Written By:
notices and features - Date published:
6:00 am, September 5th, 2021 - 50 comments
Categories: open mike -
Tags:
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
rambling.. but my deadset 2c..
that Texas law change on abortion is yet another certain indicator of the Republican's steady stomp to an authoritarian fascist state.. ramped up into the bright lights by Trump's corrupt and unlawful activities.. with the GOP now girding itself for further steps over the next few years to continue along this path…
pretty much all authoritarian regimes and dictators take some considerable time to get there… cause a skirmish over there… pit citizens against one another over here… tweak the judiciary there… amend the constitution here… purge the public service there… change the military here… and then one day while all these things have steadily been pushed into place, make the final move…
And so the Texas law trashes the US constitution… resulting from a tweaked judiciary willing to turn a blind eye… and pitting citizens against each other with bounty-hunters…
It is all so very predictable… such is history always repeating this well-trodden path…
The Texas law should be yet another warning to not only the US, but also the world… that the Republicans are stepping through the necessary steps to enable a final grab at total power..
the US is heading down this track at an increasingly rapid rate…
watch out
The horrific state of the American empire. Chris Hedges spells it out.
Terrifying and Ominous Robert. We must make the most of our relative security for tomorrow….. Hell might be real after all.
Interesting that Shane Te Pou on Marae this morning says he has reliable connections that reckon Judith’s only got about another week or so left as leader of the Nats
Whose next any tips ?
He did say that the word is that Simon is leading the push but that it wasn't clear if it was for himself or someone else
If Simon has learned from previous mistakes, life could get interesting for Labour.
Shane usually has reliable sources. Interesting level of detail from him..
https://twitter.com/PouTepou/status/1434030814019264518
If Simon is a stalking horse, could the main man be Mark Mitchell. He’s invisible in his electorate. Too busy campaigning in Wellington?
Is that the Mark Mitchell who was a “security contractor” in Iraq?
Interesting systemic analysis of how some people end up distrusting vaccination – click on the tweet inside the tweet to see the rest of the chain of them.
https://twitter.com/juliefairey/status/1434308592136450051
https://twitter.com/wekatweets/status/1434318179681988610?s=21
Hilary Mantel further down on that thread
The absurdity of "gender-neutral pronouns" was in full display again this afternoon as Grant Robertson referred repeatedly to "The Terrorist" as “they”. There is no confusion or uncertainty about the gender of The Terrorist; Robertson like everyone else is perfectly aware that The Terrorist is a male.
September 26th German Federal elections are looking interesting for a Left Left Green government. They'll have to come to an agreement on NATO membership though.
With the current Nat leader smoothly claiming on telly that Covid would kill a trifling 500 of us each year at 70-75% vaccination levels, this actual evidence might prove useful:
https://twitter.com/StrayDogNZ/status/1434307776826810371
Tame almost had Collins on toast but didn't close for the kill. He got to the point where he'd made it clear that a 70% (or whatever) vaccination rate isn't a target in itself, it's an enabler of other outcomes – and those outcomes are your real targets.
Those real targets might include measures such as excess deaths, excess hospitalisations, productivity lost through excess illness, number of days in lockdown, no. of people able to cross the border, amount spent on wage subsidies, etc. Collins didn't have any of these real targets – and to pretend that an arbitrary vaccination rate plucked from your nether regions constitutes a target is nonsense. It's simply cover for indulging your ideological predilections against restricting business activity.
A sane, honest person works bottom up from these real targets and with luck comes up with a combination of vaccination rate plus residual public health measures (masks, border controls) that gets us somewhere close to them.
Anyone saying that needs to be challenged, yes, starting with the obvious proxy figure..
https://twitter.com/SachaDylan/status/1434339583525675016
The epidemiologist Jim mora interviewed this morning on Sunday (RNZ) said that excess death analysis showed that covid had killed 4 times as many people as shown on the worldometer site…that is 18 million rather than 4.5 million. Also it had caused life expectancy in the USA to drop by 18 months.
These figures are clearly being covered up by Boris ScoMo et al. I wonder why? (Sarc)
Thanks, I previously linked to a Stuff piece on this: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126211034/longterm-public-health-measures-needed-alongside-vaccination-for-borders-to-reopen
National and Judith seemingly ignore stuff that doesn’t fit with their narrative or twist it.
The paper notes the uncertainty in both alpha and delta variants that were increasing at the time of the paper.
A high rate of vaccination is a necessity for NZ to constrain delta and its increasing risk,along with enhanced border controls for border staff,and international flight crews (vaccinated or otherwise such as specialist transport etc)
Limitation of cross border transport during local outbreaks maybe also necessary to enhance both economic wellbeing,and to allow other medical facilities to be available in the event of a black swan event.
