New climate change polling shows people are becoming less tolerant of those who build in harm's way, with the overwhelming majority expecting extreme flooding to increase.
It was also when shocking new data came out showing the sea level is rising twice as fast as previously thought in some parts of Aotearoa, making once-in-a century floods likely in some places every year in just 18 years.
Victoria University climate scientist Professor James Renwick said there was "a lot of confusion, and a need for education and clear messages about actions we can all take".
National's Climate Spokesperson Scott Simpson said it was a conversation New Zealand needed to be having, and it was better having it late than not at all.
Buller mayor Jamie Cleine said the region was already seeing the effects of climate change, and the approach to mitigating those needed to be multi-pronged.
"We've seen multiple serious floods now, tidal surge inundations, and two ex-tropical cyclone wind events all within the last, say, 10 years, so it's quite clear that the climate is changing and the intensity of the events is getting greater.
Nats Scott Simpson……the unaware Irony.! How many years….have critical thinkers…been trying to red flag this? Were his Nats EVER interested ? Mind boggling.
Birchfield was elected chairman of the West Coast Regional Council in 2019, after six terms as a councillor.
Birchfield denies human-caused climate change and sea-level rise, calling it "a gigantic fraud" and "the biggest rort in the history of human civilisation".He refused to accept a report to the regional council about future hazards to the region from sea-level rise, calling it "bullshit".When Kiwibank announced it would no longer do business with the fossil fuel industry, he accused them of "trying to destroy the economy."
He won't be happy until Westport is washed into the Tasman sea and it's former site a low lying lagoon, at which point he'll write a column for the Daily Blog blaming "wokism".
Power and roading infrastructure in the South Island takes a serious hit. Those sitting trapped in the dark can be sure, (though it may take a few days in some cases), that they will reconnected to the grid and the roads will be cleared.
As weather extremes get worse and closer together that certainty will disappear. As more and more of us get to sit in cold dark homes, for longer periods, cut off from our neighbours by floods and slips. and power outages.
There must come a realisation that there will be a time where the hits to power and roading infrastructure cannot be rebuilt.
When we reach that point, will BAU still continue?
Will we still allow our transportation system to be dominated by fossil fueled vehicles?
Will we still allow valuable crop lands to be ploughed under for intensive dairying conversions?
Will still be mining and importing coal?
Will Huntly coal fired power station still be operating?
When that time comes, will we try to mend our ways?
When that time comes, will it be far too late to make any difference what we do, will we find that the changes to the climate will be irreversible?
You know, if this was the Soviet Union you'd almost suspect the usually sycophantic media had got the memo that the Politburo thinks comrade Fosters inability to consistently hit his tractor production quotas is now a problem…
He refused to say what mask rules he would introduce however, only that he would listen to the experts. It was put to him that New Zealand could not move on from the virus while case numbers were rising.
Health problems accumulated as you grew older and there were many seniors with compromised immune systems who were worried they would be affected badly by the virus.
Indeed, there is increasing concern that with the likely more transmissible BA.5 variant on the rise and the surge in the number of daily cases reported last week, we are at the start of the second Omicron wave which could have a big impact on the over-60s.
Masks work and we need to think about how best to use this vital public health protection and how to ensure that mask policies are working well for everyone."
Has any NZ politician ever been given such a big platform to say nothing at all so as to remain as politically beige as possible? First he says he won't criminalize abortions despite the fact he also considers them to be murder, and now the guy can't even take a position that masks are useful protection against airborne viruses.
Luxon and the previous three Nat leaders have called for looser restrictions at every stage. They have now made tighter restrictions politically impossible and there is only one possible direction of travel – stay the same or loosen further. They have what they wanted all along, and as the consequences of that become clear, only the most brazen of liars and opportunists among them will reverse course and call for a tightening.
Also "not giving a shit" is different from "moving on". 300 people still dying from Covid daily in the UK (almost 50% worse than NZ's 17 average deathsper day on a per capita basis) in addition to the 182,000 who have already died. If Luxon thinks that's the model to follow then that says more about him than it does about the current government.
Now this is a global supply chain shortage issue which I can live with!
RTDs are one of the entry points into alcohol abuse (sweet mixers hiding the taste of alcohol) – having them off the shelves (because of a shortage of bourbon) seems to be a win for health.
yes, exactly. A wealthy industrialised country like NZ should totally take the opportunity of lowering art fert supplies and turn it into an umitigated disaster that collapses the economy.
🙄
What do you think will happen to NZ if we blithely try to keep BAU and art fert supplies don't recover? At the same time as we have crop failures globally and locally from increased frequency, climate induced, extreme weather events. Writing is on the wall for those that are paying attention. We have a window in which to transition well and by choice, before that choice is taken from us.
There is no evidence that fertiliser supplies won't recover when supply chains open up again and we do, in fact, produce our own at Kāpuni and Ravensdown among other places.
You do have this tendency to make sweeping statements about agriculture and power generation without demonstrating much understanding the technical or geographical practicalities.
This is pretty compelling stuff Nicky. Especially the part about lobby groups fighting change:
The thing I want to emphasise with climate and environment is that the main problem stopping change is not a lack of facts about the issues. The main thing stopping change is the continuous organised obstruction, delay and watering down of environment policy by well funded industry lobby groups. It is the fake community groups – Mothers for More Motorways-type groups – the paid spokespeople and publicity campaigns, the funding of biased experts, the full-time lobbyists, the corporate election donations, the law firms threatening to sue governments for introducing needed regulations and the rest of the mercenaries who help companies fight desperately needed change…..
Being investigative journalists in times of trouble By Nicky Hager
New Zealand author Nicky Hager was keynote speaker at Dataharvest, the European Investigative Journalism Conference, and highlighted the big issues needing urgent and lasting media attention.
I have admired and supported Hager's work for years, but like others on the Old Left have been disappointed to see him join (seemingly unquestioningly) the Team of Mainstream Media Personalities Standing Against (what we have reliably been informed is ) The Far Right.
…a US-inspired protest against covid policies that was used as movement building for the far right.
The protest was in February this year, when New Zealand anti-vaccine groups staged an action imitating the Canadian “freedom convoy” truck protest. Hundreds of people took over the Parliament sector of the city for four weeks, with effigies of people in nooses and being guillotined, and slogans about executing the Prime Minister. It had an ugly ending with protesters pelting the police with rocks and setting their tents on fire.
The most chilling part was the social media statistics. They revealed that more people were getting news about the parliament protest from right-wing and conspiracy social media than from all the mainstream news media combined.
(my bold)
It's concerning that Hager refers to the US as inspiring the Freedom Village protest, then also refers to the Canadian Trucker protest. Which is it? Or has Hager blindly accepted the line that the Canadian Truckers were also inspired and funded by 'US Far Right White Supremacist Misogynist whatevers…' ?
As yet I have seen no actual evidence, no paper trail (for which Hager is rightfully respected) to support these claims.
It was not "hundreds" of protestors in Wellington, it was thousands. But what is an order of magnitude or two between professional investigative journos?
I did not see the "effigies of people being guillotined" in the Wellington protest…I'd be grateful if someone could provide a photo or two to verify this…perhaps Hager is a tad confused and is remembering the 2012 Anti Asset Sales protest?
And no, Hager…the Wellington protest was overwhelmingly peaceful until the heavily armed and armoured police squad moved in with their super pepper spray and crowd control tech and provoked a riot. The rock throwing and the burning only began after the cops began their purge of what a sitting MP desribed as a "river of filth".
