The team of 5 million is splintering
"The team of five million is splintering and there are early signs Jacinda Ardern’s campaign that wasn’t a campaign for re-election is wobbling.
It’s becoming abundantly clear the Prime Minister’s sworn mission of stamping Covid-19 out of New Zealand is neither sustainable nor the right thing, morally, to do."
Reality Check
"We need look no further than our own backyard to see that Covid will regularly slip through our precarious border controls again and again.
We have 18 isolation and quarantine facilities in Auckland with thousands of staff marching in each day to work and marching out each night to a city of 1.5 million. It’s just a matter of time before there’s another slip up and, no matter how competent our dear leaders have been in ordering a lockdown, we can’t trust them to keep Covid out.
Despite being lauded for her fine communication skills, somehow the Prime Minister forgot to tell the boffins that regular testing of all border and quarantine staff should have been happening."
Overseas, Vietnam and Australia should serve as warnings that no country can keep Covid out.
The dream of a vaccine arriving soon is just that.
The World Health Organisation has changed its tune on the timing of a vaccine. It’s now telling countries they need to learn to live with Covid in their communities and for a long time yet. The world record in terms of vaccine development is four years for the mumps vaccine and most take about 10 years.
Dr Simon Thornley, a senior lecturer of epidemiology at the University of Auckland, puts it this way: “In New Zealand we’ve talked ourselves into a corner that we’re going to be able to do this. A long-term strategy that is predicated on a vaccine coming and seeing New Zealand isolated from the rest of the world is unrealistic and detrimental to the health of our population.”
What about the death toll?
Every option comes with a cost. But it seems the cost to lives was initially overstated by the Prime Minister. Death tolls of between 8,500 and 27,600 were predicted and used as justification for the harsh measures imposed.
The then Health Minister David Clark told me he didn’t even know where some of those modeled numbers had come from and was unsure of others the Prime Minister had stated publicly.
Whatever the case, they need revisiting.
I spoke to a Swedish journalist a few weeks back to get a sense of how our two, polar-opposite approaches are working and learned their death rate is far lower than had been predicted. And that’s without any lockdowns (although there are low-level restrictions) and children still able to attend school.
Most interesting is recent news that Sweden's percentage change in new cases over the past fortnight has dropped by a third. This, as neighbouring lockdown countries endure the rise of second waves.
Moreover, the WHO says the death rate is now estimated at between 0.5 and 1 percent.
So the cost to life is not what it was but the burden on our businesses, workers and families is all too real.
The political problem
"Stay home, Save lives.
We will take a health first approach.
We will follow the health advice from officials.
We believe in science, not conspiracy.
We can beat this again.
We are the envy of the world in the way we’re handling Covid."
Ardern has made very clear how she will deal with Covid and it involves a lot of pain for kiwis. It’s an entrenched position and a change of course risks undermining her decision in the first instance.
But she must ask herself whether the health risks of perpetual lockdowns are worth the economic price.
Ardern’s ability to clearly communicate decisions has never been in doubt, but increasingly her ability to make them is.
We can’t insulate ourselves from Covid’s impact on the global economy, but can make sure we don’t exacerbate the problem by shooting our own in the foot."
Comments
Post a Comment