For an example of how not to do things well look at Canada during an election cycle as the fourth wave rises.
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/08/30/Governments-Wont-Stop-COVID-Up-To-Us/?fbclid=IwAR2W9ymPCXVH27rZkeKKEkSjdr7rSoH82oJ-l63WcV7FE5-J0qAXMqofk_g
This is a very good article showing the constraints on outcomes on vaccination without concomitant public health measures.
A very good opinion piece by Dr Ian Powell on the failings, not failure, of the overall Covid-19 response and the (public) health system in general.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/300399082/our-covid-strategy-has-been-a-success–but-we-cant-ignore-the-governments-serious-failings
Highly misleading of him to claim there is no replacement plan for the DHBs whose failings have become all too obvious to the public in the last year or two.
Well, if you happen to have a link to the new agreed and decided structure with all the relevant details that would be appreciated
AFAIK, there’s no “dismantling” happening yet although the current system is crumbling and buckling under the pressure; it is only going to get worse, which is why the current Covid-19 strategy is the only viable option for Aotearoa-New Zealand, IMHO.
The plan is effectively the Simpson report being implemented by the 'transition unit' in DPMC, as Powell well knows.
The Simpson report (https://systemreview.health.govt.nz/)? Yeah, nah.
Anyway, the current train wreck is chugging along ‘nicely’ towards the cliff’s edge and it is more harmful than a locomotive ending up in Picton harbour (https://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/300399401/kiwirail-retrieves-locomotive-from-bottom-of-picton-harbour).
He has an interesting piece on Cuba's health system (not a lot of spare cash to throw around, but a much less individualistic culture) and the ways we might learn from each other.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/09/05/guest-blog-ian-powell-lessons-for-nz-from-cuba-the-covid-19-vaccine-powerhouse/
Ta
I'd much rather be here in NZ than Cuba. Even just from a covid and vaccination perspective, let alone all the other factors.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/cuba/
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=NZL~AUS~CUB
Powell's piece had very little discussion of the trials needed for vaccine approval. This appears to be the much bigger obstacle to vaccine development and use. Developing vaccines seems to be fairly straightforward, proving that they're safe and effective is the hard bit. That proof also requires the trial participants to be exposed to a lot of disease, which we in NZ have shown we're willing to take fairly stringent measures to avoid.
All in all, it just came across as a "let's have lots more doctors and healthcare workers". Kind of an unsurprising position for the former Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists.
So yeah, nah, I'm not seeing lessons from Cuba for us to follow. Not from that piece, anyways.
Me too. Still, imho NZ could do with "more doctors and healthcare workers", for the health & wellbeing of both doctors/healthcare workers and their patients.
Based on this old dataset, we'd need ~2,500 more physicians to approach the per capita number in Australia (32.7 per 10,000 people). And Cuba (67.2); well forgetaboutit – only Qatar (77.4) and Monaco (71.7) had more.
Doctors and healthcare workers have to be trained and/or poached, and that takes money – another tricky balancing act.
Yes, there is a good argument for beefing up our health system.
But that good argument doesn't come from comparison with Cuba. Nor does it come from the very rare and specific circumstances of a pandemic disease potentially getting into our population before widespread vaccination has happened.
The better argument comes from where we have lousy outcomes over sustained timeframes that are specifically attributable to under-resourcing, and we can point to peers that have better outcomes specifically attributable to better resourcing.
Lord knows there's no shortage of material to work with to make those better arguments.
Andre, nice to know you believe "there is a good argument for beefing up our health system", despite concerns about the nature of Powell's advocacy.
For over 30 years! So difficult to know whose opinion to trust these days.
I don't think the trajectory of our health care industry over those thirty years makes a good argument for the quality of his advocacy.
I've seen plenty of deep-seated long-lasting systemic issues attempt to get improved. Even when the underlying problems are correctly identified and a reasonable model chosen to follow for improvement, it's still a chancy thing as to whether what comes out the other side is genuinely better.
But if the problems are misidentified right from the beginning leading to the choice of crap models to learn from, then in my experience improvement efforts have a record unblemished by any success whatsoever.
Andre, do you feel that Powell's (30+ years of) advocacy was lacking in quality? If his peers shared this belief then it's simply staggering (to me) that he 'held on' to the position for as long as he did, but maybe you know something I don't, e.g. evidence that NZ's health care 'industry' would now be on a better path but for Powell?
Can help wondering if putting the boot into Powell's advocacy has less to do with 'trajectory', and more to do with 'union' and 'Cuba'.
https://healthcentral.nz/opinion-ian-powell-leadership-needed-on-safe-staffing/
NZ On Air's regular tracking research shows how fast younger people have switched away from broadcast radio and TV. https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/03-09-2021/confronting-new-research-shows-just-how-fast-traditional-media-lost-young-nz/
Nice little Covid progress detail from a local data scientist.
https://twitter.com/Thoughtfulnz/status/1434342891514519553
Thanks.
