So why prior to the latest community outbreak were they not testing all the staff at the border? There was no pressure on the testing regime when there was no community transmission. It is inexplicably incompetent. A monumental cockup.
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Getting no response on the other thread so I figured I would repeat it here.
Quote Originally Posted by jonu View Post
He's a person speaking his mind. A rare thing in the PC woke world in which Labour and the Greens exist.
moka, be so kind as to explain the exit strategy from NZ's level one and associated closed borders. I'd really love to know so that I can explain to my grandchildren why it is they are still paying of the debt in thirty years time. I don't recall Labour telling us when they committed to spending 150+ billion dollars.
From what I can tell it must be based on the gamble of a vaccine becoming available to the public within the next 12 months (backdated to April). How's that working out?
At what point do we abandon the closed borders and write of 150+ billion to experience?
No answer to this moka? Any Labourite care to enlighten me as to what the exit strategy is?
Crusher isn't going to let it in either so maybe they will have the same exit strategy?
I do wonder how long we can keep the current settings though.
It seems 'experts' think elimination is still the best strategy, depends on which experts you choose like for all other advice.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/hea...nz-experts-say
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/hea...l-stays-silent
Perfect summation of how dismally this government has failed to deliver post the previous lockdown:
"The Government had one job, to isolate the outbreak, but had failed."
“The Government set itself one job: test, trace and isolate the virus in three days. But it has failed, at a cost to all of us,” Seymour said.
“If the strategy was always for restrictions to last one incubation cycle of 14 days, the Government should have said so.”
Seymour earlier said the Government needed to have a plan to live with the virus, even if that meant tolerating small outbreaks. New Zealand should try and mimic Taiwan, which had managed to have low rates of death and infection without imposing severe lockdowns."
As a non-expert, I think elimination is the best strategy and if the current outbreak can be contained we can go back to elimination. And go back to life pretty much as normal except for lots of handwashing and kindness, and border controls.
So far all the cases have been linked to one cluster so it may be possible. As Michael Baker says the alternatives to elimination were undesirable for both health and economic reasons. And yes there are a range of experts with a variety of opinions, just pick one to confirm your bias.
We expect to move in and out of elimination for the foreseeable future, says epidemiologist Amanda Kvalsvig.
We know that elimination is possible because New Zealand eliminated community transmission before. The goal is to maintain zero community spread but this country will always be under threat from infections being introduced through the borders. No border-control system can be 100% fail-safe. But because we’re starting from a baseline of elimination, it should be feasible to extinguish each new outbreak using all the control measures we have at our disposal, including case and contact management, physical distancing and mass masking.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02402-5
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...t-you-wish-for
Postponing the election? Careful what you wish for.
Should the Government postpone the election? No-one is going to take any notice of Judith Collins calling for a delay but that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing to do.
The more this election looks like a foregone conclusion, the less people will feel like voting. Democracy relies on participation and people believing their vote counts. More difficult voting processes could also act as a discouragement to voting.
Maybe Collins should be careful what she wishes for in delaying the election because the current climate could present it with a God-sent opportunity.
What was Gerry Brownlee playing at this week by insinuating the second outbreak and move to level 3 were part of some grand Government scheme? This is not gutter politics, it is nutter politics. As the former earthquake minister, he, of all people, should know how to ride this out with dignity.
Delaying the dissolution of Parliament and using the powers of the Chief Electoral Officer provide the mechanisms to postpone the election to a date suitable for the current circumstances. Let’s do it to ensure a healthy election
The personalisation of politics – those who support Ardern also support the government’s response, while those who did not feel emotionally close to Ardern do not support the government’s response.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...mes-with-risks
Ardern’s political style rests on her personal appeal, but it has also been criticised as superficial – or, as Bill English put it, “stardust”. Personalisation of politics means that political leaders can nurture emotional closeness with voters across party lines and political ideologies.