An honest investigative journalist would have also shown pictures of the unprovoked police brutality of the 10th of February, and how the riot cops on the 2nd March forced peaceful protestors from their tents and the common cops moved in behind to destroy and lay waste what had been carefully and lovingly built over the previous three plus weeks.
An honest investigative journalist would have shared with us his interviews with the Freedom Villagers, and how he realised that far from being generic "anti-vaxxers", many of them had willingly taken the Pfizer Product and been seriously negatively impacted.
An honest journalist would have noted that it was the total denial by the Ministry of Health, the Government and the "mainstream news" of these injuries that drove many to Wellington. And a professional investigative journalist would have commented that how it is totally bizarre the insistence that those who suffered heart injuries from the first or second shot (or anaphylaxis) had to have a second or third shot in order to keep their jobs.
Or perhaps, a good investigative journalist would have gone out there into the world and found out why so many of us have turned away years ago from the "mainstream news" providers (that he clearly believes should be our only source of truth) and prefer to find our own sources of information such as established scientific journals and Covid data sites.
Such a pity there are so few investigative journalists with the integrity to step outside the mainstream and actually speak kanohi ki te kanohi with those they seem happy to accuse.
"An honest journalist would have noted that it was the total denial by the Ministry of Health, the Government and the "mainstream news"…" Rosemary McDonald
Are you inferring Rosemary, that Nikki Hagar is not an honest journalist?
The supporters of Russia's war against Ukraine, also spread the same smear against our journalists, that they are all corrupt hacks toeing the Western MSM line.
…has Hager blindly accepted the line that the Canadian Truckers were also inspired and funded by 'US Far Right White Supremacist Misogynist whatevers… Rosemary McDonald
No, but my fear is that you have.
Nazi Hippies: When the New Age and Far Right Overlap
Both the New Age and the far right are drawn to conspiracy theories
Health Minister responds to doctors' claim 'catastrophic collapse' coming.
Health Minister Andrew Little spoke to Morning Report.
Corin Dann doesn't understand what Little says and keeps insisting it's a 'crisis'. Little describes the situation using words similar too, or meaning virtually the same, but Dann won't be happy until the word crisis is used.
This is starting up again; though probably too late now for this year's local body elections, and likely next year's general election too:
A youth-led campaign to lower the voting age to 16 is being heard in the Supreme Court today.
Make it 16 will have its case heard at the Supreme Court after failing in the group's efforts in the High Court and Court of Appeal in 2020 and last year…
Attorney General David Parker's position is that the earlier High Court decision was correct for declining the declaration Make it 16 seeks.
He said section 12 of the NZ Bill of Rights Act, which provides that every New Zealand citizen over the age of 18 can vote in parliamentary elections, settles any limitation in respect of the voting age.
However, that does rather ignore the Court of Appeal's statement from last year:
the Court of Appeal judgement found the Attorney-General had failed to “discharge the burden of proof” to justify the existing age limit.
Looking at the justification of limiting the rights of 16 and 17 year olds was required, the judgement found.
“The matter is intensely and quintessentially political involving the democratic process itself,” the judgement said.
“Further the matter is very much in the public arena already including being part of a recently announced review of electoral law. We choose to exercise restraint and decline the application for declarations.”
In a new judgement of the court, released on the Supreme Court's website on Wednesday, along with the granting of leave of appeal, it said "the approved question is whether the Court of Appeal was correct to dismiss the appeal".
The more relevant part of the BORA would seem to be Section (4), which is why Make It 16 are going for a declaration of inconsistency rather than a nullification. Though it seems more likely that it'll be kicked back down to the Court of Appeal given the wording of the Supreme Court's approved question. Everyone appears to recognize the inconsistency, but no one seems to want to do anything about it:
No court shall, in relation to any enactment (whether passed or made before or after the commencement of this Bill of Rights),—
(a) hold any provision of the enactment to be impliedly repealed or revoked, or to be in any way invalid or ineffective; or
(b) decline to apply any provision of the enactment—
by reason only that the provision is inconsistent with any provision of this Bill of Rights.
He'll either buy it at a cheaper price (probably won't use any of his own money to do it) or it'll be revealed just how over priced twitter is and the shareholders will be asking questions of the veracity of the boards statements
There are valid reasons why someone doesn't want/need/require all the shots and boosters and I'd rather have an unvaccinated or unboosted nurse looking after me than no nurse at all or nurses that are so burnt out that they might make mistakes
Apparently because nurses not staying in nursing once they get residency is an issue, but GPs don't do that enough for it to be a problem. My guess is they looked at some data from a Ministry and made the decision based on advice based on what's happening the real world. It's stupid politics given everything else that is going on, but is it a bad policy?
I mean, if you were a nurse in the UK, burnt out, hating living there, and you got the opportunity to immigrate to NZ and quit nursing and go work in a less stressful job, what's not to love?
So lets throw some figures around (the numbers don't matter so much as the gist of it)
Lets say100 nurses come in and 10% of nurses don't hang around so 10 nurses leave early meaning 90 nurses stay
Is it better to make it less desirable for nurses to work here in the hopes that those who do stay longer or is it better to make it easier and more desirable for nurses to come here
For example 150 nurses arrive, 20% leave early (just a figure I plucked since Ardern wouldn't tell us) but that still leaves 120 nurses
If nurses are in hot demand globally and we can't match other countries wages then surely it makes sense to do whatever else we can to attract nurses here?
The National Party used a recognisable part of a popular song by Eminem without the creator's permission to further their own political ambitions. They thought they could get away with it because it was "pretty legal". Got into big trouble and they have form.
One time I worked hard to create visual content for a project only to have it appropriated and used thereafter as their own by a certain taxpayer funded organisation beginning with T and ending in NZ. Still unhappy about it.
The future National government's coalition partner, ACT, does not respect culture in any form. While Baldrick (Chris Luxon) speaks of trading NZ to the world, Rimmer (David Seymour) is determined to halt our film and TV trade with the world. Fireworks to come.
Puckish Rogue continues a long line of chancers abusing other's content for their own means.
you could have riffed that of PR's casual, throw away joke, but instead you made it personal. Remember how mods don't like having their time wasted, and how flaming tends to irritate them?
I wanted to point out that PR had used someone else's specific joke written on another forum without attribution. Despite your assertion, it was not PR’s joke at all.
Here’s the quote:
All the nurses who want to come and live and work in New Zealand should simply declare they are really DJs, who just do nursing as a side gig.
The second comment explained why I took that position.
How is that wasting moderator's time?
[what you appear to be missing is that I was giving both you and PR a headsup to not start in on each other. Now I will make my point in BOLD.
Had you made the point you did in your last comment (your view, quote, link) there would have been no problem. The comment explains really clearly what you are on about and thus everyone reading and wanting to take part knows. Your FB-esque original comment looked like taking a pot shot at PR and it wasn’t possible to know what you were on about.
The wasting mod time is that here you are yet again arguing about moderation, something you have a history of. You could have asked early on where the boundaries are, but instead you expect me as a mod to do the extra mahi and explain ad nauseum.
It’s actually really simple: use your words to explain the political point you are making, do this at the start. Avoid taking pot shots at commenters. Stop arguing with the mods – weka]
Are DJs on the Green List and do they have to DJ for 2 years here before they can apply for Residency? And after that they can go into property development?
"you may want a fool responsible for your medical treatment, I don't"
I just want someone who is trained and competent to carry out whatever medical procedure I need. I know if I go into a hospital or medical practice right now, there is a big chance I will get covid from either other patients or medical staff (vacinated or unvacinated).
Do you not relize that the health system is on the brink of collapse? Everyday there are articles in Stuff about Drs and nurses on the brink. We are 4000 nurse down. If these nurses/drs were unvacinated and we had a war zone with sick people dying would you say I don't want these fools looking after these people?
