year. See blue chart, below.

Economic Freedom

Finally, the rankings on economic freedom compiled by Heritage Foundation in the USA give the Ardern administration huge bragging rights.

Heritage ranked New Zealand the top economy in the OECD in four of the last five years. Global ranking has fluctuated between second and fifth.

If the right wing media read these numbers when the Nationals were in office, they would have proclaimed them from the mountain tops.

…you can’t pretend that Jacinda didn’t have serious policy wins and strong results.

The facts remains that Jacinda and Labour saved us from a public health catastrophe over Covid and we repaid that courage by electing a hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government.

We are our own worst enemies in New Zealand.

My advice to her is that she puts the Kindness to one side, and instead go full righteous fury!

She should attack the anti-vaxx witch hunt for what it is and make the most aggressive defence for putting public health before Death Cult Capitalism.

She should unleash with the incandescent rage of the just.

Put these snivelling little Quislings who would sell so cheaply our shared sacrifice of Lockdown in their places and denounce this revisionist history.

For the millionth time, we were running blind in a once in a century pandemic, were the mistakes?

OF COURSE THERE WERE, but the stats speak for themselves and Jacinda has a legacy she should be proud of and we should be grateful for.

We bypassed the worst of a once in a century pandemic, we were the lucky ones you clowns.

We were the lucky ones.

 

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