The majority of Ardern supporters who also support the National Party (80%), ACT (85.2%), and New Conservatives (85.7%) deemed the government’s response to COVID-19 “successful”.
In stark contrast, among those who did not feel closely connected to Ardern, few supporters of opposition parties gave such positive evaluations (National 37.4%, ACT 27.8%, and New Conservatives 23.5%).
Nonetheless, even among supporters of the opposition parties, people who felt emotionally close to Ardern showed more support for higher tax than those who felt closer to other party leaders.
Found on BFD.co.nz. Interesting reading. No wonder so many questions are being asked on social media.
I hope Mr Hipkens doesn't tell me off, but some things about our 'South Auckland family' don't add up. Is it alright to talk about it? After all, the repercussions are destroying the livelihoods of many of our Auckland friends and costing the country billions so everything should be subject to scrutiny at this stage; don't you think?
We learned on Tuesday 11 August, and the following days, that an unwell male, in his fifties, presented to his GP on Monday 10th August with symptoms and was swabbed for a COVID sample, testing positive twice. By the following day the sample had been notified and a second, also positive, test taken and analysed. Not only that, but the six other family 'household' members who live with him had been tested with three of the further six testing positive by mid-afternoon Tuesday. That's, of itself, a minor-miracle turn-around time given results normally take 24 hours to materialise, but I suppose they were designated priority, or something, and by 4pm Tuesday 11th the hammer began dropping on the entire population of unfortunate Auckland.
Mr Bloomfield, with hand on heart and all the certainty possible, claimed, in response to a press question on the 11th, that the gentleman concerned had displayed symptoms for "four or five days" before presenting at his GP. We now know that was not true: that is not to say Mr Bloomfield lied, but that the statement is simply untrue, because during the COVID Update of August 13th both the prime minister and Mr Bloomfield confirmed that, in fact, the correct date of the gentleman's first symptoms was July 31st. We never went '100-Days' COVID-free.
So what? Well, here's the interesting thing from the Alert Level 3 announcement on the 11th:
"Media: And what kind of symptoms are the cases showing? Are they quite severe symptoms?
Dr Ashley Bloomfield: So the person who presented as the first case did have fever, a cough—you know, so quite noticeable symptoms. The partner of that person also had obvious symptoms—in fact, that preceded that of the case that we diagnosed first".
So: the partner of Index One was ill and displaying "obvious" COVID symptoms "preceding", our "first" documented resurgence case, taking the possible timeline further back, raising further questions and nullifying others, for instance: if 'Index One's' partner actually contracted COVID first then Index One's employment at the Americold cool-store is completely irrelevant, a totally unnecessary and unfair slur on the business, a Herring Red, and a very wet rag to the 'came in on frozen peas from Melbourne' governing coalition's 'Dunno how it got here' conspiracy theory.
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Over to you: Mr Hipkens but, please; don't get angry, remember to watch your peas and (Managed Isolation and Quarantine) queues, they're splitting.
The thing that gets me about all these insinuations that the Director General or a minister is lying, is it is never explained what the benefit is from the lie.
If the index case wasn’t really the index case, why was the lie told? It just becomes grand conspiracy after grand conspiracy with no explation of what the aim of the grand conspiracy was.
It also the usual anti-government conspiracy where they can’t organise their way out of a paper bag, but they can create a grand web of lies and no one from the MOH is blabbing to the media about this fabrication.
1. Lie about covid
2. ???????
3. Profit?
[QUOTE=blackcap;836534]Found on BFD.co.nz. Interesting reading. No wonder so many questions are being asked on social media.
Unable to find article on quoted website. Perhaps the MOH had it deleted?
westerly
Media: And what kind of symptoms are the cases showing? Are they quite severe symptoms?
Dr Ashley Bloomfield: So the person who presented as the first case did have fever, a cough—you know, so quite noticeable symptoms. The partner of that person also had obvious symptoms—in fact, that preceded that of the case that we diagnosed first.
page 6 if you really must...11/8
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/feature/covid-19-updates