If this was a war zone, all field medics would have had mandatory vaccinations by command order, so really not the best analogy. You really don't want infection roaring unchecked through territory with no sanitation or infrastructure.
Conchies that refused to join the medical corps, Merchant Navy or other options were put in jail. Where many were treated worse by the guards, than actual criminals.
Refusing to shoot people for moral reasons, and taking the consequences, is a commendable moral choice. Refusing to take sensible precautions to protect the health of your patients……. Is something that most of the conchies wouldn’t have agreed with.
One would have to question the General that as casualties stack up, keeps 700 nurses in a POW camp at home, because there was a question mark over the last item of their medical.
Sure then because I think the risk of covid has been massively overblown and I support those that don't want to/have objections to/are unable to have the injections I should also not go to the hospital if I break an arm or something, because its equivalent
The statistics from countries that didn't have as comprehensive a covid response as ours, prove that anyone who claims " risk of covid has been massively overblown" is divorced from reality.
How many of those deaths were actually caused by covid?
So yeah overblown.
But it made incredible profits for Big Pharma, the MSM had everyone glued to the screens (if it bleeds it leads) and it got Labour an overwhelming victory in the election
I think the arguement is relevant. It is about people who deny science, i.e. that its not posible to change your sex and that the evidence for puberty blockers is experimental at best.
Getting steadily worse over decades is hardly a sudden crisis.
In fact most of us were predicting it, for our proffesions for decades.
My own trades/Proffesions have an over thirty year training gap, since it was decided that bringing in already trained "skilled migrants" was cheaper than training our own kids.
I admit to a degree of shadenfraude, as those who cheer leaded the whole "reforms" and profited by the whole shemozzle, get bitten on the arse, as we predicted, so long ago.
"Getting steadily worse over decades is hardly a sudden crisis."
Yes, the point I was making was about the scale. The situation is far worse than 10 years ago.
"since it was decided that bringing in already trained "skilled migrants" was cheaper than training our own kids."
Training our own is preferable, but it takes time and we still may not have enough to allow for population growth. Bringing in trained migrants will likely always be part of the solution. Right now it needs to be a big part.
No. It doesn't, because it will just carry on the addiction. And the problem of adding more people when the infrastructure cannot possibly be expanded fast enough to keep up.
Unless we have willing trainees, and can train them in sufficient numbers, there is no option. Besides, having foreign trained nurses helps with cultural and professional diversity. It's a good thing.
Yes its been a problem for years. I posted recently an article by Dr Ian Powell who met with David Clark 5 and a half years ago and said there are three problems for the workforce……staff shortages, staff shortages and staff shortages.
I wish the media instead of harping on and on about the need for immigrant nurses would check out the requirements for Registration with the NZ Nursing Council. basically an applicant from a country where the education is in English, UK, Ireland, Singapore and USA and Canada where all conditions are met registration will be granted in 30 or so days. All other countries will have to prove scope and competencies and pass an IELTS exam, most don't. To grant immediate residency without registration would be foolhardy as all we would have is a number of Nurse Aides who like most immigrant Nurses be gone to Australia as soon as able.
Is it that you fear they will be more likely to pass covid on? Or you think they shouldn't be practicing if they don't agree with all medical procedures?
As psych nurse mentioned @ 13.2.1 no health care worker has died yet from attracting Covid-19 at work in NZ. To mandate a vaccinated workforce is helping a lot to keep it this way.
Anecdotally I've seen it spread through all different groups of people, vaccination status doesn't seem to be a deciding factor, but I'd be interested to know if we have evidence of only the unvaccinated being the superspreaders?? Highly vaccinated countries are getting high case numbers are they not?
Your second sentence is a slur on these health workers, as their job everyday requires sensible decision making.
USA. 67% vaccinated. Death rate 308/100k.
NZ 94% vaccinated. Death rate 31/100k.
It is even more striking if you compare highly vaccinated US states, with the Republican idiotvilles.
But surely masking up is all thats needed to protect us from the virus, especially if we're vaccinated, therefore the nurses just need to wear ppe and we're all good to go
Please tell us what happened in MIQ before there was a vaccine and how that compares with working in a healthcare setting. Just for good measure you may want to include a comparison of transmissibility of the current variants vs. the earlier ones that are relevant to MIQ.
My point is Incognito that prior to vaccines nurses worked MIQ. There are many health care settings but in MIQ and and at the Jet Park where covid cases went, nurses interacted with people,taking swabs, temparatures monitoring symptoms etc, with great care. They were also tested regularly.
Having attended an ED in the last few weeks where we were not asked if we were vacinnated, nor were we particularly isolated, nor tested for covid, I am unsure that there is that much difference
You know perfectly well why nurses (and doctors) who are not vaccinated (and masked) can't work in their profession …
We do?
Vaccine effectiveness studies have conclusively demonstrated the benefit of COVID-19 vaccines in reducing individual symptomatic and severe disease, resulting in reduced hospitalisations and intensive care unit admissions. However, the impact of vaccination on transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 needs to be elucidated.
This study showed that the impact of vaccination on community transmission of circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 appeared to be not significantly different from the impact among unvaccinated people.
The scientific rationale for mandatory vaccination in the USA relies on the premise that vaccination prevents transmission to others, resulting in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”.
Yet, the demonstration of COVID-19 breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated health-care workers (HCW) in Israel, who in turn may transmit this infection to their patients, requires a reassessment of compulsory vaccination policies leading to the job dismissal of unvaccinated HCW in the USA. Indeed, there is growing evidence that peak viral titres in the upper airways of the lungs and culturable virus are similar in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.2,3
According to WHO some 180,000 Health Care workers worldwide died of Covid, contacted in the course of their work. In the UK some 900, NZ zilch. You should be eternally grateful to the NZ government for their response to the pandemic, I am. You can reference these figures on Google when you next find evidence to back up your conspiracies.
What conspiracies? I provided a link to a letter in The Lancet which suggests that Covid vaccine mandates for healthworkers are unjustified because studies show that it makes no difference whether the worker is vaccinated or not with respect to transmission or viral load. The writer provides references.
The Franco-Peredes Lancet letter from which you quote is not scientific research: Rosemary McDonald. Rather it is a comment on a study by Singanayaman et al (2021): Community transmission and viral load kinetics of the SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the UK: a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study. Who are not at all impressed with him in their response, given their pointed line about misinterpretation, in the paragraph immediately preceding their brief discussion of Franco-Peredes' comment:
Ultimately, one has to consider the totality of data on SAR estimates, which are generated using different methods and populations, each with their own particular strengths and limitations. The public health messages of our paper and media briefing (Science Media Centre, London, Oct 28, 2021) are thus complementary to the findings of Knol and colleagues. First, despite vaccination, the delta variant readily transmits in households, and unvaccinated people cannot therefore rely on the immunity of the vaccinated population for protection as they remain susceptible to infection, severe illness, and death. Second, increasing population immunity via booster programmes and vaccination of teenagers will help to increase the population-level protective effect of vaccination on delta-variant transmission. Third, direct protection of those at risk of severe outcomes, via vaccination and non-pharmacological interventions, remain necessary to contain the burden of disease. Fortunately, the vast majority of media coverage of our paper, comprising over 360 news stories to date, has conveyed these important messages without misinterpretation.
Although our findings support Franco-Peredes’ conclusion that vaccination status should not replace social and physical public health mitigation practices, the above clarifications explain why our findings do not support his assertion that mandatory vaccination of health-care workers would not reduce nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
The Franco-Peredes Lancet letter from which you quote is not scientific research: Rosemary McDonald. Rather it is a comment …
Yes. I did state that it was a letter I was quoting from in my comment. In your rush to prove me a fool, did you not read what I wrote?
