How many NZers are ACT & National prepared to allow die from Covid?
The grim modeling demands acknowledgement.
At 90% vaccination, NZ would suffer 11400 hospitalizations and 1030 deaths.
That’s 90%, a rate seen no where else.
Anything less than 90% and those hospitalizations and death rates jump up by several times that size.
National are currently pushing for 70% – that would see 30 000+ hospitalizations and 3000+ dead.
I simply can’t see the majority of NZ agreeing to those mortality and sickness rates no matter the cost of lockdowns.
Add ACT into the mix and I suspect they actively want the sick to die so that it incentivizes the rest to work harder.
National and ACT do a great job of criticising Labour but to date haven’t put forward a plan that doesn’t require a huge number of deaths and sickness.
Your average angry ACT and National voter believes Delta is inevitable and only see them losing money from pointless lockdowns. They consider Jacinda too weak to allow her own citizens to die for the economy and so ACT & National in representing that venality have to push for a solution that doesn’t alert the middle to their desire for a mass culling of the weak via Covid.
The truth is not even National or ACT can sign off on 3000 dead and 30000 hospitalizations despite their angry supporters desire for a purge.
That’s why the only way National or ACT can win is if Labour fuck up because the Rights solutions are politically too toxic.
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The doomer modeling in the original outbreak was proven to be exaggerated.
But let’s say the figures above are not, are you going to hold the government to account when delta or next variant establishes here if not this time next time?
Eternal lockdown is not possible.
Fact is, this delta came through ( predictably ) from Australia as a DIRECT RESULT of opening up a trans Tasman ‘bubble’,- right smack dab in the middle of a large outbreak in New South Wales. Its akin to being in a boxing match and lowering your guard and wondering why you got clocked fair square on the kisser.
Keep our borders closed.
Wild K. Agree. We may need a few high profile people deaths for National and Act to be able understand the gravity of the current situation – which normal people generally seem to now.
New South Wales. ..
Who’s Gladys taking public health advice from? Medical or Business?
https://youtu.be/ExkfAlICSVE
I agree that the bubble with Australia, especially NSW, was a mistake..(I’ve been advocating for a state by state approach from the beginning), but I feel it necessary to point out that “opening up a trans Tasman ‘bubble’,- right smack dab in the middle of a large outbreak in New South Wales”, is not only inaccurate, but irresponsible.. To mind, a bubble with Western Australia, for example would have paired us with a state that uses the same methods as NZ, and has been as staunch in maintaining it.. The only glitch has been when the federal government decided to shift a large number of detainees from Villawood, in the heart of Sydney, to a prison north of Perth, without bothering to consult the state government first.. No news as to the fallout from that, as yet.. Just to clarify.The Delta outbreak didn’t occur until june 2021, leading to a lockdown being reluctantly imposed at the end of june… The travel bubble was opened officially on April 18 2021… Don’t let one rather obvious error spoil what is a valid point to make…
“At 90% vaccination, NZ would suffer 11400 hospitalizations and 1030 deaths.”
We would probably reluctantly have to accept that if we could somehow hit 90% vaccination.
That number of hospital hospitalisations is a tiny fraction of the over 1.2 million hospitalisations per year.
That number of deaths is comparable to the flu.
It will be good when we can think loads more about other causes of death and work on bringing those down to improve length and quality of life. 9,500 each year from cancer. 700 a year from suicide. We desperately need to work out how to do “covid and …” not covid instead.
Quick facts from 2016 (https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/mortality-2016-data-tables)
There were 31,398 deaths registered in 2016, equating to an age-standardised rate of 364.6 deaths per 100,000 population.
Males accounted for 15,898 deaths in 2016, slightly higher than for females (15,500).
Māori accounted for 3,471 deaths in 2016, 11.1% of all deaths registered.
The leading causes of death were cancer, ischaemic heart diseases and cerebrovascular diseases. Cancer deaths made up 30.3% of all deaths, ischaemic heart diseases 14.9% and cerebrovascular diseases 7.4%.
For Māori, the leading causes of death in 2016 were cancer, ischaemic heart diseases and chronic lower respiratory diseases.
Similar to previous years, mortality rates were generally higher for males than for females. For example, males had higher mortality rates for intentional self-harm, motor vehicle accidents, melanoma and ischaemic heart diseases compared with females in 2016.
As seen in previous years, mortality rates for Māori were generally higher than for non-Māori. For example, Māori had higher mortality rates for ischaemic heart diseases, diabetes mellitus and lung cancer compared with non-Māori in 2016.