Yes, it is dropping, but only slowly. Don’t forget that the current outbreak started with just one case (aka index case). Lockdown aims to get the R0 number down and break transmission chains; each chain can start a new chain/outbreak if not caught (in time). As always, testing levels tend to drop off over time and when we go down alert levels, our overall compliance levels tend to go down accordingly. This could have a long tail of short (!) chains of new community cases before we can and will go back to L2 or L1 even. It is only 111 days until Christmas.
The number of Locations of Interest are an interesting trend to monitor as well.
https://twitter.com/TheGradyConnell/status/1434322941504720897
I'm very curious about how many transmissions to customers are believed to have occurred at those locations of interest after the lockdown started.
Further, if any transmissions occurred, how many were staff-to-customer and how many were customer-to-customer.
and customer to staff..
Well, yeah.
But I kinda suspect that opportunity for customer-to-staff transmission is kinda low, compared to customer-to-customer and staff-to-customer.
If a customer is infected, they could spend quite a long time waiting in a queue with the same people 2m in front and 2m behind, with a bit of breathing air sharing going on. Also, most people tend to take a similar route through a store, so the people behind the infected person in the queue are potentially going around the store in a cloud of dilute infected air the infected person leaves behind them. Then there's the queue at the checkout, for another potential period of air-sharing. That's quite a long time for a potential customer-to-customer transmission to occur.
Then when the customer gets to the checkout, yes, there's a medium-ish time of close-ish proximity with equal-ish opportunity for transmission either way, and a checkout operator has a lot of people go past them every shift.
But an infected customer gets one go at infecting one staff member, if they're unlucky enough for their once every few days shopping trip to coincide with their infectious period. Compared to their somewhat stronger likelihood of infecting other customers.
Whereas an infected checkout operator has a chance of infecting each of the dozens or even hundreds of customers they serve during a shift, and may even end up working multiple shifts while infectious. Even if each individual staff-customer interaction has a much lower chance of resulting in a transmission.
Ta
The aim is to get as close to the edges of the outbreak as possible. This can be achieved by mandatory scanning/signing in, rapid contact tracing, and rapid testing, whilst slowing down transmission, e.g., through lockdown, mask-wearing, et cetera.
Just over 48 hours ago two cops had an experience more harrowing than can be described.
We've seen a million shots being fired by police and criminals and military in thousands of movies and tv shows for years. We turn them off and go to bed and maybe watch the same thing again the next day. It's normal.
But it's not normal. Seeing thousands being shot and killed inures us to the reality of two cops looking after us being in a situation of having to shoot someone. And doing it.
And then turn it off? Go home and, "How did your day go?"
"Just another day at the office, love. Come here kids, give your dad a cuddle."
Thank you to the officers who were there for us and acted as they did.
Harrowing indeed! Though I believe the police are very good at giving counselling to staff who have had that experience
Very poignant, today being fathers day and all.
A comically inept Obama staffer has written a book; it was a bad idea. For him.
"A level of sustained and conscious lying that can be explained only by sociopathy."—Glenn Greenwald
The book came out in 2018, about internal White House processes which occurred multiple years earlier.
Since that time we have had a global pandemic, a major economic collapse, two US Presidents, three changes in Senate majority, complete takeover of the US judiciary by hardcore Christian fundamentalists, and the collapse of the largest US military intervention since Vietnam.
You'd be one of those lost RSA guys complaining into his fourth DB of the afternoon, except you never served.
The book came out in 2018, about internal White House processes which occurred multiple years earlier.
The "White House process", as you call it, that Ben Rhodes revealed was his browbeating of Cuban government officials to deny a political refugee safe passage. That was not in any way "White House process": it was an extraordinary and—until he bragged about it in his dog of a book—highly secret action.
Since that time we have had a global pandemic, a major economic collapse, two US Presidents, three changes in Senate majority, complete takeover of the US judiciary by hardcore Christian fundamentalists, and the collapse of the largest US military intervention since Vietnam.
We have indeed. Could you explain how any of that serves to mitigate the viciousness and the contempt for human rights of what Rhodes did in 2013?
You'd be one of those lost RSA guys complaining into his fourth DB of the afternoon,
Your disdain for old soldiers is duly noted.
except you never served.
?? Never served whom?
Insomnia
by Faithless (Music Video)
Great recommendation. On point.
Rolle looks like a black Bela Lugosi.
Lovely structure that accelerates very carefully into a proper London House.