Can you provide scientific proof that the Pfizer Product prevents infection and transmission of the Omicron variants? Or at least reduces infection and transmission sufficiently to justify exclusion of much needed health and disability workers?
And I'd like to see those scientific papers that show that the mRNA injections are safe and there will be no long term adverse effects from continual boosting?
(Full disclosure here…I was the paid carer of my tetraplegic partner from April 2020 when this payment was allowed because of home care worker shortage and fear of infection with carers going into multiple homes. This payment of course was stopped when both my partner and I chose not to partake of the Pfizer product. Stopped because…paying for the work I do would somehow increase the risk of infection? Who knows.? The properly triple jabbed carer sent out to merely sit with my man so I could do the shopping came to our home a day before testing positive and after a weekend partying out of town. She was symptomatic. Despite having already had Omicron in March…I too also developed a sore throat etc for a few days. I'm not sure what country you are living in, but around these parts its generally accepted that vaccination status means nothing in terms of getting infected, and those already vulnerable are still sadly falling off their perches despite being multiply jabbed. )
USA. 67% vaccinated. Death rate 308/100k.
NZ 94% vaccinated. Death rate 31/100k.
It is even more striking if you compare highly vaccinated US states, with the Republican idiotvilles.
Sigh. Have you not been following what has been happening in the US regarding healthcare? As much as healthcare might exist for the millions who cannot afford it in that obscene jealously protected private profit driven system. Compare apple with apples.
Japan has been doing quite well.
But what truly sets it apart from many places, particularly Asian neighbors like China, is it’s managed to limit deaths without mandates and with few restrictions. The constitution prevents imposing lockdowns backed by police actions, meaning that even during a state of emergency the government puts the onus on businesses and individuals to change their behavior.
Considering our much lower population density (a factor with an airborne disease) Japan has done much better than NZ…without the stick waving and vicious mandates.
And treating the population like helpless, mewling infants.
It is the anti vaccers and their apologists, like you who ignore complexity. Who cannot comprehend that sciencentific evidence is a jigsaw of many pieces. Not just one, or a few datapoints! or "aneqdotes".
And, of course you prefer you ignore the differences in neighbouring US States, where "other variables" have less effect than between NZ and the USA.
We all know why India has less deaths. If you do not have an excellent immune system in India, you won't survive to adulthood.
I point out that your simplistic comparison is flawed and show one example of how reality is much more complex – and you accuse me of ignoring complexity.
I don't know how you expect a constructive conversation on that basis.
Thank you for the link. I think you are seeing things that don't actually exist in this letter to the Lancet.
Yes, there was no difference in viral load or nasopharangeal levels of Covid19, between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. I think you then imply that it's ok for doctors to be unvaccinated when seeing patients.
This is overly simplistic in that viral load doesn’t necessarily equate with transmissibility.
This is one letter in a medical journal versus a large body of evidence backing vaccination for medical professionals to protect their patients.
Sorry out running right now can't easily do a decent search for you in the rain, but lots of clear evidence out there.
Sorry out running right now can't easily do a decent search for you in the rain, but lots of clear evidence out there.
And there's a lot of real world evidence that despite complying with mandates multiply 'vaccinated' medical staff are being infected with Covid and becoming symptomatic. And needing time off work.
Somewhere there will be data showing the % of folks who became infected, were symptomatic, needed hospitalisation and sadly died of/from/with Covid before the Magic Jabs were deployed.
It would be very interesting to compare those data with the data collected recently.
A pity RNZ has now removed the comparisons between unvaccinated, fully vaccinated and boosted with respect to new cases, hospitalisations and deaths…because before they were removed…the graphics were showing sweet f/a difference.
But Anne, I understand the only Dr in Muripara who refused the vacinne has been allowed bcak to work. Maybe the powers that be thought it was better to have a Dr rather than no Dr at all.
While I didn't provide a link for my brief comment about the Dr at Murupara, it is more or less as Rosemary said. Another reason to bring back unvaxed nurses is indeed if they have had covid in the last three months (likely if they are unvaxxed) as they will have natural immunity.
We are due to get a booster soon, which we will do, although I haven't taken the time to read how effective it is in providing immunity. I imagine it must provide some.
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Open access notables A survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:The frozen elements of the high North are thawing as the region warms much faster than the global mean. The dangers of sea level rise due to melting glacier ice, increased ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure. The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On ...
In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
COMMENTARY:By Ronny Kareni Since the atrocious footage of the suffering of an indigenous Papuan man reverberates in the heart of Puncak by the brute force of Indonesia’s army in early February, shocking tactics deployed by those in power to silence critics has been unfolding. Nowhere is this more evident ...
Analysis - Nicola Willis is holding firm on tax cuts despite the economic outlook being worse than forecast and critics urging her to wait, writes Peter Wilson for The Week In Politics. ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
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Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Essential poll, conducted March 20–24 from a sample of 1,150, gave the Coalition a 50–44 lead including undecided, a reversal ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Hesp, Professor, Flinders University Patrick Hesp In some parts of Australia, coastal dunes are retreating from the ocean at an alarming rate, as waves carve up the beach and wind blows the sand inland. But coastal communities are largely ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Heemsbergen, Senior Lecturer, Digital, Political, Media, Deakin University With an impressive 60% of the US smartphone market, Apple is undeniably big, but not a clear monopoly. Yet, years of innovation by Apple have effectively given the company its own exclusive ...
Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Shutterstock The federal government has bowed to pressure from the car industry, announcing it will relax proposed emissions rules for utes and vans and delay enforcement of the new standards ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
The Government’s decision to reduce access to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) not only threatens the lives of children with type 1 diabetes and increases the potential for ‘Dead in Bed’ syndrome, but also threatens the health of their parents an ...
Apples are available year-round, but the wide variety on offer involves intensive scientific research – and large-scale commercialisation. What’s beautiful, red, sweet and crunchy? Tony Martin’s favourite kind of apple: Sassy. The CEO of apple and pear breeding organisation Prevar, Martin’s fondness for Sassy represents professional success as well as ...
Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
Brutal government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40% will hit Pasifika communities hard, the PSA says. The Ministry has told staff that it is seeking voluntary redundancies, and to redeploy and reassign ...
I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Nicholas, Senior Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, Deakin University Earlier this month, the New South Wales government announced it would roll out programs for gifted students in every public school in the state. This comes amid concerns gifted school ...
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Asia Pacific Report A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations. Writing a commentary for RNZ News today, Nicky Hager, author of Secret Power, a 1996 ...
While Nicola Willis wouldn’t give any details on its size, she said a package of tax cuts is definitely still coming in this year’s budget, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming the investigation into the Department of Internal Affairs after it was revealed that the Department’s Chief Executive personally reached out to expedite a DJs passport application. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns ...
Finance minister Nicola Willis delivers her first budget statement, and unwittingly helps Joel MacManus save his relationship. Nicola Willis strode into the Beehive Theatrette. Around me, on the green foldout seats, were the country’s top business and political journalists. They were all here to see her announce the Budget Policy ...
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On a Thursday in February, at Wellington’s Conservation House, the Conservation Authority, a statutory body advising the eponymous department and minister, Tama Potaka, opened its 195th meeting. Under consideration that afternoon was an agenda item written by Tim Bamford, chief advisor in the Department of Conservation’s biodiversity, heritage and visitors ...
