1.It would appears the ability to keep forking out 4 billion a month for more lockdowns will not be fiscally viable indefinitely .
2. As soon as all those people who want a vaccine have got one, potentially around Christmas , then I believe we will see the borders being loosened and Covid present in the community next year .

3.Even at 80% vaccination it would still leave around 1,100,000 million “deliberately unvaccinated citizens vulnerable . The gobal mortality rate stands at 2% which would still mean around 22,000 dead.
4.A better health system and new antivirals may reduce the number to 1% but there are two problems,

a) NZ has the 2nd lowest number of intensive care beds in the OECD around 400 , with covid patients taking beds for up to 20 days , don’t bank on the care being there if you are unvaccinated . Oz has 2x the intensive care beds compared to NZ and NSW is already a train wreck .Cases due to peak at 4000 per day in 2 months and already patients being turned away from full hospitals at 1000 cases a day .

b) The overloading of the health system will impact on normal health services , Emergency depts/ elective surgery postponement / colon screening programs/cancer diagnostics/surgery and so on . I predict a serious public backlash to the unvaccinated in the new year,impacting the vaccinated who can’t get suitable care.

5. If the Govt can eliminate delta till everyone who wants protection has got it then , they will have done a world class the job , and should still rate highly in the polls.

6.Those who deliberately didn’t vaccinate should not impact on Labours popularity as they were offered protection but refused . On your head be it .

7.I’m personally in favour of fortress NZ/ indefinite elimination , and recoil from the concerted right wing media effort to fabricate false public support for opening up the borders too early . .Greedy , selfabsorbed, and callous .

However at some point after Christmas I suspect the game will change .If you are looking to have a vax, well done , for the 1,000,000 who don’t want one , good luck , in my estimations you will need it .As Chris Finlayson said on RNZ Sun Morn ” People have the right to be stupid but I have no empathy for the consequences .”

Firstly, the vaccine gradually loses effectiveness and is pretty much useless after 6.6 months. This is why Israel no longer considers those who were double jabbed with Pfizer nTc to be UNVACCINATED after 6 months, at which point they must have a third jab. This can easily be verified online lest anyone think I’m a rumor spreading anti-vaxxer.

That means by the time we open borders, all those people who are currently double jabbed will be pretty much back to their starting point. Those in the frontline are already vulnerable.
Bloomfield says we aren’t looking at boosters (and before you all start demanding them check out the death rate for all causes for Israel since the start of the year, and then look up the statistics for the 3rd booster shot…a disturbing correlation there although obvious cause and effect aren’t established).

So the 70% thing is bullshit, as much as 60% or 99% vaccination. Never gonna happen no matter how hard you all might want it.

Secondly, in the comments there is an expectation that vaccination protects from transmission. There was a perfectly good study done that demonstrated the viral load carried by vaccinated vs unvaccinated is the same. Said another way, a vaccinated person is equally likely to transmit the virus to others as an unvaccinated person.

What is concerning is that the authorities have not publically disclosed this, in particular to those who work with vulnerable people and got vaccinated to protect them. They are a walking risk and most are completely oblivious having swallowed the repeated claims around transmission which have not been updated since this study was released at the end of July!

Quote: “We find no difference in viral loads when comparing unvaccinated individuals to those who have vaccine “breakthrough” infections. Furthermore, individuals with vaccine breakthrough infections frequently test positive with viral loads consistent with the ability to shed infectious viruses.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v1

I am confident those in control will figure it out in the end. This is still the best place in the world to be right now.

Bozo did you know the government has yet to use the app for tracing? It seems it’s pretty useless.

I don’t want mandatory masks or tracing – both are an infringement on civil liberties and neither are proven to be effective.

“Once the vaccination program is complete there is no longer a justification for lockdowns and we must indeed learn to live with it”.

Correct Andrew. The devil’s in the detail. And the details entail both the public health response – most certainly mask wearing for a while yet and mandatory use of the tracer app – and walking the political highwire as Adern and her team try to hang on to support won in the last election.

Once the vaccination program is complete there is no longer a justification for lockdowns and we must indeed learn to live with it. Because just as our wildlife was forced to the edge of extinction because a rat jumped off a ship, isolationism is a failed evolutionary strategy. It WILL get in eventually and we won’t be able to stop it. Ardern scared the public spitless over the vaccine in order to get reelected so now she’s got to talk it all down again.

As for the rising number of ‘cases’ overseas, there’s a bit more to it than you might realize at first glance:

The definition of a ‘case’ is someone who presents themselves at a medical facility (dead or alive) and tests positive for the virus. The dead are those who died WITH the virus but not necessarily OF the virus. (Coroners do a test on the bodies and tick the relevant box, but the cause of the fatality could have been a car crash, a shooting or old age.)
Now consider that the virus has been on the march for more than 18 months now, so a significant proportion of the global population will have already been infected and suffered minor or zero symptoms. In addition I think those who have been vaccinated will return a positive test because the PCR test checks for the presence of antibodies. UK tests on the general population show that a very high proportion (over 70%) produce a positive test: It’s gone through the population and most people have already had it and are now just fine. So now nearly ALL subsequent deaths or hospitalizations will be recorded as ‘cases’ thus making the statistics meaningless. The only way to examine the real effect of the China Virus is to look at the ‘excess deaths’ statistics and that can only be done retrospectively.

Take a look at the Aussie statistics. You’ll see that those dying are near the end of their life anyway. Many were already in hospital with terminal conditions and more than one were in dementia wards.
https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-case-numbers-and-statistics#cases-and-deaths-by-age-and-sex

If vaccination allows one to get infected and not need to go to hospital, that is a form of immunity, albeit via infection – well at least for the health system.

39% (sorry typo).