Nats Scott Simpson……the unaware Irony.! How many years….have critical thinkers…been trying to red flag this? Were his Nats EVER interested ? Mind boggling.
Birchfield and his like….somehow retain a following. Of similar dinosaurs. Reminds of a King Cnut.!
Or similar : ) ….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut#The_story_of_Cnut_and_the_waves
He won't be happy until Westport is washed into the Tasman sea and it's former site a low lying lagoon, at which point he'll write a column for the Daily Blog blaming "wokism".
Well…that was a lol. : ) And maybe some gold be washed to the top ? A cunning plan !
Power and roading infrastructure in the South Island takes a serious hit. Those sitting trapped in the dark can be sure, (though it may take a few days in some cases), that they will reconnected to the grid and the roads will be cleared.
As weather extremes get worse and closer together that certainty will disappear. As more and more of us get to sit in cold dark homes, for longer periods, cut off from our neighbours by floods and slips. and power outages.
There must come a realisation that there will be a time where the hits to power and roading infrastructure cannot be rebuilt.
When we reach that point, will BAU still continue?
Will we still allow our transportation system to be dominated by fossil fueled vehicles?
Will we still allow valuable crop lands to be ploughed under for intensive dairying conversions?
Will still be mining and importing coal?
Will Huntly coal fired power station still be operating?
When that time comes, will we try to mend our ways?
When that time comes, will it be far too late to make any difference what we do, will we find that the changes to the climate will be irreversible?
What then?
Re Sri Lanka
First thing done by the 'current ' admin a couple of years ago was
CUT TAXES
Sound familiar.
You know, if this was the Soviet Union you'd almost suspect the usually sycophantic media had got the memo that the Politburo thinks comrade Fosters inability to consistently hit his tractor production quotas is now a problem…
Clustopher Luxon…saying how he thinks…well…maybe.
Experts…..
Has any NZ politician ever been given such a big platform to say nothing at all so as to remain as politically beige as possible? First he says he won't criminalize abortions despite the fact he also considers them to be murder, and now the guy can't even take a position that masks are useful protection against airborne viruses.
Luxon and the previous three Nat leaders have called for looser restrictions at every stage. They have now made tighter restrictions politically impossible and there is only one possible direction of travel – stay the same or loosen further. They have what they wanted all along, and as the consequences of that become clear, only the most brazen of liars and opportunists among them will reverse course and call for a tightening.
Yep. Clustopher (tip o' the hat..Blazer ! ) Luxon could be quite a dangerous man. Doesnt "quite" say….where he really is on these and other vitals.
That, and the rest of these Nact types…has indeed focused me. On doing my best to make sure they never get power in NZ.
Hence. Colours. Nailed. : )
Also "not giving a shit" is different from "moving on". 300 people still dying from Covid daily in the UK (almost 50% worse than NZ's 17 average deathsper day on a per capita basis) in addition to the 182,000 who have already died. If Luxon thinks that's the model to follow then that says more about him than it does about the current government.
Now this is a global supply chain shortage issue which I can live with!
RTDs are one of the entry points into alcohol abuse (sweet mixers hiding the taste of alcohol) – having them off the shelves (because of a shortage of bourbon) seems to be a win for health.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/129239817/global-bourbon-shortage-creates-lack-of-supply-of-cheap-rtds
excellent.
The fertiliser shortages might finally push us towards getting off that shit as well and into regenag.
You mean like Sri Lanka?
yes, exactly. A wealthy industrialised country like NZ should totally take the opportunity of lowering art fert supplies and turn it into an umitigated disaster that collapses the economy.
🙄
What do you think will happen to NZ if we blithely try to keep BAU and art fert supplies don't recover? At the same time as we have crop failures globally and locally from increased frequency, climate induced, extreme weather events. Writing is on the wall for those that are paying attention. We have a window in which to transition well and by choice, before that choice is taken from us.
There is no evidence that fertiliser supplies won't recover when supply chains open up again and we do, in fact, produce our own at Kāpuni and Ravensdown among other places.
You do have this tendency to make sweeping statements about agriculture and power generation without demonstrating much understanding the technical or geographical practicalities.
Agree Belladonna. They are addictive with all the sugar and alcohol.
RIP Monty Norman
Monty Norman, composer of iconic James Bond theme, dies at 94 (msn.com)
And from that great philosopher himself:
"Governments change. The lies stay the same."
-James Bond, 'GoldenEye'.
This is pretty compelling stuff Nicky. Especially the part about lobby groups fighting change:
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/nicky-hager-being-investigative-journalists-in-times-of-trouble
Being investigative journalists in times of trouble
By Nicky Hager
I have admired and supported Hager's work for years, but like others on the Old Left have been disappointed to see him join (seemingly unquestioningly) the Team of Mainstream Media Personalities Standing Against (what we have reliably been informed is ) The Far Right.
…a US-inspired protest against covid policies that was used as movement building for the far right.
The protest was in February this year, when New Zealand anti-vaccine groups staged an action imitating the Canadian “freedom convoy” truck protest. Hundreds of people took over the Parliament sector of the city for four weeks, with effigies of people in nooses and being guillotined, and slogans about executing the Prime Minister. It had an ugly ending with protesters pelting the police with rocks and setting their tents on fire.
The most chilling part was the social media statistics. They revealed that more people were getting news about the parliament protest from right-wing and conspiracy social media than from all the mainstream news media combined.
(my bold)
It's concerning that Hager refers to the US as inspiring the Freedom Village protest, then also refers to the Canadian Trucker protest. Which is it? Or has Hager blindly accepted the line that the Canadian Truckers were also inspired and funded by 'US Far Right White Supremacist Misogynist whatevers…' ?
As yet I have seen no actual evidence, no paper trail (for which Hager is rightfully respected) to support these claims.
It was not "hundreds" of protestors in Wellington, it was thousands. But what is an order of magnitude or two between professional investigative journos?
I did not see the "effigies of people being guillotined" in the Wellington protest…I'd be grateful if someone could provide a photo or two to verify this…perhaps Hager is a tad confused and is remembering the 2012 Anti Asset Sales protest?
And no, Hager…the Wellington protest was overwhelmingly peaceful until the heavily armed and armoured police squad moved in with their super pepper spray and crowd control tech and provoked a riot. The rock throwing and the burning only began after the cops began their purge of what a sitting MP desribed as a "river of filth".
An honest investigative journalist would have also shown pictures of the unprovoked police brutality of the 10th of February, and how the riot cops on the 2nd March forced peaceful protestors from their tents and the common cops moved in behind to destroy and lay waste what had been carefully and lovingly built over the previous three plus weeks.
An honest investigative journalist would have shared with us his interviews with the Freedom Villagers, and how he realised that far from being generic "anti-vaxxers", many of them had willingly taken the Pfizer Product and been seriously negatively impacted.
An honest journalist would have noted that it was the total denial by the Ministry of Health, the Government and the "mainstream news" of these injuries that drove many to Wellington. And a professional investigative journalist would have commented that how it is totally bizarre the insistence that those who suffered heart injuries from the first or second shot (or anaphylaxis) had to have a second or third shot in order to keep their jobs.
Or perhaps, a good investigative journalist would have gone out there into the world and found out why so many of us have turned away years ago from the "mainstream news" providers (that he clearly believes should be our only source of truth) and prefer to find our own sources of information such as established scientific journals and Covid data sites.
Such a pity there are so few investigative journalists with the integrity to step outside the mainstream and actually speak kanohi ki te kanohi with those they seem happy to accuse.
"An honest journalist would have noted that it was the total denial by the Ministry of Health, the Government and the "mainstream news"…" Rosemary McDonald
Are you inferring Rosemary, that Nikki Hagar is not an honest journalist?
The supporters of Russia's war against Ukraine, also spread the same smear against our journalists, that they are all corrupt hacks toeing the Western MSM line.
…has Hager blindly accepted the line that the Canadian Truckers were also inspired and funded by 'US Far Right White Supremacist Misogynist whatevers… Rosemary McDonald
No, but my fear is that you have.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2022.2061948
Denial much?
Europe reaches equality,
Euro/us$ parity,The Euro has now depreciated 14% TY and imported energy costs have increased by both demand inflation,and currency depreciation.
Lagarde and the ECB showing the risks with continued QE when inflation shock was not only a war levy.
https://twitter.com/RobinBrooksIIF/status/1546598034104098822?cxt=HHwWjIC9kfitz_YqAAAA
Health Minister responds to doctors' claim 'catastrophic collapse' coming.
Health Minister Andrew Little spoke to Morning Report.
Corin Dann doesn't understand what Little says and keeps insisting it's a 'crisis'. Little describes the situation using words similar too, or meaning virtually the same, but Dann won't be happy until the word crisis is used.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018849118/health-minister-responds-to-doctors-claim-catastrophic-collapse-coming
Corin Dann is just another right wing poodle imho
This is starting up again; though probably too late now for this year's local body elections, and likely next year's general election too:
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/voting-age-appeal-be-heard-supreme-court-today
However, that does rather ignore the Court of Appeal's statement from last year:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/04/13/fight-to-lower-voting-age-to-16-will-head-to-supreme-court/
The AG taking refuge in section 12 of the BORA also seems to contradict Section 21 (1) (i) of the Human Rights Act:
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0082/latest/DLM304475.html
The more relevant part of the BORA would seem to be Section (4), which is why Make It 16 are going for a declaration of inconsistency rather than a nullification. Though it seems more likely that it'll be kicked back down to the Court of Appeal given the wording of the Supreme Court's approved question. Everyone appears to recognize the inconsistency, but no one seems to want to do anything about it:
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/whole.html
This is fantastic:
https://fortune.com/2022/07/11/elon-musk-twitter-meme-mocks-bots-court-delaware-showdown/
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXW4J4xXgAAXFKs?format=jpg&name=small
He'll either buy it at a cheaper price (probably won't use any of his own money to do it) or it'll be revealed just how over priced twitter is and the shareholders will be asking questions of the veracity of the boards statements
Win-win all round
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TWTR/
The old "don't talk about the bots let them pad the numbers trick" goes boom
Something about chickens and roosts springs to mind
Let them work:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/129197272/plea-by-unvaccinated-nurses-to-return-to-work#comments
Why would you want medical staff who don't comprehend, or refuse to follow, medical science, to be responsible for your health?
Apart from the added risk to patients that have immune issues.
There are valid reasons why someone doesn't want/need/require all the shots and boosters and I'd rather have an unvaccinated or unboosted nurse looking after me than no nurse at all or nurses that are so burnt out that they might make mistakes
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/nursing-shortage-nurses-broken-while-sector-faces-thousands-of-vacancies/L7NUXOPG4AB472OKXOH5QJSUMU/
Time for Ardern to support the nurses
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/07/pm-jacinda-ardern-suggests-migrant-nurses-put-off-by-needing-to-stay-in-role-for-two-years-perhaps-don-t-want-to-be-a-nurse-in-nz.html
You may want to have a fool responsible for your medical treatment. I don't!
Adern is correct.
Why bring in Nurses to help with the shortages, that don’t work as nurses for a couple of years. No point.
If this keeps up then you won't have either!
'Why bring in Nurses to help with the shortages, that don’t work as nurses for a couple of years. No point.'
A couple of years is better than no years or at all because, unless you've failed to notice, we're in a crisis
Maybe the nurses could claim to be DJs instead then they'd have no problems getting in
"No years at all" is the point.
If they won't even commit to two years, what is the point of bringing them in.
So why only nurses then, why not do the same for GPs
(Apart from sexism of course)
Apparently because nurses not staying in nursing once they get residency is an issue, but GPs don't do that enough for it to be a problem. My guess is they looked at some data from a Ministry and made the decision based on advice based on what's happening the real world. It's stupid politics given everything else that is going on, but is it a bad policy?
I mean, if you were a nurse in the UK, burnt out, hating living there, and you got the opportunity to immigrate to NZ and quit nursing and go work in a less stressful job, what's not to love?
So lets throw some figures around (the numbers don't matter so much as the gist of it)
Lets say100 nurses come in and 10% of nurses don't hang around so 10 nurses leave early meaning 90 nurses stay
Is it better to make it less desirable for nurses to work here in the hopes that those who do stay longer or is it better to make it easier and more desirable for nurses to come here
For example 150 nurses arrive, 20% leave early (just a figure I plucked since Ardern wouldn't tell us) but that still leaves 120 nurses
If nurses are in hot demand globally and we can't match other countries wages then surely it makes sense to do whatever else we can to attract nurses here?
I'd guess that 10% is quite a large shortfall for the health planners.
I thought the issue wasn't that nurses leaving NZ, but getting residency and not staying in nursing.
I also think NZ is a reasonably attractive place to try and get residency. I'm in favour of bonding and think we should use it more.
You ripped that joke off Farrar. What's the deal with RWNJs stealing other people's material?!
I'm surprised you actually recognize a joke
shall we take bets on who gets banned next if you two start having another go?
I'm pretty hot on this for three reasons:
Puckish Rogue continues a long line of chancers abusing other's content for their own means.
I guess some people create, and some incarcerate!
you could have riffed that of PR's casual, throw away joke, but instead you made it personal. Remember how mods don't like having their time wasted, and how flaming tends to irritate them?
I wanted to point out that PR had used someone else's specific joke written on another forum without attribution. Despite your assertion, it was not PR’s joke at all.
Here’s the quote:
– David Farrar
and link:
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2022/07/pm_says_migrant_nurses_may_not_want_to_be_nurses.html
The second comment explained why I took that position.
How is that wasting moderator's time?
[what you appear to be missing is that I was giving both you and PR a headsup to not start in on each other. Now I will make my point in BOLD.
Had you made the point you did in your last comment (your view, quote, link) there would have been no problem. The comment explains really clearly what you are on about and thus everyone reading and wanting to take part knows. Your FB-esque original comment looked like taking a pot shot at PR and it wasn’t possible to know what you were on about.
The wasting mod time is that here you are yet again arguing about moderation, something you have a history of. You could have asked early on where the boundaries are, but instead you expect me as a mod to do the extra mahi and explain ad nauseum.
It’s actually really simple: use your words to explain the political point you are making, do this at the start. Avoid taking pot shots at commenters. Stop arguing with the mods – weka]
mod note.
Are DJs on the Green List and do they have to DJ for 2 years here before they can apply for Residency? And after that they can go into property development?
"you may want a fool responsible for your medical treatment, I don't"
I just want someone who is trained and competent to carry out whatever medical procedure I need. I know if I go into a hospital or medical practice right now, there is a big chance I will get covid from either other patients or medical staff (vacinated or unvacinated).
Do you not relize that the health system is on the brink of collapse? Everyday there are articles in Stuff about Drs and nurses on the brink. We are 4000 nurse down. If these nurses/drs were unvacinated and we had a war zone with sick people dying would you say I don't want these fools looking after these people?
'If these nurses/drs were unvacinated and we had a war zone with sick people dying would you say I don't want these fools looking after these people?'
This right here is what its all about
If this was a war zone, all field medics would have had mandatory vaccinations by command order, so really not the best analogy. You really don't want infection roaring unchecked through territory with no sanitation or infrastructure.
Not if they were hard up for medical personal
They would be drafted, and fully vaccinated when they were kitted out.
Ever heard of conscientious objectors?
Conchies that refused to join the medical corps, Merchant Navy or other options were put in jail. Where many were treated worse by the guards, than actual criminals.
10 March 2016, Families of NZ conscientious objectors sought to share and preserve stories, News, University of Otago, New Zealand
Refusing to shoot people for moral reasons, and taking the consequences, is a commendable moral choice. Refusing to take sensible precautions to protect the health of your patients……. Is something that most of the conchies wouldn’t have agreed with.
One would have to question the General that as casualties stack up, keeps 700 nurses in a POW camp at home, because there was a question mark over the last item of their medical.
Conscientious objectors don't get sent to front lines
Why would you go to a hospital if you don't believe what the doctors and scientists tell you?
Some doctors think boys can become girls.
Its not a accept everything or accept nothing situation.
It's impossible to take seriously anyone who insists on dragging any argument back to a single and not really equivalent issue.
Seriously?
Sure then because I think the risk of covid has been massively overblown and I support those that don't want to/have objections to/are unable to have the injections I should also not go to the hospital if I break an arm or something, because its equivalent
Labours on the wrong side of this, deal with it
The statistics from countries that didn't have as comprehensive a covid response as ours, prove that anyone who claims " risk of covid has been massively overblown" is divorced from reality.
Well you're on the wrong side of the science and evidence, so you deal with it
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
How many of those deaths were actually caused by covid?
So yeah overblown.
But it made incredible profits for Big Pharma, the MSM had everyone glued to the screens (if it bleeds it leads) and it got Labour an overwhelming victory in the election
Yeah right. All those people I know overseas whose family and friends died of covid, are just being "overblown".
Nope, not overblown, but severely underestimated.
https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
I think the arguement is relevant. It is about people who deny science, i.e. that its not posible to change your sex and that the evidence for puberty blockers is experimental at best.
All these people talking about a shortage of medical staff, a "crises" as if it has suddenly happened.
The shortage of GP' s, Nurses and other staff has been apparent for years.
Our local medical centre hasn't been fully staffed for over a decade.
"The shortage of GP' s, Nurses and other staff has been apparent for years."
Yes, of course, but the scale has changed significantly.
For example, according to the NZNO in 2012 the ADHB was short about 120 nurses. "NZNO organiser Craig Muir says, “These shortages are shocking."" In March 2022, the ADHB was short by 428 nurses.
I acknowledge these are two different sources, but if the data comparison is valid, that's a big change over the 10 years.
Getting steadily worse over decades is hardly a sudden crisis.
In fact most of us were predicting it, for our proffesions for decades.
My own trades/Proffesions have an over thirty year training gap, since it was decided that bringing in already trained "skilled migrants" was cheaper than training our own kids.
I admit to a degree of shadenfraude, as those who cheer leaded the whole "reforms" and profited by the whole shemozzle, get bitten on the arse, as we predicted, so long ago.
"Getting steadily worse over decades is hardly a sudden crisis."
Yes, the point I was making was about the scale. The situation is far worse than 10 years ago.
"since it was decided that bringing in already trained "skilled migrants" was cheaper than training our own kids."
Training our own is preferable, but it takes time and we still may not have enough to allow for population growth. Bringing in trained migrants will likely always be part of the solution. Right now it needs to be a big part.
No. It doesn't, because it will just carry on the addiction. And the problem of adding more people when the infrastructure cannot possibly be expanded fast enough to keep up.
"because it will just carry on the addiction."
Unless we have willing trainees, and can train them in sufficient numbers, there is no option. Besides, having foreign trained nurses helps with cultural and professional diversity. It's a good thing.
And your point is KJT.?
Yes its been a problem for years. I posted recently an article by Dr Ian Powell who met with David Clark 5 and a half years ago and said there are three problems for the workforce……staff shortages, staff shortages and staff shortages.
2009. Though I could look up almost any other year.
On solutions to the shortage of doctors in Australia and New Zealand | The Medical Journal of Australia (mja.com.au)
I wish the media instead of harping on and on about the need for immigrant nurses would check out the requirements for Registration with the NZ Nursing Council. basically an applicant from a country where the education is in English, UK, Ireland, Singapore and USA and Canada where all conditions are met registration will be granted in 30 or so days. All other countries will have to prove scope and competencies and pass an IELTS exam, most don't. To grant immediate residency without registration would be foolhardy as all we would have is a number of Nurse Aides who like most immigrant Nurses be gone to Australia as soon as able.
Absolutely. I want to know that the nurses looking after me are properly trained and qualified to NZ standards.
FFS yes lets bring these nurses back! It's desperate.
C'mon get real, its only desperate for plebs like us, the ruling class don't have to worry about it
Be kind
Aroha
Why would you want every layer of the public service staffed by people who don't have the wits or the fortitude to refuse to follow stupid orders?
So much stupidity all around!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-high-court-rules-vaccination-mandates-for-educators-healthcare-workers-justified-dismisses-challenge/Q4NCC26OS7VOPOP72AR7TSYRJU/
Let them work?
NO!
Let them work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkIJsnLBA4c
Done it.
Why not let them work Anne?
Is it that you fear they will be more likely to pass covid on? Or you think they shouldn't be practicing if they don't agree with all medical procedures?
They are more likely to pass covid on.
As well as being less likely to take other sensible precautions to protect their patients.
As psych nurse mentioned @ 13.2.1 no health care worker has died yet from attracting Covid-19 at work in NZ. To mandate a vaccinated workforce is helping a lot to keep it this way.
Anecdotally I've seen it spread through all different groups of people, vaccination status doesn't seem to be a deciding factor, but I'd be interested to know if we have evidence of only the unvaccinated being the superspreaders?? Highly vaccinated countries are getting high case numbers are they not?
Your second sentence is a slur on these health workers, as their job everyday requires sensible decision making.
"Anecdotally"???
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105
USA. 67% vaccinated. Death rate 308/100k.
NZ 94% vaccinated. Death rate 31/100k.
It is even more striking if you compare highly vaccinated US states, with the Republican idiotvilles.
"job everyday requires sensible decision making".
Which is why we don't need idiots, in medical care.
They did enough damage in parliament grounds.
You know perfectly well why nurses (and doctors) who are not vaccinated (and masked) can't work in their profession so don't pretend otherwise.
But surely masking up is all thats needed to protect us from the virus, especially if we're vaccinated, therefore the nurses just need to wear ppe and we're all good to go
Unless…
Masking up and regular testing. You know like what happened in MIQ before there was a vaccine
Please tell us what happened in MIQ before there was a vaccine and how that compares with working in a healthcare setting. Just for good measure you may want to include a comparison of transmissibility of the current variants vs. the earlier ones that are relevant to MIQ.
My point is Incognito that prior to vaccines nurses worked MIQ. There are many health care settings but in MIQ and and at the Jet Park where covid cases went, nurses interacted with people,taking swabs, temparatures monitoring symptoms etc, with great care. They were also tested regularly.
Having attended an ED in the last few weeks where we were not asked if we were vacinnated, nor were we particularly isolated, nor tested for covid, I am unsure that there is that much difference
You know perfectly well why nurses (and doctors) who are not vaccinated (and masked) can't work in their profession …
We do?
Vaccine effectiveness studies have conclusively demonstrated the benefit of COVID-19 vaccines in reducing individual symptomatic and severe disease, resulting in reduced hospitalisations and intensive care unit admissions. However, the impact of vaccination on transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 needs to be elucidated.
This study showed that the impact of vaccination on community transmission of circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 appeared to be not significantly different from the impact among unvaccinated people.
The scientific rationale for mandatory vaccination in the USA relies on the premise that vaccination prevents transmission to others, resulting in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”.
Yet, the demonstration of COVID-19 breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated health-care workers (HCW) in Israel, who in turn may transmit this infection to their patients, requires a reassessment of compulsory vaccination policies leading to the job dismissal of unvaccinated HCW in the USA. Indeed, there is growing evidence that peak viral titres in the upper airways of the lungs and culturable virus are similar in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.2,3
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00768-4/fulltext
According to WHO some 180,000 Health Care workers worldwide died of Covid, contacted in the course of their work. In the UK some 900, NZ zilch. You should be eternally grateful to the NZ government for their response to the pandemic, I am. You can reference these figures on Google when you next find evidence to back up your conspiracies.
Of or with?
of/from
…find evidence to back up your conspiracies.
What conspiracies? I provided a link to a letter in The Lancet which suggests that Covid vaccine mandates for healthworkers are unjustified because studies show that it makes no difference whether the worker is vaccinated or not with respect to transmission or viral load. The writer provides references.
You offer un- referenced figures and slurs.
The Franco-Peredes Lancet letter from which you quote is not scientific research: Rosemary McDonald. Rather it is a comment on a study by Singanayaman et al (2021): Community transmission and viral load kinetics of the SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the UK: a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study. Who are not at all impressed with him in their response, given their pointed line about misinterpretation, in the paragraph immediately preceding their brief discussion of Franco-Peredes' comment:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00761-1/fulltext
Original study (a bit dated now because; delta, rather than; omicron, SARS-CoV-2 variant):
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext
The Franco-Peredes Lancet letter from which you quote is not scientific research: Rosemary McDonald. Rather it is a comment …
Yes. I did state that it was a letter I was quoting from in my comment. In your rush to prove me a fool, did you not read what I wrote?
Can you provide scientific proof that the Pfizer Product prevents infection and transmission of the Omicron variants? Or at least reduces infection and transmission sufficiently to justify exclusion of much needed health and disability workers?
And I'd like to see those scientific papers that show that the mRNA injections are safe and there will be no long term adverse effects from continual boosting?
(Full disclosure here…I was the paid carer of my tetraplegic partner from April 2020 when this payment was allowed because of home care worker shortage and fear of infection with carers going into multiple homes. This payment of course was stopped when both my partner and I chose not to partake of the Pfizer product. Stopped because…paying for the work I do would somehow increase the risk of infection? Who knows.? The properly triple jabbed carer sent out to merely sit with my man so I could do the shopping came to our home a day before testing positive and after a weekend partying out of town. She was symptomatic. Despite having already had Omicron in March…I too also developed a sore throat etc for a few days. I'm not sure what country you are living in, but around these parts its generally accepted that vaccination status means nothing in terms of getting infected, and those already vulnerable are still sadly falling off their perches despite being multiply jabbed. )
USA. 67% vaccinated. Death rate 308/100k.
NZ 94% vaccinated. Death rate 31/100k.
It is even more striking if you compare highly vaccinated US states, with the Republican idiotvilles.
Sigh. Have you not been following what has been happening in the US regarding healthcare? As much as healthcare might exist for the millions who cannot afford it in that obscene jealously protected private profit driven system. Compare apple with apples.
Japan has been doing quite well.
But what truly sets it apart from many places, particularly Asian neighbors like China, is it’s managed to limit deaths without mandates and with few restrictions. The constitution prevents imposing lockdowns backed by police actions, meaning that even during a state of emergency the government puts the onus on businesses and individuals to change their behavior.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-17/how-japan-achieved-one-of-the-world-s-lowest-covid-death-rates
Considering our much lower population density (a factor with an airborne disease) Japan has done much better than NZ…without the stick waving and vicious mandates.
And treating the population like helpless, mewling infants.
Japans population doesn't need "stick waving" because they follow sensible precautions without it.
Coronavirus manners in Japan (japan-guide.com)
Japanese do not have to be told not to make other people sick.
Unlike a proportion of our population. Who need to be treated like "mewling" moaning infants. Because they are!
That is deeply flawed comparison that pretends vaccination rate is the only variable that is different between the the US and NZ. In fact despite their relatively low total vaccination rate the US death data is not very different from many other similar developed nations.
The story is far more complex than you are pretending. For example India has a very similar vaccination rate to the US at 66%, but a far lower total death rate according to the OurWorldinData link above.
That is only one piece of evidence, of many.
It is the anti vaccers and their apologists, like you who ignore complexity. Who cannot comprehend that sciencentific evidence is a jigsaw of many pieces. Not just one, or a few datapoints! or "aneqdotes".
And, of course you prefer you ignore the differences in neighbouring US States, where "other variables" have less effect than between NZ and the USA.
We all know why India has less deaths. If you do not have an excellent immune system in India, you won't survive to adulthood.
I point out that your simplistic comparison is flawed and show one example of how reality is much more complex – and you accuse me of ignoring complexity.
I don't know how you expect a constructive conversation on that basis.
psych nurse that is a shocking statistic. Really shocking
Hi, Rosemary
Thank you for the link. I think you are seeing things that don't actually exist in this letter to the Lancet.
Yes, there was no difference in viral load or nasopharangeal levels of Covid19, between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. I think you then imply that it's ok for doctors to be unvaccinated when seeing patients.
This is overly simplistic in that viral load doesn’t necessarily equate with transmissibility.
This is one letter in a medical journal versus a large body of evidence backing vaccination for medical professionals to protect their patients.
Sorry out running right now can't easily do a decent search for you in the rain, but lots of clear evidence out there.
Sorry out running right now can't easily do a decent search for you in the rain, but lots of clear evidence out there.
And there's a lot of real world evidence that despite complying with mandates multiply 'vaccinated' medical staff are being infected with Covid and becoming symptomatic. And needing time off work.
Somewhere there will be data showing the % of folks who became infected, were symptomatic, needed hospitalisation and sadly died of/from/with Covid before the Magic Jabs were deployed.
From memory, 80% of those infected in 2020 had no symptoms…. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/08/more-than-80percent-of-people-with-coronavirus-had-no-symptoms-uk-study.html
It would be very interesting to compare those data with the data collected recently.
A pity RNZ has now removed the comparisons between unvaccinated, fully vaccinated and boosted with respect to new cases, hospitalisations and deaths…because before they were removed…the graphics were showing sweet f/a difference.
But Anne, I understand the only Dr in Muripara who refused the vacinne has been allowed bcak to work. Maybe the powers that be thought it was better to have a Dr rather than no Dr at all.
You seem to understand very little because you didn’t do any research, did you?
Why don’t you Google it and let us know what you find? BTW, it is Murupara.
Ouch! Are you ok Incognito? Did I touch a nerve?
While I didn't provide a link for my brief comment about the Dr at Murupara, it is more or less as Rosemary said. Another reason to bring back unvaxed nurses is indeed if they have had covid in the last three months (likely if they are unvaxxed) as they will have natural immunity.
We are due to get a booster soon, which we will do, although I haven't taken the time to read how effective it is in providing immunity. I imagine it must provide some.
Maybe the powers that be thought it was better to have a Dr rather than no Dr at all.
At the time he was suspended, he had been restricted to carrying out consultations via Telehealth due to not being immunised against Covid-19.
Because of his recent recovery from Covid-19, he has received a three-month exemption from the Covid-19 order and is able to practise
https://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/article/news/murupara-doctor-back-practice